Saturday Serendipity

Quote,Mental Model, Twitter Thread.

Quote

We view a behaviour as correct in a given situation to the degree to that we see others perform it. ~ Robert Cialdini

Mental Model

Red Queen Effect

In a book written by Lewis Carrol there is a famous scene where the Red queen seizes Alice and drags her along to run very fast.They run faster and faster and eventually Alice stops. She realises that she is in the exact same place as she was when she started running. She was in shock. She said, “ Well in our country you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” says the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

In Sports

Many times we see cases where the player practices a lot. Every day minimum 5-6 hours dedicated to any game. The player has made significant progress in his own game. When he looks back at himself 5 years ago he would be shit compared to where he is now. But when he goes to try out what does he realise. He has improved and he is better than many players out there but the sad reality is the good ones have gotten even better by practicing even more. Similar to evolution you have improved individually but there is no change as to where you are. Personally I have improved a lot since I was in 8th but I never got selected for u-19.

In Evolutionary biology

John Gribbin describes the Red Queen effect in biology very well in relation to frogs and flies.

““There are lots of ways in which the frogs, who want to eat flies, and the flies, who want to avoid being eaten, interact. Frogs might evolve longer tongues, for fly-catching purposes; flies might evolve faster flight, to escape. Flies might evolve an unpleasant taste, or even excrete poisons that damage the frogs, and so on. We’ll pick one possibility. If a frog has a particularly sticky tongue, it will find it easier to catch flies. But if flies have particularly slippery bodies, they will find it easier to escape, even if the tongue touches them. Imagine a stable situation in which a certain number of frogs live on a pond and eat a certain proportion of the flies around them each year.

Because of a mutation a frog developes an extra sticky tongue. It will do well, compared with other frogs, and genes for extra sticky tongues will spread through the frog population. At first, a larger proportion of flies gets eaten. But the ones who don’t get eaten will be the more slippery ones, so genes for extra slipperiness will spread through the fly population. After a while, there will be the same number of frogs on the pond as before, and the same proportion of flies will be eaten each year. It looks as if nothing has changed – but the frogs have got stickier tongues, and the flies have got more slippery bodies.”

In business

Buffett has written about the textile and airline industry where putting in more capital looks very ideal for the company when you see the numbers of the individual company. But if you see everyone else doing the same thing the capital expenditure has increased but there is nothing changing in the market share of the company. The industry grows together but there is no growth of market share of the company. The competitors benefit just as much as us.

Buffett: “Investors have regularly poured money into the domestic airline business to finance profitless (or worse) growth. For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners.”

The Red Queen effect can haunt certain businesses and it shows us the nature of evolution. We might think we are doing something that is taking us ahead but in reality we are at the same place.

Source: https://fundooprofessor.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/red_queen/

https://fs.blog/the-red-queen-effect/

Twitter Thread

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936?s=46&t=fjU8yGaYrj3Ggyn8ammoGA

That’s it from me this week! Enjoy your weekend!