Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and we
Speaker 1: are in the week of Valentine's right now. We're just
Speaker 1: completely amished in the Valentine's um season, with red and
Speaker 1: pink everywhere, hideous flowers in hideously priced flowers popping up
Speaker 1: everywhere in fact the podcast. But this is full of balloons,
Speaker 1: red balloons. Yes, it's really annoying. Who left these here?
Speaker 1: Tex stuff? Probably love birds. So that's the thing about Valentine's.
Speaker 1: It brings varying connotations. Uh, you know, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of people are really positive about it. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a bright, happy, fun time full of love. Other people
Speaker 1: may legitimately hate it, and uh, it's it's and so.
Speaker 1: And then of course you have the saying about how
Speaker 1: there's a thin line between love and hate, right, that's right,
Speaker 1: and uh and then while I've also seen people that
Speaker 1: get on the defensive about that, and it's like there's
Speaker 1: no thin line, there's the enormous canyon between love and hate.
Speaker 1: And uh, I don't know, but what do we have
Speaker 1: some information for you. So today we're we're gonna serve
Speaker 1: up a little bit of love, a little bit of hate,
Speaker 1: and some robots. Yeah yeah, so if the lover hate
Speaker 1: didn't have you, you know, stick around for the robots
Speaker 1: or come for the love and the hate, stay for
Speaker 1: the robot. That's right, That's what I say. That's your motto.
Speaker 1: So there's something called lammerence. Have you heard about this before?
Speaker 1: I actually had not heard of about this. I've I'm
Speaker 1: not really a you know, even when Valentine's is around,
Speaker 1: I'm not super you know, into it. So I have
Speaker 1: to I hadn't really like read a lot about the
Speaker 1: science of love well, and I didn't realize that that
Speaker 1: there's a term for when you are literally love sick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is the moment, Like, you know, picture any
Speaker 1: any movie, any romantic comedy or whatever. John Cuzak that
Speaker 1: the boom box. Yeah, well, I'm thinking specifically, if you
Speaker 1: know where the guy looks up and he sees the
Speaker 1: woman of his dreams and then the music starts playing.
Speaker 1: That works. Yeah, it's like, but what's happening is limerits right, right,
Speaker 1: that person is connecting with a sort of near obsessive
Speaker 1: romantic love in his or her head, and there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of dopamine and uh VA's oppressing and all sorts
Speaker 1: of good like oxytocin the field. Good hormones are raging. Yes,
Speaker 1: because and and then and there the judgment part of
Speaker 1: their brain is kind of shutting down a little bit. Right.
Speaker 1: But but okay, so how do we know this? Well,
Speaker 1: we can hook love birds up to an m r I, Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, what else should we do but hook love
Speaker 1: birds up what's going on in that love sick head
Speaker 1: of their all? Right, So you know that the cool
Speaker 1: thing about the fm R I is that it can
Speaker 1: measure basically the blood flow to certain regions of the brain. Right.
Speaker 1: And when we look at at the images off and
Speaker 1: you'll see like bright colors and all. And that's just
Speaker 1: marking where where blood is moving around and where neural
Speaker 1: activity is taking place. Right. So, someone, so if someone's
Speaker 1: eating chocolate, or they're playing pac Man, or they just
Speaker 1: they want a lot of money, or they're in love,
Speaker 1: we see the reward center of their brains start to
Speaker 1: light up like a pinball machine. Yeah, So that's how
Speaker 1: we know when you're in limerince that do doesn't sound sexy.
Speaker 1: It doesn't I'm in Limerince Happy Limrince day. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. So the thing I thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: about this too is that um, according to an author
Speaker 1: of Anatomy of Love, Dr Helen Fisher, that when you
Speaker 1: are going through these changes, the reason I would yeah
Speaker 1: the love doctor, the limerence doctor, Dr Helen Fisher. Um.
Speaker 1: She basically says that when you're heartbroken, hormones hormones can
Speaker 1: change again and you get another dopamine boasts boost. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: so you know when you first fall in love and
Speaker 1: you get that dopamine boost, um, do you sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: for some people who have experienced this sport, do you
Speaker 1: sometimes have a hard time eating? You're not really hungry.
Speaker 1: That's the hormones changing. So the same thing occurs when
Speaker 1: you have a breakup or heartache, that that dopamine boost
Speaker 1: is happening again and you don't feel like eating. So
Speaker 1: you could have like one person would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so in love, I forgot to eat lunch today,
Speaker 1: and the other person's like, like, my girlfriend just broke
Speaker 1: up with me, I forgot to eat lunch to day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the same thing going on, right right, in the
Speaker 1: break room right now. So you had talked about the
Speaker 1: thin line between love and hate. Yeah, there's an interesting
Speaker 1: study from the University College London where they actually you
Speaker 1: actually had this one researcher, I believe his name was.
Speaker 1: It is Sameer Zeki, smeer Zeki. So Zeke has has
Speaker 1: co workers, colleagues, and he's pretty sure that one of
Speaker 1: them hates him. Right, Yeah, He's like, this dude just
Speaker 1: hates me. What's going on? He seems to just hate me?
Speaker 1: And then he starts looking into a little moment. He's like, like,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think we've all had this with
Speaker 1: with various people. We like, I think this guy hates everybody. Right,
Speaker 1: he realizes it's not just him, Like, this guy's irrational,
Speaker 1: this guy is miserable, and he's done everything he Kenny's
Speaker 1: tried to befriend, this guy has been nice to him,
Speaker 1: he's whatever, and this this guy still has hatred toward him.
Speaker 1: But being a scientist, the the answer is, let's scan it.
Speaker 1: Let's figure out what's going on. Yes, let's nail this down.
Speaker 1: Let's figure out this hate thing. And the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about this is that um sameer Ziki and Andrea's Bartol's
Speaker 1: they conducted a previous study about love UM and they
Speaker 1: used f M R I of course, and they scanned
Speaker 1: the brains the seventeen volunteers who described themselves as truly
Speaker 1: and madly in love. And so during the scans, each
Speaker 1: of them was shown pictures of their loved ones and
Speaker 1: then other pictures of neutral people. And so that's how
Speaker 1: they could figure out that this part of the brain
Speaker 1: lights up when someone is in love, right, So that
Speaker 1: is that that was sort of the the impetus for
Speaker 1: Zeki saying, okay, we know where love is, let's find
Speaker 1: out about this hate and why my colleague hates. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so they they they ended up doing the same thing
Speaker 1: with with with some other test subjects where they they
Speaker 1: showed them pictures of people they hate it right, And
Speaker 1: what they found was that the all right, when when
Speaker 1: someone when you're doing the love experiment, like people would
Speaker 1: see someone they love and the love circuit with one
Speaker 1: light up the terminology and um that they were using
Speaker 1: the circuit. And then but then in this other experiment,
Speaker 1: people would see someone they hate, the hate circuit would
Speaker 1: would light up. But the hate circuit in the love
Speaker 1: circuit the same area, right, so the same neural circuit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm on one level there you go. I mean
Speaker 1: that's the love and hate are are sharing some of
Speaker 1: the same neural architecture, right, And it turns out that
Speaker 1: these are two specific brain regions, right, it's the putaman
Speaker 1: and the insular cortex. Yeah. The putaman is used to
Speaker 1: prepare the body for movements. So to put it in
Speaker 1: like real caveman terms, it would be like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: a pretty girl, I'll go get her, and then the
Speaker 1: other one is there's my enemy, I will go clube.
Speaker 1: I guess you might have the caveman would stare typically
Speaker 1: club either, right, he would just there would be more
Speaker 1: bludgeoning involved with the enemy and more of a loving
Speaker 1: a love tap with the cudgel on the head of
Speaker 1: the intended naming right exactly hopefully, and then the and
Speaker 1: then of course you could also say that this is
Speaker 1: also like oh you would you would run to the
Speaker 1: pudman is saying, who I love that person, I'm going
Speaker 1: to run to help them and keep them from falling
Speaker 1: off that cliff, whereas with the enemy would be like
Speaker 1: like always totally teetering on the edge of that Cliff,
Speaker 1: I better give him a good kick. So that's the pudman.
Speaker 1: And then there's again the insula, which is associated with
Speaker 1: feelings of distress and jealousy. Right again, that would for
Speaker 1: both situations, right right, Yeah, it's like, oh that dude
Speaker 1: so successful, I hate him? Or uh you know, or
Speaker 1: yeah I'm jealous. Yeah, do you love pac Man more
Speaker 1: than me? Why are you playing it so much? You know?
Speaker 1: The thing I think is really interesting about the study
Speaker 1: is that Zeke was kind of disappointing because he thought
Speaker 1: that the that the prefrontal cortex, where the seat of
Speaker 1: judgment is and reasoning, he thought that that was going
Speaker 1: to be deactivated a bit like it is with love
Speaker 1: and hate. And his idea was that, you know, if
Speaker 1: it's an irrational hatred, therefore you know someone's uh faculties
Speaker 1: should be a little bit dimmed. Right, But it's the reverse,
Speaker 1: I mean, were not the reverse. But it's more a
Speaker 1: situation where when you're when you're in love, the judgment
Speaker 1: falls off. But love is love is blind right when
Speaker 1: you're in love, right, because you're you're reasoning dems. But
Speaker 1: right when when you're hating, apparently you still have the
Speaker 1: ability to think analytically, and of course his idea is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that means that maybe because the pudamin is also
Speaker 1: um in action here, that the two would would allow
Speaker 1: someone to attack another person. Yeah, essentially. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if you see, if there's somebody
Speaker 1: like or even love and they have kind of goofy hair,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna let it go or not think about it, right,
Speaker 1: but if you red flag, Yeah, I mean, goofy hair
Speaker 1: is fun. But if you hate somebody and they have
Speaker 1: goofy hair, you'd be like, you look at his hair
Speaker 1: con Brian every night. So I don't hate him. I
Speaker 1: actually like him quite a bit. Um So Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that that's kind of covers that whole like thin line
Speaker 1: between love and hate. Definitely got the same circuits going
Speaker 1: on there. And then there's this other question that's recently
Speaker 1: cropped up, and it's that can you really fall in
Speaker 1: love and a fifth of a second love at first sight?
Speaker 1: Right right staring out in the crowd, seeing the woman
Speaker 1: or man of your dreams standing over there, and just
Speaker 1: and then you know, the music off string quartet rises.
Speaker 1: There's a study by Syracuse University professor Sephanie ortigue, and
Speaker 1: she determined that falling in love has the same eufork
Speaker 1: feeling as using cocaine, but also that affects intellectual areas
Speaker 1: of the brain, which is interesting. It is essentially running
Speaker 1: more blood to those areas dealing with mental representations, metaphors,
Speaker 1: and body image, and that it can also take less
Speaker 1: than a fifth of a second love. Now, let let
Speaker 1: me break down the cocaine thing for a second. For
Speaker 1: anyone to get down, I will break it down. And
Speaker 1: I got that. I grabbed this data from from our
Speaker 1: excellent article by Stephanie Watson on how stuff works called
Speaker 1: how crack Cocaine works. All right, crack cocaine you smoke,
Speaker 1: so it gives the brain much faster than inhaled powder cocaine.
Speaker 1: All right, So crack cocaine gets the brain and creates
Speaker 1: a high within ten to fifteen seconds. Normal cocaine is
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen minutes um. And then the effects can
Speaker 1: last anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. And then you
Speaker 1: have to do more cocaine because it you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of sucks. So don't do drugs. Do more love, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because love is We're gonna explore, like you fall in
Speaker 1: love like that stuff's gonna last fifteen months at least,
Speaker 1: you know, cocaine fifteen minutes and then you know, it's
Speaker 1: just that's exactly right. That's that's the whole limbrance is
Speaker 1: what the shelf life is fifteen months for limrance kind
Speaker 1: of love. Yeah, love in one hand cocaine and the
Speaker 1: other one you're just going to do you for for
Speaker 1: several months either you're just gonna be keeping doing cocaine
Speaker 1: over and over again. So I think love is the
Speaker 1: obvious winner here. Yeah, they really need to rethink their
Speaker 1: p s a s for for anti drug commercial saying
Speaker 1: like they need to rethink the cocaine ad campaign that
Speaker 1: they're not really getting it out. Yeah, those cocaine marketing
Speaker 1: people are really asleep at the wheel. Um. But that
Speaker 1: study is interesting because it really does sort of indicate
Speaker 1: that it's the that the sort of passionate love is
Speaker 1: is again it's centered in the reward center, whereas like
Speaker 1: an eternal love for more long term love is found
Speaker 1: in the middle brain and supposedly like a mother for
Speaker 1: a child or or you know, or a child for
Speaker 1: a parent, right, yeah, or a copy I love to us,
Speaker 1: And that's sort of like a hasn't there's a different
Speaker 1: types of love that's like a like a church thing,
Speaker 1: right where I've seen I've seen church programs that are Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some there. I think there are some that use
Speaker 1: that term. But I think it's one of like five
Speaker 1: different kinds of groovy loves you can have. Anytime I
Speaker 1: year a gup a love or at likes used to
Speaker 1: I would I would think of Guppy's in love, you know,
Speaker 1: so I think a little a little like you know,
Speaker 1: Salamander has creatures falling in love, guffies in love. All right,
Speaker 1: This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But supposedly they're supposed to have a follow up study
Speaker 1: about the fifth of a second thing because that's sort
Speaker 1: of interesting, like you know, fifth of a second you
Speaker 1: can uh, you know, how do how do they know?
Speaker 1: Because that's the specifics weren't necessarily available. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: you'd have to hook machinery up to like the kind
Speaker 1: of person who just falls in and out of love
Speaker 1: a lot, like you know, kind of like a Don
Speaker 1: Draper for Madman type, you know. Yeah, okay, so they
Speaker 1: had to have like a high limbrance yeah quality well
Speaker 1: or or at least I'm not sure how it would
Speaker 1: be the kind of person who would can suitably fall
Speaker 1: in love and fall in love because because if you
Speaker 1: have high limeriance, aren't you more inclined to fall in
Speaker 1: love like once and stay in love? For saying DeAndre
Speaker 1: for shouldn't we just say lust? Yeah? Okay, he's become
Speaker 1: the icon of stupid man lust yeah yeah yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know a couple of ladies have I think perhaps
Speaker 1: listed after him. Um. But then that brings me to
Speaker 1: the question about whether or not we could actually have
Speaker 1: like a true love, true love, true love like no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like a completely um unmitigated love.
Speaker 1: Could you have that limbrince your entire life? Right if
Speaker 1: it weren't a lust limerence, if it was a pure love.
Speaker 1: So previous research has laid out the fracture points in
Speaker 1: a relationship to be twelve to fifteen months, So BEINGO,
Speaker 1: there's there's your you're saying like love can in many
Speaker 1: studies last fifteen months, right, and then you've got three
Speaker 1: is another sort of breaking point. And then the seven
Speaker 1: year itch that we've all heard about. And I think
Speaker 1: one thing that or at least my take on this
Speaker 1: is that when when you're saying love ends after fifteen months,
Speaker 1: we're not saying like, oh what am I doing here?
Speaker 1: It's like waking up for a dream and realizing you're
Speaker 1: you're in this life you want. You know, it's this
Speaker 1: this chemical thing that maybe it definitely becomes something else.
Speaker 1: You know, well, yeah, you're the chemical sort of calibrate
Speaker 1: and they'd have to write, I suppose, yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it's like, it's pretty obvious. This is we're kind of
Speaker 1: stating an obvious fact here, But love really powerful. Oh
Speaker 1: I just fell in love that that tends to calm
Speaker 1: down and become something more mature over time, right, Like,
Speaker 1: can you imagine having that horrible, obsessive teenager e kind
Speaker 1: of love applied in your adult relationships? Because because general,
Speaker 1: you know, love is great, and I love it when
Speaker 1: my friends are in love. But but man, it's kind
Speaker 1: of tough to be around them if they're they've only
Speaker 1: like if they're you know, they've only been in love
Speaker 1: with somebody for like, you know, a month or so, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're like, wow, you guys really are not over
Speaker 1: this yet. Just like take it down a notch. Wow,
Speaker 1: you really drove past the house like fifty times again
Speaker 1: this evening making out of my living room. What's going on? Stop? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um So, researchers from Stony Brook, you in New York,
Speaker 1: compared the longtime couple's brains a group of longtime couple
Speaker 1: springs to newly minted in love couples, and they found
Speaker 1: that one in ten of the long time couples there
Speaker 1: were twenty of them exhibited the same chemical reactions when
Speaker 1: shown photographs of their loved ones as people commonly do
Speaker 1: in the early stages of relationship. This limitans that we're
Speaker 1: talking about. They're kind of super lovers. They call them
Speaker 1: swans because they meet for life. Right. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because, um again you've got that the fading
Speaker 1: point fifteen months um in the testosterone levels actually fade
Speaker 1: as the Hornburger limit. I think, no kidding, my goodness,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, I just blushed and I have no idea why. Um,
Speaker 1: but their testotering levels are fading back to normal, right,
Speaker 1: and they still have like those shots of oxytocin um
Speaker 1: to create a feeling of attachment, because that's that's really
Speaker 1: what this spoils down to. But they don't have the
Speaker 1: wild love. So the feelings of obsession in theory, they
Speaker 1: shouldn't survive, right, they shouldn't be these couples shouldn't be
Speaker 1: having the same sort of reaction, chemical reaction as he's
Speaker 1: untually minted. It's kind of like if you're going to
Speaker 1: perform surgery on somebody you want, you know, you may
Speaker 1: numb them up or not surgery. Let's say a dental procedure.
Speaker 1: You may numb them up to perform this quick, fairly,
Speaker 1: you know, simple procedure. But then you want that numbness
Speaker 1: to wear off so they can feeling again and actually
Speaker 1: use their mouth like a normal person. But uh, but
Speaker 1: it's but it's like the when the love lingers, when
Speaker 1: the limericks remain so intense for so long, it's like,
Speaker 1: to a certain extence, kind of outlived its usefulness. Like
Speaker 1: it's more about like, let's let's get this, uh, let's
Speaker 1: get this relationship started. Let's go let's get everything sealed
Speaker 1: up and ready. It's like, you know, let's hire a
Speaker 1: hundred guys to start building this this this house, and
Speaker 1: then we'll split the work crew down to fifty to
Speaker 1: get the real work done, right, right, So, but then
Speaker 1: the researchers were kind of like, well, so, what why
Speaker 1: is it that they have this chemical reaction? And and
Speaker 1: they're not like sitting here like frenching on the waiting
Speaker 1: room couch as we're doing this study, Like why are they?
Speaker 1: You know, they they seem to be these longtime couples
Speaker 1: and love with each other, but they're not like this
Speaker 1: other group that's they're all french ing on the couch.
Speaker 1: But I just made all that up. But you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, they're trying to figure out why why
Speaker 1: their brains are reacting this way. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like it's the difference between saying like a really old
Speaker 1: couple and that they're still in love and going ah,
Speaker 1: and then a really old couple that was still in
Speaker 1: love and going yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. And so they
Speaker 1: said in there, in sort of I think clinical terms,
Speaker 1: they said that that sort of romantic love was able
Speaker 1: to mature into intensive companionship and sexual liveliness. So the
Speaker 1: Swans they could control themselves. I suppose that's that's the
Speaker 1: mature part of it. Yeah, I hope. Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: just completely out of control out there. Okay, I'm imagining
Speaker 1: that they're not their brains are still letting up because
Speaker 1: they truly and madly still love each other. The the
Speaker 1: key here, I'm guessing is that Swans need to find Swans,
Speaker 1: and and that would seem to like, how do you
Speaker 1: do You can't really like put put that out there
Speaker 1: and be like, I'm a person that will you know,
Speaker 1: fall in love with you and stay in love with
Speaker 1: you forever. I just need somebody else who's exactly the
Speaker 1: same as me, because it seems like you're going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of people who are just just like,
Speaker 1: oh that sounds who doesn't want to fall in love
Speaker 1: with somebody who's gonna love you back forever and be
Speaker 1: like powerfully in love with you, you you know? Is this
Speaker 1: your your dating website idea? Yeah, Like if the Swans
Speaker 1: had their own dating site, is that I feel like
Speaker 1: people would abuse that. Yeah, they would. They would claim
Speaker 1: to be a Swan and not be a Swan unless
Speaker 1: the thing is that you had mandatory like brain scans,
Speaker 1: because I believe that actually, to go back to the
Speaker 1: hate Circuit researcher, that was one of the possible uses
Speaker 1: they were talking about. It's like being able to have
Speaker 1: the the evidence admissible in court so that it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think so and so murdered. Uh, um, Dave here
Speaker 1: because uh he hates him. Let's test him and cev
Speaker 1: he hates and show him a picture. Oh red light
Speaker 1: lit up. That means he hates it and that he
Speaker 1: totally hates him. I like this idea. It's like a
Speaker 1: like a photo booth for love, right, except for you're
Speaker 1: getting your brain scanned. Yeah, well, kind of like they
Speaker 1: all like they have those uh those old contraptions where
Speaker 1: you like the love tester where you like squeeze a
Speaker 1: joystick and then it lights up to show how how
Speaker 1: much you love. It would be kind of having like
Speaker 1: having a scientifically accurate one of those. And then every
Speaker 1: little like you're getting people getting a fight with their
Speaker 1: spouse or something and they're like, do you still love me?
Speaker 1: And it was like, yeah, of course, prove it. We're
Speaker 1: going down to these shownees where they have that love
Speaker 1: love tester up and we're gonna we're gonna test this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and think about I mean, Larry King could have really
Speaker 1: you've been helped out by this. I think, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not up enough of my Larry King lore. Oh he's
Speaker 1: he's sort of like the Elizabeth Taylor of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just keeps getting married and married over again. But
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't Maybe he's not really he doesn't care
Speaker 1: about that that reward center lighting up in his partner's brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you thinking it would have this technology would have
Speaker 1: helped Larry King find merited out a true mate for him?
Speaker 1: Or is it? Or is the reverse? I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about him. Is it a situation where
Speaker 1: the rest of the world needed this device to protect
Speaker 1: them from Larry King? That may very well be actually
Speaker 1: the answer right there. Um. Yeah, so I like that.
Speaker 1: I'm liking this idea of the sort of photo booth
Speaker 1: scan that couples can just duck into and then they
Speaker 1: can show their children later on, like here's this little
Speaker 1: film strip of us in love our brains look at it. Well.
Speaker 1: That was another thing they brought up, is that by
Speaker 1: under the more we understand love and and ultimately hate
Speaker 1: and and heartbreak, that the more that we can we
Speaker 1: can sort of rationalize it like that was that was
Speaker 1: one of the arguments that did we understand what's happening
Speaker 1: chemically in our brains when when we're feeling heartsick, then
Speaker 1: then we can we can understand it and and and
Speaker 1: make sense a bit more, deal with it better. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I never I never had. I don't
Speaker 1: think I had the scientific info when I was going
Speaker 1: through heartbreaking situations. No, I didn't need that. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I'm ready now. I hope I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not put to the test, but I'm saying I'm ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, for now, until I forget everything we researched.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so it needs to happen in the next
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes because then I flush all this data. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm turning my phone off. In that case, let's talk
Speaker 1: about robots sex. Yeah, as long as we're talking about
Speaker 1: machines and love, then maybe, you know, maybe we don't
Speaker 1: need a machine to quantify love between two humans. How
Speaker 1: about just love between a human and his or her
Speaker 1: sex spot. Okay, So, I mean we've seen some some
Speaker 1: of this in the media, right, Like two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: David Levi wrote the book Love and Sex with Robots,
Speaker 1: and so he posits that in the very near automated
Speaker 1: future that will undoubtedly, undoubtably having sex with robots, and
Speaker 1: we'll have to developed like robot prostitute sex spots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well and to a certain extent, we you know, we
Speaker 1: definitely already have this technology it comes to fruition. Do
Speaker 1: not do an image search on any of this. But
Speaker 1: but there there are these things called real dolls, which
Speaker 1: are basically dolls. They're human looking things, tactile like, they
Speaker 1: feel like human flush and one can can can conceivably
Speaker 1: um engage with said there are anatomically correct and uh.
Speaker 1: And then there this wasn't just in the last year,
Speaker 1: but the company A true companion LLC unveiled a prototype
Speaker 1: of something called Roxy with three X is. Of course,
Speaker 1: at Las Vegas is two thousand ten adults Entertainment expo,
Speaker 1: and it basically looks like an inanimate sex doll. And
Speaker 1: uh but it allegedly boast enough artificial intelligence and prerecorded
Speaker 1: phrases to engage in pillow talk. So yeah, literally creepy.
Speaker 1: Do not do an image search for that one either,
Speaker 1: because even like the press images for that, I had
Speaker 1: to look it up for an article and uh, it's
Speaker 1: into my mind creepy. Yeah, and apparently too, you know,
Speaker 1: she could be programmed. Um and if you this is
Speaker 1: this isn't from an article that I read it says
Speaker 1: that she may even per metallic sounding that gets me
Speaker 1: hot after you introduce a topic like soccer, so you
Speaker 1: know who wants that? I don't know. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, I'm just in terms of why do you
Speaker 1: want your robotic partner getting aroused at that that soccer talk?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's keep that out of the weird situation.
Speaker 1: I know, I know. And we're talking nine thousand clams here,
Speaker 1: So I mean you know that do you want your
Speaker 1: car or do you want your sex spot? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean I get it. You know, it's it's that sort
Speaker 1: of easy way out in relationships. But and this is
Speaker 1: where it gets interesting. Um, there is a woman named
Speaker 1: Sherry Turkle, and she's a psych professor M I. T.
Speaker 1: And she's been studying robots and human interactions since the seventies.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that one day she found herself
Speaker 1: smitten with their office robot, cogg is his name, hoping
Speaker 1: that he would turn his head her way when she spoke,
Speaker 1: and was wishing to be around him more than her
Speaker 1: actual coworkers. Now, what did cog do? What was his function?
Speaker 1: He wasn't like a room by or anything was, I mean,
Speaker 1: not anything wrong. I don't want to get all class
Speaker 1: sensitive about who in which robot you can follow up.
Speaker 1: You're judging the robot that she falls in love. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that his I think this was maybe in
Speaker 1: the earlier part of UM A I M I T
Speaker 1: and so his main function I think was to turn
Speaker 1: around and to engage with a human. So if if
Speaker 1: I were to be talking, he would turn around the
Speaker 1: neck like he was listening to me, and then I
Speaker 1: would think, oh, he's he he's listening to me, understands me.
Speaker 1: So UM, she's been that Turkle has been a huge
Speaker 1: proponent of social social technology. Um. But she now was
Speaker 1: kind of looking at the last forty years of her
Speaker 1: career and her studies, and she's weaving a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: from her field research, which is filled with hundreds of
Speaker 1: interviews with children and teenagers and adults and the elderly
Speaker 1: and countering tech gadgets and over and over she would
Speaker 1: see how even the most basic robotic dog or baby doll,
Speaker 1: or even just a shell of a robot could spark
Speaker 1: a deep emotional response. Yeah, I think there's no question
Speaker 1: that we're good at Like I don't question for a
Speaker 1: second that a human could fall in love with a robot.
Speaker 1: I mean we can, we can fall in love with
Speaker 1: non robotic machine and things, you know, like to be
Speaker 1: there's a the had a real doll or like a
Speaker 1: stuffed animal. I mean they're even Uh, there's one particularly
Speaker 1: delusional misidentification syndrome called syndrome of delusional companions, where you
Speaker 1: end up looking to things like maybe it's something that's
Speaker 1: some sort of item that you have an association with.
Speaker 1: And this was a typical typically seen in like Alzheimer's patients.
Speaker 1: But they begin getting they have these comforting associations with
Speaker 1: the toy, and then they start experiencing the toy is
Speaker 1: a singent thing and they keep then they're triggered associated
Speaker 1: behavior so well. And see that's interesting because what Turkle
Speaker 1: is basically saying is that that's that's where it becomes
Speaker 1: an ethics question um between ai UM developers and the
Speaker 1: community at large, because if you're going to keep using
Speaker 1: robots in society and eventually they come to you know,
Speaker 1: we already have ones that can spend baith elderly person,
Speaker 1: right um, and you program them so that they're so
Speaker 1: nuanced that they really do have all these different ways
Speaker 1: of communicating with human then what, you know, what are
Speaker 1: we what sort of what sort of society are we
Speaker 1: setting up? And what are we doing with our human
Speaker 1: emotions when you're projecting love onto something that can't love back.
Speaker 1: And then that brings me to the other question is
Speaker 1: is love just a mirage in the first place? Are
Speaker 1: we doing that with humans anyway? So it's my concept
Speaker 1: of love for one person, is that even my idea
Speaker 1: of that person and that love is that even realistic
Speaker 1: or concrete? Yeah, it's kind of I think there's a
Speaker 1: line in Terry pratchett hog Father where some wizards have
Speaker 1: created a computer and and one of the wizards asked
Speaker 1: about whether it's, uh, you know, it's actually thinking, and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, it just appears to be thinking. And
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it's just like everybody else. Then, you know. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, there there comes a point where when when
Speaker 1: you when you look at the possibility of robots faking
Speaker 1: things that are human, you have to also look inward
Speaker 1: at us and say, well, what, how many things, how
Speaker 1: many aspects of the human experience are to some extent
Speaker 1: or the other of fate. You know, everything from consciousness
Speaker 1: to to love to hate. If you get down and
Speaker 1: you analyze it enough and you break down, like even
Speaker 1: things like free will, um, it gets down, you can
Speaker 1: you can. You can break it down to the point
Speaker 1: where it where the magic disappears. It's uh, I think
Speaker 1: are the way our Scott Baker put it um when
Speaker 1: in talking about his book Neuropath, was that things like
Speaker 1: consciousness um that they're like, um, it's it's all part
Speaker 1: of like a like a coin trick, a magic trick,
Speaker 1: and we are the magic. And so if you if
Speaker 1: if you explain away the trick, like we're the magic
Speaker 1: that disappears. Okay, so love could just be another construct
Speaker 1: of the mind. Yeah. So eventually we create machines that
Speaker 1: can that are just as good at creating this kind
Speaker 1: of magic, and we either buy into it or we
Speaker 1: don't buy into it. It's kind of like I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, every day you can sort of make a
Speaker 1: choice whether to buy into the magic of life or not.
Speaker 1: You know, you're going to see the person next to
Speaker 1: you as a as this uh, this spongy organ setting
Speaker 1: in a skull and you know, flooded with different chemicals
Speaker 1: and you know, plodding through its day thinking it's conscious
Speaker 1: or um or do you look at them as something better?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, I mean when the technological similarity comes,
Speaker 1: will we even have a choice? Yeah? Maybe not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you will have to love robots. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the maybe the robots will be worth loving.
Speaker 1: That's my my hope. I know, I know, I love
Speaker 1: that you're optimistic about that. Yeah, not I mean loving
Speaker 1: in a not in a sex spot fashion. But who knows,
Speaker 1: you know, a few generations from now that may make
Speaker 1: total sense and they'll look back at me and but whoa.
Speaker 1: That guy was really out of line when he said
Speaker 1: a human should not marry machines that have the name
Speaker 1: like Roxy with three xes. Yeah, are right? I mean,
Speaker 1: like how Judge metal. So I think that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good Valentine note to end to everybody. If you, if you,
Speaker 1: if you have somebody in your life, great, If not,
Speaker 1: just wait for robots. Um, it'll it'll be around eventually.
Speaker 1: But or save up for Roxy. Yeah. But anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: some some some different ways to think about love and
Speaker 1: hate and what they have to do with each other
Speaker 1: and what they have to do with whatever you're going
Speaker 1: through right now. So, hey, I have some lister mail.
Speaker 1: Oh bring them all right, some fairly short ones here,
Speaker 1: Gabriel writes in he says, and he's responding to our
Speaker 1: Life on the Floor episode. We seem to be pretty
Speaker 1: popular with folks. Uh, says Julian Robert. I don't know
Speaker 1: who would write a feature Romeo and Juliet in which
Speaker 1: the characters live in ancient skyscrapers, but I can tell
Speaker 1: you that the skybridge fight scenes would be awesome. A
Speaker 1: curse on both your ancient skyscrapers needs work. Have a
Speaker 1: better one, Gabriel. So there it is and it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's taking form. Keep keep thinking of those ideas
Speaker 1: of people. Um. Then also Ryan writes in, hey, Robert
Speaker 1: and Julie, I was listening to the High Animals podcast,
Speaker 1: the one about Junkie's animal kingdom, and I thought you
Speaker 1: ought to know that you can't get nicotine lotion. But
Speaker 1: I have seen caffeinated body so apparently if you use
Speaker 1: it in your morning shower, it will help you wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning as a substitute or in addition
Speaker 1: to coffee. All Right, I need all the help I
Speaker 1: can get. I'll try it out. Uh. Then we also
Speaker 1: heard from well another Um, oh it's the same Ryan. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll save that one for later. Um. But then Joel
Speaker 1: writes in, and Joel says, Hey, guys, I'm an avid listener.
Speaker 1: I've been meaning to send this reference in for some time,
Speaker 1: but I only just got around to it. I was
Speaker 1: reminded when you talked about it again at the end
Speaker 1: of the Life Aquatic podcast. There's a great book by
Speaker 1: an author which tackles exactly the problem of living in
Speaker 1: a giant building interconnected with all the amended. In J. G.
Speaker 1: Ballard's novel high Rise, a massive building is being filled
Speaker 1: with people rich at the top, less well to do
Speaker 1: on the bottom, including shopping malls and swimming pools. The
Speaker 1: novel takes a creepy turn when floors based on socioeconomic
Speaker 1: standing began fighting with each other, even killing people stopped
Speaker 1: leaving the building, sabotage elevators, booby trap hallways, and formed
Speaker 1: tribal groups. Even cannibalism and the rate begin. Certain figures
Speaker 1: become kinglike and rule over different areas of the high rise,
Speaker 1: warring with each other. In the end not to totally
Speaker 1: wreck it. If you survive the chaos, definitely a great read.
Speaker 1: You can watch organized society breakdown within this one massive building. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's uh, that's cool. J. G. Ballard is an
Speaker 1: author that I have been meaning to read for some time,
Speaker 1: and I have I have friends who keep telling me,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta read this, you gotta, you gotta
Speaker 1: read his short stories so supposedly really awesome, and that
Speaker 1: this is the second time someone's mentioned Skycrite was great
Speaker 1: for to me, but I didn't. I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about it lining up with everything that I was requesting
Speaker 1: at the end of that podcast. Huh, what, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: check into it as well. It's cool. So if you
Speaker 1: have any anything you want to add to this, uh,
Speaker 1: feel free to interact with us on Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1: We are blow the Mind on both of those. We
Speaker 1: update that pretty regularly with neat links to stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works and elsewhere on the web. And if
Speaker 1: you've got any comments about love hate robots, please do
Speaker 1: drop us a line at Blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
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