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The Science of Survival
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Page 2: The Darwin of Dumb
Why smart people make dumb mistakes (and how you can avoid them).
Text by Laurence Gonzales Photo Illustration by Jonathan Barkat
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Accidents of all types used to be analyzed in terms of their physical or mechanical causes. When the cause was clearly human error, they were often written off as the result of foolishness or lack of training. But among those who investigate accidents, there is an increasing awareness that this type of analysis does not fully explain why otherwise rational people do what may seem irrational.
For example, in May 1989, Lynn Hill, the winner of more than 30 international rock-climbing titles, was preparing to climb what she called a "relatively easy" route in Buoux, France. She threaded her rope through her harness, but then, instead of tying her knot, she stopped to put on her shoes. While she was tying them, she talked with another climber, then returned to climb the rock face. "The thought occurred to me that there was something I needed to do before climbing," she later recalled, but, "I dismissed this thought." She climbed the wall, and when she leaned back to rappel to the ground, she fell 72 feet (22 meters), her life narrowly saved by tree branches. In her case, more training would not have helped. In fact, experience contributed to her accident. She had created a very efficient model for tying her rope to her harness. She could do it without thinking. So the act of tying her shoes may have been similar enough to tying her rope that it allowed her to reach the unconscious conclusion that her rope was tied, even while leaving a slight residue of doubt.
I've been studying accidents of various kinds for more than 30 years, and I have tried to go beyond conventional analysis to explain why seemingly stupid actions can actually make a type of biological and evolutionary sense at the time and under the circumstances. We can laugh at the Darwin Awards and write off our mistakes as stupidity or bad luck.
But at some level, most of us are like Lynn Hill, with a knot half-tied somewhere in our lives, just waiting for us to put our weight on it. And one of the most frequently ignored factors in many accidents is the way we form models of the world and refer to them—not the world itself—in most of what we do. Understanding this system will help explain why smart people do irrational things. And some of the dumbest things I've done have been in the wilderness.
Continue reading on the next page >>
Survival Intro >>
Page 2 - The Darwin of Dumb >>
Page 3 - When Mental Models Go Wrong >>
Page 4 - The Trouble With Success >>
Page 5 - Learning How to S.T.O.P. >>
Page 6 - Living Mindfully >>
Page 7 - The Survivor: Rulon Gardner >>
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