Quotes from Tom Vanderbilt

steep learning curve means you're climbing faster. And the steepest learning curves come right away.

The power of liking or disliking, or what psychologists call "affect," should not be underestimated: It not only informs what we feel about something like art but influences how we see it.

How you feel about something, she said, is there before you detect the stimulus;

One thing that is known is that they do not look at paintings very long.

Art experts are said to have a "good eye." What they really have is a good brain. It is less that they spot things that others do not; it is that they know where to look;

The psychologist Robert Zajonc argued that the way we feel about something, rather than coming on the heels of cognition—that is, "before I can like something, I must have some knowledge about it"—actually accompanies and may even precede it.

We spend time with a painting to try to understand it, but how much time we spend with a painting is driven by how much we understand of it.

Many traffic signs have become like placebos, giving false comfort to the afflicted, or simple boilerplate to ward off lawsuits, the roadway version of the Kellogg's Pop-Tarts box that says, "Warning: Pastry Filling May Be Hot When Heated.

Let me let you in on a little secret," he writes. "If you are hearing about something old, it is almost certainly good. Why? Because nobody wants to talk about shitty old stuff, but lots of people still talk about shitty new stuff, because they are still trying to figure out if it is shitty or not. The past wasn't better, we just forgot about all the shitty shit.

This machine is driven in part by the oscillations of novelty and familiarity, of hunger and satiation, that curious internal psychophysical calculus that causes us to tire of food, music, the color orange. But it is also driven in part by the subtle movements of people trying to be like each other and people trying to be different from each other.

the hipster effect occurs, he suggests, when people try to make decisions in opposition to the majority. Because no one knows exactly what other people are going to do next, and information can be noisy or delayed, there can also be periods of brief "synchronization," in which nonconformists fail to be "disaligned with the majority.

When there are too many choices, or the answer does not seem obvious, it seems better to go with the flow; after all, you might miss out on something good.

John Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places (New York: Walker and Co., 1998), 94.

But we should be wary of people reeling off ornate wine or coffee descriptions: Our ability to correctly identify particular odors in a complex, blended mixture, for example, begins to hit a "ceiling" at three. Beyond that, tests have shown, people become worse than chance at picking out correct aromas. As

We all want to be individuals on the road, but smooth-flowing traffic requires conformity. We want all the lights to be green, unless we are on the intersecting road, in which case we want those lights to be green. We want little traffic on our own street but a convenient ten-lane highway blazing just nearby. We all wish the other person would not drive, so that our trip would be faster. What's best for us on the road is often not best for everyone else, and vice versa.

We often interrupt people at the beginner stage, forgetting that talent can take time.

If obedience to fashion consists in imitation of an example, conscious neglect of fashion represents similar imitation, but under an inverse sign.

In America, a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car.

As much a search for novelty, new tastes can be a conscious rejection of what has come before—and a distancing from those now enjoying that taste. "I liked that band before they got big," goes the common refrain.

The adoption of tastes is driven in part by this social jockeying, this learning and avoidance. But this is not the whole picture. Sometimes tastes change simply because of errors and randomness.

Gut feelings help us filter the world, and what is taste, really, but a kind of cognitive mechanism for managing sensory overload? But

What ever-sharper, real-time data about people's actual listening behavior do is more strongly reinforce the feedback loop.

The nations that rank as the least corrupt—such countries as Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and Singapore—are also the safest places in the world to drive.

A gulf was opening. Unless you were a professional, you were a mere dilettante or an "amateur." And what did this loaded word originally signify? "To love," derived from the French aimer. With the increasing specialization of knowledge and professionalization of everyday life, suddenly being delighted by something, or loving something, was seen as vaguely disreputable.