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Counter-Intuitive Thinking

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Assignments

• Pre-Socratic Exercise
• Trajectory paper = 100 points
• Article = 50 points

1. Pre-Socratic Exercise
   • Do the exercise in class
2. Trajectory paper
   • Describe yourself as a trajectory, not a pop-pysch list or by physical appearance
   • Read Gasset's "Man has no Nature" [Full Article]
   • seeing a person (and yourself) as a conceptual trajectory not as a defined schema of behaviours
   • Yes, this is difficult--Not sure if THIS helps, or not.
   • 1-1/2 to 2 pages. Follow this formatting
   • Cite/quote the above writing by Gasset at least twice.
   • Create a works cited for that one source
   • Submit via email as an ATTACHMENT to the email (No sharepoint, one drive, or google docs).
   • Label the Word document as LastnameTrajectory.docx
3. Article (You'll talk about this article at our next meeting)
   • Choose one of the articles on this page
   • Read the article
   • Know the ideas and information well enough to discuss the article in 3-5 minutes of talking.
   • You must find an incorporate into your discussion one other source concerning that same subject.
   • That talk can only be delivered at the next class meeting
   • No reading at us unless it is to read a quote that does ot exceed 50 words
   • This is not a formal presentation
   • If you are not in class next week in time to talk about your chosen article, you cannot obtain these 50 points.

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Topics

• Presocratics
• Counter-Intuitives in History (Perverse Outcomes)
• Counter-intuitive examples
• Conflicts in counter-intuitive thinking
• Articles using Counter Intuitive
• Toward a conceptual trajectory

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Pre-Socratics

Pre-Socratic Philosopher	Year	The idea that was not supernatural, but natural
Thales	~550s BC	Water
Anaximander	~550s BC	-
Anaximenes	~530s BC	-
Pythagoras	~480s BC	-
Heraclitus	~510s BC	-
Empedocles	~420s BC	-
Anaxagoras	~430s BC	-
Democritus	~380s BC	-

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Counter-Intuitives in History (Perverse Outcomes)

This list of sources CANNOT be used for hte article asignment

• Professional Lady Rejecters
• WWII planes and Bullet holes
• The Cobra Effect, or Perverse Incentive
  • There's also stories of perverse incentives with rats in early 1900's Hanoi, of opium in early 2000's Afghanistan, of 3D printed guns in 2020s, and of 2007 wild pig program at a military base
• Jim Fixx, jogging guru of 1980s died of a heart attack --while jogging.

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Counter-Intuitives Examples

• Kiosks: for clerks, not customers.
• Science: cannot be believed or trusted
• Reading: out loud; moving one's lips
• Spelling errors: use in spam to gatekeep smart people

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Conflicts in counter-intuitive thinking

• Seeking AN answer (as if there must be one), or the right/correct answer--the answer that will get a kudos. These are mechanisms of feeling that compel us to seek MORE intuition rather than understanding the counter-intuitive.
• The dunning kruger of learning a new philosophy and not understanding how it fits with other ideas--thinking it's just unnecessarily deep, verbose or mouthy.

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Articles using Counter Intuitive

You can use these for the assignment

• Why you might be more pessimistic when things are actually going well [article]
  • In your discussion, connect this article to the concept of hyper-normative
• The Times is publishing a new investigation of life inside an Amazon warehouse. [article]
  • Be clear in your discussion how counter-intuitive does not mean "good"
• Ideas that work: Truth, knowledge, justice – to understand how our loftiest abstractions earn their keep, trace them to their practical origins [article]
  • "knowledge, truth or justice don’t obviously cater to practical needs. On the contrary, these exalted ideals draw our gaze away from practical pursuits."
  • Focus on discussing what pragmatic genealogies are, and have the rest of the class discuss an idea or concept invented in your lifetimes: "a community of human beings in which the idea is still lacking, and explore why they might be driven to invent it."
  • "The State of Nature is not something you find out about. It is something you construct"

Toward a conceptual trajectory

You can use these for the assignment

1. Why Dolphins Are Deep Thinkers [article]
   • Clearly discuss how this is counter-intuitive
   • Describe dolphins, not physical appearance, but their conceptual arrangement
   • Discuss intelligence and intuition in wildlife/humans
2. News Is Bad For You – and Giving Up Reading it Will Make You Happier [article]
   • Clearly discuss how this is counter-intuitive
   • This is not about being happy; what is it really about?
   • It's not called "The Relevance"; it's called the news. FOMO and superficial worldliness
3. Suppressing the reasoning part of the brain stimulates creativity, scientists find [article]
   • Clearly discuss how this is counter-intuitive
   • "When the [dorsolateral prefrontal cortex] was ‘cooled down’, the brain seems to have stopped applying old rules [learned from experience], and been more successful at finding new rules – this is the essence of creativity in problem-solving"
4. Bless Us, O Instagram [article]
   • Clearly discuss how this is counter-intuitive
   • Discuss your position (and how other people's poisiton) on people taking food selfies and posting them
   • The article does not justify food selfies; what does it do?
5. Why You Should Hate Your Job [article]
   • The article is not suggesting we should just force ourselves to hate work or our job; what is the point of the article?
6. Endorsement of the “American Dream” is related to negative attitudes toward impoverished people
   • Seeing the dark side of the American Dream