“Peanuts are legumes” said one of the guys. This was a discussion about the differences between nuts, fruits, pits, seeds, etc. “But peanuts grow under the ground as part of the root system”, I said.
I immediately thought back to a time when I was about 12 years old and had sent away for peanut seeds (raw peanuts) to grow my own. As a science experiment, of course, not a Jimmy Carter get farmer rich quick scheme. A note that this was the late 70s and our peanut farmer president spawned all sorts of interest in areas related to his personal biography.
I remember looking at the black and white line illustration of the profile of a peanut plant showing the peanuts themselves (dozens per plant) growing underground. I remember harvesting my pitiful handful of peanuts from maybe three plants that actually grew. And having to dig them out from the ground. Then washing the dirt off them before roasting.
The other two guys on the crew said no. They had done pipeline work through peanut fields and they specifically remember the peanuts hanging off the plants just like peas, beans and other legumes.
I told them of my experience. They insisted they knew what they saw.
I questioned out loud my own memory. After all, I was 12 when I personally experienced the detailed growth cycle of a peanut plant from empirical experiment. They were adults, knowing nothing of the growth cycle of peanuts but traipsing through a peanut farm at a certain time of maturity and seeing what they remember they saw.
I googled it. They did not.
The next day, I introduced the topic again with a question framing my only interest in this particular discussion of peanuts.
“What is your confidence interval for believing that peanuts grow above ground and not below?”
Are you 90% sure, 80%, 70%, what? That peanuts grow above ground and not down under the soil?
“90%”, said the most reasonable of the two guys. “90... 99%!” said the other.
99%?... really? Did you google it?
I don’t need to. I know what I saw.
The most reasonable of the two guys started googling on his iphone thingy. (I am a techno ignoramus, so I have to get on my laptop in evenings to do such self-questioning).
Peanuts grow underground.
They are not part of the root system. They grow from a shoot sort of like a rhizome and the peanut grows underground. And they are legumes.
Heads did not explode. The guys accepted the truth of subterranean peanut growth... then began to wonder how their memories were wrong. They knew what they saw. Or they know what they remember seeing. Maybe they saw eroded peanut hills with ready to harvest peanuts already exposed near the base of the plant eroding out of the soil? Probably.
The guy that was not the most reasonable of the two said, “well, it doesn’t matter”. What doesn’t matter? “Whether peanuts grow above or below ground surface.”
I bet it matters to a peanut farmer, I thought. But, I said, “I think it matters that most people go through life with a 99% confidence interval of their rightness on issues they are completely wrong about.”
Boy, does it matter.
The final lesson of this episode came when the guy that was not the most reasonable of the two said that he staves off the problem of false high confidence by questioning himself.
Seriously. He said that without any hint of irony.
I hope nobody really wonders why the world is so screwed up.
I was the one that questioned myself. The boys did not consider questioning themselves in light of my shared experience with them. I questioned myself based on THEIR shared experience with me.
All it came down to was respecting another's experience enough to consider it. In the end, we were both right and both wrong. But the truth came in the questioning, not the false confidence of self-righteousness.
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