If not me, then someone else; But if not us, then no one | Daniël Lakens | TEDxEindhoven

We are biased to see patterns where there are none, and do not appreciate or reward randomness. We like to think remarkable things were meant to happen, but is this really true? We would love to be able to predict when remarkable things will happen, but we can’t. Daniel speaks to make you think about whether you should try to do remarkable things, or not, and if we should reward randomness more than remarkableness.

Daniel Lakens is assistant-professor Human Technology Interaction at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He is an expert in psychology, statistics, research methods and open science. Daniël loves to teach especially about research methods and was elected as best teacher of a bachelor course at the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2014. He is fascinated by how we should reward people, if we want to achieve both reliable and novel scientific insights.

[d.stephenlindsay]

Right on. Indeed, downright remarkable!

[elementarysherlockclips]

There's a caveat, though. Einstein's insights were in 4 different fields of physics, and all of them developed in the span of a single year whilst he was a clerk at a patent office. All of them groundbreaking. He was compelled to do what he did. If he was just as subject to "randomness" as the rest of us are, he may as well have resigned to just doing his duties as a clerk. He does deserve to be put on a pedestal as an icon of independent thought and doing what was his calling despite the odds against him.

It's true those discoveries would have been made by someone else, but using genius as a model to strive to by questioning what we take for granted is a useful one for everyone to adopt. Recognizing his genius doesn't take away from the fact that most things are subject to the vicissitudes of randomness.

[JCResDoc]

*beautiful! still hope i get the prize tho. but ill be thinking of all of you, for sure!* -JC