Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - The Curse of Knowledge Meets The Valley of Death

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Why were soldiers on horseback told to ride straight into a valley full of enemy cannon? The disastrous "Charge of the Light Brigade" is usually blamed on blundering generals. But the confusing orders issued on that awful day in 1854 reveal a common human trait - we often wrongly assume that everyone knows what we know and can easily comprehend our meaning.Starring Helena Bonham Carter as Florence Nightingale.Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin 1854, a gently sloping valley near the village of Balaklava in Crimea, on one side of the valley, Russian troops with cannons. On the other side of the valley, Russian troops with cannons. At the far end of the valley, yes you've guessed it, Russian troops with cannons. This is the Crimean War, the same grim conflict we heard about earlier this season when Florence Nightingale treated sick British soldiers. The war was the global standoff of its day, the British, French and Turks were all worried about Russia's growing influence.

Balaklava is just outside Sevastopol, a strategic port on the Black Sea, and the situation is delicately poised. With all their cannons, the Russians are firmly in control of the valley. They've just captured a bit more land and a few British cannons. But now the commander of the British forces, General Raglan, has ordered his cavalry to take those cannons back. General Raglan watches to a telescope from his viewpoint on a distant hilltop, as his men on horseback ride towards the valley, so far so good. Now they should turn and climb the slope to surprise the small-bounder Russians who are

hauling off the heavy British guns, but they don't. They keep on going, further and further down the valley, between the Russians on both sides, towards the Russians at the end. What on earth are they thinking? Cannon to the right of them. Cannon to the left of them. That's how the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson famously described the charge of the light brigade. Generations of British schoolchildren

learn from his poem about the 600 horsemen and their suicidal charge into a valley full of guns. Into the valley of death rode the 600. Tennyson based his poem on a breathless, first-hand account in the Times. The Times' war correspondent was watching from the hilltop, alongside the horrified General Raglan. As it turned out, in his rush to file a story, he'd miscounted that we're near a 700-man in the light brigade.

Tennyson was annoyed when he got this fact-check. 700 would ruin the meter of his poem. He decided to leave it as it was. would ruin the meter of his poem. He decided to leave it as it was. Boldly they rode and well into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell rode the 600. But why were six or 700 of Britain's finest cavalrymen charging suicidally straight at Russian cannons? Tennyson got this bit right. The soldier knew someone had blundered. Indeed, someone had blundered. But who?

And why? I'm Tim Haferd, and you're listening to cautionary tales. The infamous Crimean Blunder involved three men, an impatient young captain, a frustrated bullying lord, and an amiable old general. That's General Raglan. Let's take a moment to get to know the general first. The Times' walker respondent describes Raglan's personal charm, sweet smile, kindly glance, courteous, gracious, gentle manner, and how about a character reference from Florence Nightingale?

It was impossible not to love him. He was not a very great general, but he was a very good man. Not a very great general. Raglan had spent most of his long career as a number two. Well into his six days now, he was still new to the top job. He might have been a very great administrator in peacetime, but it was 40 years since he'd been on a battlefield, let alone commanded any troops. Now General Raglan is hundreds of feet up on top of a hill, the Sapun Heights. He lifts his telescope to his eye.

He's got a commanding view of the British soldiers down below. It's like watching from a box in a theatre. In the distance he can see the valley the Russian troops are defending, with cannons on the slopes on both sides and at the end. It's 8 o'clock in the morning. General Raglan will send four fateful orders to the cavalry over the course of that morning. He clears his throat and dictates the first. Cavalry to take ground to the left of the second line of reedouts occupied by Turks.

To get the order to the cavalry, Raglan has to send a messenger to ride the steep and winding path down the Sapun Heights, then gallop across the plain, it takes 20 minutes. The recipient of the message is a man named Lord Lucan. He's in charge of the cavalry, which includes the light brigade. He reads the message. Cavalry's a take. Wait, this makes no sense. Why are communications sometimes hard to understand? The psychologist and linguist Stephen Pinker reckons the single biggest reason is the curse of knowledge. That's a curious cousin of the Dunning Kruger effect. With Dunning Kruger, we don't know what we don't know. With the curse of knowledge, we don't notice when we know

something, others don't. The curse of knowledge was ingeniously demonstrated in an experiment by a Stanford University's psychology student called Elizabeth Newton. She put volunteers into pairs and gave one of each pair a list of well-known songs. Choose a song, she said, and tap it out with your finger on the desk. Like this. The job of the second volunteer was simple. Listen to the taps and then guess the tune. Did you get that one? No? Try another. If you don't recognise the tunes, don't feel bad. Very few of the listeners among Elizabeth Newton's experimental subjects managed to, they

guessed correctly just two and a half percent of the time. But here's the part that demonstrates the curse of knowledge. She asked the people who'd done the tapping. If we played your tapping to lots of listeners, how many would correctly guess the tune? The tapers reckoned around half of the listeners would get it right. But remember, hardly any of the listeners actually did. The tapers were wildly overconfident in their ability to convey music using only taps. Why?

Because in their heads, they weren't just hearing the taps. They were hearing this. Or this. The people doing the tapping simply couldn't imagine what it would be like to hear only the taps without the knowledge of which tune the taps were intended to convey. Much the same thing happens when an expert gives a talk full of confusing jargon. They don't realise it's jargon.

To them it's a bunch of very familiar words with perfectly clear meanings. They can't conceive of what it's like to be someone who doesn't understand. The curse of knowledge is a devilish curse, says Stephen Pinker. We do not notice the curse, because the curse prevents us from noticing it. We sometimes forget that the person we're talking to might not have the context to make sense of what we're saying. We mean one thing. They hear something else entirely.

Down at the mouth of the valley, Lord Lucan reads General Raglan's message again, cavalry to take ground to the left of the second line of redouts occupied by Turks. It still makes no sense. Redouts occupied by Turks. There aren't any. Redouts are temporary fortifications. That's where the British cannons had been, guarded by their allies, the Turkish army. The Russians had captured them already that morning, so the Turks weren't occupying their adults anymore. Still, that must be what Raglan meant. Second line of riggedouts? Isn't there only one line?

Yes, can't help you there. Take, growing to the lift. Who's lift? A lift of what? My lift? Raglan's lift? Who is he looking for, anyway? My lift? Raglan's lift? Where's he looking from anyway? There's the curse of knowledge. Raglan had a perfect view from high on a hilltop, he knew exactly what he meant by, to the left. He forgot that Luke couldn't down below, had a different point of view. A more experienced commander might have made sure to write something his troops couldn't possibly misinterpret, East or West, not right or left. As you might have guessed, the puzzled Lord Lucan is the second of our three main characters.

He's the frustrated, bullying Lord. Unlike the amiable old general, Lord Lucan is not a popular man. Lord Lucan had risen quickly through the ranks of the British army. A Lieutenant Colonel in his 20s was this because of his military genius? No. If you were good at your job, you might hope to get promoted, but the only sure way to the top was money. The British military sold off its top ranks to the highest bidders. Lukun was a Lieutenant Colonel because he'd paid to be one, millions of dollars in today's money.

Lord Luchen soon got a reputation as a harsh, vindictive leader. It had soldiers flogged for trivial misdemeanors, but then Luchen stepped back from the army. It spent most of the last two decades running his family estate in Ireland's County Mayo. The smallholders who farmed his vast tracts of land were struggling to pay their rent and Luke and decided to modernize. He emerged their small plots of land into bigger farms that would be more productive, but to do that. He first had to force out his existing tenants.

Luke was pitiless. He hired Crowbar Brigade's of 50 men to demolish his tenant's houses when the potato famine hit. He kept going. Here's one survivor's account of the winter of 1846 in County Mayo. Sick and aged, little children and women with child were alike thrust forth into the cold snows of winter, and to prevent their return their cabins were leveled to the ground. The majority rendered penniless by the years of famine wandered aimlessly about the roads

and bogs, till they found refuge in the workhouse or the grave. Lord Luchen, as I said, was not a popular man. Now he was back in the army, he'd swapped the crowbarb gates for the cavalry, and he was struggling to work out exactly where General Raglan wanted him to position his troops. He asked Raglan's messenger to stay with him while he finished the maneuver, just to make sure he'd understood what the general had in mind, and this time he had. But there were three more messages to come. Corsion retails. We'll return in a moment. Why would the British Army sell ranks to the highest bidder?

It seems to make no sense, wouldn't you want your army to be run by the people who were best at running an army? But the purchase system did have some logic behind it, at least if you were a part of Britain's ruling class. This was a time of revolutions in Europe. If your army was run by capable soldiers from the middle or lower class, that was risky. The army might side with the people against the elite. By selling off ranks to the highest bidders, you made sure that could never happen, because only the landed gentry could afford to be in charge.

There was, of course, a downside to this arrangement, capable soldiers had to take orders from incompetent aristocrats, like the amiable general Raglan, or the frustrated bullying Lord Luchon. Not surprisingly, the capable soldiers sometimes resented this. It's time to meet the third and final man who'll play a pivotal role in the Blunder, the impatient young captain. Lewis Nolan is up on the Sapun Heights with General Raglan, waiting for his chance to shine. He wasn't the son of a lord, his father was a soldier and diplomat. The sons of lords went to expensive private schools and studied ancient Greek. Nolan's school taught him more practical subjects, engineering, military history, fencing, horsemanship.

He quickly gained a reputation as the army's most brilliant horsemen, and he quickly developed strong opinions on everything the army was doing wrong. Still just in his early 30s he wrote a book, Cavalry, its history and tactics, and he couldn't resist the odd swipe at the posh buffoons in charge. Right up in golden letters, in every writing school and in every stable, horses are taught not by harshness but by gentleness. Where the officers are classical, the golden rule may be given in Greek, as well as in English. This kind of snide remark didn't endear him to the higher ranks. Yes, they saw Captain Nolan's skills, but they also thought he was far too young to be publishing his opinions.

A great man, said one, in his own estimation. In the weeks before the battle at Balaklava, the British army made its way through Crimea, and the higher ups made decision after decision that had infuriated Captain Nolan, twice the cavalry came across an unexpected chance to attack Russian troops, and twice Lord Lucan held them back. There were 1,000 British cavalry looking on at a beaten army retreating within a ten minutes gallop of them, enough to drive one mad. The decision to be cautious wasn't Lord Lucan's fault, the orders came from General Raglan,

Lucan was frustrated too, nonetheless he got the blame. He also got a nickname, not so much Lord Lucan as Lord look on, am I right? It wasn't fair, but it stuck, and it stung. Lucan didn't want to be known as a dithering bystander, and that's another reason he was irked and he read General Raglan's first order of the day. It wasn't just that the meaning of the words was hard to pause. Once he'd understood them, Luc and realised this was yet another humiliating retreat. He had deliberately positioned his forces close to where the Russians would

have to pass if they were to attack. Raglan was telling him to be cautious again, to move the cavalry further back. Back up on his vantage point, meanwhile, the old general changed his mind. Perhaps Lord Luchen had got the positioning right in the first place. Half an hour after sending his first order, General Raglan sent his second. Ed Squadrons of heavy dragons to be detached towards Bella Klava. That meant half of Luchen's cavalry, the heavy brigade, as opposed to the light. Another messenger on horse-packed, gingerly picked his way down the side of the sapoon

heights and galloped to Lord Luke and to hand him the slip of paper. Luke and Reddit rolled his eyes. Great, now he had to move back to where he had been, but with only half his troops. That wouldn't help if they ran into any Russians. And they did. But luckily the Russians weren't expecting it. The two forces skirmished briefly, and the Russians retreated. Up on his hilltop, General Raglan spied an opportunity.

With that Russian retreat, perhaps he could recapture those British canons the Russians had taken earlier. The ones nearby on the Causeway Heights, the slope to one side of the valley. Raglan being a cautious man didn't want to send the cavalry on their own, it rather wait for the infantry, the foot soldiers to back them up. But where were the infantry? It sent a message to their camp, telling them to come right away, as it happened, the urgency of Raglan's message had been lost on the infantry leader. He had decided he could finish his breakfast before setting off. But Raglan didn't know that. He expected the infantry to come into view at any moment.

And anyway, there weren't that many Russians near those guns on the Causeway Heights. The cavalry could take them on their own if needed. Raglan dictated his third order of the morning. cavalry had to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. They will be supported by infantry, which have been ordered. Another messenger, riding cautiously down the steep slope,

another slip of paper handed to Lord Luchen, another exasperated sigh. It will be supported by infantry. What does that mean? Does he want us to advance now and hope the infantry will arrive later? Or are we supposed to wait for the infantry to arrive and then advance? General Raglan had meant advance straight away. Lord Lucan decided he should wait for the infantry. There was still no sign of them, so the cavalrymen decided they might as well relax for a while. They got off their horses, lit their pipes, unscrewed the caps on their flasks of rum. Some had brought hard boiled eggs from breakfast.

Up on the hillside, General Raglan watched through his telescope in mounting fury. Why were the cavalry smoking and drinking? Hit told them to advance. He turned his telescope towards those captured British cannons on the heights. Could he see Russian soldiers starting to drag away those cannons? That's what it looked like. There was no time to lose. Raglan dictated his fourth and fatal order. Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns.

Raglan wanted the message to get to Lord Lucan as quickly as possible, so he looked around at the horseman he had with him on the hilltop. Who among them would be the swiftest rider? Send Nolan. The impatient young captain eagerly took the message and jeed up his horse. Raglan called after him. Tell Lord Lucan the cavalry is to attack immediately. At last, Nolan rode off exultant.

After weeks of frustration, finally the cavalry had something to do. And he, Nolan, would get to deliver the order to that dithering fool Lord Lookon. Captain Nolan urged his horse on as it slithered and stumbled down the steep side of the sapoon heights. He galloped the last mile towards Lord Lucan and thrust the message into his hand. Advance rapidly to the front. Which front?

Prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Which guns? Nolan watched Lucan trying to figure it out. His patience snapped. General Raglan's orders are that the cavalry should attack immediately. A Texer? A Tex what? What guns are? Where and what to do? There my lord. There is your enemy. There are your guns. Nolan swept out a hand in the general direction of them. Well of what exactly? It looked to Luke and, like Captain Nolan was pointing right down the valley, towards the many Russian cannons arrayed at the far end. There is your enemy. There are your guns. by your gums. Luke and Gulped. Up on the hilltop, General Raglan was oblivious.

It simply happened to him that there could be any ambiguity about what he wanted. Obviously this fourth order was a follow-up to the third. You know, the one that said, recover the heights. So when he said, advance to the front, he meant the heights. Obviously. And when he said the gums, he meant the British cannons that had been captured on the heights. That was obvious, wasn't it about to destroy the light brigade. Corsary tales will return shortly. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Computing Titan, IBM, employed a Dutch psychologist called Gate Hofsteder to fly around the world asking questions of their employees in different

countries. Questions like this. How frequently, in your experience, does the following problem occur? Employees being afraid to express disagreement with their managers. IBM wanted to understand how workplace culture differed from country to country, where people collectivist or individualist, sticklers for rules or happy to improvise, and what was their attitude to authority? Hofsteder came up with an idea he called power distance.

In a culture with low power distance, an employee who gets an apparently stupid instruction feels free to say, you sure boss? Where the power distance is high, the employee silently gulps and carries out the stupid instruction. Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers describes how countries with a high-power distance used to have more fatal plane crashes. Captains and first officers spend about the same amount of time at the controls, but crashes would happen more often when the captain was flying. If the first officer was flying badly, the captain would tell them.

If the captain was flying badly, the first officer might not. Power distance is high in Korean culture. In 1997, Korean Air Flight 801 was descending into Guam. The captain was tired. He wasn't thinking straight. He was peering out of the cockpit window to try to spot the runway. It seems he hadn't realised that there were dark clouds ahead. The runway wouldn't be visible. He should be relying on the instruments instead. The first officer knew what was happening, but he didn't want to challenge the captain directly. Instead, he pointed at the weather radar and dropped a hint. Don't you think it rains more?

In this area here? The captain was too distracted to understand. He kept on looking outside, where was that runway? The flight engineer knew what was happening too. He tried an even weaker hint. Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot. Neither said what they must have been thinking. Captain, you can't land the plane by looking outside the weather's too bad. And neither said another word, as the captain flew the plane

through a dark cloud and into a hillside. Airlines now train their pilots on how to speak up if they think the captain is making a mistake. But on the battlefield in Balaclava in 1854 there had been no such training. 54, there had been no such training. The curse of knowledge had set the Blunder in motion and power distance was about to seal the deal. It seemed to Lord Luchen that General Raglan wanted the cavalry to embark on a suicidal charge down the valley. Well then, that's what they'd have to do. Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem sums up the lot of the soldier. There's not to make reply, there's not to reason why there's but to do and die. Actually, Lord Luchen would have had some scope to make reply and reason why.

The power distance here was complicated. Luke and Outranked Captain Nolan, but Nolan was speaking on behalf of General Raglan. Luke couldn't refuse Raglan's order, but he could have pressed Nolan to explain it to make sure he understood. That's exactly what he had done with the messenger who delivered the first ambiguous order to move his troops to the left. But this time, he didn't. Perhaps he was angry about the insolence with which young Nolan was treating him. Perhaps he was worried about how it would appear, Lord Lookon, wriggling out of action once

again. At any rate, he simply glared at Nolan, then rode off to talk to the light brigade. They were closest to the valley and had to leave the charge. The leader of the light brigade was Lord Cardigan, another wealthy aristocrat who'd bought his position. Cardigan had only just appeared on the battlefield. He wasn't camping with the soldiers. It had his yacht sailed over from England and more than in a nearby harbor. He often pitched up late after a good sleep in a leisurely breakfast.

The noble Yotsman, the soldiers called him. He was also Lord Lucans' brother-in-law. They hated each other. Lord Cardigan, you are to advance down the valley with the light brigade. I will follow in support with the heavy brigade. Certainly, sir, but allow me to point out to you that the Russians have a battery in the valley on our front and batteries and riflemen on both sides. I know it, but General Regland will have it.

We have no choice but to obey. Cardigan redded his troops. Every last one of them could see how crazy this was that it could achieve nothing, and they'd need a miracle to survive. The soldiers knew someone had blundered. Oh well, they were soldiers, orders were orders. The bugle sounded. Cardigan kept the pace steady.

There was a mile and a half to the end of the valley. The horses couldn't charge at full speed all that way, but one soldier seemed impatient. He broke ranks and rode out in front. It was capped in Nolan. What was he doing? Perhaps he had only just understood the blunder that was about to unfold and was trying to change the light brigade's direction. Perhaps the impatient young captain just wanted to be front and center, we shall never know. No sooner had Captain Nolan ridden ahead, than a Russian shell exploded right in front

of him, the shard of hot metal ripped to his chest. Nolan was the first to die. He was not the last. Struck full in the face, has blood and brains, but spattering us who rode near. Streaks of fire about two feet long and a foot thick in the centre of a gust of big white smoke. Gallon balls tearing the earth up and musket balls coming like hail. Old Greymare kept alongside of me for some distance. Terrible how her entrance she galloped.

Haris head blown off. Rode about 30 yards before he fell. Poor dumb broods, galloping about were a numbersly, mad wild beasts. My overalls are massive bloods. The flame, the smoke, the roar were in our faces, it is not an exaggeration to compare the sensation to that of riding into the bulk of a volcano. Up on the Sapun Heights, General Raglan watched Dumb Founded as the light brigade disappeared at full pelt into a bank of smoke.

The Times' walk-or-respondent scribbled furiously in his notebook, the French commander General Bosquet delivered a verdict for the ages. C'est magnifique, mis sonébalagère. It was magnificent, but no way to wage a war. When the smoke cleared, one in six of the light brigade had been killed, more were captured or wounded. Incredibly, more than half made it back with barely a scratch. The charge had achieved precisely nothing. The loss of life and limb was senseless.

From our modern perspective so was the whole Crimean War, so it seems jarring that the survivors Dorothy, but hailed as heroes. To know that you got no choice in a doomed and dangerous mission because of some hideous cock-up, and to give it anyway your full-blooded commitment, it no longer seems magnificent to us. But we can at least admire the courage, and since Tennyson's poem is easily the most famous memorial to this disaster, maybe he should get the last word. light brigade, noble 600. Key sources for this episode include Hell Riders by Terry Brighton and The Charge by Mark Adkin along with Elizabeth Newton's dissertation The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions.

For a full list of references see TimHalford.com. Corsion Retails is written by me TimHalford with Andrew Wright, it's produced by Ryan Dilly and Marilyn Rust, a sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. Starring in this series of cautionary tales, a hell in a bottom-carta, and Jeffrey Wright alongside Nizah Eldorazi, Ed Gohan, Melanie Guthridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Koenholdbrook Smith, Greg Lockett, Masey M. and Rho, and Rufus Wright.

This show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LeBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarrs, Carla Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor, and Niela LeCarn and Maya Canard. Corsionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to rate, share and review.