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Puzzle Rush · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: It's eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, a
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: little chili deep in downtown Manhattan. Streets are empty. I'm
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: standing on the sidewalk with my assistant, Camille Baptista.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: First of all, Camille needs no did you did you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: sleep well last night?
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: I did sleep well. Yes, I did not, really I could.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Almost know sleep.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: And I had a nightmare about the l SAT that
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I left before him so over. I had an exam
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: nightmare from high school, essentially a high.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: School See you left before it was over.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I had a nightmare about the l SAT that I
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: walked out before the test was over. Oh but my
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: nightmare was just beginning. This is Malcolm Gladwell. I'm back
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: with season four of Revisionist History, my podcast about things
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is about what happened when
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Camille and I took the law school admissions test. We
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: had three number two pencils each, a small pack of Kleenex,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: a package of trail Mix, all in clear plastic bags.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: We lined up outside Pacey University with hundreds of other
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: nervous people clutching clear plastic bags. Everyone wanted someday to
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: become lawyers except us. We were there in the name
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: of science.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: We had to go.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all been very traumatic and stressful, but I
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: wanted to get one last thing. I would like to
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: get your handicap on your chances of beating Just tell
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: me what you think your chances.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Of beating me are my chances as a Your mom,
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: I would point out, was quite confident you would win.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: My mom is confident in me no matter what, which
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: is very nice, but you know, maybe unrealistic. Uh, you know,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Fifty to fifty, Camille, I really am.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I told you I am twenty four.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, I can't even I won't even tell you how
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I am. But it's it is a It is a
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: large multiple of your age, I know.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: But I don't think it has I don't think it
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: has to do with age. I think it has to
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: do with reading ability. And you read non stop twenty
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: four hours a day.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I've been an intellectual. I've been in cognitive cline for
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: thirty years. It's all going to be exposed. All right,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: we're off, We're going to go. I got the idea
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: of taking the l SAT from a man named William Henderson.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I read a paper that he wrote. It was on
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: my favorite website SSRN, which is where academics from around
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the world post their papers and they get ranked. If
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: you're a regular listener to this podcast, you'll know how
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: genius I think SSRN is. Anyway, this paper was called
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the l SAT Law School Exams and Meritocracy, The Surprising
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: and under Theorized role of test taking Speed. Anything with
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the words surprising and under theorized in the title, of course,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: is going to be catnet for me. So I read it,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: then I read it again. Then I had to meet him.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: So just a little bit of a background here. I
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: didn't go to law schoolto was thirty five, and so
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: I had had a whole career before then.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Why what were you doing before you became a lawyer.
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: I was a firefighter paramedic. I was a union rep
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: for a suburban Cleveland fire department. I did that for
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: nine years and as a kid, people, and remember, I'm
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: kidding as I went to law school because of those
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: bastard management attorneys.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Henderson goes to law school. After that, he gets a
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: clerkship with a judge and one day he's in a
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: shower and a thought occurs to him. What was the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: aha in a shower? The specific aha was what.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Was my God? The two most time pressure things I've
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: ever done in my life is taking the LSAT and
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: these damn law school exams.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: He had been a firefighter paramedic, he had raced to
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the streets of Cleveland to save people on the brink
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: of death. And then most time pressure he'd ever felt
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: was taking the l set to get into law school
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: and then taking the exams once he got there.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: I can remember taking Cass Sunstein's Elements exam my first
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: year of law school is a two hour exam.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Stein used to teach at the University of Chicago, which
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: is where Henderson went to law school. He's a genius.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: He asked the kind of questions that you can spend
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: months years thinking about. But his exam two hours. That's
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: all you got.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: The proctor said time, and everybody dropped their pencils and
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: there was this huge ug you know, everybody was like
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: groaning that they didn't get more time to keep on
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: working on Cass Sunstein's Element exam. It's like, you know,
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: ninety people who all dropped their pencil and they're all,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: you know, exclaiming the desire for more time. That was
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: a memorable experience.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Now, I'm sure this is obvious to you, particularly if
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: you're an American. You've been tested a thousand times in
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: your life, SAT ACT, GRE on and on, and every
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: one of those standardized tests doesn't just test whether you
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: can answer the question correctly. They test how quickly you
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: can answer the question correctly. But I'm a Canadian. I've
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: never taken a standardized test in my life, and as
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: an hour I have to say the whole system seems
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: really weird. Why is quicker better? The L set is
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Exhibit A. It's the single most important thing that determines
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: where you go to law school. Nothing else comes close.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: And what is it? It's around one hundred and twenty
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: five questions, divided among five sections analytical reasoning, reading, comprehension,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: two sections on dissecting an argument, and one experimental section.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Everything's multiple choice. You mark your answers with a pencil
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: by filling in little bubbles on an answer sheet like
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: an IBM punch card. A perfect score is one eighty,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: and if you're a super go getter, you cannot score
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: below one seventy five because then you can't get into
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Harvard and if you can't get into Harvard, you're never
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: going to get an offer from a big law firm
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: or get a Supreme Court clerkship. Your life is over everything.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: The country club, the BMW, the multiple cases of two thousand,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Chateau Lafitte, Rothschild, it hinges on those five sections, And
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: how long do you get to spend on each of
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: those five sections? Thirty five minutes, not forty, not fifty,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: not fifty five. And if you finish up one section early,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: you don't get to add that time to the next section.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: When we decide who is smart enough to be a lawyer,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: we use a stopwatch. So that was William Henderson's question.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: What does putting that thirty five minute time limit on
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: a cognitive test like the LSAT do? So I said
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: to Camille, let's find out, And because we're both super competitive,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: the whole thing got very involved. The first thing I
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: would like to do is to understand on a very
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: very granular level, what time pressure means for the way
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: people take the test, the strategies they use, the kinds
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: of mistakes they may specific Everyone told me that there
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: was no way I could do well on the l
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: set without getting some coaching. So I went to one
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: of the top new educational technology startups in America, a
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: company in New York called Noodle, started by John Katzman,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: who before this was one of the founders of the
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: famous Princeton Review test prep company. I sat down with
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Katsman and two of his top people in a big
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: loft building on Union Square in Manhattan. Katzman, Fritz Stewart
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: and Dan Edmonds.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: No, but I am very.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Very anxious not to lose to Camille.
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: So I thought he was she born in the US
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: or in the UK.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, she's went to a fancy school, like this serious,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: seriously intelligent woman. But I'm saying US or UK, we US.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Oh great, I'm too old and I'm from the wrong country.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: It was not an encouraging start. I've done things under
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: time pressure before. Of course. I've written newspaper stories on deadline,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I wrote exams in college. In those cases, though, the
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: task required me to be me only with a sense
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: of urgency. But the first thing the Noodle guys told
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: me was the l set didn't require me to be me.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: It required me to be someone else.
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: A lot of it is about helping people understand. They
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: don't get to do this at a comfortable speed.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: It's Dan Edmonds right.
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: In order to finish these sections, you have to do
• 9:39
  Speaker 6: it at a speed that's a little uncomfortable, which means
• 9:42
  Speaker 6: you have to hone your instincts by the test rules,
• 9:47
  Speaker 6: not by your rules.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: What does it mean to read it at an uncomfortable speed?
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: For me?
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: It means that if there's something like in a reading
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: comprehension passage, if I hit a paragraph that I don't
• 10:01
  Speaker 6: fully understand, I don't get to go back and reread it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: I just kind of have to accept the parts that
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: I understand and move on.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: The noodle guys approach the l set like pathologists approach
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: a cadaver.
• 10:12
  Speaker 7: For me, I'm like, Eh, all right, I didn't get that,
• 10:14
  Speaker 7: But if a question asks about it, I will go back.
• 10:16
  Speaker 7: But it doesn't bother me as long as I understand
• 10:19
  Speaker 7: the topic, sentence of the paragraph, and the overall thrust
• 10:21
  Speaker 7: of the author's argument. If I miss a few details
• 10:24
  Speaker 7: here and there, or even a chunk of the argument,
• 10:27
  Speaker 7: I'm like, all right, fine, who cares, I'll go dig
• 10:30
  Speaker 7: it out exactly when I need to.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Wait. It's okay to miss a chunk of the argument.
• 10:36
  Speaker 7: So I don't even aim for a level of what
• 10:39
  Speaker 7: we would normally call comprehension, and my first read I
• 10:43
  Speaker 7: am out to process the information, not understand it. I
• 10:46
  Speaker 7: don't get any points for understanding it. I get points
• 10:48
  Speaker 7: for bubbling in the right question.
• 10:50
  Speaker 6: I imagine that when you read, there are lots of
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: moments where you sort of oh, that's an interesting point,
• 10:54
  Speaker 6: and you sort of pause and you think, and you
• 10:56
  Speaker 6: let your mind meander a little bit. There's no meander
• 10:59
  Speaker 6: time on the alf set, there's no digression time.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Meander and digression are my whole m. That's what I
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: do for a living. What do you think this podcast
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: comes from? So then John Katzman gave me a sample question.
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: What I would have you do is read this, and
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: then for each of these questions, tell me the two
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: stupidest answers, too stupidest, okay, the two answer choices that
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: you know are wrong.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: WHOA, this is what?
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm saying.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: You can't read this on a podcast, No, No, I can't.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: The passage with six hundred words it seemed longer. I've
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: just been told that I don't need to understand it.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I don't need to comprehend it. It's okay if I
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: miss chunks of it. In other words, I'm supposed to
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: read it without reading it. And as I sit there
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: puzzling about this, the three of them debate right in
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: front of me. How long this reading without reading should take.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: John said a minute, Fritz said three tops, Dan said
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: it depends on the person who's reading. The only thing
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: they all agreed on was that I had to hurry.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Fly and get the bones of the argument.
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: Now feel free to spend the time on the question itself.
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: And again, all you're trying to do is tell me
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: the two worst answers.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Two worst answers, What do you tell me? I'm on
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: your structure.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Just so, this is on page one two right, already
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: got it?
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I read it out loud because I thought maybe that
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: would help researcher. People who participate in opinion surveys often
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: give answers they believe the opinion surveyor wants to hear,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: and for this reason that some opinion surveys do not
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: reflect the actual views of those being surveyed. However, in
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: well constructed surveys, the questions are worded so as to
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: provide respondence with no indication of which answers the surveyor
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: might expect after the passage. There were multiple sets of
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: questions to test my understanding of what I had just
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: not read. There were pages of them. So if a
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: survey is well constructed, survey responders desire to meet surveyor's
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: expectations has no effect on the survey's results. The reasoning
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: in the researcher's argument is questionable in that the argument
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: overlooks the possibility that they must say A and B
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: are uh.
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: Just across map and move on to the actions.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, those are the worst.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: Not They're wrong, They're the worst answers.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: The clock is ticking.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Well, this is such a brutal passage, shine cruel, Jesus bananas.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: What am I aunt? Time wise?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: This is what they meant when they talked about uncomfortable reading.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I was being forced into a kind of altered, frenzied state.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: The word they used was breathless. You should be a
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: little breathless, they said. I was breathless. I kept asking
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: how much time has passed? They tell me my heart
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: would accelerate. I started to panic.
• 14:04
  Speaker 7: Okay, okay, I have no idea what I did great
• 14:07
  Speaker 7: timing on that seven minute twenty.
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: So this section is how long minutes?
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Thirty five minutes, thirty five, thirty five.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: Minutes And we just did one, two, three, four, five,
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: six seven questions you would have had, say, ten minutes.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I haven't picked any right answers yet.
• 14:28
  Speaker 7: But you've done all the harder And that was four
• 14:30
  Speaker 7: and a half oh seven and a half seven seven twenty.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: So you're tight.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Oh man, you're not toast. Oh I'm toast. We did
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: another question. I was convinced the answer was B.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: It was C.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I could feel Harvard slipping away. Great, thank you. Will
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: you guys think my aunts are of a beating Camille?
• 14:55
  Speaker 6: Do you want the honest answer? I think you're in
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: real trouble, buddy.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: On the day of the l SAT, I sat in
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: a little class in one of those fixed half desks
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: that I last had in grade school. We got our
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: test packets. I raced through reading comprehension with time to
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: spare sections two and three. I was right up against
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: the deadline. Then came analytical reasoning logic games, and I
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: looked at the questions and what I had to figure
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: out and realized that there was just no way I
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: was going to finish in thirty five minutes. I needed
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: to slow down, and I wasn't allowed to slow down.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: I glanced behind me and there was Camille with like
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: a death stare in her eyes, ruthlessly dispatching question after question.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Then I looked around some more and saw all these
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: kids half my age, beavering away full of purpose, because
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: all you Americans, apparently except as Gospel, this idea that
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: the smart person is not the person who gets the
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: right answer. The smart person is the person who gets
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the right answer the quickest. Mercifully, it ended at one thirty.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Camille and I stumbled outside into the sunshine, clutching our
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: plastic baggies. Our producer, Jacob Smith was waiting. We had
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: no idea some people wanted to be lawyers.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: First of all, that was a shock.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Camille cheated because she she packed my We had to
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: have these plastic bags. She packed packed my plastic bag
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: for me. But she gave herself like apples and like
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: really really lutritious snacks.
• 16:41
  Speaker 8: And I got bags, which is the same thing.
• 16:45
  Speaker 7: So you had fresh fruit.
• 16:46
  Speaker 8: And Malcolm I did Malcolm on Trao Mix from CBS.
• 16:50
  Speaker 8: But but but who sharpened all your pencils, Malcolm, and
• 16:55
  Speaker 8: packed your little tissues in case your nose runs.
• 16:58
  Speaker 9: Right now, after both taking it, who like, what's your
• 17:01
  Speaker 9: honest opinion?
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: How do you think did better?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I think it, Camille didn't.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I was I did so poorly. I was fine, and
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: I got really cocky and then I hit the logic
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: games and basically I think I got zero right. I
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: had no idea what to do. I sat there and
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I was like in a state of complete panic. I
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: have I was untested until this moment. Now I have
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: been tested. America has taken its measure of me, and
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I'm it's pretty it's pretty humbling experience. Why do Americans
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: do this to themselves? Do they play scrabble with a stopwatch?
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: In literature class? Do they get extra points for reading
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Tolstoi's War and Piece Overnight? Is there an oscar that
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: goes out every year to the movie that got shot
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the quickest? I really don't get it. Okay, time to
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: meander and digress.
• 17:59
  Speaker 9: I became a grand master at fifteen, so I think
• 18:02
  Speaker 9: I became an im right after I turned thirteen. And
• 18:04
  Speaker 9: I was a grand master at fifteen, so yeah, yeah,
• 18:06
  Speaker 9: that was very very good at the time.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: That's Hikaru Nakamura grew up in Westchester County, outside New
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: York City. He's in his early thirties, although he looks
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: about half that age. He's one of the best chess
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: players in the world. How much chess were you playing
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: as a kid?
• 18:23
  Speaker 9: Pretty much all the time, so I was playing at
• 18:26
  Speaker 9: the Marshall at least I would say two or three
• 18:29
  Speaker 9: days every single week, and then I would also be
• 18:31
  Speaker 9: playing blitz on the internet chess club. I would say
• 18:33
  Speaker 9: at least five to six hours every single day.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Years ago, I met Magnus Carlson, who is the greatest
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: chess player in the world, and I asked him how
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: much he used a chess board versus how much he
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: just worked through chess positions in his mind, and he said, oh,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I've practiced mostly in my mind. In fact, I'm working
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: on an opening right now. Nakamura is a little like that.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: He's incredibly gracious and humble, but even when he's giving
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: you what seems like his full attention, you get the
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: feeling that there's a whole separate part of his brain
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: breaking down. A bus be Fisher match from the early
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. The first thing I did after my disaster
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: with the l set was call up Hikaru, but I
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: didn't want to talk to him about chess. I wanted
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: to talk to him about time. So my first question
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: about this would be what would happen within reason if
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: there was no clock? How does the way that you
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: approach a game of chess change if I remove the
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: time constrained entirely?
• 19:34
  Speaker 9: All right, So if you remove time entirely from the
• 19:37
  Speaker 9: game of Chuss, every game of trust would be drawn
• 19:42
  Speaker 9: because without time, if you have an nast amount of
• 19:45
  Speaker 9: time to think about any given move. If I could
• 19:47
  Speaker 9: think for thirty minutes on every single move, I do
• 19:50
  Speaker 9: not think I would ever lose a game of trust
• 19:52
  Speaker 9: to a human. To a computer, I would still lose,
• 19:54
  Speaker 9: but to human even Magnus. Yeah, if I had an
• 19:58
  Speaker 9: half hour for every move, I don't think I would
• 19:59
  Speaker 9: ever lose to Magnus.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: This is why chess games have a time limit. Otherwise
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: it's not a game. Tournaments would go on for months
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: and everyone would end up tied for first. It would
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: be like Little League. Everyone would get a participation trophy.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: So there's classical chess, which is the kind play of
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: the World Championships. Classical allots ninety minutes for the first
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: forty moves, then thirty minutes for the rest of the game.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Winning at classical chess involves calculation, working through many possible
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: scenarios before deciding on a move. Then there's blitz chess.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: That's what Hikara was playing for five or six hours
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: a day growing up. In blitz, each player gets five
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: minutes for the whole game.
• 20:41
  Speaker 9: When you play blitz chess, it very much becomes about
• 20:44
  Speaker 9: finding moves that look good, that are not blunders, that
• 20:47
  Speaker 9: you can play almost instantly, where you use a couple
• 20:49
  Speaker 9: of seconds.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: In classical how many moves would you go deep?
• 20:53
  Speaker 9: It normally would be about five to six moves in
• 20:56
  Speaker 9: about three or four branches.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: It's a fantastically complex mental exercise.
• 21:02
  Speaker 9: Yes, very much. I mean it's probably at least I
• 21:04
  Speaker 9: would say, close to one hundred different different permutations of
• 21:08
  Speaker 9: moves or a sequence. Is that you're looking at for
• 21:10
  Speaker 9: every single move?
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. In blitz we've truncated that process.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Everything about Blitz and classical is the same same pieces,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: same board, same players, same choreographed openings, but the time
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: limits are different and what happens when you tinker with
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: the time limit, you get a completely different set of results.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: A classical chess, Magnus Carlson is number one, he's also
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: number one a blitz because he's a genius. Hikaru right
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: now is eleventh in the classical rankings. But it blitz,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: he's number two in the world. Why because he's really
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: really good at the rapid pattern recognition that's necessary for blitz,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: and he's not quite as good at the complex calculation
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: that's necessary for classical. Now, who's an example, a good
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: example of the opposite.
• 22:02
  Speaker 9: Uh Fabiano Fabiano Karjuana is actually he's probably the best example.
• 22:07
  Speaker 9: I can't even think of anyone else who is that
• 22:10
  Speaker 9: much better at classical chess than they are at blitz
• 22:13
  Speaker 9: and wrap.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Why do you think he's not good at blitz and rappit?
• 22:16
  Speaker 9: I think I think with Fabiano he's it's the other way.
• 22:21
  Speaker 9: He's very very good at calculations, so when he gets positions,
• 22:24
  Speaker 9: he's very good at calculating and understanding what the possibilities
• 22:28
  Speaker 9: are with with more time, whereas when he doesn't have
• 22:32
  Speaker 9: time to calculate the long sequences all the way through
• 22:36
  Speaker 9: his intuition has to take over, and his intuition and
• 22:39
  Speaker 9: natural feel are not as good as as everyone else.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Fabiano is a tortoise, slow and steady. Hikaru is a
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: hair ear's back speedy. You can struct your chest that
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: favors the tortoise, or you construct your chess so that
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: it favors hairs. I think you can see where I'm
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: going with this. If we had a blitz tournament for
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: the World championship, you know, in two months, where would
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: you put your odds of winning?
• 23:07
  Speaker 9: I would put my odds of winning probably around twenty percent.
• 23:11
  Speaker 9: I would say I'd put Magnets at about sixty percent.
• 23:14
  Speaker 9: I put myself at twenty percent.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: So pretty good odds. Yes, so your your world changes if,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: just arbitrarily, we decided that the standard for international tournament
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: chess ought to be blitz.
• 23:26
  Speaker 9: Yes, it would change.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you would make a lot more money probably, Yes. Wait,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: there's a third variation, bullet chess. In bullet you get
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: one minute for the whole game, and Hikaru is the
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: king at bullet. Are you better than Magnus at bullet.
• 23:44
  Speaker 9: At bullet yes, a bullet yes.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Why so what's why wouldn't Magnus. If he's if he's
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: so serenely superior at all other kinds of chess, why
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: can't he beat you a bullet?
• 23:56
  Speaker 9: In terms of the calculation, what he does is like
• 23:58
  Speaker 9: the sort of well it's not an algorithm, but sort
• 24:01
  Speaker 9: of the way that he find tunes are the way
• 24:02
  Speaker 9: he thinks about I think it takes a little bit
• 24:05
  Speaker 9: more time to come to the conclusions.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: What strikes me is that the chess hierarchy formal chess
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: hierarchy is an arbitrary function of the amount of time
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: we have decided to spend on a chess match. Right, Yes,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Like I said, I think you can see where I'm
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: going with this. Hikaru is a hair, not a tortoise.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: And what is the l SAT It is a test
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: that rewards hairs over tortoises, which means that if the
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Elsat ran the chess world, they would consider Hikaru the
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: greatest chess player in the world. They would crown him
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: champion over Magnus. El sat logic is that the best
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: player is the one who solves the hardest chess puzzles quickest,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: and that's Hikaru. But that's insane, not even Hikaru thinks
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: he's better a chess than Magnus. What Hikara would say
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: is that he's a different kind of chess player than Magnus.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: And I haven't even mentioned puzzle Rush. It's an online
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: game where you get a series of endgame chess positions
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: and you have to get to checkmate as often as
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: possible in five minutes. Puzzle Rush is insanely popular. Do
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: you play a lot of Puzzle Rush?
• 25:19
  Speaker 9: I have the highest score at it.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: So yes, I yeah. So what's your score?
• 25:24
  Speaker 9: My highest score is fifty.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Five, and what's the second highest?
• 25:28
  Speaker 9: I think there are two people with fifty four, and
• 25:30
  Speaker 9: then there are couple with fifty three, and it falls
• 25:32
  Speaker 9: off from there.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We have most of the top players in the
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: world played puzzle Rush.
• 25:39
  Speaker 9: Most of them have.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, as Magnus plays change.
• 25:42
  Speaker 9: Not officially, not officially, might be playing and hiding a
• 25:45
  Speaker 9: sea he probably has.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you get any award for being
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the number one on puzzle Rush?
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: No?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: They don't like crown u King of Puzzle Rush. There's
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: a three hour video of a car crushing puzzle Rush
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: on YouTube. It is one hundred and thirty thousand views.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: This actually might be the most hotly contested form of
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: chess you've ever played. You've never played something where millions
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: of people are in the same tournament.
• 26:14
  Speaker 9: Yeah that's yeah, that's true. This is right.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: You could make an argument this is your greatest accomplishment.
• 26:21
  Speaker 9: I guess, but I have one thinking it that way.
• 26:24
  Speaker 9: But yes, you're right.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, the only reason we don't consider that your greatest
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: accomplishment is we've arbitrarily decided only to honor chess played
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: under these archaic rules in a tournament atmosphere. That puzzle
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: rush is a I mean, if we decided to say,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: that's what chess.
• 26:42
  Speaker 9: Yes, right, yeah, if you arbitrary decide yes, that's that's true.
• 26:45
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: It has many advantages. Chiefly is it allows the entire
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: world to compete on an equal right. Right, so you
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: went against the entire world and you won.
• 26:55
  Speaker 9: I don't know, yeah, yeah, I've never thought about that,
• 26:58
  Speaker 9: but yes, that is true.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: If one thing comes out of this, it is I
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: hope you you give yourself a pat on the back.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: The order in which people finish in any cognitive task
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: is an arbitrary function of how much time is given
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: to complete that task. You can make it fast or
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: you can make it slow. The chess world has chosen
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: to reward the tortoise. The el sat has chosen to
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: reward the hair. They've decided to play puzzle rush and
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: reward the Kors of the world, and not have us
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: play classical and reward Fabiano. What does the legal world
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: have against Fabiano? As I mentioned earlier, there's going to
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: be a second part to this examination of the l set.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Of course, there is why would I rush? In the
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: next episode, I'm going to visit with the folks who
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: administer the l set, the Law School Admissions Council of Newtown, Pennsylvania.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: But that can wait. Let's go back to William Henderson,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: who started me wondering about time and tests. The great
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: justification for the l set is your score is supposed
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: to be a useful indication of how well you will
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: do in your first year of law school. It's a predictor.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: But Henderson's great question was what if the l ST
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: only predicts law school grades? Because law schools make the
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: same mistake that the lset does. In most law schools,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: grades are based in large part on how well students
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: do on exams where they are deliberately not given enough time.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: You take Cass Sunstein's elements exam, where you engage with
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the ideas of a legal genius, and you have two hours.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Henderson wondered if a law school doesn't rely so heavily
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: on its students doing things quickly, if the school relies
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: instead on take home exams and essays, what happens to
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: the usefulness of the L set as a predictor? And
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: he found that its usefulness declines. I'm quoting the data
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: show that the l SAT was a relatively robust predictor
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: of in class exams and a relatively weak predictor of
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: take them exams and papers. In other words, once you
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: stop racing against the clock, then the people who do
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: well on the l set no longer are the best
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: at law school, which is exactly what every chess player
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: in the world would have told you. What happened. So
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: what did William Henderson do when he became a law
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: professor at Indiana University. He changed the way he evaluated
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: his students. He started placing more emphasis on take them exams,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: and when he gives an exam in class, he makes
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: it four hours, not two.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: That's completely open book and I give out one of
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: the questions in advance. I say, here's three questions. I'm
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: going to test you on one, so you've seen one
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: of the questions already. And then four hours is plenty
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: of time to do the issue spot or and I
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: give a word limit. And I did that as a
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: direct result of that LSAT study that I did, because
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: I was acutely aware that you change the ordinal ranking
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: when you pick a testament. And I say, you know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: I don't think anybody will need all four hours, but
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: if you if you want to take four hours, you're
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: free to take four hours.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Not long after he started grading that way, a student
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: came to see him.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: This kid got an A on the exam, and so
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: he comes in. He wants to talk about exams. I said,
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: I've been here for three years. I've never done this
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: well out of the exam before, and I want to
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: know why I did this well. And I pulled out
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: his exam and it was an eight hour take home
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: and I go, look at your first paragraph. You hit
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: every single issue here in the first paragraph. It's just
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: a well organized pearl. The light bulb went on for him.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: It's just like if I had had more time. All
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: my exams would have been disorganized.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: You have a student who the system declared was of
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: average ability. The student believed it, why wouldn't he. But
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: then someone came along, someone by the way, with the
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: great benefit of being a firefighter from the suburbs of Cleveland,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: who had the freedom to think a little differently, and
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: he said, wait, maybe you aren't of average ability. Maybe
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: you only think your average because we have chosen an
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: arbitrary system to evaluate your ability that makes you look average.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: You are Fabiano and we have been making you play
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: puzzle Rush. I know what you're thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: but who won between you and Camille who got the
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: higher score in the l SAT No stop racing ahead,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: you are engaged in uncomfortable listening. You'll have to wait
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: until the next episode. What I want you to think
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: about is that student of William Henderson's and his miraculous
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: revelation that he really was a good student. After all,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: there are a ton of tortoises like him out there,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: not just taking the elsat in city in law school classrooms,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: but competing for places at any number of schools and
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: professions that have decided to tell their applicants whether they
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: are or are not any good. And what I don't
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: understand is how the hairs got to set the rules.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I thought the whole point of the story of the
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: tortoise and the hair was that the tortoise one. Clearly,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the kind of person who is most disadvantaged by this
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: system is the tortoise. I realized, after my experience with
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: the noodle guys and my time with Hikaru, that I'm
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: on the side of the tortoise. I feel for the tortoise.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: I might be a tortoise. I come from tortoises, and
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: we've all met tortoises in our lives. Who will not
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: My mother is a little bit of a tortoise. She
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: will not be rushed under any circumstances. She will not
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: She does not make mistakes. She goes over things five
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: times to make sure that they're perfect. She is ideal
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: for a certain kind of work. She'd have a problem
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: with the eel set. She would say, why are you
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: rushing me? And she would you know, and she wouldn't finish,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: And she would never guess. She can't guess. She's incapable
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: of guessing. So my mom could never The profession is
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: putting up a barrier.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: To my market.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: You put a stopwatch on thinking whatever, you rigged the system.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: So Camille wins fine, but when you go after the Gladwells,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: then it's personal. Revisionist History is produced by Mia Lobel
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: and Jacob Smith with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: Flon Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Original music by Luis Kiera. Special thanks to Carle Migliore,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Heather Fein, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and Jacob Iceberg. Revision's
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: History is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: gladwa But Camille, Camille is like a smarty pant. She's
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: going to do don't you think she's going to do? Yes?
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: Yes, Well, Camille has a natural.
• 34:33
  Speaker 9: Uh.
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: She she naturally prepares and is naturally persistent and determined.
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: So I think those things will really help her a lot.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Should I should I be worried?
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: I think you should be worried. I think you should
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: be worried.
• 34:54
  Speaker 8: Yep