WEBVTT - Episode 6: The Overconfidence Game 0:00:15.276 --> 0:00:22.636 Pushkin. So our story actually begins a couple of decades 0:00:22.676 --> 0:00:25.956 ago at a dinner party thrown by a really rich 0:00:25.996 --> 0:00:30.356 guy in snowmass Colorado. He'd invited a bunch of his friends, 0:00:30.396 --> 0:00:34.196 plus two younger women he didn't really know. One was 0:00:34.236 --> 0:00:37.516 a writer who happened to be in town, Rebecca Sulman. 0:00:38.556 --> 0:00:41.676 It was this glam house that looked like a Ralph laurentad, 0:00:41.756 --> 0:00:47.676 with the chelims and woodburning stove and rusticity, some sort 0:00:47.676 --> 0:00:56.796 of luxury roughing it fantasy vacation home. And it was 0:00:56.916 --> 0:01:01.036 mostly older people, and clearly people who were wealthy and 0:01:01.116 --> 0:01:04.396 powerful and thought of themselves as important. And we were 0:01:04.436 --> 0:01:07.956 both about forty and were clearly like the young ingeneus 0:01:08.076 --> 0:01:12.396 in the room. Rebecca had gone to Colorado to visit 0:01:12.476 --> 0:01:16.036 her friend Sally. Sally had talked her into going to 0:01:16.116 --> 0:01:18.436 this party, and the point of the party was to 0:01:18.476 --> 0:01:21.836 make Rebecca feel ignored, at least that's how she felt. 0:01:22.396 --> 0:01:24.716 The host hardly said a word to her until they 0:01:24.716 --> 0:01:28.316 were about to leave, and then came over to us 0:01:28.676 --> 0:01:31.476 and said to me, so, I hear you've written a 0:01:31.516 --> 0:01:34.156 couple of books, And at that point, how many books 0:01:34.156 --> 0:01:38.836 had you written? I think seven, which is not technically 0:01:38.836 --> 0:01:44.116 a couple. And so I said several actually, and he said, oh, 0:01:44.116 --> 0:01:47.956 and what are they about in this already intensely patronizing town. 0:01:48.316 --> 0:01:51.836 My most recent one had been about Edward Moybridge at 0:01:51.996 --> 0:01:56.876 Moybridge's transformation of photography into a technology that could capture motion. 0:01:57.916 --> 0:02:02.516 And he interrupted me to tell me that I should 0:02:02.596 --> 0:02:05.596 know about the very important Moybridge book that had just 0:02:05.716 --> 0:02:08.676 come out, and he was about to explain to you 0:02:08.676 --> 0:02:13.996 about Wood Moybridge. He did proceed to explain about the 0:02:14.116 --> 0:02:17.876 very important Moybridge book I should know about. The host 0:02:17.916 --> 0:02:20.756 went on and on and on about this book about 0:02:20.756 --> 0:02:24.596 the British photographer that both women could tell he hadn't 0:02:24.596 --> 0:02:28.596 actually read. They could tell this because Rebecca had written 0:02:28.636 --> 0:02:33.516 the book River of Shadows, Edward Moybridge and the Technological 0:02:33.596 --> 0:02:37.956 wild West. It took my friend Sally three or four 0:02:37.956 --> 0:02:41.276 times of trying to interject that's her book before he 0:02:41.356 --> 0:02:44.476 actually listened to her enough to shut the fuck up. 0:02:45.236 --> 0:02:49.996 And so it's kind of glorious and horrific as a 0:02:50.076 --> 0:02:57.036 pristine shining diamond example, a pristine shining diamond like example. 0:02:57.836 --> 0:03:01.876 But of what the answer didn't leap instantly to Rebecca's mind, 0:03:02.596 --> 0:03:05.396 she filed the rich guy away as an example of something. 0:03:05.916 --> 0:03:08.036 It took her five years to find the words to 0:03:08.116 --> 0:03:11.756 fully express what it had been an example of. But 0:03:11.836 --> 0:03:14.196 then one morning she sat down and wrote a piece 0:03:15.156 --> 0:03:18.676 Men Explain Things to Me, she called it. It was 0:03:18.716 --> 0:03:24.716 an instant classic. I wrote the essay in two thousand 0:03:24.716 --> 0:03:28.516 and eight, and some mysterious, unnamed person who had always 0:03:28.516 --> 0:03:31.636 assumed as a woman coined the term man explaining in 0:03:31.756 --> 0:03:34.116 response to it. And then the world was off and 0:03:34.236 --> 0:03:37.876 running when you published the original essay. Did you get 0:03:37.916 --> 0:03:42.316 any kind of backlash? Was there any hostility? I got 0:03:42.316 --> 0:03:45.476 a very funny letter from a man who said he'd 0:03:45.516 --> 0:03:49.196 never patronized a woman in his life, and I just 0:03:49.316 --> 0:03:52.596 needed to get over my feelings of inferiority and speak up. 0:03:54.436 --> 0:03:58.476 And he proceeded to patronize. Why. Yes, well, welcome to 0:03:58.556 --> 0:04:04.196 my gender. Michael, you sound surprised. What Rebecca got next 0:04:04.436 --> 0:04:08.916 was an avalanche of similar stories, all from women. There 0:04:09.196 --> 0:04:11.196 is the woman who listened to a man explain how 0:04:11.236 --> 0:04:14.756 to pronounce her own name. There was the female scientist 0:04:14.996 --> 0:04:17.676 to whom a man explained the contents of her own 0:04:17.716 --> 0:04:23.076 academic paper. There was a one about well, I shouldn't 0:04:23.076 --> 0:04:26.076 really be the one telling you about this. Can you 0:04:26.316 --> 0:04:30.196 walk me through a few of them? Somebody tweets a 0:04:30.236 --> 0:04:35.116 photograph of a woman sharpshooter in last Summer's Olympics, and 0:04:35.236 --> 0:04:38.636 a man explains that she's got the wrong stance, and 0:04:39.636 --> 0:04:43.756 he's explaining she should hold it with both hands. He's wrong, 0:04:43.756 --> 0:04:47.676 of course, men explaining sports to professional female athletes turned 0:04:47.676 --> 0:04:51.836 out to be a whole subgenre of man's plaining. Molly Sidell, 0:04:52.476 --> 0:04:56.036 who won a silver or bronze medal in track in 0:04:56.116 --> 0:04:59.956 the Olympics a few years ago, tweeted, on my flight, 0:05:00.076 --> 0:05:01.876 I was talking to a guy next to me and 0:05:01.956 --> 0:05:04.436 it came up that I run. He starts telling me 0:05:04.516 --> 0:05:07.156 how I need to train high mileage and pulls up 0:05:07.196 --> 0:05:10.396 an analysis he'd made a a pro runner's training on 0:05:10.436 --> 0:05:14.076 his phone. The pro runner was me, it was my training. 0:05:14.556 --> 0:05:21.436 Didn't have the heart to tell him, just as Rebecca 0:05:21.596 --> 0:05:23.396 hadn't had the heart to tell the rich guy that 0:05:23.436 --> 0:05:26.196 he was lecturing her about a book she herself had written. 0:05:26.836 --> 0:05:30.116 She's obviously found the heart since can I just read 0:05:30.156 --> 0:05:34.836 you one? I have an almost bottomless appetite. Here's a 0:05:34.876 --> 0:05:38.316 woman named Eileen Mary O'Connell, who said on Twitter a 0:05:38.356 --> 0:05:41.116 few years ago, thinking about the time that I said 0:05:41.156 --> 0:05:45.196 I was distantly related to Marie Curie, and a man explained, 0:05:45.676 --> 0:05:57.156 it's pronounced Mariah Carey. I'm Michael Lewis, pronounced Michael Lewis. 0:05:57.396 --> 0:06:00.276 And this is against the rules where we explore on 0:06:00.436 --> 0:06:03.596 fairness in American life by looking at what's happened to 0:06:03.676 --> 0:06:08.276 various characters in American life. This season is about experts, 0:06:09.196 --> 0:06:12.556 and this episode is about men, or any way about 0:06:12.596 --> 0:06:16.356 this thing that men do because they really are naturally 0:06:16.396 --> 0:06:20.676 superior to women at one thing, offering themselves up as 0:06:20.756 --> 0:06:32.596 experts when they clearly are not. Now, I am, of 0:06:32.636 --> 0:06:36.716 course a man, and as a man, I might offer 0:06:36.756 --> 0:06:39.996 you with total confidence all kinds of theories about why 0:06:40.036 --> 0:06:43.436 we are the way we are. I could explain until 0:06:43.516 --> 0:06:46.716 every oxygen molecule is sucked out of the room why 0:06:46.796 --> 0:06:49.916 men are so ready to explain things to people who 0:06:49.956 --> 0:06:53.476 know more about those things than we do. But let 0:06:53.476 --> 0:06:56.356 me turn instead to the journalists Claire Shipment and Katty 0:06:56.436 --> 0:06:59.756 k because they wrote an entire book that offers up 0:06:59.956 --> 0:07:03.796 one really plausible theory, and I actually read it. It's 0:07:03.836 --> 0:07:08.636 called The confidence code. Columbia University has come up with 0:07:08.796 --> 0:07:13.956 a phrase, which we love, is called honest overconfidence. That's 0:07:14.036 --> 0:07:17.956 Caddy Kay and Columbia reckons that men tend to overestimate 0:07:17.996 --> 0:07:22.716 their ability by something like thirty percent. Women tend to 0:07:22.916 --> 0:07:26.316 underestimate their ability, but men tend to overestimate their ability. 0:07:26.316 --> 0:07:28.556 And they call it honest over confidence because it's not 0:07:28.596 --> 0:07:32.956 that they're pretending they know more. They actually believe they 0:07:32.956 --> 0:07:36.236 are about thirty percent better than they are. Now we've 0:07:36.236 --> 0:07:38.796 all learned to be skeptical about this sort of social science. 0:07:39.236 --> 0:07:42.956 Some researcher discovers something shocking about human nature and then 0:07:42.996 --> 0:07:45.436 it turns out to be not really true, or only 0:07:45.476 --> 0:07:49.236 sort of true, or true only in certain circumstances. But 0:07:49.356 --> 0:07:52.836 in the case of male over confidence, the findings are 0:07:52.876 --> 0:07:56.196 totally solid. If you want to do a social science 0:07:56.236 --> 0:07:59.236 test with a bunch of graduate students and you want 0:07:59.236 --> 0:08:02.116 to make sure you know in advance what the answer 0:08:02.156 --> 0:08:03.596 is going to be, you give a group of men 0:08:03.596 --> 0:08:07.396 and women a scientific reasoning quiz, and the men will 0:08:07.436 --> 0:08:09.676 nearly always say they're going to perform better than they 0:08:09.676 --> 0:08:12.876 actually do, and the women will nearly always say they're 0:08:12.876 --> 0:08:17.156 going to perform worse than they actually do. And why 0:08:17.316 --> 0:08:20.156 is this? I know it's a hard question to answer, 0:08:20.276 --> 0:08:25.036 but when does this first manifest itself in life? Do 0:08:25.196 --> 0:08:29.036 little girls and little boys exhibit this tendency or does 0:08:29.076 --> 0:08:32.636 it only happen later in life. This really starts to 0:08:32.676 --> 0:08:38.916 manifest itself in middle school, around puberty. We commissioned a 0:08:38.996 --> 0:08:42.796 survey for our book on Confidence and Girls that suggests 0:08:42.796 --> 0:08:47.836 that between the ages of nine and about thirteen, girls 0:08:47.996 --> 0:08:50.916 lose a third of their confidence and they never get 0:08:50.916 --> 0:08:54.916 it back. Obviously, boys can grow up to be under 0:08:54.956 --> 0:08:58.316 confident men, and girls can grow up to be confident women. 0:08:58.996 --> 0:09:01.636 And obviously not every man longs to explain things that 0:09:01.636 --> 0:09:05.596 he shouldn't. But there's an undeniable pattern here men thinking 0:09:05.636 --> 0:09:08.716 they have an expertise that they don't. You really don't 0:09:08.756 --> 0:09:10.836 have to look any further than Wall Street for examples. 0:09:11.916 --> 0:09:17.116 Imagine that you are an individual investor, maybe not that active, 0:09:17.156 --> 0:09:21.556 but occasionally trading. That's Terry o'deane, a finance professor at 0:09:21.636 --> 0:09:24.996 UC Berkeley. He and his colleague Brad Barber made what 0:09:25.196 --> 0:09:28.276 might be the purest case study of mail over confidence. 0:09:29.196 --> 0:09:31.436 But they set out to just look at how ordinary 0:09:31.436 --> 0:09:35.836 people traded in the stock market. You open up the 0:09:35.916 --> 0:09:39.236 Wall Street Journal one morning, you read a paragraph about 0:09:39.276 --> 0:09:42.876 some company. You say, Wow, that really sounds great. I 0:09:42.916 --> 0:09:47.996 think I'll buy it. So you don't pause and say, 0:09:48.436 --> 0:09:52.516 maybe professional investors already know this, It's already been incorporated 0:09:52.516 --> 0:09:55.036 into price. You just say, sounds like a good idea, 0:09:55.116 --> 0:09:59.316 I'll buy. Maybe another investor reads the same stuff, says 0:09:59.556 --> 0:10:04.436 intriguing company. But I really don't know enough to place 0:10:04.476 --> 0:10:07.676 a trade, and I gotta get to work. So what's 0:10:07.716 --> 0:10:09.956 the difference between over confidence and confidence? I can see 0:10:09.956 --> 0:10:14.036 how confidence is sort of what leads thought to action. Yes, 0:10:14.556 --> 0:10:16.796 but what's the difference just confidence? Why is it over 0:10:16.836 --> 0:10:21.796 confident systematically on the side of thinking you know more 0:10:21.836 --> 0:10:23.716 than you do and that's what leads you to buy 0:10:23.756 --> 0:10:26.556 the stock or sell the stock. Yes, I think it 0:10:26.596 --> 0:10:29.956 takes a great deal of hubris to think you are 0:10:30.076 --> 0:10:33.996 going to do part time if you have a regular job, 0:10:34.476 --> 0:10:38.956 you are going to do what professional money managers struggle 0:10:39.076 --> 0:10:42.956 to do, and many never succeed at. Unless you're trading 0:10:42.996 --> 0:10:46.676 on inside information, which is illegal. When you make a 0:10:46.716 --> 0:10:49.676 bet on the price of some stock, you're basically betting 0:10:49.676 --> 0:10:51.836 on the flip of a coin, and you're paying a 0:10:51.836 --> 0:10:54.916 commission each time you do it over and over. The 0:10:54.996 --> 0:10:58.956 smartest professional investors fail to outperform the market by picking stocks. 0:11:00.236 --> 0:11:02.116 For an amateur to even try, well, it's a lot 0:11:02.196 --> 0:11:06.156 like man explaining, Terry Odeane thought so too. He wondered 0:11:06.156 --> 0:11:08.476 whether there was any difference between how men and women 0:11:08.556 --> 0:11:11.836 behaved in the market, So he and his colleague got 0:11:11.836 --> 0:11:15.476 a hold of data from online brokerage accounts. They sorted 0:11:15.476 --> 0:11:18.956 the money into three buckets, money managed by single men, 0:11:19.716 --> 0:11:23.636 money managed by single women, and money managed by married couples. 0:11:25.196 --> 0:11:28.236 Men did worse than women, and not just a little worse. 0:11:28.636 --> 0:11:32.396 Both men and women underperformed to buy and hold approach, 0:11:32.676 --> 0:11:36.876 but men underperformed by one percentage point more a year 0:11:37.116 --> 0:11:41.076 on average than women. Single men by one point four 0:11:41.116 --> 0:11:44.676 percentage points more a year on average than single women, 0:11:44.716 --> 0:11:47.996 which is actually quite significant. Yes, it sounds like a 0:11:47.996 --> 0:11:52.356 little but if you compound that over a lifetime. Even occasionally, 0:11:52.356 --> 0:11:55.516 financial reporters will say, well does anyone really care about 0:11:55.556 --> 0:11:58.476 one percent? And what I usually say is, next time 0:11:58.516 --> 0:12:01.996 you're shopping for a mortgage, ask yourself that question, right, 0:12:02.436 --> 0:12:06.116 I mean, a one percentage point difference in your mortgage 0:12:06.676 --> 0:12:09.636 is going to add up to tens of thousands or 0:12:09.756 --> 0:12:11.996 hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of a 0:12:12.156 --> 0:12:15.676 thirty year mortgage. Hearing this, you might conclude that it 0:12:15.716 --> 0:12:18.316 would all be better off if Wall Street were overhauled 0:12:18.596 --> 0:12:21.156 and women were put in charge of the financial risk taking. 0:12:21.996 --> 0:12:25.116 But what we got instead was a world historic financial 0:12:25.156 --> 0:12:30.116 crisis engineered by very confident men. Even that didn't cause 0:12:30.156 --> 0:12:32.436 anyone to ask if leaving the financial risk taking to 0:12:32.516 --> 0:12:35.796 men was a great idea, except in Iceland. In Iceland, 0:12:35.796 --> 0:12:38.196 they actually figured it out. They replaced the men in 0:12:38.236 --> 0:12:40.836 the banks with women, and the male prime minister with 0:12:40.876 --> 0:12:44.636 a woman who promised never again to let icelandic men 0:12:45.076 --> 0:12:50.036 touch her banks. Outside of Iceland, men still mostly decide 0:12:50.076 --> 0:12:53.116 what to do with big piles of money. Terry o'deane's 0:12:53.156 --> 0:12:57.036 findings have gone ignored. But has anybody ever called you 0:12:57.116 --> 0:13:00.436 say thank you, Terry. I have my job managing the 0:13:00.476 --> 0:13:04.876 stock portfolio because of your paper. That has never happened. 0:13:05.436 --> 0:13:08.516 One thing did happen. I got a letter once. Shortly 0:13:08.556 --> 0:13:12.516 after paper got, you know, some coverage in the popular press. 0:13:13.156 --> 0:13:16.716 A woman wrote said, I want to thank you. She's 0:13:16.796 --> 0:13:22.036 in her sixties, and she said, my husband has been 0:13:23.236 --> 0:13:28.476 actively trading our savings and I've been very nervous about 0:13:28.476 --> 0:13:30.636 it for the last few years. And then I read 0:13:30.676 --> 0:13:34.636 about your paper and I told him to stop actively 0:13:34.676 --> 0:13:39.476 trading my savings. So I thought, well, that feels good 0:13:43.596 --> 0:13:57.316 against the rules, will be right back. Let's recap our 0:13:57.356 --> 0:14:01.436 findings thus far. Men are especially capable of thinking they 0:14:01.476 --> 0:14:05.076 know things they really don't. They feel a weird compulsion 0:14:05.156 --> 0:14:08.156 to explain subjects to people who know more about those 0:14:08.156 --> 0:14:11.556 subjects than they, and they are more likely than people 0:14:11.556 --> 0:14:14.076 who are not men to think they know things that 0:14:14.156 --> 0:14:18.116 are totally unknowable. Sometimes they even act on that belief 0:14:18.316 --> 0:14:21.796 and lose huge piles of money. But it's not really 0:14:21.836 --> 0:14:24.476 men's fault, or rather, it's not the fault of any 0:14:24.516 --> 0:14:28.356 individual man. If a man is deluded into believing he 0:14:28.396 --> 0:14:32.036 knows more than he actually does, it's because he's surrounded 0:14:32.036 --> 0:14:36.316 by people who share his delusion, who encourage his over confidence. 0:14:37.596 --> 0:14:40.236 The writer Maria Kanakova wrote a whole book about this, 0:14:41.036 --> 0:14:43.476 The Confidence Game. It was called It was all about 0:14:43.516 --> 0:14:46.436 con artists, but it is also about what con artists 0:14:46.436 --> 0:14:53.756 tell us about our culture. Exhibit A was a man 0:14:53.876 --> 0:14:57.916 named Ferdinand Waldo Damara, who had a gift for persuading 0:14:57.956 --> 0:15:01.636 people that he knew stuff that he did not were 0:15:01.756 --> 0:15:05.756 during the Korean War, and he decides that he's going 0:15:05.796 --> 0:15:08.796 to steal the credentials of a doctor in Canada and 0:15:09.156 --> 0:15:12.636 apply to be a doctor on a ship, a military doctor, 0:15:12.876 --> 0:15:16.796 because he actually identifies a perfect opportunity. Why would he 0:15:16.836 --> 0:15:19.636 even want to do that? Like, why would why would 0:15:19.636 --> 0:15:21.076 you want to be a doctor on a ship? So 0:15:21.316 --> 0:15:27.516 Damara is someone who is so narcissistic, so full of 0:15:27.596 --> 0:15:30.276 himself that he thinks that he is the best person 0:15:30.316 --> 0:15:33.076 in the world, and he loves more than anything else, 0:15:33.196 --> 0:15:36.076 playing god. And what is the ultimate profession where you 0:15:36.156 --> 0:15:38.476 really get to play god. It's being a surgeon. It's 0:15:38.476 --> 0:15:41.836 actually having people's lives in your hands. So he falsified 0:15:41.876 --> 0:15:45.316 his credentials, ended up getting an appointment, and ended up 0:15:45.356 --> 0:15:49.676 being the sole physician aboard this ship heading to Korea 0:15:49.836 --> 0:15:53.236 during the war. Not only that, but he then ended 0:15:53.316 --> 0:15:57.956 up operating on a ship full of soldiers who had 0:15:57.996 --> 0:16:01.356 been in an ambush. So he ended up operating on 0:16:01.476 --> 0:16:04.916 all of them and, as he said, saving their lives. 0:16:04.916 --> 0:16:08.236 But we don't actually know what happened you might see 0:16:08.236 --> 0:16:12.156 this imposters an extreme example, but you might also see 0:16:12.196 --> 0:16:16.596 them as a case in point. But this feels like 0:16:16.596 --> 0:16:19.756 a very male thing. I have a very hard time 0:16:19.796 --> 0:16:22.556 imagining a woman doing it. I agree, I agree, And 0:16:22.596 --> 0:16:24.636 I think that those types of coins that's why we 0:16:24.676 --> 0:16:27.676 don't really see we don't know any stories of women 0:16:27.756 --> 0:16:30.836 pulling something like that off all of the female cons 0:16:30.836 --> 0:16:33.996 that I was able to kind of unearth when I 0:16:34.156 --> 0:16:37.636 was when I was researching the Confidence Game, where things like, oh, 0:16:37.756 --> 0:16:41.476 I'm going to pretend to be the daughter of Carnegie 0:16:42.036 --> 0:16:44.196 so that I can get people to loan me lots 0:16:44.196 --> 0:16:46.596 of money because they think that I'm going to come 0:16:46.636 --> 0:16:49.276 into my inheritance or something like that. But it's not 0:16:49.316 --> 0:16:52.996 a pretensive expertise. It's it's something very different. It's I'm 0:16:53.036 --> 0:16:55.276 not who I say I am, but it's not and 0:16:55.516 --> 0:16:58.716 I can do what I can't actually do. I am 0:16:58.756 --> 0:17:02.196 heir to this fortune, I'm a socialite and I have 0:17:02.276 --> 0:17:06.876 connections to royalty. I am part of the aristocracy. Why 0:17:06.956 --> 0:17:10.996 is it you think women don't pretend to expertise. I 0:17:11.116 --> 0:17:14.076 think that actually just because of the type of society 0:17:14.116 --> 0:17:15.876 we're in, the fact that we are in a male 0:17:15.956 --> 0:17:19.676 dominated world that female experts tend to be questioned more. 0:17:19.956 --> 0:17:22.476 If a woman says I'm the best surgeon you've ever seen, 0:17:23.236 --> 0:17:28.196 red flags are going to start waving. Con Artists pick 0:17:28.276 --> 0:17:31.676 up on psychological cues. That's how they can us. The 0:17:31.796 --> 0:17:33.956 cue here is that when we hear the word expert, 0:17:34.316 --> 0:17:37.396 we form a picture in our head. And that picture 0:17:37.636 --> 0:17:40.556 is of a man. My husband and I were on 0:17:40.636 --> 0:17:45.956 a pretty long flight. Her name is Aminemogul, doctor Aminemogul, 0:17:46.636 --> 0:17:49.996 and I was sitting it was like a triple seven jet, 0:17:50.036 --> 0:17:54.036 So I was sitting close to the aisle and in 0:17:54.076 --> 0:17:57.756 the middle section, and there was a gentleman who was 0:17:57.956 --> 0:18:01.996 walking back from the restrooms who was seated just one 0:18:02.116 --> 0:18:07.596 row behind me, to my left, and he just completely collapsed. 0:18:07.596 --> 0:18:12.156 I mean he just fell down, face forward, and a 0:18:12.236 --> 0:18:16.476 flight attendant immediately rushed over, and so she shouted to 0:18:16.476 --> 0:18:18.436 find out if there was anyone who was a doctor 0:18:18.476 --> 0:18:22.516 on the plane. Amina wasn't just any doctor. She was 0:18:22.556 --> 0:18:25.716 a former army doctor who now worked as a general practitioner. 0:18:26.516 --> 0:18:30.316 She'd been trained for battlefield emergencies. She was exactly the 0:18:30.396 --> 0:18:33.396 kind of doctor you'd won in this moment, and she 0:18:33.596 --> 0:18:36.476 was right there she'd seen it all. So I stood 0:18:36.556 --> 0:18:39.116 up and I said, I'm a doctor. And right behind 0:18:39.196 --> 0:18:44.956 this gentleman's row was a older male nurse. He identified 0:18:45.036 --> 0:18:48.076 himself as a nurse. He was a Caucasian. I'm South Asian, 0:18:48.636 --> 0:18:51.716 and he stepped up and the flight attendant kind of 0:18:51.796 --> 0:18:55.356 completely ignored me. And my husband was seated next to me. 0:18:55.436 --> 0:19:00.796 He's a pretty tall Caucasian guy, and he tried to 0:19:00.836 --> 0:19:03.396 alert the flight attendant and said, hey, my wife is here. 0:19:03.436 --> 0:19:05.716 She's a doctor. And she looked at me, and then 0:19:05.716 --> 0:19:07.236 she looked at him and she said, we have the 0:19:07.276 --> 0:19:11.916 help that we need. And and that was that. Do 0:19:11.956 --> 0:19:16.716 you think she looked at you and thought not doctor autely? Absolutely? 0:19:17.636 --> 0:19:19.476 And actually, you know what, now that I think about it, 0:19:19.476 --> 0:19:23.196 I think she actually said, what you're a doctor, like 0:19:23.196 --> 0:19:26.676 like it was somehow unbelievable. And my husband goes, yeah, 0:19:26.716 --> 0:19:28.556 she's a doctor, and then she just looked at him 0:19:28.556 --> 0:19:30.556 and said, oh okay, and then just kind of carried on. 0:19:31.116 --> 0:19:32.716 And I looked at my husband and I looked at 0:19:32.716 --> 0:19:35.716 each other and we were just like, well, that was bizarre. Meanwhile, 0:19:35.756 --> 0:19:37.556 they were this man who might be dying on the 0:19:37.596 --> 0:19:40.636 floor of the cot and I'm thinking to myself, Wow, 0:19:40.796 --> 0:19:46.636 I hope he's okay. Unfortunately, it never occurred to the 0:19:46.676 --> 0:19:49.436 male nurse or anyone else that they were in the 0:19:49.436 --> 0:19:51.716 presence of someone who might know more than they did. 0:19:52.316 --> 0:19:54.596 But the truth was that Ameda didn't give the episode 0:19:54.676 --> 0:19:58.036 much thought until she stumbled upon a Facebook group of 0:19:58.116 --> 0:20:01.796 female doctors in which another woman described how she'd just 0:20:01.876 --> 0:20:04.636 come off a flight with some medical emergency and she 0:20:04.796 --> 0:20:07.436 shouted that she was a doctor, and everyone had just 0:20:07.516 --> 0:20:10.876 ignored her, and a lot of people just started chiming 0:20:10.916 --> 0:20:13.836 in with their anecdotes, and there were a lot of them. 0:20:13.876 --> 0:20:16.836 There were a lot of them. I was kind of 0:20:16.836 --> 0:20:19.276 shocked at how many other people had been through the 0:20:19.356 --> 0:20:23.396 same thing. That's how doctor Amina Mogul found out that 0:20:23.436 --> 0:20:28.276 this was actually a thing. Invisible female doctors on planes. 0:20:38.396 --> 0:20:40.716 Not even a man wants to die on an airplane 0:20:40.756 --> 0:20:43.036 because no one can see the female doctor in seat 0:20:43.116 --> 0:20:47.396 eighteen B. It's clearly not healthy for any society to 0:20:47.436 --> 0:20:49.996 treat men as if they know more than they actually 0:20:49.996 --> 0:20:54.636 do and women as if they know less. It encourages 0:20:54.676 --> 0:20:58.916 men to become imposters. It drags women with actual knowledge 0:20:59.556 --> 0:21:04.476 into imposter syndrome. It cheats the entire society of expertise, 0:21:05.556 --> 0:21:08.476 and so the obvious question is why does this happen? 0:21:13.436 --> 0:21:16.276 Before you or I answer that question, let's describe, or 0:21:16.356 --> 0:21:21.356 let's let Caddy K describe. One final science experiment done 0:21:21.356 --> 0:21:24.836 a few years ago by an American psychologist named Zach Estes. 0:21:26.116 --> 0:21:29.676 He sat a group of men and women and gave 0:21:29.716 --> 0:21:34.396 them a spatial awareness test. It's a series of like 0:21:34.596 --> 0:21:37.356 Rubik's cube type puzzles on a computer screen, and you 0:21:37.396 --> 0:21:40.396 have to solve these puzzles, and he gives them the 0:21:40.476 --> 0:21:44.156 same test, and the women do significantly less well than 0:21:44.196 --> 0:21:47.196 the men do. So Professor Estes goes back over the 0:21:47.236 --> 0:21:49.796 results and he sees that what's happened is that the 0:21:49.956 --> 0:21:53.236 women have skipped questions more often than the men have. 0:21:54.556 --> 0:21:57.796 And he thought that was interesting. The women were basically 0:21:57.796 --> 0:22:00.196 saying they didn't know the answer to a question a 0:22:00.276 --> 0:22:02.996 lot more than the men, and it wasn't because the 0:22:03.036 --> 0:22:06.436 men were more likely to know the answers. The next test, 0:22:06.556 --> 0:22:09.756 he gives the same group another set and he says, okay, 0:22:09.876 --> 0:22:12.996 now no one is allowed to skip anything. No omissions 0:22:13.116 --> 0:22:14.636 is what he calls it. So no one's allowed to 0:22:14.636 --> 0:22:18.076 skip anything, and guess what. On the test where the 0:22:18.116 --> 0:22:20.516 women have to answer the questions, they do just as 0:22:20.516 --> 0:22:23.556 well as the men. Sometimes it is better to think 0:22:23.596 --> 0:22:25.476 you know the answer to the question when you don't, 0:22:25.796 --> 0:22:27.956 because it leads you to answer the question rather than 0:22:27.996 --> 0:22:31.436 just leave it blank. That's the joy of overconfidence. It pays, 0:22:31.836 --> 0:22:36.316 and not just in a social science lab. In real life. Obviously, 0:22:36.356 --> 0:22:39.156 no one knows your cards except for you, and all 0:22:39.196 --> 0:22:41.756 they see is how you present yourself, right. The only 0:22:41.796 --> 0:22:46.636 information that's available is how you play. After Maria Kannakova 0:22:46.676 --> 0:22:49.756 wrote her a book about con artists, she stumbled upon 0:22:49.796 --> 0:22:51.956 a book called The Theory of Games by a pair 0:22:51.996 --> 0:22:56.876 of genius mathematicians named von Neumann and Morgenstern. Morgenstern had 0:22:56.916 --> 0:23:00.396 gone looking for games that resembled real life. He had 0:23:00.436 --> 0:23:02.556 this idea that if he could figure out the smartest 0:23:02.596 --> 0:23:05.316 way to play certain games, he could also figure out 0:23:05.356 --> 0:23:07.436 the smartest way to deal with a lot of situations 0:23:07.436 --> 0:23:10.876 in real life. He has this whole passage where he 0:23:10.916 --> 0:23:14.476 says that chess is boring, like chess is a bullshit game. 0:23:14.756 --> 0:23:17.396 Don't have me play chess because I can solve it. Right, 0:23:17.516 --> 0:23:20.076 I'm creating this thing that's going to become the computer. 0:23:20.516 --> 0:23:23.796 Give me enough computing power and I tell you the 0:23:23.876 --> 0:23:26.276 right move. That's not life. That doesn't help me make 0:23:26.276 --> 0:23:32.116 decisions in life. How do I decide in a nuclear 0:23:32.196 --> 0:23:35.036 war situation? He actually, you know, at that time he 0:23:35.076 --> 0:23:39.876 was advising the National Security Council, so this was not abstract. 0:23:40.076 --> 0:23:42.476 He said, you know, in roulette also total bullshit, because 0:23:42.516 --> 0:23:46.316 that's just gambling, that's chance. So that's almost the you've 0:23:46.316 --> 0:23:47.796 got the end of the spectrum. You can chess on 0:23:47.756 --> 0:23:50.036 one of which is entirely rule based, and you can 0:23:50.036 --> 0:23:54.156 solve with AI and coin flipping or roulette or total chance, 0:23:54.556 --> 0:23:58.556 and somewhere in between is poker, and that's life too. Exactly. 0:23:58.796 --> 0:24:01.916 Poker is the model for its decision making in life, 0:24:01.956 --> 0:24:04.836 because both poker and life are games of incomplete information, 0:24:05.196 --> 0:24:07.556 he said. In real life this is a quote from him, 0:24:07.916 --> 0:24:10.556 which is one of my favorite quotes. He said, real 0:24:10.636 --> 0:24:14.876 life consists of bluffing, of little tactics, of deception, of 0:24:14.916 --> 0:24:17.636 trying to figure out what does this man think I 0:24:17.716 --> 0:24:22.716 mean to do. Maria had never played poker and had 0:24:22.756 --> 0:24:24.916 no clue how to act, but she set out to 0:24:24.956 --> 0:24:27.996 become a professional poker player. The first thing she did 0:24:28.036 --> 0:24:31.956 was hire a coach, a famous player, and you had 0:24:32.036 --> 0:24:34.796 no idea of even the rules of the game. And 0:24:35.036 --> 0:24:37.196 I told him that I didn't know much about poker. 0:24:37.476 --> 0:24:39.436 I mean, I know that there are fifty four cards 0:24:39.436 --> 0:24:42.436 in a duck and he just he said, wait, excuse me. 0:24:42.596 --> 0:24:45.156 I just his face just changed and I said what 0:24:45.676 --> 0:24:47.436 And he said how many cards are in a duck? 0:24:47.476 --> 0:24:49.636 And now I start doubting myself a little. I said 0:24:49.676 --> 0:24:52.796 fifty four and he's like, well, you know, theoretically with 0:24:52.836 --> 0:24:56.276 the jokers, yes, but when we're doing odds calculations, it 0:24:56.276 --> 0:24:58.356 would be better if you used fifty two, you know, 0:24:58.516 --> 0:25:03.156 just to keep things a little simple. Is help me 0:25:03.196 --> 0:25:07.036 list the ways pokers like life. One is that you're 0:25:07.076 --> 0:25:10.636 never going to have or like life's dis making decisions 0:25:10.636 --> 0:25:13.756