Woo-Kyoung Ahn (Yale psychologist on thinking)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.

[1] I'm Dan Rather, I'm joined by Mr. Mouse.

[2] Via Zoom.

[3] Via Zoom.

[4] Still a party, though.

[5] It's still a party, and you are on the road.

[6] You're in BB.

[7] It's not the same for you, but for me, it's very interesting because I'm on the Missouri River in North Dakota, and then when I come into the Zoom, I'm back in the attic.

[8] Like, I'm leaping back into my real life.

[9] That's fun.

[10] Time travel.

[11] Speaking of time travel, we have an expert on time travel today.

[12] We don't have an expert on time travel.

[13] In fact, we have an expert on thinking.

[14] Ukiung -on.

[15] Ukiung -an is a psychologist and professor at Yale University, and her class on thinking was one of the most popular classes ever to exist at Yale.

[16] And she's basically taken that class that everyone was in line to get into and made a book out of it called Think.

[17] 101, how to reason better to live better.

[18] And you're going to love this episode and you're going to be thinking about it for weeks and weeks and weeks like Monica and I have.

[19] We can't stop thinking about how broken our thinking is, and it's so fun.

[20] And she gives some tips, which is helpful.

[21] Like, it's not just like, oh, no, our brains don't work.

[22] Like, there's some ways around.

[23] And spoiler alert, we felt in love with her.

[24] We were so in love with her by the end.

[25] I love her.

[26] I just want to, like, I just want to go take her class for the rest of my life.

[27] Me too.

[28] I just want to be around her.

[29] Yeah, me too.

[30] We love you, Ukiung -Anne.

[31] So please enjoy this incredibly intriguing episode about thinking.

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[34] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[35] Hello?

[36] Hello, how are you?

[37] So good.

[38] Professor, I want to make sure I'm saying your name correctly.

[39] Yeah, that's the first step.

[40] Is it Wu Kyeong?

[41] Yeah, pretty close.

[42] Actually, I don't know why I put W in the English spelling, but W is silent.

[43] So it's just Wu Kyeong.

[44] Ukiung.

[45] Good to know.

[46] I like it.

[47] And then on?

[48] Yes.

[49] Ukiung on.

[50] Boom.

[51] Did it.

[52] I feel like a pronoun.

[53] Well, welcome to the show.

[54] we're so grateful to have your time.

[55] I'm sure you're busy there.

[56] Are you mid -curriculum at Yale?

[57] It's last month of summer break, and I'm very excited to be here.

[58] I am not teaching next semester either, so I feel like I'm having a very long break right now.

[59] Oh, are you doing research?

[60] Yeah, what are you doing in place of teaching?

[61] I will be doing research, and also next year.

[62] I'll be teaching at the Yale and U .S. in Singapore.

[63] I will be teaching two courses there, which will fulfill my year -long teaching requirement.

[64] Okay, and why have they selected you for that?

[65] You're not from Singapore, are you?

[66] No, I'm not.

[67] I'm from Korea.

[68] Unfortunately, that school is closing, so they were very interested in having some Yale professors to come over and teach.

[69] Okay, so your book, Thinking 101, How to Reason Better to Live Better, right out of the gates, you have a hurdle to overcome, which is I can't imagine most of us think that are thinking as flawed, to begin with, or they're quite comfortable with their thinking.

[70] So how do you first convince people their thinking is worth examining?

[71] I do a lot of class demonstrations, and then before the semester even begins, there's a first assignment that's due within the first week where they have to fill out all this survey with a demo questions, because if I do these demos in the middle of the semester, students kind of get the hang of it, and they start giving the answers that are counterintuitive to them, hoping that that will be now the correct.

[72] answer.

[73] So I collect all the data at the very beginning and then I present those data as we go throughout the semester.

[74] I tried to do that with the book, but I didn't want to shock the readers too much, but I try to give some intuitive examples at the beginning of each chapter.

[75] I don't mind embarrassing myself.

[76] I talk about my mistakes.

[77] I talk about some famous experiments that everybody can relate to.

[78] Well, and I'll just say that your book is in some ways, representation of your class entitled Thinking at Yale, which for a time was the most popular class on campus.

[79] It's a wildly popular that it deserved a book.

[80] I started the book last night because I couldn't sleep.

[81] I was so in.

[82] This is such a hack for people who don't get to go to Yale and don't get to take the most popular class.

[83] You can just read the book or listen to this.

[84] Yeah.

[85] Okay.

[86] So I think our listeners in particular will be familiar with some of the things.

[87] A, one that's kind of ubiquitous in pop culture or in the zeitgeist would be confirmation bias.

[88] Of course, we'll go through it.

[89] But even attribution error, we're kind of obsessed with attribution error around here.

[90] We've talked about it for years once learning about it.

[91] Are we also like Bader Mindhoff is a frequency illusion?

[92] Frequency illusion we're really attracted to.

[93] So just know that the audience you're in front of has some slight awareness.

[94] And I want to get into some of your examples, but first I just am curious, did you read the weirdest people in the world by Joseph Henrik?

[95] No. Okay.

[96] This book blew my mind, and I'll just tell you my background, I was an anthromager at UCLA.

[97] So I think I was already kind of well -versed in challenging how we think.

[98] But in this book, the weirdest people in the world, something we would take for granted is that we think like humans.

[99] We think like all the other humans on planet Earth.

[100] How could we not?

[101] And in this book, it details how peculiar Western thinkers are, how many things that have happened over the centuries that have actually changed the structure of our brain.

[102] I was just blown away by that.

[103] Obviously, you would be more intimately familiar, I'd imagine, as someone who emigrated here.

[104] You must have been struck immediately with a lot of ways that people are thinking different.

[105] No, not really.

[106] I grew up in Korea.

[107] I attended kindergarten in America one year.

[108] And then I went back to Korea.

[109] And I decided to leave Korea and study in the U .S. because the culture fit me better.

[110] the individualistic society, also much less sexism.

[111] So I didn't really find it weird to be in America.

[112] But going back to what you're saying about people being familiar with this thinking errors already, the reason why the course could have been popular was because I talk not just about the experiments or demonstrations of Linda the bank teller, the conjunction fallacy, but I talk about exactly how that happens in real life situations.

[113] And then I also take one more step to explain that it's not because we are stupid or we are weird.

[114] It's just that we have evolved this way, given our limited cognition.

[115] That's the way we can handle this complex world.

[116] And when we do that, we need to compromise.

[117] Sometimes we can make mistakes.

[118] So given that we're kind of evolved and biologically wired to make these mistakes, how can we overcome this?

[119] What are the actionable strategies that we can take?

[120] So those are the three main things that run through my course and also this book as well.

[121] Yeah.

[122] One that blew my mind is you just said individualistic, right?

[123] That's part of this weird acronym in that book, which is in a lot of places, if you were to ask somebody who they are, you're basically asking what their identity is.

[124] They would list brother, son, father.

[125] They would list the ways they are related to other people as opposed to some individual, I'm a carpenter, I'm a graduate.

[126] That right there is an interesting example that we would take for granted.

[127] Yes, I totally get that.

[128] And that was another reason why I left Korea.

[129] The only way that a decent daughter in a decent family can leave the family can move away from the parents was to marry another family.

[130] And I just couldn't do that.

[131] So I just left to America.

[132] Right.

[133] There's one study that I talked about in the book about the cross -cultural differences in terms of taking perspective of other people.

[134] Collective society is kind of weird, too, in some sense.

[135] When you go to a restaurant with a group of people, the person who is most powerful order a dish and everybody else orders the same thing.

[136] They say, I will have the same.

[137] And if I deviate, then you look like you are an outlier.

[138] Yeah.

[139] But what I thought was really interesting in Western society, was they all have to order different things.

[140] It's like if I order something that someone in front of me already order, you have to apologize.

[141] I'm so sorry that I'm doing the same thing.

[142] It's not like we're going to sample everybody's dish anyway, but it feels like you have to be unique and different.

[143] Oh, that's so funny.

[144] It's kind of like if you wear the same outfit as your girlfriend, you're like, oh, no, we can't possibly go out in the same shirt.

[145] I'm so sorry.

[146] Well, that is embarrassing.

[147] Same goals are embarrassing, regardless of the culture, for sure.

[148] But in terms of ordering food, I thought that was kind of interesting.

[149] And what happens in a collective society is that because they have to constantly figure out what others are thinking, they're much better at taking other people's perspective.

[150] So the study that I talk about is that there was an experimenter who has objects placed in a greed, and the experimenter is...

[151] facing the participant on the other side, and they can see which objects are aware on that greed, both of them, but some of the cells are blocked from the experimenter's view.

[152] And then there are blocks, two blocks on that grid.

[153] One block is visible to both the experimenter and the participant.

[154] The other block is shown only to the participant.

[155] And the experimenter gives a direction to the participant, what to do with these objects, move that toy car, one cute, one cell up or move it to the left and so on.

[156] And then the critical item is the block.

[157] Move the block one cell down.

[158] And it should be clear if you're taking the experimenter's perspective which block he was talking about.

[159] And so they measure the looking time, how long it takes for them to search for it, what kind of questions they ask.

[160] Chicago students who are grown up in America, they are much slower than Chinese student who just started at the University of Chicago.

[161] The same kind of education and same background, except that the culture was different.

[162] And the American subjects even say, which blog are you talking about?

[163] They're not even embarrassed to ask that question.

[164] Chinese subjects, only one person out of 20 subjects asked that question.

[165] Oh, wow.

[166] So they're almost automatically take the other person's perspective right there.

[167] Oh, interesting.

[168] Oh, wow.

[169] Yeah.

[170] Okay, so the first one, you decide to tackle is the allure of fluency.

[171] And what is the allure of fluency?

[172] I have to plead ignorance on this one.

[173] It's pretty simple.

[174] If it sounds easy, then they think it's easy.

[175] He suffers from this.

[176] He thinks he can do surgery because he watched his surgery on YouTube.

[177] It's literally that.

[178] Exactly.

[179] I feel like I can cut my dog's hair after watching it for 40 minutes.

[180] None of my family members could recognize our dog after I did that.

[181] Some idea that if you've witnessed something and you understand it, your next logical assumption is, well, then I could do it because I witnessed it.

[182] Yes.

[183] And a book that's so easy to read, they think it was so easy to write as well.

[184] Maybe the person must have just written it from the beginning to the end without any stumbling.

[185] It's an illusion.

[186] Another reason why I decided to write this book was my daughter was a student at Yale, and she was not allowed to take my course, although she could have benefited.

[187] so much, and I could do all the nagging to her through the class that I couldn't do at home.

[188] They call that sub -tweeting, by the way, like when you're not actually tagging the person, but we know who you're talking to.

[189] Yale does not prohibit professor's children taking their own courses, but they strongly discourage it, of course.

[190] So I said, okay, I'll just write the whole book for my daughter.

[191] So this illusion of fluency was because she was going through job interviews.

[192] And I did not want her to feel like she can't just say things eloquently without having actually practice exactly what she was going to say because that's the common mistake we make.

[193] We feel like, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do this.

[194] That sounds fine.

[195] I can probably just win.

[196] No, as you know, as an actor, that's not how it works.

[197] I mean, you can't play violin just by watching people playing violin for hundreds of hours.

[198] Right, right.

[199] You have to actually do it and practice it, get the muscle memory, do all those things.

[200] There's a good example of the dancing in your book at the beginning of your class.

[201] Yes, so that's how I demonstrated.

[202] The actual experiment was done with the Michael Jackson's moonwalk, but, you know, Michael Jackson has some issues.

[203] Some students might be sensitive to that.

[204] So I changed to BTS to be also more current, and I showed just like a six seconds clip of the song.

[205] And that choreograph is supposed to be an easier one, relatively speaking.

[206] And they watched it over and over and again.

[207] And I take the volunteer, come out if you think you can do it.

[208] And then they come out and do it and then nobody can do it.

[209] They all fall apart.

[210] It's a complete illusion.

[211] How do you course correct for that?

[212] Because, by the way, I'm still vulnerable to it.

[213] Because honestly, and I just sent Monica a video yesterday.

[214] I tell her I can do surgery because surgery is just power tools.

[215] And I'm great with power tools.

[216] I've built a lot of things.

[217] You got a drill, you put it in the bone.

[218] I can do this.

[219] Pull teeth, I can do it.

[220] Send her a video of a knee surgery.

[221] I'm like, this guy's holding a electric power drill.

[222] Why can't I do that?

[223] So how do I address that?

[224] Do the surgery.

[225] I would love to.

[226] It will teach you right away that you can't do it.

[227] Okay, I got bad news for you, professor.

[228] I removed a couple of abscess.

[229] earrings out of Monica's ears with all my power tools and hand tools, and by God, she healed up in a day or two.

[230] They did do a good job.

[231] I wouldn't necessarily put that at the same level as a knee surgery.

[232] I had to cut them out, Professor.

[233] I had to irrigate, and I had to put some anti -bacterial on it, and I did all those things, and she's healthy as a horse.

[234] So would that be confirmation bias?

[235] Maybe we just eased gently into, I got one piece of data.

[236] I'm going to build my whole life around.

[237] Maybe you can't do that much, but not the knee surgery.

[238] So you know that, right?

[239] I don't know if I do.

[240] She's so worried that this is real, and it is real.

[241] So to overcome the fluency effect, my prescription to that was you just have to try it up.

[242] It was like, you know, just do the BTS dance.

[243] If you think you can do it, just do it.

[244] And it's the same thing with the knowledge, too.

[245] So there's a phenomenon called the illusion of an explanatory death.

[246] So if we ask people, do you know how toilet works?

[247] You think you know how a toilet works?

[248] We're lucky in that we just had an episode on toilets.

[249] I'm not kidding you.

[250] So we happen to know the difference between the German toilets, the European toilets, and the American toilets.

[251] But granted, we're a weird people to ask.

[252] Let's do a different one.

[253] Do you know how a helicopter works then?

[254] Yes.

[255] I don't.

[256] And then in an experiment, subjects say, well, I don't quite know like an expert, but I know a lot of it, right?

[257] there's something rotating around, so they give the intermediate rating.

[258] And then you just ask them, can you write down how it actually works?

[259] Then they realized, oh, I did not really know what's going on.

[260] And then you were even quiz with even more delicate questions, like how does a helicopter move up and then start going forward?

[261] How does it change directions?

[262] And all this question, and they realized, oh, gosh, I had no idea how a helicopter work.

[263] So that's how to break the illusion.

[264] And that can pervading lots of political situations as well.

[265] They think they know how climate change is happening or not happening.

[266] They're both very confident about the explanations.

[267] And when you're talking to only your in -group, you don't have to explain it.

[268] But then it's only when you have to talk to the other group, the people who have different views.

[269] That's when you have to really spell out exactly why you think climate change is not happening.

[270] And that's the only time you can realize that you had an illusion of your knowledge.

[271] Do you know when I find this most common is I cannot tell you how often I hear people either reference when they're talking or writing about our forefathers in the Constitution.

[272] And my first thought is horse shit.

[273] No one has read the Constitution.

[274] All these people who are constantly referencing the Constitution have almost zero knowledge of the Constitution or zero knowledge of the founding fathers.

[275] They have a theme they believe they agree with the founding fathers, but they don't have any knowledge of any of those things.

[276] That's a perfect example.

[277] I will use in my next lecture.

[278] It's like the dudes getting pulled over by the police, too.

[279] They're like, you don't have a right to they're all of a sudden, they're constitutional lawyers.

[280] They know all their rights.

[281] Well, no, you don't.

[282] You've heard they can't do X, Y, or Z, and that's your full breadth of the knowledge.

[283] Okay, I just want to make a commitment right now.

[284] We have a fact check at the end of each episode.

[285] in an effort to check our thinking, I am going to, without any preparation, explain how a helicopter works, just so you know.

[286] So I read this in your book yesterday, and you used the specifics.

[287] How does a toilet work?

[288] How does a helicopter work?

[289] One other thing.

[290] And I was like, oh, no, Dax is going to read this, and he's going to immediately be like, I do know how all these things work because he actually does.

[291] He does have a very high mechanical knowledge of things.

[292] So I was like, we need a better example.

[293] Well, I think I'm victim of, this seems to parallel a little bit, the Dunning Krueger effect.

[294] Would we agree?

[295] Okay, do you want to tell people what that is?

[296] Because I think sometimes you're right.

[297] In my in -group, I'm a mechanical genius.

[298] Now, you put me with some people at an actual engineering school, I'm probably going to look like a bozo.

[299] But within my group, all of a sudden I start pontificating on all these things.

[300] You know what?

[301] It's funny is I'm just actually having the experience right now.

[302] Is that Dunning Kruger effect?

[303] I said, yeah, that sounds familiar.

[304] I think I know what that is.

[305] And then when you just said, explain it.

[306] Oh, gosh.

[307] Oh, this is great.

[308] Oh, my gosh.

[309] This is so fun.

[310] The person who knows the least talks the most.

[311] Generally, there's some inverse proportion to when people know the least they seem to talk the most on the subject is my kind of cursory knowledge of it.

[312] That's another illusion that I confess to my students.

[313] You think I know everything, but I just reviewed all my notes.

[314] right before the class.

[315] It's not like it's always in my head all the time.

[316] Yeah.

[317] Okay.

[318] The other book I was wondering if you had read was Behave, that book by Robert Sapolsky that's out.

[319] What I loved about the weirdest people in the world was recognizing how as a Westerner I have a very specific thing I have to be cognizant of.

[320] And then I think in Behave, just one of the things I really responded to was if you show subjects in an experiment a photograph of a human being that is in their outgroup.

[321] The amygdala, which is responsible for anxiety, fear, and aggression, it is triggered before any other part of your brain can do any kind of thinking.

[322] Right.

[323] And that's just something we're defenseless against.

[324] That's, as you pointed out, that's evolution.

[325] That's how we're made.

[326] And now we have to have a lot of tools to come back from that, don't we?

[327] Yes, we do.

[328] Great book.

[329] Okay, confirmation bias.

[330] How we can go wrong when trying to be right.

[331] What's some good examples of us experiencing this.

[332] Okay, here's a good one.

[333] I don't know whether you're familiar with the 246 task.

[334] That's kind of classic task for confirmation bias.

[335] The 246 task?

[336] Please tell me. You guys are too smart.

[337] This demo might not work.

[338] You're going to kind of play a little bit dumb.

[339] What's great is the listener might not know.

[340] I won't know.

[341] And then if I know, I will wow them and they'll think I'm a professor.

[342] So it'll serve everyone.

[343] You, the audience, and my own ego, okay?

[344] Okay.

[345] Okay.

[346] So I have a rule in my mind, and you need to figure out what that rule is.

[347] And the rule is about the relationship between numbers.

[348] The sequence 246 fits with this rule.

[349] The way we're going to play this game is, you give me another sequence, another set of three numbers.

[350] And I tell you whether it fits with a rule or not.

[351] Okay.

[352] If you think you figure out what the rule is, you tell me what it is.

[353] If you want to test more, we can continue.

[354] So give me three numbers.

[355] 14, 16, 18.

[356] It fits with the rule.

[357] Okay.

[358] 22, 24, 26.

[359] 22, 24, 26.

[360] It fits with the rule.

[361] And you guys are acting just like subjects.

[362] Yes.

[363] Going well.

[364] Okay.

[365] Yes.

[366] Okay.

[367] So now I can question what the rule is in your mind or the pattern.

[368] You can continue if you want or you can announce what your hypothesis is.

[369] Okay.

[370] So, Alex, I'm ready to ring in.

[371] What is adding two to each consecutive integer?

[372] That's not the rule.

[373] Okay, so let me ask you another one.

[374] 1921, 23.

[375] If it's with a rule.

[376] Holy smokes.

[377] 19, I said, 21, 23.

[378] So it's not something divisible by two.

[379] It's not counting by two.

[380] It's not odd numbers.

[381] Well, yeah, but we don't know it yet.

[382] Rob's giving us hands.

[383] Now there's three of us on the job, and we still haven't gotten it.

[384] But hold on.

[385] By the way, this experiment can go for 15 minutes if I don't stop it.

[386] 2, 4 ,6.

[387] So now I'm also just thinking about the work.

[388] words, 24, 6, in writing.

[389] You've got a consonant, you've got a consonant, and then six, you have a consonant.

[390] So it could just be any numbers that start with a consonant.

[391] How about 8, 10, 12?

[392] If it's with the rule.

[393] Oh, fuck.

[394] So it's not a consonant thing.

[395] Let me give you a hint.

[396] This is an example of a confirmation bias.

[397] So what are you supposed to do?

[398] Okay, Rob wants us to try something that's not two apart.

[399] He's meddled into this, and I'm going to do it.

[400] Okay, so 1, 913.

[401] That's a great one.

[402] It fits with the rule.

[403] So it's just any three numbers is the rule.

[404] No, it's not that bad.

[405] All you're thinking in my mind now is any three numbers.

[406] The pattern is three numbers.

[407] Yeah, you went a little bit way too abstract.

[408] Do you want to continue or?

[409] Of course I do.

[410] Yeah, then we could spend two hours.

[411] You're going to point out how flawed our thinking is in many other areas and it'll be fun.

[412] So let's learn now what the rule was.

[413] The rule is any increasing numbers.

[414] What was the one that didn't work?

[415] I never descended in order.

[416] She's right.

[417] Exactly.

[418] So the problem is if you keep on trying to confirm your hypothesis by presenting the examples that you think fit with your hypothesis, you will never find this rule.

[419] So 1 .9 .13 was a great example because you tried to disconfirm your hypothesis.

[420] Of it being by two.

[421] Exactly.

[422] Exactly.

[423] You could get out of that rule.

[424] So what does this have to do with real life?

[425] Bloodletting is my example.

[426] Do you know what it is?

[427] Yes.

[428] In medieval times, they were.

[429] would heal you by getting rid of some of that poisonous blood?

[430] Exactly.

[431] And that was practiced in the Western culture all the way until George Washington time, like 2 ,000 years.

[432] I just read his biography.

[433] That might have been what killed him.

[434] He got like half of his blood drained at the end.

[435] Exactly.

[436] And by the time George Washington was around, we already figured out the earth is round and the sequence of the pie and people are very smart.

[437] How could they be still practiced in this bloodletting?

[438] It's because whenever someone got sick, they did the bloodletting because they believe it's going to work.

[439] And people do recover.

[440] I mean, because we have immune system and people spontaneously recover.

[441] So they kept seeing that and they said, okay, I'm going to just stay with the bloodletting.

[442] So nobody had tried not doing the bloodletting when they're sick.

[443] If you had another group of people without bloodletting, they will figure not that the proportion of recovery is essentially the same or maybe worse with the bloodletting.

[444] It's a correlation and causation.

[445] So there's a lot of this alternative medicine thing that they'd say had not been scientifically tested.

[446] You know, I swear by Echinacea whenever I catch cold.

[447] And I do get better with Echinacea, of course.

[448] Thus far.

[449] Although it's questionable whether it actually works.

[450] I can't take a risk.

[451] Don't you put it in the category of worst case it doesn't.

[452] work, but it doesn't harm me. So for the risk -reward analysis, there's really no risk.

[453] So if you're wrong, you didn't pay a price other than what it costs.

[454] Exactly.

[455] So it can be that way, but when it's applied to the society, it can have a great harm.

[456] So for instance, if you think that men are better than women in science and just only continue hiring men and they do a good job, they have no data that all humans can be good at science.

[457] Right.

[458] The study that I cover has to do with finding out your genetic risks for certain disorders and how that can actually affect the way you think about yourself because of the confirmation bias.

[459] So in that study, we made up a saliva test and we told the participants that this is supposed to detect your genetic risks for major depression.

[460] Did you also work on the AUD study that's similar to this, the alcohol use disorder?

[461] Yes, that just came out, but it's not in the book.

[462] I don't know how you know about that.

[463] Because I watched the video with, I assume, your co -collaborator announcing the results.

[464] I'm an addict, so I'm fascinated, of course, by this topic.

[465] So that's a different side, but I will talk about the depression study first.

[466] So it contained mouthwash.

[467] We mixed in a lot of sugar into that.

[468] And subjects are asked to rinse their mouth with.

[469] it and spit it out.

[470] And then they had to put this test strip underneath their tongue and report what color they see and enter there on the computer.

[471] And then the computer gives them feedback.

[472] That means you have elevated levels of genetic risks for major depression.

[473] You know, so there are two different groups of subjects.

[474] One group randomly assigned.

[475] They were told that that means you have genetic risks.

[476] That means you don't have genetic risks.

[477] And after that, we administer the Bex Depression inventory, which is a measure.

[478] of depression.

[479] So we asked them, how depressed were you in the past two weeks?

[480] How was you're eating?

[481] How is their sleeping pattern?

[482] How anxious?

[483] How pessimists you are and so on?

[484] And these are large number of groups who are randomly assigned to one of the two grows.

[485] I mean, we have no idea what went on in their lives, of course, in the past two weeks.

[486] But because they're randomly assigned, there's no reason to expect that one girl particularly had a worse two weeks than the other girl.

[487] But for the people who received the feedback that they don't have genetic risks, their average score on the BDI2 was below the cutoff for mild depression.

[488] For the one who tested positive, sort of positive, their average score was significantly greater than the cutoff for the mild depression.

[489] So we could create the mild depression within three minutes with this simple task.

[490] Wow.

[491] And that's an example of a confirmation bias because when you start believing that, oh, I have a genetic risk for depression.

[492] And then when you're thinking about past two weeks, you are selectively retrieving only the ones that conform your hypothesis.

[493] You know, everybody had bad and good things happening in their life.

[494] But once you do that, then you actually now start believing that you are depressed.

[495] Yeah, you singularly focus on proof for your hypothesis at the exclusion of counter evidence, right?

[496] You become blind to the conflicting data.

[497] Yes.

[498] So I had a follow -up question about this.

[499] And again, as you say, you have a new study that does a similar thing with alcohol use disorder, which, by the way, just to give you a scale of how many people suffer from this, 14 .4 million people with an 88 ,000 annual deaths resulting from it.

[500] So, serious thing.

[501] If people found out, fake found out, that they did not have the genetic markers for alcoholism, yet they had the exact same symptoms as the people who were told they did have a disposition.

[502] They have identical symptoms, but now one group will evaluate.

[503] those symptoms as irrelevant, even if they are showing symptoms that would normally classify you as a problem drinker, and vice versa.

[504] Huh, interesting.

[505] My question was, where do you think this bizarre faith in genetic testing came from?

[506] My theory is that we are conflating DNA in a criminal case with genetic testing.

[507] Like, that's the one thing we've learned is absolute.

[508] If your DNA is on the murder weapon, there's a one in three billion chance.

[509] it's not this person.

[510] Is that because how DNA was commonly introduced to us that we have this weird association with, it's absolutism?

[511] So the common misconception seems to be this.

[512] There are actually disorders that are based on a single gene, like Down syndrome or the famous breast cancer.

[513] Braca.

[514] Yeah, what's her name?

[515] She removed her breasts because of that.

[516] Angelina Jolie, maybe?

[517] Yes, thank you.

[518] Mental disorders are never based on.

[519] not a single gene.

[520] Not even schizophrenia?

[521] No. Okay.

[522] Never a single gene.

[523] They, of course, have genetic bases.

[524] There's hereditary components, but they are multiple genes, and also there can be genes that counteract the power of the other genes as well.

[525] And most importantly, there are environments that changes the genetic expression for things like mental disorder, depression, or drinking behaviors.

[526] This cannot possibly be because of just the genes.

[527] People have hard time understanding that everything is interacting.

[528] They just want just one magic answer to it.

[529] It's the gene.

[530] I have a gene or I don't have a gene.

[531] Therefore, I am invincible.

[532] I can just drink as much as I want.

[533] Or they have the gene and now they're probably hypercritical of any weird.

[534] They could have set off a false sense of evaluation as well.

[535] Yes, exactly.

[536] But the way to deal that is to reverse the question that you ask yourself.

[537] Instead of asking, how unhappy am I, then you're going to retrieve all the unhappy thoughts, right?

[538] Yeah.

[539] You can ask yourself, how happy am I?

[540] Oh, what an easy hack.

[541] Yeah.

[542] Then you're going to start retrieving all the happy events.

[543] So if you want to ask them both ways, and then average them up, at least.

[544] Yeah.

[545] We'll never know what the truth is, but at least you're going to approximate that by balancing.

[546] Oh, man, that's a really good.

[547] cool hack.

[548] How happy are you?

[549] And you can do it to everything.

[550] How successful am I?

[551] How rich am I?

[552] How educated am I?

[553] Because there's going to be a lot of data in both directions.

[554] So that's actually one of the experiment that was done to rectify this 246 task.

[555] And interestingly, they use the category names Dax and Med. There's one category named, spelled D -A -X.

[556] No. No. Yes.

[557] Yes, it's in the book.

[558] Oh, my gosh.

[559] That's exciting for you.

[560] And Meg?

[561] Med, M -E -D, but we can call it Monica.

[562] Yeah, I like that.

[563] Really quick.

[564] Where did you get this name, Dax?

[565] No, it's not my experiment.

[566] Oh, okay, okay.

[567] Someone else did it.

[568] Someone else, they tried really, really hard.

[569] How can we fix this problem with a two -for -six task?

[570] I mean, they tried with Harvard students.

[571] They were stuck.

[572] Some had to even go to the psychiatric ward with the ambulance or something.

[573] I don't know whether the experiment was the cause of that nervous breakdown.

[574] Yeah.

[575] These college kids are so high -strung these things.

[576] That was in 1960s.

[577] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[578] What's up, guys?

[579] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

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[581] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[597] It looks like a very simple task.

[598] Why can't they get this right?

[599] It's so easy.

[600] Other people had tried to fix it.

[601] So they said, okay, let's take advantage of this confirmation bias.

[602] Instead of testing just one hypothesis, why don't we let them test two hypotheses?

[603] So now you have to figure out the rule for Dax and rule for Monica.

[604] Oh, wow.

[605] Two for six fits with Dax.

[606] That belongs to Dax category.

[607] And then they're going to say, okay, it's an even numbers increasing by two, right?

[608] Then now you realize, okay, now I have to figure out what is Monica then.

[609] But we know she's different.

[610] We've got to throw away the first one altogether.

[611] So then you said, oh, maybe.

[612] Maybe it's the odd numbers increasing by two.

[613] So you said to test, to confirm their hypothesis about Monica, you give the rule of one three five.

[614] And the experimenter says, actually, that's a dex.

[615] That's not Monica.

[616] And that forces you to disconfirm your hypothesis about X. Wow.

[617] Huh.

[618] That's so cool.

[619] These are fun.

[620] They're so fun.

[621] This is like puzzles and riddles.

[622] Yes, it's like an IQ test.

[623] It's very entertaining.

[624] I like challenging how you think.

[625] It's fine.

[626] Yeah, it is.

[627] Going back to men, women, in the science thing, if your hypothesis was what makes a good scientist, if you think that was a white chromosome, then you need to now figure out what makes bad scientist.

[628] So you might think that it's an X, X, X, chromosome.

[629] To confirm the hypothesis, you hire a woman, and she might do a great job in science.

[630] That will disconform your hypothesis.

[631] Yes.

[632] So that's how it works.

[633] And then you'll feel, threatened and you'll figure out a different way to subjugate her.

[634] She's too powerful.

[635] That's a different chapter.

[636] Okay.

[637] Now, your third chapter is about the challenge of casual attribution.

[638] Causal attribution, not casual.

[639] Oh, causal.

[640] I'm dyslexic.

[641] I apologize.

[642] Causal.

[643] I know this is attribution error.

[644] So this is my first time with the causal.

[645] By the way, many of the.

[646] subject in my experiment, sign up for my causal reasoning experiment because they misread it as a casual reasoning experiment.

[647] Sure.

[648] Yeah, it almost entails maybe like a hookup, casual hookups.

[649] Okay, this one I love, because I suffer from it so much.

[650] And I'm hoping that after you tell us about it, I might have another layer to it.

[651] Will you lay out for us the challenge of causal attribution?

[652] Can you lay out how this would work in the real world?

[653] The example that I use in the book was whether Woodrow Wilson catching the Spanish flu could have been the cause for Holocaust.

[654] Oh, my.

[655] Some historians say that it's because President Wilson attended that Paris Peace Conference.

[656] He was going to put a lenient punishment over Germany.

[657] He was very strong on that because of the Spanish flu.

[658] he got weakened and so the British and the French people won and they gave a very harsh punishment on Germany and as a result, Germany couldn't handle it so they caused the World War II again and the Holocaust.

[659] It feels like a stretch.

[660] Yes, but anyways, okay, let's continue.

[661] Some people might buy this argument, some might not.

[662] So in judging this, how are we going to figure out what caused what?

[663] Yes.

[664] And the biggest challenge is that we will never find out, what the true cause is.

[665] That's a given.

[666] We have an illusion that we figured out what caused what.

[667] We are very certain about that.

[668] That could be because of the fluency effect.

[669] We just saw it happening in front of our eyes.

[670] Yeah.

[671] Or a variety of other reasons.

[672] But we use these other indirect cues.

[673] The chapter talks about what cues we use for the causal attributions, but they never guarantee what the true cause is.

[674] Number one, because we cannot go back in time and watch it whether that was true.

[675] But number two, most importantly, there are many other interacting causes.

[676] What is the cause of the event?

[677] That's a subjective point.

[678] Famously, the plane crashes are always four or five system failures.

[679] They're never just weather.

[680] They're never just mechanical.

[681] They're never pilot error.

[682] Yeah.

[683] Don't humans have a predisposition to try to make sense of the past?

[684] We already have a leaning that we feel scared in the world.

[685] It's unpredictable.

[686] And we think if we understand and what got us here, we will better be able to foresee what's coming.

[687] Is that the driving force of this?

[688] Perfect.

[689] You were a great student if you're taking my course.

[690] Oh, my God.

[691] Good job.

[692] Yale.

[693] The reason why we engage in causal reasoning is to control the future.

[694] When bad things happen to us, we want to understand why so we don't repeat it.

[695] When good things happen, we also want to know why so that we can repeat that.

[696] So it's all about control.

[697] Sometimes people tend to give a blame or credit.

[698] on things that they can control when, in fact, that's not the most powerful cause of the event.

[699] So the clear example of this is the victim blaming themselves.

[700] So when they get raped, they may feel like oh, I should not have gone to that party or I should not have smiled at that person.

[701] These are all the things that she could have controlled herself.

[702] And can potentially control in the future.

[703] Don't go to that place.

[704] Don't look at people in the eyes.

[705] Exactly.

[706] So instead of blaming the perpetrator, you end up blaming yourself.

[707] That's one of the reasons why victims can blame themselves.

[708] Wow.

[709] That makes so much sense.

[710] Yeah, it does.

[711] So I kind of talked about examples of the causal reasoning fallacies.

[712] Another of my favorite experiment is this.

[713] Let's say Monica and Dex, you toss a coin.

[714] Dex goes first and then Monica goes next.

[715] And if both ends up with heads or both ends up with tails, then I'll give you $5 ,000.

[716] But if you don't, you can't have any money.

[717] Dax goes first.

[718] It was heads.

[719] Monica goes next.

[720] Turns out to be tails.

[721] Whose fault is this?

[722] Yeah.

[723] All right.

[724] Yeah, yeah.

[725] Of course.

[726] I mean, your brain says Monica.

[727] She was supposed to follow suit.

[728] Yes.

[729] We couldn't have changed mine, but hers was still a variable.

[730] Even though there was no causal connection between you, you're tossing, and Monica's tossing at all.

[731] And that's what happens watching the sports games.

[732] Yes.

[733] You get it, right?

[734] Yeah, they'll say this kicker, won or lost the game.

[735] It's like, well, no, the game had already been won or lost before that person got in that situation.

[736] Yeah, yeah.

[737] When the real causes are just all lined up way before that, yeah.

[738] So we can just focus on the most recent event like that.

[739] We tend to do this when we look at the end of the river crime data, right?

[740] We see someone commit a crime and then all we want to do is label the blame.

[741] That person was at fault.

[742] They've committed a crime.

[743] We want to ignore all the many forces that led to that person committing a crime.

[744] Exactly.

[745] And the end of relationships.

[746] I think that's common in that.

[747] Like you take the last moment or the last thing as the reason when it's a relationship long amount.

[748] She cheated or I cheated or they cheated.

[749] It's like, well, what the hell got us to the point where someone was cheating?

[750] Yeah.

[751] Because we can never figure out what the true cause is.

[752] And especially there are problems that are just so complex that there's no way you can figure out what the cause was.

[753] But then you keep on thinking about it.

[754] The classic example of that is, why me?

[755] Why is this happening to me?

[756] Question.

[757] I have an imposter syndrome.

[758] I'm at stage four.

[759] It's like a running joke in my family among my friends.

[760] I could always try to figure out what cause that.

[761] It might be my mom who's always critical growing up, or it could be the pessimistic personality that runs in my family.

[762] or it could be because I skipped one grade at school and I was like dealing with older students or right after college I came to United States not being able to speak fluent English and that could not have done much good to my self -esteem.

[763] There are many, many other causes.

[764] None of these can be changed anyway at this point.

[765] If I keep on thinking about why do I have low self -sisting, why am I this way?

[766] And I'm not finding any solutions and I just keep on ruminating.

[767] And when you're ruminating, you bring up the bad memories.

[768] And you're reliving negative events all over again.

[769] And you're not solving any problems.

[770] I might be reminded of what my mom said when I came home with the math score of 88 or something.

[771] How dare you?

[772] I don't accept them.

[773] Oh, yes, totally unacceptable.

[774] So that's when you have to really stop try to figure out what the causes are and just distance yourself and take a different perspective about the whole thing.

[775] Okay, so this is really juicy advice because I agree with everything you've just said and it seems un pragmatic to keep ruminating.

[776] To your point, you're only reminding yourself of all the reasons that you feel this way and reconfirming that you should feel this way on some level.

[777] Is this an anti -psychoanalysis position?

[778] Because I do think there is very very, in first understanding what happened so that you can then identify and label, oh, this is just that thing, in a cognitive behavioral sense, oh, this is just that story, and I now need to step outside of it.

[779] But I do think one should first understand the story they've inherited.

[780] What do you think about that?

[781] Yeah, so there's another set of studies.

[782] I forgot his name, but they brought in the students to the lab and had them write a diary for a week on traumatic events that happened to them when they're growing up.

[783] The first surprising results was almost everybody could write about traumatic events.

[784] Sure.

[785] And then there was a control condition where they just wrote about something else.

[786] They did that for several days, and they followed up these subjects all throughout the college, and they even measured their T -cell count, and those who actually spit out their traumatic events in the diary actually became healthier.

[787] They visited health care less.

[788] their teeth account is higher and so on.

[789] Yeah, so that would say that's a good endeavor.

[790] Right, but perhaps it worked because you wrote it down in the diary.

[791] And let it out of your head?

[792] Exactly.

[793] So if you can kind of box it up and then put it aside, then it might be good.

[794] But if you keep on thinking about why questions rather than how questions, how can I solve this problem?

[795] Then it's not constructive at all.

[796] Right.

[797] I was talking to my therapist about this.

[798] I was like, I can't stop thinking about this thing, and I can't stop thinking about it, and I really want to stop thinking about it.

[799] It's annoying at this point.

[800] I just want to stop.

[801] And she was like, okay, well, you have 20 minutes a day, you can think about it.

[802] At 5 o 'clock, you can think about it.

[803] So if it's starting to happen, you can say, I'm going to think about that at 5.

[804] Right now, I'm not going to giving a space for it.

[805] So you're not like, don't think about it, because then all you'll do is think about it.

[806] You give it a space, but you say, I'm only giving this much space.

[807] And I think that's helping.

[808] Yeah, definitely.

[809] In the experiment where they show that rumination can actually cause depression, they brought in the people to the lab.

[810] It's not my experiment, by the way.

[811] And they asked, how are you feeling?

[812] How's your life going?

[813] What is your energy level?

[814] These are very benign neutral questions, but people who are somewhat depressed to begin with, they ended up becoming seriously more depressed by the end of the experiment, just by answering those questions.

[815] Probably because of the confirmation bias and all that.

[816] But then what worked to prevent that was a distraction condition.

[817] Now you start thinking about ceiling fan rotating and you talk about that or you switch and you talk about something else.

[818] Distraction is actually great strategy to stop the rumination.

[819] The other one that I talked about in the book was distancing yourself.

[820] So a great way to think about is that NASA, the picture that just came out.

[821] Oh, yeah.

[822] Right, right, right.

[823] How huge this universe is, and think about you in that giant space, it's really nothing.

[824] Well, look, I think it's true to say that we should have space to hold many conflicting ideas.

[825] So, yes, one is we're completely insignificant, and also I'm significant.

[826] You know, like, no one wants the advice that they want, what direction do I run in?

[827] And it's like, well, no, the art of life is finding that fine line between I acknowledge my past, I know what got me here.

[828] I don't feel shame from it.

[829] I'm not flawed.

[830] Things happen to me. And I need to go forward and be productive and focus on something else.

[831] All things need to kind of happen but within proportion to one another.

[832] Yes.

[833] I always try to talk about both sides.

[834] There's no right answer.

[835] The answer is always, it depends.

[836] And it's always in the middle.

[837] Okay, so here's my version of attribution error.

[838] You're driving down the road, you get cut off.

[839] I immediately attribute their behavior to them being entitled, selfish, and an asshole.

[840] I don't know those people.

[841] I don't know what caused it.

[842] My wife gets cut off, and she attributes to them being late to the hospital, late to a food bank, late to somewhere important.

[843] So that's also attribution error, yeah?

[844] Yes, and what's the question?

[845] Well, this is the layer I wanted to hit you with and see if we can collaborate.

[846] Okay, you're ready for this?

[847] I acknowledge that as attribution error, but then I really got curious why?

[848] Why?

[849] Why does my wife give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I assume that they're selfish and entitled?

[850] That's one of those unanswerable questions.

[851] Of all your life history?

[852] No. I've answered it.

[853] Okay.

[854] What is it?

[855] It incorporates some confirmation bias and incorporates the other fallacies.

[856] So the reason I assume that is because I often drive like an entitled asshole.

[857] I cut people off when I'm in a hurry.

[858] But you don't think you're an entitled asshole, though.

[859] No, but I cut people off and I take advantage.

[860] And I have a baseline assumption that the rest of the people in the world are similarly good and bad as I am.

[861] Now, my wife never cuts people off.

[862] So her baseline extension of how everyone feels is similar.

[863] She thinks everyone is as good as her on the road.

[864] And so my fascination is we actually create our own attribution error because we're only going to estimate the people around us to be as good or bad as we are.

[865] So by me being an entitled asshole, I know live in a world of other entitled asshole.

[866] So I create the thing.

[867] That's, I think, the underpinning of it.

[868] And I don't know, I'm excited by the notion of exploring that.

[869] That's a great experiment.

[870] We should do it.

[871] Right?

[872] When it be like we come up with some metric, like how generous you are, how selfish you are, and then you put people in all these situations and then you evaluate their takeaway of the other person.

[873] What I've learned from my wife is like, if I behave better, I'm going to only see betterness around me because I'm going to confirm my theory that everyone's pretty similar to me. That's a great deal.

[874] They might have done that in social psychology.

[875] I can't imagine I'm like a pioneer sitting in my living room, but I will say I really have spent years thinking about this difference between how she and I see the world.

[876] I will do some literature review on that and report back to you.

[877] If nobody had done it, then we can do an experiment.

[878] Oh, my God.

[879] What I love, can you imagine, Moni, if I was co -author?

[880] Oh, my God.

[881] Oh, my God.

[882] Professor.

[883] What I want to know is, is why you see the guy and he's cutting people off and you're like, that's an entitled asshole.

[884] Instead of he's like me, he loves to drive.

[885] He thinks he's being fun on the road.

[886] I'll tell you why, because I know deep in my cockles, when I cut you off to get in front of you and then you happen to pull aside to me and get in the left lane and now we're equal and you look at me in the face, I feel shame.

[887] Oh, you do?

[888] I do.

[889] I feel guilt.

[890] I know, I cut in line.

[891] And now I'm busted.

[892] If I can stay in front of you, I never have to experience that.

[893] shame and then that perpetuates me to drive even faster so no one can catch up to me and look me in the eyes because I know I'm not being a great citizen when I do that.

[894] Okay, yeah.

[895] Something like that is related to another chapter on communication problems that people have.

[896] Dangers of perspective taking.

[897] Yes, exactly.

[898] That one.

[899] This just happened to me yesterday.

[900] Someone, we've been working together last three years.

[901] Everything was through Zoom, but we've been pretty close working together.

[902] we know each other pretty well, we thought.

[903] So we thought.

[904] And then he just had a 60th birthday last month.

[905] How did you celebrate that?

[906] You talked about what he did.

[907] And then said, oh, yeah, mine is next year.

[908] And he said, oh, I thought you were way behind me. Okay, my imposter syndrome made me interpret that as, oh, maybe I looked immature, inexperienced.

[909] Oh, wow.

[910] He was trying to flatter you on how well you're.

[911] Like you look young.

[912] Yes.

[913] But that's the thing about communications.

[914] Any statement can have multiple meanings.

[915] But we have overconfidence in our interpretations of what other people said, as well as we are overconfident about how clear our explanations work to the other person.

[916] Oh, yes.

[917] So it goes both ways.

[918] Yeah, for sure.

[919] Oh, and I hate to reconfirm gender stereotypes, but I certainly see this with the men and women in my group constantly.

[920] Like what a guy thinks is a clear answer, and it's such a misfire so often.

[921] Yes.

[922] So that happens all the time, and it's so prevalent, so how can we fix that?

[923] There was a paper that's not my lab published with 25 experiments in it, and 24 of them were all reporting the failure to, find any beneficial effects of trying to take the perspective of the other person.

[924] So whenever there is a miscommunication, you might say, why can't you take my perspective?

[925] Or a therapist might say, why don't you take your wife's perspective?

[926] That never improves the understanding, mind reading of the other person.

[927] It doesn't.

[928] It doesn't.

[929] Because we lack the tools?

[930] Because we don't know what the fact is.

[931] You can't just guess what the person is thinking.

[932] When my collaborator said, you looked way younger than me, I do not know the fact, right?

[933] What he had in mind by just trying to take his perspective.

[934] So the 25th experiment of that paper was very simple solution.

[935] Just ask.

[936] Ask what you meant by that.

[937] It's as simple as that.

[938] Yeah.

[939] Okay, great.

[940] Yes, because again, you're locked into your story and your confirmation by, so you can't really even imagine or it's the thought experiment 246 it's like you can't come up with the alternative theory because you only have yours that's the one that makes sense to you yeah we have a friend that we just interviewed and he learned about six years ago that he was on the autism spectrum and the amount of clarity that gave him when he again was looking back on his life trying to make sense of it it was oh boom boom boom boom but the thing he has learned to do which is awkward for people is you'll say, oh, I just said this, how did you take it?

[941] I can't read your reaction.

[942] I'm now nervous and I can't read it.

[943] So can you tell me. That's great example.

[944] I'm going to use it my next lecture too.

[945] Oh my gosh.

[946] That's how we should do it.

[947] You would think you need the, quote, excuse of being autistic to ask for clarifications.

[948] Like you would need a label so people would be patient with you in order to have the right to ask for clarification.

[949] And yes, we need to kind of reprogram society.

[950] That's not a challenge to your thing.

[951] It's a sincere request to understand you.

[952] Yep, that's it.

[953] Okay, you've given us so much of your time and I'm having so much fun, and yes, we will move to Yale and join your lecture series.

[954] Oh, I would love to do.

[955] What are the perils of examples?

[956] I have a hunch of what it is, and I actually think I profit from it greatly.

[957] That chapter was the hardest one to write because there were so many statistical terms to go over.

[958] So let me use new.

[959] 9 -11 as an example.

[960] When 9 -11 happened, we have a clear, vivid examples of how Muslim people attacked American people.

[961] And it's very salient in our mind, the pictures, it was everywhere.

[962] And based on that, people now equate that if you are a Muslim, then you are a terrorist.

[963] That's the problem because statistically that does not make any sense.

[964] Okay, given that there are terrorist activities, what percentage were done by Muslim?

[965] That's about 27%.

[966] That year, 2001?

[967] Since 9 -11 until 2017, I think that's the record that I looked at by the government report.

[968] So people might say, well, that's still quite a big percentage should we do the ethnic profiling.

[969] But that's reversing the conditional probability.

[970] So, for example, we all know someone pregnant.

[971] What's the likelihood that that person is a woman?

[972] 100%.

[973] Yeah.

[974] I thought it was a trick question, right?

[975] I was like, well, it's 100%, but she's fucking with us this whole time.

[976] So what is it?

[977] Exactly.

[978] Is it because of non -binary or what?

[979] Where are we?

[980] Let's flip that.

[981] There's a person.

[982] All we know is that this person is a woman.

[983] What's the likelihood that the person is pregnant?

[984] Not 100 % for sure.

[985] So even though 27 % of the person, of terrorists were Muslim, that does not mean that 27 % of Muslims were terrorists.

[986] Right.

[987] Or we'd have some 400 million terrorists active.

[988] Yes.

[989] And if I calculate the probability, which is spelled out in the book, it's essentially 0%.

[990] It's not statistically relevant.

[991] Exactly.

[992] It's not going to help you at all to do the ethnic profiling.

[993] This is like the amygdala issue.

[994] So we are categorical animals.

[995] To your point, it was very easy for people to look at the photos of Osama bin Laden and all the Al -Qaeda members and go, okay, well, I kind of can categorize what that looks like.

[996] When you say that the majority of terrorist attacks that have happened since in America are generally been by right -wing and Christian ideology people, well, what the fuck does a Christian look like?

[997] I don't know.

[998] The whole place is Christian.

[999] So I have no shot at categorizing them, so I don't even try.

[1000] Or is it all men?

[1001] No, I can't categorize all men.

[1002] but we have such limited experience and exposure to other Islamic folks in this country that it seems doable.

[1003] Yes.

[1004] The out -group members are easier to simplify and treat them as a just homogeneous category.

[1005] I think our path is humans, so much of it is honoring and recognizing what was a survival mechanism and then transcending it.

[1006] But first we have to acknowledge that we have this predisposition, we have this bias and don't feel terrible.

[1007] Again, you're not a racist because you're amygdala fires.

[1008] You're an in -group -out -group survivalist.

[1009] Now your frontal lobes got to take over and prevent you from being a racist.

[1010] Amidalefiring is not a bad thing.

[1011] It actually gets done a lot of things without having to think.

[1012] A guy in a ski mask holding a metal object in his hand, yeah, get the fuck out of there.

[1013] I know.

[1014] You don't need to take time and calculate what's the odd.

[1015] Yeah, is this guy walking up the set of my favorite TV show that has cops and robbers, it's at Halloween?

[1016] No, get out of there, then you can think about it.

[1017] And the other thing is the concept of statistics and probabilities are very modern -day concept.

[1018] We didn't even have the notion of percentage and probabilities until a couple of hundred years ago.

[1019] So we're not evolved to deal with this kind of statistics anyway.

[1020] We are more used to think intuitively.

[1021] So these are a difficult thing.

[1022] Okay, so the last one I'm going to ask you about, the troubled with delayed gratification, I feel within this last chapter, there's also some potential marching orders for crafting who you would like to be, or I hate to call it a self -help component, but a tool that could be helpful in your growth.

[1023] I really did not want to talk about the marshmallow study in that chapter because it's so famous.

[1024] I'm so fucking sick of it.

[1025] All these books I just listed to you, I got to re -learn about the damn marshmallow thing.

[1026] I know, I know, yes.

[1027] But the book was meant to be for people who had never taken any psychology who are not like you.

[1028] So I did talk about it.

[1029] Okay.

[1030] that shows is that delayed gratification is difficult for us.

[1031] So we tend to discount the future reward.

[1032] So $400 now feels much more valuable than $500 next week.

[1033] So we just take the $400 right now.

[1034] What's interesting, you know, the marshmallow test predicted the SAT scores later on?

[1035] All these little kids, how long they waited to eat this marshmallow, they would get a second marshmallow if they waited to the guy returned, and that became the most powerful predictor of what their future educational attainment would be, salaries, everything, right?

[1036] My demo of do you want $400 now or $500 next week never works with Yale students.

[1037] Oh, because they're people who have actually mastered delayed gratification.

[1038] Yes.

[1039] Even when I explained the results, they said, why would anybody do that?

[1040] They basically gave up their fun partying high school experience for the reward of Yale.

[1041] You've got the worst subject group to talk about this with.

[1042] So I do talk about why we discount the delayed gratification.

[1043] But more importantly, what I want to talk about is that is that a good thing?

[1044] Right.

[1045] That's a big philosophical question.

[1046] In this society that is very success oriented and achievement oriented, we assume that educational achievement, the financial reward, that those would be implicitly worth pursuing.

[1047] And we're working backwards from that we think agreed upon assumption, right?

[1048] Yes.

[1049] So there is now a lot of positive psychology trend going, like, you can do it, you can exercise your brain, you can become smarter.

[1050] All you need is just to persist, just stick with it, you can do it.

[1051] And I wonder whether that could be cause for concern in the sense that it can make students too anxious about what they should do.

[1052] And in fact, there are studies showing that people who are already high in self -control, if they grew up in a disadvantaged environment within like four years, their health becomes deteriorating because they were bombarded with all these problems because they're not in a great environment.

[1053] And they're high self -control people.

[1054] So they try to tackle every one of them.

[1055] And after that, they start getting exhausted.

[1056] They get fatigued and they surrender.

[1057] Yes.

[1058] This was done in a rural Georgia area with the black participants.

[1059] And it's really heartbreaking results.

[1060] So it's not necessarily a good thing to just say you can do it.

[1061] Push through.

[1062] Wait for the next marshmallow.

[1063] Yeah.

[1064] Yeah, the two things that come to mind really quick.

[1065] I think we could illustrate a very simple example of how this would go awry, which is sacrifice the good time in high school to get to.

[1066] to Yale, then sacrifice your college experience to graduate at the top of your class, then sacrifice your whole 20s and 30s to build your career at the law firm, then sacrifice the speedboat and the vacation so that you have a retirement fund.

[1067] And then literally you've lived 75 years of your 90 years on planet Earth to enjoy this 15 years that you've not practiced once about enjoying, and you're never going to fucking enjoy now.

[1068] This is also an outcome of this, right?

[1069] This is exactly where I feel like I am at.

[1070] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1071] So my suggestion for this is what my yoga instructor said.

[1072] Can you breathe now?

[1073] Are you tight in your chest all the time?

[1074] When you're doing a tough pose, are you pushing yourself just right amount?

[1075] Because the pain that you feel, if it's just a right amount, it feels good.

[1076] You can still breathe while you're doing it.

[1077] Ah, great analogy.

[1078] But you have so much muscle memory to unravel.

[1079] Exactly.

[1080] That's really hard for high achieving students.

[1081] I can't really convince them with this yet.

[1082] I just want to, huh, I'm just letting that sink in.

[1083] Yeah, it's partly because we are also biologically wired to prepare for the future.

[1084] Oh, this was in this book I keep trying to sell to you and get you to read, the weirdest people in the world.

[1085] Yes.

[1086] And you're probably already aware of this, but here's a great example is these experiments that you talk of, these delayed gratification ones.

[1087] When you do them in parts of Africa, you offer somebody X amount of food today, or, you're, they can come back and get X amount of food the next day, and then even more, 3x the amount of food in a week and a half.

[1088] In this case, they'll take the extra food tomorrow.

[1089] They will not wait a week for the three times food.

[1090] And so our Western brain would label that is illogical or not great risk reward or whatever you'd want to say bad computation.

[1091] But when you learn about their culture, which is they're a culture that doesn't store food, they share food.

[1092] Storing food doesn't make any sense to them, nor do they need to because they're a part of a community that they'll give extra tomorrow and then they'll receive extra on someday.

[1093] It's actually illogical for them to stockpile or hoard anything because that's not how their society works.

[1094] Ours does.

[1095] And in fact, often makes them a target because then they'll have too much.

[1096] Right.

[1097] And then people will come for that extra.

[1098] And we just take our definition of logic in the West as being sacrosanct, but it's actually illogical in many places and maladaptive.

[1099] I might have actually read some parts of their book, is it?

[1100] I love you.

[1101] Yeah, this is so fun.

[1102] I'm telling you, I don't know how you're going to interpret that.

[1103] Stage four.

[1104] I love you.

[1105] I wish we could spend more time with you.

[1106] Yes, you're so wonderful.

[1107] There's zero curiosity on why your course was so popular.

[1108] You have such a fun levity to this topic and playfulness, and I just enjoy it so much.

[1109] I really hope people get, thinking 101, how to reason better, to live better, because it's not a daunting undertaking.

[1110] It's fun, and it's a fun exploration.

[1111] You asked great questions, and I was nervous yesterday, of course, and my daughter said, oh, just you're having a conversation with your most favorite student, and that was exactly how I felt.

[1112] This was like, click, click, click.

[1113] Everything, you know, you just get it and you relate to yourself.

[1114] I mean, this whole book is about making people think.

[1115] I feel the same way, click, click, click, click, click.

[1116] And that's why I love you.

[1117] And I really hope I get to be in person with you at some point.

[1118] I feel like a hug is in our future.

[1119] And I hope you're amenable to it.

[1120] Thank you.

[1121] Yes, of course.

[1122] Okay, well, Professor Anne, thank you so much for your time.

[1123] And I hope everyone gets thinking 101, how to reason better, to live better.

[1124] And if you live in Singapore, get on that wait list for this class.

[1125] I don't know if you're going to teach that in Singapore, but if so, people should be stammering to get in line.

[1126] Thank you.

[1127] All right.

[1128] Take care.

[1129] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1130] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1131] Oh, wonderful.

[1132] And your Zoomie is recorded.

[1133] Yeah.

[1134] Oh, wow.

[1135] And the mic is hooked up.

[1136] I have them all recording.

[1137] Oh, yeah, I just meant the one you're talking to is no longer plugged into the main board, but directly into the portable Zoom.

[1138] Yeah.

[1139] Okay, great.

[1140] Oh, they've been all through the portable Zoom.

[1141] Oh, they have.

[1142] Oh, because Rob's not here because of COVID.

[1143] Yeah, so I've been doing it by myself.

[1144] and it's a little tricky.

[1145] A little scary.

[1146] Well, first let's give our love and condolences.

[1147] And also, last one to go down.

[1148] I know.

[1149] He held it together for so long.

[1150] I think he's the last person I know, right?

[1151] I can't think of one person that hasn't had it other than him.

[1152] Yeah, I think you're right.

[1153] Well, I hope that there's a ceremony and that a medal's given out.

[1154] He deserves it.

[1155] How's it going over there?

[1156] How does it sound?

[1157] It sounds good.

[1158] You know, you can adjust how loud I am on the little dials on that fourth one.

[1159] You're overwhelmed.

[1160] I'm a little overwhelmed.

[1161] Are you a little frazzled from your hormones?

[1162] Yeah, I think so.

[1163] I think it's multiple things.

[1164] I'm kind of doing everything, you know.

[1165] Of course, of course.

[1166] I'm not there, Rob's not there.

[1167] You really have left on your own now.

[1168] Yeah, and I was driving home from an appointment today, and I was like, I'm really excited to see my friend.

[1169] Oh, me too, me too.

[1170] Yeah, I was really excited to see you today.

[1171] Do you feel fertile?

[1172] I feel bruised.

[1173] Oh, how so?

[1174] Because the shots.

[1175] Oh, can I see?

[1176] Yeah.

[1177] Let's see if you can see.

[1178] Oh, sure.

[1179] Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[1180] Okay, double whammy.

[1181] Yeah.

[1182] Yeah.

[1183] So I have some bruising.

[1184] It is funny because now it is about egg size.

[1185] Oh, no kidding.

[1186] Well, it's about follicle size.

[1187] What are follicles?

[1188] Follicles are what turn into eggs.

[1189] It's like...

[1190] Oh, they're egg seeds?

[1191] Yeah.

[1192] It's like what drops the egg or grows the egg or is the egg.

[1193] I'm not sure.

[1194] Right.

[1195] Part of the treatment is grow these follicles big.

[1196] Big boys.

[1197] Yeah.

[1198] Right.

[1199] Padman style.

[1200] What's normal, what's high, what's low.

[1201] What, like, you really want is like 25.

[1202] Okay.

[1203] 25 would be a 10.

[1204] Now I'm really confusing things.

[1205] I'm getting...

[1206] I'm mixing numbers.

[1207] They're not really metaphors.

[1208] They're numbers.

[1209] Yeah.

[1210] And then 30 is also great and possible.

[1211] That's Jordan S numbers.

[1212] Yeah.

[1213] This just changes monthly?

[1214] It can change monthly, so each cycle is a little different, but won't drastically change.

[1215] So people have like a predisposition for follicles?

[1216] Yes, and then that was the whole thing with the birth control.

[1217] It was like, I'm stunting that level a bit.

[1218] Uh -huh.

[1219] But your mother didn't have any problem getting preggers, did she?

[1220] No, and she's like, it actually has not much to do with pregnancy.

[1221] She was like, you have a normal period every month.

[1222] Like, you definitely have the ability to get pregnant.

[1223] Because you only need to wake one egg out of all those follicles, right?

[1224] It's just, the number really matters now.

[1225] It matters in this freezing process because you want to have some viable by the time you want to use them.

[1226] Right, right, right, right, right.

[1227] Today when I went, so you have to go like every two days.

[1228] They dry your blood.

[1229] They put the dildo up.

[1230] It's like.

[1231] Oh, same, same dude.

[1232] Last appointment, it wasn't him.

[1233] It was my doctor.

[1234] And then today I went and my stomach was growling again on my ride there.

[1235] And I was like, oh, I hope that other guy isn't going to do my ultrasound because my stomach's crumbling again.

[1236] And then, of course, it was him.

[1237] Oh, okay.

[1238] And the doctor.

[1239] It was both of them this time.

[1240] Oh, full table.

[1241] Yeah, but my tummy didn't grumble, so that was good.

[1242] Okay, that's good.

[1243] Did it get any less awkward?

[1244] Like now you're, are you used to it at all?

[1245] I mean, yeah, I guess a little bit.

[1246] I am a little bit more used to it.

[1247] It's, it's all, what a ride.

[1248] What a ride this is.

[1249] I'm so glad you're recording every minute of it.

[1250] Yeah, Liz called.

[1251] She left me a voice.

[1252] Memo yesterday, she was crying.

[1253] And it is funny because, like, in the moment, of course, it's like, oh, no, like, you know, it's sad.

[1254] And then now it's already, like, kind of funny.

[1255] Right.

[1256] You're like, oh, you know, it's just that thing.

[1257] Yeah, it's an interesting process.

[1258] And then what about just your overall mood?

[1259] My mood has been okay.

[1260] It really has.

[1261] Okay, good.

[1262] I had one night and one morning of sadness.

[1263] and some crying.

[1264] Other than that, I have really been fine.

[1265] I mean, I've been high -strung.

[1266] Like, I've been irritable.

[1267] More energy?

[1268] No, this high -strung?

[1269] Irritable, like, just, like, ready to be a little angry.

[1270] But, you know, it's funny, so we just interviewed Andrew Huberman.

[1271] Yes.

[1272] And he...

[1273] Who we love.

[1274] Who we love.

[1275] And it was great.

[1276] But he said some people on their period, you know, before their periods and stuff when they're releasing hormones, they can get irritable and I was like me and then he was like but also those people normally have a high libido and have like he's like an oh he's like really it's an overall friskiness oh sure that's accurate that that tracked for you well in general for me with periods right so anyway it's just all interesting did you guys have any rhythm I don't think so but I don't know Oh, how can I, I don't know.

[1277] Well, because last time you were thinking maybe afterwards that you had some rhythm.

[1278] Did I?

[1279] Or was I like, no. I think I was like, no, he doesn't like me. No, but you were like, oh, I think I'm attracted to that guy.

[1280] Oh, yeah.

[1281] Which is rare for you to say, you know, after a guest leaves.

[1282] Yeah, he, because, I mean.

[1283] He's super smart.

[1284] He's a professor, and he's a beast.

[1285] Exactly.

[1286] Anywho, tell me about your trip.

[1287] Give me updates.

[1288] Okay.

[1289] Well, first of all, they're great.

[1290] Yesterday, Mount Rushmore.

[1291] Fun.

[1292] For anyone who's not been there, it doesn't get prioritized.

[1293] It doesn't seem like.

[1294] You know, like people want to make a pilgrimage to Grand Canyon.

[1295] They want to go to wherever they want to go to.

[1296] It's the cutest park.

[1297] It's not my second time having gone there.

[1298] Oh, third, I went as a kid with my friend Trevor and his father, and then Bree and I stopped there on the motorcycle ride.

[1299] And then now this time.

[1300] It's a very manageable, cute, really well -constructed little national park and I was in heaven because we're sitting there looking at the faces and then on three different occasions people stepped up and they were, one woman was just kind of wondering aloud.

[1301] She just basically asked me, who's that guy in the middle?

[1302] So then I got to play history professor and I got to do it like four or five times because I just finished the Washington biography.

[1303] I haven't read a Jefferson one but I've read three or four biographies that are constantly talking about him as a B plot.

[1304] And then Teddy Roosevelt, I did read that biography, and it was great.

[1305] And then, you know, Abe Lincoln, honest Abe, and I have a chip on my shoulder against Thomas Jefferson, primarily because he got his 13 -year -old slave pregnant on a trip to France.

[1306] That's a good reason.

[1307] Yeah, when this one lady, the one that she's like, I'm embarrassed to say, I don't even really know who these people are.

[1308] And I said, oh, yeah, well, that's so -and -so -and -so, and she's like, right, and why is he?

[1309] And then I'm saying, well, you know, he drafted the Declaration Independence, you know, tremendous writer, brilliant, you know, also in addition to owning a lot of slaves, impregnated one of them at a very young age.

[1310] I'm like, so kind of a double whammy pedophile and slave owner inherited a bunch of money when he was alive and then died in debt.

[1311] Anyways, that was really fun, not just because I got to be a know -it -all.

[1312] No, but that's fun.

[1313] You got to share your knowledge.

[1314] Probably even better than that was when we arrived because Big Brown, as you know, is a handful and it's like up this steep mountain road and you're kind of fingers crossed when we get to the top there's going to be some kind of parking situation and then I thought, you know what?

[1315] There's so many tour bus, you know, tours like Greyhound bus staff.

[1316] There's got to be space up that.

[1317] Well, sure enough, pull in, there's a lane for us in an actual parking spot like you were at the mall for Big Brown, which was so cute.

[1318] Perfect.

[1319] Imagine a parking spot for Big Brown, a 50 foot long parking spot.

[1320] Yes, it looked like it was just a normal car at a shopping plaza.

[1321] Did you get a picture?

[1322] Mm -hmm.

[1323] Okay, good.

[1324] Of course.

[1325] I've taken more pictures of Big Brown than the children or any of the national landmarks.

[1326] Then, tremendous drive to North Dakota, Bismarck.

[1327] So much fun.

[1328] Jimmy had made me a playlist.

[1329] I was dancing.

[1330] I did 100 squats while I was driving.

[1331] I did 100 shoulder presses.

[1332] I did 100 triceps, and I did 210 curls.

[1333] Oh, my God.

[1334] Mm -hmm.

[1335] For the girls?

[1336] Mostly for the girls.

[1337] So I had a full workout, and then I had two plans.

[1338] One, I wanted to get to our friend X's house before dark, because the bus is so big.

[1339] And then two, I wanted to get there by 9 o 'clock this time so I could do my 7 p .m. A .A. meeting that's in L .A. over Zoom.

[1340] Nice.

[1341] Two really noble goals that I should have maintained.

[1342] But we saw a fucking Dairy Queen in the town before hers, and I had been looking for one for nine days now.

[1343] So we pulled over and we went wild at Dairy Queen, which means we got to her house after dark.

[1344] I missed the Zoom meeting and going down this little dirt road to her house, and I'm thinking, fuck, I hope her driveway is wide, get there, there's like a wooden fence on the left side and then this big wooden structure for the trash cans on the right side.

[1345] I mean, probably the tightest squeeze I've ever had of my life, getting the bus off the road into the driveway.

[1346] That was one thing.

[1347] We then get there and she's got a four -wheel.

[1348] I say, can I take that down to see where, I'm actually parking and see if I can do it at night take it down there I'm like yeah this is fine go down this twisty path down to the river and I'm making this left turn around this huge tree and there's a fence on my right side so like the front corner of the bus is an inch from the fence and then I think just the wheels are going over like the roots of the tree I'm like okay fuck we just barely made it park go to get the shore power cord out to plug it in to run everything and I can't get the side door open, and I realized, oh, my God, underneath is bent.

[1349] I've bent three of the doors going over that.

[1350] Oh, no. Yeah.

[1351] I mean, A, the cost.

[1352] That's going to be pricey.

[1353] But even worse, who fixes that?

[1354] I live in L .A. Like, the bus was made in Texas, and I think everywhere that fixes this shit is in Texas.

[1355] Oh, no. Now I can't get the basement doors open, which is I need the power cord out of there.

[1356] It's bent upwards under now the molding by like an inch, and I'm, like, trying to pull it down.

[1357] no chance in hell.

[1358] Then I have a screwdriver in there.

[1359] Then I get the idea.

[1360] I'm going to use one of the ratcheting tie -down straps from the motorcycles.

[1361] I latch it to the top, tie it under the bus, ratchet it, bend the door down, get it open.

[1362] And then I've spent the last 18 hours forcing myself not to think about the damage that is done to the bus.

[1363] You've got to keep moving, right, Monica?

[1364] It's over.

[1365] I can't go back in time.

[1366] Yeah, you can't.

[1367] It is what it is.

[1368] It's going to cost what it's going to cost.

[1369] And I'm going to have to figure out who fixes it.

[1370] And in the meantime, I've ordered some supplies to try to get a better my mind.

[1371] myself a little bit.

[1372] Which might be a fun project for you.

[1373] It was already, you know, like I went from immediately devastated to, well, I got to get this door open or we have no power and into my ingenuity brain and put all that energy into there and I came over with a really good solution.

[1374] Yeah.

[1375] Okay, so.

[1376] Wow.

[1377] Then there's another bad story.

[1378] Get the motorcycles off today.

[1379] Lincoln and I are riding.

[1380] And it's the funest riding we've ever done.

[1381] They're on six acres of grass.

[1382] Then we're riding down by the river on the shore of the river.

[1383] Then we go to a farm.

[1384] We're flying through a farm.

[1385] These two tracks.

[1386] She, I can see, is having the first real motorcycle experience.

[1387] So it's like, oh, where do I want to go?

[1388] I can go over there.

[1389] I can go over here.

[1390] I can right in between these puddles.

[1391] Everything's going so spectacular.

[1392] We're on our way back to the house.

[1393] We're literally turning into the driveway.

[1394] She grabbed a little too much front brake, went down in the gravel.

[1395] Oh, buddy.

[1396] Cut her knee in her hands.

[1397] And it was her first spill after four years of riding, which, by the way, needed to happen.

[1398] You need to have some respect for the bike.

[1399] Well, and the fact that she's gone that long with, it's impossible.

[1400] Like, she's so good.

[1401] Right.

[1402] And so she really, you know, on a lot of levels.

[1403] So I carried her back in the house and clean her knee up, clean her elbow up, clean her, you know.

[1404] She's got some road rash out of it.

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] Now she's relaxing on the couch.

[1407] I was heartbroken, of course.

[1408] Of course.

[1409] Oh.

[1410] But, again, incredible motorcycle ride up until then, our best ever.

[1411] We were out for like an hour ripping around all.

[1412] all these trails.

[1413] Neither of us knew where we were at.

[1414] We were exploring.

[1415] That was great.

[1416] That's so nice.

[1417] Oh, poor thing.

[1418] Well, I hope she feels better.

[1419] She will.

[1420] She better be on that bike by tomorrow morning.

[1421] Okay, maybe give her a set.

[1422] No, no. She can take as what time as she went.

[1423] But you know, the old fable of get back on a horse?

[1424] Get back on the motor horse.

[1425] That's right.

[1426] Part of me has some unrealistic fear that if she doesn't ride it really quickly, she's never going to again.

[1427] I don't think that's true, but I understand the fear.

[1428] Poppycock.

[1429] Yeah, it's poppy.

[1430] Wait, what was I going to say something?

[1431] Have you and Liz been hanging out in the evenings?

[1432] Well, we hang out every night for our shots.

[1433] Oh, right, right, right.

[1434] And we went to dinner one night, which was really nice.

[1435] You know what's funny is when you said, I got to go, I'm going to go do shots with Liz.

[1436] I was thinking, because it was when you told me you'd had a bad day.

[1437] And I was like, yeah, that makes sense.

[1438] But then I was like, that's weird.

[1439] Monica doesn't really do shots.

[1440] And I thought, oh, Liz must like to do shots.

[1441] She's like, okay, yeah, fuck it.

[1442] I'll join her whole system.

[1443] And then literally 30 minutes later, I realized, oh, those shots.

[1444] Yes.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] You know, there's so much conflicting info about alcohol.

[1447] Mm -hmm.

[1448] And my doctors said it's fine.

[1449] Well, aren't most people drunk when they get pregnant?

[1450] I mean, I would imagine a significant percentage of people are drunk.

[1451] when they get pregnant.

[1452] But the thing is that this doctor, not this doctor, but the fertility doctor.

[1453] A doctor.

[1454] A doctor told me, he said, you know, remember this isn't pregnancy.

[1455] He was like, there are things, obviously you can't do in pregnancy, but it has nothing to do with this.

[1456] Like, you're not protecting a baby.

[1457] It's just about the growth.

[1458] Yes.

[1459] So Liz's doctor was like, don't drink.

[1460] And I don't know if everyone's just being overcautious.

[1461] Like, who knows?

[1462] We were kind of joking.

[1463] Like, we should do a shot with our shots.

[1464] Oh, yeah.

[1465] You were accurate in your assessment.

[1466] I don't do shots.

[1467] I don't like them.

[1468] And also, now that there's conflicting info on alcohol, I just don't feel right about it.

[1469] Also, it does.

[1470] There's something out of balance about it.

[1471] It's something like two 18 -year -olds freezing their eggs would do.

[1472] Like, let's do shots and shots.

[1473] But now I'm wine.

[1474] You know, I'm going to do.

[1475] Right.

[1476] You're middle -aged.

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] And sometimes martinis.

[1479] So that means I'm old, you know.

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] Right, right, right.

[1482] Yeah.

[1483] Well, means you're a professor if you drink martinis.

[1484] Who's this episode about?

[1485] Ukiyam.

[1486] Oh, my God.

[1487] We fell in love with her.

[1488] We couldn't stop talking about her.

[1489] We couldn't stop talking about her.

[1490] And I don't, is there a component that she's our baby?

[1491] I'm nervous to say that I...

[1492] No, that you're conflating because then I showed you baby video.

[1493] There's a video I love so much.

[1494] It's basically your antidepressant.

[1495] It is.

[1496] It's this baby eating some lettuce.

[1497] Oh, my God.

[1498] It's like bok choy, maybe the baby's eating.

[1499] And she's eating it like a vacuum cleaner.

[1500] Like, it's impossible how fast she gobbles up the bok choy or whatever it is.

[1501] She eats it like a squirrel or rabbit or something.

[1502] Oh, you know what she eats it like is if you feed like a huge branch into a woodchipper and it's just like, yes.

[1503] Yes, she like woodchips the bok choy.

[1504] Yeah, and David Ferrier thinks it's fake, but he's wrong.

[1505] I mean, so put me in the middle of that spectrum, like you on one side, David on the other.

[1506] I'm like, this can't be, and yet I'm choosing to believe it's real, but I don't know.

[1507] Anyway, that's my favorite baby.

[1508] Yeah.

[1509] And I showed you.

[1510] that video.

[1511] So now I think you're just conflating babies and her.

[1512] Okay, that could be it.

[1513] All right.

[1514] At any rate, we fell in love with her.

[1515] And I got to say we get these guests like, I don't know what number it is, one and whatever, where you just can't stop thinking about the things we were talking about with her?

[1516] Yes.

[1517] Or at least I can't.

[1518] I love these hiccups in her thinking.

[1519] Me too.

[1520] Me too.

[1521] I don't know why I find it like it should be really discomforting, but I'm weirdly, I love it.

[1522] It's almost like we are on shrooms.

[1523] I want to take shrooms to alter my reality and feel like I'm five years old again and I don't understand how anything works.

[1524] But in truth, we're already there.

[1525] We don't understand how anything work.

[1526] We don't understand how we think.

[1527] We think we're the fluency thing I love.

[1528] We think we can do everything.

[1529] We understand everything.

[1530] We don't.

[1531] No, but I think it's nice to know that we don't know anything.

[1532] Like there's something kind of freeing in that.

[1533] We do have some power.

[1534] We can make changes.

[1535] Like we're not stuck in these moods or mindsets.

[1536] Well, I was thinking, a lot about when we discuss Dunning Krueger for a minute.

[1537] If you don't know a lot about a topic, then you can't know how big the topic is.

[1538] So of course you overestimate how much you know.

[1539] Like you might know 10 % of it, but because you don't know the whole topic, you might think that's 100 % of it.

[1540] I was just thinking of like that paradox.

[1541] Like how would you know how little you know about something?

[1542] Yeah, that's true.

[1543] Well, that's what I liked about her experiment of like telling people oh, which you have to do for this fact check.

[1544] How does a hell Well, and just so people believe me, I didn't know who we were fact -checking until one second ago.

[1545] So I did not prepare.

[1546] I was too busy destroying my motor home and almost killing my daughter.

[1547] So I, you know, I ran out of time.

[1548] Everyone trusts you.

[1549] They know you wouldn't look it up.

[1550] Okay, did you look it up so you can check me?

[1551] This is the problem.

[1552] No. Okay, okay, great.

[1553] Well, you two have been busy.

[1554] You're harvesting eggs and follicles.

[1555] I have a lot going on.

[1556] But I can.

[1557] But the problem is you might know more than my Google, so it's going to be hard.

[1558] Okay, do I do it?

[1559] Do you want me to do it?

[1560] Yes, please.

[1561] Okay, so first, the baseline knowledge you have to have is an airplane.

[1562] And, you know, an airplane has two wings on it.

[1563] And the way the wing works is the wing is shaped, kind of bubbled on top and flat on the bottom.

[1564] So what happens is when the air passes over it, that air is joined.

[1565] It has to rejoin itself.

[1566] So the fact that the air that goes over top has to take a longer route, right?

[1567] Right?

[1568] Because because the top is curved, it's longer in length.

[1569] Yeah.

[1570] It speeds up to match up, to rejoin the air coming out the bottom.

[1571] And that makes it lighter.

[1572] So that's what creates lift.

[1573] Oh.

[1574] Okay.

[1575] Now, a helicopter, let's say it has four blades.

[1576] All four are airplane wings.

[1577] So all four the blades are shaped just like an airplane is.

[1578] So each spinning blades.

[1579] So the way the airplane creates lift is it's travel.

[1580] quickly through the air down the runway.

[1581] And as it gets going faster and faster, the amount of lift is increasing and increasing.

[1582] Instead, the helicopter can just sit still, but instead it spins the wings at a rapid speed.

[1583] And then those spinning wings create lift.

[1584] Now, to go up, each blade on the helicopter can spin left and right.

[1585] So within the helicopter, you're choosing the pitch of the blades, which creates more or less lift.

[1586] And then you also have the velocity that it's spinning.

[1587] you have more throttle, then it's spinning quicker, it's creating more lift.

[1588] Okay, now if you can imagine that you're creating all that lift and it took off in the air.

[1589] Now, the problem that you'd have immediately is the engine's spinning one way and the blades are spinning the other way.

[1590] So what would happen is the whole helicopter would start spinning the opposite direction underneath.

[1591] Does that make sense?

[1592] Oh, yeah.

[1593] If left to its own device, the helicopter would spin in the opposite direction under the blades.

[1594] Now, it'd spin less because it's heavier than the blades.

[1595] But so to counteract that on the back of the helicopter, you know it's got that little set of blades that are vertical.

[1596] Can you picture those?

[1597] Yeah, those like cute guys.

[1598] Yeah, the cute little guy is like a fan.

[1599] Looks like a fan on the back.

[1600] Now those are creating lift in the opposite direction.

[1601] They're creating lift but sideways.

[1602] So they're creating a force opposite to the force that's being put on the helicopter so that it'll stay dead still.

[1603] I see.

[1604] Interesting.

[1605] Now, once you've created lift in your...

[1606] you're doing that again with the speed that it's spinning and the pitch of the blades.

[1607] Now, once it's in the air, it's creating lift straight up and down.

[1608] So all you've got to do is the whole engine is like on a gyroscope inside the helicopter.

[1609] So it can tilt the motor forward.

[1610] And when you tilt those spinning blades forward, it's now pulling and lifting.

[1611] Wow.

[1612] Because it's at an angle.

[1613] Okay.

[1614] You dig?

[1615] Yeah.

[1616] And then it can also tilt the rotation.

[1617] rotating blades to the left, so it'll pull it up into the left, or it can tilt them to the right and pull it up into the right.

[1618] So the forward, backward, left, right, all of that is happening by just tilting the base of the helicopter blades so that they're just...

[1619] Wow.

[1620] If you've ever held a box fan in your hands while it's spinning, and as you turn it to the right with your hands, you feel it pull you or push you, that's what's happening.

[1621] They're just changing the position of the box fan.

[1622] Huh, that's cool.

[1623] Yeah, did that make sense?

[1624] It made a lot of sense.

[1625] Some sense.

[1626] Enough sense that you believe me. Oh, I believe you, yeah.

[1627] And someone's going to correct me. I'm sure I got one aspect of that wrong, but in general, that's what's happening.

[1628] Do you know that from your, like, mechanic -y?

[1629] Like, how do you know that?

[1630] I want to tell you one really fun part of it.

[1631] Okay.

[1632] So the blades are all spinning at the exact same rate, right?

[1633] They're on one axle.

[1634] the blades on the left side of the helicopter are spinning at the same speed as the blades on the right side of the helicopter as it goes in a circle.

[1635] So they're creating the same amount of lift until once the helicopter starts moving forward, the blades that have the wing part on the right side of the helicopter, now they're experiencing wind that's passing like a normal airplane.

[1636] Now as it spins and now it's on the left side of the helicopter, it's not creating lift the same way because the air is moving past it.

[1637] And so what inevitably happens, and this is what prevents helicopters from flying super fast, is that once they start going a certain speed, there's so much wind resistance on the right side of the helicopter and not the left that the whole helicopter starts tilting to the left because the right is making more lift than the left because of the oncoming wind.

[1638] Now, that's why those, Huge military helicopters, the Chinooks that have two helicopter blades, one on back, one on front.

[1639] Uh -huh.

[1640] Those spin in opposite directions.

[1641] Oh, cool to counteract.

[1642] So both sides are creating lift equally.

[1643] Those are actually the fastest helicopters in the military, which you would think it'd be the Apaches or the Blackhawks or the fighter ones.

[1644] But it's really those big transport ones.

[1645] And they invented recently a helicopter that's now got two blades right on top of each other, spinning in opposite directions.

[1646] and they say that with that technology, they're going to have helicopters that can fly like 300 miles an hour.

[1647] Currently, a helicopter only flies like 140.

[1648] Wow.

[1649] But if it could fly 300 miles an hour, now you're in the world of a jet.

[1650] Yeah.

[1651] Wow, that's so cool.

[1652] Yeah.

[1653] Oh, so why do I know that?

[1654] I just got curious about them.

[1655] It drove me nuts when I would look at them and I didn't understand what was happening.

[1656] So I'm piecing together some stuff.

[1657] One is my buddy Dean taught me about lift on the airplane and the air traveling faster.

[1658] And then when I was in Afghanistan, they told me the Chinook was the fastest.

[1659] I was like, why?

[1660] That doesn't make any sense.

[1661] They said it because it has two blades.

[1662] They still didn't know why.

[1663] And then I read this article about this new invention about the two blades on top of each other spinning opposite directions, and that's where I learned the tilting effect that happens at speed.

[1664] Wow.

[1665] And I've cobbled it all together here today.

[1666] And people probably stopped listening six minutes ago.

[1667] I find it very interesting.

[1668] and you're really smart.

[1669] Thank you.

[1670] So are you.

[1671] Not that kind.

[1672] I'm not that kind of smart.

[1673] I am smart, but not that kind.

[1674] We met a new friend while we were at Jimmy's house that I think you in particular would really, really love.

[1675] Do I already talk about him?

[1676] He's the guy who did those Amazon boxes.

[1677] You talked about him last time, yeah.

[1678] You loved him.

[1679] I loved him.

[1680] I loved him.

[1681] And he's a mechanical engineer that worked at NASA.

[1682] So any chance I could, It was two parts.

[1683] Well, I just love talking about this stuff.

[1684] It's not often you can talk to folks.

[1685] And then, of course, I wanted to impress him so bad because he went to NASA.

[1686] So I was so turbocharged, you know?

[1687] Ding, ding, ding.

[1688] Oh, and then I wanted to talk to him yesterday on that motorhome drive I was telling you about.

[1689] From Mount Rushmore to Bismarck, North Dakota, Lincoln said, do you know the earth is spinning slowly?

[1690] And we can't tell.

[1691] I said, yeah, well, actually, it's spinning really fast.

[1692] And she said, how fast?

[1693] And I said, a thousand miles an hour.

[1694] And of course, that's impossible to compute.

[1695] Yeah.

[1696] And she's like, wow, we can't feel it.

[1697] I'm like, I know.

[1698] And then I started thinking of ourselves.

[1699] I was thinking about the fact that we were driving 75 miles an hour.

[1700] And then I was thinking you're locked into the planet so it doesn't really matter.

[1701] I started thinking if you're traveling in the opposite direction that the world was spinning, would you be making up more ground?

[1702] And no, I think 75 is 75, whether you're going, you know, with the rotation or against it.

[1703] But then I thought, oh, an airplane is not tethered to that ground anymore.

[1704] Once the airplane goes up, so if an airplane's flying 400 miles an hour against the rotation, are they covering a lot more ground than when they fly 400 miles an hour with the rotation?

[1705] And then I was like, I wish I had Mark's phone number.

[1706] I got to get them on the phone to figure this out.

[1707] But I was thinking, I've always believed that the reason is faster when you fly west and east, was, I thought it was the currents in the golf stream, like tailwind headwind.

[1708] Yeah.

[1709] But now I'm wondering if it's more than that.

[1710] Interesting.

[1711] So again, that's, yeah, I thought of that yesterday, and now that'll drive me nuts until I get the answer here in the next couple weeks.

[1712] He didn't pick up?

[1713] I don't have his phone number.

[1714] He didn't give it to me. We should have him on the show.

[1715] We really should.

[1716] He's really fascinating.

[1717] My dad would like that mechanical engineer.

[1718] Oh, I know.

[1719] No. Well, that's why part of my retirement's going to be hanging with a choke a lot.

[1720] When I do the loop of America, I'll pick him up for a leg.

[1721] Oh, you would love that.

[1722] Anywho, okay, well, let's do some facts.

[1723] Well, one, that was a major one.

[1724] Explain how a helicopter works.

[1725] Right.

[1726] Okay, I'm going to look up now.

[1727] Sorry, I'm really sorry I didn't do it earlier.

[1728] What percentage of the population is pregnant right now?

[1729] That's what I want to know.

[1730] Oh, okay.

[1731] It was part of her riddle.

[1732] Oh.

[1733] It was like part, not a riddle, but, you know, a thought experiment.

[1734] And did she give us the answer?

[1735] No, because it wasn't like relevant, you know.

[1736] Oh, okay.

[1737] This is the data for the U .S., okay?

[1738] And this is according to the CDC, something I trust.

[1739] Okay.

[1740] 20 -20.

[1741] Number of births, 3 ,613 ,647.

[1742] So that's one in a hundred women had a baby that year.

[1743] Okay.

[1744] Yeah, birth rate, a little.

[1745] 11 per 1 ,000.

[1746] Okay, so one per 100, 1 %.

[1747] Good job.

[1748] All right.

[1749] That's United States, but that's where we live.

[1750] Yeah.

[1751] Oh, if your DNA is on the murder weapon.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] What are the chances of it not being them?

[1754] How would you write that?

[1755] Yeah, what are the odds that the DNA results were wrong?

[1756] Yeah.

[1757] Oh, how about this?

[1758] How many people have the same DNA?

[1759] Yeah, it's a hard question to ask.

[1760] We both know what we mean, right?

[1761] We mean how accurate is a DNA.

[1762] Yeah, let's type.

[1763] How accurate is DNA evidence?

[1764] Maybe that's the right question.

[1765] Studies have shown that DNA evidence is 99 % accurate, making it one of the most foolproof pieces of evidence you can possibly use in court.

[1766] It's 99%.

[1767] Okay, this one says, yes, it's possible for distant DNA matches to be false.

[1768] It is most common to have false DNA matches that share a single segment that is smaller than 10 centamorgans in length.

[1769] We don't know what that is.

[1770] No one knows what centa morgans are.

[1771] I've never even heard centa morgans.

[1772] It sounds like a demigorgon from stranger things.

[1773] It does.

[1774] It also sounds like Guten Morgan.

[1775] Hello in German.

[1776] That's hello?

[1777] Good morning.

[1778] Oh.

[1779] Okay.

[1780] And then our last fact is a very dumb fact.

[1781] I looked up what countries eat off shared plates.

[1782] Oh, okay.

[1783] Is that a known thing?

[1784] Another thing I'm not writing correctly.

[1785] She said here, if you order the same thing as somebody else, it's like, oh, I'm so sorry.

[1786] Like, I'm eating.

[1787] I don't mean to get the same thing as you.

[1788] And she's like, that's silly.

[1789] It's not like we're all eating off each other's plates.

[1790] But in a lot of places, you are eating off other people's plates.

[1791] Oh.

[1792] You know, like shared plates.

[1793] Okay, sure.

[1794] Family style.

[1795] Ding, ding, ding family style.

[1796] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1797] All the hip restaurants now, like, it's small shared plates.

[1798] And you take, like, what we did in Austin.

[1799] Oh, you just said Texas.

[1800] But yeah.

[1801] Oh, right.

[1802] Both at those restaurants and also Salt Lake.

[1803] Exactly.

[1804] And, like, nice restaurants and hip restaurants, that's what you do.

[1805] Okay.

[1806] Maybe I'll do percentage of restaurants that know, because I want to know what countries prefer shared bites.

[1807] Oh, boy.

[1808] These are very hard.

[1809] Oh, my God.

[1810] There's an article from Spoon University.

[1811] Oh, that's a great university.

[1812] If your kid told you they were going to Spoon University, boy, you better practice your reaction to that.

[1813] Oh, my God, that's great, honey.

[1814] Oh, fantastic.

[1815] And you're majoring in cutlery or?

[1816] Oh, my God, you got in?

[1817] Wow.

[1818] So you did, you mailed it?

[1819] I guess you did get it in the mail, huh?

[1820] Oh, my God.

[1821] Okay.

[1822] Okay.

[1823] Well, I'm not going to read about this.

[1824] If you guys want to go to Spoon University.

[1825] It's a weekend.

[1826] I think you get your degree in a weekend.

[1827] If anyone's got a weekend to kill.

[1828] I shouldn't say that.

[1829] Maybe that's a real university.

[1830] It just has an unfortunate name.

[1831] My guess is it's just a website.

[1832] Oh, okay, okay, okay.

[1833] I hope.

[1834] I hope.

[1835] I hope.

[1836] No, I don't hope.

[1837] You're right.

[1838] That's bad to say.

[1839] What if it's great?

[1840] Yeah, yeah.

[1841] If you've gone there, we're proud of you.

[1842] We love you.

[1843] That's all.

[1844] I'm really sorry.

[1845] I'm not tip -top, you know.

[1846] That's okay.

[1847] I'm enjoying your company just the same.

[1848] Okay.

[1849] But I apologize because this is also my job and I'm not doing it to 100%.

[1850] But it's weird because you're doing another one of your jobs accurately.

[1851] But I want to do all of them.

[1852] I'm trying to be able to do all of the jobs well.

[1853] I am still doing my edits well.

[1854] That's prioritized.

[1855] Okay, good, good, good.

[1856] Yes, spend your utiles there.

[1857] Yeah, and David and I are, going to go to the Amazon store in like 15 minutes to try to get a social video for the post tomorrow.

[1858] Oh, fun.

[1859] The Amazon store.

[1860] They have a brick and mortar.

[1861] Isn't that crazy?

[1862] What a trick.

[1863] I know.

[1864] They're like going back.

[1865] Oh, my God.

[1866] They took us full circle.

[1867] I know.

[1868] It's exciting.

[1869] Anywho, well, I'm really glad I got to see you.

[1870] Me too.

[1871] Well, I love you.

[1872] And I don't mind you in your frazzled state and i don't think anyone else does and i think at least one time shots and shots okay okay for you all right bye love you love you follow armchair expert on the wondery app amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to every episode of armchair expert early and ad free right now by joining wondry plus in the wondry app or on apple podcasts Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.