Not Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Chimps Kick Butt in Game of Strategy

Perhaps it's because I've become so accustomed to looking for the hidden marketing and public relations hand in reported news, but I couldn't help but wonder, if only for a moment, if a study about the competitive smarts of chimpanzees was somehow tied to the pending release of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

In one particular game of strategic decision making called the Inspection Game, it turns out that chimps came much closer to maximizing their competitive advantage than did their human counterparts.

But why?

Chimps Outwit Humans in Games of Strategy:

There are two possible explanations that researchers currently find plausible. The first has to do with the roles of competition and cooperation in chimpanzee versus human societies; the second with the differential evolution of human and chimpanzee brains since our evolutionary paths split between 4 and 5 million years ago.

The past half-century has seen an enormous divergence of opinion as to how cooperative or competitive humans 'naturally' are, and though this debate is far from settled, it is clear that wherever humans sit on the cooperative/competitive scale, common chimpanzees are more competitive with one another than we are.

I was happy to see a nod to cooperation as a fundamental human trait. In addition to game theorists, biologists of course have long studied the extent to which cooperation is a "natural" part of human experience. I'd wager that anthropologists have a lot to say on the matter, as would behavioral economists since classical micro-economic theory is based in human exchange being determined exclusively by a conscious self-interest. And of course, the world's monotheistic traditions have long acknowledged that humans live somewhere on the cooperative/competitive scale, observing that our default behavior is to act in our own interests, to fall short of our potential, while urging upon us a deferential course of action.

There are, sadly, limits to my generosity as well. So at the moment I'm thinking that somewhere a studio executive is crying over his vodka tonic about the missed tie-in. Also: the silent video of chimps sitting at terminals with the lights flashing is just a little bit spooky.

Stay curious. And have a great weekend.

Wayne

Curiosity Says "Nearly"

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong - Richard Feynman

In the video embedded here the famed physicist Richard Feynman talks about how our eyes are optimized to detect the narrow "optical" band of the electromagnetic spectrum, and how the longer and cooler wavelengths carry information in the form of heat. These facts are useful. In the case of the infrared (long wavelength), some space borne observatories, cooled to an operating temperature just a degree or so above absolute zero, can detect objects many billions of years old by registering the faintest of temperature spikes.

We can rely on the physics because, as Feynman says, it's all "really there!" whether we're actively looking or not. That's key. The scientist and the crackpot can both be right. They can both be wrong. The difference, however, is in the quality of the answers. Because she can do more than simply point to gaps in knowledge, the scientist, thanks to characteristics of scientific method like repeatability and falsifiability, can be wrong in productive ways.

Instead of "no," her results may suggest "nearly."

That's a lot like curiosity, wouldn't you say?

Keep an eye on this page for speaker announcements, coming soon!

Wayne

Your Phone, the Mirror

I'm a sucker for the big picture, so this piece from Prospect grabbed my attention. In it, Jacob Mikanowski reviews three books that wrestle with the transformation happening in our always-on, hyper-connect world, and connects it to a history of the self.

"All the world's an app:"

The search for the origins of the modern self has been one of the great snipe hunts in the history of the humanities. For Jacob Burckhardt it began in the Italian Renaissance; for Norbert Elias in the court of Louis XIV; for Harold Bloom it all started with Shakespeare. But the point is the same—for a long time the self was one way, and then it was another. As Lionel Trilling put it in Sincerity and Authenticity, “in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, something like a mutation in human nature took place.” Medieval people defined themselves as members of groups, and then, suddenly, they became Renaissance “individuals.” The change registers in poetry, in painting, in philosophy. You can hear it in Hamlet’s soliloquies and see it in Italian portraiture—starting around 1500, when these people look at you, they hold something back. They live inside their heads.

But do we anymore?

The irony of course is that we spend more time staring at screens than ever, lost in the promise of further connection.

Recently at the IdeaFestival, an artist debuted a mapping app. When asked for directions the software would deliberately route its users the long way around Louisville, past the Ohio river, around 19th century homes, and into off-the-map eateries before reaching the desired destination. It's that willingness to be productively lost that I think about about when I think about the IdeaFestival, because for humans, answers out of context do not know that things that they know. "Rote innovation" is a contradiction.

The great thing about IdeaFestival is that it offers different contexts for the questions that have always occupied us. If your concern is leadership, the actor or an improvisational comic might have something of use for you. The professor of evolutionary biology might suggest something interesting about the nature of altruism, as University of Louisville Professor Lee Dugatkin did in 2008. Goals matter as leader. Does the knowledge that many thousands of other planets circle other suns - some like our own yellow dwarf, and in orbits that suggest the presence of water on the surface of those worlds - change anything? Is there life elsewhere? The answer, whether yes OR no, ought to re-orient our thinking about the important things.

Our most intimate app has produced sentient, "I-am-here" creatures able to hold out many possible worlds for examination. It's been 3.5 billion years in the making, and, as Mikanowski says in Prospect, has always "required silence to access and space to experience." So if the game of comparison with your Facebook friends leaves you weary, or if the thrill of that next virtual connection is oddly deflating, perhaps, to suggest one response to his expansive review of the books that purport to describe us to ourselves in these crowded days, it's because our devices hold before us mirrors, not windows.

You might like the spoken word video embedded here. I thought at first it might perhaps be a bit overly sentimental until I realized it has amassed 40 million views. I got over my objections.

Stay curious. And keep an eye on this page for more 2014 speakers announcements, coming soon!

Wayne

Argue Like a Teacher

Is is just me? Or are we all just shouting at one another these days?

Writing his BBC Futures column, Mindhacksblog contributor Tom Stafford suggests that a misplaced self-assurance persuades many of us to do the one thing we shouldn't when trying to win someone over to our side of a disagreement - enumerate the many reasons why we're right and they're wrong.

Throw in the easy accessibility of the social media megaphone and a few cherry picked bits of information, and those strongly held views devolve into casus belli. The problem, according to Stafford, is that we often think we understand how something works when in reality, we don't. 

The Best Way to Win an Argument:

Usually, nobody tests us and if we have any questions about them we can just take a look. Psychologists call this idea that humans have a tendency to take mental short cuts when making decisions or assessments the "cognitive miser" theory.

It's a phenomenon that will be familiar to anyone who has ever had to teach something. Usually, it only takes the first moments when you start to rehearse what you'll say to explain a topic, or worse, the first student question, for you to realise that you don't truly understand it. All over the world, teachers say to each other 'I didn't really understand this until I had to teach it'. Or as researcher and inventor Mark Changizi quipped: 'I find that no matter how badly I teach I still learn something'".

Those who can mentally slip into the role of teacher get another benefit. According to research he cites, people who "provide explanations softened their views, and reported a correspondingly larger drop in how they rated their understanding of the issues," which is helpful if thinking afresh is your goal.

There's nothing like being the teacher to demonstrate how little we really know.

But if you're not feeling so charitable, there's something devilishly satisfying about asking one's adversary to explain in some detail how something works - or might work - while patiently listening. Almost inevitably there will be a pause, a wrinkled nose, a pregnant pause.

Let it linger.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by LaVladina

"By the Book" Rarely Writes a New Chapter

It's no secret that data is big. Decisions are made and projects are quashed because the numbers don't add up.

But can we rely too much on metrics? Bruce Feiler, "United States of Metrics:"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the statistician and former options trader who wrote the best-selling book “The Black Swan,” about unexpected events, said he believes the current obsession with metrics is a seductive trap.

'The evil here is not having metrics,' he said. 'The problem is that you start trying to maximize every metric you have and reduce everything else.'

Mr. Taleb said he likes knowing how many kilograms of meat he’s buying, but if his meal is measured only by kilograms of meat and calories consumed, then dozens of other uncountable qualities, like the pleasure of the food or the quality of the conversation, go ignored.

Metrics should inform decisions, but for the decision maker they will never, alone, point to the best possible outcome, and certainly not to anything fundamentally new or innovative. That's because what's new and innovative is not fully knowable now. And if an ability to innovate or fundamentally change direction is important to you or your company, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

As a snapshot of the world, metrics by themselves cannot hope to match compression algorithm already in your mind, a mere 3.5 billion years in the making. Throw in an openness to experience, a widely read and well stocked attic and a tolerance for ambiguity, and that first-person thing called conscious thought already encodes for incredible possibility. That's because, unlike the numbers in a spreadsheet or model, the human mind knows the things that it knows. Its "uncountable qualities" add crucial information to the mix.

Rather than a class in statistical regression, perhaps a course in improvisation, theater or stand-up would be beneficial. Why? Like life, creative outcomes are always a work in progress. And that next step will always be a step into the unknown.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, by the way, spoke at the IdeaFestival not long after the publication of The Black Swan.

Stay curious. 

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by out of ideas