How to Teach an Alien to Make a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich

inside 

And who wants that?

I really like my surgeon. I think she’s brilliant and I’m lucky.

And let’s keep in mind I might be a literalist. I once called my mother-in-law to ask her thoughts about how long I should shake my baby’s formula since the directions were to Shake very, very well.

Not Before Using.

Not Before Using.

Not even Before Using, but Before Using.

This is serious stuff. Somewhere, experts in charge of creating nourishment for humans, baby ones, concluded that this food needed to be shaken well beyond the norms of any food in modern society.

I wouldn’t risk my baby’s health for whatever the consequences of shaking the formula only well would bring.

To this day, 30 years later, mention this story and my mother-in-law goes into a full-on, can’t-catch-her-breath, hold-her-gut hysteria. “Oh, C’mon!” I say. “I was worried about your grandson!”

And in my defense, why couldn’t they just write Shake for Three Minutes (or five, or nine or whatever very, very well means. We still don’t know) and save this young mother confusion?

But, I digress.

Just for fun, if your doctor gave you these instructions, how would you go about using the cotton and Vaseline?

It didn’t feel like a “just do this” situation. It didn’t feel correct.

Let me explain…

In college, our communications professor gave us broadcasting students the assignment to create a video teaching an alien how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.²

Technically, Curse of Knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to not know what you didn’t know once, now that you know it.

So, most students might have a list of instructions like this:

1. Take a slice of bread.
2. Use a knife and spread peanut butter on it.
3. Then spread jelly on the other piece of bread.
4. Put the two slices together and eat it.

Only, the bread is in a wrapper (remove a slice of bread from its wrapper). A knife has a sharp end and a handle (you must indicate which part of the knife to use).

We need more instruction. Remember, we are teaching an alien.

• How do you get the peanut butter out of the jar? 
• And the lid must be removed. You must hold the jar with your left hand (if you’re right-handed) and then turn the lid counter clockwise until the lid is free. Don’t forget to set the lid aside.
• How much peanut butter should you use? 1 tablespoon? The entire jar?
• How far do you spread the peanut butter? To the sides? Down the sides? Keep it in the middle?
• How much jelly? Etc. Etc.
• Which sides of the sandwich should you put together?
• How is it eaten? With a fork and knife? With a spoon? With a crowbar? 
• and so on…

We all need a bit more information to make sure our endeavors, even if it’s just making a sandwich, are successful.

Especially for us literalists.

Cheers to excellent communication!

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1. Hat tip to Dr. Tsai and Kaiser Permanente for the best, most wonderful care.
2. This is a classic exercise in communication. Communicating such an easy task is much harder than you think. So much so, a Google search on this specific topic yields nearly 4 million results. This exercise is used in teaching subjects from computer programming to communication and is taught to all ages, from kindergarteners to university students.