Looking under the lamppost

Prints

It's an old economists' joke. A person out walking at night comes across a man scrabbling on the floor under a lamppost. The man on the floor says he lost his keys. When asked when he dropped them, he replies, "Oh, I dropped them over there, but the light's better here."

The joke is also known as the streetlight effect or the drunkard's search. It's an apt metaphor for how, if we're really honest with ourselves, sometimes we find ourselves working, or searching, or staying in the places where we find it easier rather than the places where we know we ought to be.

Also see: the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Published 4 Apr 2021

A weekly sketch by email

Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

Sketchplanations in a book! I think you'll love Big Ideas Little Pictures

Prefer to listen?
Try the podcast

Like Sketchplanations?
Support me on Patreon

Keep exploring

The Feynman Learning Technique

Buoyancy

Survivorship bias

The Boaty McBoatface effect

What is the Fun scale explained showing Type 1 fun as skiing, Type 2 fun as mountaineering and Type 3 fun as surviving a bear encounter (the best story)

The fun scale: understanding the types of fun

Pillars of hope

Richard Feynman was one of the great scientists of the 20th century, making significant contributions to physics and other related fields. Part of what made him stand out was his gift for teaching. He had a remarkable knack for explaining some of the most complex things in ways anyone could understand. He was also a model of the desire to deeply understand how things worked, often deriving a result in several ways to be more confident he was right. The Feynman learning technique is typical of how he approached understanding something deeply and helps explain some of his teaching skills. Spend time writing about a topic as if explaining it to someone. Then practice explaining it, speaking and drawing as if you were a teacher at the front of the class. You may figure out some other aspect wasn't as clear as you thought and need to look into something. Refine any gaps you reveal until you can share the topic fluently and clearly. Then, simplify your language by replacing complex words and ideas with simpler ones and considering analogies to help people relate. Now, you can explain it because you deeply understand it, too. "You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird." — Feynman's father, from Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman? Learn more: I loved the Fun to Imagine interviews to experience some of Feynman's joy and skill for teaching. The sketch was inspired by this excellent animated video of the Feynman Learning Technique. Though he was primarily a theoretical physicist, Feynman also made lasting contributions to the field of computation. If you want to get into those, you might enjoy the Feynman Lectures on Computation from the last course he taught at Caltech, edited, no less, by my Dad.…Richard Feynman was one of the great scientists of the 20th century, making significant contributions to physics and other related fields. Part of what made him stand out was his gift for teaching. He had a remarkable knack for explaining some of the most complex things in ways anyone could understand. He was also a model of the desire to deeply understand how things worked, often deriving a result in several ways to be more confident he was right. The Feynman learning technique is typical of how he approached understanding something deeply and helps explain some of his teaching skills. Spend time writing about a topic as if explaining it to someone. Then practice explaining it, speaking and drawing as if you were a teacher at the front of the class. You may figure out some other aspect wasn't as clear as you thought and need to look into something. Refine any gaps you reveal until you can share the topic fluently and clearly. Then, simplify your language by replacing complex words and ideas with simpler ones and considering analogies to help people relate. Now, you can explain it because you deeply understand it, too. "You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird." — Feynman's father, from Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman? Learn more: I loved the Fun to Imagine interviews to experience some of Feynman's joy and skill for teaching. The sketch was inspired by this excellent animated video of the Feynman Learning Technique. Though he was primarily a theoretical physicist, Feynman also made lasting contributions to the field of computation. If you want to get into those, you might enjoy the Feynman Lectures on Computation from the last course he taught at Caltech, edited, no less, by my Dad.

Newer

RRandom

Older