Masters of the Rational Universe (by Chris Young)

Guest Post: Chris Young

Chris said writing his guest blog post reminded him of school newspaper days. We know each other from Westville Boys' High where I also attempted to get people who didn't usually write to get articles in. I had to try hard to convince them that the paper wouldn't be boring. If they wrote, it would be more likely that they read what they wanted to read! The same is true now. If we only hear from professional writers about what is going on in professional writers lives it would be rather boring. A little like the Oscars regularly giving the award for best film to films about Hollywood. Oh wait. The down side was that schools did have to censor what we put out. One particularly hilarious edition (well, we thought so) was severely trimmed - but I still have  the uncut edition safely tucked away. I may be purging almost everything I own, but I am still a hoarder of memories.

Chris is a super star. He is an Academic Neurosurgeon and former Rhodes scholar with multiple publications and other really fancy awards. He is also a great guy. He is currently a Research Fellow in Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University. Like Samir said, writing a blog is something Chris has wanted to do, but never really gotten around to. Hopefully this is the start of him regularly sharing some of his thoughts with us.

Master of the Rational Universe

By Chris Young

You may be alarmed to learn that the human brain is not quite the perfect machine we would like to believe.  Nor are we assuredly in control.  The brain is fraught with fragilities, susceptible to external influences, and prone to making poor judgements.  Indeed, with a mind of its own.

To demonstrate, try answering the question below:

A bat and ball cost $1.10.

The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

The intuitive answer is 10c.  If this was your answer, you can take comfort that this is the incorrect answer given by the majority of Harvard students. The correct answer is 5c.Daniel Kahneman, renowned psychologist and Nobel laureate explains in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow:

A number came to your mind. The number, of course, is 10: 10c. The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing, and wrong. Do the math, and you will see. If the ball costs 10c, then the total cost will be $1.20 (10¢ for the ball and $1.10 for the bat), not $1.10. The correct answer is 5c. It is safe to assume that the intuitive answer also came to the mind of those who ended up with the correct number—they somehow managed to resist the intuition.

Many thousands of university students have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle, and the results are shocking. More than 50% of students at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton gave the intuitive—incorrect—answer. At less selective universities, the rate of demonstrable failure to check was in excess of 80%. The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.

Kahneman proposes that our mental function can be thought of as two interconnected systems: a fast, intuitive one that is prone to errors, and a slow “rational thinking” one that has limited capacity.  The bat and ball question illustrates the frailty of the fast, intuitive system.  The limited capacity of the slow “rational thinking” system is something we have all experienced. Take the math problem 18 X 13.  Very few people will know the answer immediately. However, you also know that with some effort, you can probably work it out. If you were walking, there is a high chance that you might come to a stand-still to perform the mental calculation. If you were navigating rush-hour traffic, you might decline to solve the problem whilst driving.

In addition to intrinsic software and hardware issues, our constant interactions with the external environment also impact our thinking and decision making. In an elegant experimental paradigm, the experimenter accidentally drops pencils onto the floor. Experimental subjects with money on their minds helped pick up fewer pencils compared to those thinking about arts, sciences or politics.

How do our mental failings affect us in real life?  Decisions made by an Israeli parole review board over a 10 months period were analysed. The parole board sits from morning to afternoon, spending 6 minutes reviewing each case. Overall, the decision to approve the parole application occurred in about 35% of cases (i.e. rejection is the default position).  However, at the start of each session which was preceded by a meal break, the rate of approval exceeded 65%, gradually tapering down close to 0% by the end of the session.  This study of 1,112 judicial rulings involving 8 judges provides irrefutable evidence that even the most able and scrutinised of decision makers are limited by basic biological parameters.  In a state of fatigue and hunger, their capacity to make rational decisions was impaired and they fell back to the default position (rejection).

I want to point out: the mechanisms which underlie some of these "flaws" are probably also responsible for some of our most valued human qualities: the ability to remain optimistic in the most adverse circumstances, and the willingness to persevere when the odds are clearly against us. Perhaps the most valuable lesson in this: despite the obvious mystique of the brain, it is really a human organ like any other. Fantastically complex? Yes! But we will do well to study it, dissect it, and strategize to train it to reach new heights.

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In writing a blog about several topics in which I admit to being a complete beginner, I am going to have to rely heavily on the people I am writing for who cumulatively know most of what I am likely to learn already. I would love it if some of you found the time to write a guest post on the subject of happiness or learning. The framework I use for thinking about these things is what I call the '5 + 2 points' which includes proper (1) exercise, (2) breathing, (3) diet, (4) relaxation, (5) positive thinking & meditation, (+1) relationships, (+2) flow. Naturally if you would like to write about something that you think I have missed, I would love to include that too. If you are up to doing something more practical, it would be awesome if you did a 100 hour project and I am happy to do the writing based on our chats if that is how you roll. Email me at trevorjohnblack@gmail.com 

Safe in Your Tribe (by Neville Scott)

Guest Post: Neville Scott

I met Neville in my first job after university. He headed the glamorously named 'Modelling Team'. It was their job to work with the Actuaries in Product Development to take whatever ideas we had and clarify them. If ideas could be clearly articulated, they could be built into models that could do what they were meant to. Neville also arranged weekly learning sessions where we would focus on a different concept that would help in our quest to think better. One of the most lasting lessons I got from those Monday mornings was the idea of describing something (and yourself) by what it is rather than what it isn't. I wrote about this idea in 'Aporcupine Apineapple'. Neville is always curious and has lots of interesting ideas. I hope this is the first of many guest posts.

Safe in Your Tribe
by Neville Scott

Many years ago I saw an experiment on a TV program. They set up a huge pyramid of coke tins in a supermarket. With a touch sensor and a device to collapse the pyramid when touched. Successive people looked at it, touched it, and then witnessed the calamitous collapse of tins clattering noisily over them and all over the shop. Lawyers, doctors, housewives, ministers, children all touched it and triggered the collapse, and every single one declared loudly "I never touched it!"

They all lied.

The experimenters put forward an interesting hypothesis. People are herding animals who don't individually have all of the tricks needed for their own survival and need to stick together. Herding creatures know that expulsion from the herd means death. And apparently collapsing a monster pyramid of coke cans in a supermarket generates a significant herd-rejection fear.

On the science level, we've got at least two completely independent brains: the survival brain (amygdala) and logic brain (frontal lobe). Simplistically our amygdala maintains lists of life threatening stuff. It got high speed hard-wiring to sensors (sight, hearing, ...) and hard-wiring to the central nervous system to trigger action. If it senses something on its list, it fires survival actions. And it doesn't consult the far slower-acting logic brain. It doesn't concern itself with morality or logic. Its sole job is to keep you alive. It manages its list:

• Every time it learns of a new risk it adds it to the list. Cars. Rocks. Pointy things. Big Johnny.
• If it is repeatedly exposed to a listed item with no ill effect it may shift down the list. Even off the list. Fear of heights can be overcome.

If you abuse it for too long it gets confused and can malfunction and start firing false alarms. Anxiety attacks, panic disorder, PTSD, shell shock - these are the survival brain misfiring. Apparently most people are born with spiders & snakes pre-coded on the list. And mice are born with cats in their list - a newborn mouse panics when exposed to cat hair.

The frontal lobe does the thinking and moralising and logic stuff. But it doesn't have the same hard-wire privileges of the amygdala. It gets information far later and takes longer to respond. Throw a ball at a person. They will invariably duck immediately, then say "what was that?". The survival brain saw the danger immediately and generated the ducking survival action. The frontal lobe eventually woke up and got vaguely fascinated about what they hell just happened. It seems we are hard-wired to survive; and be logical later.

The Amygdala (left red) and the Frontal Lobe (right blue)

So we've got these brains operating independently. When we're scared the survival brain is dominant and triggering defensive responses. When we're safe the logical brain is dominant and making moral and sensible decision. Simon Sinek tells us why good managers make you feel safe.

Let me stretch the hypothesis and suggest that herding creatures feel safest when they are in the company of others that "feel" like the same herd: Genes, Qualifications, Profession, Race, Religion, School, Politics,... The 911 attacks triggered enormous herding polarisation. Winning the rugby world cup defined the "South African" herd and aligned those within it against an external common enemy. My takeout is that environments of perceived safety allow morality, tolerance and peaceful co-existence. Perceived danger awakens defensive responses and cause polarization into herds and survival responses. "I never touched it!"

The moments when the brightest, most trusted people look you straight in the eye and blatantly lie. They're scared. Something has awakened their fear of herd expulsion. For managers and governments: if you want teamwork and a sense of national identity - make people feel safe.

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In writing a blog about several topics in which I admit to being a complete beginner, I am going to have to rely heavily on the people I am writing for who cumulatively know most of what I am likely to learn already. I would love it if some of you found the time to write a guest post on the subject of happiness or learning. The framework I use for thinking about these things is what I call the '5 + 2 points' which includes proper (1) exercise, (2) breathing, (3) diet, (4) relaxation, (5) positive thinking & meditation, (+1) relationships, (+2) flow. Naturally if you would like to write about something that you think I have missed, I would love to include that too. If you are up to doing something more practical, it would be awesome if you did a 100 hour project and I am happy to do the writing based on our chats if that is how you roll. Email me at trevorjohnblack@gmail.com