My mom and I had a daily practice for many years: We would exchange gratitude emails. Every day, I’d email her one thing I was grateful for, and she’d email me one thing she was grateful for.

My mom sent me such emails as…

“I’m grateful for our cat Hoho who always makes me laugh.”

“I’m grateful for my gorgeous hydrangeas.”

And

“I’m grateful that I’m allergic to chocolate, so I’m not tempted to eat it.”

Which is a great positive spin on being dealt a tough genetic hand.

Over the years, I emailed her hundreds of reasons I’m grateful. One thing I wish I’d emailed more often: How grateful I am that Ellen Jacobs was my mom.

Because she was a wonderful mother.

First of all, she was supportive. So supportive. Consider this:

When my first book “The Know-It-All” came out, my mom bought so many copies on Amazon.com that the Amazon.com corporate office sent her a notice that she was forbidden to buy any more. They thought she was trying to set up her own bookstore to compete with them.

Another example: When I was researching a book on Elvis Presley, my mom volunteered to help with research. She ended up watching and taking notes on 12 Elvis movies. That’s dedication.

But it wasn’t just that she was a supportive mom. She was an inspirational mom.

She was a role model for me in so many ways — in being intellectually curious. In showing kindness whenever possible. In dealing with life’s hardships with humor. She once emailed me, “A sense of humor will get you through the toughest times--never lose it.”

I also got her gene for worrying and nervousness, but you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Being my mom was just one of her roles. She was so many things to so many people. To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman — whom she studied as an English major at Cornell — my mother contained multitudes.

Since my mom died a few days ago, I wanted to briefly talk about a handful of those roles:

MY MOM THE TEACHER

My mom spent 20 years teaching science to middle-schoolers. She was a beloved teacher, partly because she made science fun. Consider that she taught fundamental scientific principles via snacks and treats. How can you not love that?

To demonstrate the Big Bang Theory, she cooked muffins with her students. The lemon batter represented space, and the raisins were galaxies. That is still how I visualize the universe, by the way.

A few years ago, one of her students wrote me a letter about this culinary side of her teaching.

“Your mom started ’the kitchen corner’, and outfitted the area with real cooking tools and equipment. I’ll never forget my first day assigned to prepare Ants on a Log. Spreading the peanut butter on the celery stalk without it smearing over everything; getting the raisins lined up—it was too much for me. Your mom crouched next to me, guiding me through the steps. She was so encouraging

The feeling that came over me that afternoon--accomplishment and deep satisfaction--is what I’ve been chasing every night for the last 20 years.”

The writer of that letter is Dan Barber, owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, one of the most influential chefs in the world. So thank you, Mom, for inspiring Dan and hundreds of other students.

Share

MY MOM THE ARTIST

My mom was a deeply talented artist. She painted, she drew, she did calligraphy. Perhaps she shined brightest as a designer and maker of jewelry.

She made gorgeous, intricate necklaces, earrings, and bracelets with gemstones — including, of course, beryl stones (Beryl is my sister).

I remember visiting her at her jewelry studio, where she was wearing a pair of industrial-grade goggles and holding a flaming welding torch. She looked like she was on the assembly line at the Detroit Chrysler plant.

She was a specialist at something called cloisonné, which is hard to spell and even harder to master. She would use melted enamel and wire to make these detailed, beautiful images of swans or flowers.

Her friend and teacher Melissa said my mom’s cloisonné work made her a “legend” at the jewelry studio. That was the word she used: Legend. She gifted her jewelry to friends and family, and I love seeing them wear it proudly to this day.

MY MOM THE GRANDMA

My mom loved being a grandmother and she excelled at that role. In fact, she had a T-shirt that said…

“What happens at Grandma’s, stays at Grandma’s”

My mom was just the right amount of indulgent to her five grandkids, Jasper, Zane, Lucas, Isabella and Micaela.

When my sons were little, she picked them up from school at least once a week and took them to our local grocery store to buy lollipops. I wasn’t supposed to know, but the grocery store owner spilled the beans. I have come to accept it.

MY MOM THE CAT MOM

There was only one thing that got as much love and indulgence as her grandkids, and that was Hoho the cat.

I’d often visit her and she’d be lying on her bed reading a magazine. But she’d be curled up in the Northwest corner of the mattress, and Hoho would be spreading himself out over the vast mainland. I’m not sure how a little cat could take up that much room, but he did. And of course, he’d be getting his whiskers petted, and he’d be loving it.

MY MOM THE SUPPORTIVE FRIEND

My mom’s 80th birthday happened during the quarantine, so we couldn’t throw a party, of course. Instead, Beryl and I asked several of her friends and family members to write short notes about how our mom had impacted their lives. The notes were remarkable, so moving and full of love.

And one of the recurring themes was just how much our mom helped friends and family through tough times — divorces, deaths in the family, business failures.

You were a “lifeline,” one friend wrote, citing my mom’s kindness, gentleness, and wisdom.

MY MOM THE SPOUSE

Both of my parents hit the jackpot, spouse-wise.

They loved and adored each other from the time they met as students at Cornell, and their marriage has been a model for me in my own marriage.

My dad had a particularly difficult job these last couple of years, as he had to be caretaker for my mom as she battled dementia. But he never wavered, frequently reminding us during the crisis, “Your mom is an amazing woman.”

And she, in turn, was a wonderful wife to my dad.

Early in their marriage, she moved from New York to Korea where my dad was stationed in the Army. And she and Beryl lived in Korea for 15 months. Moving across the world would be adventurous now — but fifty years ago, before WiFi and chain stores — it was truly a bold leap of faith.

My mom was the greatest audience for my dad’s jokes. Even though she had heard them once or twice or a thousand times before, she still loved his repertoire of classics.

She still chuckled every time he went to a friend’s house and ordered a “Yellow Lightning” - a fictional drink consisting of tequila and lemon Kool-Aid. My dad made it up on the theory that no one had both ingredients in their house. My mom would be the merciful half of the pair, explaining to the flustered hosts that it was an elaborate joke.

But she wasn’t just an audience. She had a delightfully mischievous sense of humor of her own. And she was good at poking gentle fun at my dad. For instance, my dad spent hours in the summer writing his law books on the beach. She always said he was so focused that he never looked up at the scenery. He wouldn’t even notice if a tidal wave came and swallowed him up. As a birthday present, she painted him a T-shirt with an image of my dad’s beach hat floating on the ocean. He wore it proudly for years.

MY MOM THE BOOK LOVER

My mom loved books (one of the reasons I was interested in becoming a writer). One expression of that love was her decades of work with the New York Public Library. There, she served two terms as head of the 500 library volunteers.

And she gave hundreds of tours as a docent to the library’s exhibitions. These exhibitions changed several times a year, and my mom would have to learn an entire new topic — Biblical literature, Chinese art, you name it.

She had a way of making the tours particularly engaging, finding the most interesting details. I remember there was an exhibit on restaurants, which had a section on diners. My mom learned some of the diner lingo used by the waitresses and cooks, and taught some phrases to her tour groups. Thanks to my mom, I know that milk is called “moo juice.” And a decaf coffee with nonfat milk? That’s called a “why bother.”

Subscribe now

MY MOM THE DETERMINED OPTIMIST

I use the word “determined,” because optimism didn’t come naturally to her. My mom, like me, was born with a gene for worrying. She and I are both very good at picturing worst case scenarios.

But together, we worked to fight this. We sent the above-mentioned gratitude emails. We reminded ourselves how lucky we were to have a family like ours.

For the last three years of her life, several times a week, my mom and I would watch a classic Hollywood musical together.

And during that time, we watched not one, not two, but three songs about seeing the good side of all the rain that falls in your life. There was “Singin’ in the Rain,” of course. And one called “It’s Lovely Weather for Ducks,” sung by Rosemary Clooney. And another called “Isn’t this a Lovely Day,” sung by a drenched Fred Astaire.

And that is what we tried to do together, as the rain fell pretty hard toward the end of her life. We cherished those hours watching musicals together, and singing along, usually slightly off-key.

As you can see, my mom really did contain multitudes. But the common thread running through all of her identities was this: She left the world a better place.

She left it more beautiful place, thanks to her jewelry and art.

She left it kinder place, thanks to her role modeling.

She left it smarter place, thanks to teaching and tour-giving and book-reading.

All of which makes me send this belated email to her: I’m grateful to you, mom, for being such a bright light in this world, and for teaching me so much.

Leave a comment

Here’s something I’m 90 percent certain is true: The misinformation crisis continues to get worse and poses a real threat to civilization.

Here’s something I’m 75 percent certain is true: There are several strategies that can help you get closer to the truth, even if they aren’t foolproof.

Here’s something I’m 99 percent certain is true: I’ve always wanted to invent something whose initials spell out a relevant word, like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) or BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code).

That day is here!

I’ve come up with the cleverly named TRUTH system. As I said, it’s not perfect. It won’t end the epistemic crisis caused by, among other things, A.I. slop and a president with a severe allergy to the factual statements.

But I find it helpful and hope you will too.

Here’s how it works:

When I hear or read an alleged fact, I try to put that fact through these five steps in the TRUTH process (no trademark pending, available to all!)

Namely:

T – Turn the statement into a specific, falsifiable claim

R – Rate the likelihood it is true

U – Understand how the fact fits into the bigger picture

T – Take stock of your feelings

H – How should you act in response to this knowledge?

I’ll illustrate the TRUTH system with a hypothetical scenario – but will happily go through other examples in the comments if you want.

Imagine a friend tells you: “There’s a killer shark off the coast of New Jersey!”

T – Turn the statement into a specific, falsifiable claim (or claims).

First, you need to convert any vague phrases and loaded words into testable sentences. Your friend’s killer shark claim is relatively specific, but you could still make it more precise.

You ask your friend for more details of what she heard. With the new info, you refine the statement into this one: “A shark killed a man yesterday off the coast of New Jersey.”

Note that this claim – like perhaps most claims – is actually a bundle of claims. One part can be true and others false. There are several elements that could be falsified. Was it really a shark? Was it really New Jersey? Was the victim a man? Was it really yesterday? These are concrete nuggets that can be investigated.

Turning the shark statement into something more concrete is a relatively straightforward job. But in other cases, it takes a lot of work to turn vague and general statements into something specific. If someone says, “crime is out of control,” that’s hard to assess whether that is true – until you do the hard work of asking what “out of control” means and which crimes we are discussing.

Subscribe now

R – Rate the likelihood that the statement is true.

This step is all about figuring out a percentage likelihood that the statement is true. The end goal is to be able to say something such as, “I think there’s probably a 70 percent chance this is true.”

Notice I’m not asking for certainty. Certainty is tempting, but it’s usually unearned and often dangerous. Percentages and probabilities are 100 percent preferable.

In order to determine the truth rating, you can examine evidence (including looking for disconfirming evidence). You can look at sources, incentives, alternative explanations, and prior probability.

In the case of our shark attack, we could start with the sources. How did your friend know about the attack? She heard it from a friend who saw it online. Hmm. Pretty shaky.

So you go on a search engine or AI platform and look for reliable sources that have reported it. In this hypothetical, let’s say a major city newspaper and a public radio station have independently reported pieces on a shark attack. You’ve found these two outlets decently reliable (not perfect) in the past, so you raise your percentage.

But hold on! When you read the articles, it confirms there was a shark attack – yet the articles say the attack happened off Long Island, not New Jersey. So, you need to revise the sentence that you are assessing. The new sentence is: “A shark killed a man yesterday off the coast of Long Island.”

Before giving this revised claim a rating, you could ask about incentives: Are there any strong motivations for your sources to lie? In this case, not really, aside from the lust for clicks.

You can also ask: How extraordinary is the claim? As the great Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Shark attacks are rare, but not extraordinary. If your friend had said that a polka-dotted dragon swooped down from the sky and killed a man, I’d want a lot more evidence than two articles.

For those familiar with Bayesian thinking, this concept of extraordinariness is somewhat akin to the idea of “priors.” How plausible did you think the claim was before seeing this new evidence, and how strongly should the new evidence cause you to update?

So weighing these factors – reliability of evidence and extraordinariness of the claim -- you come up with a rating: there’s a 95 percent chance this new bundle of statements (with Long Island, not New Jersey) is true.

U – Understand the context of the fact, and how it fits into the wider world.

This step is all about seeing the fact from a 30,000-foot view. A fact can be technically accurate in isolation, but misleading in the broader sense. Here, we ask: Why should we care about this fact? How important is it in the grand scheme?

For this step, you look at base rates, trends, comparisons, denominators, and scale. How many fatal shark attacks occur off Long Island every year? And in the U.S. every year?Given the number of swimmers versus attacks, what are your chances of being attacked if you go swimming off Long Island this weekend?

How about shark attacks over time? Are they getting rarer or more common? How many were there last year, 10 years ago, 50 years ago? How many people are killed by shark attacks compared to other deadly animal attacks in the world? Snakes? Dog bites? And what about mosquitoes and malaria?

How common are shark-related deaths compared to other causes of death: Heart attacks, car accidents, tripping over wires in your office, etc.

One big lesson I’ve learned is that you can select true facts to create an accurate but wildly distorted view of reality. For instance, suppose someone utters the inflammatory sentence, “Harriet Tubman drugged children with opium.” That is likely true. Tubman did, according to sources, give babies and young children paregoric, an opium-based medicine. But in isolation, the fact creates a deeply misleading impression. Tubman was guiding enslaved people to freedom at enormous personal risk, and crying children could reveal the group’s location to slave catchers. She apparently used the drug to keep them quiet during these extraordinarily dangerous journeys. It’s the same fact, but once you supply the context, it’s a radically different picture.

T – Take stock of your feelings in reaction to the (perhaps) true fact.

Now it’s time for emotions. I know! Holding off on your emotions is a tall order – and probably impossible. We’re not robots or Vulcans. But still, there are advantages to asking your emotions to be patient.

When you read something on the internet, it’s tempting to react with instant outrage or fear. But it’s quite likely you’re feeling outrage or fear for something that’s not true, distorted, or out of context. So as much as you can, try to hold off on the outrage and other emotions until you have the proper knowledge and context.

How should you feel about this shark attack? There’s no single correct answer, of course. And you’ll likely have multiple feelings.

Perhaps compassion for the man’s friends and family. And fear – but how much fear? When you realize how rare the shark attacks are, maybe this should go pretty far down on your list of daily worries.

What about anger at the shark? Perhaps. But is that a good use of mental energy? As Starbuck tells the whale-obsessed Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, “Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness!”

Share

H – How should you change your behavior or perception of the world?

The final step is to ask yourself what to do with this information. How should it change your behavior or core beliefs, if at all?

Suppose you are going to the Long Island beach this weekend. Knowing that shark attacks are very rare – and that you’re more likely to be killed by a rip current – maybe you’re willing to take the small risk and go swimming if swimming gives you great pleasure. Or maybe you’re risk-averse and this tiny chance of a shark attack is enough to dissuade you.

If you do decide to go swimming, what are the best practices for keeping safe from sharks? Does the minor scrape on your knee meaningfully increase your risk of a shark bite? (Probably not, but you should probably stay out of water with an actively bleeding wound0.

Or else, maybe the information about shark attacks inspires you to act in other ways. Your sources say the warming oceans are pushing some shark species farther north. Does this make you more inclined to give money to an environmental cause

As I said, this is not a perfect system. The TRUTH system will not always lead to the truth. But, I believe, it’s a helpful tool — plus I’m very proud of the initials.

By the way, I’m the first to admit I’m not a perfect user of the TRUTH system. Consider that my opening claim — “the misinformation crisis continues to worsen” — fails my very first test. What exactly counts as misinformation? And what about disinformation? According to which metric is it “worse?” Touche, TRUTH system!

Please let me know your strategies for determining the truth. I’d love to hear them. True fact!

Leave a comment

It all started because I was curious about the phrase “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.”

I wanted to know: Do rose-colored glasses actually make you see the world more positively?

So, I bought a pair and wore them for two days straight.

Did they work? Kind of. At least for a while. The world appeared a bit softer, less threatening. I felt like I was living in a giant version of Elle Woods’ bedroom – pink everywhere. When I read a pink email on my pink laptop screen about a pink unpaid bill, it was just a skosh less annoying.

My psychological boost didn’t last. By the second day, I’d adjusted to my new reality. Not to mention that I looked embarrassingly goofy -- Julie asked me if I was starting a Janis Joplin tribute band.

But the rose-colored glasses sparked my curiosity. What could I learn from seeing the world through other types of lenses? So, I ordered some glasses. And then I ordered some more. By the end, I had 14 types of vision-altering glasses, including:

--Yellow-tinted glasses

--Rear-view glasses

--Night vision goggles

--90-degree-shifting prism glasses

--Goggles that simulate what it’s like to be “totally wasted”

--Goggles that simulate what it’s like to be on Molly/LSD

--Glasses to make you see like an insect

I tested all my new glasses over the course of a week, wearing them each for several hours to a day, both indoors and out. I got lots of feedback from family members, who made sure to walk 20 feet behind me in public.

But it’s been worth it. The Multiple Lenses Project has been a fascinating experiment. Revelatory and humbling. I learned a lot about the limits and distortions of human vision. And perhaps more important, it allowed me to think about metaphorical lenses. How we view everything – life, history, our relationships – through specific lenses and filters. And how important it is to shift lenses, to see the world from multiple points of view, especially in these polarized times.

But before I expand on that, let me tell you three lessons I learned from my collection of 14 literal lenses.

Subscribe now

Lesson Number 1: We see only a small slice of reality.

Imagine if you’d only tasted the most common fruits -- apples, oranges, pears, bananas. You’d never had a bite of papaya, mango or passionfruit, or the 6,000-or-so other edible fruits the world has to offer.

That’s kind of like our vision. The Multiple Lens Project drove home a humbling lesson: human vision captures just a small slice of what’s out in the world. There’s so much out there we cannot perceive.

First of all, we only see what’s in front of our face. I’m jealous of insects that have 360-degree vision. I’m annoyed that evolution has cursed us with dumb forward-facing eyes. So I bought glasses equipped with rear-view (you can glance to the side to see the world behind you). This all-round vision is both disorienting and empowering. I felt a little less paranoid. I liked knowing what was going on behind my back. Not that I’m expecting a mafia hit soon, but Julie sometimes (unintentionally) startles me by coming up behind me while I’m working. Not a problem with these bad boys.

Secondly, unlike cats and owls, we humans have terrible night vision. So I bought night vision goggles and walked around my apartment after dark. Again, fascinating. Intellectually, I’ve grasped the concept of object permanence since I was five months old. Things don’t just disappear when they are out of sight. But when the lights are off, I still forget that the world still exists as concretely and vividly as it does in daylight. So it was startling to see the titles of books on the bookshelf lit up in eerie green light. They’re still there!

Third, we can’t see tiny things. So I got a microscope camera that I attached to Julie’s iPad and got a look at the hidden world I was missing -including the ocean of tiny pink mushrooms on my tongues surface.

The bottom line: Human vision is severely limited. It’s a tiny slice of reality. In fact, as I’ll discuss in a moment, we only see a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We don’t see infrared. We don’t see ultraviolet, as do butterflies and bees. Our band of visible light is narrow – just a tiny sliver of a much bigger spectrum.

Lesson Number 2: We are bad at noticing.

Even for those objects in our vision, we’re absurdly selective about what we notice. Perhaps you’ve seen that video of the unseen gorilla among the bouncing basketballs? It’s a great example of inattentional blindness: when we focus on one thing, other obvious things can disappear from our awareness.

A couple of my glasses drove home my failure to notice what’s around me. First, I wore glasses that ONLY allowed peripheral vision. They were quite DIY. I took a pair of glasses, and covered the center of the lenses with masking tape but left the far left and right sides uncovered. I don’t recommend this for long-term use, especially when walking around NYC streets, which was terrifying. But the goggles provided epiphanies. They allowed me to focus on the margins I usually ignore. For the first time in fifteen years, I really noticed the artwork on our apartment walls (including the collage by our son of a boy giving a thumbs-up, which looks more like he’s flipping us off, which made me chuckle).

Second, I gave the 90-degree prism glasses a whirl. These lenses shift the world by a 90-degree angle. If you’re standing up with your eyes straight ahead, you see the floor. If you’re lying with your head on the pillow, you’ll see your feet – allowing you to read a book without holding it aloft.

The prism glasses were also a bit scary – I had to walk zombie-style, with my hands extended in front of me to prevent wall-crashing. But the new perspective also allowed me to notice things I missed. When typing, the glasses made me focus on the keyboard, not the screen. For the first time, I noticed that the semicolon is taking up prime real estate – right under the pinkie. What the hell, semicolon? I also got to look at the back of my hands. Contrary to the proverb, I don’t know them well. I got to know the fascinating mesh of veins and tiny wrinkles.

Lesson Number 3: Different lenses shape reality in different ways.

Reality looks very different depending on the lens.

I already mentioned the Elle Woods Effect of my rose-tinted glasses. I also tried yellow-tinted glasses, because a friend told me yellow lenses made him happier (yellow is the color of smiley-faces, I guess). For me, the effect was more instant nostalgia. It turned the world into a yellowing old newspaper photograph.

Speaking of color, I loaded an app on my iPhone called Color Blind Pal. This app helps people with color blindness identify colors, but it can also be used to simulate what it’s like to see the world from the perspective of a person with colorblindness. I held my iPhone up to my closet to see the familiar red blazer turned gray.

But color blindness is a relative term. Most humans are blind to colors with wavelengths shorter than 380 and longer than 750 nanometers. And most of us have never seen the color olo. I’d never heard of olo until a week ago. I learned about it from a fascinating article in The New Yorker. Apparently, some scientists claim to have been able to stimulate cone cells in a way that reveals a mind-bogglingly intense green most humans have never experienced. The color is named olo.

Moving on from color, there are a whole host of glasses and lenses that alter your vision to educate, to teach compassion, or just for kicks.

I bought glasses that mimic the fuzziness of cataracts and the tunnel vision of ring scotoma. Which made me simultaneously sad for those afflicted (including, perhaps, my future self) and grateful for the vision I do have, even though I’m both increasingly near-and farsighted.

I also found a company called “Drunkbusters.” They make ski goggles that are supposed to discourage teenagers from binge-drinking and drunk driving. They claim the goggles replicate the vision of a “totally wasted” person. To me, it was more like looking through a funhouse mirror: The world was tilted, blurred and doubled. My son tried them on and said, “I have a sudden urge to send a text I’ll regret later.” I also bought the Molly/LSD goggles, which just seemed like a “totally wasted” person who’d had another beer.

In one sense, all these glasses are distorting reality. But distorting is a tricky word. Because even 20-20 sober human vision is distorted – or at least tansformed and highly edited. Our brains distort the signals in numerous ways, both helpful and unhelpful. We divide the world into figure versus ground, we fill in missing edges and our eyes’ blind spots, we smooth out color when the light is uneven, and on and on. These alterations are usually beneficial, but they can backfire as well.

Share

The Importance of Different Metaphorical Lenses

As I mentioned, the Multiple Lenses Project allowed me to think about metaphorical lenses in addition to literal lenses. I believe we view everything – life, history, our relationships – through specific filters.

As a high schooler, I went through a Marxist phase, and saw everything through the lens of class struggle. It can be a useful lens. It can make you aware of the wealth imbalance and the shortcomings of our current system.

But if that’s your only lens, I think it’s too limiting. I now look at the world through many lenses. Sometimes I’ll put on my behavioral economics lenses – and notice how much of human behavior is shaped by irrational cognitive biases. Sometimes I’ll put on my physics lenses and think about how everything I see (peanut butter jars, chickens, cruise ships) are temporary aberrations on the road toward maximum entropy.

All these lenses have their pros and cons (some have more cons than others). All highlight one version of reality, but not the entire thing. I believe the best approach is to have a collection of multiple lenses with which to view reality, and to constantly switch them.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous essay by Isaiah Berlin titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” It’s based on an ancient Greek idea about two types of thinkers. A hedgehog views the world through a single lens, whether that’s Marxism or Christianity. A fox views it through multiple lenses, combining approaches and strategies. The saying goes, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Let me put in a plug for one of my favorite lenses: The telescopic lens. I love the telescopic lens. Every morning, I try to zoom out. Way out. I remind myself that my experienced reality is just a tiny sliver of the whole. I’m one of eight billion people on Earth. The Earth is a tiny corner of the vast universe. I’m here on Earth for an eensy portion of the universe’s billions-of-years-long cycle, like a single frame in a three-hour David Lean epic. Some might find this perspective depressing, and maybe it is. But I find it humbling and compassion-building.

One last lesson this experiment taught me: The importance of noticing the lenses themselves. One of my favorite parts of wearing my 14 lenses was the feeling I got when I took them off. The jolt of remembering that the pink hue was not permanent.

Like the proverbial fish that asks “what’s water?”, I spend a lot of time oblivious to my own lenses. I’m very good at filtering out the positive. I often wear lenses that expertly spot everything that went wrong in a day. I have to remind myself to also don the lenses that notice the hundreds of things that go right every day. For obvious reasons, I need those lenses more than ever.

I’d love to hear what lenses you find helpful, both literal and metaphorical.

Leave a comment

Here’s the Zoom link…

rb.gy/7a5axt

Experimentally yours, A.J.

Read more

Hello!
It’s been too long since I got to hang out with the VIP Experimenters on Zoom.

So I thought we could do one from 8 pm ET to 9 pm ET on Wednesday August 5 (in two days). We can talk about whatever we want (writing, the state of the world, favorite vegetables, etc)

Hope to see some of you there. Let me know if you are coming – I’m at ajjacobs1@gmail…

Read more

Let me start by apologizing for the headline to this piece.

The phrase “The Death of Nuance” is embarrassingly self-contradictory – it’s completely lacking in nuance.

A more proper headline would be:

“For Various Reasons, There Has Been a Decline in Nuanced Information and Nuanced Thinking in Some Parts of Our Lives!” (1)

But I was worried no one would click on that headline.

Which illustrates the very real problem I’m writing about: binary thinking and extremist statements are so damn alluring.

My headline is also inadequate because it leaves out perhaps the more important part of this essay: The potential solutions. A more nuanced headline would end with the phrase:

“…But I Have A Quixotic Belief That We Can Stop Or Even Reverse This Trend, And Here Are Some Suggestions On How To Do It!”

To back up: I decided to write this piece after reading Rose Horowitch’s article in The Atlantic called “The End of Reading is Here.” (2)

Horowitch’s article caused a stir for a reason: It’s a great essay, and a disturbing one. It contains disturbing statistics – only 16 percent of Americans read for pleasure on any given day, according to a 2023 survey. Less than 10 percent of 20-somethings read the newspaper every day.

And disturbing quotes. A Harvard sociology professor is quoted as saying some of her students view assigned reading as a punishment. They think “professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through this more difficult medium.”

Horowitch says reading books and long articles are being replaced by TikTok videos, podcasts, Instagram captions, and text messages.

This is bad for many reasons, says Horowitch. One of which is that it imperils democracy. Democracy requires citizens to be informed by lenghthy, complex chains of reasoning. If most of us are informed by 10-second clips, our politics become more emotional, visual, and personality-driven.

As I said, it’s a great article in many ways – and disturbing. As an author, I was tempted to curl up in the fetal position under my desk after I finished it.

But there’s a profound irony in The Atlantic’s presentation of this article. The article —which decries the decline in subtle thinking and the rise of outrageous binary statements – is headlined with an outrageous binary statement.

The article argues there’s a war against nuance, quoting a scholar at a conservative-leaning think tank on how best to exploit social media. “You name an enemy and you polarize the public,” he said. “You don’t allow for nuance, because nuance is just a confusion when you’re in a struggle for power.”

Isn’t that an apt description of the headline itself? I understand the incentive of the headline writer, and I don’t blame them too much. They want people to read an article that decries the incentive itself.

Thankfully, the article is much more balanced than the headline. First of all, Horowitch points out reading itself is not ending. We are still reading a huge amount – it’s just that we’re reading short, simple things: Text messages and Instagram captions.

The real problem isn’t the death of all reading, but instead the decline of deep reading. We’re reading fewer complex books and long arguments. Deep reading is becoming “a kind of niche hobby, like stamp collecting or growing orchids,” as one historian said to Horowitch.

Horowitch’s article belongs to a long line of obituary-themed headlines and titles. A small sampling includes:

The Death of the Author (an essay by literary theorist Roland Barthes)

The Death of Newspapers (a common headline in media articles)

The Death of Expertise (a book by Tom Nichols)

The End of History and the Last Man (a book by futurist Francis Fukuyama)

The End of College (a book by education writer Kevin Carey)

The End of Work (a book by Jeremy Rifkin)

Not to mention that original clickbaiter Friedrich Nietzsche, with his

“God is dead”

Subscribe now

In fact, many years ago, I did a series of humor pieces for Esquire poking fun at this trend. I wrote fake obituaries announcing the death of some aspect of culture, such as

“The last shred of human dignity died Sunday on the set of Big Brother 7 in Los Angeles. It was 10,052 years old. The cause was contestant fellating a zucchini.”

I understand why “death of” titles are such a popular trope. They’re tailor-made for the amygdala. They inspire fear, shock, and outrage. Simplicity sells.

Imagine if The Atlantic piece had the more accurate headline:

“If Current Trends Continue, Very Few People Will Spend Time Reading Deep and Lengthy Texts And This Is a Problem for Our Society”

Would it have gone as viral? Probably not. It’s the same reason you rarely see headlines such as “The Pros and Cons of X.” Or why you don’t see books anymore with titles like the memoir of 19th century scientist Robert Boyle

“Occasional Reflections on Several Subjects.”

Yowza! Who could resist picking that one up?

In fact, the “Death of” headlines are just a subset of absolutist and binary headlines. Another popular variety are headlines with superlatives– “The Best Movies in History,” “The Worst Vegetables for Your Health.”

And there are the titles that use absolutist words such as “All” or “None.” Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. I recently ran across an 1896 article from The New York Times called…..“All Dogs Deserve Death.”

Wow. That is one ye olde hot take! And it proves that clickbait existed long before clicks.

Share

Such outrageous titles increase the chance the article will get read, so you could argue that’s a worthwhile sacrifice. But the absolutist language comes at a huge cost.

It encourages binary thinking and discourages nuance. The best kind of nuance is about exposing the complexity of life, showing the grays in between the black and white. It’s about showing that there is often a third (or fourth or fifth) way, an alternative solution. It’s about looking at the world from the 30,000-foot view, putting life into context, asking why does it have to be just those two options?

All-or-nothing language also causes rage and fear and overreaction, which I believe are ill-suited for discovering the best solutions to our world’s many problems.

So what are the solutions to this particular problem? Well, I shouldn’t use the word solution. There’s no perfect solution. But here are some humble suggestions on how to battle absolute, headline-like thinking:

1) Come Up with Your Own Headlines to Articles

Whenever I see a headline in the media, I do a fun mental exercise: I try to translate it to a more accurate headline.

If an entertainment site runs a list called “The Best Movies of All Time”

I translate that in my mind into:

“Here’s a list of some movies that our three movie critics really liked, though admittedly they haven’t seen every movie ever made and have tastes that may not align with yours.”

Or else, consider this headline I found on today’s NPR homepage:

“Adults have struggled to set rules for AI in school. These teens figured it out.”

After reading the article, I translate the headline to:

“A group of 98 students came up with a series of suggestions about AI use in school that may help, but are untested, and also the technology is changing so fast they may be obsolete soon.”

And don’t restrict yourself to just headlines. When watching The Bachelor, I translate the host’s comments to: “This rose ceremony is slightly to the right of center on the bell curve of dramatic rose ceremonies.”

2) Try to resist absolutist language when you write

If you create content, try to resist the temptation of absolute and sensational headlines.

I confess! I’m a sinner myself. I’ve used plenty of sensational headlines. For instance, my book “The Year of Living Biblically” would probably be more accurately titled:

“The 14 Months I Tried to Follow the Rules of the Bible Literally And Also Meet Various Religious Groups, Though I Still Used Some Modern Technology Because The Bible Doesn’t Say ‘Thou Shalt Not Use Your Laptop.’”

But I pledge to try to do better. And in my defense, I often try to hedge my headlines, or give them a self-deprecating gloss. For instance, my Substack essay, “Can Puns Save Democracy? Probably not. But Maybe?”

3) Replace Global statements with Specific Observations

Of course, absolutist thinking isn’t limited to the media. It’s all over our everyday lives – especially in relationships.

Therapists wisely advise us to avoid all-or-nothing language.

If you say “You never listen to me,” you’re pretty much guaranteed to make the other party defensive.

Instead, you could say:

“When I was telling you about my client just now and you checked your text messages, I felt ignored. Could you put it away while I finish?”

4) Seek out Nuanced Information

Read widely. Read things that annoy you. Or bore you. The Week magazine used to have a section called “Boring But Important.” I love that phrase, because much of the information we need to understand the world is, in fact, kinda boring. Budgets are boring but important. Base rates are boring but important.

Speaking of base rates, when you read something, ask yourself what is the bigger picture. Use questions such as “out of how many?” “How has it changed over time?” “Compared to what?” If there’s a shark attack, ask how common are shark attacks (especially compared to other ways of dying).

For those of you who use AI for research (and I understand the moral complexities of doing so), I recommend framing your prompts to encourage nuance. For instance, try saying “Tell me about the pros and cons of X topic.”

And when AI gives you its results, make sure to check the sources and weed out hallucinations.

But that’s just a start. I know there are other ways to battle the all-or-nothing plague (is that sensational, to call it a plague?) Please put your suggestions in the comments. I need more strategies.

Also, thank you for reading this article, especially if it’s the last article you will ever read in this post-literate world!

FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTE 1: An important Nuance about the Nuance of Nuance!

As I said, the best kind of nuance is about exposing the true complexity of life.

But the idea of “nuance” can be exploited by those looking to introduce unwarranted doubt. I wrote about this phenomenon in an essay on the phenomenon of “agnotology.”

This distortion of nuance comes in several flavors: “Both-sideism,” “What-aboutism, and false equivalencies, of instance. When writing about evolution, it’s an abuse of the concept of “nuance” to provide so-called balance by quoting a debunked creationist.

True nuance is not the same as giving voice to pseudo-science and quacks. Like everything in life, nuance requires nuance

FOOTNOTE 2:

The headline “The End of Reading Is Here” is from the online version of The Atlantic article. Interestingly, the print edition of The Atlantic headlined the piece “The Age of Reading Is Over” – which seems equally all-or-nothing.

FOOTNOTE 3:

Thanks to my friend Peter Norvig for alerting me to a related media sin: Headlines that end in question marks. He told me about the Betteridge Law of Headlines, which states that any headline ending with a question mark can be answered “no.” The reason: If the journalist had proof, they wouldn’t pose it as a question.

Leave a comment

Here are some things I did this morning, as described by an alien from another planet:

1. I ingested an unfertilized reproductive cell of another species.

2. I rapidly moved my feet on a revolving surface while remaining in the same location.

3. I stared at a glowing rectangle, then stared at a larger glowing rectangle.

4. I used a sharp metal object to remove some protein strands on my face but left those over my eyes untouched.

In other words, as you likely figured out, I ate an omelet. Walked on my treadmill. Looked at my iPhone and laptop. And shaved my face (but not my eyebrows).

For the last few months, I’ve tried to spend a little time every day thinking like an alien. It’s become part of my morning routine: Describe some aspect of human behavior as if I’d never encountered it before.

There’s a phrase in anthropology called “making the familiar strange.” That’s what the thinking-like-an-alien mental exercise does for me.

The benefits are many. It’s good for my sense of wonder. It keeps my hubris in check. It helps me generate ideas. It gives me perspective on our current politics. And it stops me from sleepwalking through life and allows me to appreciate the bizarre beauty and/or absurdity of the human existence.

The strategy goes by several names. It’s also known as “defamiliarization.” Russian theorists call it “ostranenie.” And it has a long history. Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story from the point of view of a horse, who was baffled by the human concept of private property.

It’s a staple of comedy. Obviously, you can see it in aliens-on-earth comedies such as SNL’s Coneheads or 3^rd Rock from the Sun. But much of observational comedy also uses the tactic. Consider Jerry Seinfeld’s famous routine about how bizarre sports fandom is. The players are constantly moving from team to team, so we’re basically rooting for the uniform. We’re cheering for laundry.

There are even parodies of defamiliarization, such as the “honkwiching” meme -- in which aliens describe an absurd ritual that doesn’t exist: Namely, trombone players blowing sandwiches into each other’s mouths.

But it’s about more than comedy. It can increase our sense of awe and open our minds. Novelist Saul Bellow was a fan of the tactic for this reason. In a 1997 NYT interview, he said he adopts the Alien Perspective and pretends ‘’I’ve never seen the world before. Now I [am] seeing it, and it’s a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchanting reality.” (1)

Subscribe now

Let me break down why I find the Alien Perspective useful…

BENEFIT #1: IT’S A CURE FOR HUBRIS

I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that my rituals, my way of life, are the correct ones. The rational way. Defamiliarization reminds me this is an illusion: To an alien, much of my daily life would look insane -- so I shouldn’t be so judgmental of other people’s rituals and ways of life.

This lesson was drilled home when I was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica for my first book. What really nailed it for me was the entry on “body modification.”

The entry summarized the many ways that cultures throughout history have stretched and distorted body parts. The head flattening of the Choctaw tribe. The neck stretching of the Kayan women of Myanmar. Oh, and the extreme breast augmentation of the 21^st century North Americans.

It was a humbling moment. There I was reading along, thinking how exotic and irrational other cultures are, until BOOM, it became clear that modern America’s body modifications would appear just as bizarre to an alien observing earth.

“So why exactly do women put saltwater bags in their torsos to enlarge their infant nutrient delivery organs?” an alien might ask.

When I was a teenager, my parents showed me the famous 1956 satirical essay by anthropologist Horace Miner called “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” Nacirema is “American” backwards. And in the essay, Miner describes American customs in the same way that anthropologists describe other tribes. He says the Nacirema tribe cleans teeth by “inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth…and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.” (2)

Defamiliarization can make our lives and rituals sound ridiculous, and that’s kind of the point. I think it’s healthy to laugh at ourselves, to recognize our own limitations. It can be a good coping technique, too– for instance, stopping you from getting too depressed when the millionaires wearing your preferred laundry lose to other millionaires wearing laundry of a different color.

BENEFIT #2: IT OPENS YOUR MIND

The Alien Perspective reminds me that the human customs and behavior I’ve grown up with are not the only option. They are not the default. And that realization gets me out of my mental rut. It opens my mind up to new options.

Kevin Kelly, a great writer and the co-founder of Wired, endorsed the Alien Perspective as a tool for creativity and understanding. In an essay called “How to Future,” he said one key to predicting the future is seeing the present with “alien eyes.” New York Times columnist Ezra Klein took up this challenge and applied Alien Eyes to the question of whether the American system will collapse soon. (Unlikely, but not impossible).

Like Klein, I’ve found the Alien Perspective helpful in deciphering politics – and in realizing there are other potential solutions. The current system in America has plenty of good aspects, but it also has ridiculous ones. Defamiliarization can help identify the most absurd of these.

For instance, here’s an alien description of the our country’s Electoral College method of choosing a president:

The leader of this landmass is the person who receives the greatest number of filled-in ovals, unless those filled-in ovals originate inside certain invisible lines on the landmass, in which case the leader is the person who receives the second most filled-in ovals.

It’s crazy, right?

And it’s not just politics. It can help us be more open to change in other areas — even the most basic ones. Take bidets. A lot of Americans are bidet-suspicious. But adopt an alien perspective: Does it make more sense to inefficiently clean waste matter from your backside with dry, dead tree matter – or to clean it efficiently with water?

The approach can be a boon to science, as well. One way a scientist can see the world is to examine some phenomenon and say, “Why is it even like that?” Darwin may never have imagined himself an extraterrestrial, but his approach to science has shades of the ET mindset.

BENEFIT #3: IT RESTORES WONDER

The Alien Perspective prevents us from sleepwalking through life. It’s a powerful mindfulness tool. Yes, it’s good at highlighting life’s absurdities (rooting for laundry), but at the same time, it can increase our joy and awe. You can have both reactions at once.

For instance, isn’t it amazing that the air movement created by horse hair rubbed on sheep intestines can produce such happiness? (That would be a violin and bow, or at least traditionally made ones).

Isn’t it lovely that tiny fires on top of a sugar disk can give us a sense of connection and meaning (birthday parties).

Share

If you’re a fish, you don’t notice the water. But as humans, we can notice the metaphorical water, be grateful for it, and refuse to take it for granted.

We can do the same with literal water. Isn’t it remarkable that I can turn a metal knob and immediately get rainwater that has traveled 200 miles and was cleaned of tiny poisonous creatures along the way?

As with everything in life, defamiliarization has drawbacks. You can use it in an overly flippant or demeaning or nihilistic way. Love can be turned into oxytocin. Art can be reduced to nonsense. Here’s a description I found on Reddit of a beloved movie:

A boy with zero supervision gets a space sword from an old man, joins an extremist group, and blows up a government space station.

If the nine-year-old Star Wars-obsessed me had read that description, he would have been enraged and/or depressed. There’s a danger of taking something sacred and making it mundane.

But overall, I think the Alien Perspective is one of our most powerful mental tools. And there are so many parts of life to which we can apply it.

I hope that in the comments, you’re inspired to write Alien Descriptions of other human activities. For starters, in honor of my late grandmother, here’s what she said was her favorite thing I ever wrote : “We honor our dead leaders by licking the backsides of their portraits.” (This was in 1994, when you still used saliva on stamps, kids).

Now I’m going to watch an array of photons that resemble humans who are pretending to be other humans by making mouth noises determined by still other humans (watch a Netflix drama). And I’ll try to remember what a wonderfully strange gift that is.

FOOTNOTE 1: Thanks to Rob Walker, author of The Art of Noticing, for directing me to that Saul Bellow passage. I discovered from Google that Rob is a fan of the Alien Mindset too (though I did’t read an article he wrote about it because it’s behind a paywall). Apparently Jen Sincero also mentions the technique in her book You Are a Badass.

Also, in addition to Bellow’s quote, I love Anais Nin’s related idea: “It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”

FOOTNOTE 1: I have mixed feelings about the Nacirema essay. On the one hand, I think it’s brilliant and I love that it exposes much of our irrational behavior. But one danger is that it conflates science and magic. Miner compares hospitals to a place where you go to have magic potions administered by medicine men. I do think a hospital is at least partly scientific, and that science is a more accurate way to portray the world and cure diseases than magic.

Leave a comment

We’ve recorded 623 episodes of my podcast Hello, Puzzlers! – but we just released a very, very special episode (yes, two very’s!).

It’s with the Papa Bear of Puzzling himself, Will Shortz.

As you may know, Will is the crossword editor of the New York Times, the NPR Puzzle Master, and author or editor of 775(!) books.

I interviewed Will a few weeks ago near his house in Westchester, New York, alongside my partner in puzzle podcasting Greg Pliska.

It was one of my favorite interviews ever.

Greg and I interviewed Will about his life in puzzles and how we’re in the Golden Age of Puzzling. The interview also got surprisingly personal. At times, I felt like Barbara Walters. We delved into Will’s later-in-life marriage, his debilitating stroke and ongoing recovery, and his philosophy of life. Of course, we also gave him word puzzles, and vice versa.

The show is available in audio and on video on YouTube. We’re really proud of it, and hope you like it as much as we do.

To whet your appetite, I’m extracting just seven of the nuggets of wisdom I learned from Will. What struck me wasn’t merely Will’s puzzle knowledge. It was that his approach to puzzles turns out to be a surprisingly good approach to life.

1. PUZZLES FOSTER CURIOSITY, AND CURIOSITY IS GOOD FOR HUMANITY

Recently, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates was an answer to a clue in The New Yorker crossword puzzle. When she learned of this, Oates posted on social media, “Who on earth has time for crossword puzzles?”

To which the proper response is, “Who on earth has time to read novels?”

I asked Will about Oates’ comment, and he was too nice to slam her, aside from saying “Wow.” But Will and I both believe crossword-bashing is bunk. Puzzles aren’t merely trivial pursuits. Puzzles foster creative thinking, help stave off cognitive decline, and build community, many of whose members, as Will puts it, are “funny, smart, well-rounded people with quirky minds.” Puzzles create a solution-oriented outlook on life, which we need now more than ever. Oh, and also they are keeping journalism alive by providing a large part of the NYT’s bottom line.

Subscribe now

2. PROGRESS IS POSSIBLE

Whenever I despair that the world is just a massive stupidity-induced mess – like a gender-reveal-caused forest fire on a global scale — I try to remember: Many parts of human existence have gotten better. Our lifespans are far longer than they were 100 years ago. Our socks have elastic, so we don’t have to tie little belts to them. And crossword puzzles are great. Especially compared to the first-ever crossword puzzle, which appeared in the New York World in 1913. It was bad. Most clues were boring (e.g. a lion was “An animal of prey” – as opposed to a modern clue such as “Pride parade participant.”). Or else the clues were just ridiculously obscure (“The fibre of the Gamuti palm,” whose answer was “DOH”) (1)

Will has been a huge part of ushering in the Golden Age of Puzzles, where cleverness and twists abound. (In fact, we asked Will to fix the world’s first crossword puzzle, and we will publish the results soon). And it’s not the only art form that continues to improve. Portal 2 is better than Pong, Obsession is better than Thomas Edison’s The Kiss.

3. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO FALL IN LOVE

One of the puzzles we gave Will involved guessing words that contained hidden “love” – words like “Slovenia” and “clover.”

It seemed appropriate because Will recently found love, which he said came as a total surprise. At the age of 69, he met his now-husband playing table tennis. (Will is passionate about table tennis, and several years ago, he opened the Westchester Table Tennis Center with the profits from his Sudoku books).

Will told us about their wedding, which was appropriately puzzle-themed – including a scavenger hunt that ended with a quote popularized by Zsa Zsa Gabor: “Love is a game that two can play and both can win.” (2)

4. CREATIVITY IS RARELY THE RESULT OF BOLTS FROM THE BLUE

When Will was interviewing for his dream job as puzzle editor at the NYT, the interviewer asked him, “What would you change?” Will’s response: “First, I told him what I wouldn’t change – which is, the intellectual rigor of the puzzle.”

This is a smart move for any job applicant: Before critiquing the institution, say what you love about it.

But Will’s answer also reflects something both he and I believe: Creativity is usually more about evolution than revolution. It’s rare that an invention or great work of art is the result of spontaneous generation.

This is true across all art forms. Just one example from another man named Will: Romeo and Juliet did not pop out of Shakespeare’s brain fully formed. It was inspired by many other versions of the Romeo and Juliet folk tale, including the 1562 poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet.”

And it’s true of Will’s career. Consider the enormously popular New York Times Spelling Bee (which would not allow either the word “tragicall” or “historye,” fyi). Will created the puzzle 2015, inspired by a game called “The Polygon” in The Times of London, but he made some important changes: In Will’s version, you can use a letter more than once. And then there’s the clever title and packaging. It makes a huge difference that the title is a pun and the layout contains beehive-like hexagons.

5. SHOW UP…IN PERSON

Will’s big break came when he got a job at Games magazine. Here’s how he landed the job, as he recounted in the Little Village newspaper: “It was in early 1978... I saw a classified ad for a puzzle editor—’Puzzle Editor Wanted.’ It was one of those anonymous ads... From the wording of the ad, I was certain the ad was from Games, which is where I really wanted to work, so I figured I would beat the competition by going in directly.”

“I put on a coat and I put on a tie, took the train into New York City, walked into the office and announced I was there for their position, and it was not their ad; they did not have a position open.”

“The editor saw me anyway. We hit it off, we talked for 30 minutes, I started getting freelance work almost immediately and I got a job by the end of the year.”

I love Will’s chutzpah! And in this digital age, I think showing up in person is even more important.

Share

6. GRIT, RECOVERY, PERSISTENCE – ALL THAT GOOD STUFF!

During the interview, Will opened up to us about his stroke. Four years ago, he found himself incapacitated, alone, and on the floor of his bathroom, thinking “Is this the way I’m gonna die? Lying on the floor in my house?” Will pulled himself across the floor to his phone and called his husband. He spent several weeks in the hospital and is still doing daily physical therapy. “I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% again, but I think I can get close,” he said.

Will no longer uses an electric wheelchair, but he still walks slowly, and has a device on his leg that sends electric pulses to his foot to help him flex his ankle.

He now is back to playing table tennis regularly, though he remains standing in one place while playing. But through it all, there was zero pause in his creativity: “I was making puzzles in bed while I was in the hospital.”

7. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN ASSHOLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL

It’s important to stress: Will is not an asshole. Despite being the most famous person in puzzling, he’s a lovely, menschy guy. Even his rejection letters are nice.
I asked Will for his life philosophy: “I have two things in life. One is that I want to enjoy myself, which I obviously do, and the second is I want to make the world a little better for being here, and I try to do that all the time.”

He’s certainly made the world better for millions of word nerds like me, and I’m grateful for him.

FOOTNOTE 1: Granted, they couldn’t have used the obvious clue for “DOH,” - namely, “Homeric catchphrase” — because 1913 was a couple of years before The Simpsons started.

FOOTNOTE 2: She was married nine times, so she won a lot of games!

BONUS INFO: If you’re not Joyce Carol Oates and you like puzzles, the Hello, Puzzlers! podcast is producing our first card game: Earbus! Updates coming soon.

Leave a comment

Am I a fun vacuum, as my wife and kids sometimes assert?

This allegation often arises when we are watching movies and the main character makes a big romantic gesture and I simply point out how morally objectionable that romantic gesture is.

For instance, Rose in Titanic.

Remember when she threw the Heart of the Ocean diamond into the water as a passionate gift to her long-lost lover Jack?

A diamond that, according to my Googling, was worth an estimated $250 million. A diamond that Rose could have sold at auction, donated the proceeds to charity, and prevented roughly 50,000 deaths from malaria (according to estimates from GiveWell).

WTF, Rose? (1)

I have a knack for finding such scenarios in almost every movie, much to Julie’s and the boys’ vexation.

In this column, I want to explore – in a fun way, of course! – the costs and benefits of this type of thinking.

Yes, perhaps it does suck the fun out of our post-movie discussions.

But on the other hand, I see it as my earnest protest against Main Character Syndrome, which I believe is a problem not just in movies, but in real life, and one that is at the root of many of the world’s very real problems.

I told you: Fun!

The scenarios that frustrate me the most are when a character does something that he or she finds wonderfully fulfilling, but that has potentially terrible consequences for others. They ignore the externalities, the costs to those around them.

I decided to write this column in the middle of watching Moonstruck, the lovely 1987 movie with Cher and Nicolas Cage. In Moonstruck, there’s a scene where an older man is walking his dogs on a New York Street, and the man looks up to see a huge full moon. The man encourages his dogs to howl at the moon, going so far as to howl at the moon himself to demonstrate.

The dogs obey and start howling at the moon.

So charming, right?

Except all I could think of was: What about the neighbors? What about the parents with a three-year-old who just fell asleep after a two-hour tantrum, and this asshole thinks it’s funny to get his dogs to make a bunch of noise? It’s not cute. It’s thoughtless and cruel. Have some compassion!

Subscribe now

The disadvantages of this type of thinking are clear:

First, your family and friends call you a fun vacuum.

Second, you are quite possibly a fun vacuum.

Third, perhaps I’m taking simple-minded consequentialism – aka “act utilitarianism” – to its ridiculous extreme. (2)

If you apply short-term cost-benefit morality to every phenomenon, including movies, it could lead to quite a dreary world. In fact, maybe this world wouldn’t even have movies at all. A purist could argue that we shouldn’t spend money on art or sports or hobbies until world poverty is solved. (Counterarguments: This is short-term thinking: Art can motivate us to act morally, and art provides human experiences that cannot be measured or quantified).

On the other hand, let me defend my allegedly buzzkilling mindset for a moment. I feel it’s important for humans – including me – to be wary of Main Character Syndrome in both movies and real life. Main Character Syndrome is the illness of believing that you are the most important person in the world and that everyone else is a supporting character or extra. Those who suffer from MCS forget that all other humans have inner lives as rich as their own (MCS is not yet recognized by the DSM, but I’m hoping soon). In Titanic, Rose happens to be a Main Character. But should she act like a self-centered one, and disregard the feelings of the supporting characters? I don’t think so. I want Hollywood to create more Main Characters who consider how their actions affect non-speaking extras.

Here’s my bigger point: I believe critiquing Main Character Syndrome in movies is good practice for building empathy in real life. Stories are simulations. They train our moral instincts. If movies repeatedly celebrate characters who ignore everyone else in pursuit of their personal fulfillment, we start accepting that mindset outside the theater too. At least that’s my hypothesis. And it’s worked for me. Critiquing selfish fictional characters has kept the greater good in the front of my mind long after the credits roll.

And there’s no shortage of movies that help me practice moral thinking. One other random example: I recently watched a romcom – I won’t say which one, for fear of spoiling the plot and harming the public good. But anyway, in this romcom, the protagonist pretends to be drowning in the ocean, and emergency services have to rescue him by helicopter and, at his urgent request, fly him to his beloved. That’s some serious Main Character self-absorption. What about the people who were actually drowning and needed the rescue helicopter? What about all the taxpayer money he’s wasting?

Share

Now you might say: This is a pretty ironic position for a writer who has engaged in stunts that sometimes have inconvenienced others.

Fair point. I can think of several examples of such behavior. When I was living constitutionally –- a project in which I tried to follow the U.S. Constitution as literally as possible -- I went to visit the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, all decked out in my tricorne hat. When we got to the front of the security line, and the security officer told me I had to put my bag through the X-ray machine, I objected, pointing out that this was a violation of my Fourth Amendment rights, which protect me from unreasonable searches.

My protestation delayed the line for half a minute, and also made my sons wish they were several miles away from me.

My lukewarm defense is that I did it as part of a book in which I was trying to defend democracy. I momentarily harmed the good of the people on the security line for the greater good of the reading public. But I realize that’s a rationalization.

Here’s perhaps a more legitimate defense of my mindset: I’m not against all ridiculous, grand, or romantic gestures. In fact, I love them.

I just want to make sure the ridiculous and grand gestures are fun for everyone, or at least not harmful to large numbers of people.

If you’re doing a gender-reveal party, maybe don’t set off blue fireworks near a dry forest. Instead, hire a cellist to come to the park and treat strangers to a free rendition of “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon (which, I hope, would appeal to most park-goers).

Suppose you’re the world’s biggest pop star and you decide to have 1,000 of your powerful friends attend your wedding at Madison Square Garden, thereby inconveniencing New Yorkers by shutting down nearby streets and requiring dozens of police officers to neglect their other duties. How about turning that wedding into something that benefits far more people? Maybe release a video of the performances and donate the profits to charity.

Or what about Rose? If she really wanted to honor Jack, she could have sold the diamond at a special auction, then set up the charitable Jack Dawson Foundation, with a fantastic kickoff party featuring sketch artists and a polka band. To me, that’s a lot more fun than throwing $250 million into the Atlantic.

I’d love to hear your thoughts — including what other Main Characters in fiction have the worst cases of selfish Main Character Syndrome.

FOOTNOTE 1: I’m not even getting into the moral question about whether there was room on the floating door for both Rose and Jack. I leave that to other scholars.

FOOTNOTE 2: Philosophers distinguish between "act utilitarianism," which evaluates the consequences of individual actions, and "rule utilitarianism," which evaluates the consequences of adopting general rules (such as prohibitions against murder or theft). The latter seems stronger to me.

Leave a comment

Perhaps you’ve seen the meme that points out there’s quite a difference between

“Let’s eat grandma.”

And

“Let’s eat, grandma.”

One is an invitation to have a meal with your elderly relative.

The other is an invitation to cannibalism.

Commas are important. My heart goes out to all the grandmothers who have been murdered and consumed because of a missing punctuation mark.

Perhaps that isn’t a huge cohort. But the point of the “let’s eat grandma” example still holds: Commas can be important.

I bring this up because I recently read an argument by Harvard professor Danielle Allen that a missing comma in the Declaration of Independence changed the document’s meaning. And changed it in an important “let’s-eat-grandma” way.

Allen believes the missing comma encouraged us to interpret the Declaration to be focused on individual rights instead of on the common good.

Allen’s argument goes like this:
The original declaration had a comma — not a period — after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” because that phrase was part of a longer sentence.

The mix-up arose because an early reproduction of the Declaration mistakenly inserted a period after “happiness” and it stuck.

That rogue punctuation mark, says Allen, makes us focus on “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” as the entire sentence — and makes us think it’s the main point of the Declaration. It tricked us into believing the Declaration is about our individual rights. Government, stay out of our business! (1)

Instead, says Allen, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is a buildup to the end of the sentence, which is about another topic entirely: the duty of government to provide for the common good (the sentence ends by asserting the right of the people to form a new government that “shall seem most likely effect their Safety and Happiness”).

Most historians agree with Allen that there should be a comma – not a period – after “happiness.” But did that typo (quillo?) really change the fundamental message of the Declaration? That idea is less universally accepted. (2)

Regardless, I believe Allen identifies a major tension in our country’s DNA: The rights of the individuals versus our responsibilities to our fellow citizens.

As July 4 approaches, I celebrate my individual rights, and express my freedom of speech in this very Substack, but I also want to put in a little plug for the common good.

If Allen is right, then maybe we've spent two centuries emphasizing the first half of the sentence at the expense of the second. It made me wonder: what would taking the second half seriously actually look like?

I think we need more attention to that second half on an institutional level – from the government and corporations - but also from your average Joes and Josephines.

Subscribe now

I’m preaching to myself as much as to anyone else. I need to get out there and be a little more civic-minded. I’m going to list a few ideas for myself with the hope that publicly declaring them will motivate me to actually do them so that I don’t look lazy and hypocritical:

--Go to the library (and donate to the library) more often

--Do one of those pick-up-litter days

--Serve as an election worker (!)

--Have dinner with people who vote differently than I do

—Don’t try to get out of serving on a jury

--At the very least, root for the US Soccer team – or at the very, very least, watch one of the games.

That’s just a start, I know. Suggestions welcome on other ways I can be a better citizen.

The Founders had lots of flaws, but I believe many of them had a deeper sense of civic responsibility than does the average modern American. It was more woven into their lives. Back then, most adult males were part of the local militia. If there was a fire, you would be there on the bucket brigade.

The Constitution contains a Bill of Rights. But I think there was also an implied Bill of Responsibilities. It was just so widely accepted, they didn’t need to write it out.

They also likely understood that our rights rely on other people fulfilling their responsibilities. Free speech depends on election workers, teachers, librarians, journalists, judges, and taxpayers, among others.

Another revolution from around the same time as ours had the catchphrase: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” We spend a lot of time thinking and talking about liberty and equality, but fraternity has slowly withered away. And without Fraternité (or Sororité), it’s hard to have a cohesive country that can solve big problems. (Hat tip to author Yuval Noah Harari for this framing).

Share

Before I sign off (declaration reference!), I want to mention one other American idea that’s also related to individualism: Most of the Founders were exceedingly anxious about a single person gaining too much power.

They would have flipped their powdered wigs at the vast powers of the modern presidency — it’s just too much authority given to a single individual. And in the past few days, the Supreme Court has given the President even more power, so we’re heading in the wrong direction.

Many delegates at the Constitutional Convention objected to the idea of just one commander in chief. They wanted a council of presidents. Maybe three presidents. Ben Franklin mentioned 12 presidents. For them, Congress was the main instrument of government, not a single person.

If we want to honor the Founders, I say we change the name of Presidents Day to Separation of Powers Day! Mattress sales would be just as effective!

The Founders opposed cults of personality. One Constitutional delegate called the idea of a single president “the fetus of monarchy.” And man, did the Founders hate monarchy. They changed King’s Street in several cities to Congress Street. Kings College became Columbia University. The King’s Minuet dance became the Congress Minuet.

But royalty has sneaked back into our language and culture. Let’s change that too. How about…

--Dairy Queen becomes Dairy Congressional Representative.

--King-sized mattress becomes Committee-sized mattress.

---Disney World becomes the Magic Republic.

Okay, now I’m off to celebrate our delightful, flawed, possibly endangered country. Let’s eat watermelon with grandma!

FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTE 1: Allen made the missing comma the argument in her 2014 book Our Declaration and in the paper “Punctuating Happiness.”

Here’s the passage in question:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

FOOTNOTE 2: Further commentary on commas: The phrase “Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness” in the official Declaration lacks an Oxford comma after the word “liberty.” But, in an earlier draft that can be found at the Library of Congress, Jefferson DOES use an Oxford comma (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness)! So maybe we should reinsert that, too! Oxford comma fans unite, celebrate, and shout with glee!

FOOTNOTE 3: I’m actually pretty bad at knowing the rules of commas, so forgive me if I made any comma mistakes in this essay.

Leave a comment

In case you want to join, I’ll be on Zoom at 8 pm ET tonight.

Here’s the link:

rb.gy/7a5axt

We’ll be talking about all sorts of topics, both profound and trivial!
A.J.

Read more

Hello VIP Experimenters,
It’s been too long since I got to hang out with you all on Zoom.

So I thought we could get together from 8 pm ET to 9 pm ET on Thursday June 18 (in two days). There’s so much to talk about!

Hope to see some of you there. Let me know if you are coming – I’m at ajjacobs1@gmail.com

And let me know if there are any topics you want to …

Read more

Who is my hero?
I’ll tell you. It’s nineteenth-century philosopher Herbert Spencer, mainly because he wrote this line: “Hero worship is strongest when there is least regard for human freedom.”

I love that quotation! Like Spencer, I have a ton of issues with the notion of heroes. In fact, this essay is about the dark side of hero worship – how it helped get us into our current global mess, why I hate the idea of Trump’s “Garden of Heroes,” and how we might replace (or at least reform) our obsession with heroes.

Oh, I should note that Herbert Spencer, in addition to writing that wonderful adage, was also a Social Darwinist and a racist, so he’s actually not my hero at all, and instead an example of why hero skepticism is so important. (1)

First, let me define hero.

One definition of hero is a type of sandwich. I mostly bring this up so that I can mention that the Earl of Sandwich, for whom the sandwich is named, was no hero: his “incompetence and corruption were legendary,” as Wikipedia sums it up, so maybe we should rethink that eponym.

But I’m talking about the other type of hero. This version of “hero” derives from the ancient Greek, meaning a demi-god with superhuman strength. Perhaps the most famous classical hero is Odysseus, who will be portrayed by Matt Damon in the upcoming blockbuster. I’m interested to see how director Christopher Nolan deals with the fact that Odysseus murdered all of his wife’s suitors, which strikes me as a heinous and sociopathic act. But anyhoo… (2)

Over time, the word “hero” evolved to mean a person of “exceptional courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities,” as one dictionary puts it.

Sounds good, right? What’s the matter with that?
In fact, this is an appropriate time to note that the notion of “heroes,” as with every phenomenon, has pros and cons. So in the interest of fairness, I want to acknowledge how the idea of “hero” can be useful. Namely:

Heroes can inspire us. Focusing on a hero in your field of interest – sports hero, moral hero, scientific hero – can make you bolder and more focused. Rosa Parks can inspire us to stand up to injustice (or sit down to injustice, I suppose). Einstein can inspire us to think far outside the box. Our brains are wired for stories, not for moral calculations, and heroes are helpful in personifying virtuous traits. Heroes can take an abstract concept such as self-sacrifice and make it specific and real.

So yes, there are upsides. But there are downsides. So many downsides. Let me list a few:

THE ROCKSTAR VS. BASSIST PROBLEM

For my book Thanks a Thousand, I interviewed a coffee expert who moonlit in a rock band. He was the bassist. “I like being the bassist,” he told me. “Everyone wants to be the lead guitarist or lead singer, and we need those. But we also need bassists. I’m necessary, but I’m background.”

I think this is an excellent metaphor for life. In our society, we fetishize the lead singers. And not just in music. The front people in every field—art, engineering, sports, food—get way too much attention.

The cult of celebrity has spread into every corner. We overemphasize individual achievement when, in fact, almost everything good in the world is the result of teamwork.

Consider the polio vaccine, which qualifies as a very good thing. According to the book Give and Take, by psychologist Adam Grant, Jonas Salk took all the glory for inventing the polio vaccine. He was on the cover of Time; he became the household name. But the truth of the vaccine’s invention is more nuanced. Salk was part of a team at the University of Pittsburgh. There were six researchers who made major contributions, not to mention three scientists who figured out how to grow polio in test tubes, a crucial advance that made the vaccine possible.

In other words, there were many bassists who helped conquer polio. And they were overlooked, which they rightly felt bitter about. In a 1955 press conference about the vaccine, Salk neglected to thank his collaborators. Many of them left the conference in tears.

Psychologists have a name for this failure to acknowledge and thank collaborators: the “responsibility bias.” For one thing, it causes a lot of pain and resentment among the billions of unacknowledged bass players in our world. But its long-term consequences might be even worse. By elevating individual achievement over cooperation, we’re creating a glut of wannabe superstars less inclined to collaborate or do the unglamorous hard work. (3)

Subscribe now

THE HALO EFFECT

The “Halo Effect” is the cognitive bias in which we assign unwarranted positive traits to a person. Studies have shown that if we find someone physically attractive, we’re more likely to believe they are moral and smart.

Gwyneth Paltrow is an excellent actress. However, her acting talent does NOT make her an expert on medical matters. Thanks to the Halo Effect, though, we are stuck with her pseudo-science-embracing Goop brand.

Even within a discipline, the Halo Effect can be dangerous. Linus Pauling won a Nobel prize for his work on how atoms bond together. But he also advocated a quack theory about the healing power of mega-doses of Vitamin C. Linus Pauling was smart about atomic bonds, but he was no expert on human nutrition. Likewise, Dr. Oz is a great heart surgeon, but that does not make him an expert on all areas of medicine.

In this peak era of hero worship and personality cults, the Halo Effect can be disastrous. Here’s just one random example: Imagine a person who is a charismatic game show host. Respect his ability to host that game show, but do NOT make him a hero. Do not assume he can analyze complex political policies and lead the free world. Keep your admiration narrow and specific, don’t let it bleed over.

I’m not opposed to admiration. I’m opposed to generalized and unconditional admiration. Make sure your role model is a model only in one specific role.

THE DEVIL HORNS EFFECT

This is the term I invented for the flipside of the Halo Effect. The Devil Horns Effect is the cognitive bias that causes us to dismiss the policies or ideas of a fallen hero, even if those policies are helpful.

I noticed the Devil Horns Effect when writing about America’s Founding Fathers. Many of Thomas Jefferson’s ideas were wonderful. But he was also, in some ways, a terrible person: A hypocrite and an owner of enslaved people. So it’s tempting to dismiss Jefferson’s writings altogether and claim that the idea of America was flawed from the start, as some people do.

Or consider the case of Cesar Chavez. The New York Times recently published an investigation alleging the hero of the farmworkers’ rights movement was a serial sexual abuser. There are two tragedies here. First, the pain of Chavez’s victims. And second, that the movement became so identified with Chavez that revelations about one man threatened to overshadow the work of thousands of laborers and activists who had nothing to do with the abuse. To repair the damage, California renamed “Cesar Chavez Day” to “Farmworkers Day,” which is what I believe it should have been called all along.

Heroism (and Villainism) encourages black and white thinking. The person did bad things, so all their ideas are bad. It conflates the flawed human and their policies. Human beings are always imperfect, so tying ideas to people is dangerous. In most cases, ideas should be judged on their merit, not on their origin.

THE ACQUIRED NARCISSISM PROBLEM

Adulation corrupts. Most mortals’ brains cannot process an excess of positive feedback. Which is why people treated as heroes so often become egotistical monsters.

Here’s a trivial example from my own life: Many years ago, I went to the Academy Awards disguised as a celebrity. Actually, I didn’t need a disguise. I looked exactly like an actor named Noah Taylor, who was in an Oscar-nominated movie called Shine. I was working at Entertainment Weekly magazine at the time, and we found out that Noah Taylor was not going to the awards ceremony. So, I put on a tux, flew to LA, and went in his stead. What resulted was six hours of unmitigated ass-kissing and adulation from fans, industry types, and the media.

And it totally warped me. I started to believe the hype. My ego ballooned. I got angry that I had to wait in line for the bathroom. Don’t they know who I am?!?!

And this was when I was just pretending to be another person. I knew it was all fake, and yet my brain still got all twisted. Imagine how such worship would distort my personality if it’d been real.

Hero worship feeds into the alleged hero’s narcissism, which reduces their compassion. Our president, for instance, shows a stunning lack of compassion – about the cost of living, disabled people, separated families, and more. Perhaps this is an innate trait. But I suspect the worshipful treatment from his base plays a part. It has fed his ego and made it harder for him to see the world from other points of view.

Share

So how can we reduce the toxic effects of hero worship? Well, I have a few suggestions.

1. SPREAD THE CREDIT

Realize that nothing is done in a vacuum. Try to elevate the bass guitarists – and the overlooked heroes. Like Israel Bissell. Paul Revere is famous for alerting the colonists to the Redcoat threat – but he’s partly famous because Longfellow’s poem glorified him. Yet Bissell also rode his horse to warn others that night, and actually covered more ground than Revere. Apparently, the name “Revere” is better for rhyming than “Bissell.” And shout outs to other riders including William Dawes, Samuel Prescott, and Sybil Ludington!

2. REJECT THE HALO EFFECT

If you have a hero, confine your admiration to the narrowest and most relevant part of what they do. Admire X for the way he puts an orange ball in that red hoop. That’s it. Don’t assume X has any wisdom on life or politics or health. The same goes for actors and even war heroes. Don’t fall prey to admiration creep!

3. ELEVATE IDEAS, NOT PEOPLE

At the start of our country, many Founders wrote pamphlets under a pseudonym (Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote The Federalist Papers under the name “Publius”). The reason: They wanted people to judge their ideas on their own merit, not be swayed by a preconceived notion about the author.

I love this. I try to adopt this when I hear an idea or read a book. Judge the idea, not the person proposing it. I try this even with ideas from our president, with whom I usually disagree. Hooray for the end of pennies!

The same goes for naming conventions. If I were in charge naming streets or holidays, I’d focus on ideas. Farmworkers Day, not Cesar Chavez Day.

If I were designing the Garden of Heroes, I’d rebrand it as the “Garden of Great Ideas,” and focus on art that elevates ideas such as curiosity, innovation, self-sacrifice, equality, and liberty. Perhaps that’s not a great idea. Perhaps that would get about 14 visitors a year. But all I can do is make suggestions. I’m no hero!

I would love to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of heroism, and who are your (qualified, conditional) heroes. Thank you!

Footnote 1: That quotation is widely attributed to Spencer, but I couldn’t find that exact wording in his books. A close example is, “Where barbarism is greatest, hero worship is strongest.” But maybe this fact helps my argument! It shouldn’t matter where the idea of hero-skepticism came from – Spencer or someone paraphrasing Spencer! The idea should be judged on its merits.

Footnote 2: Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but I figure a story that’s 2,700 years old might be past the statute of limitations?

Footnote 3: As I wrote in my book, here’s an example of how this has negative consequences in science: Your typical scientist craves the glory of creating a bold new hypothesis, instead of the equally important but less flashy task of replicating experiments to make sure the conclusions are true. This has led to what’s called the “replication crisis.” A shocking amount of our scientific knowledge may be inaccurate because we don’t have enough bassists in lab coats doing backup.

Leave a comment

I’m not a huge sports fan, but I do have a list of athletic heroes. This list doesn’t include familiar figures such as Tom Brady or LeBron James (though I do admire James’ comedic acting skills in the movie Trainwreck). Instead, my list of sports heroes includes such folks as:

High jumper Dick Fosbury. Dick invented the Fosbury Flop, the weird-looking, arched-back method of clearing the bar that inspired widespread mockery – until he won the 1968 Olympics and totally changed the sport. (1)

Professional Bowler Jason Belmonte. He’s the man who pioneered the two-handed bowling style that is now popular among younger pro bowlers. Yes! Two hands. Twice as many as people used in the past. (2)

Javelin thrower Félix Erausquín. A Spanish athlete who came up with a new way to throw a javelin in which he spun around really fast and then released the spear. The javelin went super far. Also it sometimes went into the spectator seats. Lots of distance, not so much control. So the spinning javelin technique was promptly banned after its debut in the mid-1950s. Still, a valiant try!

I love these athletes because they are experimenters. They questioned invisible assumptions. They were not afraid to try out a radically new method and to look ridiculous doing so. (Fosbury was called “the world’s laziest high jumper” by one newspaper).

As someone who does a lot of experiments with my life (see the title of this Substack), and who often looks ridiculous, I appreciate their bold spirit. I’m not planning on taking up high-jumping or javelin-tossing anytime soon. But these athletes inspire me to keep experimenting with every part of my life.

You could call it The Belmonte Mentality. Or Fosbury-izing Your Life.

The key is to examine every part of your day – work, relationships, brushing your teeth – and ask: Is there a better method to do this? Can I do this task more effectively? More joyfully? Am I packing my suitcase this way because it’s the best way, or because I’ve always done it this way and I’m just being carried along by inertia?

I made a list of small ways I’ve tried to Fosbury-ize my life recently. They’re not as revolutionary as the back-flop, and I don’t recommend them for everyone, but I hope they give a peek at the Belmonte Mentality: Looking at our daily routines with fresh eyes.

EATING: When I go to a restaurant, I ask the waiter to bring half of my entrée, and box the other half up to go. It helps prevent me from overeating.

WATCHING TV: I watch my streaming services with all sorts of tweaks: with closed captioning, with audio description for the blind, and at 1.5x or 2x speed (Not for everyone, including Julie who hates two of the three hacks – closed captioning is gets her approval).

DRIVING: I’ve attached tiny navigational stickers to my car’s front windshield. When driving, I make sure the sticker is aligned with the white line on the highway shoulder. I’m trying to be a human Waymo.

AIRPORTS: One of my sons has figured out a way to speed through the airport. He sits on his rolling suitcase and powers it like a scooter. I’m impressed, though I don’t do it myself.

SILVERWARE: No sorting! Just throw the forks, spoons, and knives helter-skelter into the cutlery drawer. You actually save time this way, because it barely takes a moment to find the right piece of silverware when you need it, and you don’t have to spend time up front sorting. At least that’s my friend Spencer Greenberg’s theory. To be honest, Julie won’t let me use this method, so I can’t swear by it.

GAMES: I’m passionate about tweaking the official rules to board games to see if different rules lead to a more entertaining version of the game. I say, “House rules rule.” For instance, with Rummikub, we play a version in which the 6s and 9s are interchangeable. You can turn a 9 upside down if you need a 6 and vice versa. Try it!

SLEEP: I’m always testing out new techniques. About two months ago, I came up with one that is my favorite so far. See footnote 3 if you are curious.

These hacks may or may not work for you. They may seem ridiculous. But the point I’m making is, I hope, a universal one: Many of our habits persist because they’re inherited, as opposed to optimal. I’m a fan of examining the unexamined parts of your life, and thinking: What is the big goal? Is there a better way to do this?

Subscribe now

Back to the sports innovators for a moment. I also find it inspiring and instructive how these athletes came up with their innovations. Some methods include:

1. BY ACCIDENT:

Swedish ski jumper Jan Boklöv changed his sport by accident. Ski jumpers used to keep their skis parallel while gliding through the air. On one jump, Boklöv accidentally kept his skis in a V shape – and went much farther. The key was paying attention to your “mistakes” and learning from them.

2. CONSTRAINTS

In his excellent new book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, author David Epstein writes about the guys who revolutionized the winter sport of skeleton (sledding face-first like maniacs). It used to be, all skeleton competitors pushed the sled with both arms because they thought it was more powerful. But in 2001, the coach of the Canadian Olympic team, constrained by a lack of budget for fancy analytic equipment, told his skeleton team: Try new methods, no matter how ridiculous they might seem. His athletes experimented with using only one arm when pushing the sled, and using the other arm for a natural sprinting motion — and found it much faster.

3. METAPHORICAL THINKING

Taking an idea from a similar domain and applying it to your realm. Javelin-thrower Erausquín also competed in the discus throw, so he thought: Why not try the spinning method in javelin too?

For a fictional example, see Adam Sandler’s movie Happy Gilmore, in which he hits a golf ball like a hockey puck, using a running start to get more momentum. The Happy Gilmore technique actually does increase the distance of a golf drive, but at the expense of accuracy, so no pro golfers use it (though my son does employ it on occasion).

Each of these strategies could be helpful in generating ideas for your own Fosbury-izing of life.

Share

One big caveat: There are drawbacks to constantly experimenting. A lot of the experiments will be failures. And if you experiment without contemplating the risks, it could backfire. Which is why I don’t encourage reckless behavior that will inspire told-you-so-ers to say FAFO, a.k.a “Fuck around and find out.” I prefer encouraging people to engage in FARTFO: “Fuck around responsibly and thoughtfully and find out.” You have to balance the wisdom of tradition with the power of innovation.

It also depends on your level of tolerance for looking foolish. For instance, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about Rick Barry, the 1970s professional basketball player who did free throws granny style (underhand, with both hands). Arguably, it’s a more accurate method for shooting free throws, but it never caught on in the NBA because it looks kind of dorky.

Often, progress happens because a handful of people are willing to look ridiculous for awhile. Whatever your tolerance for looking absurd, I’m interested in how other folks have Fosbury-ized their own lives. Thank you!

FOOTNOTES

(1) FOSBURY FLOP: As with many innovations, several people came up with similar ideas independently around the same time. So a shout out to Debbie Brill, a Canadian high jumper and her “Brill Bend,” and Montanan Bruce Quande for his “Quande Curl.” Before these three pioneers, most jumpers used the straddle technique.

(2) BOWLING: I recommend the Ben Stiller-produced HBO documentary series Born to Bowl. Seriously. That show and Epstein’s book helped inspire this column.

(3) SLEEP HACK: Here’s what I do. I pick a letter of the alphabet (say, P). I pick an object starting with P (say peach). Then I pick another noun starting with P (say, Penguin). Then I imagine the penguin and peach together – the Penguin eating the peach, for instance. Next, I think of a third thing that starts with P (Porsche) and think of the Penguin driving the Porsche. Then pick another P and pair it with the Porsche, and so on until I fall asleep.

Leave a comment

Whenever I’m feeling annoyed about something less than consequential (e.g. that the Hilton Hotel rewards program spams me four times a week despite multiple attempts to unsubscribe), I repeat the following mantra:

Surgery without Anesthesia

I find these three words a miraculously effective way to regain perspective.

Whatever challenges I may face in my life, I will never have to undergo surgery without anesthesia, which was the norm for tens of thousands of years of human history.

I came up with that mantra many years ago when reading the encyclopedia. It was one of the starkest examples of an important fact: The good old days were not good.

We face a series of stunning challenges today (the threat of authoritarianism, A.I., Tik-Tokkers recommending a biblical diet). It’s an uncertain and frightening time. But that’s no reason to have nostalgia for some non-existent Edenic past. History was a sexist, oppressive place where germ-filled people poked around your internal organs while you were wide awake.

Surgery without anesthesia came up recently in another context: The board game Operation. For my podcast, I spent a surprisingly interesting afternoon researching the history of Operation – that game where you try to remove plastic body parts with a tweezer without triggering the buzzer.

I’d never noticed it before, but the patient in Operation (who is reductively named “Cavity Sam”) is wide freakin’ awake. Sam’s eyes are open, and his eyebrows are justifiably raised in pain and terror.

Operation has to be the most sadistic board game in existence (though I also object to Monopoly’s lack of due process in players going directly to jail. Remember the Sixth Amendment, people!).

That wasn’t the only lesson I took away from my odd afternoon of board game research. My time exploring this rabbit hole (rabbit cavity?) led to some surprisingly wise takeaways.

Lesson #1: Look for inspiration everywhere, even the sewer.

For my research, I watched a documentary about the history of the board game Operation. It turns out the co-inventor of Operation – John Spinello – got the idea for the mechanics of the game while using a stick and some melted tar to retrieve coins from a sewer grate. (FOOTNOTE 1)

I love learning about where people get their ideas. One key to creativity, I believe, is to be constantly on high alert for unexpected connections and metaphors.

You can be annoyed by the burrs sticking to your socks after a hike. Or you can be inspired to invent Velcro, as did Swiss engineer George de Mestral.

Subscribe now

Lesson #2: Thinking about the greater good can save you from a lifetime of bitterness.

Spinello came up with the basic idea for Operation in 1964. He took it to a toy company and sold the rights for $500. And then…nothing. He never got another penny from the estimated 45 million Operation sets sold.

Millions of people have spent thousands of hours extracting Adam’s Apples with tweezers, and the man who came up with the idea earned less than a thousand bucks.

How pissed is Spinello? How choleric is his gallbladder?

Spinello says that instead of being bitter about the money he didn’t make, he tries to focus on the joy that the game has brought to people over the years.

What a reframe! Imagine if we all had such a Buddhist and magnanimous outlook. What a way to save our sanity! Instead of stewing over the pirated versions of my books available for free on the Internet, maybe I should remind myself: Well, at least my message is reaching more people.

Important caveat: This is not to say we should passively accept injustices. I can still report the pirated versions to my publisher and get them shut down – AND try to curb my rage by thinking about the big picture.

Lesson #3: Our universe might have been scripted by O. Henry.

By which I mean that life is often ridiculously, poignantly ironic, with millions of real-world The Gift of the Magi stories occurring every day.

In the documentary, we learn that Spinello quit game design and opened a car repair business. About a decade ago, he went bankrupt. Which left him with no money for…yes, you guessed it…an operation.

Spinello needed $25,000 for jaw surgery.

Two of his friends – who were also the ones who produced the documentary – started a crowdfunding campaign, and got him the money. Spinello got his jaw fixed, presumably with more anesthesia than Cavity Sam.

Share

Lesson #4: The American healthcare system is a monumental mess.

This was not a huge surprise. But still, Operation drives the point home. The game features 13 operations ranging in price from $200 to $1,000. The total bill for all the operations is $6,400.

As a journalist, I felt it important to investigate how much would those 13 surgeries cost in a real hospital in America today. Do you want to guess?

The answer is…

$1,867,700

Or so. Prices vary, but that’s a reasonable estimate.

Here’s the breakdown, according to an afternoon of Googling (time well spent!)

-Funny Bone (aka Cubital Tunnel Release): $4,000

-Wishbone (aka Distal Clavicle Excision): $1,700

-Adam’s Apple (aka Tracheal Shave): $12,000 (FOOTNOTE 2)

-Spare Rib (aka Rib Removal): $25,000

-Bread Basket (aka Gastrectomy): $70,000

-Broken Heart (aka Cardiac Transplantation: $1,500,000

-Writer’s Cramp (aka Tendon Release Surgery): $7,000

-Charlie Horse (aka Leg Stent, or endovascular revascularization): $30,000

-Brain Freeze (aka Brain Tumor Removal): $175,000

-Butterflies in Stomach (aka Vagotomy, to reduce stomach acid production): $17,000

-Anklebone connected to the Kneebone (aka Peroneal Reattachment Surgery): $20,000

-Wrenched Ankle (Ankle Arthroscopy): $5,000

-Water on the Knee (Arthrocentesis): $1,000

Julie and I are lucky enough to have insurance. But even so, the appendix surgery I had a few years ago cost us $10,000. And that was after Julie spent countless hours negotiating down from $30,000.

I’m not enough of an expert on healthcare policy to know the best way to fix these out-of-control costs. Nor am I saying that other countries have perfect systems. But there’s got to be a better way for Cavity Sam to get healthy without being reduced to poverty.

In the comments, I would love to hear what you think are the best ways to make surgery more affordable. (Some of the suggestions I’ve read about include more price transparency laws, price caps, and moving closer in the direction of the Canada model).

Thus concludes my thoughts on surgery and surgery-based board games.

Perhaps in a future column I will write about life lessons from other board games. I have a lot of additional thoughts about Monopoly, which I believe – hot take alert! – is a terrible, terrible game, not only because it needs serious judicial reform.

FOOTNOTE 1: To be more accurate: Spinello was the co-inventor of the game. He came up with the idea of having a game where you use a tweezer without setting off an electric buzzer. But making the game about surgery was a later development that seems to have originated at the game company.

Occasionally, great games or works of art are born fully-formed by a single person. But I find, more often, they are an accretion of ideas from multiple people.

FOOTNOTE 2: Why is Cavity Sam getting his Adam’s Apple removed? Is it possible he/she/they was one of the first representations of trans people in pop culture? Let me know your thoughts.

Leave a comment

Here’s one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes that he never actually said:
“If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute.”

I think about this faux Twainism a lot, but not in relation to Massachusetts meteorology.

Instead, I find the quote an enormously helpful metaphor for understanding my brain and its emotional weather. I like to view my moods as the weather, and my mind as New England. If I wait a minute (or an hour or a day), the moods will change.

It’s a reminder that emotions are surprisingly temporary. In one sense, this is obvious. But when I’m experiencing an emotion, I often fall prey to my brain’s propaganda that the sadness or annoyance or anger is here to stay.

Truth is, the sun will probably come out tomorrow, or maybe the day after, or maybe even in an hour. And then, the sun will likely be obscured by dark clouds sometime after that.

In the interest of doing a thought experiment, I’m going to push this metaphor to its breaking point – and then just keep on pushing! See if you can spot where it cracks!

CLIMATE VERSUS WEATHER

A friend of mine, when she’s experiencing stress or anger or sadness, likes to ask herself the following question: Is this weather — or is this climate? Meaning, how permanent is this state of mind?

I’ve started to ask myself this question, and usually, the answer is that it’s weather.

There are exceptions. I’ve battled depression in the past, and that horrible disease does feel like a climate change, a mental Ice Age. (Though even within the Ice Age of depression, I found there was variable weather; there were better and worse days.)

But usually, my emotional pain is like the physical pain I get during my treadmill sessions. I know that pattern: My legs will start to ache around 1 minute and 45 seconds into the session. And I know if I push through, the ache will fade about 2 minutes after that.

The key is to have some Buddhist-tinged distance. Emotional weather watching is a cousin of a similar strategy I’ve written about: Moodwatching, which is treating moods like a birdwatcher treats birds.

Subscribe now

COMPLEX CAUSALITY

There are so many factors that affect weather (at least from what I remember from high school science class plus some casual googling). Weather can result from low-pressure fronts, mountain winds, the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

Moods, too, are affected by multiple factors, both psychological and physical. I’m always amazed how much a bad night’s sleep or skipping a couple of meals can turn me into a pessimistic asshole. Even the literal weather can have a small effect on our emotional weather. I’ve seen a handful of studies arguing that, in certain situations, cold and rainy weather can have slight influence our mood.

Being aware of these factors helps turn me into an Al Roker of my mind, allowing me to make general predictions. If I got five hours of sleep, I can predict a 70 percent chance of annoyance and scattered outrage throughout the day.

PREPPING FOR THE WEATHER

Knowing that emotional foul weather is likely on the horizon, is there any way to prepare? What is the equivalent of an umbrella or long underwear for my inner states?

I do have some protective gear. Mostly, they are classic techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I remind myself: “Don’t filter” – if I look at YouTube comments on one of my speeches, I shouldn’t obsess just about the comments that point out my imperfect orthodonture. I should focus on the good ones too. Another technique: “Don’t catastrophize.” Just because an article didn’t go viral, that doesn’t mean my career is over.

The techniques aren’t perfect. The rain still gets through, I’m still cold much of the time, but it helps.

Share

MICROCLIMATES

Real-world weather can be paradoxical — just think of sun showers. My inner moods are also strange mixtures. As an empty nester, I can feel sad, lonely, unfettered, energized – all at the same time.

I know the weather/mood metaphor is not perfect– no metaphor is precise, or it wouldn’t be a metaphor. Maybe seeing my emotions as weather underestimates how much I can control them. Both phenomena are impossible to fully control, but maybe emotions are a bit more subject to our will. (Another quote Mark Twain never said: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”)

Despite its limitations, I still find it a great way to weather the inner weather. I hope it might help you as well. Please let me know. Thank you!

Leave a comment

It took me two minutes to come up with the sentence you are reading now.

Which may seem like a long time for just fifteen words. But actually, it was surprisingly quick, considering how many weeks I’d been delaying writing this piece.

It took me two minutes because I was following the advice of my friend Eric Zimmer:

Choose something you’ve been putting off and commit to doing it for exactly two minutes. Set a timer: When it goes off, you can stop – no guilt, no pushing through. You’re not changing your life overnight – you’re just proving that beginning doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Eric gives this advice in his exceedingly helpful new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life.

I decided to use the two-minute hack in the most meta way possible: To help me write this essay about Eric’s book, an essay that had stubbornly occupied my back burner for weeks.

What makes this strategy effective is its fun-sized commitment. First, it’s only 120 seconds. Second, I only committed to a micro-goal. I pledged to come up with just one idea for a way to start the essay. It didn’t have to be the right way to start the essay. Just one possible lead.

I exceeded my microgoal – I came up with three ideas and chose the sentence you read a few moments ago.

This essay had remained unwritten partly because of that initial hurdle of just getting started. The essay’s seal remained unbroken, and that seal was intimidating. The blank screen was so purely blank, I didn’t know how to make that first mark.

You know the old saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?”
That’s not a bad maxim.

But I’d revise it to: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with putting on your left sock.”

Putting on the sock is easier than taking a step.

When it comes to outwitting procrastination, I try to make that first action as easy as possible. I try to make that barrier to entry the smallest, smoothest, hint of a bump. Once you go over that bump, your perspective shifts. You’ve got some momentum. It’s much easier to continue.

Subscribe now

In fact, I use the literal ‘putting on the sock’ microgoal when I’m trying to get myself to go on the treadmill every day.

Once I’ve put on my socks and sneakers, I move onto the next microgoal: I’m going to step onto the treadmill. I don’t promise myself that I’ll start walking, much less running. I just need to step onto the rubber mat. Once I’m on the treadmill, I say to myself, “Fine, I’ll just go for two minutes.” And after two minutes, the momentum often carries me to stay on the treadmill.

The two-minute trick is just one of the ideas in Eric’s book. The book is a distillation of advice from Eric’s life experience, his wide reading, and the hundreds of guests on his popular podcast, “The One You Feed.”

That includes advice from former guest…me, A.J. Jacobs.

Eric quotes me talking about one of my favorite themes: reframing problems as puzzles. Here’s what I said:

“The word ‘problem’ is very intimidating and very negative,” [I] explained. “It implies that maybe there is no solution. Whereas a puzzle is very inviting. It’s like, I’m gonna roll up my sleeves, and I’m going to solve this puzzle…I try to say, ‘I’m having a conflict with my wife. All right, this is a puzzle. Let’s see if I can make this marriage work better. That’s the puzzle. If I’m struggling to figure out what my book is, it’s not a problem. It’s a puzzle. Let’s solve this puzzle.”

I stand by this quote, though I did use the word “very” three times. Which is very unnecessary.

Julie has another note: I sound weirdly Spock-like. (I accept that criticism with dispassionate logic.)

One other big theme of Eric’s book: The limits of our willpower and the importance of structuring our environment to help us accomplish what we want. To change our behavior, we need to change out surroundings.

Instead of saying “I’m going to refrain from eating Fig Newtons today,” it’s better to put the Fig Newtons on the top shelf behind a box of rice crackers.

It’s the strategy endorsed by wise people from Odysseus (who tied himself to the mast to restrain himself from jumping into the water when he heard the sirens’ songs) to Harvard professor Cass Sunstein (who co-wrote a great book on the topic called Nudge)

Share

The two-minute rule falls into that broad category. You are using your environment – in this case, a two-minute timer – to structure your behavior. You’re giving yourself a temporal nudge.

I’ll stop there, and hope that the two-plus minutes you spent reading this piece were helpful. I’d love to hear your strategies for overcoming procrastination. Even if you just type six words of advice in the comments section, that would be helpful!

ANOTHER UNRELATED THING!

Next Tuesday, I’m doing a live event in NYC. It’s a recording of the “Hello, Puzzlers!” podcast with special guest Wyna Liu — the mad genius behind the NYT’s Connections puzzle. Please join Greg Pliska, Wyna, and me if it is geographically convenient for you! Tickets are here!

Leave a comment

Hello Experimental Living people!

I’m doing a live show next week, and am offering free tickets to my VIP Substack subscribers (aka you!)

Please let me know if you’d like to attend by emailing me at ajjacobs1@gmail.com Here’s the information:

A live recording of my “Hello, Puzzlers!” podcast – with special guest Wyna Liu, creator of the NYT’s Connections …

Read more