by Jonah Lehrer
Why don’t spoilers ruin the story? According to Christenfeld, it’s because the splendor of the imaginary world matters more than the uncertainty of the ending: “When you read or watch a fiction, you willfully enter into it. You’re suspending your disbelief, choosing to get emotionally invested in this place that doesn’t exist and might not even be possible. My argument is that if you can trick yourself into believing in aliens or dragons or whatever, then you can also suspend knowledge of what happens next.” Put another way, we’re so good at slipping into fictional universes that spoilers are mostly irrelevant. The imagination is more powerful than we think.
This still doesn’t explain why spoilers can make certain stories more enjoyable. One hypothesis is that spoilers draw our attention to the lasting mysteries of the art, much like Coppola withholding subtitles so we notice the subtleties of Pacino’s performance. Or look at Harry Potter: once we know what happens to Snape, we’re free to appreciate his complex motivations. The flat nemesis becomes a rounded character. “Spoilers make it better because they free you to notice more of everything else, since you’re not just focused on what’s going to happen next,” Christenfeld says. “And that everything else”—those insoluble elements that draw us into the fictional world—“are a big source of what we enjoy.”VII We think spoilers reduce the mystery. But when it comes to great art, they actually increase it.
Plot is a finite game—every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Yet, even within this limited structure, some writers find a way to encompass the infinite. They do this by inventing questions that never get answered, no matter how many times we reread the text or rewatch the movie. “I don’t go back to my favorite films because I forgot the story,” Jason Hallock says. “I go back to them because there’s something there that I still don’t get. There’s a sense with them that I’m always missing something, that there’s more going on than I can ever see.”
“The Figure in the Carpet”
In 1896, Henry James published a short story called “The Figure in the Carpet.”11 At first read, the story is a simple questing tale: the unnamed narrator is determined to divine the true meaning of the novelist Hugh Vereker’s work, a hidden theme the writer compares to “a complex figure in a Persian carpet.” Despite spending a “maddening month” searching for this secret, the narrator discovers nothing. Then tragedy strikes: Vereker dies, taking the secret with him to the grave. The narrator’s quest ends in failure. The figure in the carpet is never found.
James almost certainly intended the story as a criticism of those searching for concealed themes in his own art. The ambitious narrator wants to solve Vereker’s fiction, but the secret is there is no secret. He didn’t fail because he couldn’t find the key. He failed because there was nothing to find. Literature is an infinite game.
The failure to appreciate mystery is a common error, and not just for literary critics. Gregory Treverton, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, makes an important distinction between puzzles and mysteries.12 The Cold War, he said, was defined by its puzzles: American intelligence agencies were seeking answers to solvable questions: How many nuclear warheads did the Soviets have? Where were the missiles located? How far could they travel? Such puzzles, he says, are about missing information. The answer is out there—it just needs to be located.
But not every intelligence question has a settled answer. Take the threat of terrorism. As Treverton writes, “Terrorists shape themselves to our vulnerabilities: the threat they pose depends on us.”13 The attackers on September 11 were not trained pilots or aviation experts—they simply noticed a weakness in our airport screening procedures. Treverton’s point is that trying to identify a terrorist attack is very different from counting Soviet missiles, since the answer depends on “the future interaction of many factors, known and unknown.” The lack of a clear answer means that it’s not a puzzle—it’s a mystery. It’s not about finding the missing piece of information, but about dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity.VIII When it comes to mysteries, Treverton notes, “the analysis begins where the evidence ends.”14
Unfortunately, intelligence agencies often attempt to turn mysteries into puzzles. Like Henry James’s narrator, they’re playing an infinite game, but they keep trying to find definitive solutions. Treverton cites the hunt for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as an example. The intelligence agencies were searching for hidden caches—that’s the puzzle approach—when they should have been trying to grapple with Saddam’s complicated psychology. (Because he was so scared of insurrection and other “local threats,” Saddam bragged about weapons he didn’t have.) As a result, they imposed an overconfident conclusion onto some fuzzy satellite evidence. Convinced they’d glimpsed Saddam’s chemical weapons tankers, they were actually looking at fire trucks.15
How do we avoid these mistakes? Philip Tetlock and Barbara Mellers, psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, have shown that it’s possible to dramatically improve our predictions of the future. The scientists began by identifying a promising set of amateur forecasters, tasked with predicting the outcome of various events. These people came from all walks of life. There was a computer science teacher and a bureaucrat with the Department of Agriculture, a mathematics professor and a struggling filmmaker. What made these people so promising was their “active open-mindedness.” As Tetlock puts it, they treated their “beliefs as hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be protected.”16
After picking those promising amateurs, Tetlock and Mellers asked them to make forecasts about various world events, from the conflict in Syria to the likelihood of a trade war with China. The scientists gave the volunteers extensive feedback about their predictions, along with a quick introduction to the most common cognitive errors. After three years, this simple training system generated some incredible results. In particular, it has led to the emergence of what Tetlock calls “super-forecasters,” amateurs who are able to consistently beat experts and algorithms. In many instances, the victories were resounding, with the super-forecasters proving to be 35 to 65 percent more accurate than their competitors. They even beat intelligence analysts at the CIA with access to classified information.17
What accounts for the success of these super-forecasters? Tetlock and Mellers emphasize their humility. They know what they don’t know. They are constantly revising their beliefs, updating their opinions. When discussing their predictions with others, they disagree gently, aware that the future is open to endless interpretation. Because they treat prediction like an infinite game, and not like a finite puzzle, they end up making far more accurate forecasts.
James Carse appreciates the practical benefits of infinite games. In conversation, he seems tickled that his little treatise has gained a second life, cited by cognitive psychologists, business consultants, and the progressive Silicon Valley set. “I do think there’s an increasing recognition that treating the world like a finite game can come with negatives,” he says. “Finite games tend to induce a style of thinking that sees the world in very black-and-white terms. They create the kind of status competitions that make a lot of us miserable.”IX If our sense of worth comes from finite games, Carse says, then we’re setting ourselves up for a lifetime of disappointment: “You’re never going to be rich enough, never going to win enough.”
This is why we need infinite games and their infinite mysteries. Because there are no winners and losers, just players, infinite games show us how to live within the moment, embracing experience as an end unto itself. It’s not about defeating anyone or solving anything—it’s about admiring the layers and enjoying the unknown. It’s about playing the game with other people. “Think of that sandlot baseball,” Carse says. “We weren’t concerned with the score. Even at our age we realized that playing was the fun part. Not winning. Just the playing.”X
That’s also the lesson of unspoilable texts, whether it’s the Talmud or Hamlet or the bounteous world of Harry Potter. We will not decipher these writin
gs—there is no figure to be found—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t full of wisdom, or that we can’t learn from their impenetrable mysteries. “The real value in teaching these old books is to show students how to confront the unknown,” Carse says. “I never cared if my students remembered what I taught. I cared about how they approached the subject. Did they accept the mystery? Did they have a sense of modesty? The best teaching is really teaching students how to live with ignorance.”
Awe Is the Ubermystery
Why do infinite games exist? One answer is that they’re useful. They keep us humble. They help us cope with uncertainty. They teach us how to think more effectively. But then the same could be said of statistics, and our cultural canon isn’t full of statistical manuals.
The real reason infinite games have been celebrated for thousands of years is because of how they make us feel. Their cognitive benefits are a side effect. It’s our emotions that keep us playing these games, even if we never find a way to win.
So what feelings do infinite games inspire? The most important one is awe. Much of the scientific research on awe has been led by psychologist Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley. As Keltner notes, awe can be triggered in countless conditions. “If I think about my own experience of awe, I think about Chichen Itza, down in the Mayan culture, or Sainte-Chapelle in Paris,” he says. “I think about the leek soup I had at Chez Panisse that one time.”18
These different sources might seem as if they have nothing in common. But Keltner says they actually share two fundamental properties: “The first property of awe is that it feels vast. It has vastness built into it.” Think of a layered text, or the view of Yosemite Valley, or a soup with an uncommon depth of flavor: there is a sense of infinity, a feeling that we will never know it all.
The second property, Keltner says, is that the source “transcends our understanding of the world.” It’s confusing and confounding, requiring a process that psychologists refer to as “accommodation,” as we adjust our old ideas and expectations to the awesome experience. We don’t know how to read this poem. We can’t begin to explain this magic trick. We have no idea how this painting was made or this church was built, or why we’re crying as we reread Harry Potter for the third time. The mystery is manifest.
In ordinary life, such conditions can make us uncomfortable, even scared. What is that unknowable thing? And why is it so vast? Every other animal is wired to run away in these situations, to flee from the surfeit of ambiguity and prediction errors. But humans are capable of experiencing a different feeling: given the right context, and the right content, we can turn our fear into wonder. The trembling becomes goose bumps. The dread is transformed into awe.19
In recent years, Keltner and colleagues have documented the psychological benefits of awe experiences. “The first thing you find is that awe really transforms your mind, and how you look at your social world,” Keltner said in a recent lecture. “We have big parts of the frontal lobes that help us think about the interests of other people… What we’re finding is that brief doses of awe move us from a model of self-interest to being more engaged with the interests of others.”
You can track this shift in the brain. One fascinating piece of evidence involves the default mode network, a circuit of brain areas that’s associated with self-representation and personal goals. As Keltner wrote in an email, the default mode network “is engaged by processing information from an egocentric point of view. It is the neural substrate of your default self.”
According to research by Michio Nomura and colleagues, awe hushes this egocentric network.20XI When the scientists showed people videos of awe-inspiring natural sights, they found a significant reduction in activity in areas associated with the default mode. But the brain wasn’t going silent. Although the default mode was less active, the scientists observed a surge of activity in the cingulate cortex, an area associated with the processing of rewards. “What this means,” Kelter says, “is that our pure experiences of awe… feel rewarding, good, and delightful.” The ego fades away, replaced by a sprawling sense of wonder.
The dissolution of the ego also changes our behavior. In one experiment, Keltner and colleagues divided students into two groups. Some students were asked to look up at a grove of towering eucalyptus trees for one minute. “When you gaze up at these trees, with their peeling bark and surrounding nimbus of grayish green light, goosebumps may ripple down your neck, a sure sign of awe,” Keltner writes. Other students were asked to look in the opposite direction, at the facade of a science building. Then, all of the students encountered a stranger who fell to the ground, dropping his pens in the dirt. The people who were awed by the trees were more likely to help.
Along with Craig Anderson, Keltner has begun studying the chemical sources of the awe experience.21 The scientists have found that people with a genetic mutation affecting the D4 type of dopamine receptor are significantly more likely to report awe after watching a short film about the universe. (The mutation is believed to make dopamine more potent.) They’re also more likely to feel awe while white-water rafting, and during the course of a normal week. This builds on previous research linking the D4 mutation to exploratory behavior, with the mutation appearing more frequently in human populations that migrated farther in the distant past.22 One possibility is that humans evolved the capacity for awe so that we could venture into the vast unknown. Instead of being scared by new places, we are moved by their mystery. The horizon beckons.
Most of us aren’t explorers. We live in cities and suburbs, far removed from astonishing natural scenes. This means that the most likely place we experience awe is our own creations. By engaging with material we can’t understand—content that feels infinite and requires accommodation—art hijacks these ancient exploratory instincts. Keltner has shown, for instance, that inducing awe in the laboratory makes people far more interested in abstract paintings. They also spend longer on difficult puzzles. They are more curious about the novel and strange.
This research helps reveal the virtuous feedback loop between mysterious art and the emotion of awe. When we pay attention to content defined by its vast unknowns, we are filled with a powerful and uplifting feeling. That feeling, in turn, makes us want to keep exploring the work, which leads to even more awe.
The game goes on and on.
CHAPTER 7 THE HARKNESS METHOD
The secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “EDUCATION”
Emerson in Cabrini-Green
To get to the Noble Academy from downtown Chicago, you take one of the broad boulevards that begin at the lake, amid the fancy stores of the Gold Coast. Eventually you’ll hit Clybourn Avenue, a diagonal street that cuts across the grid like a scar. For decades, Clybourn was the northern boundary line of Cabrini-Green, a notorious public housing development that became a symbol of urban dysfunction. The red-and-white towers were patrolled by members of the Gangster Disciples, wielding automatic weapons and selling crack in the courtyards.
Those buildings are gone; the last Cabrini-Green project was demolished in 2011. The neighborhood has been replaced by the so-called “new city,” a splotchy sprawl of low-rise condos, holdout bodegas, and strip malls anchored by a Starbucks. There’s a new Target, but also plenty of shuttered factories covered in faded NO TRESPASSING signs. Empty grass fields surround a supermarket selling poke bowls and kombucha.
The Noble Academy is across the street from that supermarket, in a squat brick building that used to be the elementary school for the Cabrini-Green projects. The school has since been renovated, but original details remain, such as the bulletproof glass, heavy security doors, and black metal bars.
The academy began as an unlikely experiment. In 2007, an anonymous donor paid for a freshman from the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago to spend the s
ummer at Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite boarding school in rural New Hampshire. Exeter’s campus is one of genteel beauty. For a student visiting from inner-city Chicago, the manicured lawns and painted white window frames probably felt like a faraway foreign country.
The first summer exchange with Exeter was a disaster—the Noble student insisted on returning to Chicago after two days. Nevertheless, Ethan Shapiro, the director of the Exeter summer school, stayed in contact with leaders at the Noble Network. At the time, the Noble Network had just three campuses—it’s now seventeen high schools and one middle school, serving over twelve thousand students—but it was already recognized as a model charter program, with graduation rates and test scores that far exceeded the average at Chicago public schools. Despite the initial mishap, Exeter and Noble decided to try again. In the summer of 2008, twelve students from Noble schools visited Exeter. This time, they stayed.
Their experience had lasting consequences. When school resumed in the fall in Chicago, the Noble teachers noticed that the students who had attended Exeter had a certain swagger in the classroom. They were more likely to raise their hands; they weren’t easily intimidated by hard texts; they showed poise during group discussions.
What accounted for this newfound confidence? One possibility was the Exeter pedagogy, which is known as the Harkness method. In 1930, the philanthropist Edward Harkness gave $5.8 million to Exeter (roughly $99 million in current dollars) to transform the school’s approach to education. Although Harkness had gone to the best schools in the country, he felt his education had been a disappointment, full of tedious lessons and forgotten facts. He wanted to pioneer a better way.1