Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: we are back. We are continuing our journey through the
Speaker 1: Seven Deadly Sins. Last time we have space on this
Speaker 1: we were slogging it through gluttony, and now we are
Speaker 1: discussing a little something called greed, which works perfectly because
Speaker 1: if you're traveling through Dante's Inferno, always have to do
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, uh, and it makes conversations about Dante's Inferno awkward.
Speaker 1: But um, but yeah. The third circle of Dante's Inferno
Speaker 1: is where the glutton's hang out, and the fourth circle
Speaker 1: is where the greedy hang out. To be more specific,
Speaker 1: this is the circle of avarice and prodigality. It's it's
Speaker 1: interesting Dante is really down on greed. It's not like
Speaker 1: one of these sin like lust, which he has a
Speaker 1: lot of sympathy for, well, because he's human. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he has like, he has a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 1: some of the individuals. That's what I'm getting to. He
Speaker 1: hasn't he has needs, But when he encounters the greedy
Speaker 1: he's it's it's a lot harsher. He divides it up.
Speaker 1: You have the prodigal and the more typically miserly greedy.
Speaker 1: So the prodigal, they're reckless fenders. It's coming in and
Speaker 1: it's it's going out twice as fast. I think that's
Speaker 1: something we can all, if not relate to personally, we can,
Speaker 1: we can we definitely witness in the world around us.
Speaker 1: And then you have the the truly greedy, the hoarders
Speaker 1: and the misers, the ones that take the money, hold
Speaker 1: the money, that are just in it for the money itself. Okay.
Speaker 1: And so when Dante and his guide Virgil show up
Speaker 1: and infer, first of all, they greeted by Plutus, which
Speaker 1: is the god of riches, with a little a little Pluto,
Speaker 1: god of the underworld thrown in because you know, you know,
Speaker 1: the underworld, underground, that's where gold and silver come from.
Speaker 1: And he's beast, he always full of ray. Ginny's babbling
Speaker 1: and he's saying poppy Satan, poppy Satan Nalipi, which is
Speaker 1: kind of just nobody. There's a lot of discussion about
Speaker 1: what in the heck that means. Yeah, I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: like poppy statan sounds a little poppy statan. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a sense like maybe it's something papal, because
Speaker 1: certainly there's a lot of discussion of sinful popes in
Speaker 1: the Inferno and then Satan of course. But but this
Speaker 1: is actually one of the few instances where Satan is
Speaker 1: actually mentioned, because when you actually encounter the big demon
Speaker 1: himself the bottom of Inferno, he's referred to as Lucifer.
Speaker 1: So anyway, back to these centers, so you have the
Speaker 1: spin Thrifts and the Misers, and they're all first of all,
Speaker 1: they're all so shabby, but you can't even recognize them,
Speaker 1: Like Dante is all like, I'm probably gonna look around here,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna know some people that I met know from life,
Speaker 1: and that your Italian accent very mildly. You're Italian is
Speaker 1: much better, and the Virgil's like, now you're not gonna
Speaker 1: You're not gonna recognize anybody, because everyone's so twisted here
Speaker 1: from their lives, from their their earthly lives full of
Speaker 1: greed and and overspending, that you're just not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to wreck it. Is that part of the punishment. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not as much a part of the punishment. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of like the reality of the like the
Speaker 1: like spiritually there deformed from this. The punishment itself is
Speaker 1: that they have there. It's kind of a joust between
Speaker 1: the spinthrifts and the greedy, except instead of having like
Speaker 1: you know, swords or spears or any kind of typical
Speaker 1: jousting equipment, they are rolling large objects against each other
Speaker 1: using only like their chests. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the illustrations provided by Good Stuff Dora, the large objects
Speaker 1: that they're jousting with their giant money bags. So if
Speaker 1: you imagine these like these hideous looking like naked people
Speaker 1: and they're all sort of like pushing big money bags,
Speaker 1: rolling them around with their chest into each other and
Speaker 1: arguing with each other and calling each other's other names,
Speaker 1: and so there there there are no demons um staffed
Speaker 1: here to punish these guys. They provide their own punishment
Speaker 1: to each other. Okay, so it's like a scene from
Speaker 1: eyes Watch. Shut well, I'll no, no, well, you know what, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe more accessible is the illustration that you sent me,
Speaker 1: and it showed a lucky cat to a mountain, and
Speaker 1: the mountain was there was a little trail going to
Speaker 1: the very top with a lucky cat is perched and
Speaker 1: there's mice with big hunks of cheese weighing them down
Speaker 1: as they bring it to the lucky cat. Yes, I will,
Speaker 1: I will link to this in the blog post that
Speaker 1: goes with this podcast and gets you're interested in saying that.
Speaker 1: But there there are many artistic interpretations. Now, if one
Speaker 1: goes into Dante's purgatory and this again is the mountain
Speaker 1: that connects Earth to the heaven, and well, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're complicating with lucky cat at this point. There's no
Speaker 1: lucky cat in this thing. Okay. It's just a mountain
Speaker 1: the connects Earth and hell beneath it to the heavens above.
Speaker 1: And if you travel up the mountain, each terrace purges
Speaker 1: you of a sin so that you'll be clean enough
Speaker 1: to enter heaven. So the fifth race is where you
Speaker 1: would purge yourself of all this greed, and you do
Speaker 1: it by lying lying face down on a hard rock floor,
Speaker 1: weeping and praying until the greed has washed away from you.
Speaker 1: That's your punishment. Yeah, it's kind of. It's not a punishment. Remember,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a cleansing, Okay, kind of weak sauce.
Speaker 1: It is it is kind of weaks us. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe Dante just wasn't bringing his a game when
Speaker 1: thinking about greed. He's really down on it. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not like they're like, you know, boiling rivers
Speaker 1: of blood and feces. They're just dudes in help pushing
Speaker 1: bags of money against each other. And and hear a
Speaker 1: lot of people praying the eyes being soon shut as
Speaker 1: in v right, and there's some gas fler ones ahead.
Speaker 1: But um, let's look to Buddhism real quick again before
Speaker 1: we get into the real science of all this. In Buddhism, greed,
Speaker 1: along with delusion, slash, ignorance, and hate, is one of
Speaker 1: the three poisons at the heart of all suffering. So
Speaker 1: if you look at the center of the Debettan wheel
Speaker 1: of life, the wheel of sam sorrow, which we haven't
Speaker 1: excellent interactive illustration of in the how Stuff Works article
Speaker 1: how sky burial works. If if you look at the
Speaker 1: center of this wheel, you'll find three animals, a pig,
Speaker 1: a cock, and a snake, and they are all biting
Speaker 1: each other's tails, forming a ring. And each of these
Speaker 1: three animals represents one of the three poisons. The snake
Speaker 1: is hate, the pig is delusion or ignorance. You see
Speaker 1: it referred to as is either, and then the cock
Speaker 1: represents greed. It's interesting how Buddhism greed is very central
Speaker 1: to everything that is wrong with life here on earth.
Speaker 1: And just as a side note, some people are really
Speaker 1: into like crazy burgers. I think it would be it
Speaker 1: would be fascinating if someone were too concoct a burger
Speaker 1: that contains three meats snake mate, pig meat, and rooster meat.
Speaker 1: And then you could have it be the the three
Speaker 1: poison burger or the the burger that is the root
Speaker 1: of all suffering. Well, isn't there already that you're ducan.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that, you're duncan, except um, it's
Speaker 1: responsible for all of man's woes. Okay, so it's and
Speaker 1: it's probably a pretty heavy launch two and just throwing
Speaker 1: that out there if anyone wants to create such a
Speaker 1: blasphemy or if if you know, next Thanksgiving when that
Speaker 1: rolls around, you can't take your tur duck in, which
Speaker 1: is a turkey, chicken and duck I'll roll together, right,
Speaker 1: and you can offer it up as a way to
Speaker 1: consume the sins of the past year, because I think
Speaker 1: that would go over really well at Thanksgiving table. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't think about that. So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: there's the religious introduction, and both of these examples are
Speaker 1: very down on the idea of greed. But it is
Speaker 1: this poisonous thing. It is this this awful thing that
Speaker 1: that distorts the soul and renders this unrecognizable in the afterlife,
Speaker 1: that is responsible for all of this pain around us.
Speaker 1: But then there's another way of looking at it, right, well,
Speaker 1: you write a more materialistic view. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: Gordon Gecko? Yes, read from us from the book of
Speaker 1: of Get all right, Gordon Gecko, the character in Wall Street.
Speaker 1: We're talking to high eighties here, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can do a Michael Douglas voice. The point is,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, greed is good, Greed works, Greed is right.
Speaker 1: Greed clarifies, cut through and captures the essence of the
Speaker 1: evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, money, love,
Speaker 1: knowledge has marked the upward surge in mankind and greed.
Speaker 1: Mark my words. We'll see not only telled our paper,
Speaker 1: but the other malfunctioning corporation called the U s A. Wow. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: greed also fights stains, that's right, that's right. I've got
Speaker 1: a greed stick at home. Um. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an idea that isn't too far away from
Speaker 1: reality and certain eras of our existence. Certainly in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, you know, accumulation of wealth is something that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are concentrating on, and there is
Speaker 1: this idea that greed is this sort of evolutionary birthright
Speaker 1: that we can't evolve without continuing to amass more and
Speaker 1: more and sort of step over each other in order
Speaker 1: to get to it. Yeah, I mean you can go
Speaker 1: with the I mean, the classic argument that stuff like
Speaker 1: India and greed, these are the motivating forces of ambition,
Speaker 1: and we need ambition in life. Like on some level,
Speaker 1: greed maybe is good because I need things to live, right,
Speaker 1: I need a little money, and a little more is
Speaker 1: maybe even a little better, So I should want those things, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's the excess part, right, Okay. So there's this
Speaker 1: guy named Andrew Low, and he's the Harris and Harris
Speaker 1: Group professor M I. T. And the director of its
Speaker 1: laboratory for financial engineering, and in a two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine interview with Freakonomics, he commented on the unprecedented era
Speaker 1: of wealth just recently that we have right um, and
Speaker 1: he said that quote extended periods of prosperity act as
Speaker 1: an anesthetic and the human brain. Okay, So that's here's
Speaker 1: one reason why greed isn't so grand. Right. Essentially, he's
Speaker 1: saying that all of us who were trading in on
Speaker 1: the real estate based financial bubble, we're in a quote
Speaker 1: drug induced cooper that causes us to take risks that
Speaker 1: we know we should avoid. He's saying basically that monetary
Speaker 1: gain and we've we've seen this before, certainly in the
Speaker 1: laboratory is uh. It stimulates the same reward securitary as
Speaker 1: cocaine and in both cases, again we've talked about this,
Speaker 1: you know, over and over in terms of this, and
Speaker 1: since dopamine is released into the nucleus incumbents um and
Speaker 1: then the opposite of this, this is really interesting. Financial
Speaker 1: loss activates the same fight or flight circuitry as physical attacks,
Speaker 1: releasing adrenaline and a cortisol in the bloodstream. So I mean,
Speaker 1: here you have different sides of the coin, but certainly
Speaker 1: you've got dopamine and you've got adrenaline on the other side,
Speaker 1: and all of this is tied to finance. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the again he's in the drug example,
Speaker 1: a young man takes cocaine and then writes a really
Speaker 1: horrible song or it gets a really or is really
Speaker 1: into an idea that is just dreadful. Likewise, a young
Speaker 1: man who has a financial success us for a short
Speaker 1: amount of time, during that success, everything is so great
Speaker 1: he decides, I'm going to buy a sailboat right right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna blow my money on this, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spend it on this. I'm gonna do this because
Speaker 1: things are great. This couldn't possibly wear off. And of
Speaker 1: course both individuals quickly find that, uh, the sensation does
Speaker 1: wear off, right, I mean, basically, this is deadening that
Speaker 1: part of your brain. That means not literally deadening, but
Speaker 1: certainly the part of your brain that is thinking about
Speaker 1: the long term is now offline. And you know, your
Speaker 1: short term brain is like, hey, do whatever, Like let's
Speaker 1: go buy a boat. It sounds like a great idea. Um,
Speaker 1: So it would make sense that in terms of economics,
Speaker 1: there's something happening in the brain that really feeds into greed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this question comes up, a greed everybody is greedy
Speaker 1: to to some extent or another. Right, Um, but who
Speaker 1: could be the greediest jerks out there? Is there is
Speaker 1: there naturally answer to that question? Who could be? Or
Speaker 1: who who might be? Might be? Might be? Like who
Speaker 1: out there in the world is the greediest chart? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well one would. I mean, if you're going with the stereotype,
Speaker 1: you're looking at people like your Gordon Geckos, like your
Speaker 1: Scrooge McDucks. You know, the individuals that have so much
Speaker 1: it's an addiction, you know, like the money and the
Speaker 1: money onto itself was an addiction. Okay, So bingo wealth corrupting? Right,
Speaker 1: And you're right, this is, you know, somewhat of a cliche.
Speaker 1: But there are some scientists who decided to put this
Speaker 1: to the test. Or rather, psychologist Paul piff of the
Speaker 1: University of California at Berkeley. He conducted seven different studies
Speaker 1: that the seven different scenarios really testing out socio economic
Speaker 1: levels and ethics, wondering if indeed wealth corrupts. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going to highlight a couple of them, because I
Speaker 1: think that they're interesting, but I should point out and
Speaker 1: that all seven scenarios, the overwhelming evidence is that people
Speaker 1: with higher socio economic levels tend to have uh dodgy ethics,
Speaker 1: or that that was the conclusion that was wrong from this.
Speaker 1: Um there was a study in which U. Pif and
Speaker 1: his team monitored traffic at a four waist stop in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and they noted all the makes and the
Speaker 1: models of automobiles because that's a really good indicator of
Speaker 1: your socio economic level usually right, um, so guests who
Speaker 1: more often than not cut the other drivers off the
Speaker 1: fancy cars. Fancy cars, I mean overwhelmingly. Okay, So then
Speaker 1: there's another study that they did, and this was they
Speaker 1: had test takers asked to imagine themselves being very rich
Speaker 1: or very poor, and then given an opportunity to take
Speaker 1: candy from a jar that would next be delivered to
Speaker 1: children in another lab like really like taking candy from
Speaker 1: from a baby. Right. See, all I can think of
Speaker 1: is the Simpsons episode where well, of course that Mr
Speaker 1: Burns is another, I mean, if not classic examples of
Speaker 1: the stereotypically rich, miserly awful person who has been totally
Speaker 1: corrupted by wealth. But there's an episode, of course where
Speaker 1: he he actually steals to steal candy from a baby. Well,
Speaker 1: right there you go. He in this study certainly would
Speaker 1: have borne out the results. But so again here here
Speaker 1: you see the people who are imagining themselves is very
Speaker 1: rich somehow distancing themselves from their action and saying and
Speaker 1: taking actually more candy than the other people who imagine
Speaker 1: themselves is very poor. Uh. And again seven of these
Speaker 1: different scenarios. Uh. And you'd have to have many more
Speaker 1: studies in order to have more conclusive data on this,
Speaker 1: I think. But I think at least it gives us
Speaker 1: an idea of the direction of of what happens when
Speaker 1: you are exposed to extreme wealth and the sort of
Speaker 1: distancing that you experience. You know, I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: the lab full of babies or children actually need that
Speaker 1: candy though, well I have to say I thought that too,
Speaker 1: because I thought, well, I might be like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what those twisty roles, that kid doesn't need it,
Speaker 1: nobody knows to go to the dentist, And what kind
Speaker 1: of can is it? Because there's there's candy, and there's candy,
Speaker 1: Like if it's if it's like, um, you know, doing
Speaker 1: all this bank suckers or candy corn, then by all
Speaker 1: means why their children have it. But if it's upscale
Speaker 1: candy that's clearly designed for a more sophisticated adult palate,
Speaker 1: then then I'm not sure taking it is really the best.
Speaker 1: I agree. I agree. Um, But there there's this evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychologist and he's a consumer researcher in his name is
Speaker 1: Vladisias of the University of Minnesota, and he says this
Speaker 1: work is important because it suggests that people often act unethically,
Speaker 1: not because they are desperate and in the dumps, but
Speaker 1: because they feel entitled and they want to get ahead. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I just did. I laid out my
Speaker 1: entitlement for the fancy candy, that the that this candy
Speaker 1: would be lost on these children, and therefore I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm doing them a favor because they don't need it,
Speaker 1: and be I am the intended audience for this candy.
Speaker 1: So I've already I've already rationalized stealing candy from a baby.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a great day of my life. You
Speaker 1: know what, all your gold rings with your diamonds are
Speaker 1: kind of shining pretty rightly. Can you kind of just
Speaker 1: take a couple off their Mr money bags? Um? Okay,
Speaker 1: So what is the opposite of greed, Well, not necessarily opposite,
Speaker 1: but a reaction that you might have to greed, revulsion,
Speaker 1: a sense of injustice. Right, Because we were discussing this
Speaker 1: the other day, like, like, there's something particularly foul about greed,
Speaker 1: especially when we I mean well pretty much only when
Speaker 1: we glimpse it in others, because when we glimpse it
Speaker 1: in ourselves, we tend to, like everything else, we tend
Speaker 1: to find more enlightened ways of understanding it or lying
Speaker 1: to ourselves about it, you know. But when you see
Speaker 1: greed in another person, it's like, I mean, it all
Speaker 1: blows done. The money right, and money on on a
Speaker 1: on a very crucial level, it's not real, Like even
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with like gold coins, it's just it's all.
Speaker 1: It's a ultimately kind of arbitrary. I mean, yes, there's
Speaker 1: there's a great deal of numbers and mathematics backing it up,
Speaker 1: but it's all and none of it is real, you know.
Speaker 1: And then when when we when we when we raise
Speaker 1: that this abstract thing, this unreal thing above everything else
Speaker 1: that is real in life. When we place this in
Speaker 1: this this made up money above the heads of very
Speaker 1: real people, it's terrifying and awful and absurd. Right well,
Speaker 1: when the fantasy of this right becomes grotesque and you
Speaker 1: can't really see the reality around you, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it clouds your vision of your ability to actually accurately
Speaker 1: since what's going on around you. That's when I when
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you make decisions that perhaps and
Speaker 1: other people creates a sense of disgust, because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you become this person who is a caricature
Speaker 1: yourself to a certain degree. There's something called the ultimatum game,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting the premises. Okay, I have ten dollars
Speaker 1: that I can share with you, Robert Land, anyway I choose. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you accept my offer, then we both keep my
Speaker 1: proposed share. If you reject my offer, neither of us
Speaker 1: sees any of the money. Oh wait, now what's the offer? Okay? Um, okay,
Speaker 1: I have ten dollars. I will give you a quarter
Speaker 1: a quarter of the money, or just say, then, what
Speaker 1: do I have to do? Do you mean you just
Speaker 1: can you can take or you can leave it? Well
Speaker 1: in that case, I would take it because cents is
Speaker 1: better than no money, Right, you are so rational, But
Speaker 1: most people would actually reject it. Huh yeah, because you
Speaker 1: would think, like the rational thing to do is to say, like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sure, now we're both richer for this, right,
Speaker 1: But there's a sense of injustice going on, like someone
Speaker 1: might think, that's not really why are you keeping and
Speaker 1: I'm getting but I didn't do anything to earn it.
Speaker 1: You just you have ten dollars. You're giving me twenty
Speaker 1: five cents and I'm and if you give me that cents,
Speaker 1: I'm halfway to getting something out of the office snack machine.
Speaker 1: All I have to do is find one more quarter
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be rolling in granola bar. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you were a normal, flawed person, you would say, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to penalize you for your stinginess. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna like neither of us are going to get anything. Right.
Speaker 1: That's weird. Yeah, even it's understandable, like I can totally
Speaker 1: I can totally get it. Yeah, like I have. And
Speaker 1: it is in a way if you think about it, Um,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a power structure, right, because if that
Speaker 1: person has the money and they're offering it to you.
Speaker 1: How do you get your power back if you have nothing,
Speaker 1: if you don't have really, uh any choice in the matter. Right,
Speaker 1: So I guess I could I could conceivably make the argument, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you you know you're keeping nine, why don't
Speaker 1: you just give me one quarter more? And then I
Speaker 1: can go ahead and get that granola bar instead. I'm tempted.
Speaker 1: I'm with half. I'm here with half a granola bar,
Speaker 1: basically that I can't eat well, I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're gonna get for honestly, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You start to think about that, and what happens in
Speaker 1: your brain, Uh, the anterior insula starts to get activated.
Speaker 1: And this is the area associated with negative emotions. And
Speaker 1: this has been seen by Jonathan Cohen and he's a
Speaker 1: Princeton neuro scientist. The interesting thing is that when you
Speaker 1: up the amount of money, like for instance, if if
Speaker 1: I said I have twenty three dollars and I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you eight dollars, then you start to see
Speaker 1: people go okay, well that's that's a little bit fairer.
Speaker 1: And the part of the brain, the the anterior insult,
Speaker 1: actually starts to die down a little bit in terms
Speaker 1: of activity. As a way to tamp down this is say, okay,
Speaker 1: let's start to be rational about this because now stakes
Speaker 1: are getting a little bit higher. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: more money here, and it really I think it's very
Speaker 1: telling on how we uh make some important decisions. So
Speaker 1: this is definitely the part of the brain is lighting
Speaker 1: up when you've just had dinner with some friends at
Speaker 1: a restaurant and you have to figure out how the
Speaker 1: bill works, or or even when like far before the
Speaker 1: bill comes, say when the guacamole comes out, or the
Speaker 1: pizza's placed on the table and food has to be
Speaker 1: divvied up, I can see that kicking in, you know,
Speaker 1: because you're wondering about how things are going to be
Speaker 1: distributed and first out and then how are they going
Speaker 1: to be paid for? Like even if you're not like
Speaker 1: a stingy kind of person who's counting the slices of
Speaker 1: pizza as they leave the table, like, your brain can't
Speaker 1: help but sort of think in those terms, right. Well,
Speaker 1: And they've seen this in babies, they've seen this in
Speaker 1: primates too, that there's a sense of injustice. Study after
Speaker 1: study that people are mentally taking notes on what is
Speaker 1: being parsed out at that time. Well, because I mean,
Speaker 1: we have to live in a community. We have to
Speaker 1: live in some sort of a group. Be at a
Speaker 1: primitive group that is just you know, crawling through the
Speaker 1: grasses and prehistoric times, or a community of people who
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out how in the heck they're
Speaker 1: gonna do the tip with a group on discount at
Speaker 1: a restaurant. Right, Yeah, that's just the recipe for disaster
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, yeah, the whole group on thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not to say that I haven't taken advantage of it's great,
Speaker 1: but yes, um, you have to come to some sort
Speaker 1: of point of cooperation. And like you said, that's that's
Speaker 1: what really makes a society. That's that's the glue of it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about why greed sometimes turns us
Speaker 1: into a bunch of only checking Homo Simpson. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. Why do donuts distract Homer Simpson? Why is
Speaker 1: homocipson subsets with with donuts? We had to boil this
Speaker 1: down to a single Oh, I don't know, brain hormone.
Speaker 1: What would it be delicious? Dopamine exactly. Just the mere
Speaker 1: thought of the doughnut can can result in dopamine release.
Speaker 1: Just the the the anticipation of rewarding yourself with those
Speaker 1: delicious cowards. I have to say, I think I might
Speaker 1: be salivating a little bit right now. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: picturing that. I don't even really eat donuts, but I'm
Speaker 1: picturing that Simpsons doughnut with the pink I sing in
Speaker 1: the sprinkles. Yeah, dopamine keeps popping up in these podcasts
Speaker 1: we're doing. I mean, but dopamine pops up a lot
Speaker 1: because it's anytime we're trying to figure out neurologically why
Speaker 1: we do the things we do, because dopamine is the
Speaker 1: reward juice, and uh, most of the not most, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we do are about releasing
Speaker 1: that chemical, about achieving the reward. Our life is kind
Speaker 1: of this game. And when we, uh, we actually hit
Speaker 1: the points where we get the achieved, that's we get
Speaker 1: the dopamine. It's not surprisingly would show up here. It
Speaker 1: show up seems to have shown up in all the
Speaker 1: other sense. And it's one of these things that we
Speaker 1: learned a game a long time ago. Primitive man kind
Speaker 1: of figured out what was going on with the dopamine
Speaker 1: and figured out, hey, I can actually cheat and get
Speaker 1: all the dopamine I want. Right, so we end up
Speaker 1: with this whole legacy of bad habits and addictions and
Speaker 1: uh and since if you will, and greed seems to
Speaker 1: play especially well with dopamine because it's tied up in
Speaker 1: three of the big needs that we have in life,
Speaker 1: the needs for safety, the need for approval, and the
Speaker 1: need for a steam. Right, we need safety because we
Speaker 1: want to survive. We need approval because we want to
Speaker 1: live in a community. Uh, and we need a steam
Speaker 1: because we want to rise up in that community. And
Speaker 1: money is it happens some pretty much buy any of
Speaker 1: those things. And if money you can buy safety for yourself,
Speaker 1: you want to be approved of, you can buy the
Speaker 1: right clothing, You can buy the right lifestyle to do that.
Speaker 1: And if you want to steam, as pretty much any
Speaker 1: say presidential election or or uh, you know, or any
Speaker 1: kind canny kind of political kind of gate illustrates, you
Speaker 1: can buy that if you have enough money and enough
Speaker 1: will to invest in it. So money is the ultimate
Speaker 1: dopamine inducer. If money in and of itself doesn't fuel
Speaker 1: the dopamine, then it can buy something that will which
Speaker 1: makes sense again why people would be chasing that high
Speaker 1: with with wealth or greed, right, um. And it actually
Speaker 1: plays into something that has been called the scrabble strategy before.
Speaker 1: And again we're talking about the short term versus the
Speaker 1: long term, and the scrabble strategy is actually called the
Speaker 1: greedy algorithm. And this is a computational mathematics term, and
Speaker 1: basically it says that you can do well by making
Speaker 1: whichever moves seems best at that moment and not worrying
Speaker 1: too much about future consequences. And in mathematics, the greedy
Speaker 1: algorithm builds up a solution piece by piece, always choosing
Speaker 1: the next piece that offers the most obvious and immediate benefits.
Speaker 1: So for us, right, that would translate to dopamine ding
Speaker 1: ding ding. Okay, So in the scrabble scenario, the the
Speaker 1: idea here is that I get a high number value
Speaker 1: pile like an X or Z or something, I'm better
Speaker 1: off holding onto it, but instead I play it immediately,
Speaker 1: right yeah, Because I mean that's not playing the long game, right.
Speaker 1: It's not like chess where you have to really consider,
Speaker 1: you know, three moves ahead. You just have to inscrabble.
Speaker 1: It really is like, whatever you have right in front
Speaker 1: of you at that very moment, you have to play
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll benefit from that strategy, so you know that.
Speaker 1: That's that's what greed sort of falls into, is this
Speaker 1: greedy algorithm. Although the greedy algorithm obviously isn't sustainable because
Speaker 1: at some point you have to uh, you know, inhabit
Speaker 1: your future brain and start thinking about the consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess with human lives, the problem is that
Speaker 1: by the time you start realizing you need to play
Speaker 1: the long game, there's not In many cases, there's not
Speaker 1: that much game left. I don't know, you didn't see
Speaker 1: that a lot. I mean, it's like, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: it's like people end up not caring during the rich years,
Speaker 1: during the bouentiful years, which are they there? The grasshopper, right,
Speaker 1: the grasshopper in the ant That sounds right because the grasshopper, yeah,
Speaker 1: the aunt in the fable, right is is piling away
Speaker 1: for the becoming winter, and the grasshopper is like, I'm
Speaker 1: having a great time and then it gets cold and
Speaker 1: the ants like I'm set in the grasshopper dies. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a right, your rosebud, we walked. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't leap to that logic. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that actually plays in all that well, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: He was chasing after greed, Yeah he was, he was.
Speaker 1: He is another iconic greedy character. But but yeah, when
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of the of the plenty, we're
Speaker 1: not thinking about the long long game, and it's easier
Speaker 1: to think about the long game when there's nothing much
Speaker 1: game left. I don't know if I'm making sense of that. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm getting it. I'm getting it. If you are obsessed
Speaker 1: your whole life with cheasing after the precious and uh
Speaker 1: and trying to battle do battle with the sneaky little
Speaker 1: hobbits is for the precious. Well, the precious was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: It was one of the rings of power. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I you can you kind of have to side with
Speaker 1: Gollumn on that one, I know. But the point is
Speaker 1: that that you could you could waste your entire life,
Speaker 1: you know, obsessing over the precious, and then you no
Speaker 1: longer have a life. You just have a shiny did
Speaker 1: get to travel pretty well, and he lived a long life.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on here, Robert Lamb. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, you know, the greedy got just coming out,
Speaker 1: don't you know, hate on Sneakle too much because you know,
Speaker 1: you got to see the world of Middle Earth, and
Speaker 1: you know, and he and he his spoiler, he dies
Speaker 1: by falling into a volcano, which is something I kind
Speaker 1: of want for myself. So okay, So there we are
Speaker 1: revealing something about you right now and your affinity for Schneegle.
Speaker 1: Like imagine if you're if your obituary said something like
Speaker 1: Robert lamp passed away today when he fell into Mountain Doon, Like,
Speaker 1: that's pretty right after chasing absolute power. Well, that makes
Speaker 1: it sound kind of sad. I guess all right, you've
Speaker 1: got it. You've got a point. All right, let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's bring over our greed. But over there, overdone? Oh
Speaker 1: I don't know, are we Yeah? I think that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty we were discussing earlier, like the
Speaker 1: research into degree doesn't go quite as deep to some
Speaker 1: of the other ones we've we've talked about. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about Dante. I was like, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: He's like this is awful, this is bad. It's awful.
Speaker 1: It's bad, but I'm not really going to devote a
Speaker 1: lot of time the same thing with researchers so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess a lot of its kind of
Speaker 1: surface level. It comes down to we want money because
Speaker 1: money makes a lot of things possible. It allows us
Speaker 1: to have safety, it allows us to to eat, to
Speaker 1: to have shelter, it allows us to move through life.
Speaker 1: So of course we want it. And like with all
Speaker 1: the sins we've looked at, there's like a tipping point
Speaker 1: between like a normal level of wanting money and an
Speaker 1: unbalanced level. You know, what I think would be interesting
Speaker 1: is some research on the super wealthy and wondering whether
Speaker 1: or not if you reach a certain point of wealth
Speaker 1: that you become more altruistic and you actually become more ethical.
Speaker 1: That isn't because a number of billionaires have taken that
Speaker 1: pledge to to donate a large portion of their their
Speaker 1: wealth charity. And there are for every you know, miserly
Speaker 1: Scrooge McDuck type individual in the world, you can you
Speaker 1: can generally think of someone else who is using their fortune,
Speaker 1: or at least a large portion of their fortune to
Speaker 1: try and do good things and not just as a
Speaker 1: tax right off, right right, So, yeah, I would like
Speaker 1: to see more more numbers on that, for sure, because
Speaker 1: there are there are certainly some individuals that really make
Speaker 1: a case for the old adage money corrupts and money
Speaker 1: is the root of all evil. But then there are
Speaker 1: some individuals who seem to stand apart from that and
Speaker 1: and really give us a little hope. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: some people who I'm sure at four waste uff and
Speaker 1: they're driving a luxury car that that actually, uh, they're
Speaker 1: not jerks. I don't know. Ye, let me get that.
Speaker 1: Let Dante have the last word on this though, because
Speaker 1: there's a lovely little line, and this is of course
Speaker 1: translated from the Italian and then this is Virgil talking
Speaker 1: to Dante. He says, now you can see, my son,
Speaker 1: the brief mockery of the goods that are committed to
Speaker 1: fortune for which the human race so squabbles for all
Speaker 1: the gold that is under the moon, and that ever
Speaker 1: was could not give rest to even one of these
Speaker 1: weary souls. He says that as they look king at
Speaker 1: the torture didn't help. So there you go. All right,
Speaker 1: all right, now let's call over the robot. Come over here,
Speaker 1: Arnie and bring us our basket of golden mail. Clink
Speaker 1: clink clink. All right, well, here's one related there. Here's
Speaker 1: one related to one of our sin podcasts. Darlene writes
Speaker 1: in about our gluttony episode Dear Robert and Julie, as
Speaker 1: someone who very recently went through gastric bypass surgery, I
Speaker 1: was obviously very interested in your gluttony podcast. Here's a
Speaker 1: personal perspective that main interesting. I've always been someone who
Speaker 1: suffered from extreme gnawing hunger. In fact, my stomach would
Speaker 1: growl so loudly my dogs would bark at it. A
Speaker 1: small amount of food would not mitigate the pain. Not
Speaker 1: not pains, but genuine pain of that hunger. Combine this
Speaker 1: with an extremely slow metabolicalism, and you have a perfect
Speaker 1: recipe for obesity. In the months of study and research
Speaker 1: prior to my gas would bypass surgery, I read that
Speaker 1: the hunger hormone garyline becomes suppressed following surgery. I didn't
Speaker 1: really understand or believe it, But now about six week
Speaker 1: suppost surgery, I can confirm this is absolutely true. Like
Speaker 1: those twin women who always irritated me with their oh, dear,
Speaker 1: I forgot to eat today, I find that I don't
Speaker 1: eat on a specific schedule, I to forget all about food.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to lose weight when you were
Speaker 1: never hungry. I understand that pharmaceutical researchers have been on
Speaker 1: the trail of garland for suppressor for years but still
Speaker 1: haven't been able to nail it. So be kind of
Speaker 1: the overweight, obese and those who may appear gluttonous, they
Speaker 1: may have physical issues that aren't obvious. Thanks Darling. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we you know, touched on the while I wanted to
Speaker 1: touch I think we we we definitely tried to stress
Speaker 1: in the Gluttony podcast that there's a lot more going
Speaker 1: on with certainly with obesity and issues of just you know,
Speaker 1: revenous hunger than than oh I like food and I
Speaker 1: want to eat a lot of them, like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a lot more complicated than that that there There's
Speaker 1: there's stuff going on at genetic level and that true
Speaker 1: gluttony it certainly is far as like competitive eating goes
Speaker 1: really stands apart from the issues of plotting way. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: one of the things we didn't get into um is
Speaker 1: something called ft O, which is a a gene variant
Speaker 1: that is often seen in obese people, and this is
Speaker 1: actually responsible for this biologically altered state, much like what
Speaker 1: she just talked about in terms of regulating hunger. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, unfortunately, there's actually a lot of stuff about
Speaker 1: gluttony and in diets and all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: we couldn't get to you in that podcast. Um. So
Speaker 1: it was it was nice to hear from her and
Speaker 1: to be able to sort of address that right now
Speaker 1: at least. Oh well, here's another email from a listener.
Speaker 1: By the end of of Desolu and Deflu wrote in
Speaker 1: to share some thoughts on me don't eat the Panda episode,
Speaker 1: but also mentioned that they found the Cubed Earth episode
Speaker 1: very inspiring and they wanted to create an RPG roleplaying
Speaker 1: game module about it. They say, think Star Trek where
Speaker 1: Earthlings come from different sides of the cube. Woo who
Speaker 1: so ampt to write it? So I thought that was awesome.
Speaker 1: Any times podcast can inspire people, I am I'm all
Speaker 1: into it. Uh. Here's a quick email from a listener,
Speaker 1: My name Carlos. Carlos says, after listening to your rat
Speaker 1: King podcast, I came to the realization that magneton uh
Speaker 1: and this is apparently a Pokemon character. The evolved form
Speaker 1: of magnet E is essentially a rat king. I linked
Speaker 1: some pictures, don't worry. Carlos also mentions that if I
Speaker 1: enjoyed playing Team Fortress back in college, I should be
Speaker 1: happy to know that there's something called Team Fortress too,
Speaker 1: So I will have to check that out, or maybe
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. The Pokemon thing was interesting. I looked at
Speaker 1: the picture. I didn't quite understand it, but it looks,
Speaker 1: it looks, and then finally here is one from a
Speaker 1: listener by the name of Maricela and Marcelo right and says, hey,
Speaker 1: exclamation point. I'm sure this has happened to you, guys.
Speaker 1: In my head as I listened to you, I make
Speaker 1: a perfect picture of you, as my imagination dictates, according
Speaker 1: to the tone or depth of your voice. The little
Speaker 1: changes when you're about to say something sarcastic or even
Speaker 1: a joke, or at least I used to until I
Speaker 1: saw the Facebook profile picture, which of course is that tough.
Speaker 1: Just look up the stuff to blow your mind on
Speaker 1: Facebook at us and uh, it will invent your life.
Speaker 1: Myself goes on to say, I gotta say, Robert, you're
Speaker 1: close to what I had in mind or is it
Speaker 1: the other way around? But I so totally pictured a
Speaker 1: blonde Julie. Don't know why it just happened. And now
Speaker 1: whenever I'm listening to the two of you, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: so funny to think about it, I just start laughing.
Speaker 1: Great work with the podcast, the awesome dynamics between you
Speaker 1: tube really transcends the mics and makes me learn something
Speaker 1: new every time. Here's now correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But don't you have a doppelganger in Athens, Georgia that
Speaker 1: is a blonde Julie? I did it one time? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also I would one time. Did you slay her? Well?
Speaker 1: I don't know if she's still there. Uh, but I
Speaker 1: was blonde until I swell. But you know, for what
Speaker 1: it's worth, so you're you're right to some degree, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And my daughter is like very Nordic working and blind,
Speaker 1: so I don't know you're picking up on something there, okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yes, I'm a brunette, proud brunette, okay. And and
Speaker 1: that I still can do something with the doppel game.
Speaker 1: I thought, are you saying that, like I am the
Speaker 1: doppel ganger and I'm wearing a wig right now, and
Speaker 1: then when I leave the studio, I take my wig
Speaker 1: off and I'm blond. Maybe I don't know, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you're you're the doppelganger you play, you replaced the
Speaker 1: actual Julie. You're completely wrong, but I don't. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: even think that there's no logic there. Don't pursue that
Speaker 1: line of logic anymore. Okay, okay, okay, seriously, I am Julie. Okay, okay, okay. Well,
Speaker 1: well if you would, if you would like to interact
Speaker 1: with me or Julie or potentially Julie's doppel game, you
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and Twitter again. On Facebook,
Speaker 1: we're Stuff to Blow the Mind. Find us on there,
Speaker 1: like us, follow the feed we updated with all sorts
Speaker 1: of cool stuff about current and upcoming episodes. You know,
Speaker 1: we'd love to get feedback from you guys as well.
Speaker 1: On Twitter, you will find us under the handles Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind, and you can always drop us a line
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow,