Tom Stafford Quotes

Time Dreams. They are dreams, like any other dream. They are dreams about space and Time. They are reoccurring. They don’t happen all at once, or in any particular order. They are random. They seem real, but so does life. What sense is it that

The first two sentences are hard to understand, but make some kind of sense. The last sentence is merely rearranged but makes no natural sense at all. (This is all assuming it makes some sort of sense for an old lady to be swallowing cats in the first place, which is patently absurd, but it turns out she swallowed a goat too, not to mention a horse, so we’ll let the cat pass without additional comment.)

This research, and research that followed on from it, showed that strong arguments can be persuasive, but only when people are motivated to deliberate on the issue. Recently, a team led by Joseph Paxton of Harvard University showed that, in the domain of moral arguments, strong arguments were only persuasive if people were given some deliberation time before being forced to answer. Like crimes, it seems, reasoning requires both motive and opportunity. If both are there, even in crude psychology experiments, we can show that strong arguments alone have power to persuade.

Now, two centuries into the age of reason, our collective endorsement of human irrationality is at a high-water mark. By this I don't just mean the fads, conspiracy theories and fundamentalisms that beset society, but also how we talk about the human ability to reason, how we collectively think of ourselves.

But the picture of when we reason best that emerges from the research is far away from the classic image of rationality - the wise scholar alone in a study. Rather, we avoid error when we reason in groups - allowing the push and pull of argumentation to get us out of holes that we'd otherwise dig ourselves into.

Robert Cialdini's "Influence" is the single best place to start to read about the social psychology of persuasion, and at first glance the book looks like an overwhelming testimony to irrationality in our interactions with one another. This classic work explores six major factors which can help persuade other people. For example, one major factor is “reciprocity”, whereby we feel compelled to give something back when people have given something to us (for example when a car salesperson has agreed to cut the price by 10%, maybe we feel we should raise the amount we’re willing to pay in return). There’s no need to labour the opportunities for the unscrupulous to take advantage of this kind of habit of mind. None of Cialdini’s important persuasion factors are rational argument, so at one reading of Cialdini’s manual of persuasion is coming firmly from the “we’re irrational” side. But there is another interpretation. Much of the evidence on which the power of these factors to aid persuasion is based assumes a situation where you have an at least half-way rational argument to begin with. Rationality is the background against which these irrational factors create variation.

In his book The Righteous Mind, Haidt argues that intuitions come before reasons in arguments about moral issues, and that our social natures means that it is next to impossible to persuade someone under conditions of group competition (such as the current conditions of US politics). Haidt isn’t saying that we can’t persuade other people in arguments about moral issues, just that reason and argument are less important than group membership and intuition. I like to see a silver lining on his warning that productive debate is impossible across social divides. Yes, if two groups view each other as the enemy you won't see enlightening discussion, but it also means that there are conditions in which reason can be fostered. Haidt's analysis gives us justification for paying attention to the things that make people comfortable with each other. Wanting mutual respect between groups with different opinions on an issue isn't just an empty nicety - it's an evidence-based precondition for effective discussion.

Paul Bloom is a proponent of the power of reasoning in moral persuasion, arguing that we have direct evidence of the power of reasoning in cases where morality has changed - over time, people have been persuaded to accept gay marriage, for example, or to reject slavery. Reasoning may not be as fast as intuition, as Haidt claims, but it can play a role in where those intuitions come from. Bloom cites an idea Peter Singer describes in his book “The Expanding Circle”. This is that when you decide to make a moral argument - i.e. an argument about what is right or wrong - you must to some extent step outside of yourself and adopt an impartial perspective. If you want to persuade another that you should have more of the share of the food, you need to advance a rule that the other people can agree to. “I should get more because I’m me” won’t persuade anyone, but “I should get more because I did more work, and people who did more work should get more” might. But once you employ an impartial perspective to persuade you lend force to a general rule, which may take on a life of its own. Maybe tomorrow you slack off, so your own rule will work against you. In order to persuade you struck a bargain with the group’s shared understanding of what’s reasonable. Once you’ve done this, Singer argues, you breathe life into the internal logic of argument. The “impartial perspective” develops its own dynamic, driving reason forward quite apart from the external influences of emotion, prejudice and environment. Not only can the arguments you advance come back to bite you, but they might even lead you to conclusions you didn’t expect when you first formulated them.

So where does this leave us? Are we a rational animal, or as Robert Heinlein said, merely a rationalising one? Sure, there’s no shortage of evidence that our intuitions, emotions, prejudices and motivations can push reason around. Good luck to you if you want to use only argument to persuade - unless you’ve got people who already like you or trust you (ideally both) you’re going to have a hard time, but amidst the storm and shouting of psychological factors, reason has a quiet power. People do change each other’s minds, and if you can demonstrate the truth of your point of view, or help someone come to realise the short-comings of theirs, maybe you can shift them along. But beware Singer’s warning - logic has its own dynamic. If you open yourself to sincerely engage in argument then it is as likely that your interlocutor will persuade you as the other way around, after all, none of us has the sole claim on what it means to be rational.

For a long time, psychologists have used a logic task called the Wason Selection Task as a lens on our power of reasoning. The task works like this: imagine there are cards which always have a letter on one side and a number on the other. You are shown, flat on the table, four cards. Their up-facing sides show “E”, “G”, “7”, “6” and you are told that you need to test this rule: “All cards with a vowel on one side have an even number on the other side”. Which cards do you need to turn over to test if this rule is true?

Dan Ariely has a book calling us “Predictably Irrational", and the introduction tells us “we are pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend. We usually think of ourselves [with] ultimate control over the decisions we make [but] this perception has more to do with our desires…than reality”. Cordelia Fine’s book “A mind of its own" has the subtitle “how your brain distorts and deceives”, whilst David McRaney doesn’t pull any punches with the title of his “You are not so smart".

Time Dreams. They are memories of the soul. They encompass all Time. They exist in the space of a dream.

Time Dreams. They are memories of the soul. They encompass all Time. They exist in the space of a dream.

Therefore, the NASA thinkers came up with the idea of beating them to the punch by sending Gemini 12 around the Moon, if all tests were successful through the first eleven missions. The last five Gemini flight plans already included docking with an Agena rocket, which would go into orbit first. So our engineers figured they could soup up the thrust of the Agena enough to give the final Gemini mission a deep-space capability. In this theory, when Gemini 12 reached orbit and docked with the improved Agena, the bigger rocket engine would provide enough kick to throw the spacecraft onto a course that would result in a single loop around the far side of the Moon. They counted on the slingshot effect of lunar gravity to fling the spacecraft back toward Earth for our reentry. People were seriously considering sending Tom Stafford and me around the Moon! Looking back, I’m glad they came to their senses and recognized a really bad idea when they had one. We weren’t anywhere near being ready to send a crew on a journey of half a million miles. *

The science, and those who promote it, seem to be saying that we’re unreasonable creatures. Either we don't act on rational principles, or when we do we're mistaken and something else (our brains? evolution?) is really in the driving seat. That’s a problem, given that many of our social institutions (such as democracy) are based on an assumption that rational persuasion can occur. If I believed the story told in these books I would be forced to choose between my profession as a cognitive scientist and political commitment as a citizen and democrat.

Time's Magpies by Stewart Stafford Time’s magpies swoop to taunt and rob, And pluck out hair and gums carefree. Opportunity and energy drained by mob, As we duel pitiless reality. The cat’s jowls swelled in uproar, His gut sags and snarls with pain. Feathery barbs of a matador, Feline fleeing to copse again. A younger cat enters the fight, Ousting the aged tom. Crown prince routs thieving flight, A proud lion of dawn's sun. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

The Beshrewing of Tom o' Bedlam by Stewart Stafford Fie and a plague on thee! Nay, a pox! May legions of hellions float through thee, And may thou fall in the dung of an ox. May the thing below thine eyes, Take on the appearance of a sprout, And may the things above thy chin, Resemble a harlot's spout. May Heaven strike thee dumb, Aye, dumber than thou art now, May thy words become those of a lunatic, And thy breathing the grunting of a sow. Verily, I do not wish thee misfortune, Lest it rebounds back upon me, But, as long as it befalls thee first, I may live quite merrily. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

More recent Gemini graduates, Stafford and I were the newcomers, but Tom seemed to be a swifter study than I. He had been number one in his class in electrical engineering at the Naval Academy, and he sopped up wiring diagrams with the same ease with which some teenage girls memorize the words of popular songs.