vsauce kevin here and i'm an idiot
i am the duke of the dull and dumb
witted
i am breathtakingly brainless i am
fabulously fat-headed
disastrously dultish and confoundingly
cretinous i've spent 10 years making
hundreds of videos celebrating knowledge
and creativity i've highlighted the
achievements of some of the smartest
minds in science and math i've learned
a lot along the way and maybe you have
too
but for the last few weeks i've been
pursuing
peak stupidity and uh
it's going pretty well the fact is i
hope
this video makes you dumber because
sometimes being an idiot is the
difference between
life and death here's how
hold on i gotta get this barbecue sauce
off my face it's like literally
burning my skin okay hang on oh this is
for a child
[Music]
okay i am going to smell like barbecue
sauce for the rest of this video
but it's what i do for you
okay here's how in 1942 psychologist
alexander luchens
administered a problem-solving test
using water and differently sized jars
the goal is to fill and empty those
jars with water in a combination to get
the desired volume
you've got an unlimited supply of water
and you can throw
out as much as you want in problem
number one
jar a holds 29 ounces and jar
b holds three ounces the goal is to
measure
20 ounces so you'd fill the 29
ounce jar and use that to fill the three
ounce jar
three times 29 minus three minus three
minus three leaving you with 20 ounces
this is not a paradox problem two
adds a third jar this time jar a
is 21 ounces jar b is 127
and jar c is 3 ounces we have to get to
100 ounces
and that's also pretty easy 127
minus 21 minus 3 minus 3
equals 100 the third problem is a little
bit trickier but now we know how to
solve these
jar a holds 14 ounces jar b
holds 163 and jar c holds 25 ounces
your goal is to get 99 ounces you can
fill the 163 then pour
2 25s and 114
for 163 minus 25 minus 25 minus 14
equals our 99. once you're
locked into the successful strategy
you're
on autopilot fill the biggest jar
and use the other two smaller jars to
reduce it
until you've got the right amount got it
alright one more jar
a holds 23 ounces jar b
holds 49 ounces jar c holds
3 ounces we need 20 ounces
so 49 minus 23
minus 3 minus 3 equals 20
right ro well yeah
actually that is that is right but
it's not the most efficient solution we
could just fill jar a
with 23 ounces and then pour three
ounces into char c
and have the 20 ounces that we need
this time we don't need this largest jar
at all learning an algorithm to solve
these
problems actually made us a bit
stupider luchans found that after giving
six
problems that involved filling the
largest jar
b and then taking away different amounts
using jar a
and jar c the research subjects were
locked into using all three jars to
solve
each problem they didn't even see
the simpler solution the final problem
28 76 and 3 with a goal of 25
could only be solved efficiently by
using the two smaller jars
28-3 many of the subjects
tried to apply their algorithm and
immediately said
the problem was impossible
impossible they'd gained too
much knowledge they were too experienced
they'd become so smart that they
got stupid welcome to the einstein long
effect
einstein is a german word that roughly
translates as
mindset it describes the overall method
and frame of reference for
solving a problem when luchens conducted
his experiment he gave
a second group that problem that
contained two
possible solutions as their very first
task
most of them instantly recognized the
simpler solution because they weren't
trapped in the big
jar method of thinking about the problem
it
wasn't that group b was smarter it was
that group a
had learned just enough to make them
dumber oh and some of the people who
were shown the simpler solution
after they declared the final problem
was impossible
they got mad like
they got really really mad in his paper
mechanization and problem solving
luchens wrote realizing it he is
embarrassed by the blindness and
stupidity he showed while solving them
puzzles how it was possible and feels
shame at having been blinded to such a
degree
rendered so incapable of reasonable
action
of intelligent procedures
basically some were upset that they
felt dumb and then decided to take that
anger out on
the experiment itself in a footnote
lucian's explains
instead of viewing their responses as
stupid some of these subjects remarked
heatedly that the tasks or the
instructions
were stupid they were
embarrassed because they felt stupid and
they felt stupid because they were too
smart they'd have been smarter if they
were stupider it's
it's a vicious cycle the ichthyolong
effect is a
serious cognitive force and it's so
strong
that when a similar experiment used eye
tracking software
to show whether expert chess players
could recognize
a simple solution after a specific
series of moves
they literally did not even see it
their brains wouldn't let them
see it kind of like how you can't see
that my
face is not flat this is
actually a concave photo of my face
as you can see when i turn it this is
not at all
a flat image but when seen straight on
your brain automatically fills in that
hollow
shape and projects it outward because
it's programmed to see
faces that way grand illusions has a
hollow face einstein mask
that really shows just how biased our
visual
systems are in favor of seeing faces as
convex your brain won't allow you to see
the hollow face for the concave
shape it truly is because it's
shortcut supersedes reality it's
why the phrase i can't unsee it exists
in the first place here's a different
example
excuse me me there's an old riddle about
a plane
crashing or a starship enterprise
crashing on an international border and
being asked
where to bury the survivors
your brain gets so wrapped up in
processing what you know that
a country's borders could be relevant in
determining how to deal with the
situation
that a certain number of people died
in the crash and all the other details
we're used to thinking about that
it takes a minute to realize that
survivors don't have to be buried at all
the einstein effect has created a
short-term
cognitive illusion that turns a simple
obvious scenario into a ridiculous
brain teaser sometimes it's just
better to know a lot less in a 1999
paper called the recognition heuristic
goldstein and gigarenser describe a
psychological experiment asking which
of two cities had a larger population
san diego or san antonio a group of
germans answered correctly more often
than
a group of americans the americans
likely considered the populations of
texas and california whether they
thought the cities were growing
and a ton of other factors the germans
well more of them had heard of san diego
and
not san antonio so they figured the
famous city was
bigger the end that's it the less is
more effect actually made them more
likely
to be right and we've just recently
figured out that
being dumb can make you smart right
wrong we've actually known about this
problem
for a really long time in 1620
francis bacon wrote in noam organum that
the human understanding when it has once
adopted an opinion either as being the
received opinion or as being agreeable
to
itself draws all things else to support
and agree with it bacon didn't know the
cognitive science behind that
phenomenon but he had the basic idea
right for
efficiency's sake your brain tends to
process
new things by drawing on the knowledge
it
currently possesses it's why i can't
make this
egg stand up come on egg
work with me here please stand
the task here is to balance this egg on
one of its ends and uh
it's not really working out for me too
well in girolamo benzoni's 1565 history
of the new world
he wrote that christopher columbus
challenged a group of
noble spaniards gentlemen i will lay a
wager with
any of you that you will not make this
end stand up as i will
naked and without anything at all
i don't know why he had to be negative
kind of weird
they tried and failed just like i've
been trying
and failing and then columbus just kind
of
smashed the egg on the table and look it
it stood up he wasn't trapped by
einstein and neither was alexander the
great who solved the puzzle of the
gordian
knot in the 4th century bc
the knot was so complex and so
intricate a lot more complex and
intricate than
this this is a pillowcase that
anyone who could untie it would
immediately be declared
king of phrygia he just
cut it in half with his sword
something like that kind of like the way
that indiana jones was badly outmatched
by an
expert swordsman and then he just
shot him with his gun everyone has
understood this
seemingly forever and a recognition of
the einstein effect
is deeply rooted in asian philosophies
in zen buddhism the term shoshen refers
to
the beginner's mind an attitude of
openness
and eliminating the constraints of
experience and
knowledge zen and taoist meditators try
to achieve the motion
the state of a mind without a mind
free from attachments and thoughts
in japanese martial arts sanchin is
total awareness not just focusing on
what you know
or think you know but letting every
possibility
present itself even when it's simple
but this isn't just about illusions
ancient philosophy or solving cute
riddles
understanding the impact of angst along
can
literally save lives in the 1970s a
cardiologist named lee goldman compiled
data on heart attack cases
and found that taking an ecg reading and
answering
three basic questions could determine
whether someone was
actually having a heart attack when this
shortcut decision tree was implemented
at cook county hospital in chicago
the results were incredible it beat the
old diagnosis method by 70 percent
and the hospital found that highly
trained
experienced doctors diagnosed the most
serious cases correctly
75 to 89 of the time while the
three-step quick and dirty method was
right
over 95 percent of the time
depending on a well-educated extremely
knowledgeable professional
actually made things worse
people died because we were too
smart we are obsessed with being smart
and knowing things it's why i'm so
curious
about science and math and people and
honestly it's why this channel exists
and look it's important to know stuff
and
have experience and it's important to
have a
mechanized mind luchen said
mechanized responses have a place in
one's behavior
they possess the advantages of releasing
one from the bother of
finding new responses to recurring
everyday situations they equip one with
precise ready and speedy responses to
certain
aspects of his environment and they free
the mind so that it can more
adequately deal with complicated
tasks yeah but he then went on to say
when a habit ceases to be a tool
discriminately applied but
becomes a procrustean bed to which the
situation
must conform when in a word instead of
the individual mastering the habit
the habit masters the individual then
mechanization is indeed a dangerous
thing intelligence experience
and knowledge are freedom and
they can also be a prison that takes
away your freedom to think
differently your brain is the greatest
computer ever
invented but it can also constrain your
creativity
and limit your potential we all
want to get smarter become more creative
and
solve bigger and more advanced problems
in everything from
the video games we play to the society
we live in there's so much pressure to
be smart
and it's just not always
about that sometimes you just gotta get
stupid
and as always
thanks for watching
you