THINKER'S ALMANAC - April 2

What classic fairy tale reminds us of the human tendency toward opting for harmony and conformity rather than telling the truth?

Subject:  Groupthink - “The Emperor’s New Clothes”

Event:  Birthday of Hans Christian Anderson, 1805

“The Little Match Girl,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Snow Queen,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Thumbelina”:  these stories are so familiar and so frequently adapted that many people fail to realize that they even have an author; many would probably be even more surprised to learn that they all have the same author:  Hans Christian Anderson, who was born on this day in Denmark in 1805. Anderson's name is so synonymous with fairy tales that his birthday is annually recognized as International Children’s Book Day.

                                                                Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay 

Anderson was born into poverty;  his mother was a washerwoman and his father was a cobbler.  He left home at age fourteen, hoping to work in theater, but he soon discovered that his talent for poetry and storytelling was his ticket to success. 

Of his over 150 fairy tales, one stands out for its psychological and sociological insights:  “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a tale that has been translated into over 100 languages. 

The story is about an Emperor who is hoodwinked by two hucksters posing as weavers.  They tell the Emperor that they can weave him a beautiful new suit of clothes, but that the clothes are invisible to anyone who is stupid, incompetent, or unfit.  When the “sewing” is finished, the Emperor holds a procession to show off his new clothes.  None of the adults dares to admit that the Emperor is parading naked in public for fear of being labeled stupid or unfit.  There is one child in the crowd, however, who is not afraid to proclaim the truth; he cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”

More than a hundred years after Anderson wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a research psychologist gave the story's main theme a name:  groupthink.

Irving Janis, from Yale, researched group decision-making rather than fairy tales, but he discovered the same psychological phenomenon found in Anderson’s story.  Groupthink occurs when adult groups opt for harmony or conformity over telling the truth.  This often leads to irrational and poor decision-making.

One specific historical case study analyzed by Janis was the poor group decision-making and thinking in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.  The plan, put together by John F. Kennedy’s administration, was to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro.  Even though President Kennedy involved some of the brightest people in the world in his planning process, the invasion of Cuba failed miserably.  This puzzled the president, but once he began to examine what happened, he realized his error.  Instead of encouraging his subordinates to scrutinize and question the invasion plan, he had allowed his men to simply go along with the plan, telling him what they thought he wanted to hear.  The lesson learned from the Bay of Pigs debacle was that to avoid groupthink the individuals in a group need to feel free to speak their minds.  They also should be encouraged to scrutinize the weaknesses of a plan as well as its strengths. When we work in groups, we are often too quick to try to maintain harmony and to establish consensus.  Kennedy was able to capitalize on the lessons learned in 1961 when the Soviet Union secretly deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba in October 1962.  After discovering the missiles, Kennedy made sure that he heard multiple points of view and that everyone involved was encouraged to debate, to argue, and to disagree.  This time, instead of failure, Kennedy achieved success.  The Soviets agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba, and nuclear conflict was averted (1).

Recall, Recite, Retrieve, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How does the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” reveal Groupthink?  How did the lessons learned from the failure of the Bay of Pigs help Kennedy overcome Groupthink?

Challenge - Philosophy For Kids:  What is another story that you know from your childhood that contains the same kind of philosophical or psychological insights found in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?  Summarize the story and its insights.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

-April 2, 1951:  On this day, Jack Kerouac began a 21-day writing marathon, producing a 120-foot typewritten scroll that would become his best-known work, On The Road.  In a letter to his friend, Neal Cassady, Kerouac described the process and product:   “Went fast because the road is fast… wrote whole thing on strip of paper 120 foot long (tracing paper that belonged to Cannastra.)–just rolled it through typewriter and in fact no paragraphs… rolled it out on floor and it looks like a road.”  The scroll contained 125,000 words, which means that Kerouac averaged approximately 6,000 words per day. On The Road was officially published in 1957.  The original scroll was purchased for $2.43 million by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, in 2002.

Sources:

1-Williams, Kelly. “Groupthink and the Emperor’s New Clothes.” Medium.com 8 August 2017.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - April 1

Does drinking coffee make you a better target for April Fools’ jokes?

Subject:  Invention/Persuasion - Caffeine

Event:  Nescafe instant coffee goes on sale on April Fools’ Day, 1938

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. -Mark Twain

On this day in 1938, Nescafe instant coffee went on sale for the first time.  The process of creating this soluble powdered coffee was anything but 

instant.  It began 9 years earlier with the Wall Street Crash in 1929.  Like the rest of the economy, coffee prices collapsed.  The necessity of figuring out what to do with tons of unsold coffee sitting in warehouses in Brazil became the mother of invention for a chemist named Max Morgenthaler.  First launched in Switzerland, Nescafe soon became popular globally during World War II because of the fact that it had a longer shelf life than regular coffee.  A majority of Nescafe’s production was used in C Rations for U.S. soldiers (1).

                                                                        Image by Chris from Pixabay 

The release of Nescafe on April First probably has nothing to do with April Fool’s Day; however, there is an interesting 2005 study that raises the question of whether or not coffee might make you more gullible, and therefore a bigger target for April Fool’s shenanigans.  

Researchers from the University of Queensland, Australia, began their study by giving their subjects orange juice; half of the subjects received orange juice spiked with caffeine.  After consuming their orange juice, subjects read well-crafted arguments on controversial issues.  Results revealed that subjects who had consumed caffeine were 35% more likely to be persuaded by the arguments than those who had consumed just orange juice. 

In a second study, instead of reading well-crafted arguments, all subjects read weak arguments. In this second study, whether or not subjects consumed caffeine had no effect on whether or not they were persuaded.  These results lead to the conclusion that instead of making coffee consumers more gullible, caffeine actually makes them more alert and more primed to process cogent, logical arguments (2).

Recall, Recite, Retrieve, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What event sparked the invention of Nescafe instant coffee?  What was the result of the orange juice study as it relates to persuasion?

Today’s Challenge - Instant Coffee, TV Dinners, and ?: An ancient proverb attributed to Plato says that “Necessity is the mother of invention.”  Just as Nescafe instant coffee was born out of the crisis of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, there are many stories about innovations and inventions born of necessity.  One example is the classic TV dinner.  Just after Thanksgiving 1953, the Swanson Company realized that it had overestimated the demand for turkey.  Not only did Swanson have 260 tons of frozen turkey, it also had the turkey stored in refrigerated railroad cars that only kept their contents frozen when moving.  As the trains traveled back and forth between Nebraska and the East Coast, Swanson executives scrambled to generate ideas for what to do with tons of turkey. The answer came from a salesman named Gerry Thomas who had the idea of packaging the turkey in aluminum trays along with stuffing and potatoes.  Thomas got help from Swanson’s bacteriologist Betty Cronin, who solved the problem of how to simultaneously heat the meat and vegetables so that the meals would be safe for consumers to eat (3).  Research other inventions that were born of necessity, and tell the story of how one such invention came to be.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

April 1, 1956:  On this day the magazine Saturday Review played an April Fools joke on its readers, publishing an article by K. Jason Sitewell entitled, “The Invention of the Period.”  The article claimed to celebrate the life work of Kohmar Pehriad (544-493 BC), the inventor of the comma and the period.  The article also claimed that Pehriad’s son, Apos-Trophe Pehriad invented another less frequently used punctuation mark.

Sources:  

1-”Celebrating 75 years of the Nestlé brand that invented instant coffee.” Nestle.com.

2-Goldstein, Noah J., Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini.

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. Free Press, 2009.

3-Biakolo, Kovie. “A Brief History of the TV Dinner.” Smithsonian Magazine November 2020.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - March 30

Before the invention of the pencil eraser, what did people use to erase errors?

Subject:  Invention - Eraser-tipped Pencil

Event: Hyman L. Lipman patents pencil with eraser, 1858

 

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead. -Robert Breault

On this day in 1858, a Philadelphia stationer named Hyman L. Lipman patented the first eraser-tipped pencil.  This is one invention that has stood the test of time and is also one of the best metaphors there is to remind us that everyone makes mistakes and that no human is faultless.

                                                                            Image by Uwe Baumann from Pixabay 

One common misnomer about pencils is that they contain “lead.” In reality, pencils contain a mineral called graphite.  Legend has it that in the 16th century a shiny black substance was discovered in England’s Lake District under a fallen tree.  The substance was first used by local shepherds to mark their sheep. Because the black material resembled lead, it was called plumbago (from the Latin word for lead, plumbus — the same root that gave us the word “plumber,” someone who works with lead pipes).

A pencil shortage in 18th-century France resulted in the invention of another well-known writing implement.  While at war with England in 1794, Revolutionary France could not access the graphite needed to make pencils.  An engineer named Nicolas-Jacques Conte improvised, combining low-quality graphite with wet clay. Conte then molded the substance into rods and baked it.  This process produced “Crayons Conte” or what we know today as chalk.

Before he lived at Walden Pond, the American writer Henry David Thoreau made a significant contribution to the pencil’s evolution.  After graduating from Harvard College, Thoreau went to work at his family’s pencil-making business. Working with material from a New Hampshire graphite deposit, Thoreau developed his own process for making pencils.  He numbered his pencils from the softest to the hardest using a numbering system from 1 to 4. The No. 2 was the Goldilocks of pencils — not so soft that is smudged easily and not so hard that it breaks easily.

The origin of the most common color for pencils is another story.  Pencils were commonly painted in any number of colors, but in 1889, at the World’s Fair in Paris, a Czech manufacturer Hardtmuth debuted a yellow pencil.  Supposedly made of the finest graphite deposits, the pencil was named Koh-I-Noor, after one of the world’s largest diamonds. The distinct yellow of the Koh-I-Noor became the industry standard for quality, and soon other manufacturers began painting their pencils yellow.

The final key element in the evolution of the pencil came in the 1770s when British polymath Joseph Priestley discovered that a gum harvested from South American trees was effective for rubbing out pencil marks — appropriately he called this substance “rubber.”  Prior to Priestley’s discovery, the most common erasers used were lumps of old bread.

Priestley was also the author of an influential textbook called The Rudiments of English Grammar which was published in 1761 (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: Before pencils had erasers, what was commonly used to erase pencil marks? What well-known American writer contributed to the evolution of the pencil?

Challenge - Ordinary Objects, Extraordinary History: What are some examples of inventions, like the pencil, that are everyday ordinary objects?  Brainstorm a list of some ordinary objects that you encounter every day.  Select one of these objects and do some research on its origin. Write a report providing details about the object’s origin and history.  

Sources:

1-”Trace The Remarkable History Of The Humble Pencil.”  All Things Considered.  NPR.org 11 Oct. 2016.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - March 13

Why did a public service announcement featuring an egg frying in a pan become one of the most successful PSAs of all time?

Subject:  Analogies - SAT

Event:  Analogies removed from the SAT, 2005

In 2005, the College Board removed analogy questions from the SAT.  These problems tested students’ ability to recognize vocabulary and make logical comparisons.  

For example, 

STORY : FABLE :: POEM : _______ 

(A. POET, B. NOVEL, C. RHYME, D. SONNET).  

Using analogical thinking, a student would see the relationship:  a FABLE is a type of STORY, and a SONNET is a type of POEM.

Writing in The New York Times on this day in 2005, Adam Cohen wrote an obituary of sorts for the SAT analogy, mourning its loss:

Intentionally misleading comparisons are becoming the dominant mode of public discourse.  The ability to tell true analogies from false ones has never been more important. (1)

Although analogies may no longer be a test item on the SAT, they remain a key strategy for thinkers and writers, both for clarifying their own thinking and for communicating their thinking to others.

An analogy uses comparison and ratio to reason to some conclusion.  In this 

sense, an analogy is less figurative than a metaphor or a simile, but a bit more logical.

For example, in an essay about nail-biting, the writer Suzannah Showler uses an analogy to show her readers that we should not go to extremes by labeling all nail-biters as obsessive-compulsives:

But just as the specter of hoarding shouldn’t rule out collecting as a hobby, not every nibbled nail should be judged by the end-stage diagnosis.

In another example, Joseph Addison uses an analogy to describe the benefits of reading:

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.  As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated; by the other, virtue -- which is the health of the mind -- is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed. 

Notice how Addison’s explanation echoes an almost mathematical relationship:  

Reading : Mind :: Exercise : Body

One of the most successful public service announcements ever produced employed a visual analogy comparing drug abuse to a fried egg.  The PSA was produced by the Ad Council in 1987. It featured the simple image of a single egg in a frying pan along with a concise message of just 15 words:  “This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

                                                                        Image by Alexa from Pixabay 

Analogies are an excellent way to teach your reader and to avoid the curse of knowledge (see THINKER’S ALMANAC - January 2).  Look at your topic from your audience’s point of view.  Think about what they know and what they don’t know.  Like a teacher who tries to build a bridge between a student’s prior knowledge and a new concept, try to arrange an analogy that helps the reader to see the unknown through the lens of the known.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  In the 1987 anti-drug PSA, what image represented the brain and what other image represented drugs? How do analogies help a writer to overcome the Curse of Knowledge?

Challenge - The Annals of Analogy:  What is an example of an excellent analogy that you have seen used by a great thinker or writer?  Identify the analogy, and explain why you think it works.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

March 13, 2012:  On this day The New York Times announced that the Encyclopedia Britannica would no longer produce its print edition. First published in 1768, The Britannica became the most recognized and authoritative reference work every published in English.  The last print edition, produced in 2010, consisted of 32 volumes and weighed 129 pounds.  It sold for $1,395.

Sources:

1-Cohen, Adam. “An SAT Without Analogies Is Like: (A) A Confused Citizenry…” The New York Times 13 March 2005.