THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 30

Kipling cited “six honest serving men [who] taught [him] all he knew.” Who were these six men?

Subject:  Questions - Kipling’s Six Honest Serving Men

Event:  Birthday of British writer Rudyard Kipling, 1865

 

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? -Albert Einstein

Today is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), England’s master storyteller and poet.  Kipling was British, but he lived for many years in India where he was born.  Known especially for his short stories and his popular work of fiction The Jungle Book (1894), Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 when he was just 42 years old.  He was the first English language writer to win the prize, and he was also the youngest ever to win the prize.

                                                                Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

In a poem that accompanied one of his stories -- “The Elephant’s Child” -- Kipling includes a poem that personifies the six key interrogative pronouns, the words we use to begin questions:

I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who. (1)

Making Kipling’s “six honest serving-men” a part of your learning team is one of the best metacognitive strategies there is.  Metacognition is the ability to critically analyze and monitor your own thinking, and one excellent way to do this is to ask questions as you read or listen to a lecture.

In a 1991 study, ninth grade students listened to a lecture.  A quarter of the students reviewed their notes on the lecture by themselves.  Another quarter of the students discussed the content of the lectures in small groups.  The final two quarters of students were taught self-questioning strategies, and then were asked to generate and answer questions individually during and after the lecture, or they were asked to generate and answer questions and then discuss their questions and answers with a small group.   All subjects in the study were tested immediately after the lecture and then tested again ten days later. 

Based on the study’s results, the students who employed self questioning as a part of their study scored significantly higher than students who merely reviewed notes or discussed the contents of the lecture (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What are the six interrogative pronouns?

Challenge:  Six Starts for Self-Questioning:  Do some research on strategies for self-questioning.  Then, write a short public service announcement aimed at students, explaining what self-questioning is, how it can be done, and why it is an effective method of learning.

Sources: 

1-Poetry Foundation.  “Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).

2-King, Alison. “Improving lecture comprehension: Effects of a metacognitive strategy.” Applied Cognitive Psychology July/August 1991, Volume 5, Issue 4.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 27

What role did chance play in the invention of Saccharin, strikeable matches, and safety glass?

 

Subject: Creativity - Pasteur’s “Prepared Mind”

Event:  Birthday of French scientist Louis Pasteur, 1822

 

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. -Louis Pasteur

More than probably any person who ever lived, the French scientist Louis Pasteur - who was born on this day in 1822 - revealed the power of science as a tool for mastering nature.

Today we take for granted that germs attack the human body from outside.  It was Pasteur who opened the world’s mind to seeing how microorganisms or “germs” can lead to disease.  He also did pioneering work in vaccines, being the first to use weakened viruses to develop cures for anthrax and rabies.  Part of his motivation for studying infections and vaccinations was the fact that three of his five children died of typhoid.  He also invented the process that bears his name - pasteurization, where liquids are heated to kill harmful germs (1).

                                                        Image by Monoar Rahman Rony from Pixabay 

In an 1854 lecture, Pasteur made a remark that has inspired generations of scientists who have followed in his footsteps:   “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.”  Certainly, imagination and creativity have an important role to play in invention and discovery.  As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  However, we might say based on Pasteur’s remark that this is a false dichotomy because unless there is a healthy balance between imagination and knowledge, the “prepared mind” will have little chance of capitalizing on serendipity.

As examples of prepared minds capitalizing on chance, read the following three anecdotes of chemists who were ready when serendipity smiled on them:

1. One evening the Russian chemist Constantin Fahlburg was working late in his lab on derivatives of coal tar.  Typical of a scientist immersed in his work, Fahlburg almost forgot about his supper.  Leaving the lab in a rush without washing his hand, he sat down to eat.  Breaking a piece of bread and putting it to his lips, he tasted something sweet. He soon realized that by chance he had discovered something as sweet as sugar and luckily it did not contain any poisonous substances.  He later marketed the world’s first artificial sweetener: Saccharin.

2. In 1827, an English chemist named John Walker was mixing a pot of antimony sulfide and potassium chlorate.  When he noticed a dried lump of the mixture on his mixing stick, he attempted to scrape it off; at that point, the mixture ignited.  By chance, Walker had just created the world’s first strikeable match.

3. One day in 1903 when he was working in his lab, French chemist and artist Edouard Benedictus dropped a glass flask.  Although the glass shattered, Benedictus noticed that the glass shards held together.  Inquiring further, he realized that the glass had previously been filled with cellulose nitrate, a liquid plastic that Benedictus used in his art deco projects.  Apparently when the liquid evaporated, it left a thin film of plastic on the glass that kept the shards of glass from falling apart. As an additional stroke of luck, Benedictus had recently read a newspaper article about the dangers of broken glass in automobile accidents.  Next, Benedictus went to work to produce what would become what we know today as shatterproof, safety glass.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  In one of the three examples above, explain how chance favored the prepared mind.

Challenge - Serendipity Strikes:  Research other inventions that have resulted from the combination of chance events and prepared minds.  What is one example that you find particularly interesting?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

December 28, 1845:  On this day, an editorial appeared in the New York Morning News by John L. O’Sullivan (1813 - 1895).  In the editorial, Sullivan, a newspaper editor and proponent of U.S. expansion, argued for the United States’ claim to the Oregon Country, a large region in the West for which England and the U.S. had rival claims.  To Sullivan, expansion of the U.S. across all of North America to the Pacific coast was more than just a hope for the young nation; instead, it was its duty and its fate:

Away, away with all these cobweb issues of rights of discovery, exploration, settlement, continuity, etc.… our claim to Oregon would still be best and strongest. And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us.

Sullivan’s editorial popularized the motto: manifest destiny, giving proponents of expansion a rallying cry.  By the end of 1846, Oregon became a U.S. Territory after negotiations with Britain established the border at the 49th parallel.  At the time of Sullivan’s editorial, the United States had just 27 states.  By the end of the 19th century that number would expand to 45.

Sources:

1-Alexander Hammond. Louis Pasteur: "The Father of Microbiology" Who Pioneered Vaccine Science. Foundation for Economic Education 2 June 2019.

2-Ward, Alvin. “24 Unintended Scientific Discoveries.” Mental Floss 2 May 2015.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 24

What does the strategy of applying reinforcing armor to airplanes in World War II have to teach us about effective thinking?

Subject:  Problem Solving - Feature-Positive Effect

Event:  Christmas Eve

 

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. -Jonathan Swift

 

Translate the letters below into a single holiday-related word:

 

OUCDE FGHIN KJMAZ VRSTB QWXYP

 

In solving the above problem, the typical approach is to try to rearrange the 25 letters into some kind of coherent word.  There is, however, no single holiday-related word that can be formed from all 25 letters.  If a person persists with the problem, he or she might notice that there are both a total of 25 letters and that each letter is different (no single letter of the alphabet appears more than once).  This might, then, lead a person to notice that the single letter of the alphabet that is missing is the letter “L.”  People who get this far into the problem are very close to a solution, for in this case the key to solving the problem is using not the letters that are present, but instead using the single letter that is not.  Because there is no “L” present, the holiday message is, therefore, “NOEL.”

                                                                        Image by Victory from Pixabay 

The holiday card problem illustrates an interesting insight into human perception that’s called the feature-positive effect:  People tend to focus on what is present rather than what is absent.  As we saw in the word problem, however, often an absent element can be just as important if not more important than what we see right in front of us.

One classic example of how the feature-positive effect can limit our thinking comes out of World War II.  Scientists were at work trying to reinforce the armor in allied plans to prevent them from being shot down.  Examining planes that returned to base after a mission, some scientists recommended applying extra armor to cover the spots where most of the bullet holes were found.  The scientists were blinded, however, by what they were seeing.  It was a classic example of the feature-positive effect in action.  Rather than looking at the bullet holes that were present, the scientists should have been looking at the parts of the plane where bullet holes were not present; these areas would be the best places to reinforce with added armor because it’s in these sports where the planes that didn’t make it back were shot (1).

The simple but profound lesson of the feature-positive effect is to expand your perception by thinking about more than just what you see in front of you.  Try to consider what you don’t see and how that might be significant.  For example, as a target of marketing and advertising, consider what features of a product or service are being highlighted; then, try to consider what features are not being highlighted.  Certainly, these non-highlighted areas might be just as important as the highlighted areas.  If, for example, you are buying a new home in an unfamiliar region, write down the features that are being highlighted by the real estate agent, such as the home’s view, the home's square footage, or the quality of the local schools.  Make sure, however, to also create another column of things that are not obvious or that are not being highlighted, such as, why the owner wants to sell the house, the layout of the kitchen, or whether or not the basement leaks in winter.

 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the future-positive effect, and how can it blind us to finding solutions?

Challenge - Looking But Not Seeing:  The feature-positive effect reminds us to consider what is not present before our eyes.  Sometimes, however, we are blind even to things that are within our field of view. One form of this is called inattentional blindness (See THINKER’S ALMANAC - November 19).  Take a few minutes and study a painting or other work of art.  You can also just look out a window.  Try to be mindful of seeing what you might not ordinarily see by spending time to notice details.  If you haven’t read it before, read the short story called “Look at Your Fish” by Samuel Hubbard Scudder.  It’s a story about a student whose first lesson as a biologist is to critically examine a fish.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

December 24, 1414:  On this day in 1414, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg made a grammar error that went down in history.  Speaking to the Council of Constance in Latin, the Emperor called for the gathered assembly to eradicate the Papal Schism, a division in the Catholic Church in which three separate men claimed to be the true pope.  Unfortunately for the emperor, he mixed up the gender of the Latin word schisma using it as if it were feminine instead of the correct neuter form.  When the error was respectfully pointed out to him by a monk, Sigismund responded angrily saying, “I am the Emperor of Rome!  Even if the word is neuter, it will be feminine from now on.”  In response to Sigismund’s decree, a monk stood and proclaimed, “Caesar non supra grammaticos” - or “The Emperor is not above the grammarians.” Ever since Sigismund’s historic fail, the expression “Caesar non supra grammaticos” has been used to remind us that the rules of English grammar and spelling are not given to us as authoritative decrees from on high; instead, they are based on the conventions of writing that are followed by actual writers.  They are also inherently democratic in that they apply to everyone, and no one individual has the power to arbitrarily change them.

Sources:

1-Dobelli, Rolf.  The Art of Thinking Clearly New York:  Harper Paperback, 2014: 284. 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 23

How can the wording on a form be changed slightly to increase people’s willingness to become organ donors?

Subject: Default Effect - Organ Donation

Event: First organ transplant, 1954

If you want to encourage some activity, make it easy. -Richard Thaler

On this day in 1954, the first successful organ transplant operation was performed; it was a kidney transplant.  Today advances in medical technology have made transplant operations routine, including transplants of the heart, the liver, and the lungs.  Unfortunately, the supply of healthy organs for donation is much lower than the demand, and many people die each year before they can acquire a needed organ.

One possible solution to the problem can be found by examining how states acquire consent from potential donors.  Most people are familiar with checking a box to become an organ donor.  This is usually offered to people when they renew their driver’s license.  This method of signing up donors is called “explicit consent”: in order to become a donor, a person must take a specific action.  The problem here is that although roughly 97% of people support organ donation, only 43% take the explicit step of checking the box to sign up.  

An alternative method for signing up donors is called “presumed consent”: all citizens would be automatically signed up as organ donors; however, each would have the choice of opting out by checking a box when renewing their driver’s license.

                                                            Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Based on research by Eric Johnson and Dan Goldstein in 2003, participants were offered the opportunity to become organ donors in both the explicit consent condition and the presumed consent condition. Under the explicit consent condition, only 42% opted in.  In contrast, under the presumed consent condition, where participants had to opt out, 82% agreed to become donors.

More than just an issue related to organ donation, explicit and presumed consent have something to teach us about the default effect, our human tendency to accept default options.  We are basically indecisive individuals, and most often select the easiest option.  For example, many people own an iPhone, but few take the time and effort to customize their phone’s settings; it’s much easier to just stay with the default options.

Economist Richard Thaler and law professor Cass Sunstein wrote a book analyzing how governments can use the default effect to guide the choices of citizens while at the same time not restricting their freedom.  The term they use is “nudge,” which also happens to be the title of their book.  An example of the difference a nudge can make comes from two European countries: Germany and Austria.  In Germany, organ donation is an opt in program that requires explicit consent; as a result, only 12% of citizens sign up.  In Austria, however, citizens must opt out because their program is based on presumed consent; in Austria, 99% of citizens are organ donors.

Of course, we should not always assume that governments will nudge their citizens towards the most benevolent options.  Therefore, we should be more alert when we are making decisions.  Consider not just what the default option is, but also why it might be the default option.  It’s more cognitive taxing to examine options besides just the default, but often it allows us to expand our perspective and to take advantage of opportunities we wouldn’t have considered otherwise.

 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the default effect, and how does a country like Austria use it to nudge citizens to become organ donors?

Challenge - Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge:  The example of how Australia nudges its citizens to become organ donors is just one example of how a government might influence its citizens towards positive action.  Do some research on nudges.  Write a paragraph defining the term for a reader who is unfamiliar with it and give a concrete example to illustrate it.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:  

December 23, 1923:  Today is the birthday of Leonard B. Stern (1923-2011), American screenwriter, producer, and director.  Stern will probably be best remembered, however, as the co-creator of the game Mad Libs, the classic game where players insert randomly generated words into a passage based on the words’ parts of speech. Speaking of parts of speech, the story of the creation of Mad Libs begins in 1953 with two simple adjectives:  “clumsy” and “naked.”  At the time Stern was working on a television script for Jackie Gleason’s pioneering television show The Honeymooners. One day Stern was sitting at his typewriter, searching his mind for a precise adjective to describe the nose of one of his characters.  When Stern’s best friend and fellow word-lover Roger Price showed up, Stern asked him for help, and as Stern explains, the rest is history:

I said, “I need an adjective that --” and before I could further define my need, Roger said, “Clumsy and naked.”  I laughed out loud.  Roger asked, “What’s so funny?”  I told him, thanks for his suggestions, [my character now had] a clumsy nose  -- or, if you will, a naked nose.  Roger seldom laughed, but he did that time, confirming we were onto something--but what it was, we didn’t know.  “Clumsy” and “naked” were appropriately inappropriate adjectives that had led us to an incorrect but intriguing, slightly bizarre juxtaposing of words.

The name of the game and its publication didn’t happen until five years later.  Sitting in a New York restaurant one morning in 1958, Stern and Price overheard a conversation between an actor and his agent.  The actor said he wanted to “ad-lib” an interview; the agent responded, saying that he would be “mad” to do it.  Stern and Price now had a name, Mad Libs, but no publisher.  Unable to find anyone to print their game, they decided to do it themselves, paying to have fourteen thousand copies printed.  To publicize the game, the creators arranged for it to be used for introducing guests on Steve Allen’s Sunday night television show.  Within three days of the game’s appearance on television, stores were sold out.  Soon Stern and Price joined forces with their friend Larry Sloan to form a publishing company called Price Stern Sloan (or PSS!).  Before long Mad Libs became a bestseller, and PSS! became the largest publisher on the West Coast (1).

Sources:

1-Thaler, Richard H. and Cass R. Sunstein.  Nudge:  Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New York:  Penguin Books, 2008.

2-Price, Roger and Leonard Stern.  The Best of Mad Libs:  50 Years of Mad Libs.  New York:  Price Stern Sloan, 2008.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 16

What does it mean to think that nothing is indubitable?

Subject: Epistemology - Russell’s New Decalogue

Event:  Bertrand Russell’s essay “The Best Answer to Fanaticism - Liberalism,”1951

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. -Bertrand Russell

On this day in 1951, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote an essay in The New York Times entitled “The Best Answer to Fanaticism - Liberalism.”

Liberalism, according to Russell, is not a belief; instead, it is a disposition or attitude toward belief.  He credits John Locke as liberalism’s “great apostle” because he argued that all people should be capable of living at peace and that it was not necessary for everyone to agree.  Instead, Locke argued that all opinions should be treated as fallible and any belief should be open to question.  

Russell called into question those who argue that the truth is already known.  These people hold the opposite view of liberalism because their purpose “is not to discover truth but to strengthen belief in truths already known.”

                                                                Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

At the core of Russell’s argument is how to approach old ideas versus new ideas.  His conclusion is that all ideas should be welcomed, but at the same time, all ideas, whether old or new, should be subject to scrutiny and debate.  To help facilitate the liberal outlook, the correct epistemological attitude, Russell ends his article with what he calls a “new decalogue,” a kind of ten commandments of epistemology, in other words, ten rules that will help bring all of us closer to the truth:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the purpose of Russell’s New Decalogue?

 

Challenge - The Best of the Ten: Read through Russell’s ten rules.  Pick the one rule that you like the best, and write a paragraph explaining why you feel that the rule is important for people who are trying to find the truth.

 

ALSO ON THIS DAY

December 16, 1906: On this day in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to a friend explaining a recent political defeat.  Roosevelt, who won fame as a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War and served two terms as president from 1901-1909, was not used to defeat.  He broke up monopolies, championed federal regulation of railroads, spurred the conservation of natural resources, and began the construction of the Panama Canal.  As the leader of the Progressive Movement, however, there was one reform that Roosevelt could not make happen:  spelling reform. In addition to being an age of reform, the 19th century was also a time when public education was being expanded and democratized in America.  Roosevelt, along with other education advocates, viewed spelling reform as a practical and economical way to improve education.  After all, English orthography is plagued with words that have more letters than necessary as well as inconsistent and capricious spelling rules. In March 1906 the Simplified Spelling Board was founded and funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie.  Its mission was to reform and simplify English spelling.  On August 27, 1906, President Roosevelt issued an executive order that 300 words from the Simplified Spelling Board’s list of revised spellings be used in all official communications of the executive department.  Some of the examples of changes are as follows:

 

blessed to blest

kissed to kist

passed to past

purr to pur

though to tho

through to thru

 

On December 3, 1906, Roosevelt wrote his annual message to Congress using the new spelling.  He became an easy target for criticism, however, as can be seen in the following sentence from a newspaper editorial:

[Roosevelt] now assales the English langgwidg, constitutes himself as a sort of French academy, and will reform the spelling in a way tu soot himself.

On December 13, 1906, soon after it received Roosevelt’s annual message, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution rejecting the new spellings and urging that government documents be written using “the standard of orthography prescribed in generally accepted dictionaries of the English language.” At this point Roosevelt decided to surrender.  He withdrew his executive order, and wrote a letter to his friend Brander Matthews, who was also the chairman of the Simplified Spelling Board, admitting defeat:

I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in, and it was evidently worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten. (2)

Sources:

1-Russell, Bertrand.  “The Best Answer to Fanaticism -- Liberalism.”  The New York Times 16 Dec. 1951.

2-Thomas V.  Teddy Roosevelt, Rough Ride Over Spelling Rules. The Wall Street Journal 16 April 2015.