Things are not the way they seem
Human language is astoundingly supple. We are able to connect a finite number of sounds to produce an infinite number of sentences, each with nuanced meaning. As a result, we can ingest, store, and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the surrounding world (Yuval, 2015).
If we look around at the animals around us, we start to realize that this is exclusive to humanity. Rather than a fact of life, it is a gift given to us homo sapiens. And yet, I can safely say that a large majority of human beings live their lives complacent with their own mental library.
In this essay, we will explore instances of the universe that function in a way that was previously unexpected. These vignettes will be unrelated to each other, but will live under the roof of unexpectedness — hoping to bring curiosity back to your routine.
Diabetes is a debilitating disease that we are all familiar with, but is it possible that there are provable benefits? It has been discovered that diabetes was largely responsible for the survival of our European ancestors.
Around 15,000 years ago, a migration from Africa to the European area occurred. As they moved, they were faced with the Younger Dryas, which constituted a severe drop in temperatures. And so how did these migrants survive? Diabetes. This is a disease characterized by a decrease in insulin and ergo an increase in blood sugar.
When humans are exposed to gelid temperatures, their capillaries freeze up, and burst. An increase in sugar decreases the freezing point of a solvent, making it harder for this to occur. Think about a grape: when it gets colder in the winter grapes shrivel up by exterminating their excess water.
And effectively, those with diabetes were more resistant to the cold. Everyone else was selected against.
Pretty stunning, right. If given the opportunity to restart our global clock without diabetes, almost everyone’s answer would be yes. To them, it is unquestionably obvious. But now, with this further understanding, the decision becomes more complex. It invigorates the treadmill of curiosity, and makes us question what we know.
This idea also exists in the virtuous circle of learning.
From the moment we are born, we gravitate towards areas where we excel. The child who is inclined to read, frequents the library, and becomes even better at it. Usain Bolt observed how rapidly he could move his limbs, and found himself spending endless hours on the track.
This is called capitalization learning: we get good at something by building on the strengths we are naturally given (Gladwell, 2012). It turns out that this traditional way of amplifying natural skills might not be the best way to go.
Two psychologists at the University of California coined the theorem of desirable difficulties, which is a way to describe how underdogs excel. It says that oftentimes, the most successful members of society are those that challenge their biological deficiencies.
These researchers found that among CEO’s, a significant number had suffered from dyslexia as children. From a very young age, these figures had to overcome a tremendous amount of hardship. Over time, they overcame the friction of dyslexia, and developed courage along the way.
Courage is not genetically inherited, but rather, developed as a result of triumph. Those that overcame that unsurmountable force that was dyslexia, developed courage, and became outliers (Gladwell, 2015). They were not afraid to be unapologetically unorthodox and question society. And as a result, they became the pioneers of our generation.
This concept of hidden behaviors is closer to us than we think. During the World War 2, sociologists created the term relative deprivation that describes the idea that how deprived we are is relative (Gladwell, 2015). As an example, we can look at how this phenomenon affects college students.
On average, higher ranked colleges have smarter students. And thus, if getting a STEM degree is about how smart you are, then virtually everyone at Harvard who tries should end up with the degree of their choice — right? Wrong. It turns out that Harvard has the same distribution of successful STEM degrees as other smaller schools. The students attending this prestigious university are so demoralized by their experience that many drop out of science and pursue a non-science major.
This theory has been core to my belief system, and largely affected my decision making process as a high-schooler. The likelihood of my own success was not just about how objectively smart I was — my standardized tests, grades, and activities — but how smart I felt relative to my peers.
These are phenomenal examples, but implementation feels lofty. Pursuing these revelations as a mental fabric seems simply unreasonable. Making these discoveries would require us to deeply question and research everything around us in hopes of identifying a singularity. And so this begs the question, what already exists in our society that contains pockets of knowledge? What store of knowledge is designed to bring light to undiscovered niches?
The answer is simple — books. A book is a time machine, a garden, a compass, a mirror, a clairvoyant. And all of a sudden, discovery seems to be remarkably straightforward. The answer is sitting right in front of us.
Yet, we rarely read. Why? For me, it was because of how reading was presented to me as a child. My interests are generally non-systematic — they flourish out of randomness rather than structure. As soon as reading became systemic through our education system, that’s all it was ever associated with. One bad association distributed this feeling through the neural networks of our brain, and I never went back.
By breaking out of this habit, I hope to create an interest in being curious. And by following this curiosity, I will continue to expand my appreciation of the idea that things are not the way they seem to be. If even diabetes had hidden benefits, what else is our world hiding?
References
Gladwell, M. (2009). Outliers. Back Bay Books.
Gladwell, M. (2014). David and Goliath. Penguin Books.
Harari, Yuval N. author. (2015). Sapiens : a brief history of humankind. New York :Harper,
Moalem, Sharon. (2007). Survival of the sickest : a medical maverick discovers why we need disease. New York :William Morrow,