The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Sutherland: Supermarket shelf space unconsciously dictates consumer social norms
“Because when you look at supermarket shelves, we instinctively derive social information from the relevant prominence and proliferation of dry versus wet paper. And so we look at a supermarket shelves, we go, well, basically, there are a ton of dry Toilet roll…”
Sutherland: Humans Are Post-Rationalizing Animals Who Invent Reasons After Emotional Reactions
“We're not really a rational animal, we're a post-rationalizing animal. And that most of the time when we give a reason for an emotional state, it's a plausible sounding narrative that's actually Invented in the aftermath of us experiencing that emotion”
Sutherland: Red Bull Defies Rational Logic Given Its Disliked Taste and Premium Price
“Genuinely, Red Bull makes no rational sense whatsoever, ok? Nobody likes the taste very much, and when you research it, people hate the taste. It costs a lot of money, it comes in a tiny can.”
Sutherland: Medicinal products must taste strange to trigger perceived effectiveness
“No, I think there's an evolutionary thing, which is, if you want people to believe that something has medicinal or psychotropic powers, It has to taste a bit weird.”
Sutherland: Technologies pass through early stages devoid of pure utility
“There are whole technologies which before they reach proper sort of Model T realization, have to go through these painful early stages, which in themselves don't make sense purely in terms of utility.”
Sutherland: Information's Fundamental Dilemma Is Easy Creation and Hard Trust
“The great problem of information is it's easy to create and hard to trust.”
Sutherland: Long-term upfront costs signal repeat-game commitment and trustworthiness
“Anything that costs now and only pays off in the long term is a reliable signal of a business or an individual who's playing the repeat game, not the one-off game.”
Sutherland: Fixed businesses are more trustworthy than mobile ones due to sunk costs
“You essentially trust a kebab shop more than the kebab van. Because the kebab shop has sunk costs. If he loses his reputation, he'll have to up sticks and start a new kebab shop somewhere else at inordinate expense. The kebab van can just go, looks like Seveno…”
Sutherland: Vanishingly few Google users click 'I'm Feeling Lucky'
“The number of people who actually click it, i.e., I'm feeling lucky, take me straight to a single page, is vanishingly small. People want to choose between, you know, effectively above-the-fold options”
Sutherland: Airports Face Conflicting Demands from Frequent and Leisure Travelers
“Airports are schizophrenic, in a way, because the clientele of an airport is, roughly speaking, a fifty-fifty mix between people who fly a hell of a lot, and just want to get through the damn thing as quickly as they can, And people who only fly once a year, w…”
Four out of five IPA Gold advertising winners are family-controlled businesses
“Four out of the five gold winners, it's only every two years, this award, and it's very, very rigorously judged. Four out of the five winners, namely McCain, your Canadian heroes. McCain, Yorkshire Tea, Specsavers, and Lathwaites, a wine company. Four out of t…”
Sutherland: Hermès Kelly Bags Resell Above Retail Due to Purchase Restrictions
“Some of those things, by the way, weirdly, you can resell them for more than the purchase price, because in some cases, the Kelly bag, for example, they won't sell it to you until you've been a fairly reliable customer of theirs for some time, and therefore th…”