The Morality of Dynamic Pricing

I recently commented on a very good article by a friend of mine (Chris Taylor, see http://lnkd.in/bCKsVDB) regarding the Internet of Things and the effect that it might have on pricing. Specifically, the possibility of applying realtime, dynamic pricing to a broader range of products and services. I am blogging my comment, because I think it bears repeating: The availability of *big data* and the kind of distributed processing that allows us to operate in a much 'smarter' capacity runs the risk of us over-applying more sophisticated methods to interactions that, in my opinion, should remain patently unsophisticated for moral and practical reasons. Here is the comment: "Aside from the econometrics of pricing, there is also a moral question, which, I think, is further accentuated by the ever increasing bipolar disparity in income and wealth - not just in the United States, but the world at large. In today's world, the person who makes $5/hr can still complete for a cup of Starbucks coffee with the person making $40/hr, just by virtue of standing in line to pay a predetermined price. In, potentially, tomorrow's, realtime 'price elasticity' world, the $5/hr person may very well be priced out of that cup of coffee when they get to the front of the line, just by virtue of the accumulation of people at the back of the line. In cases where real, long-term planning cannot be effected by the purchaser of a specific good or service - i.e. buying an airline ticket or booking a hotel - the moral question of realtime dynamic pricing is a very interesting question indeed, especially when one has already paid a real price in terms of time spent waiting to effect the transaction. As a society, we'll need to take care to make sure we don't create dynamic models for interactions that should morally and practically remain static. It would really suck if 2015's Valentine's Day dinner were based on realtime data of 2014's post Valentine's Day dinner climax ... Or maybe not ;-)"

Deliberate Love

There is the love that is simply germane to existence: The love of a parent, the love for a parent. There is the love that simply occurs: Love at first sight, love at first touch. And then there is 'deliberate love': The kind of love that owes its existence to another source, but is fostered and cared for by the attentive mind. A mind that understands that perception always outpaces reality: The facts on the ground do not change nearly as fast as our binary minds would have us believe. A mind that understands that a hopeful heart must be given hope, an unsure mind must be given assurance, and a longing soul must be consoled with love. A mind that draws from the mysterious source that creates love, to keep it alive in less mysterious ways. It is very much like the mystery of life within us. We are walking proof of the magic in this universe. When we die, the magic runs out of us. To where, we do not know. But a skilled doctor does not contemplate this mystery. He intubates, he resuscitates, he injects life, he rejects death, and 5 minutes after the magic has seemingly run out of the patient, the magic is restored, and the walking mystery of the universe walks out of the ER and into the arms of a love that started out as occurrence, then turned into a love of existence, and was kept alive for a lifetime by the attentive mind. If there is anything to pay attention to in this world, pay attention to the ones you love. That is the only accomplishment that endures. It is the only magic we take with us.

Vocal No Fly Zones

No matter what kind of singer you are – professional, amateur, car, shower – you probably like to sing your favorite tunes, and said tunes are likely sung by someone with a much different (not necessarily better) voice than your own. Unless you are a professional singer that has learned to occupy his or her own vocal space, you have probably developed a ‘system of modulation’ to approximate the tone and timbre of your favorite singers, which probably sounds pretty good to you in the car or the shower, but you might notice that it does not sound so good on recordings or via amplification (or maybe it does, if you are one of the lucky few). Why is that? The first reason is what I call ‘hearmagination’: Your brain mixing up what comes in through the ears with what exists in the mind, blending together what is real with what is imagined, resulting in a pretty good sound that, in fact, may not be so good. This is immediately revealed in recordings, with the caveat that some recording devices make you sound much worse than you actually do, so take this with a grain of salt. The second reason is what I call, quite simply, ‘encroachment’, for lack of a better, contrived term: When someone modulates their voice to the point where they remove the very position and space required to make the best of THEIR voice, because they are trying to emulate SOMEONE ELSE’s voice. Most of the time, in an effort to sing in a higher key, they end up ‘raising’ everything, and, in essence, occupying what I call ‘vocal no fly zones’ – the space in one’s anatomy that must remain free of obstacles in order to facilitate the best sound possible. The only way to combat this, in my opinion, is to STOP singing along and START singing alone. Of course, learning to sing with YOUR voice requires one to accept the sound as it is, and then improve upon it in a way that maintains alignment – i.e. make it better, but do not modulate it. There are all kinds of ways to do this – e.g. shouting ‘hey’ in different keys offers a good clue for ones natural position and space – but, the main point of this post is the analogy this offers for life in general: (1) don’t confuse reality with what you imagine, (2) don’t modulate and emulate in lieu of being you, (3) be comfortable with who you are, and work to improve yourself in ways that make YOU a BETTER YOU, not a DIFFERENT YOU. This is one of the greatest self-taught lessons you will ever give and receive, with a few hints here and there from other people, but just barely enough to scratch the surface. You can always pay someone to teach you how to sing better, but the endeavor to live better is patently a self-funded learning endeavor ;-) 

Airplane Origami

Today I showed a woman in the airplane seat next to me how to fold an origami crane out of square paper, and an origami heart out of a dollar bill, after which time she proceeded to make 5 more cranes and 7 more hearts, tapping me on the shoulder every once in a while when she got stumped. Upon seeing the glut of crafts on her fold-out tray, I did the only thing I could think of: I made her an origami box to put it all in, to which she nearly burst into flames with joyful surprise. It's funny what a little paper and a bit of skill can do.

Beautiful

What is beautiful? A man sees a woman and, without knowing anything about her, feels a pang in his heart. An inner city child born and raised on concrete climbs up a mountain pass that looks over a valley, and feels the uplifting joy of being alive on this planet. A midwestern mother looks upon her baby girl, who only lived for a few hours, and lays perfectly still in a world of sound and fury. A husband kisses his wife goodbye after 50 years, feeling, for the first time, alone in this world. It is all beautiful, whether it builds you up or tears you apart.

The Self Contained Traveler

Business travel can be lonely at times. Not that much more lonely than living alone, but when I’m home I am home, and when I am about in the neighborhood, I having a pretty good chance of running into someone I know, up to and including someone I went to grade school with. When I am on the road and out and about, I am stranger among friends – in reality, a stranger among strangers, but somehow it seems like everyone else knows each other ;-) So there is this notion of the ‘self-contained traveler’, where one’s inner dialogue substitutes for inter-dialogue,  one’s phone acts as a tether to the familiar, and, aside from a friendly waiter or waitress, there is no recourse for discourse. It makes me sad to think that there are some people that live this way – people who have lost everyone, or, perhaps, people who everyone has lost. When you think about how our very survival depended on being in a group, it is not too much of a leap to see how being cast out leads to a type of psychological death, even if not a physical death. So the next time you are out and about and you see someone eating alone, ask him to sit with you, there is a very good chance that he might be able to expense your meal ;-) 

The Second Mind

Have you ever made decision based on your gut, and your mind never really signed on, but your mind was wrong? I call this 'the second mind', and I don't mean the often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts ;-) To me, this the observant, contemplating mind that underlies - perhaps, overlies - the frenetic, anxious mind, which simply cannot attain enough distance from the noise to be sound. The notion of 'the observer' and 'the observed' is already a well known concept in Eastern Philosophy, so this is not an original idea, but, perhaps, an original observation that these 'gut-over-mind' decisions may very well be the only encounter we have with our 'observer selves' - at the very least, those of us who are trapped in the ever-present 'thick of thin things'. Thus, it might be a good idea to muse over these kinds of decisions a bit, and figure out how to connect with this 'second mind' more often. I sure as fuck haven't been able to.