The Experiment

I have a tendency to be very ideological. My dad calls it "Kevvy-land". It's a land where everything makes sense and people act logically. People don't speed up to pass you on the highway just to get in front of you, then slow down to take the next exit. People don't says one thing but mean another. Everybody evaluates their emotions and makes rational decisions accordingly.

I get myself into trouble when reality conflicts with my ideas. More than conflicts, it ties my theories up in a burlap sack and heaves it into a dumpster. Not that reality is evil necessarily, it just doesn't follow all the rules. I have otherwise reasonable friends who insist that playing the lottery is a perfectly logical investment. I even contradict Kevvy-land theory on a regular basis.

When you boil it down everything can be described by science, that is what science does, it describes things. Some things are just harder to predict or so complex that their explanation doesn't seem to follow practical laws of science. There is a psychological factor to the guy that buzzes by me on the highway, he wants to get to his destination faster. It makes sense that if he gets there before me he is getting there faster... so any steps he can take to get ahead of any given car will get him there "faster". Some mathematical analysis will show that passing any given car will yield negligible returns compared to speed and distance especially when factoring in the time cost times the increased risk of an accident... but the brain calculator doesn't have the time to do complex analysis on every decision you make in a day, so the simple calculation "faster=better" is most efficient and generally handles most situations.

Given that I understand Kevvy-land doesn't exist, sometimes it is fun to conduct experiments. The reason I cite the driving example is because I have a couple friends who have expressed resentment over their daily commute. The volume of traffic doesn't make a smooth commute possible in normal commuting hours. Being single and fortunate in my job flexibility I can afford to drive in later and leave work later, largely avoiding rush-hour traffic. Some people aren't so lucky. My friends also mentioned that the behaviour of other drivers coupled with their frustration over waiting in traffic has led them to some bad habits including cutting people off and tail-gating... which really just perpetuates the problem for everybody.

So, I have promised a method to relieve the stress of the commute, a way to make the commute "shorter" or at lease make it seem shorter- which is really what the complaint comes from, the perceived length of the commute, or more specifically the delays. My theory asserts that the drive feels long due to the knowledge that it could be faster if there weren't so many people on the road. Eventually the hostility gets directed towards the other drivers and mayhem ensues.

The obvious solution is to reduce the number of commuters. That isn't going to be easy. Maybe nature will trim the herd but I'm certainly not going to take it on myself to reduce the population. A better, more civil solution would be to make the transport of human cargo more efficient, either by locating the population closer to it's destination to reduce the route, or make the transport mechanism more efficient, say by introducing a train/subway. Neither of those solutions are within my influence, unfortunately.

So, what's my magical solution? I look to Spoon Boy in "The Matrix":

"Do not try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon. Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.*"

So I'll use telekinesis to "spoon bend" people into work everyday? No, that's ridiculous... what I'm going to do is bend your mind :-p OK, it isn't really that dramatic. My experiment is two gift certificates to Audible.com. It's a simple solution and I hope it works but honestly I suspect the effects will be limited and short-lived. But it is an idea and it has some potential. My theory is that if you get enthralled in an audio book on your commute you won't mind the length as much. In fact you may find you want it to last just so you can hear the next chapter. I'm also hoping that the stop-and-go traffic will be just the kind of environment where book-listening won't impede driving requirements too much.

It's an experiment after all. I'll let you know how it works out.