Maria Konnikova - Grey Elephants in Denmark

Observation is simultaneously a conversation. So how do we become a great "observationalist?"

Beginning with the Grey Elephant in Denmark Trick, Maria Konnikova, the author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, explains that she can read minds.

You'll be "a step closer" to understanding Holmes' talent for reading minds after her talk, she says, and outlines what she'll discuss today - the "Magic number 17," the importance of a "well-stocked attic," "Don't forget dogs that don't bark" and how overconfidence will "kill you," but "curiosity won't."

Seeing the detail is the difference between "mindlessness and mindfulness," or passive v. active attention.

So how do we learn to pay attention?

Don't multitask. We're not actually multitasking she says, just switching very, very quickly back and forth between tasks. This "inattentional blindness" may have dire consequences when, for example, we're texting while driving.

Being in the moment requires us to actively pay attention. Demonstrating the point with a brief 20 second exercise, she asks the group to be momentarily still, and points out, on the final exhale, that "when we're in happier states, our field of vision increases."

Inward, non-judgemental states have physical benefits. Meditation changes the brain for the better.

But how we store information affects how we recall information later. The "conjunction fallacy" predicts that each of us bring internal assumptions to bear that affect judgement. Holmes' success is owed to an ability to remove a certain emotional content from decision making, and in being aware of the information he brings to the transaction. As with mindfulness, a detached, quiet observation improves the kind of information we get.

Careful observation can succeed either by recalling the information itself, or the route to that information. Holmes, Konnikova says, would be delighted with Google.

But to get to novel or hidden solutions, one must take different paths. For imaginative solutions we need to have a well-stocked attic, to be well read, to have a standard set of information about the world around us. Those data points are the raw material for expansiveness of thought.

Holmes' "three pipe" approach asks us to take a step back, to give the mind time to rummage through the attic. It's particularly important when, as she demonstrates using some clever optical illusions. The hidden information is often there, waiting for patient exploration.

That "distance" can be obtained through nature as well. Konnikova says that the natural environment - not the urban sidewalk, she adds - can add a creative force to our thinking. Moreover, "we don't know why." Even a nature-based screen saver delivers a smaller and similar effect.

Putting on the "white coat" can also distance us from (our) quick judgements, particularly when it's combined with the well furnished mind. It activates our problem-solving capacity, which made me wonder for a moment about a similar effect that actors experience, or the musician who slips into extemporaneous playing. They are exploring roles.

Wrapping up, Konnikova says Holmes' also understood "omission neglect," which focuses our attention on what's in front of us. It doesn't typically notice the "dog that didn't bark." Sales people and marketers put the effect to good use with feature creep.

The world's greatest psychologist wasn't B.F. Skinner or Freud, she concludes, but Sherlock Holmes. Our minds need not be mysteries as long as we stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by CC Chapman

Alex Stone - Once is a Trick; Twice is a Lesson

Tweetable moments from Alex Stone today:

• Returning a watch secretly stolen from audience volunteer: "Magic exploits a wormhole in the mind." 
• Kids are the hardest to fool. Adults are good at ignoring peripheral information.
• "We're used to thinking that our decisions are our own."
• "Our mind lags behind reality by a certain finite amount," a fact exploited by magicians. Magic gives us insight into these "continuity errors."
• We're so suggestible: simply imagining an act will implant a memory of that act happening. Magicians know this.
• Magic frames the experience differently and changes the end. We remember what "happens at the end" and the most emotional experiences.
• On doing kids' shows, because kids are so hard to fool: "the ninth circle of hell."
• Magic reconnects us with our eight year old. On aging magician's last request, "I wish someone could fool me one more time."
• On what he's learned: Magic tells us how we see things, how we remember, about our limitations.
• For example, "we're inclined to see patterns where none exist." BUT, perception is reality.
• Magic is a "primitive art;" it taps into our elemental biology. Being fooled is a way of experiencing something deep.
• Having amply demonstrated our frailty, Alex Stone: "Be smart enough to know that you're dumb."
• On magicians be tricked by other magicians: "we're constrained by our assumptions" too

Follow us on Twitter @ideafestival!

Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by CC Chapman

Let "Bohemian Gravity" teach you string theory

References to it can refer to the sonified sun or the Allosphere or this art-sci proposal at Discovery News to bring time dilation to our senses (I'd love to talk to you!).

But "Bohemian Gravity?"

Set to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, the words in this exceptionally clever video describe the effort to reconcile the now separate physics of the very big, which includes Newtonian mechanics and special and general relativity, and what we know about the physics of the vanishingly small, or quantum physics. If successful, and pending experimental confirmation that many believe will be exceptionally difficult to obtain, string theory would provide a single physical explanation for all of space and time, at all sizes. And if that weren't interesting enough, the math that falls out of string theory and its many derivatives also suggests that the universe has 10 or more dimensions. Fun!

Give it a listen.

Important: We're just a few days from IdeaFestival 2013. If you plan on coming and if you use social media, please check this page. It includes, among other things, information on people to follow, hashtags to use and a common place to upload your festival pics.

Please don't forget the IdeaFestival Labs happening Tuesday. They're free, but require registration. The growing number of IdeaFestival affiliate events happening around the main stage also merit your attention.

I'll see you in Louisville!

Wayne

Oliver Burkeman on awe, "opensure" and happiness

Note: This blog entry has been lightly edited and reposted. Don't miss Oliver at IdeaFestival 2013!

If someone handed you a piece of paper tomorrow that told you exactly how the rest of your live would unfold in every detail, you would hate it, even if what was on that sheet of paper was all good.

Covering a rather large plot of psychological terrain, journalist and author of "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," Oliver Burkeman talks with the IdeaFestival for its "Five Questions" series. Similar interviews have been done in the past three weeks with Maria Konnikova, Jason Pontin and Ariel Waldman.

Each of these terrific people will speak next week at IdeaFestival 2013!

Calling awe a mixture of wonder and fear, and the most "undervalued emotion," Burkeman describes the sensation as "not entirely pleasant," and suggests, perhaps with a bit of understatement, that the birth of a child might qualifiy as awe-filled.

I'm in awe when I look up. Awe for me is that heart-quickening sensation as my eyes transit a beglamored and truly dark night sky, or trace the full length of Scorpius. Awe is the knowledge that several billion years after water and precious metals rained on its surface, the terran inhabitants of this blue world blink-blinked to life, simply at first and in ways that we don't yet fully understand, and that, miraculously, these self-referential beings refashioned those same metals as Hubble, as Kepler, as Cassini, as Curiosity and flung them back into the cosmos bewildered and wondering. It is to understand that nearby Alpha Centauri and Epsilon Eridani host planets, and that in worlds much closer to home, life may swim in under-ice oceans of Enceladus or Europa or loiter in the thick atmosphere of a carbon-rich Titan.

Burkeman also uses a term new to me, "opensure," or a fundamental openness toward the unknown, which contrasts neatly with what I judged in my question to him to be a widespread longing for certainty.

And this: "an ability to rest in mystery is a crucial 'negative' skill." I loved that.

As for creativity and innovation in the business world, Burkeman argues that systems designed to avoid failure will inevitably fail. And breakthroughs that find cultural homes or financial success, are, like our happiness seeker, governed by paradox: it is often when "you are not focused on one specific endpoint, of knowing that things have to turn out one specific way, that you can hear opportunity knocking from other directions." 

Perfect.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Getting it wrong in the right way

What a wonderful idea! Too bad, my _____, my _____ or my _____ would never go for it.

I bet you can fill in the blanks.

Why are some organizations so creative while others aren't? Guest posting at Nina Simon's Museum 2.0 blog, Julie Bowen, VP of Experience and Engagement at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, points out that creative organizations value leaders and people who can "associate, observe, question, experiment and network."

If that resonates with you, you're a lot like the people - speakers and the buyers of Festival Passes alike - who appear year after year at the IdeaFestival.

Not all mistakes are created equal though. Some organizations make mistakes because the future profitable service or product appeared in a form they didn't expect or recognize. They missed the faint signal in the noise or waived off the wall flower who suddenly spoke up. We've all been in places where the email never stops. Send enough of those, or holds enough meetings, and one can never be wrong. Document demands often take the place of originality. It's the fearful that sly dial.

You've probably been on the receiving end of these tactics. Bowen, quoting Sir Ken Robinson, explains the underlying reality.

If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never do anything original.

The most important ingredient for any organization that builds creativity into its DNA is an element of faith because the truth is that nobody knows now if that interesting idea will work. Such organizations understand that a priori demands for proof are also another way of saying, "don't you dare." Instead, creative organizations, as Peter Sims pointed out last year, make little bets. They wait, watch and cultivate the ones that pay off.

More importantly, when they're wrong, they're wrong in the right way.

Without a culture of risk taking, of making little bets, even the successes have a downside. No one is certain why a product or service hit while others folded. But if an organization supports the curious within, whether it's structured time off during the day or just one wise manager's encouragement to try something new, being wrong can be a productive exercise, because, like the experimenter or the scientist, even the misses ultimately point toward the truth.  

Wayne

Image of Peter Sims: Geoff Oliver Bugbee