predictable

the truth about relativity
because making relative judgments is the natural way we think.
Can you get a handle on it? I know someone who can.
He is James Hong, cofounder of the Hotornot.com rating
and dating site. (James, his business partner Jim Young,
Leonard Lee, George Loewenstein, and I recently worked on
a research project examining how one's own "attractiveness"
affects one's view of the "attractiveness" of others.)
For sure, James has made a lot of money, and he sees even
more money all around him. One of his good friends, in fact,
is a founder of PayPal and is worth tens of millions. But Hong
knows how to make the circles of comparison in his life
smaller, not larger. In his case, he started by selling his
Porsche Boxster and buying a Toyota Prius in its place. 4
"I don't want to live the life of a Boxster," he told the New
York Times, "because when you get a Boxster you wish you
had a 911, and you know what people who have 911s wish
they had? They wish they had a Ferrari."
That's a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the
more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of rela­
tivity.
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