I've already made every imaginable mistake so that you don't have to.

Ceteris Paribus


Photo Credit: pexels.com Andrea Albanese

More > Ceteris Paribus >

The headings and some of the text have mouse-over effects to liven up the page.
Those effects are independent of your browser's copy-paste functionality.
If you intended to send an excerpt from this page to your wife but mistakenly sent her a prior text intended for your mistress, that is on you not me.
I have not decided whether this page will contain advertising.
The core content of this page takes up even most desktop screens, but one or more advertisements created by skilled graphic artists might enhance the existing text only layout.
Even without advertising and with some simplifying assumptions, it is difficult to present this much information even on a laptop or desktop screen.
On a cellphone screen it is that much more challenging.
To mitigate that, there are some navigation buttons below with which you can jump to sections within this page.





If you launch a web browser, search for English to Latin translation and plug in Ceteris Paribus the translation will be something such as: Other Things Being Equal.
If you take a course in economics, your instructor will likely reference the term Ceteris Paribus.
The exercises below might be not merely easy, they might be laughably easy.
That is by design, in order to explain the topic of this page.
In real life you will need to identify the variables in real time on your own.
If you have a better background in economics, finance, geography, or sociology than I have then you may be able to come up with better exercises than the ones that I have below.

Ceteris Paribus Exercises

Exercise 1: Internet Domain Age

All else being equal, which website would you expect to be more likely to be what it purports to be?
A) A website that uses an internet domain that was registered yesterday.
B) A website that uses an internet domain that was registered 10 years ago.


All else being equal, I would expect an internet domain registered 10 years ago to be more likely to be what it purports to be than an internet domain registered yesterday.
Does the mere fact that a website domain was registered long ago guarantee that a website is trustworthy?
Absolutely not.
If a website suggests that it can generate unrealistic investment returns trading crypto or anything else, then the site is still a scam regardless of whether it was registered yesterday or ten years ago.
For those of you that may be unfamiliar with internet domains, the exercises that follow will not require knowledge of internet domains.
However, I do think understanding internet domains is important, so I do ask that you read my pages on internet domains.
If everyone read and understood the content on my website regarding internet addresses that would not stop every internet scam, but it would stop many of them.


Exercise 2A: Latitude

Latitudes are imaginary lines that wrap horizontally around the Earth.
Longitudes are imaginary lines that wrap vertically around the Earth.
Which is which is not important enough for me to commit to memory.
Assume you are either north of the equator and travel further north, or you are south of the equator and travel further south.
All else being equal, how do you expect the termperature at the new location to compare to the temperature at the original location?
A) The new location will be colder.
B) The new location will be warmer.


All else being equal, I would expect temperature to become colder as you travel north from north of the equator or travel south from south of the equator.


Exercise 2B: Latitude... Again

Are the relative before and after temperatures stated in the solution above guaranteed to be in effect if we remove the constraint of All Else Being Equal?
Wny or why not?

No.
Reasons why it could become warmer as you move further north from north of the equator or further south from south of the equator:

  • Elevation
    Mount Everest is on the border of Nepal and China.
    As I type this in February of 2023, the internet says that the termperature at the peak of Mount Everest is -17 Fahrenheit.
    As you trave north to a lower elevation, for a very great many miles the effect of the decreaase in elecation will overwhelm the increase in latidue.
    Note: I have done absolutely research as to whether straight north from the peak of Mount Everest is or is not safe to travel.
  • Random Weather
    One location south of another location could be temporarily colder than the northern location due to random weather.
  • Some weather phenomenon such as the Gulf Stream.
    A given latitude in Europe is gernally warmer than the same latitude in North American due to the Gulf Stream.
    Such a weather phenomenon may or may not exists that make a north latitidue colder than a southern latitude at the same longitude.


Exercise 3: Collateral

Excluding credit card accounts, all else being equal, what would you expect to have a lower interest rate:

All else being equal, you should expect expect a loan that is backed by collateral to have a lower interest rate than a loan that does not have collateral.
Secured credit cards are for consumers that have either a limited credit history or poor credit.
For those people, a secured credit card might make getting a credit card possible when it would not be easy to get an unsecured credit card.
For people with good credit I have difficulty imagining a scenario where having a secured credit card would be useful.


Exercise 4A: Human Interaction

For this entire exercise, you are a young adult man.
Scenario 1
In scenario 1, you are a college student.
Another student, a woman in front of you in line at the cafeteria, says that she would like to exchange contact information.
You exchange contact information then proceed to your classes on opposite ends of the campus.
Scenario 2
As a graduation gift you were given enough money to buy a new car.
You are shopping at a car dealership.
You are greeted by a saleswoman.
The saleswoman is not the woman from the school cafeteria but she is somehow her doppleganger.
To the limits of your perception, they look and sound the same.
The saleswoman asks to exchange contact information.
Question
Which of the two women could plausbily intend to have an ongoing social or outright romantic relationship with the man in our exercise?
The women are dopplegangers.
The only difference between the two women is the scenario in which our young man encountered them.

There is only one plausible answer: the woman from the cafeteria.
Regardless of anything that our young man thought he heard or in fact actually heard, the job of the saleswomen is to sell cars.
Especially if the saleswoman is attractive, she will be very aware that being outgoing, if not outright flirtacious, will maximize her earnings.


Exercise 4B: Human Interaction... Again

In the previous exercise you were asked to determine which woman could plausibly wish to socialize with the man in a given scenario.
Does plausibly mean definitely?
Why or why not?

To say something is plausible does not mean that it is certainly so.
Our young man could have mistaken friendliness for something more intimate.
Even if a reasonable bystander might have seen the interaction as flirtacious, the scenario could still be any one of the following:

  • The woman is an exchange student.
    Despite how far computer software as progressed as an aid, she might still find it useful to have a native speaker on retainer.
  • The woman might be recruiting for a church, outright cult, or perhaps most terrifying of all: a multi-level marketing company.

Despite the very real cautions above, the idea of people in universities engaging in romantic relationships is plausible.
In contrast, to dismiss the idea of a saleswoman wishing to date one of her customers as being merely nonsensical gives the idea far more merit than it deserves.

My Takeaway

While I stated in this page's introduction that these exercises might be laughably easy, I am still extremely confident that during this year and every future year people will buy products and services that they did not intend to because they did not realize that they were experiencing exercises 4A and 4B in real life.
Over the course of your life you need to employ logic, not wishful thinking, in order to make informed decisions.