Winner’s Curse

By Chewxy, on January 30th, 2010%

In my experimental economics class 2 years ago (wow, it’s been that long?) we studied something called the Winner’s Curse. Essentially, what happens is when the winner of an auction (of a common value type) typically overpays for the auction. In some sense it’s a phyrric victory. Of course, the extreme form is by overpaying. Some other forms of the Winner’s Curse, feeling as if one has overpaid is also included (only if you consider independent value auctions as a form common value auctions).

I was involved in one such auction today.

So, as you may have known, I’m moving houses again, to a different state (and I complained about the design problems of the Rock Band guitar). Today I was involved in house inspections for rentals in the new state that I am going to be living and working in. Back in the Old state, looking for houses was a simple thing – there was very little competition. But over in New state1 was the first time I saw 30 people rock up to a tiny apartment and having half of them picking out the forms from the real estate agent. In all my years of finding places to rent, never had I encountered such competition. Continue reading Winner’s Curse

  1. I think the capitalization of the term Old and the term New should tell you which was the original state I’m from and where I am moving to – hint, one of them looks like the contraction of the name of the state, and the other one has the term in the name of the state – but if you are too stupid to figure it out I shan’t help you [↩]
Leave a comment   Economic Nonsense, Rants n' Rave

Rock Band Guitar Design Failure

By Chewxy, on January 26th, 2010%

I’m moving houses again. This time, to a different state. So, as you can guess, I’m packing stuff up. And because this time round I cannot just put everything into the car and go (Australia is testament to failure of human cognition of large distances – one simply cannot visualize the distance from city to city) – I actually have to use a removalist. And so I started packing.

Then this is what I found:
Rock Band Guitar, larger than box

Yes, you would have noticed that the guitar is larger than the box. No worries, you say, because the guitar headstock snaps off and it will go into the box, right (afterall, when it came, the headstock had to be manually snapped onto the neck)? So I flip to the back and looked at the place when I first snapped the headstock onto the neck, when I first bought the game: Continue reading Rock Band Guitar Design Failure

2 comments   Life, the Universe and Everything, Rants n' Rave

Two Ways of Reading

By Chewxy, on January 19th, 2010%

Oh look, I have a blog. A couple of nights ago, I had a wonderful dinner with a good firend and the topic of reading came up many times. I mentioned that I have stopped reading fiction, and instead, I’m concentrating on non-fiction instead. Maybe some day I’ll pick up fiction again, who knows.

In my opinion, there are really, only two ways of reading things. And these two ways can easily be approximated by the classes of books out there. There are generally only 2 superclasses of books – fiction and non-fiction, and you’d only read books with roughly these two mindsets.

Let’s say, for now, that I am correct, and there are only two ways of reading a book (or article) – you can read it like reading a non-fiction, or you can read it like fiction. The actual genre or class of the book doesn’t really matter.

Reading fiction is quite different from reading non-fiction. Ask yourself what the difference is when the last time you switched between reading non-fiction and fiction (the last time for me was in October, when I stopped reading Sala-i-Martin et al.’s Determinant of Long Term Growth; and picked up Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals (apparently I got the limited edition cover too!)). My mindset sort of switched gears. I thoroughly enjoyed reading both, but I was also very aware that my approach to them both were very different.

When reading fiction, the mind is less preoccupied with external logic and correctness. This is because the mind is aware of the construct of the fiction – that it is entirely fictional. The mind is less analytical (perhaps not when reading Agatha Christie’s books – but that’s the effect of a good author) when reading fiction, where as when reading non-fiction, even when it’s light reading like Superfreakonomics (you can read my review of Superfreakonomics when you’re done with this article), the mind starts probing for all sorts of errors or logical inconsistencies.

Now, I am not saying that there is a discrete barrier between reading fiction and non-fiction. Both give utility when reading (which is why I prefer to read epics and comedies instead of tragedies1 – in that I like to come out from reading fiction feeling happy and not depressed) – fiction feeds the imagination, and non-fiction feeds knowledge. Both fiction and non-fiction also evokes emotion, though arguably less in the latter (it’s quite hard to get any emotion from seeing a difference in GDP values, now can it).

However, I am arguing that meta-awareness in the classes of books being read – fiction or non-fiction – will impose upon a mindset that affects the understanding of the subject being read. Simply put, we treat fictions and non-fictions differently. Continue reading Two Ways of Reading

  1. I’m also lyric deaf but I doubt if anyone will get the reference, in which, I have just wasted your time reading it [↩]
3 comments   Articles, Deep Thought

2010, Huh?

By Chewxy, on January 1st, 2010%

First off, Happy New Year. I’ve had a fantastic 2009. Comparatively to countless many other people, I have had a relatively very good year. There were many things I wanted, but didn’t get; but there were many good turn of events that I have never thought possible either.

I notice I have changed quite a bit in . . . → Read More: 2010, Huh?

4 comments   Me Stuff