If you’re into computer programming, you’re probably familiar with the term “abstraction layer”. For those new to the party: an abstraction layer hides the complicated/yucky/user-UNfriendly workings of some product or process, allowing you to work with it easily without knowing how it works.

This is a fundamental concept in making computer software. Each program, website, or app is an abstraction layer. Instead of a user having to code their own way to file taxes or simulate action for fun, the programmer(s) build a program that a user can run. The same goes for the divide between hardware and software, and how high-level a language is. Instead of worrying where every little 1 and 0 go in the computer’s memory, a programmer can use a higher-level programming environment that worries about that sort of thing for them.

In fact, to see the cutting-edge of abstraction layers, look no further than tools made by programmers, for other programmers. The ease with which you can find just the right tool in a GitHub repo or an Atom package absolutely shames almost every other industry. Unless there’s a giant community of people making homebrewed plumbing tools, I’m pretty sure programming is king when it comes to toolmaking for growth.

In a way, all great technology represents some kind of abstraction layer between the required complexity to make something happen, and the user wanting something to happen. You can drive a car without knowing how the engine works, or use a toaster without needing enough knowledge to build it from scratch.

Building more and better abstraction layers is often a key to a tech company’s success. Apple’s revolutionary products weren’t “10x improvements” because they had more processing power, but because they had a massive boost in convenience. A touch screen is a better abstraction layer for human interaction than a tiny keypad. Likewise, plenty of tech firms either make something easier for consumers, or act as “platforms” to make setting up new tech easier for others.

Thinking broader than technology (or maybe still inside it), government is best implemented an abstraction layer for the infrastructure, services, and coordination needed to support a really nice society to live in. This is part of why government is so difficult to change. It’s not just the multiple competing sides loudly trying their best to make changes. It’s also the fact that everything worth politically fighting over has millions of people’s convenience at stake. No wonder so much bureaucracy exists; if something seemingly offputting was as important to you as functioning roads, why wouldn’t you make it harder for others to take it away. It’s your convenience, therefore it’s your right. Nuance and possibility of coordination will, as usual, be damned.

This is part of why so many of us feel righteous indignation at violations of human rights; it doesn’t always cost much (if anything) to allow people to do benign things, yet they are frustratingly barred from their rights anyway. Then again, many rulers may find even the act of giving new, scarce freedoms to be too high a price for happier citizens.

Where was I? Something about technology, right?

Good product design is, in many contexts, a supercharged act of moral good. Every extra bit of work a designer does to make things easier on the user can be multiplied millions of times over. Likewise, a bit of bad design can multiply evil by millions of times. And of course, if you’re designing particularly powerful technology, design must be done very carefully, since the harm you could inflict could be greater than that of less-complex technologies.

All this suggests that, when it comes to doing impossible things, mastering crucial details and looking beyond the nearest abstraction layer(s) will suggest plenty of ways to start.

(The number of links here also suggests I should start being an Amazon Affiliate, given how many books/services I link to. Jeez.) Nevermind, the links here are now Amazon Affiliate links! My disclosure notice is on the bottom of this webpage.

Many of us know plenty of good rationalist advice. Think longer before making decisions, look carefully for direct evidence, look to the research when it comes to seemingly-obvious high-stakes choices.

Today, I will share a piece of advice that, if I followed it religiously, would have probably made me much more productive years ago.

However, to avoid other-optimizing, I will say this meta-advice requires 3 key things to all be true at the same time:

1.You have found a piece of advice relating to some part of your life. It may be a productivity tip, a health recommendation, or a bit of career guidance. It must be relevant to your life.

2.From the evidence at hand, and your analysis, you think the advice makes sense. As in, you could imagine how it would help you in your circumstances, the advice-giver actually cites evidence of the advice working, and so on.

And most importantly…

3.You are terrified of following the advice.

In other words, if you get advice that applies to you, makes sense, and sounds difficult for you, go in. This advice is basically an idiot-proofed extension of the advice to “go outside your comfort zone” and “if it’s painful, it might be good for you”. You don’t get to weasel out of denying evidence or your own logical abilities, just to make advice simpler to remember.

But if you’re avoiding doing something with clear benefits, solely because of some akrasia lurking in your brain… do it.

When we left off in Part 1: In The Door, we saw how U.S. Christian churches entice newcomers to stop by. The next step, is taking somebody from the parking lot to a seat in the aisles, and keeping them there in time for the magic to begin. Continuing to reference my outsider-coming-to-church-cookout experience, let’s see which persuasion techniques churches have in their favor between your arrival and the sermon proper.

(If you haven’t read Part 1, please do so before continuing.)

(More) Social Proof:

Knowing that some familiar faces would be at church may have got you in the door. This was certainly my case, having been invited by a friend and her family. The social proof does not stop at the door, however. If you weren’t aware of how many peers were regular churchgoers, prepare for lots of face-recognizing! If you had second thoughts about this visit after seeing the giant intimidating cross outside, let them melt away as you meet and greet people! And, if you don’t know anyone there, at least marvel at the locals meeting and greeting around you! Even without direct participation, you can see and hear people in comfortable emotional states and social interactions. Surely an occasion for this many reuniting groups couldn’t be bad, can it?

Commitment:

Another Influence technique in play that Sunday was my initial commitment. Yes, it was rather small in the scheme of things, and I didn’t brag to everyone about it so they would pressure me to go (that’s mixing it up with precommitment, or “self-binding”). Still, agreeing to go to the church on a specific day, entering it into my calendar, and even looking forward to the food, the friend, and the novelty of it… Let’s just say I had many “hooks” in my mind, anchoring me to the sermon, drawing me in, keeping me from running at the first sign of vaguely-uncomfortable evangelism and persuasion.

Reciprocation:

Speaking of first signs of persuasion, some of the church volunteers (or are they employees?) were handing out gift bags! Mine came with a pen, some honey, and a free book! (About getting into Heaven). No donation required, no merchandise-hawking, just a pure gift! This, of course, made me less apprehensive about going inside the church, and more willing to play along with whatever happened in the sermon.

Liking:

“Liking” is possibly the most broadly-defined method of persuasion in the book that inspired part of this series, Influence. It means a person’s affinity for the one doing the persuading, and it encompasses attributes ranging from clothing and compliments to height and accomplishments. Still, anything the church officials could do to create a friendly and professional image, they did. Some likeable attributes spotted: gentle tones, middle-age-casual clothing, and plenty of smiling (but not too much; this is not one of those 1990s movies where people in the wrong smile too much and it’s all an allegory for America in some way and there’s elements of satire and black comedy and existentialism and and and…).

Also, if stereotypes exercise subconscious power on your mind, you may be interested in the fact that many people at the church were, coincidentally, kindly elderly folk.

Cultural Habits

If many Americans have grown up without the church experience, very few can claim to have avoided all public entertainment events. You don’t have to be an opera lover to know proper behavior in an audience just before the show begins. Practically everyone in the U.S. has gone to at least one sports game, or movie theater, or school assembly; most of them are, in fact, good audience members much of the time! Tying in with social proof is a kind of macro-cultural proof: it’s not just everyone around you who sits down and shuts up for the event, but everyone around you every time you’ve been in a similar situation in the past.

In closing:

Join me, the next time Beeminder reminds me to post something, as we dive deep into the mechanics of the sermon itself. At least, the sermon I went to on that fateful Sunday…

So last Sunday, I went to a church service, as prelude to a cookout/date with a human female I am interested in. I’ve also been reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and studying how video games and social media are designed to extract maximum time and attention.

Two and two clicked in my head, so I decided to use my (admittedly limited) new church experience to dissect why churches, specifically, are such mainstays of so many people’s lives.

Note: I will not name any specific church, even though this article is basically glued together by an anecdotal experience I had. Also, this post series is specifically about Christian churches in the United States, and written by a staunch liberal atheist.

Social Proof:

On the macro level, religious service attendance (especially weekly) is fairly high in the United States, especially among different Christian denominations. The more stereotypically hardcore sects have higher rates of at-least-weekly attendance, coming as approximately no surprise. Like a harvest of wheat from a gigantic American field, family and community members can, if not always win over their children, at least gain a starting advantage from the status quo.

Converting newcomers to regular churchgoers, however, is less like predictable farming and more hands-on gardening. The seeds of attendance are planted more carefully, in this case the offering of a cookout and a chance to “hang out” with someone I like and meet her family. (What’s the proper word for “playdate, but it’s not necessarily a romantic date and you’re both adults instead of toddlers and you arranged it yourselves”? Three seconds of synonym Googling were fruitless!)

These techniques, for the uninitiated, all tie into the Influence book’s idea of social proof: when more people do something, it seems more normal and good. (To see the power of this, try not taking off your hat during the Pledge of Allegiance at a football game.)

Full disclosure: the woman who brought me to church was acknowledged for her “touch”, as in she “touched” somebody (me) in the name of the Lord, by bringing me to church. The group’s leaders knew that a one-off invitation with sufficient motivation (food + female human) would work on many like me. Even if they did not have formal training in Influence, with a capital “I” and italics, Christianity has had thousands of years and many experimenting factions vying for followers. Accidentally hitting on techniques that work, and then spreading their usage far and wide, is no surprise.

(Editor’s note: The author worked very hard to not make a bad joke when describing his love interest spiritually touching him. Please take a moment of silence for his willpower, which will be tapped out for days after writing this.)

Familiarity, Design, and Franchising:

Here, we see techniques from the art and design worlds, dovetailing with the above techniques to supercharge church intake.

The most inviting churches to the non-regulars are, holding all else equal, often the most normal-looking ones, given the surrounding environment. A gigantic glowing Scientology logo would be out of place in Barcelona, Spain, just as La Sagrada Familia would be very strange in Los Angeles.

At the same time, churches need to attract the kinds of visitors in the area they will serve. Thus, the artistic imperative for “the familiar, with a twist” must be carried out by an individual church, like a McDonald’s changing its architecture just right to attract customers in India or Sweden. We’ll come back to this idea of community-focused franchising later, but for now, just remember that churches can adapt their persuasion techniques to uniquely suit their audiences. This is a powerful tactic, but it can also split a church along factional lines, resulting in smaller and less-accessible denominations.

In closing:

Join me, the next time Beeminder reminds me to post something, as we look at how a church can keep you around after arriving, so you won’t bail out before the sermon starts…

I was going to finish a post about how people learn to be cynical in the wrong situations, but darn if this isn’t more tempting.

SO, I was going through my email, and I noticed a new comment in a Khan Academy thread from almost a year ago.

This was the question:

…and this was the new response:

This looked spammy. This looked scammy. This looked, if one was being very charitable, like one of those links one is never meant to type from memory, like the average Google search URL. This link was at the Satanic crossroads of consumer-friendly (“Awww, a nice subdomain!”) and backend-shoehorned (“/category/, I am a robot, this is WordPress outside of an optimal context.“).

I had to know more.

(Note: if any potential future employers have found this blog, this is the post where I show off my research abilities. LinkedIn tells me that “Research” (in the generic sense, presumably) is a valuable skill.)

I clicked the link, and arrived at a strange website:

Examples.Essays.Vip. Two quick thoughts on that website title:

1.Were the periods left in from the URL on purpose? If so, why not go all the way and not capitalize the words?

2.Apparantly, .vip domains exist.

The most eye-catching words below the title led me to a very strange article. Be warned: this was the part weird enough to convince me that there was something weird enough to write a whole blog post about.

Oh no.

Attempting to read this… essay-like object… is like reading a postmodern novel. Common artistic-analysis-essay clichés don’t just appear, but seem to crawl out of the giant main paragraph like worms out of rotten wood. Marvel at the formulaic transition –> quote –> citation format, with little context and rushed, nondescript interpretation. “The pale colors did the thing the critic said they did, a-a-and the other painter uses dark colors to be different, aw crap deadline, give me an A+!”

(This just in… I’m being informed that )

Speaking of context, what exactly is this essay trying to say? It’s like several excerpts from an actual essay about paintings (or, about others’ writings on paintings…), competing with each other to get a word in edgewise. Calm down, just make one point as well as you can!

Except, of course, many school essays require multiple points made, authorial ability to do so be damned.

And, of course, using this as an Example Essay (.vip) would get you docked for grammar. Few periods have the requisite spaces after them to separate the new sentence, and many courses discourage the use of “I” in papers.

Do not take this as my rant against artistic analysis or academia. Learning is important, art can and should be looked at closely, and the existence of one bizarre example essay, out of context, can convincingly argue against much of anything.

Except, of course, the likely quality of the “brilliant papers” written by Essays.Vip.

Because I have better things to do, I have been procrastinating by reading Planet Funny. The author (the guy from Jeapordy!) makes the case that

There was something interesting Jennings said about the rise of irony, snark, sarcasm, and cynicism in society. Noting the suspension of usual irony by SNL and The Onion right after 9/11, he warns:

Wounds heal, and irony always comes back. Occasionally trend pieces will trumpet a “New Sincerity” movement… citing as evidence any new sign of earnestness or sentiment in the culture… But it’s never going to happen, as 9/11 demonstrated. Once the genie is out of the bottle, an irony culture is never going to go back to being a sincerity culture, because the roots go too deep. Authenticity is often uncomfortable and revealing: ambiguous snark never is. Who wants to be the only vulnerable poet soul in a world of irony-clad scoffers?

This reminded me of the discussion of multipolar traps by Scott Alexander. The grossly oversimplify (the linked article is better): An individual hits on some behavior that optimizes for one thing, at the cost of another. If the thing optimized is good enough for the individual (vastly oversimplifying here), it spreads throughout the group, population, or species. The result: everyone is worse off than before the big shift, but unless they can coordinate (and enforce coordination), no one actor can change the whole system. Hence, a “multi-polar trap”, described by Alexander:

From a god’s-eye-view, we can optimize the system to “everyone agrees to stop doing this at once”, but no one within the system is able to effect the transition without great risk to themselves.

Examples of multipolar traps include pollution (convenient for polluter, increases risks for everyone), arms races (no one actor can stop alone), and many tragedies of the commons.

So in the Planet Funny paradigm, as cynicism proves its use in the face of hardship and challenge, it becomes (for many) a default response to these things. As it becomes more common, it becomes harder for individuals to express sincere emotions or beliefs without coming off as self-righteous or stupid. From Jennings, again:

Ironic reserve can be exhausting and lonely!

Luckily, in real life, the spread of snark is not nearly as “sticky” a trap as other multipolar examples. Snark appeals to different kinds of people more than others, and what keeps one’s status in one friend group would be uncalled for in another.

The real threat to beware of, then, is whether the snark level of society as a whole is too pervasive and overused (especially in, say, the political sphere).

Any thoughts on this? Am I completely off, sort of off, spot on?

You’ve heard the advice before: set a time to work when you don’t need the Internet. It is often the single biggest improvement to your ability to do work. I’d guess this is because such a high proportion of addictive things are online, where they are continually being optimized to keep your attention. But what if you need continual access because you work on a server, or need tutorials, or otherwise require a connection to do your work?

Luckily, the blank blocklist need not intimidate you away from this important practice.

(Software you’ll need: anything that can block specific sites. Free tools exist, like Leechblock and Cold Turkey.)

1. facebook.com

Privacy. Data. Leaks. Filter bubbles. Clickbait. By now, everyone has at least passing familiarity with the problems created by a platform optimized for growth and engagement. Yes, sometimes you need Facebook to keep up with friends or work. Yes, sometimes they provide useful features in their quest for more users. When it comes time to work, if you’re still an active user, make sure to block this first.

1. twitter.com

Fun. Endless. Distracting. Like Facebook, Twitter is crafted to capture and keep attention. Unlike texting (or even parts of Facebook), Twitter is not essential for any useful work (unless your work requires posting and promoting. Or you work at Twitter.). Keep it separate from your productive time.

1. reddit.com and/or tumblr.com

If you found this blog, you likely use at least one of these niche-oriented social networks. If you’re a hardcore procrastinator, this will not be the first time you’ve read an imperative to get off whichever site you prefer. They’re communities are notorious for procrastination. When it comes time to work, make sure these are on your blocklist.

1. youtube.com

As much freedom as YouTube provides for creation and watching, it is almost like the new version of television in its functionality. Be honest: do you watch YouTube when you have extra energy, or when you’re tired? We both know the answer (well, hypothetically). Block it from your work time.

1. tvtropes.org

This website may be a tad niche, but I could not in good conscience leave it off this list. Its catalog of recurring patterns in fiction has a well-deserved reputation for keeping people on the site for ages, and its surprisingly high Alexa rank confirms its popularity. I would be a hypocrite if I told you to swear off the site entirely. Instead, just block it when you need work done.

1. Any websites you use too often.

In order to fully capture the benefits, you might want to track your time using a free application. Then, you can pinpoint exactly where your personally waste lots of time. If you’re a compulsive shopper, add amazon.com to your blocklist. if you follow eSports, block twitch.tv. And of course, if my blog is distracting you (with its 3 entire posts), block it when you need to work.