#9 - Finance Don't Joke, Confirm. Bias, When Greats Work & some Melodeath
🎯: less political biases in election year
¡Hola! from your friendly neighbourhood Prince of Persia…
Actually on that, I have something hilarious, albeit ridiculous, to share.
I was transferring a couple hundred bucks to a sole trader abroad using Wise1 when I got an unexpected hold-up…
I’d put in the (optional) payment reference “Prince of Persia” as a joke identifier for the recipient, but turns out financial institutions can be very prickly even on the historical exonym of Persia…
Oh well, said I, I’ll humour this dum-dum who’s just following the rules.
I explained it was just a joke for my friend (to whom I was sending “general living expenses”) and that haven’t they heard of the famous video game series?? They even made a Hollywood movie about it!2
No dice. 🎲
They cancelled my payment…
And then I just re-did it without the reference and it went through all okay. 😐
Moral of the story?
As so many people have said over the years, companies should invest more (both in terms of salary and training) in their customer service teams and empower them. The lowest paid people in a company are often the only ones customers will ever interact with, so it pays to not think of CS as a “low-skill” job that anyone can just do.
And of course, some red tape is just dumb and completely useless. 🤷♂️
💡 Critical Thinking
Biases – Confirmation
In previous issues I started introducing fallacies and biases that we should be aware of when trying to think rationally and making decisions.
This year will be a big year politically, with both the US3 and UK4 having elections. So more than ever we need to (try to) have beliefs that aren’t the result of political or ideological biases but deliberate reasoning.
Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms their pre-existing beliefs.
This leads to a lack of objectivity, a distorted view of reality and even a reduction in open-mindedness and creativity.
This bias especially enables the spread of fake news on social media. People are less likely to fact-check stories that confirm their existing beliefs, so they share dubious stories without thinking. On the other hand, stories that don’t fit the narrative in their minds are treated with disbelief, even when grounded with facts and credible sources.
It is for this reason that some researchers see it as a major factor leading to ideological extremism.5
✍ Random Fellow Writer / Data Visualisation 📊
Schedules of the Greats
I came upon this enjoyable post about productivity by
in which he shares an interesting visual (from a book called Daily Rituals) that summarises the schedules of some of the greats by use of a stacked bar chart.For the conclusions drawn from a productivity standpoint, I’ll let you read Paul’s post, but with my DataViz hat on, to improve upon this graph I would’ve limited the use of sharp colours (opting to use a spectrum of duller colours and only using a high intensity one to highlight the point of interest - sleep or creative work).
Additionally, while gridlines are usually just visual noise, they’ve would’ve been helpful here, as the bottom section of the visual is too far away from the hour axis, making it hard to see when exactly the parts start/finish.
🎶 Music & Art
One of my favourite bands, The Halo Effect, formed by ex In Flames members and led by Dark Tranquillity legend Mikael Stanne, released this new single a few days ago. With an uplifting vibe, cool riffs and clean vocals mixed in with the growls, this track can serve as a nice entry point for anyone curious about Swedish melodeath6 .
😈 Devil’s Word of the Week
Finance, n. – The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America’s most precious discoveries and possessions.
As always, let me know what you found interesting today, or other things you’d like me to write about. 😃
Till next week!
Prince 🦊
If this wasn’t your cup of tea but know a friend who likes this kind of, erm, tea, please consider sharing :)
Who else preferred their old name, TransferWise? 🙋♂️
Yes I said that last part too.
At the moment, a rematch of two now-even-4-years-older old men, one with increasing indictments and the other increasing senility & risk of death dropping dead (as he says himself) - FML Fuck Our Lives
While there are countless reasons to dislike Labour, history has proven that one party in power for too long (it’ll be 14 years for Conservatives in May) is never good for a country.
Credit for this goes to the Clearer Thinking Team
Melodic death metal ☠🎸