Hi friends,
Greetings from Brooklyn. New York is buzzing with energy this weekend. We had dinner outside yesterday night and the makeshift patios of restaurants and bars in our neighborhood were roaring with the sound of conversation.
Let’s dive straight into the 18th edition of the Practical Polymath.
Until next week,
Florian
Highway Wisdom
You’re on the road, driving back from your weekend out of town. You’re getting out at the next exit. A long and slow-moving line of cars threatens your hopes of returning your rental in time.
What do you do?
If you’re like me, you gently join the tail end of the queue. Last arrived, last in line, right? Turns out, some people feel like it’s fair game to keep driving in the left lane for another bit before nudging themselves into the queue. And then there is a tiny minority of drivers gifted with the divine privilege of cutting at the very last second.
What mental mechanism enables such a shameless display of self-entitlement?
Let’s just say my research took an interesting turn.
It turns out, whizzing by a long line of cars before merging has a name. It’s called the “zipper merge”. And no, it’s not associated with chronic selfishness. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s the rational thing to do! According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, merging late can reduce delays by as much as 40% and increases road safety.
All those late mergers are not so evil after all. Traffic authorities in the US are actively encouraging this behavior in order to reduce congestion.
What’s there to learn here beyond the counter-intuitive fundamentals of traffic engineering?
We look for information that confirms our assumptions: My little investigation into seemingly rude road behavior turned out to be a flagrant case of confirmation bias. I went in looking for a theory that would validate my assumption: it’s plain wrong to cut the line, what might explain this behavior? Instead, a good question could have been: what do we know to be true about merging early versus merging late?
Our need to belong is stronger than our desire for truth: We humans like to think of ourselves as highly rational beings. But the truth is we’re tribal creatures in dire need of belonging and acceptance. No matter how rational it is to merge late, a majority of us will continue to patiently line up and wait to avoid the awkwardness of being shunned as social pariahs. This is why traffic authorities are having to work so hard to make it socially acceptable.
Next time I see someone cutting the line, will I think “oh, look at that reasonable fellow, zipper merging like a pro”? Not necessarily. But I’ll know that, albeit unwittingly, they’re advancing the common good.
Weekly Wisdom
🌼 On the importance of beauty: Our attraction to beautiful things is deeply rooted in our ancestors’ need to recognize the cues in nature’s patterns to survive. As we left the natural world, we’ve progressively replaced beauty with functionality and efficiency. But neglecting our innate inclination for what’s pleasing to the eye has come at a cost. We now have evidence that the way we design our environment has a direct impact on our health and well-being.
👁️ Check your metaphors: I’ve been reading “Metaphors We Live By” this week. I’m only half-way through but this book is blowing my mind. The authors argue that metaphors aren’t just a device we use to enrich our language, they are a central to how we understand the world and what we value. For example, ideas could be understood in terms of food (e.g “that’s food for thought”), commodities (e.g “that ideas just won’t sell), people (e.g he is the father of modern biology) or plants (e.g she has a fertile imagination).
Lateral Thought
“If something interests me and is both timeless and timely, I write about it. Much of what is published online is content designed to be dead within hours, so I find most of my material offline. I gravitate more and more towards historical things that are somewhat obscure and yet timely in their sensibility and message.”
Maria Popova
Florian, I think you should know that I always zipper merge. IF the lane is open it drives me crazy that people queue up early in the other lane - so inefficient!
Also I'm a bit of a self-entitled douchebag at times too I suppose ;)