Adaptive Preference Formation Jon Hillenbrand, November 7, 2010October 17, 2019 You can’t reach the grapes so they are probably not ripe anyway, right? This attitude is known as Adaptive Preference Formation. It’s what we do, as humans, to justify our failures. The other day, I had to do a photo shoot where I KNEW that most of the photos were never going to be used. It’s what I call a “Political Shoot” where I am asked to show up an event in order to demonstrate to the attendees that the corporation believes the event is so important that they’ve sent a photographer to document the proceedings. In other words, I am no different from the paid off crowds at Communist Party rallies in China, there to cheer for the Will of the State no matter the message, to appear in the background like so much propaganda, to convince the rest of the cattle that the ramp is benign. I might be mixing my metaphors, but the paper is still stained with my ink. Sadly, I’m somewhat comfortable with my role as a propaganda tool for a corporation. “Buying In” (which may or may not be the same as “Selling Out”) is one of those things which you swore you would never sacrifice about yourself back in college. But soon you find your honor to be for sale to the highest bidder once rent comes due or the blue of a Yamaha sport bike invades the desire center of your brain. Happily, I held out for a very long time and my recent realizations of possibly having sold out come to me as a surprise, or at least an uncomfortable awakening. Ideally, I would do something to relieve my richeous indignation and restore my honor, but real life keeps interfering. My apartment is very dirty and I am going to go clean it now instead of finishing this post. Photography Thoughts adaptive preference formationcleaningcorporationexcusesphotographyselling out
Photography Cracking Open the Omniverse August 24, 2010October 17, 2019 Today I experienced a cranial disaster resulting from a singularity in all space and time. It all started way back when my parents decided not to have any more children after the birth of my older sister Sarah. Sixteen months later, I was a newborn being carried around the hospital by… Read More
Photography What's the Boy Scout Motto Again? August 4, 2009October 17, 2019 Continued from Motivation When you suddenly find yourself locked out of your car that is in drive and stuck in a snow drift, your options are somewhat limited. Your mind races. Possibilities that had not occurred to you just moments before, such as freezing to death while huddled around your… Read More
Photography Fortune’s Fool May 4, 2010October 17, 2019 Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but at the end of the work day today, the cleaning woman showed up and started speaking with such prophetic wisdom that I found myself listening intently to every sentence in her half-Haitian-half-English tongue. She’s just like an oracle in the old… Read More
Major league baseball used adaptive preference formation when they used a default response of treating the outcome of baseball games as just a joke when they frequently lost to Negro League teams. That response was used to cover up many visceral emotions like a feeling of inferiority, latent integration and a comparative analysis of talent. For most of them this exposure was embarrasing and did not allow them to reinforce their supposed superiority; so, the joke response was an example of addaptive preference formation.