WEBVTT - Be a Better Guesser With Fermi Estimation 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:14.560 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.360 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:19.400 I want you to think about something I know you've 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:23.120 seen many times before. Okay, you've watched James Bond movies, right, 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:26.000 of course. I grew up watching James Bond movies mostly 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:28.800 on I think TBS on Thanksgiving Day and that one 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.200 they show it. I think they would, but it seems 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:33.360 like they just chewed it all the time. Like every 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.960 weekend it was what what Bond movie will be sort 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.160 of watching this weekend? And you would you would hope 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:42.320 where I would often those days, I would hope it 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.040 would be the Sean Connery. Nowadays, I think if I 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:49.520 were to do what, I would say, Roger Moore please. Yeah, 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:52.199 the more ones are the cheesier ones, they're better for 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:56.640 Thanksgiving Day. Yeah, I think so, like the Sean Connery 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.120 ones might be better movies, but they kind of just 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:04.200 they have this tinge of alcoholism and misogyny that well, no, 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.240 I guess the Roger Moore wins due to they do. 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:08.479 It's kind of just part of the character I think 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:13.480 you find that in every variation. Yeah. Anyway, So James Bond, 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:16.160 what does he do when he walks up to a 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:20.600 gambling table? What happens every time he walks up, lights 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.160 a cigarette, makes some dirty word play with a female 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.600 gambler or something like that, and then he gets a 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.399 black check hand. What happens, Well, he tends to win. 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:33.880 He wins every time. He always wins. When James Bond 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.959 never loses, unless it's like a specific scene where gambling 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.120 is crucial to the plot and he must lose, like 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:42.920 in Casino Royality. Yeah, like, I can't even I think 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.040 I can't remember if he won or lost in gold Finger. 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.520 But there's a scene in gold Finger where, uh, gold 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.800 Finger himself, you know, the villain of the piece, like 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.880 cheats at cards. I think by by having somebody in 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.960 in one of the high rises. Oh yeah, here's thinking 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.920 James Bond isn't playing he gold Fingers cheating somebody else? Okay, 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.400 but does he then play Goldfinger and win? It sounds 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:07.800 like the kind of thing Bond would do. I don't 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:09.440 think he ever played. He plays him, he plays him 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.920 in golf and then and then they both cheat. Anyway, 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.239 getting past this, okay, Yeah, but so he always wins. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.560 He all, he goes up, he hits twenty one right 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:21.679 on the first throw every time first throwers what you 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.720 call it the first hand. Um, And so my question 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.920 is do you believe that there are people like that? 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:34.040 Obviously there is luck in the sense that there are 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.240 differential outcomes. You can have a lucky thing happen to you, 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.280 you can have an unlucky thing happened to you. But 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:43.560 do you believe there are people who are consistently lucky? Well, 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.200 I'm sure plenty of our listeners have played the various 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.000 role playing games, you know, video games as well as 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:51.960 pin and paper games, and if you have, you've probably 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.200 encountered characters or character management systems where there's an actual 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.600 numerical luck rating for the character. Right, so you can 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:02.760 like eight yourself higher on luck. Yeah, so you know, well, 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:04.919 this character and then their strengthened in that grave. Their 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:07.839 dexterity is a little lacking, but their luck skill is amazing. 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.120 That's not a skill well I know, or an attributed 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.240 ll but but yeah, if you play enough role playing games, 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:16.359 that makes you think, yeah, I wonder what my my 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.639 my luck rating is? Am I on a nine or 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:23.280 a ten. Um. So is it like that in real life? Well, 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:27.480 I think obviously the answer is no. Um. Though actually 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:28.880 I want to go back on what I said a 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.280 second ago, because I said, that's not a skill. It 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.200 may be true in the sense that some things that 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:38.520 look like luck are in fact skills, But personally I 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.200 don't don't believe in this karmic version of luck. I 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.480 would assume Robert, you probably don't either, I know, not 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.000 not per se not not scientifically speaking, not in terms 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.200 of like you having some kind of store of spiritual 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.640 capital holding sway over future outcomes, right. I mean, if 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.320 I was to adjust my the lenses through which view 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.800 reality and uh and choose to load up more mystical 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.080 religious views of the world, I might engage in this 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.240 into a certain amount of magical thinking. Some folks are 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.840 are lucky that some folks are, I don't know, guiding 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:18.480 themselves to the multiverse of possibilities along like the most 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:22.360 victorious line possible. But from a strictly like real world 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:27.440 scientific pragmatic point of view, no, absolutely not, however, though 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:29.440 I mean, I think we can both agree that even 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.960 in the sense of a real world scientific pragmatic point 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.560 of view, there are some people who do seem to 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:39.520 be more consistently lucky than others, And I think this 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:44.640 is because random events are it's or it's not because 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.599 of random events being brought to heal by luck magic. 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.400 It's because people are able to influence events in ways 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.120 that are not in fact random, just look random from 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:58.960 the outside. So, for example, a person who's really confident 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:03.839 and positive might not actually have more good outcomes on 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.880 average than somebody else. But when you think of that person, 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.159 when you think of your friend who's really confident and positive, 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.160 you're more likely to count the hits and discard the misses. 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:18.080 You know, this selection bias thing. Good outcomes seem in 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.760 character for that person. They sort of get added to 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:23.599 the character sheet. You're like, yeah, that's that's them. Well, 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:27.279 you know, bad outcomes you just ignore. That's like that's noise. Yeah, 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.880 I mean James Bond is a classic example. We think 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.600 about James Bond to you know, of course, the fictional 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.839 character spread out across various movies and books, and we think, oh, 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:38.039 he wins all the time, he always gets the girl. 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.119 But there's a scene in What's the George lasonby movie 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.919 um on Our Majesty's Secret Service. Yea, his wife is 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:50.320 murdered by by Telexavalis's Blowfield's Man. You know, just spoilers 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:55.120 well killed and spoiler for you know, arguably one of 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:59.240 the lesser James Bond films. Oh no, it's some people's favorite. Uh. 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:02.080 I enjoyed it. But but yeah, like there's a super 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.000 traumatic moment like who would want? I wouldn't want? I 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.000 would I would not want all of the you know, 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.479 alleged benefits of Bond's life if I also meant I 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:13.200 had to experience like that kind of a low. So 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.760 even with James Bond, we're forgetting all the torture scenes 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:20.720 and the injuries and the dead wife, and we're focusing 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.440 on the stuff that we are in via stuff. Sure, okay, 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.960 so that's just like influencing people's perceptions of you. But 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.640 what what if you are actually you actually have more 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.560 good outcomes than average. I think in in cases like this, 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.000 there are a lot of things that we think of 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:41.120 as luck that are in fact skill. One example would 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.600 be some forms of gambling. Now it's true that there's 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.240 no skill involved in getting lucky cards at blackjack, but 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.320 there could be skill involved in other aspects of gambling, 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.320 like in poker, knowing how and when to bet so 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.400 as to manipulate your opponents. Uh, you can turn even 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.560 a bad hand into a winning hand in poker. In 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.360 black jack, you you know you can't control what cards 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:04.599 you get, but if you can count cards, if you 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.240 know the odds on any given play, if you know 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.000 you know, okay, here are the cards I have, and 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.120 here's what the dealer is showing. I know the odds 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:14.360 of what I should bet. You can sort of start 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:16.760 to leverage an advantage. In black check. I think you 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:21.720 still probably can't get better than but but there is 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.360 some skill involved there. And don't count out just flat 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.440 out cheating. Oh of course, I mean the most important 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.040 skill in peopling. It's the skill that the house has 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:35.120 leveraged against you. With your consent, you agree to a 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:38.200 game that they openly acknowledge they have rigged. This is 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.840 true and nice call back to our slot Machines episode 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:44.240 that we recently republished. Right. Uh. And another way to 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:48.640 think about this, Uh, this concept of skill versus luck 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:53.800 is in the realm of guessing. I think guessing is 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.720 a really interesting phenomenon for human beings because we use 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.400 this word a lot of different ways. Some times we 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.760 use it to mean, uh, you know, just going with 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.600 a gut feeling when you have no information. Sometimes we 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:08.640 use it to mean coming up with an answer on 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.840 very limited or little information. But but generally it means 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.640 like trying to produce a piece of information without a 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.280 strong determinative process to get you there. Well, I think 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.560 in a lot of cases it's it's the kind of 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.240 it's kind of artificial scenario that would not exist out 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.720 of the human realm, such as I think one of 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.800 the classic examples would be a multiple choice test. Then 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.200 maybe you didn't study for all that well, right, and 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:36.000 so you have suddenly are forced to answer a question 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:38.360 that you just have no idea about. Maybe you can 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.640 eliminate one possible answer. If you're still left with three 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.520 likely answers, and you just have to go with your guy, 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:47.480 you just gotta guess. You gotta get a wild shot 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.480 in the dark. Yeah. And and from this concept we 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:52.640 we have this concept of the lucky guess. Of course, 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.880 people who are lucky guessers who seem to have a 0:08:56.000 --> 0:09:00.960 much better than average hit ratio at tossing out a 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:04.400 correct or nearly correct answer to a question even when 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.920 you've got essentially no knowledge or very little information to 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.160 work with. And that's what I want to talk about today, 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.320 about this, this process of guessing, and about how in 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:19.040 many cases things which appear to be random lucky guesses 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.240 are not in fact random. There's a skill, you know, 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.600 there's a skill and art and a science to many 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.800 different kinds of guessing and smart guessing. Uh. And there 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.000 are even a few techniques that you can harness for 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.679 yourself to get a little bit better at guessing than 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.040 you might be if you're just always going with your gut. 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.000 So one thing I wanted to do. I don't know 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.280 how many good answers we can really come up with here, 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:44.959 but I was wondered, like, who are some people who 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.760 are some famous, really good guessers. I've got one answer, 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:52.160 but other than that, I don't know. You know people 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.440 like this personally, right, You've got friends who you know 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:58.240 are better guessers than others. But in terms of finding 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:02.240 like historic moments and saying like legends of guessing. I 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:04.839 did some poking around, and there aren't a lot of 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:09.920 great options, like you know, military history, etcetera. There aren't 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:13.800 situations where someone just takes a wild guess and it 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:18.560 pays off and it becomes the stuff of just absolute legends. Yeah, 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:21.240 one of the few examples I could come across. And again, 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:23.959 this is not a high stake situation. I mean, it 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:26.720 kind of is for one specific person, but it's not 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.320 a warfare scenario, and it's taking place within a very 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:34.760 artificial human environment, not the multiple choice quiz but the 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:40.400 game show. All right, So Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune, 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.320 this was This occurred on a two thousand fourteen episode. 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.480 So you had this contestant by the name of Emil 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:51.800 de Leon and he had If you're familiar with Wheel 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:53.400 of Fortune, it's where you have you know, those blank 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:57.160 uh blank places where the letters go on the It's 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.920 like a combination of Roulette and scrabble. Yeah, so it's 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:04.080 it's it's a very specific game. It's you know, if 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:06.760 you're like me, you at least grew up watching your 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.200 grandparents watch it, and a lot of people watch it regularly. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.720 It's a it has a certain system in play, and 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:14.960 it's kind of neat to to sit there and play 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:16.760 along at home, you know what. It's actually more like, 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.000 I don't know why we're explaining this. Everybody's seeing wheels 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.640 watch but no, I mean if you actually haven't. It's 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.880 like the game Hangman, where you guess letters. You have 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:27.800 a set number of spaces. Uh you know they're like 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:30.200 eight maybe you know there are eight letters in this 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.240 word and you're trying to guess letters and if you 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.440 get one right, it gets filled in there you go, Yeah, 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:40.160 it's it's Hangman, with with with with with monetary rewards 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.720 and Pat say Jack, okay, okay, So uh, the leon 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.640 is playing all right, and there's like a there's a 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.480 three word problem up on the board and the only 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:53.160 letter up there is in, so that the it's in 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:58.000 blank blank space blank blank blank blank space blank blank 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:00.959 blank blank blank. Right, that's what it is. That's it. 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.000 That's always got to go on. What would you guess? 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.000 I don't know, see unlikely leon. I haven't put a lot. 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.199 I haven't put a lot of thought into the system 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:12.840 of it. Like here's a guy who watched it pretty 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:14.719 religiously and then he was gonna, you know, he got 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:16.600 to go on the show. So I think he was 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:17.959 he was very much in the mind to try and 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:19.439 game the system. I look, if I were to look 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:21.400 at those blank spaces. I don't know what I guess, 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:29.120 uh new rats lover. That doesn't work now, I give up. Well, 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.160 but you got the new, all right, so you figured 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:33.600 that part out. And indeed he also guessed the new, 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.520 but he also went all the way and guessed new 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:43.520 baby Buggy and one sixty three thousand. Yeah, cheating must 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.760 have been cheating. Well, some people leveled that charge and 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.000 he uh, he ended up explaining himself because this was 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.360 apparently a big deal, like even Pat say Jack said 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.880 this was the craziest guests ever in his history of 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:01.079 hosting the show and when they When Leon Julianne was interviewed, 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.240 he said that, well, first of all, he'd been watching 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.560 the show for some time. He knew the game inside out, 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.199 and he knew that knew had to be the first 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.600 word like that was even we got that. You know 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:13.760 that if it's in blank blank? How are many? How? 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:16.640 What what are some more common words that come to mind? 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:23.440 Not many? Maybe not not not now, but he he, 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.040 I guess watched it enough to know that a lot 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.559 that's probably gonna be new. And then he said that 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:30.680 since he was studying for nursing exams, he had babies 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:33.200 on the brain, so he just kind of it just 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.440 happened to be that that, like baby is the perfect 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.360 four letter word. I don't is new baby buggy like 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:44.480 a like a common phrase I don't not in in 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.840 my experience, So that's like an expression that I'm not 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.120 familiar with. I mean, I guess it's like a new baby. 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:55.520 Is it like a some sort of a rhyming nursery 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:57.880 rhyme kind of a thing or tongue twister? I guess 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.080 is a tongue twister. Maybe that's the origin there, but 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:04.440 uh yeah, it just seems kind of crazy that that 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:09.400 he just instantly produces the answer to this seemingly out 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.680 of nowhere. Uh As it turns out it's not quite 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.880 out of nowhere. He at least had a very educated 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:20.200 guests on that first word, and then his prior experience 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:24.160 just happened to ease him into those last two words. Okay, 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.240 Well that that might you might actually just call that 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:29.680 luck in some ways, like it might know the game 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.200 well enough to see new there. But I mean, those 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:38.040 other words could have been anything, right, but his experience 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.120 prepared him to be lucky in a way that other 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.720 people would not have been lucky, like if they had 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.640 not a watch the show a bunch of times, which 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:48.320 I don't know if anybody ever just shows up on 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.240 Will of Fortune, they've basically never seen the show. They 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:55.280 do this new baby buggy puzzle every other week. Yeah, 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:57.880 so you know, I I think you can you can 0:14:57.880 --> 0:14:59.800 make the argument either way. But yeah, I would say 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.960 that his his experiences put him in just the right 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:07.560 position to to to be a little quote unquote luckier 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.960 than other people. Okay, well, I mean, so whatever is 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:14.960 happening in that scenario, we do know that, at least 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:17.480 in much the same way, somebody who appears to be 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.960 a consistently lucky gambler might just be a skilled gambler 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:26.360 counting cards, calculating odds, manipulating opponents. Um. When it comes 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:31.160 to numerical values, uh, somebody who appears to be a 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:35.320 lucky guess or with numbers is more likely to be 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:39.880 a skillful guesser figuring out how to leverage existing knowledge 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:42.520 that you wouldn't even thought of to take into account 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:47.520 into a kind of ballpark accurate guess. And one person 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:52.240 who's famous for this is the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.880 So Fermi lived from nineteen o one to nineteen fifty four. UM. 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.880 He grew up in Italy. After the passage of anti 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:04.760 Semitic restrictions and fascist Italy in ninety eight, for Me 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.280 and his family fled to the United States, where he 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:11.480 ended up working on the Manhattan Project and in his 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.280 role for Me, was present for the first test of 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:20.400 the atomic bomb on July sixteenth, ninety the Trinity Test. 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.520 You've heard about this, and at the time, this was 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:27.360 new territory. Nobody had ever tested a nuclear weapon before, 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.160 you know, a fission weapon with this big yield. They 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:32.960 didn't know exactly what was going to happen. You know, 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.960 the physicists had their calculations. Uh, they were fairly confident 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.200 that the device would explode. It was this plutonium implosion 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.160 bomb that they called the Gadget, and they thought it 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.960 would generate a large explosion, but the outcome was all 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:49.080 theoretical at that point. They weren't sure what the level 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:52.880 of energy output would be. Yeah, I remember reading that 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.400 like on the extreme ends of the spectrum, that where 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:58.200 there was the possibility that it could be a dud 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:00.280 or it could catch the air on fire. About that 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:02.440 that sort of thing. Yeah, and so they didn't know. 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:07.560 So Enrico Fermi that this great physicist who's famous at 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.760 good guesses he's there to watch the test. So picture 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.480 him there. Uh, he's there with his colleagues, and he's 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.760 at a camp about ten miles away from ground zero, 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.200 ten miles from where the bomb goes off. Jay Robert 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:24.640 Oppenheimer's there like scribbling notes into a Hindu epic. I'm sure, 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.600 I'm sure. Yes. So they're behind some shielding for good reasons. Uh. 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:33.080 And Fermi watches the blast through a board that's got 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:37.119 a viewing window made of welding glass. And there's a 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.000 two thousand five issue of the Nuclear Weapons Journal that 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.320 includes an article with some great quotes from Fermi and 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.919 others who were eyewitnesses to this to the event, and 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.520 Fermi wrote, So he's there, he's looking through the welding glass. Um, 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.680 and uh that he very first saw quote a very 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.200 intense flash of light that was brighter than full daylight, 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:01.399 and then a conglomeration of flame that rose into the sky, 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.880 and a huge pillar of smoke with an expanded head, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.840 like a gigantic mushroom. Here's where we get our mushroom 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:13.040 cloud um and that rose rapidly into the clouds. Now, 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.680 when there's an explosion and you're pretty far away, there's 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.879 a time gap between when you see the flash and 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.960 when you feel the blast. Right could because why light 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:25.720 travels faster than sound. It's the same thing that happens 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:29.000 between lightning and thunder. You see the light and then 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:31.560 you hear the sound of the thunder. Uh So it 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.400 was about forty seconds after the visible explosion that the 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:39.199 air blast actually hit the observation camp. And when the 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.000 air blast arrived, Fermy did something really weird. He held 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.480 up a handful of scraps of paper about six ft 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:50.040 off the ground, and he dropped them and he let 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:52.600 them flutter away in the force of the air blast, 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.800 and then after seeing where they fell, he released some more, 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:02.280 just in regular air, no blast. And then after he 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.080 looked at how far they went, I think it was 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.920 like two point five meters or something, he quickly guessed 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:11.040 that the detonation had been about ten kilo tons worth 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.120 of explosion, meaning it released the same energy as ten 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.640 thousand tons of t n T. Now, when the actual 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:20.760 readings came in, it was about twenty kill a tons, 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.840 about twice Fermi's estimate. So he wasn't exactly right, but 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.199 this is still a remarkably good guess for having no 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.520 direct readings to work with. I mean, after all, you 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:33.920 think about it, can you look at an explosion ten 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:36.040 miles away and say how many tons of T n 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.959 T you think it's equivalent to know? I wouldn't even 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:42.760 know how to. I wouldn't know what order of magnitude 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:47.760 no tons to kill a tons to mega tons um. 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.000 So with just some scraps of paper watching how far 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:53.080 they blew in the wind, FIRMI was able to do 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.800 some quick calculations in his head and correctly guess within 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:01.000 the true order of magnitude. So how did he do it? Well, 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:02.919 we'll come back to that in a bit when we 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:06.679 get into the Fermi estimation method. Now, before we move on, 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:09.800 and I think this is also of interest that the U. 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:12.720 S Army as well as other U S Armed forces, 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:17.200 have used the acronym SWAG before, which stands for a 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:21.920 scientific wild ass. Guests, now, you're not you're not swearing 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:25.159 on the podcast? Now? No, no, no, not necessarily. I 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.240 guess it depends on your your viewpoint here, But uh, 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.960 this was a now Robert, Uh, you know what we're 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.080 talking about here. Of course, as a guestimate, a guest 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:38.119 made by an expert or institution with a certain amount 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.520 of expertise in a given topic. Um, you know, it's 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:45.560 still a guests but but hopefully you're leveraging your best 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:48.880 information and making that guess. It's I think it's generally 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.880 considered a guest that comes from somebody who should know 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.919 what they're talking about, even if they don't have direct 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.919 information to work with. So you know, you might be 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:02.280 in a situation where, uh uh, somebody has some weird 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:07.600 array of symptoms and they don't really correspond to any 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.120 known medical condition, and maybe you don't have any instruments. 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.160 You can't take their temperature, you can't do any lab 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:15.680 work or whatever. But you could still have a doctor 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.399 look at them and guess what's wrong with them, or 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.600 just have a I don't know, a football player look 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.440 at them and guess what's wrong with them. Even though 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.399 the doctor doesn't have a lot of his or her 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:31.840 tools at their disposal. Um, they still might just have 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.440 some intuitions based on their experience. Right right now, now, 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:37.840 you have to say it might be a football related injury. 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.720 In which case the football player might have insight that 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:42.880 someone else might not have, so in the in their 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.160 case it might be a swag if you will. Now, 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.560 I do want to point out that the wild ass 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:53.880 part of this is technically not um me being obscene, 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.480 because as William Saffire points out has pointed out before, 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:01.359 I believe in the New York Times, uh he said 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.960 that the wild ass is not a mirror of vulgarism, 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.160 as it can be found five times in the King 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:12.840 James Bible, most notably job behold as wild asses in 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:16.800 the desert go, they fourth to do their work. So 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:22.120