Comments on "The Three Doors of Serendip"

‘The Three Doors of Serendip’ invites ideas about much more than its designed purpose, to explore the Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD).  The visuals used in the exhibit are thought provoking; the applets are a wonderful way to bring readers into the world of thinking, guessing and understanding (however, the applet found on the Achieving Broader Understanding page does not work, a logistical glitch that overall doesn’t affect the quality of the exhibition or its message).
    

Several different themes that are seemingly unrelated to the MHD are interwoven into the fabric of the exhibit and add both richness and diversity.  The welcoming page, where the frustration that arises from understanding (or misunderstanding) is discussed, is a nice introduction but could benefit from connections made between the concept of “understanding = knowing the truth” and something like science and the pursuit of absolute knowledge, as well as speculation about whether or not this actually can be attained.  Later in the exhibit the notion of striving to be “less wrong” and not necessarily “right” turns traditional scientific method upside down, but brings with it some contradictions.  If there is no “right,” can there exist a “less wrong?”  This implies that a “wrong” does exist, and if such a thing exists so must a “right.”  Could striving to be “less wrong” lead to just as much, or more, frustration as misunderstanding at the risk of being completely “wrong?”  “Less wrong” may imply that there is no set boundary (no absolute “wrong”) beyond which exists a home for those who perpetually misunderstand.  In our society, structure is a crucial part of daily life and has become somewhat of a security blanket covering our workplaces, government and schools.  “Less wrong” challenges people to give up a boundary that has been in place since the beginning of time.  Also, it might help to directly connect the concept of “less wrong” with the MHD because the two do not seem correlated at first glance, as the MHD can easily be misconstrued as a guessing game (and surely guessing will not always lead to being “less wrong?”).
    

Connections to the article “Mathematicians vs. Birds vs. Monty Hall” and the actual study found in the Journal of Comparative Psychology are definitely important to this exhibit, but comparison between human thought process and that of birds would be helpful as well.  For example, in the portion of the exhibit discussing unconscious learning and skills such as itemizing and generalizing, it would be logical to put a link to the article and journal study.  In this section it might also be beneficial to explain (or link to commentaries about) how birds perform better in the Monty Hall task even though they use no logic, the effectiveness of unconscious learning in humans, and questions about if it’s possible that human beings are actually too analytical.
    

The discussion on “loop” thinking is interesting in relation to the MHD because the evidence from the bird study suggests that these creatures use one mode of “non-logical,” unconscious thinking and perform better than humans at the task, rather than looping between conscious and unconscious thinking.  As discussed in our group this morning, science has yet to take its place next to other fields such as literature and art; this section of the exhibit would be a perfect place to do this.  The quote “Scientific stories are frequently efforts to summarize the widest possible range of observations” can easily be related to a field such as literature/storytelling, which has been in existence since the dawn of mankind.  This would relate science to storytelling, and place them both on the same level by suggesting that storytelling is a universal path to understanding.
    

The square boxes near the top of the page “Unconscious, Intuitive and Experimental Understanding” might prove detrimental to the goal of the forum in breaking down barriers and dissolving categories.  The boxes clearly state that if a reader arrived at the page through one link or the other, they appreciate a certain style of thinking.  It feels uncomfortable to me to tell people what they appreciate, and seems contradictory to the effort of moving away from categorization than can only serve to isolate different minds even further.