THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 31

How did Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichman rationalize his role in the atrocities of the Holocaust?

Subject: Obedience to Authority - Milgram’s Shock Machine

Event:  Trial of Adolf Eichman, 1962

-The Parable of the Two Wolves:

A grandfather is talking to his grandson:  “Inside each of us there is a battle going on between two wolves.  One wolf is evil - full of anger, greed, jealousy, and arrogance.  The second wolf is good - full of love, generosity, honesty, and humility.  

After listening intently to his grandfather’s words, the grandson asks, “Which wolf will win?”

The grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”  

                                            Image by Rain Carnation from Pixabay

On this day in 1962, NAZI SS officer and organizer of Hitler’s final solution Adolf Eichmann was executed after being found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Jerusalem. After fleeing Germany at the end of World War II, Eichmann lived under an assumed identity for fifteen years.  When he was discovered living in Argentina in 1960, Israeli officials apprehended him and transported him to Israel for trial.

One person who was especially captivated by Eichmann’s trial was a young Jewish psychologist named Stanley Milgram.  When he heard Eichmann’s defense, that he was just following orders, Milgram got an idea that would become one of the most famous and most controversial psychological studies in history.

The study that Milgram designed involved 40 male volunteers.  The subjects were told that the study was about the effects of punishment on memory, but what Milgram was really after was to find out how far subjects would go to obey authority.  

Subjects were told that they would be randomly assigned the role of either “teacher“ or “learner.“ In reality, however, every subject became a “teacher,“ and each “learner” was one of Milgram’s assistants.  The first step was for the “teacher” to observe while electrodes were attached to the wrist of each “learner.”  The “teacher” was then taken to a separate room and provided with a microphone and headphones for communication with the “learner.”  After studying a list of word pairs, the “learner” was quizzed by the “teacher.”  If a “learner” gave an incorrect answer, an electric shock was administered.  The “teacher” had a control board with 30 switches in a line.  The first switch began with the smallest shock, 15 volts, and each of the other switches increased the shock slightly.  The maximum shock was 450 volts.  “Teachers” were told that although the electric shocks were painful, they were not dangerous.

In reality the “learner” never received any shock, but the teacher was led to believe that an actual shock was administered:  Each time a switch was pressed a buzzer sounded and a red light illuminated. 

As the voltage of the shocks increased, the “teacher” would hear the “learner” request to end the test, or the “learner” would complain of a heart condition.  At 300-volts, the “teacher” would hear the “learner” banging on the wall, demanding to be released.

In the room with the “teacher” was the supervising experimenter, who wore a long white lab coat.  If the “teacher” ever expressed doubts about continuing the test, the experimenter would respond with one of the following prods:

1. Please continue.

2. The experiment requires you to continue.

3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.

4. You have no other choice but to continue.

The results of Milgram’s study revealed that 65 percent of the “teachers” continued the shocks to the highest level 450 volts while all “teachers’ continued to at least the 300-volt level.

Milgram concluded based on his study that ordinary people are likely to follow the orders of an authority figure, such as the experimenter in the long grey lab coat.  Furthermore, he concluded that this obedience to authority could extend even to the murder of innocent human beings as it had during the Holocaust.

Although many have turned to Milgram’s study to point out the fundamentally flawed nature of humans and their seeming willingness to follow orders blindly, historian Hunter Bregman sees things differently.  In his 2019 book Humandkind:  A Hopeful History, Bregman points out that questionnaires by Milgram’s subject revealed that only 56 percent actually believed that they were actually inflicting pain on the learner.  Furthermore, because the experiment was framed as a learning experiment, subjects felt that they were being helpful and were through their participation making a contribution to science.  This analysis serves to counter those who assert strongly that Milgram’s experiment proves that anyone will blindly follow the orders of a man in a grey lab coat (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What were the results of the Milgram experiment?

Challenge - No Good or Noble? : One of the oldest debates in philosophy is about the essential nature of human beings.  For example, philosopher Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679) argued that humans are essentially corrupt and deprived and that without the civilizing forces of government, society would devolve into chaos.  The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) disagreed.  He viewed the essential nature of humans as noble and peaceful.  Do some research on what people have said about the essential nature of humans.  Identify a quotation that you find interesting, write it down, and explain why you like it.

Sources:

1-Bregman, Rutger. Humankind: A Hopeful History.  New York:  Little, Brown and Company 2019.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - April 21

What can the confirmation of a U.S. Supreme Court Nominee in 1991 teach about our tendency to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were?

Subject: Hindsight Bias - Clarence Thomas’s Nomination to the Supreme Court

Event:  The pioneer researcher in hindsight bias Baruch Fischhoff is born, 1946.

Take a moment to contemplate the following question:

How can you drop an egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?  

The answer is “very easily because an egg will not crack a concrete floor.”

Now that you know the answer, does it seem like you actually knew it all along?  There’s an old saying that “hindsight is 20/20,” which means that people tend to view events as more predictable after the fact than they were before they happened.  

In the 1970s, Baruch Fischhoff, who was born on this day in 1946, was a student working on his master’s degree in psychology.  While attending a lecture by Paul E. Meehl, Fischhoff noted a comment that Meehl made about the fact that psychiatric clinicians often overestimate their ability to predict outcomes.  Fischhoff seized on the seemingly off-the-cuff comment, using it as the inspiration for the first studies in hindsight bias.

                                                                    Image by Claudia from Pixabay 

Since Fischhoff published his first studies in the 1970s, many others have confirmed the impact of hindsight bias.  One study, for example, involved college students' predictions about the U.S. Senate’s confirmation vote for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991.  Before the vote, 58% of the students predicted that Thomas would be confirmed.  Later, after Thomas was confirmed and the same students were polled again, 78% said they had thought that Thomas would be confirmed.

Hindsight bias is a close cousin to another cognitive bias, confirmation bias.  With confirmation bias, we begin with a conclusion and then put on blinders to anything other than evidence that supports our conclusion (see THINKER’S ALMANAC - February 15).  Hindsight bias reverses this process.  We begin with factual evidence of an event from the past - such as who won this year’s Super Bowl -- and we then revise our judgments about what happened, giving ourselves credit for foreseeing what happened as inevitable.

This tendency to tell ourselves that “I knew it all along” makes sense when you think about how our brains work.  As psychologist Kathleen A. Vohs explains, it's much easier to tell ourselves a story about what happened in the past than it is to process information in real time:  

What consciousness does is tell the most compelling story it can come up with. That means to tell a neat story, where all the pieces fit together. This means that the past becomes a lot more ‘knowable’ than it was in reality, and hence hindsight bias. (1)

The best way to counteract the hindsight bias is to consciously consider multiple possibilities prior to a final outcome.  For example, in one study a group of psychiatrists was asked to rate the probability of different diagnoses after studying the background of a patient.  The doctors who were asked to explain the reasoning behind each of the possible diagnoses were significantly less likely to demonstrate hindsight bias than the doctors who rated the diagnoses without providing any rationales.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is Hindsight Bias? What is the best method for counteracting Hindsight Bias?

Challenge - Did You Know It All Along? : Consider a historic event that has happened in your life on a single day.  Looking back at what happened on that day, does it now seem inevitable?  Reflect on how you view it now and whether or not you think hindsight bias is playing a part in how you perceive the event today.

Sources:

1-Carey, Benedict. “That Guy Won? Why We Knew It All Along.”  The New York Times 30 Oct. 2012.

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.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 23

Why is one of the keys to a successful Ted Talk not just the content of the talk but also the talk’s time limit?

Subject:  Attention - TED Talk Time Limit

Event:  TED Founded, 1984

In 2005, Time magazine reported that research conducted by Microsoft Corporation concluded that the attention span of the average individual dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2005. Time also noted that the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds(1).

A bit more optimistic view of the human attention span can be found at TED conferences, where the rule is no presentation may exceed 18-minutes.  It’s hard to argue with the success of TED Talks; they are streamed more than 2 million times per day.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) was created by Richard Saul Wurman, who hosted the first TED conference in Monterey, California, on this day, Thursday, February 23, 1984.  Attendees paid $475 to watch a variety of 18-minute presentations.  In 2009, TED began to depart from its once a year model by granting licenses to third parties for community-level TEDx events.  The TED.com website was launched in 2006, and today there are TED events in more than 130 countries.

As TED curator Chris Anderson explains, the time limit is no accident; instead, it is a purposeful standard that helps both the speaker communicate clearly and the audience learn more efficiently:

It is long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention. It turns out that this length also works incredibly well online. It’s the length of a coffee break. So, you watch a great talk, and forward the link to two or three people. It can go viral, very easily. The 18-minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write. By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you get them to really think about what they want to say. What is the key point they want to communicate? It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline. 

Communication coach Carmine Gallo explains the logic of the 18-minute time rule based on the physiology of the brain:

The 18-minute rule also works because the brain is an energy hog. The average adult human brain only weighs about three pounds, but it consumes an inordinate amount of glucose, oxygen, and blood flow. As the brain takes in new information and is forced to process it, millions of neurons are firing at once, burning energy and leading to fatigue and exhaustion. (2)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the rationale behind the 18-minute time limit for TED Talks?

Challenge - Under 18 But Not Minor:  Some of the most effective and memorable speeches in history come in under the 18-minute rule.  For example, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which he gave at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, was 17 minutes long.  Speaking at a normal pace, the average 18-minute speech would be approximately 2,500 words.  Do some research on great speeches, and find one that you like that is under 2,500 words.  Explain the rhetorical context of the speech and, besides the fact that it is less than 18-minutes long, explain why you feel it is effective.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

February 23, 2011:  On this day an important study on language was published. More specifically, the study revealed the power of metaphors to persuade.  In the study, participants were shown two different metaphors describing the same situation:

Crime is a beast ravaging the city.

Crime is a virus ravaging the city.

People who read the “beast” metaphor were more likely to suggest law enforcement-based solutions, such as more police or longer jail sentences.  In contrast, people who read the “virus” metaphor were more likely to suggest education initiatives or economic policy changes. Clearly metaphors subtly influence our thinking, bringing to mind different associations.  When we think of a “beast,” for example, images related to brute force and cages come to mind.  In contrast, when we think of a “virus,” images related to antidotes and prevention come to mind. (3).

Sources:

1-McSpadden, Kevin. “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish” Time.com 14 May 2015.  

2-Gallo, Carmine. “The Science Behind TED's 18-Minute Rule.”  Linkedin.com 13 March, 2014.

3-Thibodeau, Paul H. and Lera Boroditsky. “Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning.” Feb. 2011. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16782.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 27

What one word will go with each of the following words to form a compound word: “flower,”  “friend,” “scout”?

Subject: Creativity - Remote Associates Test

Event:  Birthday of Sarnoff Andrei Mednick, 1928

 

Look at these three words:  DREAM, BREAK, LIGHT.

Does a fourth word come to your mind automatically, a word that is associated with each of the other three?

Psychologist Sarnoff A. Mednick, who was born on this day in 1928, sought to better understand creative thinking.  After interviewing scientists, architects, and mathematicians to identify their creative process, he noted that one key element of creativity is associations from memory. Being creative means being able to make associations and to connect ideas, especially ideas that aren't immediately obvious.

                                                                                     Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

Based on what he learned about creativity, Mednick created the Remote Associates Test (RAT) in the 1960s as a method of assessing creative thinking.  The test is made up of word puzzles where the solver must examine three words -- such as DREAM, BREAK, LIGHT -- and identify the single word that links all three: DAY -- as in “daydream,” “daybreak,” and “daylight.”

Some psychologists argue that the RAT is more a test of linguistic ability or problem solving than creativity; nevertheless, Mednick’s invention remains a popular instrument.  The RAT not only helps us ponder the relationship between memory and imagination, but it also meets the criteria of Albert Einstein’s definition of creativity:  “Creativity is intelligence having fun” (1).

Try the following examples, which range from very easy to very hard:

1. dew, comb, bee 

2. preserve, ranger, tropical 

3. sense, courtesy, place 

4. flower, friend, scout 

5. sticker, maker, point 

6. right, cat, carbon 

7. home, sea, bed 

8. fence, card, master 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the RAT, and what insights does it give us about creativity? 

 

Challenge - Mother Tongue Lashing:  What one word fits between the words ‘Jelly’ and ‘Bag’ to form two separate compound words? Jelly __________ Bag  The answer is the word “bean” as in jelly bean and beanbag.  This is a variation of the RAT called Mother Tongue Lashing. It takes advantage of the wealth of compound words and expressions in English. For each pair of words below, name a word that can follow the first word and precede the second one to complete a compound word or a familiar two-word phrase.

1. Life __________ Travel

2. Punk __________ Candy

3. Green _________ Space

4. Rest __________ Work

5. Word  __________ Book

6. Rock __________ Dust

7. Spelling __________ Sting

8. Night __________ House

Sources:  

1-Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

Answers to the RAT:  1 honey, 2 forest, 3 common, 4 girl, 5 match, 6 copy, 7 sick, 8 post

Answers to Mother Tongue Lashing:  Answers:  1 time, 2 rock, 3 back, 4 home, 5 play, 6 star, 7 bee, 8 light