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from the it's-harder-to-reverse-engineer-someone-else's-work-than-the-new-stuff-we-just-came-up-with dept.
Here's Why Our Brains Solve Problems by Adding Things, Not Removing:
Have you ever noticed how we usually try and solve problems by adding more, rather than taking away? More meetings, more forms, more buttons, more shelves, more systems, more code, and so on. Now scientists think they might know the reason why.
A study of 1,585 people across 8 different experiments showed that our brains tend to default to addition rather than subtraction when it comes to finding solutions – in many cases, it seems we just don't consider the strategy of taking something away at all.
The researchers found that this preference for adding was noticeable in three scenarios in particular: when people were under higher cognitive load, when there was less time to consider the other options, and when volunteers didn't get a specific reminder that subtracting was an option.
"It happens in engineering design, which is my main interest," says engineer Leidy Klotz, from the University of Virginia. "But it also happens in writing, cooking, and everything else – just think about your own work and you will see it."
"The first thing that comes to our minds is, what can we add to make it better? Our paper shows we do this to our detriment, even when the only right answer is to subtract. Even with financial incentive, we still don't think to take away."
[...] "The more often people rely on additive strategies, the more cognitively accessible they become," says psychologist Gabrielle Adams, from the University of Virginia.
"Over time, the habit of looking for additive ideas may get stronger and stronger, and in the long run, we end up missing out on many opportunities to improve the world by subtraction."
The research has been published in Nature.
Journal Reference:
Gabrielle S. Adams, Benjamin A. Converse, Andrew H. Hales, et al. People systematically overlook subtractive changes, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by srobert on Monday April 12 2021, @02:32PM (15 children)
Might explain the income tax code in the U.S. Every single piece of it was ostensibly added to solve some sort of issue of perceived fairness. Meanwhile the unfairness of it is hidden in its size and complexity. The whole thing should be scrapped and rebuilt to be fair and simple. Accountants and tax attorneys will probably disagree with that. But I guess they could learn to code or something.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 12 2021, @03:32PM (7 children)
In the "even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes" department, I genuinely liked the ignorant, unrealistic, mandate from the stratosphere by DJT in 2017: for every regulation added two must be removed.
The tax code should be driving harder than that toward a flat tax. Income tax is income tax, no need to special case it beyond a percentage of net income. What is and isn't allowed as an expense deductible from income should be mercilessly driven toward simplicity.
Couple a flat tax on income with a UBI that covers the basic needs of life to a level where charity is no longer required to maintain the health or safety of citizens who lack other income and we've got a workable system that doesn't dis-incentivize work or income producing activities. Focus charitable giving on improving people's quality of life through arts and education, not keeping them from starvation or exposure.
Want to subsidize something? Go for it, just keep that shit out of the tax code.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by HammeredGlass on Monday April 12 2021, @04:43PM (3 children)
And then you voted for China Joe cuz fat man says mean things.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @05:24PM
Fat man is literal fascist and fascist == bad
Capisce?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 12 2021, @06:36PM (1 child)
China Joe vs Moscow Mitch and Kremlin Don - such choices we have in our elections these days.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by HammeredGlass on Monday April 12 2021, @10:35PM
The only one to have proven financial ties with authoritarian dictatorships is Joe Biden, you craven lying fool.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 12 2021, @07:02PM (2 children)
To simplify taxes, everyone should pay 30% of income. And, "income" means return on investments, dividends of any sort, as well as pay and wages. I'm half tempted to make it applicable to inheritance - except I really don't like inheritance taxes. The average Joe already pays a helluva "tax" on inheritance when he sees to funeral expenses.
It shouldn't matter how poor, how rich, old money, new money, or no money, you pay 30% on income. To hell with all the excuses and exemptions. Trust funds, foundations, etc pay the same on income. No taxes on the existing capital, just on income.
I wouldn't mind seeing some of the property taxes abolished. Personal property tax means that I pay something on everything I own, each year. Stupid utility trailer cost me $500, and sits idle 99% of the time adds a dollar or two to my annual taxes, which I think is stupid. Real estate taxes . . . sometimes I don't think they are high enough. Too many people "hiding" their wealth in real estate.
But, bottom line, taxes should be simple enough that the average high school grad can understand them. What we have, the average college grad can't understand unless he majored in business administration, with something like a submajor in tax accounting.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Monday April 12 2021, @10:46PM (1 child)
I'm in favor of a 1% yearly wealth tax, no income tax at all. (Maybe add in the option of a primary residence exception, but the tax goes to 2% if you do.)
Taxing income instead of wealth was one of the biggest con jobs ever foisted off on the peasantry by the rich.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 13 2021, @12:11PM
More popular with the rich than wealth or income tax is consumption tax - true consumption tax applied to all consumption.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Monday April 12 2021, @06:05PM (4 children)
The tax code is intentionally complicated, because tax filers want job security and can afford lobbyists.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Monday April 12 2021, @11:37PM (3 children)
It's tax filing software providers [youtu.be], but yeah.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @01:12AM
Don't forget the Republican preference for tax filing to be complicated and painful [theatlantic.com] to remind people to dislike taxes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 13 2021, @04:08PM (1 child)
Them too. I remember talking with my dad's tax filer when I was a kid. One guy in an office, shelves full of tax law books, which I remarked about. He said yeah, that's just this year's tax code. I asked why it was so complicated, and he replied that he makes donations to politicians to make it complicated, to preserve his job. At least he was honest.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:54PM
You know, that makes sense about preserving its complexity as a moat [investopedia.com]. Which is probably why it seems like it's full of sewage and alligators.
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Monday April 12 2021, @08:58PM
An (ex-engineer) patent attorney friend explained it to me this way: laws that are passed act like "patches" to the legal code, adding/modifying/deleting parts of it, so it's not as if you can remove and replace a "law" independently as you would a (oblig. analogy) car part. Considering how "laws" passed in Congress are sometimes ~1E3 pages in size, it's hard to say that any of these are clean, auditable sets of changes to anything -- in most cases, anyway [folklore.org].
Between special interests, partisanship, loopholes, and actual legal theory and application, over time the whole thing looks more like a cluster of accretions than an extension/elaboration of the original plan with clearly-defined abstraction layers, per the title of this webcomic [lawsandsausagescomic.com].
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 13 2021, @07:23AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves