THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 4

What can a Pope from the 16th century teach us about skepticism?

Subject:  Counterarguments - Pope Sixtus V’s Devil’s Advocate  

Event:  Mother Teresa becomes a saint, 2016

The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.  -George Jean Nathan

What is your position on vegetarianism?  If you are a vegetarian, your mind probably goes to making the case for why it is a healthy alternative to eating meat.  If, however, you are a carnivore, your mind probably turns to evidence that supports your diet.  

Most people’s first instinct is to find arguments that support their position rather than to seek out or even acknowledge evidence that challenges their position.  The general tendency to see what we want to see rather than seek out disconfirming evidence is called confirmation bias.

For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church had an established process for determining whether or not a candidate for sainthood would be canonized.  Much like the adversarial system of a court trial, there were two sides: one arguing the case for canonization and one presenting the case against it.   In 1587, Pope Sixtus V established the advocatus diaboli, or devil’s advocate, to search out any character flaws or other evidence that would counter the case for canonization. (The position was also called the Promotor Fidei, or promotor of the faith.)  In 1983, Pope John Paul II eliminated this position, removing this skeptical inquirer from the process.

Image by Yama Zsuzsanna Márkus from Pixabay

Therefore, on September 4, 2016, when Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) was officially declared a saint by the Catholic Church, there was no official devil’s advocate to argue against her.  The church did, however, invite an atheist, Christopher Hitchens to present his case against Teresa’s canonization (1).

The devil’s advocate lives on in the English language as a handy reminder of how strategic thinkers can prevent confirmation bias and groupthink.  It is a helpful metaphor for injecting strategic skepticism into the thinking and decision-making process. We know the human mind often likes the path of least resistance and is often blind to alternative positions.  The devil’s advocate challenges us all to be skeptical and to build skepticism into our decision-making process, whether we are making decisions as a group or as individuals.

So, once again:  What is your position on vegetarianism?  And how can employing the devil’s advocate avoid the pitfall of confirmation bias and help you build a more sound position?

Challenge - Put on Your Thinking Caps:  Although it is always good to employ a Devil’s advocate in the thinking or decision-making process, often the Devil’s advocate is outnumbered; therefore, it can be an intimidating role.  One alternative approach is what thinking expert Edward De Bono calls parallel thinking.  For example, imagine your town council is proposing to replace all traffic lights with traffic circles.  Begin by having everyone in the room symbolically put on their yellow thinking cap.  The yellow cap symbolizes thinking that focuses exclusively on the value and benefits of the proposal.  After everyone has worked as a team to generate the positives of the proposal, they then symbolically take off their yellow cap and put on their black cap:  this is the devil’s advocate hat, where everyone intentionally focuses on reasons that the proposition will not work.  Parallel thinking eliminates the adversarial approach where people’s egos and emotions overwhelm rational thinking.  With parallel thinking, everyone is facing in the same direction at the same time rather than facing off against each other, and only one mode of thinking is permitted at a time.  This way you will still generate a number of pros and cons, but you’ll do it together as a team. What is a proposal that might be presented to your city council -- a change that would improve your community?  Work together with at least two people to try out the parallel thinking method.  Write out your proposal; then, flip a coin:  heads means everyone begins yellow hat thinking and tails means everyone begins with black hat thinking. 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is parallel thinking, and what does the thinking of Devil’s Advocate (Black Hat) contrast with Yellow Hat thinking?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

-September 4, 1957:  On this day the Arkansas National Guard was called out to prevent nine black students from attending Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  The students were eventually able to attend, however, when President Eisenhower federalized National Guard troops and ordered them to protect the group of students, who became known as “The Little Rock Nine.”

September 4, 1998:  On this day, two Ph.D. students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, formally incorporated their new company Google.   The story of the word Google, however, long pre-dates the internet.  In 1938, while on a walk with his nephew in the New Jersey Palisades, mathematician Edward Kasner challenged the nine-year-old, Milton Sirotta, to come up with a name for a 1 followed by 100 zeroes.  Milton’s ready response was “googol.”  Kasner liked the word so much he introduced it to the world in 1940 in his book Mathematics and the Imagination. The change of the word’s spelling from googol to Google happened more than fifty years later.  Page and Brin originally called their search technology “BackRub”; however, in September 1997 they had a meeting to brainstorm ideas for a new name.  The story goes that at that meeting the name googol came up, but when it was typed into a computer to search for available domain names, it was misspelled as google.  The name was available and was purchased before the misspelling was discovered, so Google stuck (3).

September 4, 2001:  On this day Ruth J. Simmons, the 18th president of Brown University, presented the Opening Convocation Address.  At one point in her speech she challenged the students as follows:

You know something that I hate? When people say, “That doesn’t make me feel good about myself,” I say, “That’s not what you’re here for.” If you come to this place for comfort, I would urge you to walk to yon iron gate, pass through the portal and never look back. But if you seek betterment for yourself, for your community and posterity, stay and fight. Fight for the courage to be a true learner. Fight for the dignity of your intellect. (2)

September 4, 2018:  On this day The Coddling of the American Mind was published.  In the book, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue the goal of education should not be to make the student comfortable; instead, the goal should be to make students think.  As a result, it should “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”

Sources:

1-Gilovich, Thomas and Lee Ross.  The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit From Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights. New York:  Free Press, 2016: 147-8.

2-Ruth J. Simmons. “Text of the President’s Opening Convocation Address.” 4 Sept. 2001.  Brown University News Service. 

3-Steinmetz, Sol and Barbara Ann Kipfer.  The Life of Language. New York:  Random House, 2006:  167.

 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 3

What do the inventions of penicillin and the Post-It Note have to teach us about the role of serendipity in creativity?

Subject:  Creativity and Serendipity - Discovery of Penicillin

Event:  Biologist Alexander Fleming discovers the first antibiotic, 1928

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny...” -Isaac Asimov 

Some people find it hard to get back to work after being away on a vacation.  The English biologist Alexander Fleming was not one of them.  When he returned to his laboratory on September 3, 1928, serendipity helped Fleming make a discovery that saved, and continues to save, millions of lives.

When Fleming returned from his tw0 week vacation, he discovered mold growing in some of his stacked cultures of bacteria.  Examining more closely, Fleming noticed that the growing fungus had destroyed some colonies of bacteria.  Thinking to himself, “That’s funny,” Fleming decided to use chance as a springboard and attempted to grow the mold in a pure culture.  The substance Fleming produced was originally called “mold juice,” but once he realized that it was an effective killer of disease-causing bacteria, he changed the name to penicillin.

It took work by two other scientists for Fleming’s discovery to see its full potential as a lifesaver.  Australian Howard Florey and Ernst Chain were able to mass-produce penicillin in large enough quantities that it could be used by medical staff to combat infections in soldiers during World War II.  Knighted in 1944, Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel in Medicine with Florey and Chain (2).

Image by Bruno from Pixabay

Not every serendipitous scientific discovery saves lives.  Some just make our lives a little more efficient.  One example is the invention of the Post-It Note, credited to Arthur Fry.  In 1973, Fry was working as a new product developer at 3M.  He attended a presentation by a colleague named Spencer Silver, who was working on strong adhesives.  Rather than report on one of his successes, Silver shared a failure:  a seemingly useless adhesive that only stuck lightly to surfaces rather than bonding as it should.  In other words, Silver had developed a glue that didn’t stick.

Fry forgot about Silver’s presentation until one day when he was practicing with his church choir.   To mark the pages of his hymnbook, Fry used slips of paper.  As he opened the hymnbook to mark a page, one of the slips of paper fell out, sparking Fry’s epiphany. Applying some of Silver’s adhesive to a slip of paper, Fry discovered that not only did the bookmark stay in place but it also could be removed without damaging the pages of the hymnbook.

Later, when he wrote some notes to his boss on his new invention, Fry realized it had more uses than just as a bookmark.  Post-it notes went on the market for the first time in 1980, and today Post-it notes and Post-it-related products are sold in over 100 countries worldwide (3).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How do the stories of the discovery of penicillin and the invention of the Post-it Note explain the role of serendipity in creativity?

Challenge - Serendipity and Science:  Research some other examples of how serendipity played a role in a discovery or an invention.  Then, pick the one you like the best, and explain how serendipity played a role. 

Also on This Day:

September 3, 1838:  Frederick Douglass, American orator, writer, and abolitionist, escaped from slavery.  Disguising himself as a sailor, Douglass boarded a train in Baltimore and rode it to his freedom in Philadelphia.  While still a slave, Frederick was desperate to learn how to read.  In his autobiography, he explains how he would always carry a book and some bread with him, hoping to persuade young white boys to give him lessons:  “This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.” 

September 3, 1939:  On this day King George VI gave a radio address, announcing to his subjects that England was going to war against Germany.  George VI unexpectedly ascended the crown in December 1936 when his brother Edward VII abdicated the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.  A lifelong stutter, George VI worked for years with a speech therapist to speak more clearly.  The 2010 movie The King’s Speech gives a fictional account of the King’s work with an Australian speech therapist named Lionel Logue.  When the big moment arrived to deliver the speech, King George VI rose to the occasion, speaking beautifully in what has become known as one of history’s most iconic speeches (4).

September 3, 1995:  eBay was founded on this day by Pierre Omidyar. The first item sold on the online auction site was a broken laser pointer, which sold for $14.83.  

Sources:  

1-Mecozzi, Valeria and Menno van Dijk. “SERENDIPITY” thnk.org 9 March 2017.

2-Sloane, Paul. Think Like an Innovator.  Pearson Education Limited, 2016:  216.

3-Horne, Richard and Tracey Turner.  101 Things You Wish You’d Invented …and Some You Wish No One Had.  New York:  Walker & Company, 2008.

4-Finn, Heather.  “The Incredible True Story of How King George VI Overcame His Stutter for His 1939 Speech.” Good Housekeeping  23 February 2020.  

THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 2

What can a battle that happened more than 2,500 years ago teach us about perseverance?

Subject:  Mindset, Perseverance - Pheidippides’ Long Run

Event:  Battle of Marathon begins, 490 BC

-We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~ Aristotle

-Energy and persistence conquer all things. ~ Benjamin Franklin

-It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. ~ Albert Einstein

The three quotations above testify to the importance of persistence as a vital habit of mind.  Having a brain is one thing, but using it to propel your thinking and your body without giving up is another.  Critical thinking is hard work, and critical tasks are labor intensive.  Because of this, we should always be on the lookout for stories that inspire persistence.  Today we’ll look at one such story.

Image by ha11ok from Pixabay

On September 2, 490 BC, the Battle of Marathon began.  The Greeks, vastly outmanned by the Persians, eventually won a miraculous victory, giving the Persians their first-ever defeat.  The Greek victory also marked the start of a golden age for Athens, an age that would see the birth of democracy and of philosophy.

Even more well known than the Battle of Marathon, however, is a legend about its aftermath.  According to the story, a Greek foot-soldier Pheidippides was sent as a messenger from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over the Persian army. As he approached Athens, having run a distance of nearly 25 miles, Pheidippides collapsed and died. He did not die, however, without first completing his mission; with his last gasp, he uttered “nike,” the Greek word for victory.

As is so often the case when it comes to history versus legend, there is a lot more to the story.  According to the fifth century historian Herodotus -- “the father of history” -- Pheidippides' story begins before the battle. He was not an athlete; he was a hemerodromos: a Greek soldier whose specialty was delivering messages by foot over long distances. 

Pheidippides’ first task was to run from Athens to Sparta, a distance of 150 miles, to request the help of Spartan troops in the Athenians’ anticipated battle against the Persians.  The trip took Pheidippides two days.  Once he arrived, the Spartans agreed to join the fight, but not before the arrival of a full moon, which was required by their religious laws.  Pheidippides now faced a new task, notifying his superiors of the Spartans’ delay.  After a brief night’s rest, he rose before sunrise and began his 150-mile trek back to Athens.  Arriving two days later, Pheidippedes delivered his message and joined the 10,000-man Athenian army as it was deployed to Marathon.

Led by General Miltiades, the Greeks were outnumbered six to one against the Persians. In addition, knowing that the Spartans would probably not arrive early enough to help them, the Greeks needed to be strategic. After receiving intelligence that the Persians had sent their cavalry back to their ships in preparation for a plan to surround the Greeks, Miltiades decided to execute a surprise strike at dawn, while the Persian cavalry was absent. The gamble worked.  Even though the Persians had a larger force, they were unprepared for a direct attack.  If not for Pheidippides’ heroic 300-mile run, Miltiades would not have known that he could not count on the Spartans’ help, and what many have called the most critical battle in history might have been lost. 

In the battle’s aftermath, the Greeks did send a messenger back to Athens to announce the great victory; oddly, however, the messenger was not Pheidippides.  As the story goes, the messenger ran the 25 miles to the Acropolis.  Upon arrival he loudly announced,  “Nike! Nike! Nenikekamen” (“Victory! Victory! Rejoice, we conquer!”).  He then collapsed and died.

Today, many people run 26 mile marathons, but those who know the true story of Pheidippides’ run the 246-kilometer (153 miles) Spartathlon, an ultramarathon from Athens to Sparta, run annually since 1983 (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How do the stories of Pheidippides before and after the Battle of Marathon inspire perseverance?

Challenge - Mind Over Matter: Pheidippides personifies perseverance.  Who is another person who serves as a living example of how strength of mind can help anyone overcome physician limitations?  Explain how this person was able to achieve great things through his or her mindset.

Also on This Day:

September 2, 1802:  On this day, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote his sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.  Instead of taking a photo or painting a picture, he crafted an image made of words, vividly describing the city of London and the Thames River.  Like a postcard, his poem is permanently postmarked by its title, providing both the time and place it was composed.

September 2, 1901: Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech at the Minnesota State Fair where he used a line that was to become famously associated with him:  “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”  Roosevelt was Vice President at the time, but he became the youngest president ever just eight days later when President William McKinley died from an assassin’s bullet.

September 2, 1945:  Six years and one day after it began, World War II ended with the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, signed aboard the USS Missouri.  Thus ended history’s deadliest conflict.

Sources:

1-Karnazes, Dean. “The Real Pheidippides Story”  Runner’s World 6 Dec. 2016.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 1

How can radishes and cookies help us better understand willpower and decision-making?

September 1

Subject:  Willpower/Ego Depletion - Radishes and Cookies

Event:  Publication of Roy F. Baumeister’s book Willpower:  Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, 2011.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. -Vince Lombardi

On September 1, 2011, psychologist Roy F. Baumeister released his book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.  Baumeister and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University performed a classic study on willpower, which came to be known as “The Radish and Cookie Experiment.”  All the subjects in the experiment were told that they were being tested on taste perception.  To ensure that each participant arrived with an empty stomach, they were asked to skip a meal prior to the experiment. 

 

As participants entered the room, they smelled the aroma of freshly baked cookies.  On a table in front of them, they found two plates:  one of cookies and one of white radishes.  Half of the study participants were designated as “radish eaters,” which meant that although they could see and smell the cookies, they were limited to only eating radishes.  The other half of the participants were designated as the “cookie-eaters” and were allowed only cookies.

Image by Cassia P. from Pixabay

In the second phase of the experiment, all subjects participated in a puzzle-solving activity.  They were told that they could take as much time as they wanted to solve the puzzles; however, what they were not told is that the puzzles were impossible to solve.  The researchers then carefully recorded how much time the puzzle solvers worked before giving up.

While the cookie-eaters spent an average of 19 minutes working on the puzzles, the radish-eaters lasted an average of just 8 minutes.

The conclusion that Beumesiter drew from this study is that the radish eaters gave up sooner than the cookie eaters because of what he called ego depletion (AKA decision fatigue).  According to this theory, willpower is a limited resource.  The radish-eaters, for example, used up their reserve of mental energy resisting the tempting cookies.  This reduced their powers of self-control and resulted in their giving up so much sooner than the cookie-eaters, who maintained their stores of mental energy (1).

Reporting on the study in The Atlantic magazine, writer Hans Villarica said, 

In the psychology world, the key finding of this seemingly silly study was a breakthrough: self-control is a general strength that's used across different sorts of tasks  -- and it could be depleted. This proved that self-regulation is not a skill to be mastered or a rote function that can be performed with little consequence. It's like using a muscle: After exercising it, it loses its strength, gets fatigued, and becomes ineffectual, at least in the short-term. (2)

Baumeister’s study provides new insight into metacognition - our ability to think about our own thinking.  If we have been exerting mental effort in making decisions, problem-solving, or delaying gratification, we should understand that ego depletion will reduce our ability to efficiently take on the next challenge we’re faced with.  This is why some famous decision makers such as Steve Jobs and Barack Obama were known to wear basically the same outfit every day.  They realized that making decisions -- even mundane decisions about what to wear or what to eat -- sapped their mental capacity, so they consciously made an effort to reduce the number of decisions they needed to make each day. 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is ego depletion, and how does the contrast between radishes and cookies in the experiment help us understand its effects?

Challenge - How to Just Do It:  Write a public service announcement (PSA) that gives the audience a tip on how to increase willpower.  We all face the daily struggle of getting ourselves to do what we need or should do, instead of what we want to do.  What is a specific tip that will help your audience delay gratification, fight procrastination, and increase motivation?

Also On This Day:

-September 1, 1928:  Author Robert M. Pirsig was born on this day.  He received 121 rejections for his novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Pirsig persevered.  The book he wrote in 1968 about a motorcycle trip that he and his son took from Minnesota to San Francisco was finally published in 1974.  Not only was the book published it achieved cult status, selling more than five million copies.  Typical of someone with an indefatigable spirit, Pirsig reframed his challenges as opportunities to learn, saying, “If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas.”

-September 1, 1939:  It is said that the first casualty of war is the truth, which is especially true in the case of World War II.  The six-year war began on this day under false pretenses when Germany invaded Poland.  As justification for the invasion, the Germans used false flag operations the night before, concocting a fake narrative that one of their radio stations had been attacked by the Poles.

-September 1, 1953:  On this day, a 27-year-old man named Henry Gustav Milaison underwent a medical procedure in Hartford, Connecticut that would eventually make him the most famous patient in the history of neuroscience and psychology.  After suffering frequent and severe epileptic seizures for more than 15 years, H.M. was so desperate for relief that he agreed to undergo a radical surgery where his hippocampus and amygdala were removed from both hemispheres of his brain.  After his surgery, Milaison’s seizures stopped; however, the negative side effect of his surgery was that he could no longer form new memories (3).

Sources:

1- Walton, Greg and Carol Dweck.  “Willpower:  It’s in Your Head.”  New York Times, 26 Nov. 2011.

2- Villarica, Hans. “The Chocolate-and-Radish Experiment That Birthed the Modern Conception of Willpower.”  The Atlantic  9 April 2012.

3-Mo Costandi, Mo.  “Science’s Memory Man.” The Guardian 18 October 2010.