Futility Closet - 319-Friedrich Kellner's Opposition

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from solar cremation to the paradox of fiction. This is episode 319. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In the 1930s, German civil servant Friedrich Kellner was outraged by the increasing brutality of the Nazi party and the complicity of his fellow citizens. He began to keep a secret diary to record the crimes of the Third Reich and his condemnations of his countrymen. In today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:43 we'll tell the story of Friedrich's diary and his outspoken warnings to future generations. We'll also ponder the problem with tardigrades and puzzle over a seemingly foolish choice. In 1960, a 19-year-old American naval petty officer named Robert Scott Kellner found himself on a layover at Frankfurt Air Force Base in Germany. His father had died recently, and he had never met his father's parents, who he knew lived in a German town called Laubach. After some searching, he found them there, a tall, 75-year-old man named Friedrich and his wife,

Starting point is 00:01:23 Paulina. On the first evening, Friedrich showed Robert a series of notebooks, almost 900 pages, filled with newspaper clippings and cryptic old German script. Friedrich explained that this was a diary he had written during World War II to document Hitler's rise to power and the crimes of the Nazi regime. He devoted six years to the project, filling ten notebooks with news reports and his own outrage and dismay. If he'd been discovered, he would have been executed as a traitor. He told Robert, I could not fight the Nazis in the present as they had the power to steal my voice.

Starting point is 00:01:55 So I decided to fight them in the future. I would give the coming generations a weapon against any resurgence of such evil. My eyewitness account would record the barbarous acts and also show the way to stop them. He pointed to the title. Where Hitler's manifesto had been called Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, Friedrich had called his diary Mein Widerstand, or My Opposition. He said, This was my resistance to terror and lawlessness, my way to give your generation, and generations to come, a weapon of truth against any repeat of such terror.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Robert promised to find a way to bring it to the public. Friedrich Kellner had begun his career as a supervisor of law records and court accounting. He'd married Paulina in 1913, and in World War I, he came to question his role in the conflict. He was ready to defend his own country with his life, but in the trenches, he found himself attacking another. It seemed impossible to reconcile his actions country with his life, but in the trenches he found himself attacking another. It seemed impossible to reconcile his actions with the notion that he should treat others as he would wish to be treated. He was wounded in 1914 and recuperated in Mainz, where he and Paulina raised their son during the Weimar Republic, the first period of German democracy.

Starting point is 00:03:01 Friedrich became a local organizer in the Social Democratic Party, handing out leaflets and campaigning openly against the rise of the Nazis. At rallies, he would hold up Mein Kampf and say, Gutenberg, your printing press has been violated by this evil book. But Hitler was vowing to restore Germany's greatness, and Friedrich found that the people around him were listening. Paulina's sisters and their husbands said the country needed a strong man to restore order, and her brother admitted to voting for national socialists friedrich called them victims of nazi propaganda in the courthouse he found that attorneys and judges were taking hitler's views seriously when friedrich said that hitler would start another war a chief inspector grew angry

Starting point is 00:03:39 at him and a colleague warned him to be careful what he said as no one knew who was turning toward warned him to be careful what he said, as no one knew who was turning toward Hitlerism. Out of caution, in 1933, he moved his family to Laubach, 40 miles north of Frankfurt, where no one knew of his political activities. Two weeks later, Hitler was sworn in as chancellor. Friedrich wrote, Who carries the blame? The people without a brain. To trample democracy with one's feet and give power to a single man over almost 80 million people is so terrible that one can really tremble over the things that will come. In Laubach, he became the courthouse administrative manager, a position that gave him some security against Nazi officials. He would need it. In Laubach,

Starting point is 00:04:14 the National Socialists had got more than 60% of the vote, and they ruled the town council. The professional class urged the Kellners to join the Nazi party. They were not obliged to do so, but the town's population was only 1,800, and their refusal was conspicuous. In Friedrich's words, the people supporting Hitler were like a herd of cows electing their own butcher. He wrote, too many of my fellow men allowed themselves to be deluded by National Socialist propaganda. What our ancestors had fought to achieve over centuries was forfeited in 1933 by inane carelessness, incomprehensible gullibility, and the damned blasé attitude of the German middle class. He began to witness the brutal harassment of Jews, even in school classrooms. Friedrich probably

Starting point is 00:04:56 didn't know any Jews personally, they made up less than one percent of the population, but he believed that all people were the same and was angry that racial propaganda could stir up such hatreds so easily. He began to write essays to record what he was seeing. On Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, Jews were beaten where they were found, the contents of their homes were tossed into the street, and Torah scrolls and books from the synagogue were burned in the marketplace. When both Friedrich and Paulina objected to this, a judge suggested that both of them were under investigation and would be sent to concentration camps, and an investigation was opened into Paulina's ancestry to see whether she had a Jew in her family. Friedrich wrote, If the Jews, who over the centuries contributed demonstrable achievements in the economy for the

Starting point is 00:05:38 total development of the nation, can be made a people without rights, then that is an act unworthy of a cultured nation. The curse of this evil deed will indelibly rest on the entire German people. He wrote his last essay on August 30, 1939. It ended, As a preacher in the wilderness, I felt compelled to write down the thoughts that dominated my mind in this nerve-wracking time so that later, should it still be possible, I could convey a picture of the true reality to my descendants. But just two days after this, Germany invaded Poland and the war began in earnest. Rather than continue his intermittent essays, Friedrich resolved to make a disciplined effort to record the outrages of the Third Reich and the acceptance of Nazism among the German people. He wrote the

Starting point is 00:06:20 first entry that day, and he kept it up until Germany's surrender in May 1945. Throughout, he retained his position in the courthouse, hiding the diary in a secret compartment in the back of his dining room cabinet. From the start, Friedrich and Paulina resisted the war effort in small ways. They turned away a soldier whom they'd been expected to quarter in their apartment and gave little to a collector who came to their door. Paulina refused to join the Nazi Women's League. Even for such small infractions, Friedrich was reported to the Nazi party leader, and in February 1940 he was summoned to Gießen to answer complaints against himself and Paulina. In the midst of this meeting, he glimpsed a paper in a folder that said, Kellner's attitude exerts a bad influence

Starting point is 00:07:00 on the rest of the population, and in our view he should be made to disappear from Laubach. Fortunately, officials in the bureaucracy could not be placed arbitrarily in the Gestapo's hands. They had the right to a trial. Friedrich said he would request a formal hearing that would put the matter before Rudolf Hess, whom Hitler had ordered to review all judgments against officials. His opponents backed down rather than annoy Hess with such a petty dispute. Still, Friedrich was dismayed at how the Nazis' sense of authority was becoming absolute. He wrote, law and justice have disappeared. A month later, on March 22nd, Friedrich was summoned to the town hall for questioning. There, the mayor and the Nazi local group leader, Otto Pott, questioned him about his views on national socialism, Adolf Hitler, and other Nazi leaders.

Starting point is 00:07:45 on National Socialism, Adolf Hitler, and other Nazi leaders. Friedrich had been heard comparing Germany unfavorably to England and America, and he had failed to celebrate the Fuhrer's birthday. Pott said, one more of those and you and your wife will be sent to a concentration camp. Here again, Friedrich threatened to call for a formal trial, and in this one he would submit complaints against his accusers, who he knew had appropriated land wrongfully and failed to pay taxes. The meeting ended, but Pott called Friedrich the most unpatriotic person he'd ever met. Friedrich responded by angrily rolling up his trouser leg and showing him the wound he'd received fighting for the Kaiser. When he got back to the apartment, Friedrich found it had been searched in his absence. Paulina had had to burn an essay he'd been writing to keep it out of the men's hands,

Starting point is 00:08:22 and she'd hid his diary notebook under her sweater and stared them down defiantly during the search. Even after this, Friedrich kept writing, recording the crimes of the Nazi party and the people's willing belief in its propaganda. He wrote, looking over the present situation, one can only be depressed by the thought that since 1933, the vast majority of intellectual leaders, with university professors in the forefront, shoved aside everything they had previously stood up for and taught and devoted themselves entirely to the new political direction. Almost all of them relinquished their own wills and their own reasoning and exalted in a servile and spineless way everything the party prescribed for them. As the Nazis conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France, Friedrich was appalled

Starting point is 00:09:05 that German citizens didn't seem troubled by civilian deaths or the destruction of architectural treasures. He wrote, to the shame of my countrymen, it definitely must be said they are completely dazzled by the military successes. With each of these victories, Friedrich's mood grew darker, though he believed the tide would turn when the United States entered the war. His diary reflects violence on the Eastern Front, which was kept out of official reports, but which Friedrich heard about through soldiers who were home on leave or recuperating in local hospitals. And he wrote about the atrocities in the mental hospital in Hadamar, where people with physical and mental disabilities were being murdered systematically. Because the local

Starting point is 00:09:42 Nazi officials knew his politics, he could undertake no serious acts of resistance himself, but he did distribute leaflets dropped from Allied planes, told friends what he'd learned from BBC broadcasts, and discouraged co-workers from joining the Nazi party. As the war progressed, the regime cracked down on Germans who criticized the leadership or expressed doubts about victory, but he wrote almost every day. His writings show that soldiers returning from Eastern Europe were speaking openly about the massacres of Jews and of Russian prisoners of war. On October 28, 1941, he wrote, a soldier on leave here said he personally witnessed a terrible atrocity in the occupied part of Poland. He watched as naked Jewish men and women

Starting point is 00:10:21 were placed in front of a long, deep ditch and, upon the order of the SS, were shot by Ukrainians in the back of their heads, and they fell into the ditch. Then the ditch was filled in as screams kept coming from it. These inhuman atrocities are so terrible that even the Ukrainians who were used for the manual labor suffered nervous breakdowns. All soldiers who had knowledge of these bestial actions of those Nazi subhuman beings were of the same opinion, that the German people should already be trembling in their shoes because of the coming retribution. There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. At the Normandy landing in June 1944, he wrote in large letters, Endlich, meaning finally, but it would take another year for the Americans and British to press in from the west

Starting point is 00:11:04 while the Russians advanced from the east. To be fair, Laubach was a stronghold of Nazism. The blind obedience that Friedrich railed against was not universal. hold of Nazism. The blind obedience that Friedrich railed against was not universal. He seems not to have been aware, for example, of resistance in the Ruhr industrial region, of the refusal of Bavarian Catholics to remove crucifixes from the walls of their school rooms, or of the courageous women's protests in Berlin in 1943, which we covered in episode 244. But he did write bitterly of the arrogance, obedience, ruthlessness, and brutality he saw around him, charging that, quote, He predicted that a reckoning would come and that Hitler's followers would disavow the stance they'd taken during the war.

Starting point is 00:11:58 He wrote, people will say that they always knew national socialism would end in this manner and that none of them had ever been a national socialist. It's kind of sad that he didn't actually know that there were other Germans who felt like he and his wife did. I mean, that would feel so isolating and you would feel so bitter to think, I mean, that the whole rest of your country is just going along with it. Yeah. It's also ironically unfortunate that in trying to get away from the Nazi influence, he chose a town that was unusually ardent to move to.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Obviously, I guess he must have not realized that when he moved there. Yeah, but it's just that you're right. It makes it all the worse. In March 1945, when the Allies entered German territory, he lamented that it had taken so long to overthrow Nazi rule.

Starting point is 00:12:41 He wrote, the way that leads to the abyss for the German people has come even though the party patriots continue ever to believe and hope. There are still those who do not want to see, who will hope right up to their funeral for a miracle from the Fuhrer. In all other respects, the number of peace lovers grows from hour to hour. The coming generations and the foreign countries will never understand why the German people did not stop the party leaders by force and turn against the party

Starting point is 00:13:05 tyranny so this horrible war could be terminated. On March 29th, as a column of American troops and armored vehicles made its way up the road toward Laubach, Friedrich and Paulina waited in the courthouse basement among other court employees, wounded soldiers, and neighbors, some of whom had shunned them for speaking out against the Nazis and who now worried how the approaching allies would treat them. Friedrich wrote, their sheepish fear gives me pleasure, and I do not pass up the chance to make scornful remarks. The Allies didn't attack. The Kellners emerged from the basement to see an advance guard of tanks, armored cars, trucks, jeeps, and soldiers. He wrote later, for the first time we behold Americans. The soldiers are outstandingly

Starting point is 00:13:44 equipped. Their appearance is remarkably good, well-fed, nothing like the Germans' situation. The Nazis' last hopes came to an end with Hitler's suicide on April 30th, a day before the unconditional surrender on May 7th. Friedrich wrote, On May 7th, Friedrich wrote, Today, naturally, no one wants to claim he had been a genuine Nazi. Everyone hides from responsibility. He took note of all those who had supported Hitler's rise and who he felt shared in the blame for the war. Officers, businessmen, scholars, teachers, and lawyers. People who had overlooked Nazi misdeeds in pursuit of personal gain.

Starting point is 00:14:19 And members of the Nazi party who had sacrificed their honor to a demagogue. On May 8th, he wrote, If now, after the collapse, any of these lackeys of Adolf Hitler has the insolence to want to be considered as a harmless onlooker, then one can only wish he immediately feel the scourge of avenging mankind. Whoever cries about having lost the totalitarian system or wants to resurrect National Socialism is to be treated as an incorrigible lunatic. Afterward, Friedrich accepted the position of first town councilman and deputy mayor. This gave him a substantial role in determining which local members of the Nazi party should be barred from their professions and from public service. Many of his former opponents had been

Starting point is 00:14:58 killed or wounded in the war, and generally he used his diary now for reconciliation rather than revenge. But he did rebuke former Nazis who tried to profit from the Reconstruction. Rejecting a bid from one contractor that November, he wrote, You are a sly businessman. If it had to be, you would step upon corpses. You make contracts with the devil without batting an eye. Whenever necessary, you were an excellent national socialist. Today, that is certainly not the thing to be.

Starting point is 00:15:23 So now you want to prove you were not a Nazi. He also worked on rebuilding the Social Democratic Party in Laubach and became its regional party chairman. The war had been over for 15 years when his American grandson appeared unexpectedly on his doorstep in 1960, and Friedrich first showed him the diary. In 1968, three months before he died, Friedrich put it into Robert's hands. He said that what he'd witnessed in Germany in the 1930s and 40s was happening again in the Soviet Union, and he wanted people to recognize and oppose tyranny in any time or place. Robert promised to find a way to get his words to the public. It took Robert Kellner 40 years to fulfill that promise. A number of museums wanted to add the diary to their collections, but none of them would commit to printing it. It finally came to public attention through the intervention of George

Starting point is 00:16:09 H. W. Bush, the former American president, who put it on display in his presidential library in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of VE Day. That exposure led to its publication, first in Germany and then in the United Kingdom. It caused a stir in Germany as it showed that a mid-level bureaucrat in a remote town had known of the elimination of the Jews as early as October 1939, as well as of the murder of mental patients and the disabled in German hospitals. Historian Lawrence Rees wrote in the Daily Telegraph, Kellner's words thus helped confirm what many academics have long believed, that knowledge of the atrocities the Nazis were committing against the Jews was widespread among the general population. Most Germans may not have

Starting point is 00:16:49 known the details of Auschwitz or the other death camps, but the awareness that something horrible was happening to the Jews was commonplace. He added, this book has vital things to say not just about the history of the war, but what it was to be a decent human being and yet be forced to live through terrible times. Robert Kellner told the Times of Israel, Friedrich knew that people like the Nazis would never lose their thirst for power and absolute rule. The last of the Holocaust survivors will soon depart, but his voice will remain, a new voice to check revisionist historians and Holocaust deniers with an irrefutable account, an account not by a Nazi or a victim of the Nazis, but by an average German citizen who never lost sight of the simple truth that a person always has a choice

Starting point is 00:17:30 between right and wrong, between good and evil. In his preface to the diary, Kellner wrote, readers of the diary will have no difficulty seeing the similarities between Friedrich's world and our own, and with Friedrich they will wonder with alarm why the pillars of civilization are so meager that they can be pulled down by brutes. We have discussed the Scunthorpe problem in a few episodes, most recently in episode 299. This is the problem of obscenity filters not being able to take context into account and thus erroneously blocking innocent words. A few of our listeners wrote to let us know about a very recent instance of this problem.

Starting point is 00:18:22 For example, Diane Harris wrote, Hi Greg and Sharon, I saw a news article you might be interested in related to a favorite subject of mine. I work in IT as a QA engineer, so I find the Scunthorpe problem to be an amusing example of unintended consequences of IT decisions. In October, the U.S.-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology held their annual conference online due to the coronavirus pandemic. During written question and answer sessions, the participants found themselves rather stymied when a built-in profanity filter prevented them from using a number of words that the researchers and students considered to be rather necessary for legitimate scientific

Starting point is 00:19:00 discussions. Words such as pubic, stream, and most amusingly for paleontologists, the word bone. A master's student in biology who attended the event said that such words are frankly ridiculous to ban in a field where we regularly find pubic bones in streams. The rather zealous filter even blocked words such as hell, which led to one researcher having to refer to Hell Creek in Montana as Heck Creek. The event's organizers apologized for the problems and explained that the platform they used to host the event was set up for business or industry events rather than scientific ones, and a spreadsheet of banned words was put online for attendees to add to, so that each word could be

Starting point is 00:19:41 manually unblocked by the platform's programmers. In a Twitter thread about this spreadsheet, participants posted replies such as, Pubis, seriously? What are you going to call it? The Ford of the ischium bone? This is way out of hand. The words sex and sexual were blocked, leading one participant to post, Ah, half my data is on sexual dimorphism. And another wrote, wait a minute, Wang is forbidden? A very common Chinese last name is forbidden? Followed by six question marks. On this last supposed obscenity, Jack Zhang, an assistant professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley,

Starting point is 00:20:20 tweeted that he was disturbed to see that name on the list of banned words, saying, I personally know of several vertebrate paleontologists by that surname. He became even more perturbed when he realized that similar slang terms, such as Johnson, which is a more Western surname, was not blocked, and said, if you're going to censor, censor everything. Censor Johnson so everyone is offended. He did retain a sense of humor about the whole thing, though, and said that he and his colleagues discussing knobs and bones might sound questionable out of context, saying, maybe if you hear a bunch of paleontologists talk in the field, it sounds very dirty,

Starting point is 00:20:54 and we just don't realize it. And the New York Times reported that some of the paleontologists started having fun with the whole thing and were typing in all kinds of words just to see which ones would be blocked. And then one of them created a meme that compared what they were doing with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park that were throwing themselves against an electric fence trying to find the weak spots, which I thought was amusing. on the naughty list, including various words that could be easily used just in standard conversations, such as ball or crack, which would mean that you couldn't really discuss sports or say that someone is on the ball or the ball is in their court, or that you'll take a crack at something or even that there is a crack in something. I get that they'd want to make these online events a safe space for everyone, but I'm not sure that blocking large lists of words is always the best way to go about it.

Starting point is 00:21:51 I wonder whose job that is to make up a big list. And whether they base it on past offenses, or if they just dream up words that they think might offend someone. Yeah, I don't know. And obviously, they don't tailor it depending on who's actually going to be using the platform. It's just a built-in standardized list, which is where they really ran into trouble here with the paleontologists. And thank you to everyone who wrote in about that topic and sent very helpful links, all of which I did end up using. Matt McGilligot wrote about a somewhat related situation. I came across the following story and thought you might be interested. Turns out PayPal is blocking all transactions containing the word tardigrade, although it's apparently not a Scunthorpe

Starting point is 00:22:28 problem. Anyone in the tardigrade Christmas ornament business, for example, is running into trouble. Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates with long plump bodies and four pairs of legs. Also called water bears or moss piglets, many people think they're quite cute, which leads to some merchants selling Tartigrade products. For example, Archie McPhee, a Seattle-based novelty gift seller, sells Tartigrade Christmas ornaments, mints, glow-in-the-dark finger puppets, and squishy stress relievers. However, recently customers and merchants were finding that PayPal was blocking transactions that contained the word Tardigrade, and customers reported receiving the message, this transaction cannot be completed because it violates the PayPal user agreement. At first, it was unclear what the problem with Tardigrade-themed merchandise was.

Starting point is 00:23:16 Two Photon Art, a small company that creates science-based art, zines, and jewelry, tweeted that they had to change the name of one of their enamel pins from Tardigrade to Water Bear because PayPal was holding their payments for the pins, and said they probably think we are sending actual Tardigrades. While Archie McPhee's Director of Awesome said, Our best theory is that they are jealous because Tardigrades are so cute and pretty much indestructible. If not jealousy, why would PayPal hate Tardigrade so much? In the end, it turned out that the problem stemmed from one of the biggest arms dealers in the Balkans

Starting point is 00:23:49 owning a company named Tardigrade Limited. This company is on the sanctions list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, which means that the company is banned from doing business in the U.S. PayPal support tweeted to Archie McPhee, Every transaction that goes through our system is reviewed by our internal security system. Certain words can trigger our security system. Unfortunately, this cannot be overridden. And they suggested that the merchant stop using the word tardigrade, which would mean changing all of their product descriptions, names, URLs,

Starting point is 00:24:20 and search engine tags, and potentially limit customers' ability to find tardigrade items that they're looking for. The merchant did end up doing this with their Christmas ornaments, but complained on Twitter that this is a terrible solution. A Vice article that Matt sent a link to reports that in 2015, PayPal was ordered to pay $7.7 million for 486 violations of OFAC sanctions over the previous several years. So I suppose it's understandable that PayPal is taking a rather conservative approach to the issue. GeekWire reported that PayPal issued a statement saying that the word tardigrade was triggering a manual review of transactions because PayPal has to comply with U.S. government OFAC sanctions,

Starting point is 00:25:01 and that if upon review there is nothing in the payment that indicates it might violate the law, the payment will be processed. So hopefully now these transactions are actually going through, albeit with some delay, rather than being blocked outright. And if you were planning to order Tardigrade Christmas ornaments, for example, I guess just plan to order in advance in case of possible delays. Wouldn't that mean that if you ran an evil company or a starting one, you should give it a really common or appealing name? Just to mess with everybody? Just to put pressure on PayPal to let you through? Well, no, I guess what would happen is you would just mess with everybody, right? Yeah, yeah. Everybody that's using that word in any of their descriptions or anything.

Starting point is 00:25:39 Yeah. Matt ended his email with, P.S. I also learned from this article that there's such a thing as a rubber chicken museum. Finally, some good news from 2020. As always, love the podcast. The time and care that you and Greg put into the show each week is greatly appreciated. And the Vice article that Matt sent mentioned that Archie McPhee, in addition to selling novelties, is home of the rubber chicken museum. So, of course course I had to look into that. R.G. McPhee's website says of its world-famous museum, located in its Seattle store, that since its opening in 2018, this museum has set the rubber chicken world abuzz. Scholars from

Starting point is 00:26:19 more than 10 countries have visited in a quest to discover what makes rubber chickens funny. The exhibit features a scholarly essay by renowned rubber chicken expert Kurt Demare that puts the rubber chicken in its correct historical context. They also boast of having both the world's largest and smallest rubber chicken, as well as a rotating display from the owner's amazing collection of novelties. A post on Atlas Obscura on what they call this quirky little museum says, the museum's meant to do more than elicit a few laughs. It's an educational ode to an iconic comedy staple filled with nuggets of wisdom about the prop. Artwork, memorabilia, and even a

Starting point is 00:26:57 scholarly essay celebrate the plastic crowd pleasers that have been amusing people for centuries. So I got to learn that there's not only a rubber chicken museum, but also apparently a renowned rubber chicken expert. Good to know. I've never thought about it before, but why is that funny? I know. When I was doing this, I was like, are rubber chickens that funny? Maybe they were at one point.

Starting point is 00:27:20 It sounds funny. You don't really see them too often anymore, do you, in comedy sketches or something. And if any of our listeners in the Seattle area discover they have a desire to see the world's largest or smallest rubber chicken or just lots of rubber chickens and end up at Archie McPhee's, please do let us know about it. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate how much we learn from our listeners. So if you have any follow-up or feedback for us, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation, and he has to try to work out what is going on, asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:28:04 This puzzle comes from Scarlett Casey, a long time and somewhat younger fan of our show. Scarlett's puzzle is, A long time ago, there was a lowly keeper of the square, infamous for always having the wrong idea about money. Townsfolk would gather from far and wide to offer the man two coins, one being greater in value than the other. However, the man would always take the coin with the lowest value.

Starting point is 00:28:28 How come the fool always took the lower value coin? Is it important that he's the keeper of the square? No. Okay. No. So there's a man who always takes the, given a choice, always takes the coin of lower value. Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:41 Given the choice of two. Yes. Does he intend to use it for a purpose other than spending no i mean does have something to do with the physical characteristics the right size for something he wants to do with it no good good thought is he trying to avoid something i don't know what that would even be i don't think so okay so the two is there any difference between the coins apart from their value i I guess is what I'm asking? No.

Starting point is 00:29:08 Okay, so if I offer him two coins, he'll always accept the one of lesser value? Yes. Do I need to know more about why people are offering the coins, anything like that? To solve the puzzle? I don't think so. Just because they think it's amusing that he does this. That's it.

Starting point is 00:29:23 Or they think it's interesting, yeah. But there's nothing that happens afterward, like that correct would you say this is a misunderstanding that he doesn't realize that's what he's doing no okay and you say his occupation his position doesn't matter right are there other significant people involved besides him and these other miscellaneous people i like the puzzle it's nice and simple okay let's say i do this let's say i approach this man with two coins okay the only difference between them is that one is worth more than the other i give him a choice of he can take one of the coins right and he consistently chooses to take the one of lesser

Starting point is 00:30:01 value correct all right why would you do that? All right. I'll ask obvious questions. Does he plan to spend the coins that he gets? Let's assume he does. And does so successfully. Okay. So he winds up with a collection then, I guess, of lesser coins? Sure.

Starting point is 00:30:25 And you say he's not... I asked if he was trying to avoid something because I think maybe he's trying to avoid going over some total or there's a penalty or something. I can't imagine what that would be. No. No, I don't think it's anything like that. You'd call this rational behavior, though. I would.

Starting point is 00:30:37 He's doing this for a reason. He is. Okay. okay, the reason isn't that he wants to buy things, though, right, would you say? Well, if his goal was to, most people would take the larger coin to say the obvious. Right. Because it's worth more, because then they'd have more value that they can exchange for goods and services. Right.

Starting point is 00:31:01 That's all true? That's all true. So what he's doing seems irrational in the sense that he's willingly taking less value than he might. That's true? Okay. Okay. I guess I'm just sticking with the puzzle.

Starting point is 00:31:15 But there is a rational reason for what he's doing in the bigger picture. But he's not something lateral. There aren't other people. Is the time period important? No. This is all just as abstract as it seems? Sure. What would happen if you offered him two coins or people started offering him two coins and he chose the larger coin. Well, the people would be left with less money. Is that it? That he's very generous? No. Okay. But in the longer term, what might happen? Well, he's taking the lesser coins out of circulation. I don't know if that's thinking too broadly. No. Why do people keep offering? Why do people keep coming up to him and doing this game? Well, you said for their amusement. Yes.

Starting point is 00:32:08 So what would happen if he took the larger coin? Oh, I see. So he's just doing it to keep them coming? Yes. Scarlett said, the man knew if he took the higher value coin, people would soon lose interest and move on. But if he continued to take the lowest value one,

Starting point is 00:32:21 people would continue to give him coins. That makes perfect sense. I thought she worded it all very delightfully, too. So thanks to Scarlett for that very cute and delightfully non-fatal puzzle. And if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to have us try, please send that to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:53 Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll not only support our show, but also get more information on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, outtakes, and peeks behind the scenes. You can find our patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet or see our website for the link at our website you can graze through greg's collection of over 11 000 delightful distractions browse the futility closet store learn about the futility closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered if you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:33:30 All our music was written and performed by Greg's phenomenal brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 319-Friedrich Kellner's Opposition

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