I have always liked friends who put challenges on the table. The more innocent they seem, the more they frighten me. Having friends like that matters. Even Albert… Einstein had them. Max Wertheimer was one of them. And what a friend he was. You may already know the story, because Manuel Conthe mentioned it in Expansión, and before him others such as Shane Parrish, or Gerd Gigerenzer himself in a very interesting book to which I shall return at the end of this article.
The story goes that one fine day Max put to Albert a seemingly innocent situation, which I summarise here in my own words: “A car has just reached the top of a small hill. The climb to the summit was 1 km long, and the car covered that kilometre at an average speed of 30 km/h. From the summit there is a descent of another kilometre to its destination. The driver wants to average 60 km/h over the whole journey.” He then posed the little question: “If he wants to meet his target, at what average speed must he drive down the hill?”
Good old Albert admitted to his ‘friend’ Max that “only when I started to do the calculations did I realise that there was no time left on the way down to reach the desired goal“. Albert set about the calculations, which mathematically involve what are known as harmonic means. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I amused myself by programming one of those 3D charts to illustrate the point. On one axis we have the average speed achieved on the first stretch; on the other horizontal axis, the average speed we would like to achieve over the whole journey; and on the third, vertical axis, the average speed needed on the second stretch to reach the target. You can see that there are situations in which the required speed would be infinite. Mathematically speaking, there would even be scenarios in which we would need negative speeds on the second stretch (how absurd some solutions turn out to be, don’t you think?).
Albert’s friend was no ordinary man, and the little puzzle was no ordinary puzzle either. Good old Max Wertheimer is the father of the theory known as “Gestalt Psychology”, which, very simply put, holds that one way to help solve a problem is to reframe the question again and again until the answer becomes obvious.
In the motoring example, we could reframe the question. For instance: how many minutes does it take to cover the whole 2-kilometre journey at an average speed of 60 km/h? 2 minutes. How much time has already been spent covering the first kilometre at an average speed of 30 km/h? 2 minutes. Put this way, the answer seems more obvious than by calculating harmonic means. Not even at the speed of light could we meet the target!
Let us take an economic example. Imagine a country whose citizens decide to provide themselves with a certain level of welfare State. The associated cost is set by that level, while its sustainability over time is determined by the wealth of its citizens. When times are lean, that welfare State will be put at risk.
Following the philosophy of Albert’s friend, what is the right question? What is this country’s problem? Unemployment? Corruption? Inefficiency? Debt approaching the level of GDP? Education?…
Each of these is undoubtedly an enormous problem, a whopper of a problem, in fact. Yet we would need to keep reframing the question for the solution to become clearer. What is at risk is the welfare State, so how are we going to generate the resources to sustain it? I would like to think Max would say we are getting warmer. Resources are generated through so-called engines of growth. We reframe again: what are going to be this country’s engines of growth that will allow us to sustain the welfare State we want? Tourism, thank God, is still there; bricks and mortar are not.
Following this process, let us assume that we need engines of growth that generate greater wealth for citizens, enough to pay for the welfare State we wish to give ourselves. Where do we stand? Have they been identified? Have the means been put in place? Have the obstacles to growth been removed? How fast are we climbing the hill?
I now return to Gerd Gigerenzer, who in his book “Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions” highlights the power of heuristics in solving problems. In essence, he argues that when complexity is at its greatest or the solution is hard to find, an appropriate simplification of the problem can help us reach a solution which, though not perfect, may be considered optimal. In my home town they would call it “grandma’s rule” or, more elegantly, “a reasonable estimate”. It is the fruit of experience, of knowing how to separate the wheat from the chaff; in short, what experts ought to do in their fields of knowledge.
So, simplifying matters, we have a goal: to grow (engines of growth). And we have a situation: we are climbing a hill worthy of the queen stage of the Tour de France, we do not have enough resources of our own, but we have earned a certain amount of credit that has allowed us to buy time by borrowing.
Not all of us are lucky enough to be called Albert, but what if the question is: will we climb this hill fast enough to reach the goal?
In my humble opinion, far too much energy is being wasted on side issues and personal agendas that keep us from concentrating on increasing our speed. I miss a clear identification of the engines of growth in a modern society (communications electronics, biotechnology, internet services, etc.). And if that is missing, still less are there the rules of the game for an efficient ecosystem that helps boost those engines of growth in an integrated way (financing, legislation, education, users, suppliers, timelines, etc.). Not to mention how that effort might feed back into the society that supported it (patents, synergies, better salaries, efficiency, prestige, universities, etc.).
There is still time, but not much. There is hope in our country because the talent is there. Some time ago a businessman, and yet a friend, told me that he did not need help from the authorities; he would be content if they did not put too many obstacles in his way. Today we do not have that luxury. Either efficient ecosystems are fostered, or we will not make it in time.
If they are, we will all be grateful. If not, and those who bore the responsibility were not brave enough to act when they could, history and our children will record it.
Published on Friday 5 June 2015 in diarioabierto.es: http://www.diarioabierto.es/257603/la-importancia-de-llamarse-albert
