When taming a baby elephant, its trainer will chain one of its legs to a post. When the elephant tries to run away, the chain and the post are strong enough to keep it in place. But when the elephant grows up, it is strong enough to break the chain or uproot the post. Yet the owner can still secure the elephant with the same chain and post, because the elephant has been conditioned to believe it cannot break free. It feels the tug of the chain and gives up — a kind of learned helplessness. The elephant acts as if it thinks the chain’s limiting power is intrinsic to nature rather than dependent on a causal factor that held for years but holds no longer.
This is such an excellent allegory that I do need to ask whether there’s a citation. I googled briefly and only found motivational texts and discussions of the morality of chaining elephants in circuses.
Roger Bannister allegedly broke the four-minute mile by applying a lesson in flea training. You train fleas by putting them in a lidded jar. As they jump and jump and jump, they hit their head on the lid and condition themselves to jump only so high—even after the lid is removed.
Bannister, according to inspirational coach Zig Ziglar, knew that for centuries it was judged “impossible” to break a four-minute mile, and all the negative input from trainers and doctors and coaches was erecting a mental barrier to what was possible. History speaks: within a month or two of him breaking the limit, over a dozen MORE runners broke the four-minute mile—something which had been biologically impossible since ancient Greece.
This story is not true. Bannister broke 4:00 in May of 1954. The next person to do it was John Landy 46 days later. Bannister’s training partner Chris Chataway did it the next year, as did another British runner. However, I think Bannister and Landy were the only two to do it in 1954. The first American to do it was Don Bowden in 1957.
I found a list for the US here
Also a master list of many runners, but difficult to parse.
There were three runners close to the sub-four mile in the early 50′s. The other two were Wes Santee and John Landy. They didn’t race each other while trying to break 4:00 because Santee was American, Bannister British, Landy Australian.
According to Neil Bascomb’s The Perfect Mile, the race to sub-4 was highly publicized, and most people believed that it could in fact be done. There are some quotes from Landy saying that 4:00 was an unbreakable wall, but I believe these were mostly comments from him in dejection after early failures to beat the mark.
Bannister also wrote a memoir about running sub-4. I do not remember the flea story from it. Google books doesn’t return any hits in that book for the word “flea”
Wikipedia says:
The claim that a 4-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by informed observers was and is a widely propagated myth created by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile (1955). The reason the myth took hold was that four minutes was a nice round number which was slightly better (1.4 seconds) than the world record for nine years, longer than it probably otherwise would have been because of the effect of World War II in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries. The Swedish runners Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson, in a series of head-to-head races in the period 1942-45, had already lowered the world mile record by 5 seconds to the pre-Bannister record. (See Mile run world record progression.) What is still impressive to knowledgeable track fans is that Bannister ran a four-minute mile on very low-mileage training by modern standards.
The stuff about centuries of buildup and ancient Greece is absurd. In ancient Greece they did not use the mile to measure, and measurements and timekeeping were not accurate enough for this anyway. Wikipedia lists mile records only back to 1855.
I have learned today not to fluff my posts with phrases like “a dozen more runners” and “ancient Greece” unless it makes sense to do so. Upon further reflection it’s also possible that Zig said “Roger Bannister was a flea trainer” in a metaphorical sense—though he most definitely used that kind of words.
The “impossible 4-minute mile” myth, also upon reflection, seems like a similar myth that I stopped believing in, that some boxers, fighters and martial artists were required by law to register their hands as lethal weapons. I heard it from an insanely powerful kung fu sifu my best friend trained under, so I figured that, as strange as it sounds, it was very relevant to a master of fighting, and probably reliable. Later I learned that professional boxers did this purely as a publicity stunt, and the ceremony had zero legal effects. I could use more strength as a rationalist.
Well, I’ve certainly heard the story several times. I think it’s sometimes told in Indian context, so try including India in your research… I don’t care enough to find that out personally
The most I could find were photographs of Indian elephants being held by (what looked to me, anyway) like rather small chains. But yeah, I see a lot of references to the nice allegorical story without a real citation.
My prior is still on it being true to some degree, not because it sounds nice but because I know training animals often works approximately the same way.
This is such an excellent allegory that I do need to ask whether there’s a citation. I googled briefly and only found motivational texts and discussions of the morality of chaining elephants in circuses.
Roger Bannister allegedly broke the four-minute mile by applying a lesson in flea training. You train fleas by putting them in a lidded jar. As they jump and jump and jump, they hit their head on the lid and condition themselves to jump only so high—even after the lid is removed.
Bannister, according to inspirational coach Zig Ziglar, knew that for centuries it was judged “impossible” to break a four-minute mile, and all the negative input from trainers and doctors and coaches was erecting a mental barrier to what was possible. History speaks: within a month or two of him breaking the limit, over a dozen MORE runners broke the four-minute mile—something which had been biologically impossible since ancient Greece.
According to Zig, anyways.
This story is not true. Bannister broke 4:00 in May of 1954. The next person to do it was John Landy 46 days later. Bannister’s training partner Chris Chataway did it the next year, as did another British runner. However, I think Bannister and Landy were the only two to do it in 1954. The first American to do it was Don Bowden in 1957.
I found a list for the US here Also a master list of many runners, but difficult to parse.
There were three runners close to the sub-four mile in the early 50′s. The other two were Wes Santee and John Landy. They didn’t race each other while trying to break 4:00 because Santee was American, Bannister British, Landy Australian.
According to Neil Bascomb’s The Perfect Mile, the race to sub-4 was highly publicized, and most people believed that it could in fact be done. There are some quotes from Landy saying that 4:00 was an unbreakable wall, but I believe these were mostly comments from him in dejection after early failures to beat the mark.
Bannister also wrote a memoir about running sub-4. I do not remember the flea story from it. Google books doesn’t return any hits in that book for the word “flea”
Wikipedia says:
The stuff about centuries of buildup and ancient Greece is absurd. In ancient Greece they did not use the mile to measure, and measurements and timekeeping were not accurate enough for this anyway. Wikipedia lists mile records only back to 1855.
I have learned today not to fluff my posts with phrases like “a dozen more runners” and “ancient Greece” unless it makes sense to do so. Upon further reflection it’s also possible that Zig said “Roger Bannister was a flea trainer” in a metaphorical sense—though he most definitely used that kind of words.
The “impossible 4-minute mile” myth, also upon reflection, seems like a similar myth that I stopped believing in, that some boxers, fighters and martial artists were required by law to register their hands as lethal weapons. I heard it from an insanely powerful kung fu sifu my best friend trained under, so I figured that, as strange as it sounds, it was very relevant to a master of fighting, and probably reliable. Later I learned that professional boxers did this purely as a publicity stunt, and the ceremony had zero legal effects. I could use more strength as a rationalist.
On Skeptics Stackexchange there a thread about it: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7796/can-an-elephant-be-trained-to-be-lightly-leashed . Unfortunately as of the time of this writing it has no answers :(
I’ve heard that it’s false, but can no longer find the reference.
Well, I’ve certainly heard the story several times. I think it’s sometimes told in Indian context, so try including India in your research… I don’t care enough to find that out personally
The most I could find were photographs of Indian elephants being held by (what looked to me, anyway) like rather small chains. But yeah, I see a lot of references to the nice allegorical story without a real citation.
My prior is still on it being true to some degree, not because it sounds nice but because I know training animals often works approximately the same way.