Irrationality: Misunderstood Genius?
Bizarre ideas make no sense… or do they? Let’s have a look.
Every individual who has ceased to exist had desired to be acknowledged as an intelligent smart cookie. The experience of sounding logical and smart in front of a crowd stating well-constructed facts is gratifying. It encourages a person to elevate oneself as an essential member contributing to the conversation. In times of uncertainty, everyone readily throws in their hands and tries to steer themselves in a singular direction that they feel valid. Every legitimate direction to a puzzle has arrived following the same old methods. And to put it plainly, this is rather dull and boring.
Important decisions taken in most situations ranging from homes and small businesses to even significant companies always tend to follow the same traditional ideology — the tried and tested approach without any considerable gamble. There is no denying that it is straightforward and uncomplicated to arrive at a resolution when obliged.
But, what is the benefit when all solutions are identical as before? Imaginative alternatives are overlooked, and the world shifts to a monotonous blue of the repetitive cycle. The narrow-minded human desire for establishing logicality has erased the potential of inventive realism. Repetitive and safe choices ruin creative designs that can be generated with the tremendous potential rendered possible by human capabilities.
You might say — “All of these are fine. I get it. We don’t need to follow the actions that have already been constructed and sustained. But what if it turns out to be a bad idea? The world is prone to mishaps, and I don’t want to risk it.”
This is where you are missing my point. Let me illustrate my purpose with proven real-world examples.
The Inverse of a Good Idea can be a Great Idea.
Imagine yourself sitting in a meeting with high-level executives, emphasising the vital concern of preserving a reservoir from turning carcinogenic due to sunlight meeting water and advising the officials to fill the reservoir with floating plastic balls to cut out the light. This idea would be laughed upon, worse; you could even be fired.
However, such a problem arose, and an unprecedented decision was taken at the Silver Lake Reservoir in Los Angeles. The entire water surface was filled with ninety-six million shiny black balls made from pure carbon. The shade balls blocked light reaching the surface, helping prevent the occurrence of algae and the subsequent heating of water.
The science behind the carcinogenic water contamination was the chemical reaction of naturally occuring bromine and chlorine from salty water that found its way into the reservoir, to form bromate in the presence of sunlight.
Playstation Only Meant For Gaming? Think Again!
If this somewhat unconventional idea does not sound convincing, hear about Gaurav Khanna from the physics department at the University of Massachusetts. He was researching into black holes, and his laboratory needed an expensive supercomputer. As we know, supercomputers have become an indispensable tool for scientists and engineers in computational science in recent times; and their relevance keeps on increasing as we probe the mysteries of the universe.
Unable to fund a supercomputer, he ingeniously networked 16 PlayStation 3 consoles to model black hole collisions. Because black holes cannot be observed directly through telescopes, Dr. Khanna used the supercomputer he built to create simulations of the collisions instead. Following the same approach, he acquired another 400 additional consoles and constructed a much larger supercomputer inside a refrigerated semi-trailer.
No one with their conventional philosophies would have retorted to their mind’s creative power to manipulate such a useful and cheap alternative. Not only did it reduce costs significantly, but this also helped gather momentum and thirst among students to learn the subject. What put the cherry on the cake was that the American Air Force Research Laboratory and the reputed Stanford University incorporated this idea.
It additionally helped research treat improper protein folding and associated diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and several forms of cancer. Dr. Khanna shrewdly showed that the PlayStation could be used to play games and also be prudently utilised in science.
Despite this unconventionally intelligent approach, Sony was not impressed. It announced that further PlayStations would be unable to run other operating systems on their consoles due to questionable security concerns.
Imagine if the same Dr. Khanna did not test his irrationality and resorted to conventional prospects -
- Applying for a loan
- Starting a donation drive
- Petitioning his university to acquire the services of a supercomputer
Would he have succeeded? Yes! Maybe after ten years.
Dawn Of Internet and Pixels For Ads
When Alex Tew from England required support towards raising money for his university education in 2005, he did not follow the standard approach of applying for a student loan and compensating his entire life to repay it. Instead, he thought of an ingenious idea to help resolve his financial dilemma. As the internet was considered the next prominent revolution back in the 2000s, he decided to put it to fair use and established the ‘The Million Dollar Homepage.’
The idea was simple yet extraordinary. This website consisted of a million pixels arranged in a 1000x1000 pixel grid, and the image-based links were sold for $1 per pixel in 10×10 blocks. The purchasers of these pixel blocks were provided tiny images to be displayed on them, a URL to which the images were linked, and a slogan was displayed when a cursor hovered over the link. The website aimed to sell all of the pixels in the image and achieved the target within four months.
The website turned out to be an internet sensation and generated a million dollars of income to the creator ($1,037,100 to be precise). The Wall Street Journal commented that this site spurred other websites to sell pixels following its success. Alex Tew is now the co-founder and CEO of “Calm”, which was honoured with Apple’s App of The Year in 2017.
These successes are nevertheless considered as lucky accidents to all rational thinkers today. Logic has proved to be profoundly applicable in physical science and finds a way to dominate our lives in minor aspects. It is deemed a fluke or once in a lifetime happening, but what people forget is that this irrational psychology has been in play for a long time, even before the words ‘Et Tu Brute’ were uttered.
Caesar: The Subtle Tactician
Caesar had been in Egypt operating on stabilising Cleopatra to be the sole ruler. Four of his troops waiting for their pay and bonuses camped outside Rome under Mark Anthony’s command. Soon Anthony lost control. The troops grew unruly and began looting wealthy estates in the capital. Several delegations were held to quell their mutiny, but nothing worked. Caesar knew he needed these troops in his conquest of North Africa. When he returned after a few months, he used an unconventional yet ingenious tactic that revived him to preserve funds for the war and firmly secure the devotion of his soldiers.
When Caesar approached the speaker’s dais, a hush fell over the rebellious soldiers. Many were embarrassed by their part in the mutiny in Caesar’s presence. When Caesar asked what they wanted with his cold voice, they were ashamed to demand money; and the soldiers began to call out for their payment. Caesar addressed them as ‘citizens’ instead of ‘soldiers,’ a tacit indication that they had already settled themselves by their disloyalty. Caesar said he would pay them the money he owed them after winning the North African campaign with the other legions.
The soldiers were shocked. They had been through 15 years of war with Caesar and had become fiercely faithful to him. It had never occurred to them that Caesar did not need them. The soldiers’ resistance soon collapsed, and the crowd begged to serve Caesar in Africa. Caesar feigned indignation and then allowed himself to be won over. When he announced that he would suffer to bring them along, a massive cry of joy arose from the gathered troops. Caesar re-enlisted four devoted veteran legions and triumphantly invaded North Africa without spending a single sesterce, singularly a succinct innovative concept.
No Redbull, No Wings!
Don’t close down something because it doesn’t make sense.
Sometimes it should not matter if it doesn’t make sense, as long as it works.
For instance, the success enjoyed by the Energy Drink brand Red Bull is surprising, especially considering that the initial public reactions were not very accepting. Nevertheless, the company decided to proceed with their cynical idea. Fast forward a couple of years and a lot of branding, a Redbull in your hand makes you look cool and ‘gives you wings.’ An unconventional concept that was deemed to fail presently invests in over 15 teams across 11 sports.
One way to solve a problem is to ask a question that has never been asked before, even if it makes you look stupid. Without a shadow of a doubt, the Red Bull employee who endeavoured to think otherwise would have been deemed as quirky. Red Bull would have undoubtedly failed if they had fired the “visionary” and decided to give other soft drinks an intense competition by duplicating another sweet soft drink.
What is competition when your adversary follows the same logical strategy?
Sometimes a strictly logical approach to a problem gives the reassuring impression that a route will open up, even when there might be no light at the end of the tunnel. People do not look for alternatives because the world has stamped approval to solutions with narrowed down rational reasoning as the only viable option. A significant failure affected by following the conventional logical approach tends to have fewer implications than a trivial confusion from an unconventional intuitional judgment.
This article need not make logical sense to demonstrate that conventional reasoning is overblown. Irrationality is not senseless; it is secondary intelligence in our subconscious. Irrational ideas that work need not demand complete sense.
By following a narrow path of logic, imagination and magic are annulled. Using logic to solve every problem is like composing the same tune to every song and expecting people to savour them unquestionably. When we allow irrational thinking to take a place in our lives, it leads to many accidents, divine accidents. Some of them can turn into magic, as many life-changing inventions have been. Penicillin was accidental magic. So were potato chips!
‘A good guess which stands up to observations is still science. So is a lucky accident.’
In this rapidly evolving world, it seems easier to follow conventional logic and defend the delusional reality that systematic facts (even if an oversight) and not sustained knowledge (irrational belief) inspired it. One can only envision how elegantly magic can be cast if people were not head over heels with their obsession with logic and rationality.
