The relativity of values causes us to use money irrationally. I go to the supermarket to buy a $15 pen, and the clerk smiles and says, “You can buy this pen for $7 if you walk 5 minutes from here.” Then, most people walk five minutes and buy a $15 pen for $7. But if you want to buy a $1,000 jacket and the clerk smiles and says, “You can get a $992 jacket in five minutes from here,” most people simply buy the $1,000 jacket. Reasonably, walking for 5 minutes equals the effort, and the profit of $8 is the same. However, people might go to a store that sells pens cheaper, but not for the jacket, because the discount rate is too low. In other words, the relativity of comparing values makes us act irrationally. The pen’s discount rate is 55%, and the jacket’s is only 0.8%. Yet, the total amount is the same for all $8, and the effort to gain that profit is identical. Attitudes and misconceptions about consumption influence how we build wealth. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”
After the Human Genome Project mapped our DNA, we discovered that gene expression and activation patterns can be altered and passed on to future generations without changes in sequence, a phenomenon known as epigenetics. This means that even identical twins, whose genetic information is almost 100% exact, will have different gene activation patterns based on their environment and experiences and pass on their traits to the next generation. A typical phenomenon is methylation (CH3), which is the addition of one carbon and three hydrogens to CpGs in mammalian sequences. Depending on this methylation, although someone inherits the same gene sequence, certain genetic traits can be activated or deactivated. It is also believed that a unique upbringing or education in life influences this phenomenon. Of course, as with any scientific phenomenon or technology, the cause or effect may change over time, but if there's a lesson to be learned, this is one of the most important reasons not to ...