THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 28

What can the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in 1986 teach us to understand how memory works?

Subject:  Flashbulb Memory - Challenger Study

Event:  Challenger Disaster, 1986

On Tuesday, January 28, 1986, at precisely 11:30 EST, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart shortly after takeoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The explosion killed everyone aboard. 

Not only was the Challenger disaster a major tragedy of the United States space program but it was also an unprecedented public tragedy:  it is estimated that 17% of the U.S. population witnessed the launch on live television.  This audience included thousands of students who watched from their school classrooms to see Christa McAulliffe, a high school teacher, who was attempting to become the first teacher in space.  

                                                                Image by WikiImages from Pixabay 

At the time of the tragedy, psychological researcher Ulric Neisser was in the midst of research on human memory, attempting to better understand how memories are stored and retrieved.  He saw an opportunity to test the accuracy of what is known as flashbulb memory, a supposedly vivid and detailed memory of a dramatic moment, such as the memories that people have of remembering where they were and what they were doing when JFK was assassinated in 1963.  Based on his own flashbulb memory of December 7, 1941, Neisser was having doubts about just how accurate these memories are; he initially remembered hearing the news of the Pearl Harbor attack when the broadcast of a baseball game he was listening to was interrupted.  He later realized that although this was a vivid memory, it could not be true.  There were no baseball games in December.

Seizing on the recency and the public nature of the Challenger tragedy, Neisser saw an opportunity to gather more data on flashbulb memories.   The day after the tragedy, Neisser asked students to write down detailed accounts of where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of the Challenger explosion.

The next step in Neisser’s research required patience; after waiting nearly three years, he then asked the same students to recount their memories of the fateful 

day.  Although all the students were confident that their memories of the day were accurate, the results of the study revealed something different: one fourth of the students had memories that were completely different, while half had memories that were somewhat different.  Less than ten percent of the students got all the details correct. 

Neisser’s work gives us all a better, more realistic picture of human memory.  It shows that even those memories that seem most vivid and distinct to us may not be completely accurate.  Each time we access a memory, we reconstruct it and potentially conflate some details, such as how Neisser remembered listening to a baseball game when it was more likely a December football game (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is a flashbulb memory, and what does the research show us about how accurate these memories are?

Challenge - Memory On Trial:  What are the implications of research on flashbulb memories when it comes to eyewitness testimony in a trial?  Do a little research on this topic, and write a paragraph that provides instructions for jury members that tells them what they need to know about the fallibility of human memory.

Also On This Day:

January 28, 1986:  Credulous believers in the 16th century prophecies of Nostradamus look to the following passage as a prediction of the Challenger disaster.  Most, however, realize that it is an example of hindsight bias at work, the erroneous habit of thinking that something that an event from the past was more predictable than it actually was:

From the human flock nine will be sent away,

Separated from judgment and counsel:

Their fate will be sealed on departure

Kappa, Thita, Lambda the banished dead err (I.81)

Sources:

1-Martin, Douglas. Ulric Neisser Is Dead at 83; Reshaped Study of the Mind. New York Times 25 Feb. 2012.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 18

What is the difference between “humor” and “wit”?

Subject:  Connotation and Denotation - Roget’s Thesaurus

Event: Birthday of Peter Mark Roget, 1779

On this day in 1779, Peter Mark Roget was born in London. Roget is best known for his groundbreaking work, Roget’s Thesaurus, originally published in 1852.  Roget’s work is a pioneering achievement in lexicography — the practice of compiling dictionaries. Instead of listing words alphabetically, as in a traditional dictionary, Roget classified words in groups based on six large classes of words: abstract relations, space, matter, intellect, volition, and affections. Each of these categories is then divided into subcategories, making up a total of 1,000 semantic categories under which synonyms are listed. Like a biologist creating a taxonomy of animal species, Roget attempted to bring a coherent organization to the English word-hoard.

                                                            Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay 

In order to make the categories more accessible, Roget’s son, John Lewis Roget developed an extensive index that was published with the thesaurus in 1879. Roget’s grandson, Samuel Romilly Roget, also worked to edit the thesaurus until 1952.

No one knows for certain how many words there are in the English language, but because of its liberal tradition of borrowing and adopting words from any language it rubs up against, there are more words in English than in any other language. In fact, there are so many more words in English that it is unlikely that the idea of a thesaurus would even be conceived of for a language other than English.

Roget continued the English tradition of borrowing words when he selected a Greek word for the title of his collection: thesauros which means treasury or storehouse.  Roget’s original title for his work was The Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.

Like the association of Webster with dictionaries, Roget’s name has become synonymous with thesauri (the irregular plural of thesaurus). Also like Webster, the name Roget is no longer under trademark; therefore, just because a thesaurus is called Roget’s does not mean it has any affiliation with the original work of the Roget family (1).

Generations of writers have turned to Roget’s work to assist their writing.  One example is American writer Garrison Keillor, who praised Roget in a 2009 article called, “The Book That Changed My Life”:

The book was Roget’s International Thesaurus.  It not only changed my life, but also transformed, diversified, and modulated it by opening up the lavish treasure trove of English, enabling me to dip my pen into glittering pools of vernacular, idiom, lingo, jargon, argot, blather, colloquialisms, officialese, patois, and phraseology of all sorts. . . .(2)

Not all writers or English teachers are fans of the Thesaurus, however.  Sometimes it’s a little too easy for a student to grab a thesaurus and insert a synonym that doesn’t quite work in context.  For example, a student once wrote the sentence:

Today I ate a really good donut.  

Searching for a synonym for the word “good” in his thesaurus, he revised, as follows:

Today I ate a really benevolent donut.

It’s because of mishaps like this that the Irish novelist Roddy Doyle gives the following advice:

Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine.

Because there are so many synonyms in English, it’s important for writers to become students of the subtleties of language. The best way to do this is to look at both the denotation of a word and the connotation of a word.  A word’s denotation is the literal dictionary meaning of a word; connotation is the implied meaning of a word along with the feelings associated with that word.  Denotations can be found easily in a dictionary, but connotations are a bit harder to find.  The best way to learn about connotations is to study words in their natural habitat — that is in the writing of professional writers.

Notice, for example, how the writer Charles S. Brooks (1878-1934) explores the subtle differences between the words “wit” and “humor” in the following excerpt:

Wit is a lean creature with a sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a kindly eye and comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary, uses malice to score a point–like a cat it is quick to jump–but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season’s fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles, wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its dinner. Humor laughs at another’s jest and holds its sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer (3).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the difference between a word’s denotation and its connotations, and why is this distinction important for effective thinking and writing?

Challenge - Is a Rant the Same as a Diatribe?:  Clear thinking, cogent communication, and coherent writing depend on diction -- a writer’s word choice.  Effective thinkers and writers must be students of words, and they must -- like Charles S. Brooks -- take time to understand the subtle distinctions between words.  Just because two words are listed as synonyms does not mean that they are interchangeable.  What are two words that — even though they are synonyms — do not mean exactly the same thing?  What are the subtle differences in the words’ denotations and connotations?  Using Charles S. Brooks’ paragraph as a model, write a paragraph comparing the differences between one of the word pairs below:

mob/crowd, laugh/giggle, student/scholar, teen/juvenile, old/ancient, wealthy/rich, gregarious/social, frugal/cheap, watch/gaze, bright/smart, late/tardy, sleep/slumber, transform/change, proud/arrogant, wisdom/intelligence, confident/cocky, jail/prison

As you write, consider both the denotations and especially the connotations of the two words.

Sources:

1 – Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

2- Keillor, Garrison.  “The Book That Changed My Life.”  Best Life. March 2009: 46.

3-Brooks, Charles.  “On the Difference Between Wit and Humor.”

http://fullreads.com/essay/on-the-difference-between-wit-and-humor/

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 31

If you condensed 15 million years -- the age of the universe -- into a 365 calendar, on what day and at what time did the human species arrive?

Subject: Time - Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar

Event:  December 31

 

The construction of such tables and calendars is inevitably humbling….dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year's Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31. -Carl Sagan

In his 1977 book Dragons of Eden, astronomer Carl Sagan tackles the problem of trying to illustrate how old the world is relative to how young human beings are.  To do this he constructs what he calls a Cosmic Calendar.  In this calendar, Sagan asks the reader to imagine the 15 billion years condensed and recorded on a 365-day calendar.

On the Cosmic Calendar, the key event on January 1 is the Big Bang (the beginning of the universe).  Other key events don’t occur until September, such as the formation of the earth on September 14 and the origin of life on Earth on September 25.

                                                                    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

If you represented the Cosmic Calendar as the length of a 100 yard football field, the whole of human history would represent a length no larger than the size of a hand.

The key day on the Cosmic Calendar for humankind, therefore, is today: December 31.  It should be humbling to realize how recently our species has appeared:  10:30 PM on December 31st.  Fire became an available tool minutes ago, at 11:46 PM and the first cities appeared at 11:59:35 PM.  Because the alphabet was invented just seconds ago, at 11:59:51 PM, all of recorded human history must be squeezed into a period of just ten seconds.  In Sagan’s words, “Every person we’ve ever heard of lived somewhere in there. All those kings and battles, migrations and inventions, wars and loves. Everything in the history books happens here, in the last 10 seconds of the cosmic calendar.”

The point of the Cosmic Calendar is to give us some perspective about how long our species has been on Earth relative to how long the universe has been in existence.  Although we as humans are newcomers, arriving just 90 minutes before the clock strikes twelve, beginning a new year, we still have enormous power to influence the next cosmic year.  As Sagan puts it, “We have a choice: we can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion year heritage in meaningless self destruction.  What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do.”

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  At what time on the cosmic calendar do humans first appear?

Challenge - It’s the Time of the Season:  What is the best thing anyone has ever said about time?  Do some research to find quotations.  Write down the one you like the best, and explain why you think the quotation is insightful.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

December 31, 1930:  On this day in the 1930s, Jay Hormel hosted a New Year's Eve party where he challenged his guests to create a name for his latest invention, a canned pork product. On that night not only was a new year born but also one of the most successful and most recognizable brand names in history came into being: Spam. The winning name was formed from the contraction of sp(iced h)am; the winner of the contest was awarded $100. Thanks to a sketch and song from the British television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, the word Spam lost its capital letter and became a lowercase common noun referring to unsolicited e-mail. In the sketch, which first appeared in 1970, a waitress recites a list of menu items, all including Spam. As the menu is being recited, a song begins where male voices chant the word Spam more than 100 times. It's this seemingly endless, repetitive chant that inspired computer users to select spam as the appropriate appellation for unwanted, disruptive email in 1994 (2).

Sources:

1-Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978. 

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

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 21

How, using a barometer, did a student give his teachers a lesson in creativity?

Subject: Creative Thinking - Functional Fixedness

Event:  The story “Angels on the Head of a Pin” appears in The Saturday Review, 1968

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. -Margaret Mead

On this day in 1968, Alexander Calandra published a story in The Saturday Review magazine entitled “Angels on the Head of a Pin.”

In the story, Calandra recounts his interaction with a physics student who was referred to him by another instructor who requested that Calandra referee the student’s unconventional answer to a test question.

The question on the exam was “Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”  

                                                            Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

The student responded to the question as follows:  “Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope.  The length of the rope is the height of the building.”

Although the student’s answer was correct, it clearly did not reflect the instructor’s expectation that a student answers the question in a way that reveals a competence in physics.  A correct answer would involve using the barometer to measure the difference between the pressure at the top of the building and the bottom.

Offering the student a second chance to answer the question, Calandra gave the student six minutes.  This time the student-generated the following answer: 

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = ½ a t2, one could easily calculate the height of the building.”

Intrigued by the student’s thinking, Calandra asked him what other solutions he had to the problem.  The student then proceeds to give four more possible methods.  One, involving a comparison of the shadows cast by the barometer and the building; two, using the barometer as a ruler and marking off the length of the barometer on the wall while climbing the stairs; three, using the barometer on the end of a string to make a pendulum; and four, knocking on the janitor’s door and asking him the following: "I have a fine barometer which will be yours if you tell me the height of this building.”

The truly fascinating thing about Calandra’s parable is that it is the student who is being tested who becomes the teacher, supplying Calandra and the reader with a powerful lesson in flexible thinking.  Too often students are taught one, supposedly acceptable way to solve a problem, rather than being encouraged to use their creativity to explore multiple correct possibilities.  

The student was courageously resisting functional fixedness, the type of thinking that limits solutions to conventional, acceptable answers and discourages new ideas and innovative thinking.  

For example, try the following brain teaser:

What is the capital of Antarctica?

If you Google the question, searching for a city, you’ll discover that Antarctica has no cities, let alone a capital city.  However, if you look at the question with a bit more of a flexible mindset, you might realize that the word “capital” can also refer to letters; therefore, the answer is capital A.

 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is functional fixedness, and how does it limit creative thinking?

Challenge - Defenestrate The Box:  As the student illustrated in the story, functional fixedness can hinder creative thinking.  Do a bit of research on creative problem solving, and write a public service announcement that encourages people to think outside of the box.  What are important characteristics and habits of creative thinking, and how can people apply these habits to think more creatively?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

December 21, 2002:  On this day, President George W. Bush was meeting with his closest advisors in the Oval Office to review the evidence for the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.  Determining whether or not Iraq had such weapons was crucial in the president’s decision on whether or not to commit U.S. forces to the invasion of Iraq.  At one point in the meeting, President Bush turned to CIA Director George Tenet, asking him how confident he was that Iraq had WMDs.  His reply was, “Don’t worry, it’s a slam dunk!” In using a basketball metaphor, Tenet was expressing his belief that the presence of WMDs was a sure thing.  History tells us that Tenet might have been better served by selecting a different metaphor considering the fact that the eventual absence of WMDs became a huge embarrassment for the Bush administration after the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Sources:

1-Calandra, Alexander. “Angels on a Pin.” Saturday Review 21 Dec. 1968.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 16

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.”

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.

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.

 

Sources:

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

THINKER'S ALMANAC: November 23

How can an Ivy League football game played in 1951 help us to see the world more clearly?

Subject: Motivated Perception and Reasoning - Ivy League Football

Event:  Dartmouth and Princeton Football Game, 1951

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. -Anaïs Nin

On this day in 1951, two Ivy League teams, Princeton and Dartmouth, played a football game in Princeton, New Jersey.  The game was roughly played; Princeton’s star tailback left the game in the second quarter with a broken nose, and at the end of the third quarter, a Dartmouth player broke his leg.  Princeton prevailed.

If not for two psychologists, one from Princeton -- Hadley Cantril, and another from Dartmouth -- Albert Hastorf, the game might have been just another forgotten football game.  What made it memorable, however, was a follow-up study published by the two psychologists. 

 Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay

About one week after the game, Hastorf and Cantril asked students from both schools to give their assessment of the game.  Their responses depended on their school:  Princeton students overwhelmingly blamed Dartmouth for the rough play while Dartmouth students blamed Princeton.

Hastorf and Cantril then had all students watch a film of the game and keep track of infractions by players on both teams as if they were a referee.  The results showed both groups of students were unable to see the game dispassionately or objectively; the Princeton students still blamed Dartmouth and the Dartmouth students still blamed Princeton.  Although both groups of students watched the same film, both groups seemed to be watching an entirely different game.  

Hastof and Cantril published their case study entitled “They Saw a Game” in 1954.  It established the concept of motivated perception; in short, we don’t always see reality; instead, we see what we want to see.  This concept is similar to motivated reasoning, where instead of coming to conclusions based on evidence, we interpret the evidence in a way that it fits our preconceived beliefs.  In other words, we don’t always believe the truth; instead, we believe what we want to believe (1).

In her 2021 book The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef warns against the dangers of self deception and of motivated reasoning. Like the college students in 1951, we sometimes employ emotionally-biased reasoning to produce the verdict we want to be true in favor of the actual truth. We cherry-pick evidence that supports our side, and we rationalize to make a case sound better than it actually is.  Galef calls motivated reasoning the soldier mindset and argues that it is an unconscious cognitive bias that needs to be exposed and rooted out.  Galef also prescribes a more sound, reasonable approach called the scout mindset.  Instead of seeing what we want to see or being defensive, we need to seek first to understand.  We should be skeptical of our own conclusions and value the pursuit of truth over our fears of being right or wrong.  The pursuit of the scout mindset means testing your own claims and understanding that changing your mind is not a sign of weakness (2).

One powerful way to understand motivated reasoning is to see it through the eyes of a sports fan.  Imagine you are watching a basketball game, a game where your favorite team is competing for a championship against a longtime rival.  Imagine your reaction when your team is charged with a foul that results in points being taken off the scoreboard.  What would be your honest reaction?  Would your emotions motivate you to find immediate fault with the referee's call and begin to construct rationalizations for why the call was wrong?  Or would you calmly accept the call and defer to the referee’s indifferent judgment?  Most honest fans -- short for “fanatics” -- will admit that their emotional 

investment in their team prejudices them and blinds them to objective judgment.  In addition, they are rarely even consciously aware of their own bias. To further understand the impact of motivated reasoning, compare the reaction you have when your team is called for a foul versus when your team’s opponent is called for a foul?  In the latter case, do you spend any time or emotional energy scrutinizing the fairness or justice of such a decision?

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: How did the Dartmouth fans see the game differently from the Princeton fans, and how does this help explain motivated perception?

Challenge -  Scouts and Soldiers:  Write a public service announcement that explains the thinking behind the scout mindset versus the soldier mindset.  Try to persuade your audience that the scout mindset is preferable and a possible solution to the political polarization that is plaguing our country.

Sources:

1-Resnick, Brian. “How desire can warp our view of the world.” Vox.com 8 Aug. 2019.

2-Galef, Julia.  The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.  New York:  Portfolio/Penguin, 2021.