Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

by Rory Sutherland

Here’s a typical school maths question: Two buses leave the same bus station at noon. One travels west at a constant 30mph, while the other travels north at a constant 40mph. At what time will the buses be 100 miles apart?* Here’s a typical real-life problem: I need to catch a plane leaving Gatwick at 8am. Should I get there by train, taxi or car? And at what time should I leave the house? The odd thing about the human mind is that many people would find the first question difficult, and the second easy, yet the second question is computationally far more complex. This says more about the evolution of our brains than the difficulty of the problem. The reason is that the first question is tailor-made for computation, being what you might call a ‘narrow context’ problem. It assumes an artificially simplified, regularised world (where buses miraculously travel at a constant speed), it involves very few variables (all of which are numerically expressible, and allow for no ambiguity) and it has one single, incontrovertibly correct answer. The question of how to get to Gatwick is what you might call a ‘wide context’ problem. It allows for vagueness and multiple right answers, and it doesn’t demand absolute adherence to any precise rules. There is no formula for the solution, it allows scope for all kinds of possible ‘right-ish’ answers and all kinds of information can be taken into account when coming up with an answer.