Around the same time that I blogged a little calculator for a friend thinking about what to do with his cars, the AAAS put out a news release, Replacing Least Efficient Car Has Benefits for Climate, Wallet".
In particular, check out the embedded video which explains why thinking about efficiency (per 10,000 miles, for example) enables better consumer decision-making.
There you go again. Decartes has won!!
I went to a school with a binodal wealth demographic. Almost classically 10% (about 40 people) had more money as individuals than the other individuals in the 90% would earn in their lifetime.
One of the rick kids told this story about his aunt. Where she needed a new car. So she went to Benz and sat in every car model within the building. She then chose the car that had the most comfortable seat.
Most people are horrified by this story!! Ask yourself though what makes it horrifing. A waste a wealth without careful consideration maybe? I doubt that the money is the real issue. Instead, realize that she made a pretty serious purchase without appling any quantifiable measure whatsoever.
Doing something like that would some measure is pretty strange. Think of what buying a house would be like without measuring it any way. So then you have to ask yourself what the measure is really worth. Does it offer some real way of understanding the object better? The next step is how you would argue that one measure is more important than another.
In this case, changing the way you display efficiency will just results in getting the information easier which ultimately results in stupidier individuals. Spellcheck for instance makes all of our documents have perfect spelling, but we can't spell.
The educational effects of over similifing life are showing up more and more as we travel through the information age. The space age ended with manufacturing becoming so efficient and cost effective that quality products became scarce. What will the information age end with?
Posted by: Mike H | September 15, 2008 at 11:00 PM