Hey Tucson What Do You See ?
September 16, 2007
Post Tags: central_bank_of_england , digital-watches , first_magnus , perception-trumps-reality , toilet_paper
What do you see? What do you think you see. I hear a lot of people that always think the glass is half empty, and other that think it is always half full. You know what, the glass is what it is. It is half empty and half full, but how do you see it? That is the important question.
I used to think fact was what was important. Fact is what is! But I’ve learned that reality and perception of reality are often at odds with each other. The sad fact is perception of reality trumps reality almost every time.
I’ve mentioned before, but possibly not on this blog, about a time while I was living in Japan and the newspaper came out with a prediction that a possible shortage of toilet paper could happen in the future if certain things came to pass. It was one of those op-ed pieces where a writer had a deadline and didn’t have an article yet so they wrote this piece on how given the right circumstances there could be a shortage of toilet paper.
Two days later, there were pictures on the paper of people with closets full of toilet paper. Yep you guessed it. There was a shortage of toilet paper. Perception trumped reality and everyone went out and bought way more of the stuff than normal and the demand suddenly overwhelmed the supply and there was a shortage, for about 3 days.
Much of the Mortgage meltdown and the demise of a local lender First Magnus had to do with perception over reality. You probably didn’t hear about the old fashioned run on a bank in England that happened this week. People going to the bank and everyone wanting their money out at the same time. The central bank of England had to step in and provide money for the bank. Was it in trouble? In reality NO in perception, well everyone wanted their money at the same time. YES, What happened, perception trumped reality.
We often get comfortable seeing things in one way. Doesn’t the tree to the left look better to you than the tree at the top.
It is the same tree, but we are used to looking at trees in a particular way and when they aren’t viewed in that way they “Just aren’t Right”.
Do you remember when digital watches first came out? They had the display usually with a black background and red digital letters. You could buy one for about $6.
They became so popular that watches with numbers and hand almost disappeared for a time. The Swiss watch making industry almost ceased to exist. A lot of Swiss watch makers went under during that time. The Japanese made millions, possibly billions from digital watches, which are still being made.
Did you know the Swiss invented the digital watch? But they didn’t see them as useful or desirable so they sold the patent rights to the Japanese and almost destroyed their own industry in the process.
Perception trumps reality every time and that is too bad.
Beta was better than VHS, but…
MS Dos was one of the worst DOS systems, but…
Sometimes we all need to take a fresh look and ask ourselves is this real, or just how I’m looking at it?
How’s your supply of toilet paper?
