Waiting by
the Stump
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The full narration of the video.
One rabbit hit one tree, and he dropped his hoe for good. That's a farmer from the state of Song, in a book written over two thousand years ago. A rabbit dashed across his field, ran headfirst into a tree stump, and broke its neck.
He got a free rabbit. So he quit farming and sat by the stump, waiting for the next one. No rabbit ever came, and the whole state laughed at him. Pigeons do the same silly thing.
A psychologist put eight pigeons into eight boxes. No matter what they did, every fifteen seconds, a bit of food dropped in. A few days later, six of them had each invented a strange little routine.
One spun in circles, one poked its head into a corner, one kept tossing its head. When the food fell, it happened to be spinning, so its brain wrote it down: spin, get food. So it spun more, the food came again, and now it really believed.
In fact the food came on a timer. Spinning had nothing to do with it. Your brain keeps the same kind of notebook, every minute of the day. When something good happens, it flips back right away: What was I just doing? Where was I?
Then it writes: do that again. And this notebook has a habit: the bigger the surprise, the bigger the handwriting. Dinner on time every day barely gets a line. A free rabbit gets carved in.
Its real name is reinforcement: when something good follows an action, you want to repeat it. The size of the writing comes from a brain signal called dopamine. A surprise sends it soaring; something you expected barely moves it. And the hardest note to erase: the one that only works now and then.
If something always works, you notice the first time it fails. If it works one time in ten, you can miss ten times and still think the next one's it. That's the note that keeps people buying blind boxes. This notebook was built to keep animals alive.
In the wild, where you found fruit once, there's usually more a few days later. The animals that remembered didn't go hungry. It just can't tell a pattern from a fluke. That rabbit was a fluke.
Han Fei told the story to mock people who cling to old methods: working once doesn't mean it always works. Next time luck lands on you, ask first: did I do something right, or did it just run into me? Do you have something you wear or carry that makes you feel today will go well?
Luck came once.
Why do we expect it again?
Over two thousand years ago, the Chinese philosopher Han Fei told a story about a farmer from the state of Song. A rabbit dashed across his field, ran headfirst into a tree stump, and broke its neck.
He got a free rabbit. So he quit farming and sat by the stump every day, waiting for the next one. No rabbit ever came, and the whole state laughed at him.
Sounds silly. But pigeons do the same thing, and so do we, every day.
Pigeons wait
by the stump too
In 1948, psychologist B. F. Skinner put eight pigeons into eight boxes. No matter what they did, every fifteen seconds a bit of food dropped in.
A few days later, six of the eight had each invented a strange routine: one spun in circles, one poked its head into a corner, one kept tossing its head.
In fact the food came on a timer. Spinning had nothing to do with it.
Your brain
keeps a notebook
Your brain keeps the same kind of notebook, every minute of the day. When something good happens, it flips back right away: What was I just doing? Where was I? Then it writes: do that again.
This notebook has a habit: the bigger the surprise, the bigger the handwriting. Dinner on time every day barely gets a line. A free rabbit gets carved in.
ReinforcementThe notebook's real name. When something good follows an action, you want to repeat it.
DopamineThe brain signal that sets the size of the writing. A surprise sends it soaring; something you expected barely moves it.
The hardest note
to erase
Put simply: the note that only works now and then is the hardest to erase. It's what keeps people buying blind boxes.
The notebook
was built to keep us alive
In the wild, where you found fruit once, there's usually more a few days later. The animals that remembered didn't go hungry. The notebook isn't wrong. It just can't tell these apart:
That rabbit was a fluke.
What Han Fei
really meant
The original goes on: "Those who want to govern today's people with the rules of ancient kings are all waiting by the stump." Han Fei was mocking people who cling to old methods.
Working once doesn't mean it always works.
Do you have something you wear or carry that makes you feel today will go well?
Quick check
Why is something that works one time in ten the hardest to quit?
An always-works note is crossed out after one miss; a now-and-then note expects misses, so it never gets erased.
