
Easy = True - robg
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/01/31/easy__true/
======
jfager
"Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with
easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-
pronounce names."

A giant "citation needed" needs to be attached to this. A quick search came up
with this: <http://www.pnas.org/content/103/24/9369.full> \- pretty terrible.
I hope such a breathless claim isn't actually being backed by such lame
research.

~~~
Eliezer
Not to mention, does "outperform" mean "higher earnings over time relative to
stock price" or does it mean "stock prices higher relative to earnings"? The
latter would seem to be what is predicted, and that's hardly "outperformance".

~~~
jplewicke
It should be some measure of market-relative total return, including dividend
yield, etc. As far as I can tell from the paper, they don't even adjust for
market-relative returns, so if a bunch of unpronounceable companies got
launched at the peak of the Internet bubble and proceeded to perform exactly
in-line with the market, this would still be counted as underperformance even
though it is completely untradeable.

------
rauljara
Sort of helps to explain why political discourse seems doomed to stick on such
a low level. Simple ideas will always have an edge over complicated ones, and
so politicians who communicate with simple ideas and hold simple ideologies
will always have an edge. It wouldn't be such a terrible thing if only the
world weren't so damned complicated.

~~~
pmiller2
Simple ideas that produce nice sound bites are also much easier to repeat over
and over in a stump speech. The simplicity of the ideas (producing this so-
called "fluency effect") combined with the power of repetition (which might be
another example of the fluency effect) means that a candidate whose goal is to
get elected is better off saying as little as possible about issues of
substance.

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lincolnq
Wow! I like this. "Cognitive fluency" is a concept that I've felt should exist
for a long time (but, amusingly, have had no words to describe). It's a reason
why I believe in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity>).

Cognitive fluency has a lot of relevance for programming languages research.
From the article: "When people read something in a difficult-to-read font,
they unwittingly transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they’re
reading about." Wow -- similarly, the programming language you're writing in
might have an even bigger effect on what programs you find easy to create or
think about.

~~~
jerf
Seems like that would be a counterexample to Sapir-Whorf, not evidence. You
clearly had an idea but not a word; language did not bound your ideation.

(I don't accept it, at least not in its strong form, pretty much for this
reason; one way of looking at my programming job is nailing down concepts
before they have names, then giving them names only later. There's some useful
idea there, but Sapir-Whorf overstates it.)

------
sp332
In the "woes unite foes" rhyming example, it's definitely using the same part
of my brain involved with processing poetic license. I disagree with the
sentence, but I can _feel_ my brain working to frame it charitably.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
OT: You disagree that challenging circumstances unite people who would
otherwise be uncharitable to one another?

In times of hardship would you work with someone you don't get on with so you
could both survive? Note that the made up aphorism does not include a term
such as "always". A less charitable version would be "the enemy of my enemy is
my friend" (an example of the aphorism is which is well known).

Just curious as I felt this was a sort of given about innate human behaviour.

~~~
sp332
I guess if they're scared they might work together. But by woes it doesn't
necessarily mean common enemy. (This is what I meant by a charitable
interpretation.) If I'm having a bad day, I'm _less_ likely to be nice to an
enemy.

~~~
gridspy
Woe is a pretty strong emotion. Think of being completely lost of in grief. It
pushes far beyond bad day to rocked-to-the-core

------
ryanelkins
Reminds me of:

If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood. And therefore... ...A
witch!

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sophacles
I can't help but wonder if this "discovery" and cognitive fluency theory
doesn't sound so great and obvious because it is so simple. :P

------
greenlblue
I'm not sure I get what kind of psychological theory the article is
describing.

"Things that are easy to understand are perceived as better than hard to
understand things unless you're in some kind of mood that makes the opposite
true."

How am I supposed to get anything useful out of a theory like that?

~~~
GHFigs
_How am I supposed to get anything useful out of a theory like that?_

Write a grant proposal.

------
mcantor
I wonder what this says about the language gap? Are people heavily disinclined
to agree or empathize with people and situations expressed to them in a
language which is not their most fluent?

------
figital
The only truth is that there is no truth.

~~~
Eliezer
<http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth>

