THINKER'S ALMANAC - August 5

Under what circumstances would turning toward a raging wildfire be an appropriate life-saving strategy?

Subject:  First Instinct Fallacy - Wagner Dodge’s Matches

Event:  Mann Gulch fire, 1949

Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn.  Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more:  the ability to rethink and unlearn.  -Adam Grant in Think Again:  The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Thinking is hard work, and after investing time and energy into making a decision, we are loath to change or rethink it.  When taking a multiple-choice test, for example, students are often taught to make a choice and stick with it because erasing an answer and making a different choice frequently results in a lower score.  This, however, is a myth -- called the first instinct fallacy.  In reality, most erasures on multiple-choice tests result in changes from wrong to right answers.

Most of the time the first instinct fallacy is not fatal; however, there is one tragic example that occurred on this day, where the failure to rethink a first instinct resulted in the death of 12 people.  This happened at the Mann Gulch forest fire on August 5, 1949.  Smokejumpers parachuted onto the scene of the fire in the Helena National Forest, a fire that turned out to be much larger than they had initially expected.  In fact, the fire was so bad that they quickly realized that fighting it was not an option; instead, they decided that flight was the better option.

Image by Ylvers from Pixabay

One man, however, thought differently.  As the smokejumpers scrambled up a ridge attempting to flee the raging fire, the group’s foreman Wagner Dodge stopped and turned toward the fire.  Next, he did something that astonished the other smokejumpers:  he began lighting matches and throwing them at the grass near his feet.  His goal was not to fight fire with fire; instead, his objective was to burn the grass ahead of him before the approaching wildfire reached him.  His hope was that by clearing an area of fuel for the wildfire, he would be able to lay in the prone position breathing oxygen close to the ground and escaping the flames as they passed over him.  

Dodge’s strategy was totally improvised.  It was not something that was taught in smokejumpers’ training; instead, it’s an example of resisting the urge to go with one’s first instinct.  Furthermore, it’s an example of re-thinking something on the spot -- even if it seems totally counterintuitive. 

Dodge’s tactic worked, and he survived. Unfortunately, 12 of the other smokejumpers perished in the fire.

There is a second lesson in counterintuitive thinking and rethinking that can be taken from the Mann Gulch fire and other forest fires like it.  In Adam Grant’s book Think Again, he explains that another reason that firefighters die is because they fail to drop their firefighting gear when fleeing approaching flames.  Grant cites research done by the U.S. Forest Service between 1990-1995 that shows that 23 firefighters died after failing to drop their equipment, despite the fact that shedding the weight of their tools would have allowed them to flee 15-20 percent faster.  Failure to rethink the situation and to question their instinctive desire to hold on to their firefighting tools cost them their lives.  

Thinking is hard work and going with instinct is so easy that we fail to question it.  A better approach is to commit to the hard work of thinking and thinking again.  In this way, we can use metacognition -- thinking about thinking -- to more rationally and consciously solve problems.  In the words of Adam Grant, “Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late” (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the first instinct fallacy, and what are examples that show how it can result in poor thinking?

Challenge - Re-Think Instinct:  Write a public service announcement (PSA) challenging your audience to watch out for the first instinct fallacy.  Define it clearly and give showing examples of its negative impact.  Finally, explain how to avoid it by challenging your audience to rethink their instincts.

Sources:

1-Grant, Adam.  Think Again:  The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. New York:  Viking, 2021:  1-7.