Checking Your Facts - the Power of Pragmatic Curiosity

Checking Your Facts - The Power of Pragmatic Curiosity
 - notes by Hugh Tayler, 2024 October 24

Years ago, carpenter Bob asked me to cut him a piece of two-by-four blocking fourteen and a half inches long. I got out the saw, measured and cut the piece and handed it to Bob. He automatically took out his tape measure and checked the length of the piece.

I said, half-joking, "You don't trust me, Bob?"

And Bob looked me straight in the eye and said, "I don't trust myself."

That simple statement, reminding me to observe and check rather than trust other fallible human beings, has stayed with me for three decades. My brother Randy says that the first step in troubleshooting an issue with equipment is to diplomatically check the symptoms for yourself, regardless of the opinions of your customer, your co-worker, or your boss.  I am fascinated by how often social pressure stops from us from simple fact checking that could solve a problem.

Our Ford Focus started making a new noise when I turned the heater fan on. It went away for a couple of weeks and then returned. And then I remembered: the car's air conditioning output was not very cool during a hot spell this summer. I clearly needed to know a lot more about automotive air conditioning than I would get from a ten minute video.

So I went to the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library, did a search and found some call numbers for textbooks and headed up to the fourth floor stacks.  There were about 18 inches worth of books on the topic and I picked out a couple of the most promising. Next to the section on Automotive Air Conditioning and Climate Control was an 8 inch cluster of books on Automotive Audio.

And in that cluster was a book cover that stood out: "Darwin's Devices". I pulled it out and took a look. It was a book on evolving robots by John Long. Fascinating, but clearly not Automotive Audio.

So I took it over to the librarian on the floor, and we had a discussion about Dewey Category 629 "Other Branches of Engineering". And I hiked back to look at the stacks and sure enough, there was nearly a whole section of shelving about robots.

I went back to the librarian and explained that this one book on robotics was literally two meters from all the others and that something was clearly not right about the call number. The librarian repeated more than once that the book was correctly catalogued and pleasantly hoped that I would enjoy the book on witchcraft that I had selected. I said that I'm fascinated by how we reach social decisions about "truth" and how people's social identity is a determiner in the process.

So I went down to the main information desk and got a second opinion from a second librarian. This librarian explained that Dewey catalogue numbers are not assigned by staff in the basement (as I assumed) but by OCLC, a global non-profit library cooperative headquartered in Ohio. As part of our chat, the librarian used the term "geek" to describe those of us who care about stuff like evolving robots and cataloging systems.

I explained that I didn't like the term "geek", and with my finger I drew an invisible bell shaped curve on the desk in front of me and said, "I think we are just people who are here on the the curve, (indicating the 90th percentile), not out here on the tail."  The second librarian  - like the first - pleasantly hoped that I would enjoy my books. I checked out my handful of books, and rode off to pick up a loaf of bread.

"Darwin's Devices" starts with an excellent summary of some core concepts. A robot that gathers its own information from the physical world has "agency", it can act on its own.  The thought stayed with me: Why could I see that a lone book on robotics shelved two meters from dozens and dozens of similar books was a problem to be resolved? And why did the first librarian see the problem as one of reassuring me that what I saw was not a mistake?

So after a night's sleep the obvious dawned on me, something that both librarians could have checked in seconds. I looked at the copyright page. TJ211.37 L66 2012. Probably the Library of Congress catalog number. And 629.8'92_dc23, probably the Dewey number, since all the VPL's robot books are clustered around the 629.892 section.

And I looked at the number on the spine: TEC 629.282 L83d.  282 not 892. Someone in the basement transposed one digit, and got another incorrect. A simple typo.

So why didn't either librarian - or myself - take the simple step of checking the spine against the number on the copyright page?

Maybe John Long's "Darwin's Devices" has something to say about how social context and social hierarchies easily defeat pragmatic curiosity and its power to solve problems. Or maybe John Demos' book on witchcraft will address the problem of socially induced artificial stupidity, where curiosity is punished and pragmatism devalued.

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Image from cover of John Long's 2012 "Darwin's Devices"