Preserving information entropy

[SPOILER ALERT: I excerpt an article which discusses the season 3 finale of Downton Abbey, so if you haven't watched that episode yet and don't want it spoiled, close this tab and be gone with ye.]

Vulture summarizes a bunch of reasons why Downton Abbey will probably not air at the same time in the U.S. as it does in the U.K. A lot of those are very sensible ones, but the one which I take issue with is the first one:

Spoilerphobes may have been mad, but they still watched.

Back in December, the Internet flooded with tears after online headlines spoiled Matthew’s demise. But it’s impossible to quantify the actual percentage of Downton viewers who had the story ruined for them, and Hoppe says the fan feedback hasn’t been that bad. What’s more, viewers don’t appear to have abandoned the show as a result. “There is a little bit of negative buzz around the spoilers, but it’s pretty minimal from what we’re hearing,” Hoppe says, pointing to the ratings, which are ginormous. PBS says the third season of Downton is averaging more than 11 million viewers per episode (when you factor in the premiere plus seven days of DVR viewing). That’s 420 percent above the public broadcaster’s average prime-time rating and double the average viewership of the show’s second season. By far, it is the most-watched program in PBS history. “That kind of success is hard to argue with,” she says. It’s also worth noting that Sybil’s episode-five death didn’t become headline news in the U.S. the way Matthew’s did, proving that some secrets make it to the U.S. intact.

I heard this used as justification for airing last year's Summer Olympics on tape delay, too: the ratings were great, and people tuned in to watch primetime events even when everyone knew who had won the 100 meter dash, or whether Phelps had won a particular event.

Aaron Cohen wrote a post when he was guest blogger at Kottke last summer citing a research paper that said tests showed that subjects preferred movies and books that were spoiled for them, even in genres like mysteries where a surprise ending would seem to be most important.

I am intrigued by contrarian ideas as much as anyone, but I can't buy into this line of thinking. It's not just because it may be confusing correlation and causation, but that's definitely a big part of it. If you take the findings of that paper to the logical extreme, we should actively start telling people the endings to movies and books just to drive more sales. Why stop there, why not just tape delay all sporting contests and then release the results before the events are actually televised?

I remember the moment when I actually first saw the ending of The Sixth Sense in a theater, without any knowledge of what was coming. That moment when I realized what had happened and my entire brain nearly exploded the neurons were firing so hot. Then I imagine someone telling me ahead of time about how that movie ends, and then what I would have felt watching the movie (that's essentially how I felt watching most of the events at the Summer Olympics on TV last year since everything was spoiled for me ahead of time).

If it's something great, I'll still enjoy a spoiled experience. However, I love an unexpected surprise. I loved when my sisters flew to Seattle and surprised me for my 30th birthday. I loved the time my manager said pack my snowboard for work so we could slip away for an afternoon ski trip in Seattle and then it turned out we were actually flying to Sundance for the weekend. I loved the ending of The Others (the rest was good, too). I loved that moment in Infernal Affair I when the elevator doors opened and...well, I won't ruin it for you. 

Genuine surprise is a pleasure the modern world is robbing us of bit by bit. We live in an instantly connected world where information flows more easily than at any time in history, and increasingly our only foolproof defense against spoilage is to lead a monk-like existence of solitude from all other humans and devices. I understand that giant media entities like NBC and PBS are unlikely to shift the TV schedules for the other side of the world, but let's not pretend it's not suboptimal.

In one of my favorite books of 2012, The Most Human Human, Brian Christian argues convincingly that information entropy is of huge value to the experience of being human. 

[information entropy can be quantified. If I tell you to guess a random eight letter word, you'll have a very low chance of being right, but if I present you with the first seven letters and ask you to guess the eighth, for example Faceboo_, your chances of guessing that eighth letter are quantifiably higher.]

Here's one relevant passage from the book:

Information, defined intuitively and informally, might be something like 'uncertainty's antidote.' This turns out also to be the formal definition—the amount of information comes from the amount by which something reduces uncertainty...The higher the [information] entropy, the more information there is. It turns out to be a value capable of measuring a startling array of things—from the flip of a coin to a telephone call, to a Joyce novel, to a first date, to last words, to a Turing test...Entropy suggests that we gain the most insight on a question when we take it to the friend, colleague, or mentor of whose reaction and response we're least certain. And it suggests, perhaps, reversing the equation, that if we want to gain the most insight into a person, we should ask the question of qhose answer we're least certain... Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and I don't quibble with them in the slightest. But if we really want to start fathoming someone, we need to get them speaking in sentences we can't finish.

This is all a long way of saying that if someone out there wants to organize some secret Game for me without tipping me off, that would likely be the greatest thing ever.

Soderbergh interviews Rooney Mara

Steven Soderbergh directed Rooney Mara in Side Effects, and he interviewed her by email for Interview magazine. Why aren't more interviews this entertaining? Did this interview remind anyone else of how Kevin Spacey's Francis Underwood would speak to  Kate Mara's Zoe Barnes in House of Cards? Forget the Kardashians, can we get a reality show called the Mara's?

[Warning: you may need to fiddle with your browser or go into print view to see the entire interview as the site is built in a way that tries to be so fancy it failed in my browser about seven times before I could see the entire interview and not just one page of it. This is not a browser-friendly page, it's downright ornery.]

NBA players in short sleeves?

A coworker shared this at work: the Golden State Warriors are going to debut a short sleeve jersey in their game Feb. 22, and they'll wear it for two more games this season.

Though that's what the majority of recreational players wear to play basketball, I've gotten so used to seeing pro basketball players in tank tops that the idea sounds strange.

If the idea spreads and sticks, though, it may be economic reasons and not fashion reasons that lead the way. Says an Adidas executive in the article:

"Fans like the opportunity to wear a short-sleeve shirt to the games to support their team but also high school kids can wear in the hallways to the mall. It's a great solution for fans to support their teams."

It's easier for kids to wear short sleeve shirts than tank tops. Not mentioned, but perhaps also relevant: shot sleeves provide a bit of additional real estate for ad decals to be affixed should the NBA ever go that route for an additional revenue stream.

Should the NBA ever go down that road, however, they may face a bit of resistance from NBA players, so many of whom have invested a lot of money in elaborate shoulder tattoos, all of which would no longer get much airtime on TV.

The high cost of cheap parking

An informative history of the birth of the parking meter and how its slowness in evolving with the times has helped to prolong the hegemony of the car and driving in America.

In his definitive book, “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Donald Shoup explains that minimum parking requirements “led planners and developers to think that parking is a problem only when there isn’t enough of it. But too much parking is also a problem—it wastes money, degrades urban design, increases impervious surface area, and encourages overuse of cars.” Besides the fact that legally required lots are often more than half-empty, they result in a variety of negative impacts, from environmental runoff issues to inhospitable pedestrian zones. Instead of using the tools available to limit automobile use and encourage free-flowing street traffic, Shoup explains that planners traditionally did the opposite, requiring “enough off-street spaces to satisfy the peak demand for free parking.”

Additionally, such ordinances falsely reduced the explicit cost of city driving, transferring the true expense of so-called “free” parking to every citizen in the vicinity, diffused into taxes, real estate, product, and service fees. In effect, this legislation created an environment where “nobody can opt out of paying for parking,” says Jeff Speck, renowned urban planner and author of the book, “Walkable Cities.”

According to Speck, “people who walk, bike, or take transit are bankrolling those who drive. In so doing, they are making driving cheaper and thus more prevalent, which in turn undermines the quality of walking, biking, and taking transit.” Furthermore, our plethora of free parking resulted in a range of negative consequences still unaccounted for: “The social costs of not charging for curb parking—traffic congestion, air pollution, accidents, wasted time, and wasted fuel—are enormous,” writes Shoup.

At the end of the article, San Francisco is cited as the leading city in swapping out old parking meters for new ones whose rates can be adjusted on the fly and that can be paid in a variety of ways, including by phone (through the PayByPhone mobile app). I've consistently use the mobile app on my iPhone to pay those meters now, and it beats carrying around a pound of quarters.

However, I still find it impossible to find parking in San Francisco most places I go. Perhaps the rates aren't high enough to sit at the intersection of supply and demand curves. The ideal pricing would have most spots filled but a few spots empty at all times so drivers wouldn't spend their time circling the block looking for a spot.

I'm enthusiastic, but not overly excited

Rob Walker writes of a new punctuation mark proposed by Ellen Susan: the ElRey, a cross between an exclamation point and a period.

The underlying problem is of course overuse of the traditional exclamation mark in the email/social network era, to the extent that the meaning of this venerable symbol has been severely undermined. I can recall coming across advice when I was in college in the late 1980s suggesting that it was permissible to use an exclamation mark once every twenty years or so. Today I probably type one every twenty minutes. I’m not doing so in published work, naturally, but rather in email: “Thanks!” “Congrats!” “See you soon!” It’s not just me. Even as I was writing this paragraph, I got a  note from a highly erudite editor of a widely respected literary/cultural journal: “You are too kind!”

I actually hadn’t been kind to any excitable-making extent in the missive he was responding to. But we both knew that. Consider a non-exclamation-point version of my correspondent’s message: “You are too kind.” That reads dry, chilly, possibly even sarcastic. Which suggests how the function of the exclamation mark has changed: It no longer connotes remarkable enthusiasm; it just signals a sort of general friendliness and baseline cheer, the equivalent of saying “Howyadoin?” in a chipper voice.

I encounter this problem all the time, the phrase ending in a period that ends up looking too cold on the page. It's a curse of the prevalence of sarcasm and irony in this age that just writing something in a plainspoken way is read far too often as  disingenuous.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating the importance of conveying genuine warmth, I've had at least two arguments with friends over the tone of an email message sent with nothing but the friendliest sentiment. I've often wondered if there was a defect in the language itself.

So to compensate, I've tried all the popular alternatives to an exclamation point. Adding a smiley face:

Thanks. =)

Friendly, but it doesn't feel right for me (don't even bring up emoji). I've tried setting it in bold for visual emphasis.

Thanks.

That usually feels too serious, and while I'm usually an even keeled guy, I do feel and wish to convey genuine enthusiasm.

I'm not sure if the ElRey is the solution, but I feel the need for that mark or something like it.

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