In today's episode, we're going to talk about something called psychophysics. And no, we're not going to get deep into this idea. This is not as fluffy as it sounds on its face. Psychophysics is the study of various types of perception of the physical world. In other words, how our brains understand what's going on physically. And specifically today, we're going to focus on something called Weber's Law. In the mid-1800s, Ernst Heinrich Weber, hopefully I'm saying that correctly, developed this theory and eventually this law related to the theory of the physical world. And it's called psychophysics. Specifically related to human perception and the relation between actual change in a physical stimulus and the perceived change. That's directly from Wikipedia, by the way. Weber states that the minimum increase of stimulus, which will produce a perceptible increase of sensations, is proportional to the preexistent stimulus. Once again, this is coming from Wikipedia. I encourage you to go and read a little bit more about this. If you are interested. But in layman's terms, Weber started by finding something called or establishing the language around something called just noticeable difference. This is essentially the amount of change that you would have to experience through your senses that you would notice that something had changed. The most basic example of this, if you're holding a five-pound weight in your hand, and, and I told you to close your eyes and switch the weight out with another weight, let's say 5.05 pounds, there is some amount of weight that I could add that you would not notice. And then there is a threshold. There is a specific weight that if I did add that, you could notice. This is only part of Weber's law. The other part states that as the baseline increases, in other words, if I handed you a 30-pound weight to hold, the just noticeable difference increases linearly. In other words, if previously the just noticeable difference was about 10% of the baseline, then it's probably going to be 10% of the baseline at a higher weight as well. This ratio stays constant, but that means that the absolute amount that you'd have to change from the baseline increases as well. So previously, if you had, let's say, 5.4, 5 pounds is the threshold, so a 0.5 pound difference, that's 10% of the baseline of 5 pounds. If you were holding a 30-pound weight, that 10% becomes 3 pounds. It's easy math, but the concept underlying here is very powerful, and it actually lines up with a lot of other things that we know about the human brain. Perhaps the most important overlap for you to take away is, the critical importance of context. In the context of holding a 5-pound weight, all you need to add is 0.5 pounds to notice it. But in the context of holding a 30-pound weight, that goes to 3 pounds, six times as much. Now, there's a lot of insight that we can draw from this, and a lot of parallels that we can draw to fields of cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, etc. For example, let's say that you had a project that you expect to do, to take three months. If that three-month project is only three days late, you'd consider that a win. But, if a project of, let's say, equal value, but it was only planned for three weeks, if that project was three days late, you're going to notice it a little bit more. Now, imagine that you had a project that was only supposed to take three days. Well, if that one's three days late, then you're really up a creek. In all cases, the absolute amount by which the projects are late is the same. But, in context, these are wildly different. Even if each of those projects produced the same amount of value, and even if each of those timelines had the same loss as a result of being three days late, we would still understand this in context of the baseline. In this case, three months, three weeks, or three days. At theijfijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij law breaks down. And importantly, we can take from this more insights. For example, at some small measure, changes will not matter very much at all. Going from a task taking 30 minutes to a task taking 30 minutes and five seconds is totally imperceptible to us. And in some ways, this is actually what causes the larger problems, the things that overrun by significant amounts. Because we have these very small overruns, maybe more than five seconds, but small enough that they're imperceptible to us, they tend to add up. This is also why it's very difficult to estimate work that's very small in difference to each other. We use, for example, story points as an example. We use story points as an example. We use story points as an example. As a mechanism to help us wrap our minds around this problem. A task might take five minutes or it might take 30 minutes. And looking at that task or the description of that task, sometimes it's hard to parse which one of those it will be. Sometimes things take five minutes that you expect to take 30 minutes and vice versa. This is because at such small numbers, at such small size, we have a hard time understanding and wrapping our heads around the differences. This is kind of an extension of an analogy here of Weber's law and how it breaks down at the small end of the scale. Ultimately, the most important takeaway you can take from this discussion is that everything that we understand is better understood in context. That said, sometimes context can trick us. Sometimes context can make us look at absolute numbers differently than we would in a different context. Thinking in context is neither good nor bad on its face then because sometimes it can lead you astray and other times it can help you out immensely. But one thing is definitely true. We are wired to think in context. And so if you face a problem where the absolute differences matter, then you should try to figure out how to avoid that contextual framing. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. If you haven't yet, please subscribe in whatever podcasting app you're currently using. That's what keeps the podcast going. We've been trying out a little bit more of a sparse episode schedule for the podcast over the past couple of weeks. We will be experimenting more with that schedule in upcoming months. So you can probably look forward to two episodes a week once again in the future. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Bye.