WEBVTT - The Fallacy of Alignment: Fundamental Attribution Error, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:14.000 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.000 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.119 I'm Joe McCormick. And we're back with part two of 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:22.799 our discussion of the fundamental attribution error, our tendency to 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:28.240 overestimate disposition all causes of behavior like innate character traits 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:32.479 and attitudes you have and underestimate the role of situational 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:35.599 influences on how people act. Yeah, And we kicked off 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:39.120 the first episode by talking about the classic sci fi 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:42.320 horror film Alien and uh, you know, figuring out the 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:46.120 characters and the motivations and the actions of of Ripley 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.840 and Dallas in the early goings of that film. Yeah, 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.720 specifically in the scene where Dallas gets back with you know, 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.720 John Hurd has a an alien face hugger stuck to 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:58.800 his face and he says, let us in the ship, 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.400 and Ripley says, no, I can't do that. Unfortunately, she 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:06.679 gets ignored overridden. They come inside anyway, and we discussed 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:08.959 what caused them to make the decisions they make. Now, 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.520 that was in the context of uh, emphasizing the distinction 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:17.280 between situational explanations and dispositional explanations. You could say Ripley 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:21.600 was trying to obey quart quarantine orders because she's orderly 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.080 and logical and calm under pressure. Or you could say 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.360 that she was doing it because maybe the cabin was 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.680 cold and she was uncomfortable, or because she was nervous 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.560 because of the strange situation they were in. And of course, 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:36.920 in a way, both those things can be true, like 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.360 people's actions are always an outgrowth of both who they 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:42.759 are as a person and what they bring to the table, 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.520 but also of the situation they're in and the unique 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:49.360 circumstances they face. And the the issue with fundamental attribution 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:52.240 error is just that we tend to overestimate the role 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.680 of the former and underestimate the role of the ladder. Yeah, 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.360 we want to we want to explain everything, uh, you know, 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.120 based on it, like a simplistic Dungeons and Dragons alignment 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:04.800 table that always explains their behavior. I guess a lot 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.240 of people aren't familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. Robert, can 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:10.760 you briefly explain what alignments are in D and D? Okay, 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:15.080 so it's almost impossible that you haven't seen this, and 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.760 by you, I mean everybody listening memified yea, yeah, you've 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.239 seen ammified. But there will be this this grid right 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:26.440 of of what nine squares showing where you are on 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:32.040 on a grid of of lawful neutral and um and 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:37.160 chaotic tendencies as well as on good neutral evil tendencies. 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:39.799 So these these grids are these are the two axes 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:42.920 and the cross reference, right, So you can be chaotic 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.000 good or chaotic neutral or chaotic evil. You can be 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.520 lawful good, lawful evil, that kind of thing, right, And 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:51.920 it's so you know, it's a it's it's a guide 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:55.440 in Dungeons and Dragons to determine how players are going 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:58.760 to role play their characters and how they're going to 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:01.919 interact with monsters and non player characters, and how a 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:05.360 dungeon master is going to incorporate those beings as well, 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.640 uh and how and and and so forth. But I 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:13.760 think that the memification of it really shows sort of 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.239 the the simple nature of it at times, you know, 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:19.680 where it's like, Okay, we're gonna I'm gonna take nine 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:24.640 characters from this television series I like, or from politics 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:26.839 or from what have you, and put them on that chart. 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.639 Put them on that chart and just boil them down 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.600 to um to to. This is one statement of their identity. 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:35.440 But one of the funny things is, I think the 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.119 more realistic and complex the characters and the story are, 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.280 the harder it is to fit them into a grid 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.720 evenly right, Because the more realistic people are, the more 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.560 their their behavior varies, the less consistent they are in 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.760 how their ethics are applied, because in fact, in reality, 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.440 people's behavior is highly situational. You know, they act one 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.640 they're lawful good in one scenario, and then depending on 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.360 a few you know, the temperature of the room and 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.280 who's there and what they're feeling in the moment, they 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.240 are lawful evil or chaotic evil in a different scenario. Yeah, 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:11.280 you know, you're playing ads and dragons. You're you're so 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.040 concerned about the alignment of the minotaur, and we don't 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.200 think about what the labyrinth is doing to the minotaur. 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.520 So now, I think it's funny that you bring up 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.960 alignments with respect to alien and aliens, because I think 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:25.520 people don't often do this. But I've thought about it before, 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.320 and I have a hypothesis. It is that Ellen Ripley 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:35.520 changes alignment between alien and Aliens. Yeah. In Alien, she 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:40.720 I would say is lawful, neutral. She's not especially selfless 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:43.359 or helpful to other people, but she does obey the 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:47.400 rules and do what she's supposed to do. In Aliens, 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:51.440 a very different ethic emerges in Aliens. She's more rebellious 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:54.520 and rule breaking, but in the spirit of being good 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:57.599 and helpful to others. I'd say in Aliens she is 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:03.000 chaotic good. Okay, yeah, that would make sense. I mean, 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.279 she's more the she's she's a bail Will figure in 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:12.560 Aliens quite literally, like she she goes back in you know, 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.039 she dives down and does battle with the monster's mother. 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.640 But I love this transition. I mean some people might say, well, 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:19.919 that's inconsistent. You know, she acts one way in the 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.039 first movie and she's kind of a different character in 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.520 the second movie. That's what people are like. The circumstances 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.200 in their lives change, and it changes the way you 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:32.400 behave This is, in fact, the difference between Alien and 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:36.240 Aliens is a great illustration of the failure of F A. 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:38.799 E type thinking when you start trying to box people 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.440 in based on limited data points about their behavior in 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.279 the past. Absolutely, now, I guess we'll leave we'll leave 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:47.599 the listeners to decide what her alignment would be then 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:52.240 an alien three and in alien resurrection, alien resurrectional what 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.719 what is the alignment of a pile of horse maneuver? Oh? 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.440 I think they're beautiful things about alien resurrection. We can 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.400 fight about this someday. All right. Well, uh, well, let's 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:07.440 let's move on from from the the alien universe now 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.960 and jump back into our discussion of f A So 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.680 we've been talking about the fundamental attribution error, the tendency 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.560 we have to more often than not explain other people's 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:23.680 behavior through through disposition, all explanations things about them as 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.919 a person, and to underestimate the role of situational constraints 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:32.320 and external factors dictating their behavior. Now, one thing I 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.400 was wondering when I was reading about this is how 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.880 much could this vary between different different types of cultures 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.560 and backgrounds? And how much is this just a fundamental 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.839 part of every human brain? And it looks like there 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:47.960 is some role that culture plays in how strong the 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.520 f A E is? Right? Yeah, and and specifically, um, 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.320 what differences you're going to see between West and East, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:59.400 between American culture and uh and and say Chinese culture 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:04.000 or Korean culture, Japanese culture, etcetera. Um, yeah, a little 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.640 American exceptionalism if you want to call it that in 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.880 regards to our tendency to engage f A. Let me 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.920 guess we're doing worse. Um yeah, We're We're worse. That's 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.400 that's the bed, the basic uh take home. But but 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:19.080 we're gonna get into the details here. This is uh. 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.640 This comes from a really cool paper um titled cultural, 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:27.680 cultural and Causal Cognition from Current Directions and Psychological Science 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.520 from the year two thousand and This is from Nisbet 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.760 and Northern Zion, who had mentioned earlier. So basically here 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.480 here's the idea. So for a while, social psychologist assumed 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:42.920 that the way we make causal judgments is universal, that is, 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.160 the same across all cultures. And this, of course is 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:48.960 always one of the potential problems for a given study 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.280 or a hypothesis, especially as it relates to uh uh 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.320 the inner workings of the mind? Right does does this 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.600 h view? Does it speak to all populations or is 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.000 it based on a narrow select action that doesn't account 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:05.840 for differences in culture, culture, socio economic level, gender, etcetera. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.120 I mean, the classic example of this is when you 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:13.000 have a small study that is using only college students 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.040 East Coast college students in the United States and extrapolating 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.920 from that to something about the way brains work in 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.520 Homo sapiens exactly, you know, maybe not everybody's brain is 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:28.240 the same as what's prevalent among that group, right, So uh, 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:32.160 basically this paper speaks to that, like looks at the 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:34.640 cultural differences in f A to first to see if 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.760 there there is you know, there there are differences, and 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.160 then also to talk about why that could be and 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.840 so um norn Zion and nes Bit. They point out 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.560 that subsequent studies do seem to reveal that f A 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.280 is harder to demonstrate in Asian populations. This was like 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.000 multiple studies, multiple studies, so just to taste here of them. 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:57.560 Study from Miller showed that Hindu Indians lean toward a 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:02.240 situational explanation for ordinary life event. A nineteen ninety four 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.920 study from Morris and Ping found that Chinese newspapers and 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:09.480 Chinese students living in America were more likely to explain 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:14.480 murders by both Chinese and American perpetrators in situational and 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:19.320 societal terms, while American newspapers and American students tended to 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:24.120 focus on the perpetrators presumed at dispositions, their internal trades 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.680 and then uh N. Repetition of the Jones and Harris 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.640 experiment from sixty seven on Korean subjects found the Koreans 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.760 in the study tended to believe that the individual held 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.640 the views expressed in their essay, but flipped when they 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.280 were required to write an essay themselves and did so, 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.400 you know, more readily than than the Americans. Also in 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.680 Morris and Ping, they showed a cartoon of a fish 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:53.800 too American and Chinese test subjects, and the Chinese subjects 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.559 attributed its behavior to external and group factors, while Americans 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:01.680 favored internal factors. Um Another study found the same thing 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:07.200 with quote schematically drawn ambiguous physical events such as a 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:12.000 round object dropping through a surface and returning to the surface. Okay, 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:14.480 so in that last example, I think that's that's really 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.439 essential here, is because we're not even talking about human 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:22.000 behavior or uh, you know, the an anthropomorphized behavior of 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.600 a cartoon fish, but we're talking about the physical world itself. 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:30.800 We're talking about the role uh that environment has on objects. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.559 Americans focused on the properties of the ball, while the 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.480 Chinese test subjects focused on the holistic reality in which 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.120 the ball existed. Oh well, that almost makes me think 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.280 of Aristotle. Like, you know, when Aristotle was trying to 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:48.720 explain physics, he would constantly make appeals to like the 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.440 nature of a thing determines how it moves and what 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:54.760 happens to it like that, Uh, you know, like a 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.480 rock falls because it has the characteristic of gravity. Yeah, 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:01.160 and that that is a huge part of what we're 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:03.080 going to talk about here and part of the reasoning 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.640 that they suspect. So the authors point out that it's 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:10.160 not a case of Asian populations not using f A, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:12.480 so they do use it to some extent. What's the 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.160 exception then, Well, it's basically, if there's not enough evidence 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:20.520 to support a societal or situational explanation, then they'll fall 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.560 back on f A reasoning as well. Okay, I mean basically, 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:24.720 you know, it comes down to how are you going 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:28.520 to make judgments about about the world around you, you know, 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:30.160 when and where what are you going to give more 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:31.760 weight to. And they're saying they're going to give more 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:36.840 weight to situational um and environmental societal but they're also 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.360 going to fall back on nature as well well, so 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.080 they'll use situational reasoning when they have some kind of 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.840 foothold there, when there's some piece of information they can 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.160 draw from, right, So that that makes it look kind 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:52.199 of like it's like the F A E might be 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:56.560 sort of like a baseline human tendency, but that you 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:00.280 can be culturally conditioned to remember more off and to 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:04.439 take into account circumstantial information when you have access to it. 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:06.439 I don't know, you know, I'm not sure they didn't 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:08.800 really talk so much about what could be the baseline, 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.160 Like so much of this paper focuses on this is 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:12.679 what we see in the Western model, and this is 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.560 in the Eastern. And ultimately they make an argument for 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.360 aspects of those cultures, especially the the the key influential cultures, 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.240 namely Greek culture in the Western, Chinese culture in the East, 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:25.920 but they don't really get into it, like what would 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.480 would a non Chinese, non Western civilization, like you get 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.640 into the whole discussion of where a culture and civilization, 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.040 how it arises and how do you how would you 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.640 even strip away the tendency to lean one way or 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:42.840 the other. Yeah, well, I was just referring to the 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.400 fact that that you mentioned about even the Eastern test 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.199 subjects falling back on F A E when they didn't 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:52.040 have any kind of circumstances that they knew about to 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:54.079 appeal to. Right, it would seem to be that both 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:58.720 are natural tools and the toolbox. But then culture uh 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:03.360 would have UH an influence on which one is the 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.800 more dominant measurement system. Okay, So, but basically the authors 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.760 are talking about cultural differences in causal cognition here, and 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.199 they state that one of the key factors really comes 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:18.800 down to the differences in intellectual histories in East Asia 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:22.000 and in Europe from about the sixth century BC onward. 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:25.400 In this the authors argue, we have to consider the 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.920 differences in the key foundational intellectual cultures at play here, 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:32.120 Greek culture and Chinese culture. So these are you know 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:37.400 that basically like these are just very foundational um cultural 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.560 systems that end up influencing everything else. Yeah, produced early 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.760 intellectual texts that have been ceaselessly referred back to within 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:49.400 the region. Right, So you mentioned Aristotle earlier, and they 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:53.200 point out that the Greeks focused on analytics, categorizing objects 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:58.080 based on their attributes, and this was used to explain behavior. Yeah, 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.480 I mean again, this Aristotle's constantly trying to appeal to 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:04.559 the nature of a thing to explain why the thing 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:08.240 did what it did. And then meanwhile, the Chinese focused 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.320 on a holistic view that focused more on the field 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:15.320 in which the object existed and interacted. That's interesting, now, 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:17.920 why would this be the case. Well, the authors speculate 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:22.080 that China's holistic leanings might stem from an earlier shift 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:28.360 to intensive farming, leading to a more cooperative, collectivist culture. Meanwhile, 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:33.080 Greek geography prohibits extensive farming operations. Instead, there was a 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:37.480 focus on domesticated animals, on fishing, and on trade, and 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:41.360 this led to a highly individualistic culture. I don't know 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:43.360 if I'm ready to jump on board with that as 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.120 the reading of these causes in history, but I don't 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:47.480 know if I'd ever heard it put that way. That 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.560 is an interesting take, uh. And of course, if if 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:52.920 these factors are in place, we have to consider to 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.800 consider just how much of those Keystone cultures and the 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.000 cultures that grew out of them are based in this 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.080 line of thinking. Um, I mentioned I was going to 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.240 bring this around to dungeons and dragons earlier, so I 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:07.080 knew you would In reading this paper and just discussing 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.320 f A in general, um, I think back to the 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:14.160 monster manuals of Dungeons and Dragons. Um. You know, these 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.200 are the books that are full of page after page 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:20.760 of monster uh and stats about their abilities and some 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:23.200 information on their you know, their background, how they work, 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:26.040 and how you how you basically have the players in 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.800 a game fight it. They're just wickedly Aristotelian. Yeah, and 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.360 you know they basically function like beast theories from the 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.680 classic tradition, uh, from the classic Western tradition. Here is 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.480 a list of things, and here are their attributes. Uh. 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.760 But while a good monster manual, you know, we'll discuss 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.400 a little bit about the creatures nature, natural habitat and 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:47.800 how it functions within that habitat. I think it's safe 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.280 to say that there is a strong f A leaning 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:54.480 here absolutely, because the they have alignments. The alignment is 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:56.640 the key, Like, yeah, there's you know, there's some stats 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:58.960 that tell you exactly what it can do, but it's 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.880 that alignment that institute that's where my eyes often go, 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:05.320 like sometimes, you know, that's the first thing I look at, like, 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.120 what is the essential nature of this monster? Is it chaotic? Good? 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.800 Is it chaotic evil? Is it neutral? Is it lawful good? Um? 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.680 And and that will determine almost everything you need to 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.840 know about how it is probably going to interact with 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.240 the character. Yeah, they have a uniform characteristic way in 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:26.840 which they behave. And you know the fact is in reality, 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:29.200 Uh well, I guess in reality there aren't d n 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:32.600 D monsters, but if there were, they would be animals, right, 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.960 And animals do tend to react to situations then highly 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.880 ways that are highly dependent on what the situation is 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:43.640 that are not always predictable from just fundamental knowledge about 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.880 the innate character of that individual animal. Well, I mean 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:49.520 there are animals in the Monster Manual. They're in the back, 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:51.320 you know, but there, and they tend to be like 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:55.800 true neutral, right, which you know, again it comes down 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.880 to situation, like a a a cornered, starving animal is 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.120 going to behave differently than a than a fully fed 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:07.520 animal out in the open. You know, that's just part 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.000 of it. Well, I mean then again, on the other hand, 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.439 I mean, obviously none of what we're talking about today 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:16.040 denies that people have certain tendencies. There are people do 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.840 have tendencies. What I think this should down to is 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.920 that maybe monsters and characters in D and D, if 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.560 they have alignments, their alignments should be I don't know, 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.920 should apply sixty percent of the time or something, rather 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.520 than thinking, if you do one thing that violates your alignment, 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:34.800 now you've got to do an alignment check because people 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:36.840 just aren't like that. People sort of act out of 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:40.040 character based on circumstances all the time. I've seen some 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:44.520 material like trying to apply this kind of nuance to say, say, 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:50.440 creatures like the drought, uh, the the evil subterranean elves 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:53.280 of dungeons and dragons. And part of that is, I think, 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:55.520 you know, because there's been there, there's a lot of 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.879 increased action around the drought and creating drought characters that 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.359 were maybe not evil or not completely evil and a 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:03.960 little more uh complex. But I've seen some people like 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.680 discussing like what percentage of the drought population um are 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.919 evil and then which percentage happens to be good? And 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:13.000 I don't know, I guess it gets kind of messy 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.960 when you have a system that is ultimately based in 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:23.080 giving anybody out there like numerical stats and a definitive alignment. Well, yeah, 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:24.480 I mean, I guess part of the problem with D 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:28.000 and D is similar to the problem you're encountering in fiction, Whereas, 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.520 like you know, in fiction, a character needs to have 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.000 characteristic behavior so that you understand the role they play 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:35.840 in the story. You know, for them to just kind 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:40.160 of act randomly is not very efficient in terms of storytelling, 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:42.959 and it doesn't feel very satisfying to the audience. I'm 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:44.560 sure the same is true in the game. All right, 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.719 And you know, ultimately, as we've discussed on the show recently, uh, 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.439 narrative is a lie and uh and so is gaming 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:53.359 to a certain extent. So, but that anyway, you have 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.719 to go back to our narrative episodes for more nuance 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:57.920 on what we're talking about there. All right, time for 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:02.399 a quick break, but we will be right back, and 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:05.760 we're back in discussing this division though between East and West, 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.199 between Greek culture and Chinese culture. The author's point to 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.720 the differing strengths and weaknesses of Greek and Chinese science 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.720 and mathematics as potential evidence here. So I'm going to 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:20.120 read just a segment from their paper. Quote. Greek science 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.480 looked for universal rules to explain events and was concerned 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.680 with categorizing objects with respect to their essences Chinese science, 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.320 some people would say it was a technology only, though 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.080 a technology vastly superior to that if the Greeks was 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:36.920 more pragmatic and concrete and was not concerned with foundations 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.360 or universal laws. The difference between the Greek and Chinese 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:44.080 orientations is well captured by Aristotle's physics, which explain the 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:46.439 behavior of an object without reference to the field in 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.920 which it occurs. Thus, a stone sinks into water because 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.560 it has the property of gravity, and a piece of 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:56.920 wood floats because it has the property of levity. In contrast, 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:00.720 the principle that events always occur in some context or 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:05.080 field of forces was understood early on in China. That's interesting. 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.560 I've never heard it put that way, but uh, that 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:09.479 does kind of make sense based on what I know 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.800 that where more Western natural philosophers would have seen, you know, 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:19.879 things and bodies that the Eastern thinkers saw a world. Yeah. 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.640 So the idea here is that much of this division 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.520 and thinking remains despite the enhanced interconnectedness of the modern world. 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.120 And uh, the cool thing is that we can actually 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:31.960 test for this to a certain extent, or at least 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.760 we can test for what's known as field dependence via 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.160 a simple rod and frame test. So I can't remember 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:40.520 if we've actually discussed a rod and frame test on 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.440 the show before. I'm not sure. Tell me about it, okay. 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.240 So basically, the situation as you look through a long 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:51.200 box like frame at a rod. I found an image 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:52.440 of one of these and I put it in in 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:55.680 our notes, Joe. But it's essentially like looking looking into 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:57.800 a box like they're looking into the top of a 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.119 box and at the bottom there's a rod, and this 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.880 particular example, the rod appears to be glowing like it's 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:08.160 a light stick. And in this experiment, you can independently 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.840 rotate the rod or the frame, often via opposing joysticks 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:16.760 on a gaming remote, and the test subject makes adjustments 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.879 and then declares when the rod is finally vertical. So 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.359 you can adjust the the the object or subject, and 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.800 you can also adjust the field or the box in 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.520 order to get the proper alignment. And then whoever's uh 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:32.879 you know, giving the test, they can see you know 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:37.160 where you're making the most adjustments. Uh So, the extent 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:41.120 to which the orientation of the frame influences judgments of 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.440 the verticality of the rod, that is going to tell 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:49.640 us um, you know what your field dependence is and um. 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.359 East Asian participants, mostly Chinese, have been shown to be 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:57.160 more field dependent than Americans in experiments by g Ping 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:02.840 and Nesbitting. Yeah. Uh. Study from Matsuda and has Bit 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:07.440 highlighted these differences between American and Japanese individuals via exposure 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:11.879 to underwater scenes with focal fish. So that's you know, 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:13.600 the idea that you know there are certain fish that 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:15.960 would capture your attention. The fish in this case are 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:21.239 the rod and the the The underwater environment is the 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:26.840 box the frame. But the general ideas that subjects from 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:30.800 Asian cultures are more likely to see things in terms 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:35.399 of the environment, to take total environmental information into account. Yeah, 0:22:35.440 --> 0:22:38.879 and uh. I found this really interesting having recently enjoyed 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.600 a lot of snorkeling on a on a trip one 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.720 of my family to Belieze, and uh, you know, these 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.480 beautiful coral reef environments, rich environment, a lot going on. 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:50.600 We'd be out there for an hour or two at 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:53.520 a time, and I'd have to remind myselves at times 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:57.200 at times to take it all in holistically, because I'd 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:00.360