In 2018, Jim Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their “discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.”
As a scientist, Allison has pointed out that you can’t really prove anything with science. All you can do is disprove. He says that the data from an experiment may be consistent with your hypothesis, but it might be consistent with another hypothesis, too. So you need to ask, what else is it telling me?
Allison covered similar ground in an interview he gave after winning the Nobel Prize:
[Being a good scientist] takes discipline but [also] creativity, you have got to learn how to view your data as a crystal or something, you know when you look at every facet of it, get to know it from every direction. Look at what it tells you beyond the reason you did the experiment and figure it out. And so I think that’s pretty much it; it is the ability to really study the data and really learn what it is telling you.
As an aside on creativity, Allison is also a musician. He plays harmonica in a band composed of other scientists. This isn’t unusual. It turns out that Nobel Prize laureates are three times more likely than other scientists to have a creative hobby (performing, singing, acting, glassblowing, writing, painting, etc.). You could say they themselves have multiple facets. Knowing that people are Nobel Prize winning scientists doesn’t tell you everything about them.
WYSIATI
I included Allison’s comments at the end of an article on Daniel Kahneman’s concept of WYSIATI or What You See Is All There Is. (Kahneman is another Nobel Prize winner, but I don’t know anything about his hobbies.)
WYSIATI means that when you’re determining the meaning of something or constructing a story about it (i.e. interpreting it), your brain can only use the information available to it at the time. What it sees is all there is. The less information you have, the easier it is for your brain to construct a convincing story. You don’t cast about looking for information you don’t currently possess. What am I likely to be missing? How am I misconstruing this? What else is this information telling me?
Similarly, if the data from an experiment is consistent with your hypothesis, why go looking for trouble by asking if it could be consistent with another hypothesis, too.
The unconscious part of your brain is looking for a good enough answer right now that adequately fits your model of the world. Accuracy is not its highest priority. You need to get a move on. No straggling allowed.
We think we have a clear idea of what’s happening. We think we understand why things happen or happen the way they do. And we feel pretty certain about our assessment of events and situations.
But certainty, like confidence, is a feeling and has nothing to do with the accuracy or lack thereof of our interpretations and beliefs. The more we proceed through life assuming we are correct, the more likely we are to be wrong and the more difficult it becomes to change—our perspectives, our behavior, the trajectory of our lives.
Look at All Facets of an Experience
One way out of this predicament is to ask a lot more questions—not just random questions: hard questions. As a species, we have a unique capacity for self-awareness, but we’re not particularly good at accessing it. As a result:
- trying to disentangle our interpretations of events from the events themselves is hard
- trying to identify the unconscious beliefs that could underlie our interpretations is even harder
- attempting to separate fact from fiction in perceiving events or situations in order to come up with alternative interpretations is extremely hard for some
But if we want different outcomes, if we want to get off the rock we’re on and get on a rock that offers a different perspective, or if we want to think different thoughts, we need to ask the hard questions. We need to be able to explore the facets or components of our experiences and recognize the roles played by our interpretations and our beliefs.
Here’s an exercise to try. But first, some definitions:
- An event is something that happens (the data, if you will).
- Your interpretation is the meaning you make of the thing that happens.
- Beliefs are convictions you have about the nature of reality (the way the world works).
Part One
- Describe an event.
- Describe your interpretation of the event.
- Ask yourself, what is this interpretation telling me about my perception of the way the world works?
- Identify one or more beliefs that could underlie your interpretation.
Part Two
- Take another look at the event (the data) and ask yourself, what else is it telling me?
- Describe two possible alternative interpretations based on the data (facts) of the event.
Part Three
- Identify your emotional response to your interpretation of the event and ask yourself, what is it telling me?
- Identify the action you took in response to your interpretation of the event and ask yourself, what is it telling me?
- Identify your emotional response to the action you took and ask yourself, what is it telling me?
Keep asking yourself what is it telling me? And then what else is it telling me? We can’t access our beliefs directly because they are part of the mental model our brain maintains of what things mean and what is normal for us. But the beliefs that make up our mental model affect our perceptions and interpretations of everything we experience.
We can’t create significant, sustained change unless we change our mental model. In order to do that, we have to learn more about it. We have to be curious. We have to ask the hard questions.
Part two of two parts. Part one is here.
