Category: Psychology

The Elite Experts Who Have Failed, Tend to Censor the Heterodox Outsiders Who They Fear

(p. 8) When you have a chronic illness and struggle to get better, you try to maintain a certain equilibrium by distinguishing yourself from all those other sick people, the ones who are trying truly crazy things while you are proceeding sensibly and moderately along the path to health.

. . .

These exotic treatments, from acupuncture to IV vitamin C to magnet therapy and more, weren’t the core of what helped me eventually gain ground and improve — strong and various doses of antibiotics played the central role. But they were the most educational part of my slow, still-continuing recovery, in the sense of what they revealed about the complexity and strangeness of the world.

The strangest of them all was the Rife machine.

. . .

Naturally, it worked.

What does “worked” mean, you may reasonably ask? Just this: By this point in my treatment, there was a familiar feeling whenever I was symptomatic and took a strong dose of antibiotics — a temporary flare of pain and discomfort, a desire to move or rub the symptomatic areas of my body, a sweating or itching feeling, followed by a wave of exhaustion and then a mild relief. I didn’t get this kind of reaction with every alternative treatment I tried. But with the Rife machine I got it instantly: It was like having a high dose of antibiotics hit the body all at once.

Of course, this was obviously insane, so to the extent that I was able I conducted experiments, trying frequencies for random illnesses to see if they elicited the same effect (they did not), setting up blind experiments where I ran frequencies without knowing if they were for Lyme disease or not (I could always tell).

. . .

When I set out to write about the entire chronic-illness experience, I hesitated over whether to tell this kind of story. After all, if you’re trying to convince skeptical readers to take chronic sickness seriously, and to make the case for the medical-outsider view of how to treat Lyme disease, reporting that you’ve been dabbling in pseudoscience and that it works is a good way to confirm every stereotype about chronic ailments and their treatment: It’s psychosomatic … it’s all the power of suggestion … it’s a classic placebo effect … poor Ross, taken in by the quacks … he’ll be ‘doing his own research’ on vaccination next

    .

    But there are two good reasons to share this sort of story. The first is that it’s true, it really happened, and any testimony about what it’s like to fight for your health for years would be dishonest if it left the weird stuff out.

    The second is that this kind of experience — not the Rife machine specifically, but the experience of falling through the solid floor of establishment consensus and discovering something bizarre and surprising underneath — is extremely commonplace. And the interaction between the beliefs instilled by these experiences and the skepticism they generate (understandably) from people who haven’t had them, for whom the floor has been solid all their lives, is crucial to understanding cultural polarization in our time.

    On both sides of our national divides, insider and outsider, establishment and populist, something in human psychology makes us seek coherence and simplicity in our understanding of the world. So people who have a terrible experience with official consensus, and discover that some weird idea that the establishment derides actually seems to work, tend to embrace a new rule to replace the old one: that official knowledge is always wrong, that outsiders are always more trustworthy than insiders, that if Dr. Anthony Fauci or the Food and Drug Administration get some critical things wrong, you can’t trust them to get anything right.

    This impulse explains why fringe theories tend to cluster together, the world of outsider knowledge creating its own form of consensus and self-reinforcement. But it also explains the groupthink that the establishment often embraces in response, its fear that pure craziness automatically abounds wherever official knowledge fails, and its commitment to its own authority as the only thing standing between society and the abyss.

    This is a key dynamic in political as well as biomedical debates. The conspicuous elite failures in the last 20 years have driven many voters to outsider narratives, which blend plausible critiques of the system with outlandish paranoia. But the insiders only see the paranoia, the QAnon shaman and his allies at the gates. So instead of reckoning with their own failures, they pull up the epistemic drawbridge and assign fact checkers to patrol the walls. Which in turn confirms for outsiders their belief that the establishment has essentially blinded itself and only they have eyes to see.

    What we need, I’m convinced, are more people and institutions that sustain a position somewhere in between.

For the full commentary, see:

Ross Douthat. “How I Became Extremely Open-Minded.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, November 7, 2021): 8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 6, 2021, and has the same title as the print version. The passages that are underlined above, were in italics in the original. In the underlined passages I use a hyphen were the original had ellipses.)

The passages quoted above are from a commentary adapted from Douthat’s book:

Douthat, Ross. The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. New York: Convergent Books, 2021.

A Driving Goldfish Shows “Smart” Adaptive Intelligence

(p. A1) Ronen Segev is out to clear the goldfish’s bad reputation.

“Many times people come to me and ask me, ‘We thought that [a] goldfish has a three-second memory span.’ This is incorrect. It’s very important to make this point,” he said. “Fish are smart, even goldfish.”

His case rests on a viral video he tweeted last month of a goldfish driving a water-tank-equipped robotic vehicle down the side of a street and inside his lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. The roboride was part of a scientific study to test whether goldfish had the mental acuity to navigate a terrestrial environment toward a target using a machine. The six goldfish that took part in driver’s training passed their test.

. . .

(p. A9) “The ability to change in response to a changing environment, it’s so important to survival,” said Kelly Lambert, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond in Virginia, who has trained rats, but not fish, to drive. “The flexibility is what is so amazing about a brain. If you had a brain that was fixed, if anything changed in the environment—we’re done.”

Dr. Segev, a neuroscientist who has been studying fish cognition for 16 years, didn’t hold back on the menu of challenges he devised for his goldfish. His aim was to show that animal brains aren’t inferior to human ones; they’re just different because they evolved in a different environment, he said. Animal brains are flexible enough to adapt to new situations, a fundamental characteristic of all brains, neuroscientists say.

He put a goldfish in a tank aboard a robot outfitted with computer-vision software that tracked the fish’s movement. When the fish moved inside its plexiglass pool, the robot moved with it. The fish had to learn that when it swam right, the robotic vehicle moved in that direction too.

The fish had to use their new cognitive skills to find a target, a pink board inside a lab. In return for hitting their mark, the fish got rewarded with a pellet of food.

For the full story, see:

Daniela Hernandez. “In This Fish Story, a Goldfish Drives a Vehicle Down the Street.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, February 7, 2022): A1 & A9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 6, 2022, and has the title “How Do You Teach a Goldfish to Drive? First You Need a Vehicle.”)

“Hell No,” Greta Thunberg’s Dad Would Not Go to Global Warming COP26 Summit

(p. A1) One person is delighted not to attend the United Nations climate change conference this month.

Greta Thunberg’s dad.

For three years, Svante Thunberg chaperoned his daughter to events across the globe, including spending weeks cooped up in a sailboat crossing the Atlantic, as Greta Thunberg rose to become the leading face of youth climate activism.

Now Ms. Thunberg, who turned 18 in January, is an adult and Mr. Thunberg, 52, can finally get a bit of his life back.

“Hell no,” says Mr. Thunberg (p. A10) when asked if he will be traveling to the COP26 summit, currently underway in Glasgow. “I am certainly not going.”

. . .

Mr. Thunberg, who runs a music-production business and once aspired to owning an SUV, went along with his daughter to attend two previous COP summits. He now drives an electric car. Her parents had to set up a foundation to manage over a million dollars of prize money their child won and wants to give away. Mr. Thunberg says he quit the foundation’s board as soon as he could.

“We have other things to do,” he says. Ms. Thunberg’s mother, Ms. Ernman, is an opera singer who once represented Sweden at the Eurovision song contest. “We have jobs,” Mr. Thunberg says.

. . .

The parental odyssey started after Greta, aged about eight, watched a TV program about trash clogging the oceans. Ms. Thunberg was shocked that more wasn’t being done to address this, her father says.

She went into a depression at age 11. She largely stopped talking, virtually stopped eating for several months and had to be taken out of school. She says she was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Ms. Thunberg, her parents and her younger sister chronicled this in a book called “Our House Is On Fire.”

. . .

. . . climate activism appeared to energize their daughter, who was now eating better and proving very adept at delivering blunt messages in public.

Her parents were amazed that, despite not saying anything particularly new on climate change, she was cutting through. Global dignitaries lined up to invite her to lecture them on their failure to act.

For the full story, see:

Max Colchester. “Greta Thunberg’s Dad Takes a Break From Climate Talks.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, November 2, 2021): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 1, 2021, and has the title “Greta Thunberg’s Dad Won’t Be With Her at the Climate Summit—and He’s Thrilled.”)

Technology Allows College Students to Stay Attached to Friends and Family at Home

(p. C5) I sometimes forget that my daughter has left for college. She Facetimes me on her way from the library to the gym. I see a small portion of her head, blue sky behind her, headphones dangling from an ear, part of a cup of coffee. She texts me updates on her failing quest to find the right edition of “The Waste Land” for one of her classes. I am still part of the dailiness of her life in a way that I am quite sure my mother was not in mine when I left for college in the last century.

My daughter also stays in close contact with her friends from home via group texts, Snapchat, TikTok, private Instagram stories. They are warm, vivid presences in her life that would likely have faded in a different technological moment.

While I remember high-school friends drifting, high-school boyfriends vanishing by winter break, many people she knows have romantic interests from home that endure. After all, their relationships with their new friends are also, to some degree, on the phone. With smartphones, physical presence becomes less important; it is no longer necessary to be with someone to communicate incessantly with them. The people in front of you comprise only one of many social situations you have access to.

. . .

Some part of me wonders if there aren’t benefits to this new way of being, along with the obvious downsides. My daughter is attached to her college friends and her friends from home. She is almost living in two places simultaneously; she is inhabiting more than one possible world.

For the full commentary, see:

Katie Roiphe. “Even at College, Our Children Are Home.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, January 29, 2022): C5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the same date as the print version, and has the same title as the print version.)

Even in Old Age Miner George Hearst Retained His “Tenacity, Demon Energy and Genius”

(p. A15) George Hearst was famous for discovering metals—copper, silver, gold—but he liked any mineral he could pull out of the earth. New Year’s Eve 1889 found him far from his San Francisco home, in West Virginia’s coal country. “We found the coal veins all right,” said Hearst’s traveling companion, T.J. Clunie, a young California state senator. “The samples were fine, the price was low, and I expected to see Hearst snap at the offer.” But Hearst was hesitant. “I don’t like to buy a pig in a poke,” he said. “We had better crawl up and see that coal for ourselves before we discuss the price.” That meant scaling a 3,000-foot hill.

At the summit Hearst found a vein of coal, hacked out a chunk, and set it on fire. The flame sputtered and died in seconds. He tossed the lump aside and went looking for another. He found a different vein, hacked out another piece and ignited it. This one burned steadily for 10 minutes, Clunie recalled, while Hearst watched it “as a mother does her first-born.” Hearst scrambled back down the hill and bought the vein. He was 69 years old.

Stomach cancer would claim Hearst barely a year later, but as Matthew Bernstein demonstrates in “George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age,” the old miner went about his work right to the end with the same tenacity, demon energy and genius for finding what he was after that had made him one of the richest men in the American West.

. . .

Hearst did occasionally interrupt his prospecting. On a visit home to Missouri, the 40-year-old prospector fell for an 18-year-old named Phoebe Apperson, and married her in 1862. It was a happy match—he certainly wasn’t around enough to get on her nerves—and they produced one child, William Randolph Hearst, who would embed himself in the national memory even more deeply than his father.

. . .

. . ., there is a warmth to the man that makes him good company throughout the book, and charm in his downright language, as when he said, “When I was young I had very strong religious views, and was brought up to a thoroughly orthodox way; but after leaving home my ideas got broader, and on studying these things for myself, without any influence from parents, or ministers, I came to the conclusion that I knew just about as much about it as anybody, and I knew nothing.”

For the full review, see:

Richard Snow. “BOOKSHELF; A Head For Metals.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Dec. 13, 2021): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 12, 2021, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘George Hearst’ Review: A Head for Metals.”)

The book under review is:

Bernstein, Matthew. George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.

Side Gigs Can Lift Mood Enough to Improve Performance in Main Job

(p. R4) Contrary to the popular wisdom, moonlighting doesn’t leave people worn out and unproductive from 9 to 5. Instead, side gigs can make people feel more empowered—and thereby more productive at the office.

Dr. Sessions and his colleagues—whose results were recently published in the Academy of Management Journal—posted ads on large social-media networking groups, asking people to take a series of surveys about the nature of their supplementary work.  . . .

The study showed that supplementary work frequently enables side hustlers to feel empowered by taking ownership of self-directed work—which was especially true for those who were motivated beyond making money, says Dr. Sessions.

. . .

Side hustlers self-reported that they were preoccupied with their after-hours gigs the next morning, due to being deeply engaged in that work.

. . .

But that wasn’t the whole story: The moonlighters’ colleagues rated their co-workers’ performance significantly higher on those same days.

So, the uplift in mood had a statistically stronger positive effect on employee performance than the negative effect of being distracted—even if the moonlighters didn’t see things that way.

For the full story, see:

Heidi Mitchell. “When Two Jobs Can Be Better Than One.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021): R4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 1, 2021 , and has the title “How a Side Hustle Can Boost Performance at Your Regular Job.”)

The comprehensive review by Prof. Stephan mentioned above is:

Stephan, Ute. “Entrepreneurs’ Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review and Research Agenda.” Academy of Management Perspectives 32, no. 3 (Aug. 2018): 290-322.

The recent study co-authored by Dr. Sessions mentioned above is:

Sessions, Hudson, Jennifer D. Nahrgang, Manuel J. Vaulont, Raseana Williams, and Amy L. Bartels. “Do the Hustle! Empowerment from Side-Hustles and Its Effects on Full-Time Work Performance.” Academy of Management Journal 64, no. 1 (Feb. 2021): 235-64.

Entrepreneurs Are Happier Because Autonomy and More Meaningful Work Matter More Than Stress and Workload

(p. R1) “If you look at the data, it turns out that entrepreneurs on average earn less money than a typical employed person, work 13 hours more a week and report that it’s a very stressful occupation,” says Boris Nikolaev, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “But despite that, there’s overwhelming evidence in the literature that entrepreneurs report significantly higher levels of job satisfaction.”

. . .

“Entrepreneurs are happier in terms of all indications (p. R4) of life satisfaction and work satisfaction,” says Ute Stephan, professor of entrepreneurship at King’s College London, who conducted a comprehensive review of more than 100 academic studies on entrepreneurship and well-being. “However, they might be more stressed than the rest of us, as well.”

This unusual mix of stress and happiness comes about, she says, because entrepreneurs tend to be deeply invested in their businesses, and their passion is a double-edged sword: It gives them a strong sense of purpose and autonomy, but it can also lead to worry, late nights, overwork and stress.

. . .

The stress and workload have a strong negative effect, as is evident in other studies, but the sense of doing something important and being their own boss is so gratifying that it outweighs all those negatives and leaves them happier overall.

“What they are doing is important to them, it’s part of who they are, it’s part of their identity, and that’s why it has such a positive impact on well-being,” says Prof. Stephan.

. . .

. . . in a recent study, Prof. Stephan discovered that autonomy alone isn’t enough. It’s important, to be sure—but what entrepreneurs need, above all, is meaning. She analyzed survey data from over 22,000 people in 16 European countries, comparing their feelings of happiness with the extent to which their work gives them a sense of meaning and autonomy.

. . .

She found that entrepreneurs experienced higher levels of happiness than wage-earning employees (4.37 vs. 4.28 on a scale of 1 to 6), as well as higher levels of meaning (4.56 vs. 4.25 on a scale of 1 to 5) and autonomy (2.66 vs. 1.95 on a scale of 0 to 3). Using regression analysis, she discovered that meaning was the decisive factor in entrepreneurial happiness.

“What we found is that much more important than decision-making freedom is the sense of doing something profoundly meaningful,” she says. “That really energizes you, and as an entrepreneur you really need that energy to be creative and to do the work that’s important to you.”

But finding meaning in work doesn’t have to be about changing the world. Framing work in terms of performing an important service can help even entrepreneurs in less glamorous industries find meaning and happiness—such as contractors who help people build a dream home, or accountants saving people from disastrous money problems.

For the full story, see:

Andrew Blackman. “Are Entrepreneurs Happier Than Other People?” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 04, 2021): R1 & R4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 3, 2021 , and has the title “Are Entrepreneurs Happier Than Everybody Else?”)

The comprehensive review by Prof. Stephan mentioned above is:

Stephan, Ute. “Entrepreneurs’ Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review and Research Agenda.” Academy of Management Perspectives 32, no. 3 (Aug. 2018): 290-322.

The recent study by Prof. Stephan mentioned above is:

Stephan, Ute, Susana M. Tavares, Helena Carvalho, Joaquim J. S. Ramalho, Susana C. Santos, and Marc van Veldhoven. “Self-Employment and Eudaimonic Well-Being: Energized by Meaning, Enabled by Societal Legitimacy.” Journal of Business Venturing 35, no. 6 (Nov. 2020): DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2020.106047.

Humans Still Matter in Chess

(p. A14) Magnus Carlsen, of Norway, steamrolled Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi 7.5-3.5 in the best-of-14 series, capturing a decisive victory that solidified his legacy as the greatest in the history of the sport. He has been the world champion since 2013—this was his fifth win—and is the highest-rated player of all time.

What even his rivals marvel at is how Carlsen, 31, has weaponized the computer revolution against them. He does it not by overpowering opponents with calculation, but by harnessing that digital knowledge to turn games into more human battles.

“Magnus is proud of saying that he’s probably the top player who works the least with the computer and is the least influenced by the computer,” said Carlsen’s coach, Peter Heine Nielsen. “He wants to trust his own evaluation, his human touch and to keep that.”

. . .

. . . here’s the twist: the most lethal use of computer-based analysis isn’t to find something that only the machine can see. It’s figuring out what it sees and dismisses that might still be useful. The dream of any computer-savvy chess player is to discover a string of moves that an engine doesn’t necessarily favor, yet taps into a line that their opponent hasn’t prepared.

“That’s the Holy Grail,” said grandmaster Cristian Chirila, who assisted world No. 4 Fabiano Caruana when he faced Carlsen for the world championship in 2018. “If you can get there, that’s a huge advantage.”

In any given situation, the engines might recommend any number of moves and suggest that they are all relatively equal. Those are the obvious ones to study. But by playing a more obscure move—perhaps even one that the computers suggest is disadvantageous—Carlsen thrives by throwing his opponents into that unfamiliar territory.

For the full story, see:

Joshua Robinson and Andrew Beaton. “Computers Revolutionized Chess. Magnus Carlsen Wins by Being Human.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, December 10, 2021): A14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Dec. 10, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

“In a World Filled With Distraction,” Apolo Ohno Praises “Deep Work”

(p. C12) Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” eloquently describes how to find an advantage in a world filled with distraction.

For the full review, see:

Apolo Ohno. “12 Months of Reading; Apolo Ohno.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021): C12.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 10, 2021, and has the title “Who Read What: Business Leaders Share Their Favorite Books of 2021.”)

The book praised by Ohno is:

Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016.

During Pandemic, Conditions and Information Constantly Change, Making Decision-Making Stressful and Exhausting

(p. A14) What should you wear today? What to eat for lunch? If life’s daily questions are getting harder to answer nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you aren’t alone, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association, found that 32% of American adults were sometimes so stressed about the pandemic that making basic decisions was tough.

. . .

“For many, the pandemic has imposed the need for constant risk assessment, with routines upended and once trivial tasks recast,” the study said. “When the factors influencing a person’s decisions are constantly changing, no decision is routine. And this is proving to be exhausting.”

For the full story, see:

Allison Prang. “Can’t Decide? It Could Be Pandemic Stress.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Oct. 27, 2021): A14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Oct. 26, 2021, and has the title “Can’t Decide What to Wear? It May Be Pandemic Stress.”)

The survey mentioned above is reported in detail in:

Association, American Psychological. “Stress in America™ 2021: Stress and Decision-Making During the Pandemic.” Washington, D.C., 2021.

The “Adventure” and “Fun” of Driving Cars

(p. B6) For one Monday in early December, the New York Stock Exchange played the role of vintage car museum. At one end of Broad Street, outside the exchange, sat a high-roofed and stately 1921 Duesenberg coupe. At the other, a fearsome 1966 Ford GT40 racecar. Between them, encased in a glass vitrine, was an imperturbably cheery 1967 Porsche 911S.

Shaking hands by the coffee stand was McKeel Hagerty. The chief executive of the classic car insurance company that bears his name, Mr. Hagerty was there to ring the opening bell, and celebrate the first day of trading for his newly public company (HGTY). Later, at a brunch in the Big Board’s boardroom, Mr. Hagerty wielded a ceremonial gavel and said, “This is only just the beginning.”

The origins of Hagerty, the company, are far humbler. It was founded by his parents, Frank and Louise, in 1984, in their basement in Traverse City, Mich., as a boutique insurer of wooden boats.

In the early 1990s, the company began insuring collectible cars. With Mr. Hagerty at the helm, it has become one of the largest indemnifiers of vintage vehicles, with over two million classics on its rolls. The actuarial data necessary to determine repair and replacement costs on these cars has also made it a foremost authority on their valuation.

. . .

Hagerty went public via a SPAC, or special-purpose acquisition company, raising roughly $265 million in the process with a goal of expanding. So, what are Hagerty’s ambitions now? And why did it need to become a publicly traded company in order to achieve them?

“The purpose of the company is to save driving and car culture,” Mr. Hagerty said flatly, as we piloted a zippy, Hagerty-insured 1972 BMW 2002 tii toward the tip of Lower Manhattan. “If we’re going to save car culture, we have to make investments outside of the core business, and really help create a whole ecosystem.” Achieving this lofty goal required hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investment, he said: “That would have been tough for us to afford just as a private company.”

. . .

Outside experts agreed with this assessment of Mr. Hagerty’s vocation. “They encourage driving. Their tag lines all the time are, ‘Drive your cars,’” Mr. Gross said. “In some ways, you think, that’s a little strange for an insurance company. You think they’d want you to drive as little as possible to minimize the risk.” He laughed.

Instead, Mr. Hagerty said he sincerely wants to help people find the pleasure in “the experiential sides” of the automobile, those organized around adventure, preservation, culture and legacy. “I think that if we can help steward along the reasons that people drive and love cars, other than to get from Point A to Point B, then we win.”

Mr. Gross concurred with this plan. “I don’t know how many companies there are that take the long way around. And that’s what Hagerty is doing here. They’re not only selling insurance. They’re trying to make sure that the reason you need that insurance is viable and fun, and lots of people are doing it,” he said. “As a business strategy, it’s pretty smart.”

For the full commentary, see:

Brett Berk. “A Classic Car Insurer’s Vision to ‘Save Driving’.” The New York Times (Friday, Dec. 17, 2021): B6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 16, 2021, and has the title “A Classic Car Giant With a Lofty Mission: Save Driving.”)