The Zakie Effect: Why Less is More

In 2003, a government contracted photographer set out to take pictures of the California coastline, in an attempt to document coastline erosion. When the photographer completed the project, he put the 12,000 pictures up on his website. However, one of his pictures happened to have Barbra Streisand’s house in it. Streisand didn’t like that there was a photo of her house on the internet, and tried to file a lawsuit to get the photo removed. Now, before the lawsuit, the photo had been downloaded six times (twice by her lawyers). However, once word got out, over 400,000 more people decided to check out the photo. Streisand tried to control something, and ended up losing more control in the end.

In 1986, FOX started airing the show “Married… with Children.” The first season of the show did terribly, and was rated #142 in terms of most watched shows that year. In 1987, it did a little better, jumping up 26 spots to #116. However, during that season, one episode offended a woman by the name of Terry Rakolta. She decided to lead a boycott against the show, petitioned advertisers to drop their sponsorship of the show, appeared on talk shows and generally just went around saying how awful the show was, calling for it to be cancelled.

Before this attempted boycott, the ratings were terrible. However, after Rakolta went around telling people not to watch it, demanding it be cancelled, the ratings for the 1988 season skyrocketed (going from a rating of 4.7 to 10.5), and it went from the 116^th most watched show to the 58^th. Not too bad! Rakolta tried to get the few people who were watching the show to stop watching it, and inadvertently caused more people to check it out.

Several studies have taken a group of cigarette smokers, and divided them up into three groups. One group would act on any urge they had to smoke, the second group would try and suppress their urges, and the third group was the control and just acted normally. At first, it seemed that the group who suppressed their thoughts about smoking were improving. However, as time went on, their cigarette usage came back with a vengeance, and surpassed that of the other two groups. Trying to suppress the urge to smoke actually make people smoke more!

When researchers asked volunteers to hold a pendulum and keep it steady, they did alright. But when the volunteers were told “don’t let the pendulum swing left to right” they saw that the pendulum would swing left and right much more than before told not to let such a thing happen. Other research has found that trying to relax will make you more stressed. Telling yourself “don’t forget X” will make you forget it, and consciously trying to be fair will result in people being more prejudiced.

The common theme here is clear: the more control you try to exert on something, the less control you end up having. I liken it to trying to hold Jell-O in your hand. The tighter you grip it, the more it will slip through your fingers.

For years I tried to find a name for this phenomenon. I've asked psychologists, neuroscientists, searched the web, posted questions on relevant internet forums, etc. Despite all my efforts, I couldn’t find a term, theory or concept that explained this tendency. I thought it was odd, seeing as it isn’t exactly a brilliant or overly clever observation by any means. Finally, about a year ago, an ex-girlfriend of mine (who happened to call me “Zakie”) said that I should just name it the “Zakie Effect.” So, I did.¹ The Zakie Effect simply states that trying to control something will often result in you having less control of it.

Though, it turns out that I am not quite as original as I had thought. I later learned that these types of phenomena are indeed known, but the terms used to explain them don’t tend to cover as broad of a spectrum as the Zakie Effect does. For example, Ironic Process Theory states that trying to suppress thoughts (and by extension, actions) will make them more prevalent in the person doing the suppressing. Now, the Ironic Process Theory accounts for things like the pendulum experiments, the smoking experiments and other such examples where the subjects are attempting to suppress and control their own thoughts and behaviors. But it doesn’t account for people tending to pursue forbidden fruits and explicitly do what they are told not to do.

Likewise, the Streisand Effect is the term now used to account for the spread of suppressed information online. When someone tries to suppress/hide/remove information from the internet, its public exposure rises, and the information spreads even more widely than before.

The Zakie Effect does have a weakness though. It’s not a theory—it doesn’t explain anything. It’s simply an observation that comes with a prediction: the more you try to control something, the less control you will have. It also predicts, paradoxically, that the best way to actually control something is to “loosen your grip”, sort to speak. Let’s look at a few examples of this prediction in real life…

In July 2001, Portuguese officials realized that their country had a drug problem. At the time, Portugal had the highest rate of drug users in all of Europe, and something had to be done. Instead of taking a page out of the American “War on Drugs” playbook, Portugal did the opposite and decided to decriminalize drugs. They didn’t just decriminalize soft drugs like marijuana, they decriminalized everything. Crack, meth, heroin, etc. Instead of drug users going to jail, they were sent to “dissuasion clinics”, where they would meet with addiction experts who were careful to never say “don’t do drugs”, but instead would explain the risks associated with the drugs, and gave info as to how the user could seek help. That is, they changed their goal from trying to get people to stop doing drugs by criminalizing drugs, and criminalizing drug users, to just educating people, and helping people get treatment.

Of course, there were a large number of people (not just in Portugal) who predicted that the decriminalization of drugs would make Portugal into a drug oasis, and usage (as well as things like HIV rates) would skyrocket. But in fact, just as the Zakie Effect predicts, the opposite happened. In just about every group measurable, drug usage rates dropped significantly. Portugal now has the lowest rate of people who have ever tried marijuana, compared to other countries in Europe (10%).² Among 9^th graders, drug use dropped from 14% to 10%. HIV infections also dropped by a whopping 17%, and drug related deaths dropped by over 50%. The amount of people who went into drug treatment rose from 6,000 to 15,000. Source.

The evidence is crystal clear: decriminalizing drugs, and taking the “forbidden fruit” aspect of it away has been enormously beneficial. 

Back in America, many adults have worried about the teen pregnancy rates. There were two schools of thought on how to battle this problem. One school said to teach the students that sex outside of marriage is immoral, psychologically damaging, and is something to be avoided. Of course, the other side argued that students should actually learn about sex so that if they do choose to engage in it, they will make smart, educated decisions.

Of course, as everyone knows, abstinence only sex education failed (and continues to fail) miserably. States that teach abstinence only consistently have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs in the country. Research also found that because of abstinence only education, the percentage of students reporting having ever engaged in sexual intercourse increased for nearly all ages between 13 and 17. The Zakie Effect strikes again!

Then there are examples of sex scandals in churches which are against sex. The Zakie Effect predicts that if the Catholic Church didn’t put such an emphasis on “priests must be abstinent”, the number of sexual abuse cases would be much, much lower.³

There are also tons of anecdotal examples that I see all the time. When a girl (or guy, it doesn’t matter) feels their significant other starting to pull away, and the girl then calls more often, tries to spend more time with the guy, etc, it just causes the guy to feel smothered and pull away even more. The girl tried to gain control of the relationship, and ended up losing it. Heck, just in regular dating terms, if you want to attract a girl, you are supposed to act uninterested. Acting (too) interested will make the girl lose interest. I am sure that others can think of numerous examples of the Zakie Effect that they have seen themselves.

Lastly, the Zakie Effect touches a bit in behavioral psychology (Behaviorism). Ever since BF Skinner started training his pigeons, we have known that when it comes to controlling and changing behavior, punishment is the least effective method that exists (punishment is the giving of something adverse when an unwanted behavior occurs, such as spanking a child for misbehaving), and the evidence for this is clear and overwhelming. If punishment did work, we would expect most abusive parents to have the best behaved children. Obviously, this is not the case. This also relates to the Portugal drug example. Instead of punishing people and telling them they shouldn’t use drugs, they found another method and had success.

In conclusion, when it comes to trying to control something, less is more. Relax your grip on whatever you are trying to control, otherwise it will slip through your fingers. It’s counter-intuitive and it feels like you are doing exactly the wrong thing, but I think I have made the case that this is what the evidence suggests is the best course of action.

Notes

1. Of course, it's entirely possible probable that this effect is actually known and has a name, and I just haven't been able to track it down yet. 
2. Meanwhile, 42% of Americans have used marijuana. 
3. While it is interesting that so many anti-gay preachers and politicians turn out to have some homosexual scandal, I don’t think that the Zakie Effect can account for that. Simply because the cases are not common enough, and it is more likely that these people just had homosexual tendencies to begin with. You don’t turn gay by telling people not to be gay. 

A History of Ridiculous Ideas: I Just Want to Fly

As a child, I wanted to be able to fly SO badly! I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out ways in which I could pull of this task. I first experimented with plastic grocery bags, and jumping off my swing set. With that being a failure, I thought maybe I should jump off something higher, like the roof. Unfortunately, my parents wouldn’t let me get up on the roof to try. So that didn’t work out.

Back at the drawing board, I thought about all the people who could fly, and how they went about it. There were only three people that I knew of who could fly: Superman, Peter Pan and angels. I realized that unlike Superman, I was not a super hero, so that wasn’t going to work. I also realized that angels fly because they have wings. I didn’t have wings, so that option was off the table as well. The last resort was Peter Pan. The good thing about him was that he was just a normal boy, but was able to fly with the help of pixie dust. This was progress! Of course, I would first have to get my hands on some pixie dust, but soon as I did, I would be golden!

So how does one go about getting pixie dust in the late 1980’s? Well, there was only one person I knew of that could help me get “hard to get things.” Santa Claus! I knew that if I asked Santa, he would definitely bring me some, and I would then be able to fly. Hooray! Unfortunately, my attention was momentarily distracted by the Christmas Lego catalog, and I ended up asking for Legos instead of pixie dust. Blast! (Though, the Leogs were glorious.)

For a child, a year is a looooong time. Christmas seems to never come, so I figured that I had blown my shot at getting pixie dust, and went back to the drawing board. I still had no hopes of becoming a super hero, so the only other option was to get wings. Unfortunately, only angels have wings... so I wouldn’t be able to have wings unless, of course, I became an angel myself. How does one become an angel? Well, in my mind, you just die and go to Heaven. At the time I figured angels were just people who were now in heaven. I figured that if I just killed myself, I would go up to Heaven, get my wings, and then I could come right back down to earth. No big deal, right? I imagined my mom in the kitchen, and me floating down through the ceiling with my wings. I imagined that she would be so pleased with me! Her little Zachary has wings and can fly, what a clever boy he is! (I imagined I would look just like this kid, but with regular clothes.)

I didn’t know how I would go about killing myself, but I had some thought about maybe wrapping a coat hanger around my head. I am not sure what I thought that would accomplish, but I was just a little kid, so give me a break. I suppose it was lucky that before I tried to do this, I went and told my mom my plan. I don’t remember what her reaction was, but I do know that she dissuaded me from killing myself by lying to me. She told me that I already was growing wings. “See those bones that sort of stick out of your back [shoulder blades]? Those are your wings… and they are growing.” My mind raced, “WHY HAD NO ONE TOLD ME THIS!!!??” Very excited about this news, I would check my shoulder blades every day, hoping to see the wings starting to pop out. Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t actually growing wings (It might have been that my parents finally told me. I don't remember). Either way, I was quite disappointed.

I only had one option left. It was a long shot, but I thought I might able to will myself to fly. I remember sitting on the side of my bed thinking, “If I just think about it hard enough, I bet I can fly.” Nope. That didn’t work either.

And with that, all my ideas were exhausted, and I was forced to accept that even though I wanted it so badly, little boys just aren’t meant to fly.

Critical Thinking: Atheists VS Theists

Whenever there is discussions on theism (in this case, I will be talking mostly about Christianity) and atheism, the opposing parties tend to claim that the other side is irrational and subject to sloppy, uncritical thinking. In this blog post, I am going to go through a few critical thinking concepts and see how each side holds up. I am going to base my assessment off one of the best critical thinking book I have read, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Thomas Kida. The benefit of using this book is twofold. First, it doesn’t mention anything about atheism or religion to begin with (so there can't be claims of stacking the deck). Second, it highlights six main points, which means I don’t have to go through dozens of fallacies, etc. Basically, this will keep things relatively short and simple. The six “problems in thinking” that the book discusses are:
  

1 - We prefer stories to statistics.

2 - We seek to confirm, not question our ideas.

3 - We rarely appreciate the role of chance or coincidence.

4 - We sometimes misperceive the world.

5 - We tend to oversimplify our thinking.

6 - Our memories are often inaccurate.

1 - Are atheists or theists more likely to prefer stories to statistics? While both sides no doubt fall for this, when it comes to the topic at hand, theists dominate. This is most easily demonstrated with the belief in prayer. If you ask a theist for evidence of prayer, you will get a number of anecdotes.¹ However, what you will not get is references to studies. This is not because studies haven't investigated prayer--quite the opposite. A number of studies have investigated prayer, but every well controlled, large scale study has shown prayer to have no effect. The most recent (and largest) of these studies was funded by the Templeton Foundation (a group that seeks to harmonize science and religion), so any attempt to claim that the study was run by atheists who somehow skewed the results is no good.

I can’t think of any example where atheists tend to prefer stories to statistics, at least in this context. For myself, I have been accused of being biased to the evidence simply because I prefer the statistics. So I think the clear winners (or losers?) are the theists.

2 - Next, we seek to confirm our ideas, rather than questioning them. While atheists are no doubt guilty of this (reading only one side of an argument, for example), theists blow the atheists out of the water. For example, the Talbot School of Theology has a statement of faith that proclaims, “The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.” Incredible! And Talbot is not the only school that has subscribes to such an idea. Likewise, the father of the creationist movement, Henry Morris, stated that “When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.” All creationist organizations would agree with both statements. 

Stating that your view is 100% true from the get go, and any appearance of it being wrong is an illusion is pretty incriminating. I can’t think of any atheist, atheist group or even science organization that dares to claim it is 100% right, and any appearance of being false is an illusion. Even Richard Dawkins stated that on a scale of 1 to 7 (in terms of certainty of God not existing), he was only a “6 but leaning towards 7.”²

So while seeking to confirm your view is no doubt a human problem, and isn’t specific to theism, the theists take it to a whole new level, and unashamedly at that.

3 - We rarely appreciate the role of chance or coincidence. Humans find patterns in randomness all the time, and it is the basis for most psudosciences like ESP and astrology. Penn Jillette has pointed out that an event that has a one in a million odds of occurring, happens six times a day in New York City! In terms of appreciating these sorts of odds, how do theists and atheists fare? Well, theist's belief in miracles tips the scales. Whenever you hear of “miracle” stories, they are almost always about something that was just too improbable to happen without the assistance of the divine. Unfortunately, these miracles (often medical) are only about things that have a small chance of happening anyway. Cancer (for example) sometimes goes into remission. It’s not common, but it does happen. I guarantee that almost everyone who has been diagnosed with cancer has had at least a few people pray for them. Of course, a large number of the cancer patients will not be so fortunate as to have the cancer go into remission. Of the lucky few who do, some may attribute their good fortune to the prayers of their friends and family. Of course, this is just a misunderstanding of statistics

The atheists, on the other hand, don’t have anything in particular that they misperceive as meaningful (in fact, they are often chided as NOT seeing things like improbable healings as meaningful). So again, the theists are the guilty party.

4 - Often, we misperceive our world. That is, we see things that aren’t there. Things like mass hysteria, hallucinations and the will to want to see something in particular are all areas of this problem. Where do theists fall in regards to these? We have to look no further than bleeding statues, faith healers and other supposed miracles. In the early 1900’s more than 10,000 people claimed to witness the sun jumping all over the sky. However, they were also told to stare at the sun (looking away will cause an after image, making it appear that the sun was moving), and reported it as a miracle. There are many stories of people wanting to see a miracle, and basically denying commonsense to hold on to the belief in it. 

If there is something similar that applies to atheists, I am not aware of it.

5 - Next, oversimplified thinking. This breaks down into a lot of areas surrounding how we are bombarded by information, which leads to either “analysis paralysis” or a false understanding of a situation. Unfortunately, as far as this discussion is concerned, none of that is relevant. And because of that, I can’t claim one party is more guilty than the other, so I am going to drop this one.

6 - Memories are not that great. Memories aren’t like a videotaped recording of what happened. They are so easily corrupted and influenced that it truly is amazing. Now, how does this relate to our topic? As for modern theists and atheists, it doesn’t so much. However, in the context of holy books, it is very relevant. The Christians believe that their holy texts are basically reliable. However, at least with the Gospels (the most important part!), they were written 30 to 70 years after the fact. And they weren’t written by eyewitnesses, or even friends of eyewitnesses. They were orally transmitted by friends of a friend of a friend of a friend, for decades, crossing over into a different language, before finally written down.³ Are we really to believe that these stories accurately reflect an event? You have to deny all of what science has taught us about how memories work in order for the gospel miracle stories to be even remotely believable.

As a close-up magician, it is truly amazing how much a trick can change in someone’s mind over the course of a few hours. Often times I would have someone come up to me, describe a trick their friend told them about (which I performed earlier), and want to see it. However, the trick described was not a trick I knew. As far as I could tell, was impossible! How much less accurate would the trick have been three decades later, being recalled by at least a fourth generation recipient of the story who speaks another language?

The fact that Christians have to base so much (all?) of their beliefs on things that are based on undoubtedly inaccurate memories means they take the cake for this final section. As far as I can tell, there is nothing regarding faulty memories that atheists would be necessarily prone to, or that they rely on.

Conclusion

Atheists win. Of course, I am biased and it is possible I have fallen for a confirmation bias, and can only recall examples of theists making mistakes in judgment and conveniently forgot examples of atheists doing such things. However, I have taken quite some time to write this post, racking my brain for relevant examples of atheists making one of these six mistakes in thinking. But if I have missed any, I hope someone will point it out!

Some people also might also deny my conclusions. To those who do, I ask “how do you explain other religions with similar beliefs?” For example, if prayer only really works for Catholics, why do Protestants, Mormons and even Muslims believe in it? And why is it that they all use the same rationale?

Ultimately, I think that if one truly wants to be a clear, honest and critical thinker, being religious is going to hold you back. As we can see, basically all of it rests on fallacious thinking.

1. When confronted with the results of a prayer study, Bob Barth (director of the Silent Unity prayer ministry) stated that "We've been praying a long time and we've seen prayer work, we know it works."

2. The God Delusion, pg. 50.

3. Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic, but the Gospels were originally written in Greek.

What Are You Thinking? Why I Like To Stare At Pretty Girls

I like to think about thinking. So when I was messing around with a girlfriend, and she asked “what are you thinking?” it really got me thinking. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t thinking anything! There wasn’t one thought it my head. All I was doing was acting, not thinking. How could this be? How could I be involved in something so enjoyable, and not have a single thought in my head?

The issue didn’t stop there, though. I realized that even when I look at attractive girls, there is nothing going on in my head. The idea of “men constantly try to picture women naked” or “men think about having sex with every attractive girl they see” doesn’t seem to apply to me, and I am guessing it doesn’t apply to many other guys either. When I see an attractive girl, all I do is stare. There is no thought process whatsoever, I am just looking. End of story.

Why is this? Why do I want to look at attractive girls? Why is it that when I am looking, nothing is going on in my head? And lastly, why am I so good at spotting attractive girls? I can spot an attractive girl in a large crowd basically instantly. Why? How? In this blog post, I hope to answer that question. Though, keep in mind that this theory is based on complete speculation.

There are many, many processes going on in your head all throughout the day. However, for the most part, you (meaning your conscious self) are completely unaware of these processes. You are only aware of a very few things that your brain feels is important enough to bump up to the conscious you, so that you are aware of it. Things that are often important are things that generally relate to our survival, be it food, novel stimuli, a threat, etc. Your brain directs your attention to it, so that you can take the appropriate action. Many neuroscientists think of attention as being a very big part of consciousness, so whatever your brain calls attention to, you are conscious of.

Besides novel stimuli, threats and food, the male brain is also very interested in finding reproductively fit females. Men have evolved to want to reproduce as much as possible--propagate those genes!! As a result, men are very interested in finding attractive girls (which equates to good genes).

We know why men are interested in finding attractive girls, as it is beneficial to reproduction. First, let’s define “attractive girl.” Men across cultures and decades all agree on a few very basic aspects of what makes a girl attractive. One of those features is the size of her waist in relation to her hips. Very young girls have a high hip to waist ratio, as do older women. However, girls who are reproductively fit will have a low hip to waist ratio (the wider hips are necessary for child birth, so they communicate to men that a girl is the right age where she is able to have babies). Studies have been done on this, and it turns out that 10:7 hip to waist ratio is found the most attractive. So in terms of what men are “on the lookout” for, are women who have a 10:7 hip to waist ratio.

Now, onto the question of why guys are so good at spotting these curvy girls! We know that one of the things men's brains are doing, is constantly scanning the visual plane, looking for anything that could be worth directing the conscious mind’s attention toward. And seeing how important it is to reproduce, the brain would also be scanning for reproductively fit females. I imagine that the system that is scanning for them would be very finely tuned to finding attractive girls and bringing them to the attention of the rest of the brain. It is most likely that this system is actually overly sensitive, since it would be beneficial to have a false positive (thinking you see an attractive girl, and being wrong) rather than missing attractive girls because you didn’t see them.

So in terms of why men are so good at spotting attractive girls, it is because our brain has an overly sensitive system which scans the visual plane, looking for anything that fits a 10:7 ratio curve.

That is one question down, so what about why there are no thoughts going on in my head when I have spotted one of these lovely ladies? Well, all the system in question is doing is bringing your attention to the girl—hoping other systems will take over, and you will get the guts to go talk to her or something. But seeing as reproducing is so important—nay, the most important thing an organism can do, the system exerts a lot of energy to make sure you are noticing this girl, so you don’t miss her.

Ultimately, when I am just starring, not thinking of anything, it's because my “find pretty girls” system is going crazy, and it is putting all my attention on the girl. And seeing as that is all that that system does, my brain won't be coming up with any other thoughts.

That’s all I got.