Feynman, Fairy Tales & Fooling Ourselves

A foray into fiction, self-deception and rationality

The first principle

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” -Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate

What does he mean by this counterpoint?

The fields of psychology and philosophy are ripe with the findings of our persistent irrationality and fallibility: the host of cognitive biases we are vulnerable to in navigating our lives and the pragmatic trade-offs using heuristics to manage everyday situations.

While science attempts to understand the natural world and ourselves from a third person perspective, I offer that certain kinds of spiritual practice like mindfulness and self-inquiry offer insight from the first person (i.e. phenomenology) in understanding the origins of our self-deception, not unlike the second person benefit of therapeutic dialogue, whether between a therapist and client or empathetic friends.

Clear thinking is difficult and self-deception is easy.

From Feynman to fairy tales

I would like to discuss fairy tales in the context of Feynman’s point that  “you are the easiest person to fool.”

Wikipedia’s definition of fairy tale:

1. A folktale featuring fairies or similar fantasy characters.
   I used to love reading fairy tales when I was a child.

2. A story presented as true that is not believable.
   He's telling us another fairy tale about how great the software will be.

3. A delightful and ideal situation of a kind attained by very few.
   I've been living in a fairy tale since I met Joe.

While the modern Disneyfied treatment implies they are stories intended for children with happily-ever-afters and good-triumphs-over-evil, that wasn’t historically the case and such tales often broached dark subject matter.

Like fables, myths and storytelling in general, fairy tales entertain and educate.

I propose that stories are like mirror neurons for the mind, offering readers and listeners opportunities to experience and learn from mere imagination through simulation.

Story time!

Let’s use Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes to illustrate Feynman’s principle around foolishness.

A synopsis from Wikipedia:

Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.

Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. Although startled, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.

What to make of this fanciful tale?

First, there is the selfish emperor who values appearances over the public good, an effective representation of the ego’s penchant for vanity. I also suspect overtones of class-based resentment towards the rich and powerful as the emperor seems quite unlikeable. 

Then there are the swindlers who see the emperor as an easy mark to con. Motivated by greed, they appeal to the emperor’s self-aggrandizing desires. They could represent the trickiness of the mind and the glamor of desire to overcome skepticism.

The officials and townsfolk represent the power of conformity, pride, the fear of speaking up and being wrong. Social psychology has brought light to phenomena like the bystander effect and the Stanford prison experiment on the power of obedience.

Finally, there’s the child that represents innocence not yet under the thrall of social convention and the courage to speak the obvious truth.

It is amusing that the emperor doubles down even after the spell is broken, an illustrative example of sunk cost fallacy.

Closing thoughts

While easy to overlook as a mere fairy tale, this story also exemplifies the archetype of the willfully blind ruler inattentive to pressing issues. How many of us have private matters we would rather not address out of fear facing a painful truth?

Or the idiom of the elephant in the room? Were it not for whistleblowers and champions of change, how long would unjust institutions continue to persist? It is a remarkable interplay of reciprocity how individuals and society shape one another.

May this revisitation of Feynman and a fairy tale inspire you to be a little less foolish.

As one of my favorite William Blake quotes goes, “If a fool persists in his folly, he becomes wise.”

This week’s piece was prompted by an exchange with fellow writer Michelle Varghoose and her suggestion to write on fairy tales.