The Meaning of Life in 100 Spoons

When we think of a spoon, our brains immediately associate it with 4 or 5 different uses (i.e. the ones you’re thinking of right now, see how many you can think of between now and when I ask you again, further down). This is what behavioural economists would call heuristic thinking — what the rest of us would probably call something like thinking habits. The idea is our brain learns a rules of thumb, and then applies these rules as often as possible in order to save computing power for more interesting thinking.

Think about crossing the road: When we’re little we learn to look STOP, LOOK, LISTEN. When you’re seven you have to consciously follow these steps. But as an adult, you’re brain has created a mental shortcut — a rule of thumb — which means these safety precautions are done ‘on automatic’, leaving your conscious brain free to figure out what you’ll cook for dinner.

This is what is known as a heuristic: An incredibly useful and efficient way for the stone age hardwear in our heads to navigate an increasingly noisy world. But they can also lead us astray. Rules of thumb are by definition rough guides, not detailed algorithms with instructions for every contingency. So a rule of thumb in one setting may not be so useful in another, like if you moved country, where you have to look left first, instead of right. Or what if you relied only on your school days’ rule to cross Shibuya crossroads in Tokyo?

You’ll probably need to concentrate crossing the world’s busiest crossroads

If you did apply only your heuristic in this case, there’s a good chance you’d walk into on-coming traffic. In reality of course, this never happens because we rarely, if ever, consciously choose to kick our thinking from the passive, rule of thumb type, to the active but (tiring) type.

This key insight enabled behavioural economists to create the sexiest term in modern economics [FT 1]: nudging. For the past 10 years or so, governments across the world have used nudges to encourage their citizens to stop smoking, piss more accurately in airport terminal urinals, pay their car tax and start pension schemes. At it’s most simple level, a nudge works by either encouraging our brains to slide into heuristic (rule-of-thumb) mode to make a decision, or to jolt us out of heuristic, lazy thinking into active mode. This, by the way, corresponds to Daniel Kaneham’s concept of Thinking Fast and Slow.

So, how many uses have you got now? (leave a comment below; for reference, it took me about a day to get 15.)

If you haven’t already tied the knot between the spoons and the economics lesson, the point of the spoons was to illustrate that we use heuristcs not just for ‘economic decision making’ but for all kinds of thinking. And just as heuristics can get us knocked over in Tokyo, or screw our retirement plans, they can also have pretty detrimental affects over how we see ourselves and our lives.

We all have certain narratives about how we are and where we came from. These narratives give us identity and create meaning. David Foster Wallace, in the wisest piece of prose I’ve ever read [FT 2], shows how these narratives place the mental spotlight on certain things. The things they highlight are where we place value, which in and of itself is not a problem — we have to value something — but what Foster Wallace shows, is that the insidious thing about these personal value propositions is that they are often unchallenged. They are what he calls our default setting.

‘Default setting’ type - langauge isn’t a million miles away from the economists’ ‘automatic thinking’ and ‘heuristics’ vocabulary. In fact they are talking about the exact same problem, just from different angles, and in different settings; which means that the economists’ insights are just as relevant here as they are in a Nobel Prize Acceptance speech.

In some sense it is surely inspiring that I’ve proved you can come up with 100 uses for such a simple object as a spoon, because it means the potential for new ‘uses’ for something as diverse and complex and multi-dimensional as, say, your life, is by comparison, limitless. But what the spoons challange also shows is that going from a passive understanding of an object (or a life) to a conscious, proactive one isn’t easy. It took lots of boring stuff like tenacity and discipline to complete the list. It also took no small amout of creativity and the ability to see the same thing from fresh eyes. All of these things share one common characteristic: They take effort.

And so, if you’re lazy, or hungover, or glued to your phone, (or like me most of the time), you won’t be able to make useless lists about inanimate objects, nor will you be able to start making new and different narratives from the experience of your life.

Anyway, enough about all that, let’s get to the list!

The rules for accepting a new use were that it had to be plausible ‘to the man on the street’. Amongst my friends who helped me compile this list, this fuzzy cirterion of acceptance led to some surprisingly heated debates and left a few bruised egos lying around. People really get attached to their ideas (especially me).

As a nod to our rule, I’ve categorised the list by the “man on the street’s” reaction (as decided by me).

Man on the street Reaction: Nods Agreement

1. A lever for removing staples and nails
2. Clean grot from the space between two bricks
3. Spread pouring water so that in a bath the hot water is less concentrated under the tap
4. Egg opener
5. Cereal eater
6. Soup eater
7. Bottle opener
8. Eyelash curler
9. Lymphatic drainage device
10. To test if a cake is cooked
11. Stop glasses with hot liquid from cracking
12. Bee feeder
13. General purpose mixer
14. Melon baller
15. Ice cream scoop
16. Lemon/orange juicer
17. Avacado excavator
18. Heroin cooker
19. A terrifying way to discipline Irish children
20. Sauna stove water ladle
21. Playing the spoons (Traditional Irish insturment)
22. Catapult
23. Pouring a baby Guinness
24. Folding (in a baking context)
25. Mixing salad
26. Serving salad
27. Entertainment (e.g. hanging spoon on nose for kids’ magic trick)
28. A black eye cooler
29. Dispensing (jam etc.)
30. Strawberry hulling
31. A forceps for taking a baby out
32. For keeping bubbles in a champagne bottle
33. Making Irish coffees
34. A canapé plate replacement
35. A last place prize
36. Egg and spoon race
37. Moisturizer (spoon prevents bacteria from your hand entering the pot)
38. A way to signal you’re in trouble/being kidnapped in an airport (put in underwear; this is the only use I found online)
39. For practicing your golf swing between your fingers (Hi Dad)§
40. To chink a glass in order notify a room you’re about to give a speech
41. Looping spaghetti around your fork

Man on the street Reaction: Strokes Beard Pensively

42. A pawl

43. Testing reflexes

44. Pastry engraving

45. Paper weight

46. Crushing pills

47. A way to measure liquid or powder

48. A hammer for constructing IKEA furniture

49. A hypnosis pendulum

50. Back scratcher

51. To scrape burnt on food from an oven tray

52. To bruise a banana

53. A propulsion device for a small boat

54. A way to create a whirlpool

55. A way to draw a line in sand

56. A jug lid

57. As a source of instability for a fitness device that trains you to balance better

58. Scooping out an eye ball

59. To hear if a wall is hollow

60. Weapon

61. Ski sled steering/breaking device

62. A handle replacement

63. A boat propeller

64. The hands of a clock

65. A pull tab can opener

66. A cutting device

Man on the street Reaction: Frowns Sceptically

67. A Shoe Horn

68. An icepop

69. A tunnel boring device

70. To cool yourself with a hose by putting it facing you in front of the nozel

71. As a mirror to look up your nose (because it inverts the image)

72. Prevent a household watering can damaging delicate plants by spreading the water (suspiciously similar to #3)

73. Lightening conductor

74. To take temperature of a liquid

75. Baby shovel

76. Precision trowel (suspiciously similar to # 75)

77. Practicing psychokinetic powers

78. A way to tap a glass ketchup bottle

79. A switch

80. A Morse code machine

81. As a demonstrative tool to explain the concept of spooning in bed

82. A medium of exchange (Probably the most controversial between us)

83. Horse eye blinkers

84. A pointer for the game twister

85. A way to make your bike wheel sound like an engine

86. A door wedge

87. A Heel support

88. A plough

89. To extinguish candles

90. Cleaning your nails

91. A way to measure distance

92. An oversized hook

93. Drum stick

94. A way for people who have no hands to clap

Man on the street Reaction: Drops his jaw

95. A circle drawing device (i.e. a compass)

96. Ginger peeler (honestly, so good)

97. Golf pitch mark repair device

98. A wind vane

99. A water wheel electricity generator

100. To chip an ice sculputre

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the list (~40 ideas!). Special thanks to Lorcan, Clare, kristo, Eoin, Ryan, Séamus, Rob, Jack, Aleks & Ellen for tolerating interminable debates in Alpine restaurants and for humouring me with new ideas on cold chair lifts!

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FT 1: and, unfortunately, now marketing

FT 2: I probably consider it all the more wise since posthumous allegations where he is accused of assaulting Mary Karr, the poet and memorist. I think this shows that even though he was able to see our flaws clearer than most, he was also full of them himself and, ultimately — sucuumbed to them worse than most to do awful things. There’s a difference between wisdom and goodness, I suppse.