Counter-intuitive as it may seem, in this fascinating learning interaction between man and ape, it appears apes have quite a keen skill for picking up language.
I mean, responding to a verbal command, could you find the image on the touchscreen from such a wide selection much faster than the ape in this clip does?
Malcolm Gladwell, the king of counter-intuitive observation and reporting, in his book "Outliers," outlines what he sees to be the path to success.
The first interesting observation he makes is that a lot of the success out there has to do with fate, simply being in the right place at the right time.
For example, if you were born in January, February, or March, you are much more likely to be a professional athlete than if, say, you were born in September to December. Why? Simply because as a child you were more likely to be chosen to be on a team and have access to special training and be motivated to do more practice than kids born later in the year. Why is this? Because December 31st is the arbitrarily chosen cutoff date to make the team in a given year, being born earlier in the year gives you the age advantage to outperform other children in your year and be given access to the chance to become great.
This is the type of observations Gladwell is well known for making, however, in this book, Gladwell takes a different spin on the theme. He posits that fate alone does not make people great. He discusses how social advantage can be shaped by your cultural background. I.e. a whole bunch of things that are unique about your history that lead to you be in the right community, at the right time, in the right place to be more likely to become great in a given area.
However, all of these ideas have to do with matters that are out of your control. One observation that we can influence is the observation psychologists made that people who are great masters in their field are shaped by 10,000 hours of practice and apprenticeship (usually over the course of 10 years). Apparently these 10,000 hours are inescapable. All great people had to do 10,000 hours of real hard work and practice (usually learning from a master) to become really good.
The moral of the story is, even if you are a genius, if you want to become really good at what you do and make it as a master in your field, then you've got to put in the hours and years of hard work and practice.
Another detail I enjoy is the notion that some communities have a much higher rate of people cashing in on their talents, putting in the hard work, and making it to the top. So if you were born into such a community, you don't have a head start, but you have the conditions that make it more likely to put the petal to the metal, do those hours, and possibly become great.
One word of caution. While Gladwell is intriguing and entertaining, we should not loose site of the fact that he is a journalist by profession. That means he spins stories to make them sound more sell-able than they really are. While it is fun to keep his observations in mind and share them with others, I haven't found the ideas in his books very useful in practice. Perhaps someone can share how they have found his ideas useful in a practical sense.
Here is a SHORT interview with Gladwell talking about his book:
I've always questioned the value of a democratic system. While from the liberal egalitarian perspective of allowing each man to have a say in the affairs of his community, the one-man-one-vote ideal seems only right. However, from the perspective of making wise decisions on policies involving national security, welfare, healthcare, taxation, the economy and national infrastructure, it would appear that such decisions should be left to the top two percent of intelligent society to make.
Why should an uneducated man with a low IQ and poor judgement be given the opportunity to choose who will hold the button to a nuclear detonator? In a sense, it appears like the democratic system could lead to disastrous outcomes. Why is it so virtuous? What is the logic behind it?
The following entertaining video demonstrates the wisdom of the crowd, how sheer numbers create a self-correcting mechanism with utmost precision and ingenuity unlike anything the wisest of individuals can conceive of singlehandedly. Enjoy!
It can be said that no two people think alike. What is counter-intuitive is just how far reaching this can be. We can have one picture in our head and when we communicate that picture to another, a completely different picture can emerge in their mind.
In addition to things appearing the way we would like them to to appear (based on our past experiences and preferences), there is also a difference in the way we perform certain basic brain-functions, like counting.
Starting from 1:40 in the following video, Richard Feynman recounts an interesting discovery he made.
Richard discovered that he counts by imagining audible voices in his head, thus he was able to train himself to count and read simultaneously (two different brain functions), however he couldn't count and talk simultaneously.
He subsequently met a mathematics professor who was able to count and talk simultaneously, but couldn't count and read. As it turns out, this mathematics professor would count by reading the numbers, thus he couldn't count and read (multiple instances of the same brain function).
This difference between people in such a basic function as counting I find to be quite counter-intuitive (and Richard is also a pleasure to listen to). So enjoy!
In this two minute commercial, Samsung brilliantly demonstrates how reality can play with our intuitions depending upon the vantage point it is experienced from. Not completely counter-intuitive, but fun and surprising nonetheless.
This is more about people's surprising intuitions than counter-intuitions, but I find it rather interesting, as I'm sure you do, to see how people reacted so differently to the different actors. I personally find the experiment not to be so reliable because, apart from the racial difference, the second actor was better at acting the part of a criminal, openly admitted to a crime, and was dressed with oversize clothing more like you would expect from an unruly fellow (although technically they were both wearing the same types of clothing).
What are your thoughts on this fascinating experiment?
The following chart illustrates the gross disparity in percentages of the population who consent to donate their organs in European countries:
Why the big gap? (70%)
The obvious answer lies in the way the question is posed. If the population is asked to opt-in to donate their organs, the results end up looking like the countries in yellow, but if the population is asked to opt-out if they do not wish to donate their organs, you end up with statistics similar to the countries portrayed in blue.
Why is this?
This is seemingly counter-intuitive as it implies that people are generally not all that concerned whether or not they donate their organs. Is this true? You would think it would mean a great deal to people whether or not they donated their organs.
The answer is a surprising one. It turns out that we humans have difficulty dealing with complex problems. When we don't have what to base our decisions on, we opt out of making the decisions altogether, even when the decisions mean so much to us.
Ever find yourself procrastinating about making a decision? Often this is because we simply don't know what to base our decisions on!
