THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 1

How do colorless green ideas sleep?

Subject:  Syntax and Semantics - Chomsky’s “Colorless Green Ideas”

Event:  Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures published, 1957

Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints -- the rules that run us.  Language is using us to talk -- we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents.  --Harry Mathews 

Today is the birthday of linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky, who was born in Philadelphia in 1928.  Chomsky spent more than 50 years as a professor at MIT and has authored over 100 books. Chomsky has been called “the father of modern linguistics” and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.  Despite all of his accomplishments, Chomsky is perhaps best known for a single sentence:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Published in his 1957 book Semantic Structures, Chomsky’s famous sentence illustrates the difference between two essential elements of language:  syntax and semantics.  Syntax relates to the grammar of a language or the order in which words are combined to construct sentences. Semantics, in contrast, relates to the meaning of individual words. Chomsky’s sentence illustrates the difference between syntax and semantics, showing that a grammatically or syntactically correct sentence can be constructed that is semantically nonsensical.

Of course, we can construct zany sentences all day for entertainment purposes, but to truly communicate our thoughts to an audience, we must craft sentences that synthesize both syntax and semantics to make sense.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the difference between syntax and semantics, and how does Chomsky’s famous sentence illustrate the difference?

Challenge - Strange Semantic-less Syntax Sings Soporifically:  What are some adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs that all begin with the same letter of the alphabet? Try your hand at constructing a syntactically correct, yet semantically nonsensical sentence.  For an added layer of interest, use alliteration by selecting words that begin with the same letter.

Begin by brainstorming as many adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs as you can.  Then, select randomly from your list, filling in words in the following order:

Adjective + adjective + noun + verb + adverb

For example:

Angry, ambivalent aardvarks argue awkwardly.

or

Zany, zymolytic zookeepers zoom zealously.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

February 1, 1852:  On this day, Henry David Thoreau recorded a rant in his journal, enumerating the idiocy of the California Gold Rush:

The recent rush to California and the attitude of the world, even of its philosophers and prophets, in relation to it appears to me to reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind.  That so many are ready to get their living by the lottery of gold-digging without contributing any value to society, and that the great majority who stay at home justify them in this both by precept and example! . . . . The hot that roots his own living, and so makes manure, would be ashamed of such company.

Sources:  

1-”Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” Psychology Wiki.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 31

What is one trick that marketers use to make things appear true even though they are not necessarily valid?

Subject:  Cognitive Fluency - Easy = True 

Event:  “Easy = True” article published in The Boston Globe, 2010

Thinking is hard work, which is why so few people do it.  -Henry Ford

On this day in 2010, an article was published in The Boston Globe entitled “Easy = True.”  Written by journalist Drake Bennet, the article was about an emergent hot topic in psychology called cognitive fluency.  Cognitive fluency is a concept that relates to the ease at which we are able to think about something.  It seems obvious, but cognitive fluency reminds us that we don’t like thinking too hard and that the human species has a definite preference for things that are easy to think about.  These are the things we pay more attention to and the things that we remember better.  As a result, when we are presented with information, the easier it is for us to process, the more valid we perceive it -- for example, if it is written in a clear font, if it rhymes, or if it is repeated.

We have a clear, instinctive bias for things that are familiar to us, which makes sense when you think about the way that our brains evolved.  Familiar things presented less of a threat, while unfamiliar things required scrutiny, which could be the difference between survival and being poisoned by a plant or eaten by a predator.

One excellent illustration of cognitive fluency comes from the research of psychologist Matthew McGlone.  He presented subjects with unfamiliar aphorisms, half of which were written in rhyming form, such as “Woes unite foes.”  The other half of the aphorisms were written in non-rhyming forms, such as “Woes unite enemies.”  Not only did people find the rhyming aphorisms more pleasing to the ear, but they also rated them as more accurate than their non-rhyming equivalents.  McGlone calls his discovery “the rhyme-as-reason effect.”  Most of us would intuitively realize that a rhyming slogan was more catchy and easy to remember, but how many of us would guess that the rhyming phrases would also be perceived as more inherently true? 

Whether we are delivering or receiving persuasive messages, cognitive fluency has important implications.  As stated by psychologist Adam Alter, 

Every purchase you make, every interaction you have, every judgment you make can be put along a continuum from fluent to disfluent. If you can understand how fluency influences judgment, you can understand many, many, many different kinds of judgments better than we do at the moment. (1)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is cognitive fluency, and how can knowing about it make you more persuasive?

Challenge - Parallel Proverbs:  The key ingredients for cooking up a more persuasive, more digestible message are repetition, clarity, and simplicity.  Rhyme and alliteration -- which involve repetition of sounds -- are two of the most common methods of repetition, but a more sophisticated method of repetition is parallelism, which involves the repetition of structure, such as Caesar's famous declaration, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” which follows the repeated pattern pronoun verb, pronoun verb, pronoun verb.  Identify a proverb or aphorism that contains both wisdom parallelism.  Explain why you think the proverb is both well written and well reasoned.

Sources:

1-Bennett, Drake.  “Easy = True”  The Boston Globe  31 January 2010.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 30

How can guessing the age of Mahatma Gandhi help us to better understand how our mind works? 

Subject:  Anchoring - Death of Gandhi Study Question 

Event:  Death of Mahatma Gandhi, 1948

On the evening of January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was killed when an assassin fired three bullets into his chest at close range.  You have probably heard of Gandhi, and you might even have known that he was assassinated.  But, do you know how old he was when he died? 

  

This question was the subject of an ingenious psychological study conducted in 1997. It’s a study that helps us to better understand human thinking and the connection between our rational thinking and our intuitive thinking. It’s also a study that reveals that our thinking and our decisions are not as independent as we think they are; instead, they can be influenced by outside forces that we often are not aware of.  

One of those forces is numbers.  For example, when you are shopping for a new refrigerator, do you pay attention to the “recommended retail price”?  Similarly, when a teacher is grading a student’s essay, do you think she is influenced by the student’s previous grades on essays or by the essay she graded previously?  Psychologists call this anchoring: the mental process by which we make estimates by latching on to reference points for comparison.

In the Gandhi study, 60 German university students were asked how old the 

Indian leader was when he died.  For 30 of the students, the question was preceded by the question “Was Gandhi older or younger than 9 years old when he died.”  The other 30 were first asked, “Was Gandhi older or younger than 140 years old.”  Logically speaking, neither number -- 9 or 140 -- seemed a likely hint to his actual age, yet the results of the study showed that in both cases they influenced the students’ estimates:  the students who were asked “Was Gandhi older or younger than 9 years old,” guessed an average age of 50 years old; the other group which was asked “Was Gandhi older or younger than 140 years old,” guessed an average of 67 years old (1).

At this point, you probably want to know how old Gandhi actually was:  he was 78 years old.

The message of anchoring is that our mind works by making comparisons, whether or not we are aware of those comparisons.  To avoid this cognitive bias, be alert to how you’re comparing things, and be especially alert to how an initial piece of information, such as a number can influence your thinking.  For example, if you are negotiating a salary or buying a new car, pay attention to the first offers presented; also, realize the advantage of being the one who offers the first number.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is anchoring, and how does it influence us?

Challenge - Buyer Beware:  You can bet that companies know how to employ anchoring to manipulate consumers into paying more for products.  Do some research on how marketers use anchoring to prey on the weak minds of consumers.  Write a brief PSA that explains the trickery of anchors and helps people avoid it to save money.

ALSO ON THIS DAY: 

-January 30, 1929:  Today is the birthday of cognitive psychologist Roger Newland Shepard, born in 1929.  He invented the famous optical illusion called the Shepherds Tables. 

Sources:  

1-IB Psychology. Key Study: Gandhi and the Anchoring Effect

Strack & Mussweiler, 1997.  https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2020/03/10/key-study-ghandi-and-the-anchoring-effect/

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 29

What one piece of writing advice did the Russian writer Anton Chekhov give to aspiring writers?

  

Subject:  Vivid Imagery - Chekhov’s “Broken Glass”

Event:  Birthday of Anton Chekhov, 1860

Today is the birthday of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904).  Chekhov began writing as a way to support his family when he was a teenager, selling stories to newspapers.  Although he is today recognized as one of the greatest fiction writers of all time, Chekhov’s first love was medicine.  He described his relationship with medicine and writing with an apt metaphor:  “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.”  

Unfortunately, Chekhov had barely started his career as a doctor when he contracted tuberculosis, which took his life when he was just 44 years old.

We look to great writers like Chekhov to find the secret of transforming our 

thoughts into words -- words that in turn will allow our ideas to come to life in the minds of our audience.  One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to “show, don’t tell.”  This is great advice, and the three-word maxim is an excellent example of concise writing; however, the irony of “show, don’t tell” is that the statement itself does more telling than showing. For a better, more illustrative version of this advice, we can turn to a quotation that’s often attributed to Chekhov:

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Here we have an example of the kind of concrete language that creates a vivid image in the reader’s mind.  Concrete language engages the reader’s senses, allowing the reader to see, hear, feel, smell, and/or taste vicariously.

Although the “glint of light” quotation is consistently attributed to Chekhov, an investigation by Garson O’Toole has determined that it’s more of a paraphrase than a direct quotation.  

At his website www.quoteinvestigator.com, O’Toole reports that the source of the quotation is a letter that Chekhov wrote to his brother Alexander in May 1886.  As we can see by Chekhov’s advice to his brother, sensory imagery is a must:

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball (1).

Too often writers don’t follow Chekhov’s advice.  It’s okay to talk about abstract ideas like love, war, freedom, or failure, but to truly show and to truly evoke images, the writer must use concrete language that engages the reader’s five senses.  This is the type of language that creates a dominant impression in the mind of the reader.  

In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell describes in detail the thinking process that happens when we write.  In this description, he shows how our thinking can go wrong, but more importantly, he also provides an antidote:

In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. 

As an example of a passage that both Chekov and Orwell would approve of, here is an excerpt from Wilfred Owen’s poem about World War I, “Dulce Et Decorum Est.”  Notice how instead of telling us that “War is hell,” it show us:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What does it mean to “show, not tell” when writing, and what kind of thinking must a person do to apply this principle to their writing? 

Challenge - Show Me the Details:  How can you support a generalization with strong imagery and sensory details that create a showing picture for your reader? Support a telling generalization with specific showing details that make a dominant impression on the reader.  Select one of the generalizations listed below or generate your own.  Then, use sensory language that engages your reader’s senses, by including details that the reader can see, hear, feel, taste, and/or smell.

-Learning a new skill can be difficult.

-Persistence is an essential trait for successful people.

-Failure is often a springboard for success.

-Procrastination is a major problem for students.

-Summer is the best time of the year.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:  

January 29, 1839:  Charles Darwin married Emma Wedgwood after taking the time to create a list contrasting the pros and cons of marriage.  See THINKER’S ALMANAC - February 12.

Sources:

1-Quote Investigator.com Anton Chekhov. 30 July 2013. 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 26

If we draw a picture of the human body based on how the human brain sees it, why is it a distorted figure that looks very little like a typical human?

 

Subject:  Cortical homunculus - The brain’s map of the body  

Event:  Birthday of neuroscientist Wilder Graves Penfield, 1891  

 

Imagine what your body would look like if each of its parts were in proportion to how much of your brain was dedicated to sensing with them or to how much of your brain was dedicated to moving with them. How much larger, for example, would your nose be in comparison to your foot?

Because of the work of the neuroscientist Wilder Penfield -- who was born on this day in Spokane, Washington, in 1891 -- we have an accurate picture of how the human brain sees its body.  

Penfield’s cartoon depiction of the human brain is called the cortical homunculus, or “cortex man.”  This cartoon presents a distorted image of the human body based on how much of the brain is dedicated to the motor or sensory functions of different body parts.  Because, for example, a large portion of the brain is dedicated to sensing with and controlling the movement of the fingers and the lips -- as opposed to say the arms or the legs -- these features are drawn to appear much larger than they appear on an actual human (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the cortical homunculus?

Challenge - My Eyes have Seen the Glory of the Homunculus:  After a meal, you might have heard someone use the expression, “My eyes were bigger than my stomach.”  In this context, it is obviously meant in a figurative rather than literal sense.  However, with knowledge of the cortical homunculus, you might argue that the expression is literally true.  Explain.

Sources:

1-PBS. “Wilder Penfield 1891 - 1976.”

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 25

What country’s national dish is a pudding made of sheep offal (the liver, heart, lungs), oatmeal, minced onion, all encased in a sheep’s stomach?

 

Subject:  Romanticism - Burns’ Night 

Event:  Birthday of Robert Burns, 1759

 

I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. -Robert Burns

Today is the birthday of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796).  Born in Alloway, Scotland, on a tenant farm, Burns began writing poems at an early age.  Although he had little formal education, suffered much poverty and hardship, and died at just 37 years of age, his poetry and songs have made him one of the great poets, especially to the people of Scotland who recognize him as their national poet.

Even though he wrote his poetry in the Scottish dialect, today Burns’ poetry is read, remembered, and loved by people around the world.  One prime example is his song Auld Lang Syne, which is sung around the world each New Year’s Eve (1).

Although he is typically viewed more as a poet than a philosopher, Burns’ life and work embodied all the elements of the philosophical tradition known as romanticism.   His humble beginnings and desire to preserve the oral tradition of the Scottish people are consistent with the romantic tradition of celebrating the individual and, especially, the common man. Furthermore, his poetic imagination captured both the wonder of nature and the power of human emotions.

It’s no wonder then that another poet/philosopher, the American Ralph Waldo Emerson, would recognize Burns’ genius. On the centennial of Burns’ death in 1859, Emerson commemorated Burns at a gathering of admirers in Boston:

 

He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made the Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of all offence through his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that the devil should have all the best tunes; he would bring them into the churches; and Burns knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody. (2)

Beginning in 1801, five years after Burns’ death, his friends gathered at a dinner in Alloway to honor the Scottish Bard. Ever since, Burns’ admirers around the world have gathered on his birthday at Burns Suppers.  More than just a meal, the Burns Supper has evolved into an elaborate, scripted event involving the playing of bagpipes, the presentation of formal speeches and toasts, and the recitation and singing of Burns’ poetry and songs.

One vital menu item for every Burns Supper is haggis, Scotland’s national dish: a pudding made of sheep offal (the liver, heart, lungs), oatmeal, minced onion, all encased in a sheep’s stomach.  Pipes play as the haggis is presented to the dinner guests, and before anyone digs in, Burns’ poem Address to the Haggis is recited.

The highlight of the evening, however, is the keynote address called the “Immortal Memory,” presented by one of the attendees.  The purpose of this speech is to revive the memory of Burns’ life and to express appreciation for his work.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is romanticism, and how did the work of Robert Burns exemplify it?

Challenge - Immortal Memory, Memorable Meal:  What person, who is no longer living, was so important and influential that he or she should be immortalized with an annual birthday supper?  What would be the menu, and what would be the agenda of activities for honoring the person and symbolizing the person’s life and achievements?  Brainstorm some individuals that you would recognize as having made a significant contribution to the world.  Select one individual and write an explanation of why this person should be honored. Also, give a preview of the meal’s menu and festivities. 

Sources: 

1-The Poetry Foundation.  Robert Burns. 

2-Bartleby.  Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The Complete Works. 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 24

Why do people place potatoes on the gravestone of Prussian king Frederick the Great, and how can this help us be more persuasive?

Subject:  Framing - Frederick the Great and the Potato

Event:  Birthday of Frederick the Great, 1712

 

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic.  We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.  --Dale Carnegie

The gravestone of Frederick the Great (1712-1786), a man who ruled the Kingdom of Prussia for 46 years in the 1700s, is covered with potatoes.   It’s not at all surprising to see flowers on a grave, but potatoes?  Why potatoes?  And what on earth does this have to do with rhetoric, the ancient art of persuasion?

Being the forward-thinking monarch that he was, Frederick the Great hatched a plan to introduce the potato to his subjects as a hedge against potential famine.  The potato would provide an alternative to bread and would make food prices less volatile.  Based on this reasoning, Frederick issued a decree requiring the cultivation of potatoes.  There was a problem, however.  Frederick’s subjects had never eaten potatoes and were wary of this subterranean, dirty, and tasteless plant, a plant which not even dogs would eat and which was not mentioned in the Bible.

Having failed to persuade his subjects with reason and authority, Frederick went back to the drawing board.  This time he employed imagination and psychology to transform the worthless, unwanted potato into a valuable and prized commodity.

Plan B required cunning and a more subtle approach.  Frederick declared the potato the royal vegetable, exclusive to the table of the royal household.  To consume the prized potato, an individual would either need to be royalty or be given royal permission.  Next, Frederick established a royal potato patch on the palace grounds.  Before posting guards, however, he instructed his potato police to be less than diligent in guarding the royal crop.  In this way, curious Prussians were able to gain access to the potato garden and steal some of the tantalizing tubers.  By manufactured scarcity and exclusivity, Frederick rebranded the potato.  Stolen vegetables from the royal potato patch were now eagerly consumed and cultivated, and today the potato is a staple of the European diet (1).

Long before modern advances in psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience, Frederick -- who was born on this day in 1712 -- understood that persuasion requires more than just appealing to reason.  Instead, persuasion requires appealing to an audience’s psychology, its emotion, and its imagination.  Rhetoric is the art of using words to persuade and of recognizing and using the right tool in the right context. It’s not that reason isn’t an important part of persuasion, but relying exclusively on reason is a bit like having a tool chest full of nothing but hammers.  Another 18th-century thinker who knew this was the philosopher Davie Hume (1711-1776), who said, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

Just as Frederick reframed the potato, rhetoric is the art of using words to reframe your ideas, employing the strategic use of reason, psychology, emotion, and imagination.  As Frederick demonstrated, how you say something can often be just as important as what you say.

Frederick taught us that people are influenced by the way a message is framed.  In other words, people draft different conclusions from the same information, depending on how the information is presented.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is psychological framing, and how can it be illustrated using a potato?

Challenge - Reframe Game:  What is one thing that is almost universally hated?   It could be a highly disparaged menu item -- like Brussel sprouts -- or a more abstract concept -- like homework.  Write an elevator pitch of at least 100 words in which you attempt to reframe the thing, using the alchemy of language to transform your audience’s perception of the thing from disdain to appreciation.  Make the audience see the glass as half full rather than half empty.

Sources:  

1-Sutherland, Rory.  The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2019.