What are you trying to prove here, anyway?

"I didn't know you were going to give me electric shocks!! What are you trying to prove here, anyway?" demanded a boy participating in a psychological experiment.

"I'm studying the effect of negative reinforcement on ESP ability." replied Dr. Venkman. (1)

Ghostbusters is a house favorite. The #2 highest grossing film of 1984 (2) is featured bimonthly at our house. “I wonder why he is shocking that boy” my 10 year old daughter mused aloud for the first time last night. “Because he’s a jerk” I quipped; one of a few phrases which would jump off the tongue of most fathers’ or mothers’ engaged in the same exchange.

Converging on the belief that Dr. Venkman is a jerk less than 5 minutes into the film satiated my daughter’s appetite to understand the motives and logic of the professor. I was not patently wrong, but the tidbit tossed from my mind lacked sustenance. I was not fulfilled by the meager insight I served up.

“Why?” is in a league of its own. You can’t respond with “no” or “not now”. That’s probably 80% of the most common replies taken out of play. You can’t throw an instruction manual at it. Logic doesn’t come in little number packages which contain pieces that snap neatly together to form a replica of the Ectomobile complete with proton packs.

Answering “why?” takes effort (3). Replying is an open invitation for “what’s that mean?” to join the party. Reactions endeavoring beyond “because I said so” require summoning lessons buried in classrooms departed decades ago to follow; science, psychology, statistics, or a combination of each. Falsification and a myriad of biases haunts all three.

Devoting time and resources to provide a thoughtful response to “Why?” creates an asset which has value; Intellectual property. This characteristic makes answering “Why?” the best place to start. “Why am I calling this person?”. “Why am I heading up this meeting?”. “Why do I think this is a good investment?”.

“Why am I writing this article?”. Responsibility in any guise encompasses causing something to happen. I’d like to write more frequently to be a better writer, to share thoughts on subjects like behavioral economics, to incite reaction and improve from criticism provided by readers.

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(1) “The idea that was based on a real experiment, were people had to give electric shocks to test people; but the people giving the shocks didn't know that they were the test subjects. The idea was to see how far people would go in giving shocks to other people.” Harold Ramis, Making Ghostbusters

(2) No small feat; Beverly Hills Cop beat out the quartet of specter snatchers while Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, Police Academy, Footloose, Romancing the Stone, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Splash rounded out the Top 10 for the year.

Humanity doesn’t seem to turn to the internet to ask “why?” very often which, while not a trend that I hope reverses, is surprising. “Why were chainsaw’s invented?” was most frequently on the minds of Americans willing to turn to the internet for philosophical insights. Spanish searchers more understandably asked “por que se llama coronavirus?”. Germans, clearly not aware of Cornflakes being ‘The Original & Best’ (at least for patients in sanitariums), asked “warum wurden Kellogg’s Cornflakes erfunden?”.