What's in a Word?

Last week I picked up an interesting-sounding title – Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds, by Michael Quinion - from the $2 rack of my favorite store, Half Price Books. Being a fan of etymology (i.e., word origins) and finding myself in the market for a quick read over the holidays, the purchase was a no-brainer.
Imagine my pleasant surprise, then, to find within the first four pages of the book some unlikely echoes of a few of the concepts I’ve been developing in the Daily Improviser blog.

On page 2, Quinion observes that there are few fields of study as open to oft-repeated misinformation as etymology. Everyone knows the acronymic origin of words like COP (“Constable on Patrol”) and TIP (“To Insure Promptness”), right? (Well, OK, I admit I’m using those words in place of other more scatological “acronyms” that have gained a wide circulation, accompanied by a knowing nudge-nudge-wink-wink.) But as Quinion notes, almost none of these reputed acronyms actually represents the origin of the words in question (the term “acronym” itself dates only from World War I).

Yet in the popular mind, such dubious stories as to word origins continue to be spread via a process Quinion refers to as “etymythology.” Why is this?

First, as Quinion explains:

"We’re suckers for a really good story. It’s one way we make sense of the world around us and so turn the unfamiliar … into the known and the comfortable. So it’s important that we have stories that explain things, but it’s much less important that the stories we tell are verifiably true. [Such stories] must reassure and convince, but above all they must interest and entertain. Stories that are boring, mundane, or inconclusive will not survive. Unfortunately, real word histories are often all of these things."

I believe that Quinion is touching on a topic I’ve addressed here before several times: We humans are greatly susceptible to shorthand constructs that explain the world around us. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, we couldn’t exist without a certain layer of abstraction through which we view and make sense of the world.

This “Layer of Abstraction” can take the form of useful shorthand – for example, describing an unfamiliar concept such as a “pomelo” in terms of a familiar concept such as a “grapefruit,” even though technically the two are not at all the same. However, the Layer can also be seductively misleading, a substitute for engaging in critical thinking. In the case of word origins, our willingness to accept and pass along a good story on shaky evidence can be relatively benign in its impact. However, when we use such one-sided thinking (as represented by the Confirmation Bias) to justify making invidious judgments, it can lead to the worst forms of discrimination and injustice.

(I'll continue with more from Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds next time.)

Anchors Aweigh!

I have written quite a bit in The Daily Improviser blog about the “Nothing Between” concept, i.e., the state in which there is “nothing between” a person and his environment, thus permitting the person to have a direct experience of reality. I have noted that many people seem to regard the performance improviser’s art as the quintessential Nothing Between state, a series of spontaneous fillings-in on a totally blank slate.

As I’ve mentioned in many of my articles, however, I wonder if anyone – the performance improviser or the Daily Improviser – really ever experiences the Nothing Between state, or even should aspire to that state as the ideal way to interact with his environment.

I recently ran across another source of support for this skepticism about Nothing Between. In his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb cites a study in which subjects were asked to spin a “wheel of fortune” that pointed to a wholly random number, and then were asked to estimate the number of countries in Africa. As Taleb recounts: “Those who had a low number on the wheel estimated a low number of African nations; those with a high number produced a higher estimate.” Taleb goes on to note:

“A classical mental mechanism, called anchoring, seems to be at work here. You lower your anxiety about uncertainty by producing a number [even when you know it is random], then you ‘anchor’ on it, like an object to hold on to in the middle of a vacuum.”

Taleb relates the anchoring mechanism to the advent of spreadsheet software – specifically, to the way in which we rely on Excel to extend projections ad infinitum into the future with a single click of a mouse.

“Once on a page or on a computer screen, or, worse, in a PowerPoint presentation, the projection takes on a life of its own, losing its vagueness and abstraction and becoming what philosophers call reified, invested with concreteness.”

As Taleb notes, our desire to reduce our anxiety over uncertainty can lead to an overreliance on the first or most concrete data we can find. But even though Taleb seems to be taking us to task for blinding ourselves to “real reality” via these mental mechanisms, in fact he recognizes that it couldn’t be any other way:

“We use reference points in our heads, say sales projections, and start building beliefs around them because less mental effort is needed to compare an idea to a reference point than to evaluate it in the absolute. We cannot work without a point of reference.” [Emphasis added]

Taleb’s discussion of these mental phenomena – anchoring and reification – reminds me of the Five White Things activity in the book Made to Stick. There, Chip Heath and Dan Heath describe the different level of mental calisthenics required to think of “five white things” vs. thinking of “five white things in your refrigerator.” The latter is generally an easier task because it provides a frame for our thinking, rather than a boundaryless (and thus paralyzing) blank slate on which nearly infinite choices could be written.

Anchoring, reification, framing … each of these mechanisms is in fact a “Thing Between” us and our environment. And as Steven Pinker so eloquently demonstrates in his seminal work The Blank Slate, these Things Between are an inherent part of the human condition. Rather than trying to deny them or will ourselves to push past them (say observers such as Taleb, Pinker, and the Heaths), we would do better to acknowledge and even embrace these mechanisms. At the least (as Taleb says), our understanding of our own thought structures should make us aware of the limits of our own reasoning and logic capabilities. At the most (as the Heaths say), knowing about the effect of framing can help us place useful boundaries on our thinking, thereby preventing analysis paralysis and facilitating communication of new concepts.

More Confirmation of the Confirmation Bias

I’m one of those people who reads five books at once – sometimes fewer, sometimes more. And as I read, I continually look for patterns, connections, and recurring themes that I can work into The Daily Improviser blog.

Lately, it seems as if the confirmation bias has been particularly persistent in dogging my reading path. As I’ve mentioned, the confirmation bias is our tendency to overlook evidence that runs counter to our pre-set opinions, as well as our near-mania to find patterns in the world’s workings that confirm our assumptions and prejudices. As Leonard Mlodinow points out in The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, “patterns” of occurrences, even if they do occur, do not always reflect an underlying cause but can simply be the products of randomness (aka “coincidences”).

Mlodinow goes on to say:

"The human brain has evolved to be very efficient at pattern recognition, but as the confirmation bias shows, we are focused on finding and confirming patterns rather than minimizing our false conclusions. Yet we needn’t be pessimists, for it is possible to overcome our prejudices. It is a start to simply realize that chance events, too, produce patterns. It is another great step if we learn to question our perceptions and theories. Finally, we should learn to spend as much time looking for evidence that we are wrong as we spend searching for reasons we are correct." [emphasis added]

Mlodinow’s observation, I think, provides more support for the “bumper sticker” headline I attached to one of my recent articles:

Want to Defeat the Truth? Then Start Arguing!

The Layer Between the Daily Improviser and Reality

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I’ve posted a number of articles in this blog on the topic of “nothing between” – that supposedly ideal state in which we directly experience reality and respond intuitively, in the moment. As much as this might sound like the quintessential “improv state,” on the contrary even performance improvisers use structures and mechanisms that do in fact “come between” them and their environments. Similarly, the Daily Improviser’s interaction with his world involves less a continuous filling in of a Blank Slate and more a dependence on useful shorthand to help him make sense of his environment.

I like to think of this “something between” as a set of layers, each representing a level of abstraction that serves as an interpretive guide for the Daily Improviser. (For the purpose of simplifying the point, I’ll apply my own abstraction to this concept and refer to this set of layers as simply the Layer.) The Layer can be counter-productive if we use it to blind ourselves to the world around us, but it can also be as comfy and cozy - and as functional - as a thick blanket on a cold winter's night. 

I think the Layer presents itself in many different ways.

For example, in their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath refer to the notion of a schema – a mental representation of a concept that everyone understands and that can thus be used as a springboard for communicating similar yet unique concepts. Rather than having to describe a “pomelo” to a novice by articulating a precise botanical definition, the describer only has to say that a pomelo is “a supersized grapefruit with a thick, soft rind.” No Blank Slate is needed – just start with the shared concept of a grapefruit and proceed from there.

In an earlier article, I also cited another example of the Layer while describing an article by Keith Sawyer concerning the mechanisms we use to facilitate our daily communications. Sawyer notes that, rather than writing fresh scripts for our every interaction, we commonly use such structures as catchphrases and overall frameworks to serve as useful shorthand for concepts that we wish to get across.

And just today, I happened upon another example of the Layer while browsing through the book The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. In the very first paragraph of the book, Mlodinow recounts the following story:

A few years ago a man won the Spanish national lottery with a ticket that ended in the number 48. Proud of his “accomplishment,” he revealed the theory that brought him the riches. “I dreamed of the number 7 for seven straight nights,” he said, “and 7 times 7 is 48.” Those of us with a better command of our multiplication tables might chuckle at the man’s error, but we all create our own view of the world and then employ it to filter and process our perceptions, extracting meaning from the ocean of data that washes over us in daily life.

So, yes, the man was in error – but it was a useful error, one that allowed him to rationalize a decision that led to a huge payoff. Doubtless, each of us (with different degrees of self-awareness) makes snap decisions based on bits and pieces of perception through which we’ve sifted. We then generalize and make abstractions about reality from the collage of sensation we craft. Failure to create and act upon this Layer would result in complete paralysis while we try to stitch together a “complete” picture that accounts for “all” the information we can gather and process.

I’ll continue to develop this idea of the Layer in upcoming articles.

Want to Defeat the Truth? Then Start Arguing!

In recent articles, I've described the way in which champion athletes manipulate their beliefs across the performance cycle.  In order to prepare their minds for success, they must instill in themselves a consciously irrational belief in their own invincibility.  Yet at the same time, they need to step outside of themselves and objectively view their performance so they can correct any flaws.

The maintaining of these two mindsets presents a paradox, since it requires a person simultaneously to believe both that he cannot fail and that he can (and must) improve his performance if he does fail.  I think this tricky mental balance perfectly illustrates a famous quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

I derived the "manipulating beliefs" point from the book Bounce, by Matthew Syed.  Syed was writing about competitive athletic contexts, but, as a recent Newsweek article by Sharon Begley reveals, a similar psychological dynamic may also be at work in another competitive arena: Arguing.

Begley says that, when we want to strongly proffer a certain point of view, we commonly use a mechanism called the confirmation bias - "seeing and recalling only evidence that supports your beliefs."  The confirmation bias helps us remain firm in our commitment to our arguments by keeping us from dispassionately analyzing our beliefs against empirical data or subjecting them to a plausibility test.  As she says, if we want to argue that women are bad drivers, we will only remember (and mention) those times when we saw a female driver going 40mph in the fast lane.

Begley observes that this tendency to ignore counter-evidence constitutes a form of irrational thinking, much like the athlete's belief in his own invincibility.  And the confirmation bias serves much the same purpose for an everyday disputant as the "invincibility" belief serves for the athlete.  As Begley says:

"The reason we succumb to confirmation bias, why we are blind to counterexamples ... is that these lapses have a purpose: they help us 'devise and evaluate arguments that are intended to persuade other people,' says psychologist Hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania. Failures of logic, he and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber of the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris propose, are in fact effective ploys to win arguments.

But Begley then makes an observation that shows the difference between the typical verbal warrior and Syed's champion athlete:

"Arguing, after all, is less about seeking truth than about overcoming opposing views. So while confirmation bias, for instance, may mislead us about what’s true and real, by letting examples that support our view monopolize our memory and perception, it maximizes the artillery we wield when trying to convince someone that, say, he really is 'late all the time.'” (emphasis added)

The typical arguer commonly fails to apply the second part of the "manipulating beliefs" equation: the recognition that he could actually be wrong.  By ignoring the holes in his own position, an arguer becomes like the athlete who convinces himself of his indomitability but overlooks the often glaring evidence that tells him where he's falling short.  When both verbal combatants fail to acknowledge their own fallibility, the typical argument becomes (as Begley says) "less about seeking the truth than about overcoming opposing views" - or, to use another combat analogy, an attempt to batter the other with one's position until he submits.  Whichever party "wins" such a battle, the truth is usually the real loser. 

Contrast this with the more productive outcome that can result from both parties' applying the And Stance, which I described earlier.

Maybe the typical arguer would do well to take a page from the champion athlete's playbook and entertain the possibility that he - and his positions - could stand further self-scrutiny.  If both parties were to do that, then their interaction could be less a competitive exercise and more a joint search for truth.

Getting There Is Half the Fun - Part Two

Last time, I described the mechanisms involved in one’s experiencing of a work of art. The enjoyment of the work doesn’t consist merely of the end-state, the basking in the emotion that comes after the work has been experienced. Rather, as described in the old advertising slogan “Getting There Is Half the Fun,” much of one’s appreciation comes from “having experienced” the work.

In other words, partaking of the structure of the work (the “how”) is as important as reflecting on the message conveyed by the content of the work (the “what”).

I think the same distinction between the “what” and the “how” is becoming increasingly important in pursuing and achieving results in an organizational environment. A leader might successfully achieve an outcome (the “what”) – a deadline, a cost savings, a revenue-generator – that provides benefit to the organization. Yet if he does it in a way (the “how”) that crushes morale, fails to develop his people, or violates ethical principles, then the question can well be asked: How successful has he really been?

A person can ask the same thing about the personal toll a goal-achievement can wreak. She might devote years of struggle and toil to attaining a goal – but if she ignores other important aspects of her life along the way (health, relationships, personal values), then she may fairly ask herself: Was the “what” worth the “how”?

Ultimately, I think, the issue boils down to a distinction I previously made in my article on Three Dog Night drummer Floyd Sneed:

“It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it!”

What this deliberately paradoxical observation is getting at, I think, is that the “what” and the “how” are really inseparable in judging the success of any artistic endeavor, in either a performance context or an organizational context.

In Improv, Getting There Is Half the Fun!

Back in the heyday of oceanic travel, the Cunard Line (which built and operated the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, among other famous vessels) used an advertising slogan that endures in the language to this day:

Getting There Is Half the Fun!

Cunard's hope, of course, was that passengers would think of the ocean passage as being the first half of the fun (and would spend that half on a Cunard ship), with the destination being the second.

Denis Dutton, in his fascinating book The Art Instinct, makes a similar point about our experiencing of artistic works of any sort, but particularly performance art.  The emotional end-state of an audience member's viewing of the work, he says, is not the real aim of attending.  Springboarding off a scene in Woody Allen's Sleeper in which people of the future step into a phone-booth-size cylinder that provides instant sensual gratification, Dutton says:

"Imagine [a machine called] an 'aesthetetron.' Step into it, push the correct button, and you can achieve a pleasure-moment of a kind produced by Sense and Sensibility or Lucia di Lammermoor without having to actually read the book or sit through the opera. What makes this joke funny (if it is) is the absurdity of trying to imagine that there exists any particular pleasure state ... that a work of art produces. Every great work of art is, like climbing a mountain, about the specific process of experiencing it - it is not about inducing some momentary pleasure that results from experiencing it." [Emphasis added]

I think this observation goes double for the experiencing of an improv performance. The structure of a novel or an opera does provide some pleasure in and of itself, but ultimately the greater pleasure is in a "final result" - the emotional content of the work that is carried by the structure.  In improv, by contrast, a transcription of the content of the improvised scene might provide some enjoyment on its own to a person who later cozies up with it by a warm fire.  However, an audience member's real engagement with the work comes from the process of its creation - i.e., the realization that the scene is being created totally off the cuff, in the moment.

Throughout The Art Instinct, Dutton describes how content and process (I'll call it the "what" and the "how") go hand-in-hand in our experiencing and assessing of a work of art.  Next time, I'll connect this observation with another art form: The creating of results in an organizational environment.

What Do Good Bosses Believe?

A friend of mine (thanks, Kat!) recently forwarded an intriguing Harvard Business Review article titled 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, by Robert L. Sutton.  I found this to be a refreshing departure from many such lists about "best practices" for leaders, many of which I believe to be fairly obvious in their recommendations.

I would like to focus on three of his 12 items in particular:

4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.

6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.

7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.

I was immediately struck by the way these three items echo some of the paradoxes I've been discussing in recent articles:

• Matthew Syed's observations about the need for an athlete to be utterly convinced of his eventual success while also being aware of his shortcomings so he can improve his game;
• The need for a leader to be both influential and influenceable;
• The need for a leader to be confident in his course of action yet also flexible enough to course-correct if events so require.

And I'll also cite a fourth item from Sutton's list:

10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

"Bad is stronger than good."  Hmm ... it seems as if we've seen that one before. 

Famous Daily Improvisers: Ted Williams

In my recent articles, I've noted Matthew Syed's descriptions (in his book Bounce) of the way in which champion athletes adopt an almost irrational confidence in the inevitability of their success on the playing field. As I read Syed's accounts of the ways in which athletes mentally prepare themselves for matches, I was immediately reminded of a story concerning one of the greatest baseball players of all time, Ted Williams.

In his 1970 book Ball Four (one of the best and most influential baseball books of all time), ex-pitcher Jim Bouton describes an anecdote related by a teammate who had played with Williams on the Boston Red Sox.  (Note: Since this is a family blog, I've cleaned up some of the language.)

"In the bullpen tonight, Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams ... would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there."

"He'd go into the [batting] cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, 'My name is Ted Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball!'"

"He'd swing and hit a line drive."

"Then he'd say, 'Here comes Jim Bunning! Jim Bunning and that puny little slider of his!'"

Wham!

"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that junk!"

Blam!

"I'm Ted Williams!"

Sock!

Williams - or "Teddy Ballgame," as he used to refer to himself -  was a two-time American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) winner who led the league in batting six times. He had a career batting average of .344, with 521 home runs, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. He is the last player in Major League Baseball to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941).

Hmm ... well, maybe in his case, his confidence wasn't so irrational after all!

Mindsets: "Fixed" or "Growth" - or Both?

Let's consider two different attitudes that an athlete might adopt as he approaches a competitive match:

1) "I am great, the greatest performer in this field, the greatest performer in the history of the world!  There is no way anybody else is going to beat me! I am absolutely incapable of failure!"

2) "I need to be hyper-aware of how well I'm doing so that, if I fail, I can pinpoint my deficiencies.  Then, before my next competition, I can devote whatever amount of purposeful practice it takes to improve my performance!"

The first attitude reflects what Carol Dweck calls the Fixed Mindset.  A person with a Fixed Mindset focuses on what he "is," as if his skills and capabilities were unchanging and inalterable.  His regard for himself is thus completely dependent on maintaining and defending this facade of infallibility.  It follows that a person with a Fixed Mindset cannot allow himself to admit his deficiencies - to himself or to others.  And if he can't admit them, then he can't correct them.

By contrast, the second attitude reflects the Growth Mindset.  A person with a Growth Mindset focuses not on what he "is" but on what he can become.  He believes (and Dweck cites research to support this belief) that a person's potential is boundless, limited only by the amount of passion, toil, and training he brings to developing his skills.  To a person with a Growth Mindset, achieving performance excellence requires a continual awareness of the gap between where he is and where he needs to go.

Dweck sets up these two mindsets to be mutually exclusive - that is, you can have one mindset or the other, but you can't have both.

Or can you?

Well, recall my prior article on Matthew Syed's book Bounce, in which he notes how champion athletes can - and in fact must - deliberately hold two seemingly contradictory beliefs at the same time: One that focuses on his invincibility (so he can "enter into battle" with the complete confidence that he'll succeed) and one that acknowledges his shortcomings (so he can identify where he needs to improve).

The implication of Syed's observations about "manipulating beliefs" is that a performer must maintain both a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset throughout the performance cycle if he wants to reach the top of his game!  He has to focus both on what he is (call it "saying affirmations" or "psyching himself up") and on what he has yet to become.

So, again, what seems like an inescapable dichotomy can be resolved by the Daily Improviser through the application of the Improv Mindset, which seeks to find the seamless connections between apparently irresolvable contradictions.