Section 1: Detecting Nonsense, Error Checking, False Assumptions, Cherishing Mistakes¶

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The introductory meeting and five sessions on catching your own errors before they catch you

Overview¶

The syllabus calls its exercises "practice scrimmages" in, among other things, "spotting and taking advantage of your own mistakes, and especially of learning a positive attitude toward mistakes, because they are often the most available doors to discovery." Section 1 builds that attitude.

It moves in three steps. Sessions 1 and 2 set up "two contrasting challenges": a small puzzle you can test with your hands, and a large question that may have no checkable answer. Sessions 3 to 5 practise separating what you were given, or saw, from what you supplied or imagined. Session 6 names the methods: "Some ways to check for errors", "hidden assumptions", and what is "understand"?

The syllabus says the exercises "depend as little as possible on knowledge of any particular subject area". It adds: "The purpose of the puzzles (many of them silly) is to slow you down for a few minutes so you can examine the working of your own mind." Getting one wrong is expected, and worth writing down.

The sessions¶

Session 01: Demonstrating the need¶

Readings due: introduction and handouts; Adams, preface and Chapter 1.

The Triangle Problem comes first, under the label "Demonstrating the need". Which triangle question Winfree asked is not recorded; its page offers two candidates, each a familiar question whose confident answer fails. Then comes the "First of two contrasting challenges", 13 Nails, or "alternatively, the celts problem": balance thirteen nails on the head of one, or explain a top that reverses its own spin.

Session 02: The second contrasting challenge¶

Readings due: Adams, preface and Chapter 1; Platt, The Art of Creative Thinking; Feynman, Cargo Cult Science.

The "Second of two contrasting challenges" is Conscious Machines: could a machine be conscious, and how would you tell? A wrong idea about the nails falls on the table; here nothing falls. Platt's essay is the source of the daily GamesWorth habit. The syllabus explains the name: "the allusion is to how much thought it takes to play one game of serious chess". The syllabus gives only this challenge's title, so its page reconstructs the wording.

Session 03: A solo problem¶

Readings due: Judson, Chapter 1: The Rage to Know.

Discuss Square Windows, which the syllabus marks as a "solo problem". Read as the Carroll and Dudeney puzzle its page identifies, its only obstacle is an assumption you were never given.

Session 04: Facts before explanations of facts¶

Readings due: none listed.

Golden Tooth: "facts before explanations of facts", Fontenelle's story of books explaining a boy's gold tooth before anyone checked it. Salvation of Doug, a parable about two retired scientists studying a car factory from a hill. Bookworm's Journey: "distinguishing things we know vs only imagine".

Session 05: Pathological science¶

Readings due: N-Rays; Langmuir, Pathological Science.

Trained physicists confirmed a radiation that was not there until R. W. Wood's tests exposed it. Discuss the Phone Cord Problem, a coiled cord that tangles though neither plug ever turns, and Stockholm Restrooms, a travel oddity to describe before you explain it. The syllabus gives only their names, so both pages reconstruct the problems.

Session 06: Ways to check for errors¶

Readings due: packet of readings on valuing mistakes; Ehrlich, Chapter 1 (Introduction).

The syllabus lists "Some ways to check for errors", "hidden assumptions" and what is "understand"?, then Evaporated Gold. It also starts the first group effort in the schedule, Collective Reproduction. No statement of either problem survives, so both pages offer reconstructions. The schedule does not list Collective Reproduction again, so how long it ran is not recorded.

Key ideas¶

Mistakes are data¶

The syllabus asks you to write down "your approaches, your lucky insights, how you got into and out of blind alleys". A recorded mistake can be studied later, in a morning-after on the notebook's left-hand pages.

Facts before explanations of facts¶

The mind jumps to the cause and skips the fact; the golden tooth, the N-rays and the phone cord show that habit on three scales. Before explaining anything, ask: has this been observed, by whom, and could a simple check settle it? Then check the answer by a second route that shares no arithmetic with the first, as the reconstructed Evaporated Gold asks.

Know versus imagine¶

Many puzzles are hard only because you added something to them: a condition nobody stated, or a picture of the situation you imagined instead of checking. When you are stuck, list the conditions you were given. Then list the ones you supplied yourself.

Symptoms of pathological science¶

Langmuir described honest scientists fooled by their own expectations. His warning signs include effects that stay near the limit of detection, claims of great accuracy, fantastic theories contrary to experience, and criticisms met by ad hoc excuses. Wood did not argue with the theory of N-rays: he changed something the observers could not see and watched whether their reports changed.

GamesWorth focus for this section¶

• Before each problem, list your assumptions, marked as something you know, assume, or could look up.
• On 13 Nails, log each failed arrangement and the belief it disproved.
• On Conscious Machines, write down what observation would change your mind. If none would, say so.
• On Golden Tooth, Bookworm's Journey and the Phone Cord Problem, keep two columns: seen and inferred.
• On Evaporated Gold, reach the answer by two independent routes and record whether they agreed.
• Do a morning-after on the Triangle Problem: what made the confident answer feel safe?

Readings for this section¶

• James L. Adams, Conceptual Blockbusting, preface and Chapter 1 (sessions 1 and 2). Reading list entry; publisher 🔒; 1974 first edition at the Internet Archive 🔓 (borrow)
• John R. Platt, "The Art of Creative Thinking", in The Excitement of Science (1962) (session 2). Reading list entry; Internet Archive 🔓 (borrow)
• Richard P. Feynman, Cargo Cult Science (1974) (session 2). Reading list entry; Caltech 🔓
• Horace Freeland Judson, The Search for Solutions, Chapter 1: The Rage to Know (session 3). Reading list entry; Internet Archive 🔓 (borrow)
• N-Rays (session 5). Which text Winfree handed out is not recorded. Reading list entry; the N-Rays page quotes Wood's 1904 letter; overview 🔓
• Irving Langmuir, Pathological Science (1953 colloquium) (session 5). Reading list entry; transcript 🔓
• Packet of readings on valuing mistakes (session 6). Its contents are not recorded. Reading list entry
• Robert Ehrlich, Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True, Chapter 1, Introduction (session 6). Reading list entry; publisher 🔒

The session 4 problem Salvation of Doug is also a text to read: William T. Sullivan's parable, at the Sullivan Lab, UC Santa Cruz 🔓.

Problems in this section¶

See the problem index for every problem in the course.

Remember: the goal is not to avoid mistakes, but to learn how to make them productively and recover from them creatively.

Machine-readable: this page as Markdown · raw source on GitHub · llms.txt · llms-full.txt (whole site). See For AI agents.