Vsauce! Kevin here, and I'm an IDIOT. I am the Duke of the dull and dim-witted. I am breathtakingly brainless. I am fabulously fat-headed, disastrously doltish,
and confoundingly cretinous. I've spent 10 years making hundreds of videos
celebrating knowledge and creativity. I’ve highlighted the achievements of some
of the smartest minds in science and math. I’ve learned a lot along the way, and maybe
you have, too. But for the last few weeks I've been pursuing
peak stupidity -- and, uhh, it's going pretty well. The fact is -- I hope this video actually
makes you dumber, because sometimes being an idiot is the difference between life and
death. Here's how. Hold on. I gotta get this BBQ sauce off my face. It's like literally burning my skin. Okay hang on. Oh this is for a child. Okay I am going to smell like BBQ sauce for
the rest of this video but it's what I do for you. Okay here’s how. In 1942, psychologist
Alexander Luchins administered a problem-solving test using water and differently sized jars. The goal is to fill and empty those jars with
water in a combination to get to the desired volume. You’ve got an unlimited supply of water,
and you can throw out as much as you want. In Problem #1, Jar A holds 29 ounces and Jar
B holds 3 ounces. The goal is to measure 20 ounces. So, you’d fill the 29 ounce jar and use
that to fill the 3 ounce jar 3 times (29 - 3 - 3 - 3 = 20), leaving you with 20 ounces. This is not a paradox. Problem #2 adds a third jar. This time, Jar A is 21oz, Jar B is 127oz,
and Jar C is 3oz. We have to get 100oz, and that’s also pretty
easy (127 - 21 - 3 - 3 = 100). The third problem is a little bit trickier,
but now we know how to solve these -- Jar A holds 14oz, Jar B holds 163oz, and Jar C
holds 25oz. Your goal is to get 99oz. You can fill the 163, then pour two 25’s
and one 14 for 163 - 25 - 25 - 14 = 99. Once you’re locked in to the successful
strategy, you’re on auto-pilot. Fill the biggest jar and use the other two
smaller jars to reduce it until you’ve got the right amount. Got it. Alright, one more: Jar A holds 23oz, Jar B holds 49oz, Jar C
holds 3oz. We need 20oz. So, 49 - 23 - 3 - 3 = 20. Right? Wr… well, yes, that’s actually right. But it’s not the most efficient solution. We could just fill Jar A with 23 ounces and
then pour 3 ounces into Jar C and have the 20 ounces that we need. This time, we don’t need this largest jar
at all. Learning an algorithm to solve these problems
actually made us a little bit stupider. Luchins found that after giving 6 problems
that involved filling the largest jar B and then taking away different amounts using Jars
A and C, the research subjects were locked in to using all three jars to solve each problem. They didn’t even see the simpler solution. The final problem, 28, 76, and 3, with a goal
of 25, could only be solved with the two smaller jars, 28 minus 3 -- you can’t even use the
largest jar to solve this problem. Many of the subjects tried to apply their
algorithm and immediately said the problem was impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. They’d gained too much knowledge. They were too experienced. They’d become so smart that they got stupid. Welcome to the Einstellung Effect. “Einstellung” is a German word that roughly
translates as “mindset.” It describes the overall method and frame
of reference for solving a problem. When Luchins conducted his experiment, he
gave a second group that problem that contained two possible solutions as their very first
task. Most of them instantly recognized the simpler
solution because they weren’t trapped in the Big Jar method of thinking about the problem. It wasn’t that Group B was smarter, it was
that Group A had learned just enough to make them dumber. Oh -- and some of the people who were shown
the simpler solution after they declared the final problem was impossible? They got mad. They got really really mad. In his paper “Mechanization in Problem Solving,”
Luchins wrote, “Realizing it, he is embarrassed by the blindness and stupidity he showed while
solving them; puzzles how it was possible; and feels shame at having been blinded to
such a degree, rendered so incapable of reasonable action, of intelligent procedures.” Basically, some were upset that they felt
dumb and then decided to take that anger out on the experiment itself. In a footnote, Luchins explains: “Instead
of viewing their responses as stupid, some of these subjects remarked heatedly that the
tasks or the instructions were stupid.” They were embarrassed because they felt stupid
-- and they felt stupid because they were too smart. They’d have been smarter if they were stupider. It’s a vicious cycle. The Einstellung Effect is a serious cognitive
force, and it’s so strong that when a similar experiment used eye-tracking software to show
whether expert chess players could recognize a simple solution after a specific series
of moves, they literally did not even see it. Their brains wouldn’t let them see it. Kinda like how you can’t see that my face
is not flat. This is actually a concave photo of my face. As you can see when I turn it, this is not
at all a flat image. But when seen straight-on
-- your brain automatically fills in that hollow shape and projects it outward because it’s programmed to see faces
that way. Grand Illusions has a hollow-face Einstein
mask that really shows just how biased our visual systems are in favor of seeing faces
as convex. Your brain won’t allow you to see the hollow
face for the concave shape it truly is because its shortcut supersedes reality. It’s why the phrase, “I can’t unsee
it!” exists in the first place. Here’s a different example. There’s an old riddle about a plane crashing, or a Starship Enterprise,
crashing on an international border and being asked
where to bury the survivors. Your brain gets so wrapped up in processing
what you know -- that a country’s borders could be relevant in determining how to deal
with the situation, that a certain number of people died in the crash, and all the other
details we’re used to thinking about -- that it takes a minute to realize that survivors
don’t have to be buried at all. The Einstellung Effect has created a short-term
cognitive illusion that turns a simple, obvious scenario into a ridiculous brain teaser. Sometimes it’s just… better to know a
lot less. In a 1999 paper called “The Recognition
Heuristic,” Goldstein and Gigerenzer describe a psychological experiment asking which of
two cities had a larger population -- San Diego or San Antonio. A group of Germans answered correctly more
often than a group of Americans. The Americans likely considered the populations
of Texas and California, whether they thought the cities were growing, and a ton of other
factors. The Germans? Well, more of them had heard of San Diego,
and many hadn’t heard of San Antonio, so they figured the more famous city was bigger. The end. That’s it. The “less is more effect” actually made
them more likely to be right. And we’ve just recently figured out that
being dumb can make you smart, right? Wrong! We’ve actually known about this problem
for a really long time. In 1620, Francis Bacon wrote in Novum Organum
that, “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the
received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and
agree with it.” Bacon didn’t know the cognitive science
behind that phenomenon, but he had the basic idea right: for efficiency’s sake, your
brain tends to process new things by drawing on the knowledge it currently possesses. It’s why I can’t make this egg stand up. Come on, egg. Work with me here. Please stand. The task here is to balance this egg on one
of its ends. And uh it's not really working out for me
too well. In Girolamo Benzoni’s 1565 “History of
the New World,” he wrote that Christopher Columbus challenged a group of noble Spaniards:
"Gentlemen, I will lay a wager with any of you, that you will not make this egg stand
up as I will, naked and without anything at all." I don't know why he had to be naked that's
kinda weird. They tried and failed, just like I’ve been
trying and failing. And then Columbus just kinda smashed the egg
on the table and look it stood up. He wasn’t trapped by Einstellung. And neither was Alexander the Great, who solved
the puzzle of the Gordian Knot in the 4th century BC. The knot was so complex and so intricate,
a lot more intricate and complex than this, this is a pillowcase, that anyone who could
untie it would immediately be declared King of Phrygia. He just cut it in half with his sword… something
like that. Kind of like the way Indiana Jones was badly
outmatched by an expert swordsman and then just shot him with his gun. Everyone has understood this seemingly forever,
and a recognition of the Einstellung Effect is deeply rooted in Asian philosophies. In Zen Buddhism, the term “shoshin” refers
to ‘the beginner’s mind’ -- an attitude of openness and eliminating the constraints
of experience and knowledge. Zen and Daoist meditators try to achieve the
Mushin, the state of a ‘mind without a mind’ free from attachments and thoughts. In Japanese martial arts, zanshin is total
awareness -- not just focusing on what you know or think you know, but letting every
possibility present itself, even when it’s simple. But this isn’t just about illusions, ancient
philosophy or solving cute riddles. Understanding the impact of Einstellung can
literally save lives. In the 1970s, a cardiologist named Lee Goldman
compiled data on heart attack cases and found that taking an ECG reading and answering three
basic questions could determine whether someone was actually having a heart attack. When this shortcut decision tree was implemented
at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, the results were incredible. It beat the old diagnosis method by 70%, and the hospital found that
highly-trained, experienced doctors diagnosed the most serious cases correctly
75-89% of the time, while the 3-step quick and dirty method was right over 95% of the
time. Depending on a well-educated,
extremely-knowledgeable professional actually made things worse. People died because we were too smart. We are obsessed with being smart and knowing
things. It’s why I’m so curious about science
and math and people, and honestly… it’s why this channel exists. And look, it’s important to know stuff and
have experience. And it’s important to have a ‘mechanized’
mind. Luchins said, “Mechanized responses have
a place in one's behavior. They possess the advantages of releasing one
from the bother of finding new responses to recurring everyday situations. They equip one with precise, ready, and speedy
responses to certain aspects of his environment; and they free the mind so that it can more
adequately deal with complicated tasks.” YEAH. But he then went on to say… “... when
a habit ceases to be a tool discriminantly applied but becomes a procrustean bed to which
the situation must conform; when, in a word, instead of the individual mastering the habit, the habit masters the
individual—then mechanization is indeed a dangerous thing.” Intelligence, experience, and knowledge are
freedom -- and they can also be a prison that takes away your freedom to think differently. Your brain is the greatest computer ever invented…
but it can also constrain your creativity and limit your potential. We all want to get smarter, become more creative,
and solve bigger and more advanced problems in everything from the video games we play
to the society we live in. There’s so much pressure to be smart -- and
it’s just... not always about that. Sometimes you just… gotta get stupid. And as always, thanks for watching.
