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How Viewing a "Virtual You" Can Help You Save
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that computer scientists, economists, neuroscientists and psychologists are teaming up to find innovative ways of turning impulsive spenders into patient savers. One way to shock Americans into saving more for their retirement is software that lets users stare into a camera in a virtual-reality laboratory and see an image staring back of how they will look in the year 2057. By enabling the young to see themselves as they will be when they are old, virtual-reality technology can transform their urge to spend for today into a willingness to save for tomorrow because to the extent that people can more vividly imagine how badly they will feel in the future with little to no retirement savings, they can be motivated to save more money now. In one test experimental subjects who saw a persuasive visual analog of a 70-year old version of themselves by morphing the shape and texture of his avatar to simulate the aging process reported they would save twice as much as those who didn't (PDF). 'An employee's ID photo could be age-morphed and placed on the benefits section of the company's website,' says Dan Goldstein of London Business School. 'From there, we're just a few clicks and a few minutes away from someone making a lasting decision that can be worth thousands [of dollars].'"
http://youtu.be/A3oIiH7BLmg
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Get $100 taken out of your paycheck every month for 40 or 50 years (480 months * 100 = $48,000) and then get a meager 600/month back for maybe 10 (120 months = however much $72,000 will be worth within 40 years) and if you're healthy enough 15 years.
My employer pays for my pension plan and they put in $100 and the $600 is what the fund says I will get even though my investments are very aggressive at this point (50% goes in the tech and asian markets with very good dividends that double the investment every quarter, 50% in the safe 'recommended' aggregated funds which doesn't ever seem to make a profit but is promised to be always there even if the markets crash). If I make another $250 contribution every month they say I should be able to have the same income as I do now but measured against the historic devaluation of money that is not what I want to be making within 40 years and I really could use the 250 right now.
The only way the pension funds work is if you're in the middle-to-upper class (>$250,000/year income) and can contribute easily a good $1000/month into your own managed investment funds. Then you should be able to cash in when you're 60 and live comfortably if off course you're investments paid off over time and you're not committing large funds in bubble's and crashes.
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Just short of mind control, really. We're holding your future self for ransom and if you don't put your money in the the 401(k) he's gonna get it! It's also weirdly like the Wolfenstein HUD in that your character's face is used to communicate status.
Such a technology as this is really an abandonment of rationalism -- we concede we can't use empirical arguments and evidence about saving and retirement to convince people to save, so now we'll just scare them. Notice that people are only manipulated into saving, and not into thinking about what to put their money into, which is the actual decision people are making. How will your face look if you discover in 20 years the stocks you were buying were a house of cards, and that the only reason you were putting your money into them is because your corporate HR department was guilting you. You should decide how to save their money with a sound mind, free of the sort of manufactured anxieties bank and stock broker marketers use to induce new customers, which is all this is.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Saving? Are you insane?
Real inflation is hitting what? 8% per year. Anything I save is made worthless very quickly. It is handed over to the bankers. On the other hand, if I take out as much debt as is possible and then I get to pay it back in devalued currency.
Deleted
Indeed, except that all the rest of us have to pick up the tab if you make *no* effort to plan ahead. I know which route I favour you taking...
So if someone is responsible, makes sacrifices, and saves, they are rewarded by having to subsidise those who didn't bother to plan ahead. If, on the other hand, they blow all their money on blackjack and hookers, their retirement is then subsidised by those who still have some money.
Sounds like a system that encourages you to take the trip to Vegas while you're young enough to appreciate it, as far as I can see...
Right, because breaking out the guillotines and slicing the heads off of a bunch of rich jerks will is totally an effective strategy for improving the day to day lives of these people. Hope they enjoy themselves. Myself, though, I think I'll wander off somewhere else before anyone decides it's time to start purging the intellectuals, and would advise most of Slashdot to do the same.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
A wage that hasn't been declining since 1970.
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It's reasonable to worry about global warming and similar effects, and it's all well and good to complain about "climate change deniers and proud of it", but to visit the other extreme is also an affront to reason. To wit: changing weather patterns may affect the world economy to the tune of trillions of dollars, but your "uber-winter" scenario sounds like something out of The Day After Tomorrow. As such, I believe that your worries have transcended reason and are now firmly in the realm of paranoid delusion.
Please come back. I assure you there's still plenty of room to be rationally concerned about the world, and (outside of a circle that already embraces the notion) you're really undermining the global warming cause.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.