This one is a two part-er, part I is my original thoughts, and part II is my reflections after some emailing.

Part I – written 8/28/2024

I’ve been thinking about something endlessly, toiling away at it in my mind until it nearly pushed me to the brink of total insanity. It’s about stolen valor. There are tons of cases of stolen valor in history — Alexander Bell was not the first to invent the telephone, Christopher Columbus was not the first to America from the old world (shoutout Leif Erikson and the Polynesians) ect, ect. But the one I’m thinking of is particularly ghastly. It’s not just a person claiming to discover something first when another beat him to it — it’s a person pretending to discover something that has been widely known for tens of thousands of year. A collective feat, broadly known.

Subconsciously, this post about my inability to grow this beard

I am talking about Ivan Pavlov — known for his ‘discovery’ of classical conditioning. His experiment is well known, he gave dogs positive and negative reinforcement to change their behavior on neutral inputs. He got dogs to salivate when he rang a bell. That’s it. His Wikipedia says “he was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the relationship between environmental stimulus and behavioral responses” — are you kidding me? Anybody with a domesticated dog knows this. If I am anywhere near his treats, my roommates dog Oggy will sit and put his paw up, without me even saying the word “paw.” Pavlov claiming he discovered this is like Chipotle claiming they invented the Burrito, or worse, that they invented chicken. How anyone let Pavlov get away with this is so far beyond my comprehension it makes me question my sanity. My roommate suggested that it is tied to the whole “white people pretending to discover things that other cultures know” thing that is a frequent truism in history but white people had dogs. It’s not like this was a foreign concept to the Caucasians either. When I have time I’m going to email a professor on this and research the history because there is absolutely no way a guy strolls up in the late 1800’s and convinces everyone that he discovered you can incentivize dogs to do things, and everyone bought it. He was nominated for the Nobel prize for this. I need to stop writing because it upsets me too much. I am officially a Pavlov hater.

Part II – written today

Ah Hubris.

I’ve mentioned before an inclination I have to be different, an enjoyment in being an exception. The problem with trying to navigate the world like this is that often things are perceived a certain way correctly. Sometimes the lauded person deserves it. Sometimes the hated person deserves it. Other than my Polynesians reference (look how smart I am, everyone) the writing above stooped in this confident unawareness. I was dramatically overconfident in my damning of innocent Pavlov. In my defense, I had enough self awareness to realize I needed to find someone who knew what they were talking about to answer my questions. So I did. Daniel Todes, PhD was the best candidate.

If you google Dr. Daniel Todes, the first image is not of him. It’s of Pavlov. That’s the level of commitment he’s shown to the man. He’s written several books about Pavlov and his work including an 855 page biography detailing his life in science, where he personally sources little reviewed materials from within Russia and Europe. So, I emailed him. This is one of those situations where you can quickly see what is about to happen. Colin Whittaker, with zero knowledge of Pavlov outside of my high school Psychology class (B-), firing a bombastic email at a PhD and professor emeritus at the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. It’s sort of like watching a second grader get in the ring with Mike Tyson in his prime.

Considering what he could’ve done, Dr. Todes was quite kind. When talking to professors, you can often read a built in I-know-more-than-you condescension — Dr. Todes had none of this. He thoughtfully walked me through the cliché of Pavlov that exists in our culture, and the reality of the importance of his work. Turns out, he wasn’t the first to discover that dogs salivate, nor did he claim to. His discovery involved constantly building out a web of conditional reflexes, even down to finding that dogs can differentiate time down to 1/43rd of a second, and then connecting that to human psychology. I also get the impression that he had a much more open perspective on subjectivity than others of his time. He even advocated for the idea that dogs had feelings and emotions as humans do, which was not presumed at that time. He took the concept of conditional reflexes and turned it into a measurable science rather than something just understood vaguely by some. Dr. Todes walked through all of this and even sent text from his book breaking down my exact argument, nearly verbatim (Chapter 21.)

shoutout wikipedia for this one

At this point Dunning Kruger effect is nearing common knowledge, but if you’re not aware it’s the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. We all do this, it’s built into the structure out of brains. In a way it can be a good thing, that overconfidence can lead to a commitment to the subject and a desire to continue even when the real performance is not strong. It can also be a bad thing, when those who aren’t claim to be experts. It’s one of those concepts you can immediately recognize in any national political debate, lots of people confidently declaring truths that they know little about. The bad is also what you just read above in Part I.

Reading his response email on the screeching Green Line in Boston was humbling. I’m no psychologist (CLEARLY), but I suspect Dunning Kruger goes beyond our own overconfidence in ourselves. I think a lot of it is denial to spare the kind of feelings I had on that streetcar. On the graph above, I was falling all the way from that beautiful steady blue perceived performance line to the very bottom of the red double-black-diamond slope of actual performance. I’m now confident I know almost nothing about Pavlov’s work.

But the red line’s not so bad.¹

I know that my new confidence is real, it’s accurate unlike the old. I’m free of lying to myself about myself. And my knowledge is not totally zero, I now know what Dr. Todes was kind enough to share with me and he did that when he didn’t have to. I’ve bought his book to continue this journey. The thought I’m left with is what other confident thoughts, hot takes, perceptions, fun facts, values, and other things leave me feeling high on the blue slope when I’m perched on the lowly red line below. I need to do more emailing.

Colin

¹ ᴵ ᵃᵐ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᶦʳˢᵗ ᵖᵉʳˢᵒⁿ ᶦⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᶦˢᵗᵒʳʸ ᵒᶠ ᴮᵒˢᵗᵒⁿ ᵗᵒ ˢᵃʸ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵖʰʳᵃˢᵉ