Taking Precocious Too Far

by Michael Tobis     Department: Earth

Between my childhood and now, somebody apparently has solved the four-color map problem, i.e., has proven that there is no way to draw adjacent closed areas on a map such that more than four colors are required to color it in such a way that no two adjacent blobs are the same color.

This problem was discussed in some detail in the wonderful Time-Life Science book series that was aimed at curious teenagers like myself. (I wonder if there's any equivalent nowadays; maybe the internet has sucked all the profit out of publishing science for young people. That would be a real shame.)

Anyway I am sure I was not more than twelve when I took on the problem in earnest.

See, it occurred to me that while I didn't have the mathematical sophistication to prove the theorem, it would take very little sophistication to disprove it. All one would need to do would be to construct a map where four colors did not suffice.  Imagine (I thought) the glory of a twelve-year old resolving this famous theorem.

In fact, I was successful in creating a map that seemed to require five colors. It had about seventy-five zones in some convoluted pattern. Anyone I gave it to who humored me found that five colors were required. I was thrilled.

Fortunately, it occurred to me that I had to prove that the map could not be colored in with four colors, and accordingly I came up with a systematic way of searching through the possibilities. This is actually pretty clever work for a kid, though of course doing this for one map is far simpler than what the mathematicians were trying to do, i.e., do a systematic search over all possible maps.

Sure enough, I managed to cut myself off at the pass. I found a four-color solution to the map where others had failed. I had achieved (I thought) nothing. In retrospect, I am pretty proud of the whole episode, and I am glad I achieved not making a danged fool out of myself, something a couple of teenagers have not done lately.

One teenage boy recently came to the conclusion that NASA's calculations about the dangers of a near-earth passage of an asteroid were wrong, and that he was in a position to correct them by a factor of 100. Somehow he convinced a reporter that NASA had accepted his corrections. It's not clear who was doing the wishful thinking and who the fiction, but now this young man's ideas are being made light of worldwide.

There's another case of a young woman of 16 who is criticizing the IPCC climate change consensus. Like most critics, she has s theory of her own based on selective evidence, misunderstood evidence, and the echo chamber effect where people who don't want the science to be true all cite each other. This is making quite a splash in the blogosphere where some oth most dedicated climate bloggers are mercilessly deconstructing her work. To some extent, it's clear she is trying to please her stepfather, and that she's quiet bright. The danger is that enough people are telling her she is already brilliant that she might get arrogant and lazy. Skeptics are not doing her a favor by singing her praises too loudly.

I'm not the only person to note the coincidental timing of these events. Some people think things "come in threes" though. I'd like to caution especially my younger readers that you may be very smart, but you should assume that you are making a mistake if you find yourself thinking you are smarter than every scientist in the world put together. A feeling like that is wrong a million times for every time it's even half right.

Adolescents who fall into this trap too spectacularly have a hole to dig themselves out of. It's not a great way to enter adulthood, having been spectacularly and publicly wrong, but youthful indiscretions are often forgiven or forgotten.

If you have such a feeling of superiority too strongly as an adult the world will not treat you kindly. You will almost certainly be wrong, wrong in the sense that 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong. Most likely you will be called a crackpot. It's suprisingly common to be possessed by this feeling of superiority but it is usually tragic. Science is a team sport.

Tags: asteroid, climate change, four colors

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