Vsauce!
Kevin here, and I'm an IDIOT.
I am the Duke of the dull and dim-witted.
I am breathtakingly brainless.
I am fabulously fat-headed, disastrously doltish, 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, uhh, it's going pretty
well.
The fact is -- I hope this video actually makes you dumber, because sometimes being
an idiot is the difference between life and death.
Here's how.
Hold on.
I gotta get this BBQ sauce off my face.
It's like literally burning my skin.
Okay hang on.
Oh this is for a child.
Okay I am going to smell like BBQ sauce for the rest of this video but it's what I do
for you.
Okay here’s how.
In 1942, psychologist Alexander Luchins 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 to the desired
volume.
You’ve got an unlimited supply of water, and you can throw out as much as you want.
In Problem #1, Jar A holds 29 ounces and Jar B holds 3 ounces.
The goal is to measure 20 ounces.
So, you’d fill the 29 ounce jar and use that to fill the 3 ounce jar 3 times (29 - 3
- 3 - 3 = 20), leaving you with 20 ounces.
This is not a paradox.
Problem #2 adds a third jar.
This time, Jar A is 21oz, Jar B is 127oz, and Jar C is 3oz.
We have to get 100oz, and that’s also pretty easy (127 - 21 - 3 - 3 = 100).
The third problem is a little bit trickier, but now we know how to solve these -- Jar
A holds 14oz, Jar B holds 163oz, and Jar C holds 25oz.
Your goal is to get 99oz.
You can fill the 163, then pour two 25’s and one 14 for 163 - 25 - 25 - 14 = 99.
Once you’re locked in to the successful strategy, you’re on auto-pilot.
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 23oz, Jar B holds 49oz, Jar C holds 3oz.
We need 20oz.
So, 49 - 23 - 3 - 3 = 20.
Right?
Wr… well, yes, that’s actually right.
But it’s not the most efficient solution.
We could just fill Jar A with 23 ounces and then pour 3 ounces into Jar 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 little bit stupider.
Luchins found that after giving 6 problems that involved filling the largest jar B and
then taking away different amounts using Jars A and C, the research subjects were locked
in to 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 with the two smaller
jars, 28 minus 3 -- you can’t even use the largest jar to solve this problem.
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 Einstellung Effect.
“Einstellung” is a German word that roughly translates as “mindset.”
It describes the overall method and frame of reference for solving a problem.
When Luchins 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.
They got really really mad.
In his paper “Mechanization in Problem Solving,” Luchins 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, Luchins 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 a vicious cycle.
The Einstellung 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.
Kinda 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
its shortcut supersedes reality.
It’s why the phrase, “I can’t unsee it!”
exists in the first place.
Here’s a different example.
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 Einstellung 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 Gigerenzer 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 many hadn’t heard of San Antonio, so
they figured the more 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 Novum 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 egg stand up as I will, naked and without anything at
all."
I don't know why he had to be naked that's kinda weird.
They tried and failed, just like I’ve been trying and failing.
And then Columbus just kinda smashed the egg on the table and look it stood up.
He wasn’t trapped by Einstellung.
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 intricate and complex 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 Indiana Jones was badly outmatched by an expert swordsman and then
just shot him with his gun.
Everyone has understood this seemingly forever, and a recognition of the Einstellung Effect
is deeply rooted in Asian philosophies.
In Zen Buddhism, the term “shoshin” refers to ‘the beginner’s mind’ -- an attitude
of openness and eliminating the constraints of experience and knowledge.
Zen and Daoist meditators try to achieve the Mushin, the state of a ‘mind without a mind’
free from attachments and thoughts.
In Japanese martial arts, zanshin 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 Einstellung 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%, and
the hospital found that highly-trained, experienced
doctors diagnosed the most serious cases correctly 75-89% of the time, while the 3-step quick
and dirty method was right over 95% 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.
Luchins 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 discriminantly
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.