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What Ronald Reagan has to do with gorilla costumes, Shakespeare and fake pennies.
The intricate mechanisms of the human mind are endlessly fascinating. We've previously explored various facets of how the mind works – from how we decide to what makes us happy to why music affects us so deeply – and today we're turning to when it doesn't: Here are five fantastic reads on why we err, what it means to be wrong, and how to make cognitive lemonade out of wrongness's lemons.
BEING WRONG
The pleasure of being right is one of the most universal human addictions and most of us spend an extraordinary amount of effort on avoiding or concealing wrongness. But error, it turns out, isn't wrong. In fact, it's not only what makes us human but also what enhances our capacity for empathy, optimism, courage and conviction. In Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, which we featured as one of the 5 must-read books by TED 2011 speakers, Kathryn Schulz examines wrongology with the rigorous lens of a researcher and the cunning wit of a cultural commentator to reveal how the mind works through the eloquent convergence of cognitive science, social psychology and philosophical inquiry.
However disorienting, difficult, or humbling our mistakes might be, it is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are." ~ Kathryn Schulz
From Shakespeare to Freud, Schulz examines some of history's greatest thinkers' perspectives on being wrong and emerges with a compelling counterpoint to our collective cultural aversion to wrongness, arguing instead that error is a precious gift that fuels everything from art to humor to scientific discovery and, perhaps most importantly, a transformative force of personal growth that to be embraced, not extinguished.
To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometime seven dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story." ~ Kathryn Schulz
WHY WE MAKE MISTAKES
In 2005, Joseph Hallinan wrote a front-page story for The Wall Street Journal, investigating the safety record of anesthesiologists with a dreadful track record in the operating room, letting patients turn blue and suffocate before their eyes. These mistakes, Hallinan found, were often attributed to "human error," which assumes inevitability. Yet a closer analysis of these anesthesiologists' process and practice revealed much could be done to avoid these deadliest of errors. So Hallinan spent nearly three years translating the insight from this particular story into the general world of human psychology, where error abounds in a multitude of realms.
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average explores the cognitive mechanisms behind everything from forgetting our passwords to believing we can multitask (which we already know we can't) to overestimating the impact of various environmental factors on our happiness. It's essentially a study of human design flaws, examining our propensity for mistakes through a fascinating cross-section of psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics.
We don't think our perception is economical; we think it's perfect. When we look at something, we think we see everything. But we don't. Same with memory: we might think we remember everything, especially commonly encountered things like the words to the National Anthem, or the details on the surface of a penny—but we don't. Our brains are wired to give us the most bang for the buck; they strip out all sorts of stuff that seems unimportant at the time. But we don't know what's been stripped out. One of the consequences of this is that we tend to be overconfident about the things we think we do know. And overconfidence is a huge cause of human error." ~ Joseph Hallinan
THE INVISIBLE GORILLA
In 1999, Harvard researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons conducted a now-iconic selective attention experiment. Chances are, you've seen it, as the video made the viral rounds 10 years after the original experiment, but on the off-chance you haven't, we won't spoil it for you: Just watch this video in which 6 people – 3 in white shirts and 3 in black – pass basketballs around; you must keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. Ready?
Now, be honest: Did you notice the gorilla that nonchalantly strolled through the middle of the action at one point? If you answered "yes," you're pretty exceptional. Chabris and Simons found that more than half of people didn't notice it so, astounded, they set out to investigate the curious cognitive glitches that made the gorilla invisible – what is it that makes us so tragicomically susceptible to missing valuable information and misperceiving reality?
Published 11 years after the original experiment, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us encapsulates Chabris and Simons' findings on the mechanisms behind this "inattentional blindness" and how they translate into fundamental human behavior. Through six compelling everyday illusions of perception, they swiftly and eloquently debunk conventional wisdom on everything from the accuracy of memory to the correlation between confidence and competence. The book, much to our delight, is written with the subtext of being an antidote to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking which, for all its praises, is tragically plagued by out-of-context "research," wishful dot-connecting and other classic Gladwellisms.
MISTAKES WERE MADE (BUT NOT BY ME)
In 1987, Ronald Reagan stood up in front of the nation in the wake of the Iran contra-scandal to deliver his State of the Union address, in which he famously declared, "Mistakes were made." The phrase became an infamous hallmark of diffusion of responsibility and the failure to own our mistakes, which inspired the title of social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson's excellent Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts – an ambitious quest to unravel the underpinnings of self-justification and, in the process, make us better human beings.
As fallible human beings, all of us share the impulse to justify ourselves and avoid taking responsibility for any actions that turn out to be harmful, immoral or stupid. Most of us will never be in a position to make decisions affecting the lives and deaths of millions of people, but whether the consequences of our mistakes are trivial or tragic, on a small scale or a national canvas, most of us find it difficult, if not impossible, to say, 'I was wrong; I made a terrible mistake.' The higher the stakes – emotional, financial, moral – the greater the difficulty."
Tavris and Aronson examine the root cause of these self-righteous yet erroneous behaviors: Cognitive dissonance – the mental anguish that results from trying to reconcile two conflicting ideas, such as a belief we hold and a circumstantial fact that contradicts it. In our deep-seated need to see ourselves as honorable, competent and consistent, we often bend reality to confirm this self-perception, which in turn results in a domino effect of errors. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) holds up an uncomfortable but profoundly illuminating mirror that not only exposes the engine of self-justification but also offers rich insight into the behavioral tactics that prevent and mediate it.
HOW WE KNOW WHAT ISN'T SO
Written 20 years ago, How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich is arguably the most important critique on the biases of human reason ever published. It's as much a throughly researched investigation into the science of mind as it is a compelling – and increasingly timely – treatise on the importance of not letting superstition and sloppy thinking cloud our judgement on a cultural and sociopolitical level.
Gilovich uses classic psychology experiments to extract practical insight and offer a recipe for using logical principles to predict and avoid our natural biases, from seeking confirmatory information to misattributing causality to random events and a wealth in between.
People do not hold questionable beliefs simply because they have not been exposed to the relevant evidence. Nor do people hold questionable beliefs simply because they are stupid or gullible. Quite the contrary. Evolution has given us powerful intellectual tools for processing vast amounts of information with accuracy and dispatch, and our questionable beliefs derive primarily from the misapplication or overutilization of generally valid and effective strategies for knowing. Just as we are subject to perceptual illusions in spite of, and largely because of, our extraordinary perceptual capacities, so too are many of our cognitive shortcomings closely related to, or even an unavoidable cost of, our greatest strengths." ~ Thomas Gilovich
If this isn't enough wrongology for you, we've compiled a complementary list of additional reading – take a look.
Unless you've lived in a country plagued by the kind of institutional inefficiency characteristic of oppressive political regimes (like we have – hello, motherland), you can never fully appreciate the sometimes comic, often tragic, and invariably debilitating magnitude of red tape. Now, thanks to Dutch historian and documentary photographer Jan Banning, you can: In Bureaucratics, he brings a conceptual, typological approach to the dreariest of desk jobs, blending humor and absurdity with an astute portrait of sociopolitical ineptitude.
Bureaucratics [is] the product of an anarchist's heart, a historian’s mind and an artist’s eye. It is a comparative photographic study of the culture, rituals and symbols of state civil administrations and its servants in eight countries on five continents, selected on the basis of political, historical and cultural considerations." Jan Banning
The countries represented are Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, the United States, and Yemen. In each, Banning visited dozens, in some cases hundreds, of offices across the spectrum of services and executive levels.
India, bureaucracy, Bihar, 2003. India-01/2003
Ram Prabodh Yadav (b. 1970) is sub-inspector (deputy inspector) of police in Maner Block, Patna district, State of Bihar. Monthly salary: 10,000 rupees ($220)
India, bureaucracy, Bihar, 2003. India-21/2003
Dr. Munni Das (b. 1960) is Block Development Officer in Thakurganj block, an administrative entity within Kishanganj district, State of Bihar. Monthly salary: about 10,000 rupees ($220)
To preserve a maximum degree of authenticity, he kept the visits unannounced, preventing the subjects from tidying up for the interview.
Even the visual narrative of the book exudes the monotony of its subject matter: Shot from the same height, with the same and from the same distance, and framed in an appropriately square format, the 50 subjects may vary greatly in age, appearance and location, but appear somehow homogenous in their shared slavery to paperwork.
France, bureaucracy, Auvergne, 2006. France-16/2006
Roger Vacher (b. 1957) is a narcotics agent with the national police force in Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dome department, Auvergne region. Monthly salary: 2,200 Euro ($2,893).
Liberia, bureaucracy, 2006. Liberia-04/2006
Major Adolph Dalaney (b. 1940) works in the Reconstruction Room of the Traffic Police at the Liberia National Police Headquarters in the capital Monrovia. Monthly salary: barely 1,000 Liberian dollars ($18). Traffic accident victims at times are willing to pay a little extra if Dalaney's department quickly draws up a favorable report to present to a judge.
Liberia, bureaucracy, 2006. Liberia-19/2006
Warford Weadatu Sr. (b. 1963), a former farmer and mail carrier, now is county commissioner (administrator) for Nyenawliken district, River Gee County. He has no budget and is not expecting any money soon from the poverty-stricken authorities in Monrovia. Monthly salary: 1,110 Liberian dollars ($20), but he hadn't received any salary for the previous year.
Russia, bureaucracy, Siberia, province Tomsk, 2004. Russia-23/2004
Sergej Michailovich Osipchuk (b. 1974) is the lone police officer in the village of Oktyabrsky (some 2000 inhabitants), Tomsk province. He does not have a police car or one of his own, not even a bicycle. He does not want to reveal his salary, but informed sources put the monthly salary of an officer of his rank and age at approximately 4,000 rubles ($143).
USA, bureaucracy, Texas, 2007. USA-11/2007
Shane Fenton (b. 1961) is sheriff of Crockett County (about 3000 inhabitants), Texas, and based in Ozona, the county seat. Monthly salary: $3,166
Yemen, bureaucracy, 2006. Yemen-03/2006
Nadja Ali Gayt (b. 1969) is an adviser at the Ministry of Agriculture s education center for rural women in the district of Manakhah, Sana Governorate. Monthly salary: 28,500 rial ($160)
Poignant and petrifying in its institutional honesty, Bureaucratics holds up a mirror against humanity's most ineffectual attempts at self-organization, and at the same time manages to elicit newfound empathy for these very human wardens of the red tape prison.
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How a numbered list can start a personal revolution.
Some days everyone needs a little extra encouragement. The words or lines or colors don't want to come, or worse, we don't even want to sit down to create. That's when we turn to these inspiring manifestos, any one of which is guaranteed to give our uncooperative creativity a sharp kick in the pants. Here are five of our favorite contemporary manifestos that nudge ideas out of your head and into the hands of the world.
RIGHT BRAIN TERRAIN
We've long been fans of the amazing work of Frederick Terral, the creative visionary behind design studio Right Brain Terrain. His "Alternative Motivational Posters" have in fact adorned our walls and desktop wallpapers for some time. But the love affair really began at the words behind his whole operation:
You may not be a Picasso or Mozart but you don't have to be. Just create to create. Create to remind yourself you're still alive. Make stuff to inspire others to make something too. Create to learn a bit more about yourself."
We can't imagine more sound advice. And charming, too: Terral's manifesto appears online in its original form as scanned notebook pages, complete with sketches. Happily you can support all things Right Brain Terrain, and surround yourself with life-affirming statements, by purchasing limited edition prints from the studio's gorgeous selection online.
THE CULT OF DONE MANIFESTO
Guidelines to get you from Point A to finished product, The Cult of Done Manifesto was written by tech guru Bre Pettis (of MakerBot fame) in collaboration with writer Kio Stark in 20 minutes, "because we only had 20 minutes to get it done." Following that same parameter, their manifesto consists of 20 truisms borrowed from hacker culture. To wit, number four on the list:
Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it."
With iteration at the heart of its process, The Cult of Done Manifesto will banish your inner perfectionist (and its evil twin, procrastination).
HOLSTEE
We first featured the Holstee manifesto over a year ago, and our fondness for their sustainable social enterprise has only grown since then. Whether you're raising a family or venture funds for your new business, rallying cries for creativity don't get much stronger than this:
This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don't like something, change it. If you don't like your job, quit. If you don't have enough time, stop watching TV. If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love."
You can buy these bracing words in poster, card, and even bib form, so that every time your baby throws a cup of peas on the ground you're reminded of the things that matter most in life.
WORK IS NOT A JOB
It's no coincidence that three out of the five manifestos featured here come from design-y entrepreneurial ventures, since as a discipline design takes a "fail forward" approach to creativity. Our number-four favorite was written by the good folks at Work Is Not A Job. A collaborative of independent design practitioners providing art direction, editorial illustration, and web development among its creative services, the group's raison d'être is effecting "a paradigm shift in how people approach 'work' not as your 9-5 job but how you individually contribute to the world."
Empower yourself and realise the importance of contributing to the world by living your talent. Work on what you love. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you."
In addition to design-for-hire, Work Is Not A Job also offers products, from hoodies to fine-art prints, to keep you inspired on the daily.
DO THE WORK
We're over the moon that author Steven Pressfield has a new release out this month. Part of Seth Godin's e-publishing experiment The Domino Project (which we featured earlier this year), Do the Work is intended as a companion guide to Pressfield's earlier text - and one of our all-time favorites on the creative process - The War of Art. Where that book was almost Zen-like in tone, containing koans about art and life that have had us returning to it for years, Do the Work focuses on practical methods and tools. Still, Pressfield doesn't pull any punches, getting right to the point about what's at stake in whether or not we create.
There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours."
Even better, Do the Work is free(!) until April 20th, so do yourself an enormous favor and snag a copy now.
Whatever you do, we hope this list of manifestos helps you manifest your passion; and if you have other favorite creative directives leave us a link in the comments. Now go forth and create!
