Read Online The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places From Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eric Weiner
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cultural institutions. Brady is sympathetic: “It takes a long time to appreciate museums. First you have to study archaeology for a long time, then you have to forget it for a long time. Then you can go to a museum.”
That is, I realize, a very Greek thing to say. The ancients believed thatknowledge was good but recognized the dangers of its reckless, indiscriminate accumulation. They possessed a “shiny ignorance,” as Alicia called it. None was shinier than that of Socrates. “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing,” he said.
----
Some twenty-five hundred years since Socrates uttered those words, social scientists have begun to investigate whether he was onto something. One researcher has focused on a rare neurological disorder known as anosognosia, in which a person who suffers from a disability—paralysis, typically—remains completely unaware of his or her disability. If you put a glass of water in front of the right hand of people with anosognosia and ask them to pick it up, they won’t do it. If you ask them why, they’ll say they’re tired or they’re not thirsty. The damage to their brain that caused their paralysis also leaves them unaware of their paralysis.
David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, uses anosognosia as a metaphor to explain the research he’s done on ignorance. In a series of studies, he and his colleague Justin Kruger tested a group of undergraduates in such skills as logical reasoning, grammar, and humor. They then showed each participant his results and asked him to estimate how he fared compared to others. The people who did well on the exams estimated their rank accurately. No great surprise there. What is surprising is that those who didn’t do well on the exams were convinced they did. They weren’t dissembling. They simply were unable to assess their competence, or as Dunning, in an interview with the filmmaker Errol Morris, put it, “We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know.”
That’s because the skills we need to solve a problem are the very skills we need to realize we can’t solve it. It’s the intellectual equivalent of anosognosia, and this phenomenon, now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, explains a lot. It explains why most people consider themselves above-average drivers, a statistical impossibility. ( Somebody has to be below average.) It also explains, I think, why more of us aren’t geniuses. The first step in any breakthrough is realizing that a breakthrough is necessary, realizing that your knowledge is imperfect. Those who possess this “thoroughly conscious ignorance,” as the Scottish physicist James ClerkMaxwell put it, are more likely to achieve creative breakthroughs than those who are convinced they have it all figured out.
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Brady and I linger at the café, indulging in some world-class sitting and talking, our conversation no more linear than the columns of the Parthenon. And that’s fine. Here, unlike back home, there is no mutually understood cutoff point, no unspoken “we should really get going” signals exchanged. This is Athens. It’s been around for at least four thousand years and isn’t going anywhere. Why should we? All of this past around us, beneath us, makes the present feel a bit less precarious. Maybe that is why the Greeks of today have given up walking and prefer to sit so much. They like the feel of all that reassuring history under their buttocks, steadying them against the cruel present.
We order two more espressos, then lunch, then two beers, and finally two more espressos. “For balance,” explains Brady. I understand. My entire time in Greece, it seems, consists of seesawing between alcohol and caffeine, groping for equilibrium. In doing so, I stumbled across a dirty little secret about the Greek notion of “nothing in excess.” It’s a lie. The ancient Greeks enthusiastically endorsed moderation but seldom practiced it. The Greeks viewed moderation as an end, not a
That is, I realize, a very Greek thing to say. The ancients believed thatknowledge was good but recognized the dangers of its reckless, indiscriminate accumulation. They possessed a “shiny ignorance,” as Alicia called it. None was shinier than that of Socrates. “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing,” he said.
----
Some twenty-five hundred years since Socrates uttered those words, social scientists have begun to investigate whether he was onto something. One researcher has focused on a rare neurological disorder known as anosognosia, in which a person who suffers from a disability—paralysis, typically—remains completely unaware of his or her disability. If you put a glass of water in front of the right hand of people with anosognosia and ask them to pick it up, they won’t do it. If you ask them why, they’ll say they’re tired or they’re not thirsty. The damage to their brain that caused their paralysis also leaves them unaware of their paralysis.
David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, uses anosognosia as a metaphor to explain the research he’s done on ignorance. In a series of studies, he and his colleague Justin Kruger tested a group of undergraduates in such skills as logical reasoning, grammar, and humor. They then showed each participant his results and asked him to estimate how he fared compared to others. The people who did well on the exams estimated their rank accurately. No great surprise there. What is surprising is that those who didn’t do well on the exams were convinced they did. They weren’t dissembling. They simply were unable to assess their competence, or as Dunning, in an interview with the filmmaker Errol Morris, put it, “We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know.”
That’s because the skills we need to solve a problem are the very skills we need to realize we can’t solve it. It’s the intellectual equivalent of anosognosia, and this phenomenon, now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, explains a lot. It explains why most people consider themselves above-average drivers, a statistical impossibility. ( Somebody has to be below average.) It also explains, I think, why more of us aren’t geniuses. The first step in any breakthrough is realizing that a breakthrough is necessary, realizing that your knowledge is imperfect. Those who possess this “thoroughly conscious ignorance,” as the Scottish physicist James ClerkMaxwell put it, are more likely to achieve creative breakthroughs than those who are convinced they have it all figured out.
----
Brady and I linger at the café, indulging in some world-class sitting and talking, our conversation no more linear than the columns of the Parthenon. And that’s fine. Here, unlike back home, there is no mutually understood cutoff point, no unspoken “we should really get going” signals exchanged. This is Athens. It’s been around for at least four thousand years and isn’t going anywhere. Why should we? All of this past around us, beneath us, makes the present feel a bit less precarious. Maybe that is why the Greeks of today have given up walking and prefer to sit so much. They like the feel of all that reassuring history under their buttocks, steadying them against the cruel present.
We order two more espressos, then lunch, then two beers, and finally two more espressos. “For balance,” explains Brady. I understand. My entire time in Greece, it seems, consists of seesawing between alcohol and caffeine, groping for equilibrium. In doing so, I stumbled across a dirty little secret about the Greek notion of “nothing in excess.” It’s a lie. The ancient Greeks enthusiastically endorsed moderation but seldom practiced it. The Greeks viewed moderation as an end, not a
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