My Real Life Gorilla Experiment

And the Release of God Was Right

“God Was Right” is finally out! I have been gratified by the many comments I have already received – including (actually especially) the critiques on various points of Torah, social science and modern society. And I’m gratified that they have come so soon after publication.

One of the questions podcasters have been frequently asking me is: “What was the most surprising thing you learned in the process of writing the book?”

I have answered that I was surprised to discover just how the Bible’s guidance is so interesting, practical, right – and comprehensive. The Bible’s guidance is direct, easily applicable and now proven true by modern social science on subjects from clothing to dating to antifragility to grandparenthood to fear and dozens of others. The range – and the fact that the Bible is direct and right on all of it – astonished me.

Now I have an addition I’ll be using. I was surprised — and I’ll add even embarrassed — to learn, firsthand and in real time, just how much I still need to internalize, be reminded of, and follow the Bible’s guidance on the very subjects I wrote about.

Here’s the story.

I was at a book launch event at the 3i Members office on Monday night – an appropriate time, as it was Shauvot, which is the time when we celebrate the giving of the Torah by studying it.

Erica led the Q&A at the book launch – and she had picked a few of the 33 chapters (each on a different subject that is addressed in the Torah and now validated by social science).

One of the chapters she chose was on noticing. Noticing may seem like something we just do – not worthy of major discussion or existential emphasis. But not to God. In Exodus 3, Moses is wandering through the desert when he sees a bush that is burning. This is a common occurrence in the desert. But Moses notices that the bush is not being consumed – and allows noticing to change his perspective.

God responds by telling Moses that he will be God’s partner in freeing the Jews from Egyptian slavery and leading us to the Promised Land.

The social science, covered in “God Was Right,” demonstrates just how surprisingly difficult and important noticing is. Twenty-five years ago, psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris developed a now famous test that anyone can take right here on YouTube

A group of teens are playing catch, and the viewer is asked to count the number of passes they throw. During this nice and serene game, a guy in a gorilla suit comes through the group and pounds his chest.

The real question from the experiment is not how many passes the participants threw. It is: Did you notice the gorilla? Half do, and half do not. (I guess I just gave away the experiment! – but it is only one-minute long, and interesting to watch anyway).

Another chapter Erica chose was on the 100% Responsibility movement, which promotes the acceptance of full responsibility for all outcomes. The Torah imperative explains why we are called Jews. In Genesis 38, Judah is in self-imposed exile after he and his brothers either acted or did not stop their brother Joseph from being thrown into slavery. He sleeps with his daughter-in-law Tamar (thinking she is a prostitute) — and has the opportunity to deny having done so with no chance of being caught. He chooses, instead, to take responsibility — explaining: “She is more righteous than me.”

In Numbers 16, there is the most serious rebellion against Moses’s rule. It is led by Korach, and joined by Datan, Abiram and 250 other people. God, furious, threatens to destroy the Jewish people. Moses pleads with God, saying: “Will you destroy the people because of one man?”

This leads to the question: Who is the one man? The mind goes to Korach – but it can’t be him; he was joined by hundreds of others. It must be Moses, taking responsibility for a rebellion under his watch.

The third chapter Erica suggested we speak about was, “The Limits of Education.” I opened the book to review it – and discovered that the section on social science (several pages) was missing from the book. I looked again. Nothing had changed, obviously. It was not there.

I felt terrible – a combination of sadness, disappointment and honestly a bit of self-loathing. The latter is especially appropriate. I had just written a book which features the difficulty and importance of noticing. And I had plenty of opportunities to notice. But I had not noticed the gorilla – in this case a section of a chapter – right in the midst of the book.

Why had I not noticed? Lots of reasons; they are easy to identify in retrospect (that’s a characteristic of noticing). One big one: I had delegated the final check. This, too, was ironic – because I write in “God Was Right” about how we learn from the Biblical Abraham that important tasks that one could do should not be delegated.

My delegation was purposeful, though not defensible. I hate reading what I have written (anything from a column to a book) because there always might be something I wish I included or phrased differently. This, I realize, is a quirk I just have to get over.

Another: we were looking for copy edits and missed the gorilla in the room. Another irony. I explain in “God Was Right” how this explains why motorcycle riding is so dangerous. Car drivers are looking for other cars, and do not even notice the motorcyclist in front of their eyes. This dynamic (Looked but Failed to See — LBFTS), I learned, may have deadly consequences on the road — but it presents where it would be least expected.

Immediately after the event, I emailed Glenn Yeffeth – the book’s publisher at BenBella. He responded right away, taking responsibility and explaining how they could have caught it on their end. I was not surprised that Glenn, a great publisher and a quintessential mensch, acted like Judah and Moses and took responsibility – even though it was really mine to take.

The solution: The chapter on “The Limits of Education” is now on the Website: godwasright.com. And the full chapter will be incorporated in the electronic versions very soon.

I’ll end here with added appreciation of the Torah for being, as it always is, so intensely practical, applicable and right. It’s ironic that my error here is such a case study for the difficulty and importance of noticing — which the Torah alerts us to so clearly in Exodus, and which I write about extensively in “God Was Right” — will be an example in the next edition of this book.

And it may also find its way into the chapter on “Reminders.” Reminders, like noticing, might seem obvious or otherwise unworthy of discussion. But that’s not what the Torah says. Indeed, the great commentator Ibn Ezra looked at the whole Torah and concluded: “The core of the commandments is reminders.”

I apparently needed this experience to remind me of the surprising difficulty and importance of noticing — an irony I’m still trying to process.