THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 18

How did a young girl manage to convince a visitor to her aunt’s house that he was seeing ghosts?

Subject: Imagination - The Narrative Fallacy

Event:  Birthday of Saki, 1870

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Today is the birthday of Scottish writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), better known by the pen name Saki.  Munro was born in British Burma, where his father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police. Munro later served in the Burma police force himself, but he was forced to resign after he contracted malaria.  Near the end of his life, Munro joined the British Army and served in World War I.  He was killed in 1916, shot by a German sniper in France during the Battle of the Ancre

Munro’s writing career began as a journalist in England, but he is best known for his carefully crafted short stories.  The stories often satirized social conventions and frequently featured surprise endings.  Saki’s stories are often compared to those of American writer O’Henry (1862-1910), whose stories also feature endings with a surprising twist (1).

One particularly brilliant story by Saki is called “The Open Window.”  The story features a character named Frampton Nuttel, who is visiting the country in hopes of finding relief for his nervous condition.  Nuttel, with letters of introduction from his sister in hand, visits the home of Mrs. Sappleton.  While waiting for Mrs. Sappleton to come down, Nuttel talks with Sappleton’s niece, a precocious fifteen-year-old named Vera.  In the room where the two characters are sitting, a French door is kept open, despite the fact that it’s October.  Vera explains to Nuttel that the door is left open because Mrs. Sappleton is under the delusion that her husband and her brothers will return from hunting, despite the fact that the three men died three years ago, sinking into “a treacherous piece of bog.”

When Mrs. Sappleton arrives in the room and begins talking about the imminent return of her husband and brothers, Nuttel listens politely, but based on Vera’s explanation, he perceives his hostess to be deranged.

When Mrs. Sappleton announces the return of the hunters, Nuttel turns and sees three men approaching the French doors, accompanied by their hunting dog.  Thinking he is seeing ghosts, Nuttel leaps up, fleeing the house in horror.   At this point in the story, the reader realizes that Vera made up the story of the hunting tragedy simply to entertain herself.  Next, instead of explaining the trick she played on Nuttel to her aunt, she spins another tale on the spot to explain Nuttel’s odd behavior, saying that Nuttel was spooked by the dog:

He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him.  

The story’s final line sums up Vera’s propensity for impromptu fiction:  “Romance at short notice was her specialty” (2).

                                                            Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay 

The meaning of the word “romance” in the context in which Saki uses it does not mean romantic love.  Instead, in this context, romance relates to the long tradition of Medieval romances — imaginative and extravagant stories of the adventures of heroic characters.  Therefore, if he were writing today, Saki probably would have written:  “Imagination at short notice was her specialty.”  

The reality is that “Romance at short notice” is the specialty of most people.  However, unlike Vera, we’re not always consciously aware of what we’re doing.  We find it very difficult to look at facts without building a narrative to explain them. Psychologists call this the narrative fallacy; in essence, instead of having a Vera to make up stories for us, we make up our own, and then we believe them.  Very seldom do people say to themselves or others, “What might be some alternative explanations (narratives) that would explain this?”  For example, because Mr. Nuttel never questioned Vera’s narrative, she was able to manipulate him, making him believe that he really was seeing ghosts.

In the classic film Twelve Angry Men, a jury spends a hot day locked in a room trying to come up with a verdict in a murder case.  Based on the narratives provided by two witnesses, eleven of the jury members vote for a guilty verdict.  For them, the testimony (narrative) of what happened on the night of the murder becomes fact.  The twelfth juror, however, has the courage to challenge the narrative.  He doesn’t say that the accused is not guilty; instead, he challenges the other jurors to entertain alternative explanations (narratives).  By doing this, they begin to see other possible interpretations of what happened.  As a result, they begin to doubt the original narratives.  Instead of jumping to a hasty conclusion based on a single narrative, they are able to envision other possible narratives. By thinking rationally about these narratives, they arrive at reasonable doubt and -- spoiler alert -- submit a unanimous non-guilty verdict.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the narrative fallacy, and how did one courageous juror overcome it to persuade his fellow jurors that a defendant was not guilty?

 

Challenge:  Short Notice, Short Fiction: What is something odd that a character might wear or carry, and why would the character wear or carry it?  Practice using your imagination at short notice.  Pick a number at random, from 1 to 7.  Then write the opening of a short story in which you, the narrator, give the backstory of why the character wears or carries the odd item.  Give the character a name, and also establish the setting of your story.

A character who wears a Santa hat in May

A character who wears a toga in January

A character who wears earmuffs in July

A character who always carries a rubber chicken

A character who always carries a cheese grater

A character who carries a guitar with no strings

A character who carries an open umbrella when there is no chance or sign of rain

 

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

-December 18, 1865:  The Thirteenth Amendment was formally adopted, ending slavery in the U.S.

-December 18, 1974:  Japanese soldier Teruo Nakamura was discovered hiding on the Indonesian island of Morotai. He was the last known Japanese holdout, surrendering 29 years after World War II had ended.

Sources:

1-Encyclopedia Britannica. Saki. 

2-Saki (1870-1916). The Open Window. Public Domain. East of the Web.com. 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 17

How can you state a rule for effective writing while at the same time violating the rule?

Subject:  Paradox - Fumblerules

Event:  Birthday of  William Safire, 1929  

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. -Carl Rogers

Today is the birthday of New York Times columnist William Safire (1929-2009). On November 4, 1979, Safire published an article on the “Fumblerules of Grammar.”  Each of Safire’s fumblerules states a rule while at the same time breaking it, such as:

Never use prepositions to end sentences with.

                                                                Image by Shotkitimages from Pixabay 

Several years after Safire’s column appeared, he wrote a book based on his collection of fumblerules called How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar.  In the book, Safire includes 50 chapters, one for each of his fumblerules.  After stating each “misrule,” he provides a brief essay with examples and explanations of the right way to write.

In the first ten chapters of the book, Safire features the following essential fumblerules:

No sentence fragments.

Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.

A writer must not shift your point of view.

Do not put statements in the negative form.

Don’t use contractions in formal writing.

The adverb always follows the verb.

Make an all-out effort to hyphenate when necessary but not when un-necessary.

Don’t use Capital letters without good REASON.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms.

Reserve the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it when its not needed. (1)

A key element of any fumblerules is paradox, a logically self-contradictory statement.  In order to grasp a fumblerule, readers must hold two contradictory ideas in their mind, both the rule that’s being stated and the rule that at the same time is being violated.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  Explain how an essential feature of a Fumblerule is a paradox.

Challenge - Recover the Fumblerule:  What is your favorite fumblerule — a writing or grammar rule that states a rule while at the same time breaking it?  Select your single favorite fumblerule, and write an explanation of how it relates to effective writing.  Use the fumblerule as your title, followed by a paragraph where you explain how the rule relates to legitimate writing.  

Sources:

1- Safire, William.  How Not to Write:  The Essential Misrules of Grammar.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1990.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 16

What does it mean to think that nothing is indubitable?

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.”

                                                                Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

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.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the purpose of Russell’s New Decalogue?

 

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.

 

ALSO ON THIS DAY

December 16, 1906: On this day in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to a friend explaining a recent political defeat.  Roosevelt, who won fame as a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War and served two terms as president from 1901-1909, was not used to defeat.  He broke up monopolies, championed federal regulation of railroads, spurred the conservation of natural resources, and began the construction of the Panama Canal.  As the leader of the Progressive Movement, however, there was one reform that Roosevelt could not make happen:  spelling reform. In addition to being an age of reform, the 19th century was also a time when public education was being expanded and democratized in America.  Roosevelt, along with other education advocates, viewed spelling reform as a practical and economical way to improve education.  After all, English orthography is plagued with words that have more letters than necessary as well as inconsistent and capricious spelling rules. In March 1906 the Simplified Spelling Board was founded and funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie.  Its mission was to reform and simplify English spelling.  On August 27, 1906, President Roosevelt issued an executive order that 300 words from the Simplified Spelling Board’s list of revised spellings be used in all official communications of the executive department.  Some of the examples of changes are as follows:

 

blessed to blest

kissed to kist

passed to past

purr to pur

though to tho

through to thru

 

On December 3, 1906, Roosevelt wrote his annual message to Congress using the new spelling.  He became an easy target for criticism, however, as can be seen in the following sentence from a newspaper editorial:

[Roosevelt] now assales the English langgwidg, constitutes himself as a sort of French academy, and will reform the spelling in a way tu soot himself.

On December 13, 1906, soon after it received Roosevelt’s annual message, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution rejecting the new spellings and urging that government documents be written using “the standard of orthography prescribed in generally accepted dictionaries of the English language.” At this point Roosevelt decided to surrender.  He withdrew his executive order, and wrote a letter to his friend Brander Matthews, who was also the chairman of the Simplified Spelling Board, admitting defeat:

I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in, and it was evidently worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten. (2)

Sources:

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

2-Thomas V.  Teddy Roosevelt, Rough Ride Over Spelling Rules. The Wall Street Journal 16 April 2015.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 15

How did a man’s daily walk with his dog lead to a breakthrough invention?

Subject: Thinking - Habits of Mind

Event:  The book Habits of Mind is published, 2008

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it. -Horace Mann

What is a characteristic of a person who is thinking and learning well?  What kinds of things will this person routinely do that reflect a sound process for thinking, learning, and decision-making?

The answers to these questions can be found in a book called Habits of Mind, which was published on this day by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick in 2008.  Essentially, the sixteen habits sum up the characteristics of effective thinkers, in other words, the good habits and specific actions that lead to quality thinking and learning:

1. Persisting

2. Managing Impulsivity

3. Listening with Understanding and Empathy

4. Thinking Flexibly

5. Thinking about Thinking

6. Striving for Accuracy

7. Questioning and Posing Problems

8. Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations

9. Thinking and Communicating with Clarity & Precision

10. Gathering Data Through All Senses

11. Creating, Imagining, Innovating

12. Responding with Wonderment and Awe

13. Taking Responsible Risks

14. Finding Humor

15. Thinking Interdependently

16. Remaining Open to Continuous Learning (1)

To illustrate one of the habits, number 11: Creating, Imagining, Innovating, we might look at the inventive thinking of George de Mestral.  

One day, when the Swiss inventor returned with his dog from a walk, he noticed that he and his dog were covered with cockleburrs. Instead of being annoyed, he studied the burrs under a microscope where he noted their hook-like shape. Many people had imagined different varieties of fasteners for clothing, but as Mestral looked under his microscope, he imagined a new one.

Engineering artificial fasteners that replicated the ones he found in nature took a few years, but Mestral eventually succeeded in creating his easy-to-use hook and loop fastener. He registered his invention in 1958. He called it Velcro.

                                                                        Image by Aritha from Pixabay 

As an inventor, Mestral cultivated and practiced creative and innovative thinking until it became a habit, a habit that allowed him to see something that no one had ever seen before.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What habit of mind did George de Mestral demonstrate, and how did he demonstrate it?

Challenge - Bracket the Habits:  On a piece of paper create a tournament bracket based on the sixteen Habits of Mind.  Randomly assign the numbers to your bracket, then determine using your own judgment who the winners of each matchup would be.  When you get to your final four, write out an explanation of which habit won each of the final three matchups and why.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

December 15, 1979:  On this day in 1979, the game Trivial Pursuit was born.  Two Canadian journalists Chris Haney and Scott Abbott were playing Scrabble when they discovered that some of the game’s pieces were missing.  Undeterred, they decided to create their own game.  It took two years to develop and market the game, but when it was released in 1981, it became wildly popular.  In 1984 more than 20 million games were sold. The object of Trivial Pursuit is to acquire six wedge-shaped colored pieces by correctly answering trivia questions in six different categories.  Since the game’s release, dozens of different editions of the game have been added, including theme-based versions, based on Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, The Beatles, and Disney.  All versions of the game follow the same pattern which is based on moving around a wheel-shaped game board and answering trivia questions in six separate categories. In 2003 Trivial Pursuit was named to the “Games Hall of Fame” by Games magazine, and in 2008 Hasbro bought the full rights to the game for $80 million (1). The word trivia has its origins in Latin, from trivialis, meaning three (tri) roads (via) or “crossroads.”  This probably explains the aspect of trivia being common or ordinary information, the kind of things that people would talk about when they met at the crossroads.  A related word trivium has a more academic history.  In Medieval education, the trivium was the term used to represent the “three roads” or “three ways” to acquiring the first level of a classical education at university through the study of rhetoric, grammar, and logic.  The trivium would then be followed by the quadrivium ("four ways"):  arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.  The fact that the trivium made up the basic level of education and the quadrivium the advanced, is further explanation for the modern meaning of trivia as “less important matters” (2).

Sources:

1-Costa, Arthur . and Bena Kallick.  Habits of Mind Across the Curriculum. Virginia: ASCD, 2008.

2-http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_trivia_pursuit.htm

3-http://www.word-detective.com/052206B.html#trivia

THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 14

Did a 16th-century prophet really predict the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster?

Subject:  Hindsight Bias - The Prophecies of Nostradamus

Event:  Birthday of Michel de Nostredame, 1503

On this day in 1503, the French physician and astrologer Nostradamus was born in Saint-Rémy, France.  Although he was expelled from medical school, he gained notoriety for his innovative treatments of plague victims in 1546-47.  In 1555, he published a book of prophecies entitled Centuries.  Since the publication of Nostradamus’ prophecies, people have scoured his vague, metaphoric language, which happens to be written in verse, to find lines that reveal his prescience.

 

                                                            Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay 

For example, some claim that the following lines reveal that Notrodamas prophesied the Challenger space shuttle disaster on January 28, 1986:

 

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).

 

Of course, even if we grant the fact that these verses refer to a specific event more than 400 years after Nostradamas’ death, we must still concede that seven astronauts were killed on that day, not nine (1).

Cognitive psychologists call this phenomenon hindsight bias.  We tend to believe that we do a better job of predicting events than we actually do.  Since hindsight is 20/20, when we look back, the reasons that something happened seem to be clear.

To illustrate hindsight bias in a more modern context, Guy P. Harrison, in his book Good Thinking, uses the example of Super Bowl XLIX where the New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks by intercepting a pass in the final seconds.  With just twenty-six seconds left in the fourth quarter, the Seahawks were down by four points.  It was first down with the ball on the one-yard line. As the Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson dropped back to pass, the Patriots defensive back Malcolm Butler jumped in front of the intended Seahawk receiver and intercepted the pass, ending the Seahawks’ hopes of winning.

Almost immediately commentators and fans went into Monday-morning quarterback mode, saying that the Seahawks’ coach should have run the ball, giving it to the Seahawks’ star running back Marshawn Lynch.  This was classic hindsight bias (2).  In retrospect, running the ball seemed to be the obvious call, but attempting a pass on first down had no greater chance of resulting in an interception than running the ball had in a fumble. Likewise, a pass at that point was in essence a free play; if incomplete, there would still be time for two attempted running plays. Responding to criticism of his decisions as "the worst call ever," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll explained,  “It was the worst result of a call ever. The call would have been a great one if we caught it. It would have been just fine and no one would have thought twice about it.” (3).

Hindsight bias causes us to be overconfident in our ability to predict the future.  The next time you watch the news, ask yourself honestly how much of what you see was predictable.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is hindsight bias, and what kind of overconfident thinking does it lead to?

Challenge - Failed Predictions:  A great way to overcome the overconfidence that leads to hindsight bias is to explore failed predictions from the past.  For example, in the 16th century Johannes Stoffler, a German mathematician and astrologer, predicted a great flood.  He claimed that the planets would align under Pisces, a water sign, on February 25, 1524, and that on that day torrential rain would begin to fall.  Many took Stoffler’s prediction seriously; in fact, a German nobleman named Count von Iggleheim constructed a three-story ark.  When February 25 arrived, there was light rain but no flood (4).

 

Sources:

1-The Skeptic’s Dictionary. “Hindsight Bias.” 14 Jan. 2014.

2-Harrison, Guy P. Good Thinking. New York:  Prometheus Books, 2015.

3-Myers, David G. “Worst coaching call ever? Hindsight bias and the Super Bowl.” TheConversation.com 5 February 2015. 

4-Cole, Rachel. “10 Failed Doomsday Predictions.” Britannica.com.