Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a
Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be part
Speaker 1: four of four in our Cynicism series. This one originally
Speaker 1: published four twenty four, twenty twenty five. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: the fourth and final part in our series on cinicism.
Speaker 3: There has been a light at the end of the
Speaker 3: tunnel and we finally reached it. So in Part one,
Speaker 3: we defined cynicism as the tendency to believe that people
Speaker 3: are bad, selfish, and untrustworthy, and we distinguished this modern
Speaker 3: deion from other concepts like the cynic philosophy of ancient Greece,
Speaker 3: which is a whole different thing, and from similar but
Speaker 3: distinct concepts like pessimism. We also looked at research on
Speaker 3: the correlates of cynicism across a bunch of domains of life,
Speaker 3: from health to career and all kinds of things, and
Speaker 3: discovered that being highly cynical tends to have overwhelmingly negative
Speaker 3: effects on a person's life. In Part two, we focused
Speaker 3: primarily on the so called cynical genius illusion. The short
Speaker 3: version of this is that while people might not necessarily
Speaker 3: like highly cynical people for whatever reason, we tend to
Speaker 3: assume that they are smart and competent in cognitive domains,
Speaker 3: conforming to the Sherlock Holmes archetype. However, experiments showed that
Speaker 3: this is not actually the case. On average, highly cynical
Speaker 3: people are not smarter than everybody else, and if anything,
Speaker 3: the correlation usually goes the other way, And so we
Speaker 3: talked about possible reasons for this fact, and also talked
Speaker 3: about the question of what, if anything, is the actual
Speaker 3: benefit of generalized cynicism. It seems like one answer is
Speaker 3: that if you are not very skilled at telling the
Speaker 3: difference between a trustworthy situation and an untrustworthy one, generalized
Speaker 3: cynicism may protect you from catastrophic misplacements of trust, but
Speaker 3: again at great cost to your well being and at
Speaker 3: the price of many lost opportunities to benefit from trust
Speaker 3: and cooperation. In Part three, we talked about the role
Speaker 3: of cynicism in politics, including the idea that cynicism has
Speaker 3: been on the rise in many democracies around the world
Speaker 3: for a possible number of reasons, one influence maybe being
Speaker 3: the use of social media. We also talked about research
Speaker 3: on the phenomenon of political cynicism, in particular as distinct
Speaker 3: from just general social cynicism or from simple distrust or
Speaker 3: skepticism of politicians, and we got into some observed characteristics
Speaker 3: of how cynicism manifests in political participation. We also talked
Speaker 3: about how people may use a mask of cynical rhetoric
Speaker 3: about politics in order to influence how they're perceived by others,
Speaker 3: maybe to sort of cover up the fact that you
Speaker 3: maybe don't know a lot about what you're talking about,
Speaker 3: and we discuss the link between cynicism and a preference
Speaker 3: for conspiracy based explanations.
Speaker 1: Another thing we discussed that ties into this episode a
Speaker 1: little bit is the idea that escape from cynicism in
Speaker 1: the modern sense, one way to escape from it would
Speaker 1: be to push through to a point of true disenchantment
Speaker 1: and essentially become an ancient cynic, a capital C cynic
Speaker 1: in the philosophical sense. Now, we'll see how well that
Speaker 1: idea pans out with what we have to talk about today.
Speaker 1: But to be clear, we're not recommending this as a
Speaker 1: standard solution to any cynicism you're wrestling with in your life.
Speaker 1: It's more interesting from the standpoint of understanding what lowercase
Speaker 1: cynicism and capital C cynicism is. So I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting take in that regard, but not necessarily something
Speaker 1: you want to try for yourself. Like, the answer is
Speaker 1: not to I think we can. We can state pretty
Speaker 1: clearly here, don't try to become more cynical about life
Speaker 1: in order to reach some point of equilibrium.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think maybe I see what the author you
Speaker 3: were citing when you brought this up is getting at
Speaker 3: with the idea of a sort of total disenchantment leading
Speaker 3: to a freedom to once again embrace virtue. I mean
Speaker 3: that almost seems a kind of Buddhist in a way, like,
Speaker 3: you know, like losing your love for the things of
Speaker 3: the world, allowing you to find like different higher levels
Speaker 3: of appreciation. But I question to what extent that kind
Speaker 3: of enlightened disenchantment capital C cynicism can actually be reached
Speaker 3: just by increasing your lowercase C cynicism along the standard dimension,
Speaker 3: you know, like becoming even less and less trustful. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that eventually gets you to capital C cynicism.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think its primary purpose is to help us understand
Speaker 1: the connections between ancient cynicism and modern cynicism, rather than
Speaker 1: give us an approach for fixing our own lives.
Speaker 3: Now, given everything that we've talked about so far, one
Speaker 3: of the things the main things we wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about today was the question of where cynicism comes from.
Speaker 3: What can we understand about its origins within a culture
Speaker 3: and within a person, how it grows and spreads, and
Speaker 3: thus how can it be counteracted. Is there anything we
Speaker 3: really know about how to stop the growth of cynicism.
Speaker 3: I think this is a field where we don't have
Speaker 3: really strong conclusions yet, but there are some good starting
Speaker 3: points based on research. And one paper that I came
Speaker 3: across that addresses this question pretty directly was published in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Speaker 3: by a pair of researchers from the Stanford Psychology Department
Speaker 3: named Eric Neuman and Jamil Zaki. And this paper is
Speaker 3: called Toward a Social Psychology of Cynicism. So the authors
Speaker 3: begin this paper by addressing what they called the cynicism paradox.
Speaker 3: Cynicism quote tracks numerous negative outcomes, and yet many people
Speaker 3: are cynical. And so this is really something we've already
Speaker 3: been talking about this series, but kind of with a
Speaker 3: different framing. We've been asking the question, if cynicism is
Speaker 3: clearly so bad for our lives, is there any compensating benefit?
Speaker 3: Because if it's harmful and lots of people are highly
Speaker 3: cynical anyway, shouldn't you think there's probably some kind of
Speaker 3: trade off that makes it worth the cost. We've already
Speaker 3: mentioned several specific ways or scenarios in which it might
Speaker 3: be adaptive, but then again, it might just be one
Speaker 3: of those things that is just plain bad for us
Speaker 3: but happens anyway, Like, for example, depression. You might be
Speaker 3: able to explain how depression grows out of biological mechanisms
Speaker 3: that are evolved in order to be adaptive for us,
Speaker 3: but you don't have to assume that depression itself has
Speaker 3: benefits overall. It's just like something's gone wrong and it's
Speaker 3: bad for us. It's possible cynicism is usually the same way.
Speaker 3: But the authors here sort of take the same idea
Speaker 3: and they frame it as this paradox, cynicism hurts the
Speaker 3: cynic and yet cynicism seems to spread and bloom a
Speaker 3: new year after year. And so the authors say, given
Speaker 3: the observation of the cynicism paradox, research within social psychology
Speaker 3: should focus on a couple of questions. Where cynicism comes from,
Speaker 3: and how it spreads, and how can it be countered,
Speaker 3: diminished or alleviated. So first the question what explains cynicism?
Speaker 3: Where does it come from? First they address the possibility,
Speaker 3: what if the cynic is right. We've talked about this
Speaker 3: from a number of angles. Maybe cynicism is just an
Speaker 3: accurate assessment based on observations of the world. In the
Speaker 3: words of the authors quote, perhaps it reflects a realistic
Speaker 3: perception of the suffering caused by human self interest. But
Speaker 3: we've already explored research casting serious doubt on this, for example,
Speaker 3: the various experiments showing that people tend to grossly overestimate
Speaker 3: the selfishness and treachery of strangers. Most people in most
Speaker 3: types of situations are actually pretty trustworthy. And the authors
Speaker 3: seem to agree with this conclusion, and so instead they
Speaker 3: identify three ways that they think cynicism arises it's not
Speaker 3: necessarily that it is an accurate model of the world.
Speaker 3: But instead quote we will argue that people often overestimate
Speaker 3: self interest, create it through their expectations, or overstate their
Speaker 3: own to not appear naive. Now, the authors here acknowledged that,
Speaker 3: of course cynicism can be and often is, responsive to
Speaker 3: observation of the real world. For example, this is an
Speaker 3: experimental finding. We become more cynical when we witness people
Speaker 3: behaving selfishly. If you do an experiment where you stage
Speaker 3: people catching somebody doing something selfish and untrustworthy, that actually
Speaker 3: makes us less likely to trust. So we've witnessed an
Speaker 3: example that trust, you know, did not turn out well,
Speaker 3: and it affects our baseline in a way, at least
Speaker 3: within the situation, we become less trusting. But jumping off
Speaker 3: of this, they say that we can easily, because of
Speaker 3: various psychological phenomena, biases, and so forth, become kind of
Speaker 3: trapped in an unrealistically cynical mindset that is not a
Speaker 3: good model of how the world usually works and brings
Speaker 3: with it all the harms we've talked about. And you know,
Speaker 3: you can think about this in a number of different
Speaker 3: psychological domains. Your initial tendency is based on an observation,
Speaker 3: like you do see a betrayal or an example of
Speaker 3: somebody acting selfishly, but then you form an inaccurate, totalizing
Speaker 3: worldview based on that one salient example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this really insightful table that they cite here
Speaker 1: that I found very interesting with these different categories of cynicism,
Speaker 1: group cynicism, institutional cynicism, and general cynicism, and this kind
Speaker 1: of model for how things might intensify. So, like one
Speaker 1: example they include is a young colleague betrays an older
Speaker 1: one in a team project. What does the older colleague conclude?
Speaker 1: And so the initial cynicism is, well, young people are
Speaker 1: self interested, and then that's the group cynicism. Then the
Speaker 1: institutional cynicism is people in the workplace are self interested,
Speaker 1: and then the general cynicism is people are self interested.
Speaker 1: And so you can you can imagine like a blossoming
Speaker 1: of cynicism more or less along these routes, you know,
Speaker 1: from being highly specific to you know, a particular encounter,
Speaker 1: to being increasing generalities about the way the world works.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting point. Yeah, And in fact, though the
Speaker 3: cynicism may be inaccurate at every single stage in this progression.
Speaker 3: So like, let's say I observe Johnny doing something selfish
Speaker 3: in one instance, and I start by saying Johnny is
Speaker 3: an untrustworthy person. That may not actually be true about Johnny.
Speaker 3: Maybe I just caught him at his worst moment, but
Speaker 3: it might be true about Johnny. Then I abstract it
Speaker 3: to some group Johnny belongs to. For some reason, his
Speaker 3: membership in a particular group is meaningful to me, and
Speaker 3: so I see him as representative of that group and
Speaker 3: apply the untrustworthiness to the whole group. And then I
Speaker 3: could branch out even further to some institution in which
Speaker 3: Johnny exists, and then possibly to all of humankind. But
Speaker 3: at every single level, it's possible you are actually not
Speaker 3: drawing a good generalization from observing one instance of behavior.
Speaker 1: This made me think about cynicism on The Simpsons, particularly
Speaker 1: as it relates to Homer Simpson. There's a famous episode
Speaker 1: from the Golden Age of Simpson's episodes in which we
Speaker 1: kind of get an origin story for homer cynicism. It's
Speaker 1: the City of New York versus Homer, in which a
Speaker 1: young and optimistic Homer Simpson experiences a number of betrayals
Speaker 1: and hostilities upon visiting the Big Apple.
Speaker 3: We talked about this episode in our Weird House Cinema
Speaker 3: on the Face behind the Mask, because Peter Lourie has
Speaker 3: the exact same experience.
Speaker 1: Yes, the exact same experience, and in this episode we
Speaker 1: see how it leads to an extremely cynical view of
Speaker 1: New York and New Yorkers. But you could also argue
Speaker 1: that it perhaps underlines the general anger in cynicism that
Speaker 1: comes to define Homer, at least in these early classic
Speaker 1: seasons of the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though it is interesting how malleable Homer's character is,
Speaker 3: and yet he still feels like a cohesive character, like
Speaker 3: sometimes Homer is very, very trusting and other times he's
Speaker 3: very cynical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's changed a lot over the years. I mean
Speaker 1: not in a character development way, but just in the
Speaker 1: realities of the show being on television this long, with
Speaker 1: this many different writers over over the years, various commentators
Speaker 1: have discussed how in the early Simpsons, or certainly the
Speaker 1: golden age of the Simpsons, you have this mix of
Speaker 1: cynicism and heart that kind of balances everything out. But
Speaker 1: the cynicism and melancholy have been observed to be particularly
Speaker 1: strong during that first season, and then they move away
Speaker 1: from that, and then eventually they kind of move away
Speaker 1: from homer cynicism and anger in general and double down
Speaker 1: on his frankness and his stupidity, so he becomes you know,
Speaker 1: it's more about like the dumb jokes and the gullible
Speaker 1: Homer as we proceed. But if you if you look
Speaker 1: at the New York episode, and you look at some
Speaker 1: of these episodes from from the from like the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: you can easily fill out a chart watching how we
Speaker 1: have a situation where Homer encounters selfish people in New York,
Speaker 1: and then this fosters into a worldview that, well, all
Speaker 1: New Yorkers are selfish, and then maybe all people are
Speaker 1: selfish as well. You can imagine it being like the
Speaker 1: thing that blossoms out into Homer's general cynicism.
Speaker 3: Right, this is a great comparison. So, yeah, it begins
Speaker 3: as the observation of an individual action or behavior and
Speaker 3: then generalizing to the person who did that, then the
Speaker 3: group to whom that person belongs, and then to the
Speaker 3: society at large, and then to all of humankind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and tell you you're the type of person who's
Speaker 1: like of course I'm going to steal roadside sugar because
Speaker 1: anyone else would do the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yes, so anyway.
Speaker 3: In this paper, the authors try to formulate a model
Speaker 3: of how cynicism can spread at three different levels of
Speaker 3: social interaction. So one is through interactions at the interpersonal
Speaker 3: level between two people, the next is at the intra
Speaker 3: group level within groups, and then finally at the intergroup
Speaker 3: level between groups. So regarding the interpersonal level of cynicism
Speaker 3: of formation, the authors raise the question what if at
Speaker 3: the interpersonal level, cynicism is a self fulfilling prophecy In
Speaker 3: other words, an initially false belief, or at least a
Speaker 3: belief not based on evidence, whether whether true or false,
Speaker 3: an initially false belief that influences the behavior of the
Speaker 3: believer in such a way that they make the world
Speaker 3: conform to the way they believe it is. And psychological
Speaker 3: research has identified a bunch of dynamics like this. Self
Speaker 3: fulfilling prophecies show up in all kinds of ways in
Speaker 3: our behavior. For example, some experiments have found that if
Speaker 3: you treat somebody in a way that indicates you have
Speaker 3: high expectations of their competence, it can actually make them
Speaker 3: more competent, And obviously there would be limits to effects
Speaker 3: like this. You know, you can't just, you know, like
Speaker 3: hand somebody who knows nothing about medicine a scalpel and
Speaker 3: say I believe in you, go do the surgery. You
Speaker 3: know they're probably not going to know what to do,
Speaker 3: but within certain limits of a plausible knowledge and behavior,
Speaker 3: you can imagine how having somebody else show confidence in
Speaker 3: you can make you more confident in yourself, maybe make
Speaker 3: you less nervous, increase your performance certain types of jobs,
Speaker 3: or maybe having somebody treat you as competent makes you
Speaker 3: more conscientious, more careful to do a good job so
Speaker 3: as not to disappoint them, and so forth, and so
Speaker 3: then the authors say, quote, just like expectations about competence
Speaker 3: cynical expectations of moral character and become self fulfilling. So
Speaker 3: examples of this remember the trust based investing game that
Speaker 3: we talked about in previous episodes in the series, where
Speaker 3: I am given some money and then I have the
Speaker 3: option to either keep the money or hand it over
Speaker 3: to a stranger, at which point the money gets quadrupled.
Speaker 3: So maybe I initially get five dollars if I hand
Speaker 3: it to the stranger, it becomes twenty dollars, and then
Speaker 3: the stranger has the option to either keep all of
Speaker 3: the money for themselves or split the money and give
Speaker 3: me back ten dollars, so we both get ten and
Speaker 3: I double my initial investment. This was one of the
Speaker 3: experiments that found strangers almost always honor the investors trust
Speaker 3: and give half the money back, but people greatly underestimated
Speaker 3: how often that would happen. We overestimate the selfishness and
Speaker 3: treachery of strangers anyway. The authors mentioned that in trust
Speaker 3: based games of this sort, maybe not exactly this game,
Speaker 3: but something like it, if one player treats the other
Speaker 3: with cynicism, the other player actually becomes measurably less trustworthy
Speaker 3: in how they play the game. In other words, if
Speaker 3: you treat me like you expect me to be selfish,
Speaker 3: I actually become more selfish than I would have been otherwise.
Speaker 3: And this dynamic has been found in laboratory experiments, of course,
Speaker 3: but also found in the wild in real life scenarios.
Speaker 3: For example, studies of workplaces that find when management treats
Speaker 3: workers with suspicion like they expect them to break the
Speaker 3: rules and they're trying to you know, make sure to
Speaker 3: really crack down and make sure you don't break the rules.
Speaker 3: It actually makes workers more likely to break the rules.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: When cynical supervisors expect low compliance and titan supervision, they
Speaker 3: actually lower compliance. This, of course might not be the
Speaker 3: case in every workplace all the time, but it has
Speaker 3: been observed and it intuitively makes sense to me. You know,
Speaker 3: when a person is treated with trust, they may feel
Speaker 3: incentivized to rise to meet that trust, And when they're
Speaker 3: treated with cynical suspicion, the mind rebels and says, no,
Speaker 3: go to hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, if you actually put a sign up no
Speaker 1: stealing pins or no you know, printing out of dungeons
Speaker 1: and dragon supplements on the on the work printer, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna be like, well why not, Why
Speaker 1: shouldn't I have pins? Why shouldn't I have color printouts
Speaker 1: of my dn D manuals come on?
Speaker 3: Or just more generally, I mean, I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people will know the feeling of it does not
Speaker 3: inspire you to be the best kind of worker. If
Speaker 3: you have the boss constantly looking over your shoulder, that
Speaker 3: just kind of makes you you feel like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: well why do I give a damn about this?
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't gonna mention too much about diagenies
Speaker 1: in this episode because I don't want to confuse things
Speaker 1: too much. But there are there are some stories of
Speaker 1: diagenies where people expect him to act like a dog
Speaker 1: in the street, and then they would like throw food
Speaker 1: to defeed him like a dog, but then he kind
Speaker 1: of ups the ante and and outdogs them by then
Speaker 1: peeing on them like a dog, which we could maybe
Speaker 1: apply to this scenario. It's like, like, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: think I'm a dog, watch how much of a dog
Speaker 1: I can be?
Speaker 3: Okay, Another self fulfilling prophecy dynamic at the interpersonal level.
Speaker 3: This one's actually even simpler, person to person respect quote.
Speaker 3: More generally, cynics assume the worst in others and accordingly
Speaker 3: treat them with less respect. A recent paper uses lab
Speaker 3: experiments and daily diary methods to show that cynics often
Speaker 3: disrespect others. Since people dislike being disrespected, they often return
Speaker 3: the disrespect. That's pretty straightforward. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: So these self fulfilling prophecy dynamics both trap the cynic
Speaker 3: in their cynical worldview by making those around them less
Speaker 3: trustworthy and more unpleasant, thus increasing evidence for the cynic's
Speaker 3: view of humankind. It's like, if you're acting, if you're
Speaker 3: already cynical, you make your environment better evidence for a
Speaker 3: cynical worldview. And then also they spread cynicism like an
Speaker 3: infectious disease, causing those who have dealings with the cynic
Speaker 3: to themselves become more cynical. All right, So that's the
Speaker 3: interpersonal level. But the next level of analysis is the
Speaker 3: intra group level within groups, and here the authors bring
Speaker 3: up an idea that I thought was really interesting. That
Speaker 3: is the idea of pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance is a
Speaker 3: group psychology effect that emerges when people mistakenly believe that
Speaker 3: everybody else thinks differently than they do. A classic illustration
Speaker 3: of pluralistic ignorance is the story The Emperor's New Clothes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most people are probably familiar with the Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson telling of this from eighteen thirty seven, though I'm
Speaker 1: to understand this was based in part on older tales,
Speaker 1: and you can also connect it to related stories in
Speaker 1: various cultures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the simplified version is some con artists go
Speaker 3: to the Emperor, and they say, we've got some beautiful
Speaker 3: new garments for you, in fact, a magical outfit that
Speaker 3: can only be seen by people who are intelligent. It's
Speaker 3: invisible to the dim witted, and the con artists provide
Speaker 3: the emperor in fact with no clothes at all. But nobody,
Speaker 3: including the Emperor, wants to admit that they can't see
Speaker 3: the clothes and thus be thought a fool, so everybody
Speaker 3: pretends the king has clothes on while he's actually just
Speaker 3: walking around naked, and nobody is able to speak up
Speaker 3: about this until finally a child points out the nudity,
Speaker 3: and finally everybody realizes they've been tricked. This story illustrates
Speaker 3: pluralistic ignorance because actually everybody privately thinks the Emperor is naked,
Speaker 3: but they are afraid to say so because they think
Speaker 3: they're the only one and nobody else is saying it.
Speaker 3: This story does slightly complicate it by adding the detail
Speaker 3: that they're afraid of being thought unintelligent, and that's not
Speaker 3: necessarily part of pluralistic ignorance, but it is pluralistic ignorance
Speaker 3: because everybody in the story just goes along pretending to
Speaker 3: believe something that none of them actually privately believes.
Speaker 1: There's a great treatment of this on the television series
Speaker 1: Arrested Development with the film project The Ocean Walker, where
Speaker 1: all the studio people surrounding it just continue to talk
Speaker 1: about how great it was, but no one actually understood it.
Speaker 1: But nobody wanted to be seen as the dummy who
Speaker 1: doesn't get this amazing project.
Speaker 3: Great example, and you can think of examples like this
Speaker 3: all throughout you know, it happens all the time. So
Speaker 3: how could this actually be a factor in the propagation
Speaker 3: of cynicism the author's right quote. A group can succumb
Speaker 3: to the norm of self interest, which specifies that people
Speaker 3: are and should be self interested. Members in such groups
Speaker 3: present themselves as more elf interested then they really are.
Speaker 3: So what if most people in a group actually just
Speaker 3: want to be trustworthy and cooperative, but there is a
Speaker 3: let's say, a prominent voice within the group saying it's
Speaker 3: a dog eat dog world. Everybody's just looking out for
Speaker 3: number one. The speaker could manage to convince the group
Speaker 3: that everyone else in the group thinks this way too,
Speaker 3: and the person who is not very selfish and would
Speaker 3: prefer mutual trust and cooperation, that person feels like they
Speaker 3: can't really admit how they feel publicly because they would
Speaker 3: be the only one and they would seem naive or silly,
Speaker 3: or they would fear that people might think they were
Speaker 3: misrepresenting themselves, you know, like your virtue signaling. We've heard
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. And the authors point to a
Speaker 3: study that looks into this. I was published in two
Speaker 3: thousand and one by Ratner and Miller, which this paper
Speaker 3: did several experiments looking into this phenomenon. I looked it
Speaker 3: up in One of the more persuasive experiments went like this, Okay,
Speaker 3: if you anonymously privately ask people about whether they would
Speaker 3: like to take money away from a research project funded
Speaker 3: through the National Institutes of Health. Most people did not
Speaker 3: want to take the money away from medical research when
Speaker 3: asked in private. However, when it was made clear that
Speaker 3: the research in question could not directly benefit certain participants personally.
Speaker 3: For example, it's like to cure a disease that only
Speaker 3: affects a group you do not belong to, people became
Speaker 3: hesitant to speak up publicly in the group about their
Speaker 3: opposition to cutting the grant, even though they privately still
Speaker 3: supported the grant. So to paraphrase. Lots of people wanted
Speaker 3: to protect medical research that could not benefit them personally,
Speaker 3: but they were hesitant to publicly speak up about protecting
Speaker 3: the research unless it could benefit them personally. This hurts me,
Speaker 3: gives me confidence to speak in public, but want to
Speaker 3: I just want to help other people. That might be
Speaker 3: a genuine private motivation, but people were afraid to say
Speaker 3: that in public. And there could be a number of
Speaker 3: explanations for this, but based on a few characteristics of
Speaker 3: the findings, it was interpreted by the researchers as the
Speaker 3: participants assuming a group norm of cynicism and fearing being
Speaker 3: judged by cynical third parties. So if you fear that
Speaker 3: the people watching you are cynical, you become sheepish about
Speaker 3: publicly supporting something that doesn't benefit you personally, even if
Speaker 3: you secretly believe it is good. And I thought this
Speaker 3: was so interesting because it's sort of counterintuitive. You know,
Speaker 3: we often think in public we want to come off
Speaker 3: as good people, and so you know, you would want
Speaker 3: to be seen doing something that would help other people.
Speaker 3: But I absolutely think this phenomenon it checks out for me.
Speaker 3: I've observed this kind of dynamic before and assuming it
Speaker 3: is real. It's obviously not the only psychological pressure on
Speaker 3: us in this kind of domain, like there will be
Speaker 3: counter pressures pushing in the opposite direction as well, because
Speaker 3: obviously sometimes people do speak up publicly in supportive causes
Speaker 3: they have no personal stake in. Whether that's simply because
Speaker 3: of the strength of their desire to support that cause.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just strong enough to overcome this fear, the
Speaker 3: fear of social pressure, of pluralistic ignorance, or maybe there's
Speaker 3: just some other social psychological pressure sometimes pushing in the
Speaker 3: opposite direction, maybe again like the desire to appear selfless
Speaker 3: and moral. But I can absolutely identify the feeling of
Speaker 3: the fear of social disapproval based on the assumption of
Speaker 3: cynical group norms. Sometimes something is happening that feels really wrong,
Speaker 3: and I have an urge to point that out, to
Speaker 3: say something about it, but nobody else around me is
Speaker 3: saying anything, and I have the feeling like, well, this
Speaker 3: is none of my business, and maybe I just don't
Speaker 3: understand it well enough, and I'll look naive if I
Speaker 3: say something. But actually, maybe lots of people are secretly
Speaker 3: feeling this way because they falsely believe everybody else endorses
Speaker 3: a cynical mind your own business mentality.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very akin to the bystander phenomena in
Speaker 1: some respects, the idea that, oh, well, I'm not the
Speaker 1: one to jump in and help. There's someone else who's
Speaker 1: either more closely aligned with the situation or has the
Speaker 1: expertise that I don't, and then therefore nobody does.
Speaker 3: Anything exactly right. But in the case of cynicism, pluralistic ignorance,
Speaker 3: creating a false belief in group cynicism has the pernicious
Speaker 3: effect of actually creating real, genuine cynicism over time. The
Speaker 3: author's write quote, as cynicism rises in a group, it
Speaker 3: can make noncinics act in more self interested ways, which
Speaker 3: further reinforces group members level of cynicism. It's a feedback loop.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, as folks just essentially become more and more
Speaker 1: cynical just to fit in with the group, and this
Speaker 1: has a potentially transformative effect over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but trying to fit in with the group, even
Speaker 3: if they are mistaken about how cynical the group is,
Speaker 3: we're like overestimating the cynicism of the group and trying
Speaker 3: to fit in with that false perception.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then finally, the authors look at the inter group
Speaker 3: level cynicism between different groups, and this section involves meta perceptions,
Speaker 3: essentially what you believe about how other people perceive you.
Speaker 3: Some research has found that across many different cultures, groups
Speaker 3: within each culture that maybe have antagonistic orientations like opposite
Speaker 3: political parties or you know, just different groups that have
Speaker 3: some antagonism, tend to have false overly negative intergroup meta perceptions.
Speaker 3: People believe that the out group is more hostile to
Speaker 3: their in group than the outgroup actually is, and this
Speaker 3: perception gap can lead to actual intergroup cynicism and hostility
Speaker 3: via the familiar mechanisms. If you think people hate you,
Speaker 3: you treat them with distrust, and treating people with distrust
Speaker 3: actually makes them like you less and trust you less. Quote,
Speaker 3: false metaperceptions illustrate how people can become more cynical in
Speaker 3: part because they overestimate how polarized their fellow citizens are.
Speaker 3: All right, So those are the mechanisms the authors identify
Speaker 3: for how cynicism grows and spreads. But they say, from
Speaker 3: these observations, we can actually offer some tentative suggestions for
Speaker 3: how cynicism can be beaten back. I don't think they're
Speaker 3: presenting this as like the ultimate remedy, like we know
Speaker 3: everything about how to defeat cynicism, but there's some good
Speaker 3: starting places here. So at the interpersonal level, they say,
Speaker 3: studies show that people appreciate being trusted and seem to
Speaker 3: actually become less self interested and less cynical on average
Speaker 3: when simply granted trust. So we have an interaction in
Speaker 3: which you trust me with something. If you do that,
Speaker 3: ion average will actually become a little bit less cynical
Speaker 3: and a little bit less selfish. And the cool thing
Speaker 3: about this is that it's transferable. So somebody trusts me,
Speaker 3: I actually tend to become not only more likely to
Speaker 3: trust that person back, but to trust an unrelated third person. Therefore,
Speaker 3: the same way that acts and displays of cynicism can
Speaker 3: create this toxic negative feedback loop that increases cynicism for
Speaker 3: all parties involved, acts and displays of trust can probably
Speaker 3: create a positive feedback loop that contagiously undermines cynicism within
Speaker 3: the culture at large.
Speaker 1: So this is the real purpose of the leave a penny,
Speaker 1: Take a penny tray, right, I mean, it's it's building
Speaker 1: a better world.
Speaker 4: You joke.
Speaker 3: But I think little things like that may indeed make
Speaker 3: a difference. You know, I don't have evidence of that
Speaker 3: in particular, but I think the little moments of trust
Speaker 3: probably do not have to be huge, Like you don't
Speaker 3: have to go out so far on a limb. Just
Speaker 3: going out a little bit to grant people trust I
Speaker 3: think actually surprises them often and has this effect of
Speaker 3: undermining cynicism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that might be the case.
Speaker 3: So if you can undermine cynicism by creating these little
Speaker 3: moments of you know, just lots of pervasive, little moments
Speaker 3: of granting trust, you know, that's a good thing to know.
Speaker 3: But I guess the question is like, how do you
Speaker 3: actually implement this? Because you want to affect you want
Speaker 3: to primarily affect people who are high in cynicism, or
Speaker 3: at least moderate in cynicism. If you are a person
Speaker 3: who realizes that you are more cynical than you would
Speaker 3: like to be, and you have like the level of
Speaker 3: self consciousness and willpower to go out on a limb
Speaker 3: and engage in little exercises of trading trust to seed
Speaker 3: the ground for a life, obviously, that's great if you
Speaker 3: have that self awareness, go for it. But a lot
Speaker 3: of highly cynical people are probably not going to do
Speaker 3: this on their own, so it probably helps for less
Speaker 3: cynical people to kind of deliberately contrive situations of friendly
Speaker 3: cooperation to infect people suffering from cynicism with opportunities to
Speaker 3: be trusted and to see examples of trust rewarded. I
Speaker 3: don't know exactly the best way to do this, obviously,
Speaker 3: you can't, like you, force cynical strangers to do trust
Speaker 3: falls with you in the grocery store parking a lot.
Speaker 3: But surely there are ways to stage parts of your
Speaker 3: life so as to create little points of trading off
Speaker 3: of trust and positive social contagion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We're going to get into some possible examples of
Speaker 1: this in a bit, but I'll go ahead and mention
Speaker 1: some of it here. These are from some of the
Speaker 1: ideas of an author we've already mentioned, Jamil Zaki, who
Speaker 1: wrote a book about overcoming cynicism, Hope for Cynics, The
Speaker 1: Surprising Eyes of Human Goodness that came out in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. But one of the things that he discusses
Speaker 1: is essentially the idea of conducting your own behavioral experiments
Speaker 1: to produce on the whole positive evidence of human goodness.
Speaker 1: So sort of in a way like leaving the door
Speaker 1: open for little examples of trust and allowing that trust
Speaker 1: to wander in again, not leaving the whole door open,
Speaker 1: you know, not you know not like you know, writing
Speaker 1: your social Security number on your arm and just seeing
Speaker 1: if anything anybody does anything bad with it. But little
Speaker 1: smaller acts, things just sprinkle throughout your daily life, like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a possibility to sprinkle a little trust out there
Speaker 1: and see that trust returned and in doing so, giving
Speaker 1: us more real life evidence of human goodness to counteract
Speaker 1: this welling up of cynicism inside us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to place emphasis again on what you just
Speaker 3: said and what we were just talking about it. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be huge risks when you make little
Speaker 3: bids for trust. It can be little things. Now, coming
Speaker 3: back to the next level of analysis, it was the
Speaker 3: intra group level. Remember this was the idea that pluralistic
Speaker 3: ignorance can create within a group a false impression that
Speaker 3: there is a norm of cynical self interest, that people
Speaker 3: are and should be selfish, when really most people in
Speaker 3: the group don't actually feel that way. They're just afraid
Speaker 3: to speak up because they think maybe they're the only one.
Speaker 3: We might be able to overcome this and other situations
Speaker 3: of pluralistic ignorance if we create a culture, we try
Speaker 3: to personally demonstrate, act out a culture in which people
Speaker 3: have more courage to disagree with what they assume to
Speaker 3: be the opinions of the larger group. It might turn
Speaker 3: out that it actually is pluralistic ignorance. Maybe a lot
Speaker 3: of people already agree with you, and they just didn't
Speaker 3: want to be the only one to say something. And
Speaker 3: this is especially important if the assumed group norm is
Speaker 3: something poisonous, something that maybe is coming top down, like
Speaker 3: it's a dog eat dog world. There's like a really
Speaker 3: influential person over the group shouting this message. It's important
Speaker 3: that somebody else is saying the opposite. Otherwise the message
Speaker 3: shouted from the top can easily become assumed to be
Speaker 3: the group norm even if it's not. But also the
Speaker 3: authors point out that normative group pressure can work in
Speaker 3: the opposite direction. This maybe sounds a little bit grubbier
Speaker 3: than some of the other ideas because this involves the
Speaker 3: idea of, well, maybe you should employ peer pressure to
Speaker 3: positive ends. But the author's write quote just as non
Speaker 3: Cynics can behave cynically under a norm of self interest.
Speaker 3: So can sinics become more trusting when they feel normative
Speaker 3: pressure to do so? There are experiments showing this. Somebody
Speaker 3: might have a kind of cynical baseline, but when there's
Speaker 3: peer pressure around them to be more trusting, it kind
Speaker 3: of works. It makes them a little bit more trusting.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what the trust falls are all about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly the trust fall. I don't know, as
Speaker 3: a particular act might be overly tainted with the aroma
Speaker 3: of corporate seminars, but things like that, I mean, there
Speaker 3: is a kind of kernel of wisdom at the inception
Speaker 3: of the trust fall. So I don't know, do we
Speaker 3: feel good about trying to intentionally use group peer pressure
Speaker 3: to influence people? I don't know, Like, using it to
Speaker 3: reduce cynicism seems like one of the better uses of
Speaker 3: peer pressure than I can imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Plus, just given how nefarious and how just infectious
Speaker 1: cynicism is in our lives, Like, yes, we should pull
Speaker 1: every level we have against it.
Speaker 3: And then finally at the inter group level. Remember this
Speaker 3: was the example where groups in society become increasingly distrustful
Speaker 3: of one another, in part because you imagine that the
Speaker 3: other group is more hostile to your group than they
Speaker 3: actually are. And the solution here, the authors propose, is
Speaker 3: just give people accurate information, because studies in these situations
Speaker 3: have shown that interventions of just like showing people real
Speaker 3: examples of members of the out group, as opposed to
Speaker 3: leaving it up to their imagination or you know, using
Speaker 3: cherry picked examples from hostile in group media.
Speaker 1: Or outright conspiracy theories exactly oftentimes, like that's the mode
Speaker 1: of thinking that is involved in characterizing the opposing viewpoint.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just seeing like real accurate representations of who the
Speaker 3: out group is, like interacting with each other and seeing
Speaker 3: what they're actually like. These types of interventions have been
Speaker 3: found to reduce this kind of between group hostility and
Speaker 3: perceptions of metaperceptions of hostility within the out group. Oh
Speaker 3: are they actually as selfish and hostile as I imagined?
Speaker 3: Now that I see them, it seems maybe not.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's all I've got on this paper by Norman
Speaker 3: and Zaki. But I think that is a very interesting
Speaker 3: place to start. It's got there's a lot to work
Speaker 3: with there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I would say in general, for folks
Speaker 1: who want more information about ways to become less cynical
Speaker 1: and combat cynical, cynical thought and cynicism in your lives.
Speaker 1: Zaki's work is definitely worth following, and he's out there
Speaker 1: in a lot of places talking about this stuff writing
Speaker 1: about it. Back in twenty twenty two, he did a
Speaker 1: TED talk on the topic, and you can look that
Speaker 1: up wherever you get your TED talks. There's a great
Speaker 1: quote in that talk where he says, you might think
Speaker 1: that cynicism is a system upgrade that allows you to
Speaker 1: see who we really are. It's not. It traps us
Speaker 1: in a version of the world we don't want to
Speaker 1: live in and one we don't have to.
Speaker 3: That's put very well, and I think that's an important
Speaker 3: thing to emphasize. It's like a lot of the literature
Speaker 3: that we talked about, I think in part two of
Speaker 3: this series, you know, with the cynical genius illusion that
Speaker 3: like it's just framed as wisdom, that seeing the world
Speaker 3: cynically as being realistic. I mean, maybe in certain scenarios
Speaker 3: there are like very corrupt situations where cynicism is a
Speaker 3: more accurate diagnosis of them. Most of the time, the
Speaker 3: world isn't like that cynicism actually makes you worse at
Speaker 3: predicting other people's behavior. It's just like, it's not a
Speaker 3: good model of the world. It's not being real. It's
Speaker 3: actually living an illusion, living within an illusion that hurts
Speaker 3: you exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, this talk was interesting because I believe it
Speaker 1: was recorded in twenty twenty one, and so you know,
Speaker 1: he definitely ties some of it into the global pandemic
Speaker 1: and talking about the connection between cynicism and disasters, where
Speaker 1: something disastrous can occur some sort of widespread scenario like
Speaker 1: global pandemic, and it can lead to increased cynicism. And
Speaker 1: he also talks a little bit about the danger of
Speaker 1: slipping into what he calls a cynicism perma frost. I
Speaker 1: suppose on the individual level, we're even on like a
Speaker 1: larger societal level where if, like baseline, cynicism grows to
Speaker 1: a certain level, it's just harder and harder for us
Speaker 1: to shake it.
Speaker 3: Yes, cynicism is self reinforcing and self perpetuating. To come
Speaker 3: back to something from that paper, it is a self
Speaker 3: fulfilling prophecy. It makes the world in its image.
Speaker 1: Now, Zaki's twenty twenty four book again his hope for
Speaker 1: cynics the Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and he, of course,
Speaker 1: in this book covers the topic at length, goes through
Speaker 1: a lot of what we've been discussing here, but then
Speaker 1: there's added information and insight as well. I recommend picking
Speaker 1: it up if you want to learn more about how
Speaker 1: to combat cynicism, but I want to go through some
Speaker 1: of the ideas that he brings forth that essentially gives
Speaker 1: you sort of a plan of attack. One of the
Speaker 1: first things that he points out is that you have
Speaker 1: to recognize the harm of cynicism. And we've been talking
Speaker 1: about this, after all, if you don't understand all the
Speaker 1: mental and physical health as well as social ramifications of
Speaker 1: a cynical mindset, you might and I continue to think
Speaker 1: of it as a path of cool and safe detachment,
Speaker 1: like this is what we are, this is the world
Speaker 1: we live in. Realizing first of all that it's harming
Speaker 1: you to think this way, that's a good first step.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cynicism is not the safe bet. It's not i
Speaker 3: don't know, putting your money in CDs or something. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's more kind of like letting it get oily and
Speaker 3: leaving it. Next to the fire.
Speaker 1: Yes. The next thing he brings up is embracing hopeful
Speaker 1: skepticism and questioning your assumptions. I really like this one
Speaker 1: because cynicism can I think, come to feel like it's
Speaker 1: a comfortable sweater that you wear, and then if someone
Speaker 1: comes around and says, get rid of that sweater, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, well, this is this is what I wear.
Speaker 1: This is basically my skin at this point. And so
Speaker 1: the idea here is that hopeful skepticism is kind of
Speaker 1: something that's going to fit you the same as that sweater,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to constrain your soul, you know,
Speaker 1: So you know, assume better of people in general, but
Speaker 1: also self analyze your cynical ideas, engage in rational skepticism,
Speaker 1: which is to say, seek actual real world evidence for
Speaker 1: your negative opinions and beliefs and pay closer attention to
Speaker 1: what you actually observe in the world.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So this is coming back to the distinction
Speaker 3: we made in the last episode between cynicism and skepticism.
Speaker 3: Whereas cynicism is just a bias toward negativity and distrust,
Speaker 3: skepticism is trying to award your trust to things on
Speaker 3: the basis of whether there's good reason to trust them
Speaker 3: or not paying attention to evidence and trying as best
Speaker 3: you can to ignore your biases, whereas cynicism is itself
Speaker 3: a bias, and.
Speaker 1: If you want to think about this as trust but
Speaker 1: confirm fair enough, however you want to think about it.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me a lot of some of the
Speaker 1: anti anxiety techniques I've learned about in recent years, such
Speaker 1: as putting your thoughts on trial and asking yourself questions
Speaker 1: like A what am I afraid will happen? And b
Speaker 1: what is likely to happen? Because we can often allow
Speaker 1: our negative thought patterns to just run around unchecked in
Speaker 1: our minds, like it's not at the forefront of our
Speaker 1: thought We're trying to do other things and it's just
Speaker 1: in the background like a yapping dog. But if we stop,
Speaker 1: if we identify our thoughts and then we apply reasoning
Speaker 1: to those thoughts, we put those thoughts on trial and
Speaker 1: say like, hey, you stop barking. Now, let's talk about
Speaker 1: why you're barking and what you're barking about. Then you
Speaker 1: can actually begin to make serious headway towards dismissing these
Speaker 1: thoughts or at least diminishing their power. Zaki also recommends
Speaker 1: we conduct again our own behavioral experiments to open the
Speaker 1: door for examples of trust to wander into our lives,
Speaker 1: to practice trust. And this is this is a this
Speaker 1: is one that's so big that it's going to sound
Speaker 1: like overly naive just to say it, but focusing on
Speaker 1: the positive. I mean, how many times have you heard that?
Speaker 1: It can it can almost sound like you should smile more.
Speaker 1: He recommends engaging in positive gossip as opposed to just
Speaker 1: negative gossip, to making an effort to finding exams semples
Speaker 1: in your life and in the world of people doing
Speaker 1: good to counteract the other stories. They're going to maybe
Speaker 1: catch your attention more and certainly drift up towards the
Speaker 1: top of the news feed more. In a way, this
Speaker 1: reminds me of that famous mister Rogers quote about looking
Speaker 1: for the helpers. You know, I believe he said quote.
Speaker 1: When I was a boy and I would see scary
Speaker 1: things in the news, my mother would say to me,
Speaker 1: look for the helpers. You will always find people who
Speaker 1: are helping.
Speaker 3: Now, to answer the cynical thought arising in some people's heads,
Speaker 3: you might think, in reaction to that, like, Oh, but
Speaker 3: isn't that just sort of like turning away from reality, Like,
Speaker 3: isn't that not being realistic and wanting to live in
Speaker 3: a happy, happy fantasy land.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the research we've looked at
Speaker 3: is like this is a strategy for having a more
Speaker 3: realistic view of the world. What we have a tendency
Speaker 3: toward is an unrealistic view of the world based on
Speaker 3: the high salience of negative events. So like you know,
Speaker 3: nineteen positive events and one negative event event, the one
Speaker 3: negative event defines our memory of what happened. And so
Speaker 3: this is like trying to have a more realistic view
Speaker 3: based on the actual real world prevalence of trust and positivity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I mean it really comes down to,
Speaker 1: like make sure that you have a balanced diet of
Speaker 1: information about people in the world, and that can include
Speaker 1: a media diet, it can also certainly include a real
Speaker 1: life diet and how you're interacting with people. Like one
Speaker 1: example from my own family, over the past year, we've
Speaker 1: started watching the YouTube videos of Sam Bentley, who you
Speaker 1: can find on wherever you get your videos. But this
Speaker 1: is a guy who highlights positive social and environmental news
Speaker 1: from around the world and these are the kind of
Speaker 1: stories that are generally never the headline. And it's not
Speaker 1: to say that they should be, and it's not to
Speaker 1: say that you should be only watching this sort of
Speaker 1: new stream and not the other news streams, but you
Speaker 1: know their general positivity and hope fullness can provide a
Speaker 1: very necessary counterbalance to the more cynical darkness that is
Speaker 1: just going to well out of you in response to
Speaker 1: the coverage the rest of the coverage out there. And again,
Speaker 1: even if the coverage is fair and you know, on
Speaker 1: the level, I mean, still it's going to feed that
Speaker 1: cynicism that is in all of us, that is going
Speaker 1: to potentially rise up if we don't keep it in check.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is very important to be aware of and
Speaker 3: informed about and have a realistic view of threats and
Speaker 3: bad things happening, But if you want to be able
Speaker 3: to respond to those in the best way possible, it's
Speaker 3: actually important not to let a cynical mindset set in
Speaker 3: which it just disempowers you. So it is important to
Speaker 3: be aware of threats and dangers and not like ignore them,
Speaker 3: to like have them front of mind in a way,
Speaker 3: but be able to respond to them realistically and productively.
Speaker 3: Rather than just submitting to cynical surrender.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Now, we should be clear that none of this
Speaker 1: is like a one and done solution. There's not like
Speaker 1: a checksheet you can go through and at the end
Speaker 1: of it be like, ah, well, there we go, cynicism defeated.
Speaker 1: In fact, Zaki here of the author in his TED talk,
Speaker 1: drives home that he still struggles with cynicism himself all
Speaker 1: the time. And it is a struggle. You can't completely
Speaker 1: squash the infection of modern cynicism. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the cruel realities of the whole scenario. Cynicism is just
Speaker 1: going to well up again and again, potentially gaining foothold
Speaker 1: each time subconsciously, like it's just in the background growing,
Speaker 1: and it requires deliberate effort generally to counter its growth. So,
Speaker 1: you know, like any kind of maintenance, except its maintenance
Speaker 1: on your outlook on the world, on your psyche and
Speaker 1: your soul. And once again, none of this is a
Speaker 1: proposed transition from cynicism into naivety, or from cynicism into
Speaker 1: some sort of unhealthy optimism. It's a transition from an
Speaker 1: unhealthy and ultimately unrealistically bleak outlook on people in the
Speaker 1: world into something that is more balanced, more reasonably optimistic,
Speaker 1: and healthier for you in multiple regards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, see the world as it really is. Trust when
Speaker 3: you can and use those relationships of mutual trust to
Speaker 3: make life better.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap
Speaker 1: up these episodes on cynicism right here on an upnote,
Speaker 1: on a hopeful note, on optimistic note, and then maybe
Speaker 1: give you a little homework for ways that you can
Speaker 1: bring less cynicism into your manifested life. We want to
Speaker 1: remind everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and
Speaker 1: on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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