Brian Clegg's Blog, page 27

Can Magical Thinking Improve Teamwork?

Usually, 'magical thinking' is a reference to fooling yourself into believing something that isn't possible,  but Mark Mason suggests that solving the mystery of how magic tricks work can help you think more effectively. 
He's running team building sessions where he performs tricks, then helps those present work together to uncover how the trick was performed. Mark says that he reveals mental techniques that will let you solve pretty well any trick you’ll see in the future - and that these techniques can be applied to problems you’ll encounter at work and in life more generally.

As I know there are a lot of blog posts out there that are really paid adverts, I ought to stress I'm not being paid to publicise this, and I only know Mark as a reader who contacted me previously about my book Inflight Science. 

What interested me here was that in the period between working in Operational Research and computing in British Airways and becoming a full time writer, I ran creativity training sessions for large companies. My experience from that time suggests that everyone could benefit from help to think more creatively and can improve their problem solving skills. Mark's approach seemed an original (and fun) way to help participants to think differently - and who doesn't love trying to work out how magic tricks are performed?

I asked Mark a few questions about the approach:

What’s your background? I’ve done lots of things - writing books and journalism, making radio programmes for the BBC, leading guided walks in London, busking on the Tube. A ‘portfolio career’, as it’s called these days.   

How did you get interested in magic? I learned some tricks as a child - then rediscovered them when my own son came along. From that I started doing them for his friends, and then his friends’ parents. I realised that I hated the distance magic can put between people ('I know how it’s done, you don’t, nur nur nur nur’) - but I loved leading people towards the secret. It’s a bit like a joke - the trick is the set-up, the secret is the punchline. 

Why do you think learning magic tricks works as a team building exercise? In the sessions I do the tricks I don’t tell you how I’m doing them… you have to work out how they're done. With some hints from me, of course. What's wonderful is that the team always achieves more than any individual could on their own. Someone will get 70% of the way to solving a trick, but it takes someone else to chip in with the final 30%. By the end of the session everyone has contributed, and they all feel 10 feet tall.

How can the techniques learned be applied to more general problem solving? A key element is to avoid trying to solve the trick/problem in isolation. Don’t look at the situation now, work out how you got there. Instead of saying ’the coin vanished from your hand’, ask how I picked the coin up in the first place, what I was saying as I did so, when and where you last saw the coin for sure… Instead of saying 'this part of the business isn’t working properly’, ask how it was set up originally, how it developed into its current form, when and where the problems started to occur...    

I’m really clumsy - when I’ve tried to do magic tricks I often messed them up - any tips? First pick the right tricks - a lot of the best ones (even those performed by professional magicians) are self-working, and don’t need any difficult sleight of hand or even misdirection. (Obviously I major on these in the sessions, so people can take them away and do them for friends and family.) And even where there is some tricky handling to practise, the key is 'little and often’. I often tell people it’s like getting a new phone - the buttons and icons might be in different places, but because you use them so often you soon get used to the new way you have to hold the phone to adjust the volume/reach a certain app/etc.   

What’s next for you? There’s always a new false shuffle to learn...

You can find out more at Mark's website. Here he is in action:

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

The best theoretical physics from the last 30 years?

Image by Thomas T from UnsplashI recently reviewed a book called Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them by Antonio Padilla. In my review, I was dubious about the way that Dr Padillia referred to the highly speculative holographic principle as 'the holographic truth'.

Something many publishers drum into their authors is that it is not a good idea to respond to reviews. If anything, it can reinforce any negative comments in the review. But Dr Padilla replied on Twitter 'thanks for your thoughts. You may be interested to see this perspective on importance of the holographic principle, which obviously I share.’ He then quotes Caltech physicist John Preskill, who had tweeted: ‘Someone asked: What are the most important ideas in physics over the past 30 years? Three immediately came to mind: The holographic principle, topological order, quantum error correction.’

Now, this seemed to me to be a depressing statement if true. What we've got with those three is firstly a principle that is largely self-referential maths that has no current way of being tested. Then there's something quite interesting if not giving huge insights or new experimental directions, but that actually predates the last thirty years. And finally there's a very important and useful mechanism that is an important contribution to physics-based engineering - but can it really be so significant in the annals of theoretical physics?

Bear in mind the last thirty years has seen a whole host of experimental breakthroughs, from the detection of the Higgs boson to gravitational waves. Could it be that major developments in theoretical physics have been so sparse? I asked theoretical physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder whether she agreed with those three ideas. She pointed out that one problem is that many scientists measure the importance of an idea by the number of people who work on it or the number of papers that have been written about it.

This clearly isn't a useful measure of the significance of a piece of theory. After all, vast numbers of people have worked on theories such as string/M theory which seem to have run out of steam. Similarly, many papers have been written on the existence of dark matter, which has as a theory been tested by large numbers of experiments that have failed to detect it - increasingly it seems likely that alternative theories, such as variants of modified gravity, have more potential. 

Dr Hossenfelder highlights two potential big developments in relatively recent theory - topological phases of matter and phase transitions (see the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2016 for more detail) and chaos control, which she noted was highly valuable both in robotics and nuclear fusion. 

Of course any attempt to do a 'best of' list is subjective - and that wasn't my aim here. Relying on either number of papers produced or an individual's hits list is not a good way to give support to a theory. I may be biassed, but for me theories can only be considered to have proved their worth once they can be directly supported by experiment or observation. For the moment, I'd suggest, the holographic principle remains a mathematical curiosity rather than truly valuable physics.

Review: How to be a Writer - Marcus Beckman ****

There seem to be three obvious markets for this book - people who are interested in what writers do, people who would like to be professional writers but aren't, and writers themselves. That last category may seem an unlikely one - if you are already a writer, why would you need a book called 'How to be a writer'? But the reality is I spent some of my cash, hard-earned from writing, on this book.

The reason the book appealed, I think, is the familiar concept of readers liking to identify with a book. This has led to much more diversity, for example, in fictional characters - but it is also engaging to read about someone who does a similar job and their experiences, especially when the narrative is handled in such a light and entertaining way as Marcus Berkmann does here.

I can certainly identify with much of Berkmann's working life - both the highs and lows of being a freelance writer. What's particularly fun is that Berkmann has written a whole range of columns and reviews, from off-the-wall observations on life to sometimes astringent reviews of books, music and films. Obeying one of the essential rules of being a freelance - always reuse material if you can - Berkmann peppers the book with examples of his writing from his long-running career, including pieces that have appeared in both national newspapers and familiar magazines. He's always prepared to indulge in some humorous self-criticism, which works particularly well in this context.

There is one aspect of the trade that I don’t think Berkmann has got a handle on: the difference between being a London-based writer and the rest of us. He tells us that lots of writers he knows don’t drive - try that if you live in the country. Similarly, he seems to spend a lot of time at publisher parties and book launches. When I get invited to something like that (because they’re always in London) I have to factor in half a day’s travel and hefty transport costs. So I rarely do it for the distinctly limited benefits that accrue.

This minor point aside, How to be a Writer is a very entertaining little book, ideal, as I used it, as a non-taxing holiday read. Recommended.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

How to be a Writer is available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Junior school science

One of my favourite activities is giving science talks in junior schools. I don't write children's books, though some of my titles are fine for an intelligent eleven-year-old, but what comes across in a wonderful way is the sheer enthusiasm for science felt by the children. This isn't limited to a few enthusiasts - everyone gets excited about science presented the right way. When, for example, I mention that they have atoms in their bodies that were previously in dinosaurs, there's always a collective 'Whoa!' - while a set of simple refracting glasses that produce rainbows from sunlight genuinely give a thrill.

When I was at junior school, I'm delighted to say our teachers took science seriously, while making it fun. Unhampered by a restrictive curriculum, they allowed us to do experiments - and to fail. Admittedly it helped that my junior school building was inherited from a re-housed secondary school and had cupboards full of interesting scientific equipment. Sadly, the former Littleborough County Junior School has now disappeared to become a housing estate - though its position opposite Hare Hill park (which we used to walk across to visit the library) seems to have been memorialised by calling a footpath 'School Walk'.

I remember particularly two failed experiments, both of which provided useful lessons. One involved blowing between a pair of suspended table tennis balls. This was part of a whole series of little experiments on a sort of science trail - we only had a limited time to complete them and I remember thinking that it really wasn't necessary to waste time doing the experiment, I would just write down what I thought should happen. Not only did this get me a lecture, still remembered many years later, on the importance of honesty in science, it was a powerful lesson not to rely on assumptions. No, they didn't blow apart, they moved closer together.

The other experiment was not a failure because of my cheating, but rather because it was an experiment to show a 'scientific' fact that turned out to be a myth. We had been told about the way that our tongues had different regions, which were responsible for different tastes such as sweet, salty and sour. The experiment involved poking our tongues with wooden spatulas and recording the taste sensation. While some of us did feel they experienced different tastes (the teacher, like many scientists at the time, hadn't grasped the importance of avoiding giving us expectations of specific outcomes), the results were inconsistent, and many of us had no sensations at all.

The whole idea of the 'tongue map' for different taste sensations was fictional, based on a misinterpretation of a legitimate piece of research. But the myth proved surprisingly resilient.

I was reminded of this experiment when writing one of the 50 articles on science myths, some of which persist to this day, in a new little book Lightning Often Strikes Twice, which is out on 21 July 2022. There's something really interesting about scientific myths, which arise for all kinds of reasons. It might be wishful thinking or misunderstanding. Sometimes it's just a matter of something that sounds reasonable when applying common sense... but the world just doesn't work that way. Whatever the reason, these may be misconceptions, but they're fun to encounter.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Beware statistics bearing gifts

Numbers are a powerful way of strengthening a message - and when we see a statistic that backs up a strongly-held belief, it can be very easy to share it without thinking too much about it. But all statistics benefit from a quick check before use - and it's doubly important to do so when they tell us what we want to hear.

A couple of days ago, I saw this message on a friend's social media. (I've removed the name at the top and added the words in red - otherwise it is unchanged.) The message is stark. But a couple of things worried me about it.

Firstly, that subscript of 'Bristol for Europe' seemed a bit odd. It's clearly not part of the original post, and how exactly could the information come from both the BBC and a pressure group?

But more importantly, the exchange rates quoted didn't feel right. I was sure sterling suffered as a result of Brexit (or, rather, BREXIT - being shouty is another flag that checking of data is required) - but a change like this would result in products priced in dollars, such as iPhones, shooting up in price, which I didn't remember happening.

On checking the actual numbers, it is true that the dollar exchange rate was, at times, $2 to the pound before Brexit - but the last time it had been was December 2007, nine years before the referendum. And for that matter, the exchange rate had also been lower  than it is now before Brexit. In February 1985 it dipped to $1.09 to the pound. Big surprise - exchange rates fluctuate all the time.

As you might expect, the exchange rate did fall after Brexit. The day before the result was announced it was $1.48. After the announcement it was $1.32 and it fell as low as $1.31 a few days later. Since it has rallied, getting back as high as $1.42 and dropping to $1.15 on the date of the UK's first lockdown. At the time the illustrated message was posted, it was moving around the $1.22 to $1.25 mark.

The phrase that Mark Twain ascribed (probably inaccurately) to Disraeli, 'there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics' is much misused. Statistics are very valuable to make clearer what is going on. However, sometimes, as here, the numbers really are lies - and even when they technically are true, they are always worth looking into, because the context can make a huge difference. 

It's particularly important to double check validity when you have a strong emotional attachment to the sentiment behind the numbers - because that's when you are most vulnerable to being deceived.

Review: The 13th Witch (The King's Watch series) - Mark Hayden ***(*)

Of all the flavours of fantasy novels, I only really enjoy those set in the real world (often described as urban fantasy, although some, as is the case here, are mostly rural) - whether it's the intricate cleverness of something like Gene Wolfe's Castleview, or when it's mixed with the police procedural, as in Ben Aaronovich's Rivers of London, Sarah Painter's Crow Investigations or Paul Cornell's Shadow Police . That meant I was delighted to discover Mark Hayden's King's Watch series. In many ways it's great, though it has proved to be something of a curate's egg.
The good news is that Hayden does some things brilliantly. I love the idea of rather than a police tie-in, it's a quasi-military one linked to the Tower of London, with a group originally set up by King James I (the aforementioned King's Watch, headed by a Peculier Constable). Hayden's magickal (sic) world and its political complications are beautifully imagined - whether it's the interplay between various human factions (for obscure historical reasons, for example, the North West doesn't recognise the authority of the King's Watch), or a very rich mix of different races from the near-human to demi-gods. Hayden is also very good at the action scenes - they really carry the reader along with page-turning vigour.
In The 13th Witch, the central character Conrad Clarke, a former RAF helicopter pilot, is introduced to a hidden magickal reality. At the time of writing there are 10 books in the series, with presumably 13 in total as each title reduces the number by one. There's an element of humour that's quite strong in the first book, though this tends to disappear as you move through the series.
So far, so good. But there are a couple of issues. The smallest one is that sometimes the situation Hayden imagines gets a bit beyond his ability to describe it, particularly in later parts of the series where he describes shifting between different planes of reality, some of which involved distorted flow of time. (Never as confusing as the movie Tenet, though.) There is also rather too much domestic background - we spend a lot of time on Clarke's relationships (and cricket playing) that really doesn't take the plot anywhere. Apart from his irritating fiancé, he has a series of attractive female work companions, who all seem to be about half his age, which is a bit creepy. But the thing that really irritated me was the way that you get the literary equivalent of in-app purchases.
As is not uncommon with big series, there are some spin-off novellas. I have no problem with these to optionally fill in back story or generally go off on a tangent, provided the main line of novels doesn't refer to them. The issue hear is that Hayden will mention something significant to the plot... then say 'which you can read about in Novella X, so we won't talk about it here' (or words to that effect). I found that so infuriating that a couple of times I nearly gave up on the series part way through a book. Each time (so far) I felt like that, I was then roped back in by a clever bit of suspense and intrigue. But I really didn't like this approach.
If these are your kind of books, I heartily recommend giving them a try - but they do come with that warning.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

The 13th Witch is available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

The incredible shrinking dilemma

Image from Unsplash by Todd Pham I was very impressed with the first series of Amazon's show The Boys - the idea that superheroes would be used for commercial gain is such an obvious fit with America's culture. I wasn't thrilled by the level of violence and gore, but still enjoyed that first series, tolerated the second season and gave up pretty quickly as a result of the even higher level of ickiness of the newly released episodes. But before I did stop, I witnessed a character who could become tiny being carried in a bag of (ahem) white powder.

Humans with the ability to shrink have been a common feature of sci-fi and superhero fantasies for ages. (I say sci-fi rather than science fiction, because of the dilemma I'm about address.) We've had The Incredible Shrinking Man (probably the best of the bunch), Fantastic Voyage, Honey I Shrunk the Whatever, Ant Man and more. But while I accept that SF has to be flexible about the science, in the tradition of Larry Niven's 1969 essay Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, I feel we ought to at least consider the problems that arise from human shrinkage.

There seem to be two possibilities open to a would-be human miniaturiser. Either the reduced-size human temporarily misplaces the vast majority of their atoms, or they undergo some sort of process whereby the amount of empty space in atoms is reduced, so they still contain all the matter that they had previously, but in a compacted form.

Neither is particularly practical, but science fiction doesn't have to worry about this - faster than light travel is no picnic in the real world. But of the two possibilities, the atom compaction seems the more likely method because it's a far simpler concept. And I suspect for most sci-fi examples this is what the writers have in mind. However, there's a big problem for that image I conjured above of the tiny person being carried by someone in a plastic bag. Compacting would not reduce mass. The tiny person would have the same mass (and weight) as they always had, rather in the same way that a neutron star or a black hole retains its mass in a much smaller form.

This doesn't just make carrying the miniature being in the way usually demonstrated impossible. It would mean that their tiny feet exerted far more pressure than was normally the case. Pressure depends on surface area. Say the person reduced in height from 170cm to 5cm. That's a linear reduction of 34x, so the surface area reduction would be 1,156 times - and as the pressure produced by a person is simply a function of weight over surface area, that means the pressure exerted by the feet would go up by a factor of 1,156. It's not uncommon in shrinking movies for characters to be chased through grass much higher than their head by insects or spiders. But with so much more pressure on the feet, the collapsed individual would simply disappear deep into the soil.

If we think, then,  of what miniature characters get up to, it's probably better to go for a corresponding reduction in mass. Mass decreases with volume - so the cube of the linear reduction. My 34x shrunken person would reduce from, say, 170kg to less than 5 grams. That's light - think about the weight of a sheet of A4 paper, a 20p piece or a US nickel. Easily carried. No pressure problems. But there are two issues.

One is just making it happen. As I mentioned above, it's relatively easy to imagine there could be some mechanism to shrink every atom, even if there isn't a genuine physical means to do it. But what we have to do here is remove 39,303 out of every 39,304 atoms in the body, nice and evenly. We then have to store them somewhere - imagine a big bag of gloppy atoms under the bed, perhaps. And we have to reinsert them when required, all in the right places, or we'd end up with something like the disastrous transporter scene in Galaxy Quest.

But even if the practicalities could be overcome there is a significant issue for our mini-people. They will be left with 0.0025 per cent of the cells in their brain. A human brain weighs about 1,350 grams on average. The typical shrunken brain would weigh 0.034 grams. Compare this with, say, a hamster's brain at 1.4 grams. Of course, weight isn't everything. Something human brains have an awful lot of is neurons, with somewhere around 16 billion in the cerebral cortex. The tiny person would be left with about 400,000. That still sounds a lot. But bear in mind a mouse has about 13 million.

Although there is no perfect measure of brain size/neuronal count that corresponds to intelligence, there can be little doubt that a human miniaturised by atom-loss would also be significantly less intelligent than a mouse or hamster. So the chances of shrinking down and saving the world are pretty slight.

Am I breaking a butterfly on the wheel? Quite possibly. But it's fun, isn't it?

The green flight gap

Photo by Etienne Jong on UnsplashThe BBC has just spent a week attempting to encourage a more green way of life - a worthwhile aim, even if it often resulted in distinctly uninspiring advice such as 'Use a reusable coffee cup.' However, on a couple of programmes I heard a suggestion that struck me as simultaneously both sensible and stupid in its limitations.

We were told to reduce shorthaul flights. I think the logic behind this is that it's easy to use a more environmentally friendly option like rail for relatively short journeys. And I certainly would both advise people to consider taking the trains and ask governments if they couldn't do something about the ridiculous situation that it's often much cheaper to fly than travel by rail. However, the flying elephant in the room (is that a mixed metaphor, or just Dumbo?) is that longhaul flights have a far bigger negative environmental impact than shorthaul. So why weren't we told to reduce them as well?

I suspect there is an element of self-preservation amongst media types, who may well fly longhaul a lot more than ordinary people do. But if we are serious about climate change, we need to steeply reduce longhaul flying. And, of course, cut out private jet use - but that's not really the point here. 

Incidentally, don't give me that guff about offsetting. Flying does the damage now. Planting a tree will reap benefits in future years when it's too late. Do plant trees, but don't think they offer you a get-out clause for flying all over the place.

We need to seriously ask ourselves whether each flight is necessary. Of course there are circumstances when flying is important. To meet up with distant family, for example. But is flying for tourism ever necessary? Do academics need to fly half way across the world to conferences? Do business people need to meet in person now the pandemic has shown how possible it is to do business remotely?

At the very least, if you or your organisation espouse green values (and especially if you tell other people that you do), perhaps it's time you looked again at your flying habits.

This has been a Green Heretic production.

How long is a piece of podcast?

Image by Mateo Abrahan from UnsplashListening to podcasts has transformed walking for exercise - and has been a revelation after the rigidity of traditional radio show formatting that requires a programme to be, say, 30 minutes long, no more, no less. However, a couple of podcasts I listened to this morning have demonstrated how things can go wrong at the boundaries.

The (2022) podcasts in question were the 14 May episode of More or Less: Behind the Stats, lasting 9 minutes, and the 6 May episode of Kermode & Mayo's Take, which runs to 1 hour 59 minutes.

These are clearly extremes - I think it's fair to say that most podcasts are in the 30-50 minutes range. But each illustrates a point.

Let's take Tim Harford's More or Less first. This one demonstrates the danger of making a podcast that is just a radio programme repackaged. It is part of a series that is broadcast weekly on the BBC's World Service and has a rigid 9 minute slot. If it had been a real podcast, it would have run for about 15 minutes, I'd suggest. But, dealing with a relative complex single issue, Harford, who is usually a laid-back presenter, was forced to rattle through at a slightly unnerving rate. The content was fine, but the need to fit to a broadcast slot made it less than perfect listening. 

By contrast, Kermode and Mayo's Take, which is a new podcast based on an earlier BBC radio show by the pair, shows that the freedom of the podcast format can be taken too far. I don't mind that nearly two hours is too long to fit with my typically 40-45 minute walk. I'm very happy to split the listening across several walks. But it felt like what we were getting was an hour's content that the presenters were allowed to run away with and extend unnecessarily. There was simply far too much wibbling with negligible information content. What this one required was a good edit.

The lessons from this listening experience seems to be twofold. We really should do away with linear broadcasting of this kind of programme and just have them as podcasts. They are better in a flexible slot than as time-constrained radio shows. But with great freedom comes great responsibility. Just because a podcast can be whatever length you like, it is still important to edit the content so it works well. I will continue to listen to Kermode and Mayo as I'm interested in film and value their opinions - but it would have been so much better if it had been tightened up.

Podcasting is still a relatively new medium and that will mean mistakes along the way. But if we learn from them, it will continue to go from strength to strength.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Archive Special: C. P. Snow alive and well at the BBC

This is an update of a post from 2013, which still seems very relevant today: 

I was watching the BBC school soap Waterloo Road* the other day, and ended up rolling all over the floor moaning. Because we saw a 'science teacher' making one of the most basic possible errors. Would they have allowed an English teacher to write on a board that Hamlet was written by T. S. Eliot? Or a geography teacher to note down the capital of France as Belgium? I would hope not. Yet this is a comparable error. Take a look at this little snap.

What is she doing? It seems she has invented a new kind of hydrogen peroxide that is made up of H-squared and O-squared. I have no idea what a squared atom is, and I wait with interest to see the BBC's drama department explaining all about these new particles. At the very least, I would expect a squared atom would enable us to perform cold fusion.

In the meanwhile I just don't understand what kind of editing process at the BBC can allow H2O2 to be written as H2O2. Similarly, in another episode the chlorine molecule, Cl2, was described as C12 (C twelve) – someone had misread the L as a number 1. I can only assume every single person involved in producing this programme didn't even manage to get a science GCSE. And that says something very sad about the whole TV drama world. 
Arguably these are visual reminders of  C. P. Snow's 1959 'two cultures' lecture, where he accused those with a humanities background, who ‘by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated’, of looking down on the illiteracy of scientists, while simultaneously being proud of their scientific ignorance. Snow likened their inability to respond to a question about the Second Law of Thermodynamics as being the scientific equivalent of answering ‘Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?’ in the negative.
Some argue that Snow's viewpoint is now outdated - but a steady stream of examples like the Waterloo Road failure seem to show otherwise.

* Due to be relaunched in 2022

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here