Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: today is an episode of where we can call out
Speaker 1: a particular listener for suggesting it. Yeah, listener Serena. She
Speaker 1: sent us this excellent life Hacker article about why we
Speaker 1: feel the need to fill our pie holes in our
Speaker 1: eye holes with exaggerated versions of stimuli every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just start up because you think Lifehacker, you think
Speaker 1: I am. I'm reading a life Packer article and I'm
Speaker 1: going to be a better equipped to sort of make
Speaker 1: the best out of my day. You know, this kind
Speaker 1: of an uplifting name aspect to that. And so I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I entered into this topic
Speaker 1: with that sort of idea in mind, like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: just a little quirky insight into how we go about
Speaker 1: our daily lives and maybe how you might improve it
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I found this topic to be
Speaker 1: one of the more or ultimately disturbing topics that we've
Speaker 1: looked at, like this condemning of of of human nature
Speaker 1: and sort of makes you want to crawl into a
Speaker 1: cave to a certain extent, Yeah, because you're right. The
Speaker 1: premise was like, hey, we all love cheesecake, right, it's delicious,
Speaker 1: it's fatty, it's got tons of sugar. But this happens
Speaker 1: to be something called a super normal stimuli. Um. This
Speaker 1: is a term evolutionary biologist used to describe any stimulus
Speaker 1: that elicits a response stronger than the stimulus for which
Speaker 1: it evolved, even if it's artificial. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: we like sugar because that's a quick hit of energy.
Speaker 1: We needed that back in the day. Um, but we
Speaker 1: don't need a slice of cheesecake. Yeah. Sugar is probably
Speaker 1: the easiest example to to just call out and and
Speaker 1: and generally a not even really a harmless one, but
Speaker 1: a less harmful version of some of the things we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at here, because the basic idea is how
Speaker 1: much raw sugar can you find in the natural environment.
Speaker 1: If you're a you know, a prehistoric hunter gather. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'll find some berries, maybe you'll find some sort of
Speaker 1: a carrot, uh, but you're not going to find you know,
Speaker 1: a big sucker, a big dumb dumb a health field
Speaker 1: of TUTSI rolls to feast on. That is supernormal stimuli.
Speaker 1: That is a a version of the stimuli that we
Speaker 1: seek as a as an organism, except it is it
Speaker 1: is blown out of proportion. It is the crack cocaine
Speaker 1: of sugar and certainly crack and heroin methamphetamines. These are
Speaker 1: these are other examples of of super normal stimuli that
Speaker 1: have had a huge effect on humans. Yeah, in my mind,
Speaker 1: there's a whole class of desserts called porn desserts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. Like there's like sixteen
Speaker 1: layer caramel cakes that are just so huge and big
Speaker 1: and with you know, red frosting, and it's so over
Speaker 1: the top. And we'll be talking about porn by the
Speaker 1: way later on, but it's like such a good example.
Speaker 1: Another great example um of this sort of supernormal stimuli
Speaker 1: giant eyed dolls or even handime hare. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this key ute. Yes, we've we've We've recorded at
Speaker 1: least one podcast in the in the past on the
Speaker 1: power of cute and and how cutely taps into our
Speaker 1: our primal instincts to want to care for like a
Speaker 1: small child, and so we end up seeing that smash
Speaker 1: small child's face in a cat in a cartoon character.
Speaker 1: But you look at some of these just super cute, hypercute,
Speaker 1: dangerously cute animate characters or the or the or certainly
Speaker 1: the avatar of this Hello Kitty, and uh, and it's overpowering.
Speaker 1: It's cuteness, almost beyond our human ability to take it
Speaker 1: in right. And as Dedra Bartlett of, a Harvard psychologist
Speaker 1: and the author of super Normal Stimuli, how primal urges
Speaker 1: overran the revolutionary purposes says, this human instinct for food, sex,
Speaker 1: or even territorial protection, all of that is rooted in
Speaker 1: our instincts, evolved, as you say, for hunting and gathering
Speaker 1: an early man. And she says that evolution has been
Speaker 1: unable to keep up with the pace of chain, this
Speaker 1: rapid change in the modern life in which a taco bell,
Speaker 1: Dorito's Loco taco, you know, daglo orange in your hand
Speaker 1: suddenly arrives. Um our bodies in our minds aren't really
Speaker 1: unable to water down that instinct, that response to that
Speaker 1: food or that stimulus. Yeah, I mean, because on a
Speaker 1: basic level, what does the human creature need in order
Speaker 1: to survive? It needs to mate and uh and and
Speaker 1: and reproduce. It needs to take in food. Um, it
Speaker 1: needs to find these various tastes that please it. It
Speaker 1: needs protection, It doesn't need a lot of things. But
Speaker 1: then we layer on all the complexities of human civilization,
Speaker 1: our technology, our art, our ability to find all the
Speaker 1: stimuli that we crave, and then just just pump them
Speaker 1: up to an unbelievable degree. Yeah, Bartlett says that as
Speaker 1: a result, we have a glut of larger than like
Speaker 1: objects from candy to pornography to atomic bombs, that cater
Speaker 1: to outmoded that persistent drives with dangerous results. Indeed, now,
Speaker 1: in order to fully understand this, we have to go
Speaker 1: to the roots of the term supernormal stimuli, which are
Speaker 1: based in some rather uh simple biological principles, which is
Speaker 1: nice because again, all these these human layers of human civilization, technology,
Speaker 1: it complicates the issue. But when we look to the
Speaker 1: animal world we can find a far simpler model, and
Speaker 1: we we find that back in the nineteen thirties with
Speaker 1: the work of Dutch noble laureate Nico Tinbergen. That's right,
Speaker 1: he is the person who coined the term super normal
Speaker 1: stimuli to describe these these uh sort of imitations that
Speaker 1: appeal to primitive instincts and exert stronger attraction and the
Speaker 1: real thing. So this biologist he set about isolating traits
Speaker 1: that trigger certain instincts in animals and insects, and he
Speaker 1: manipulated these traits in nature to see what would happen.
Speaker 1: So this next bit is from the Life Hacker article
Speaker 1: by Daniel Jody or Geoty. I suppose it says that
Speaker 1: he constructed plaster eggs to see which one a bird
Speaker 1: would prefer to sit on, finding that they would select
Speaker 1: those that were larger, had more defined markings or more
Speaker 1: saturated color. A day glow bright egg with black polka dots,
Speaker 1: for instance, would be selected over the bird's own pale
Speaker 1: dappled eggs, and in fact that perd would keep slipping
Speaker 1: off the huge one, but it couldn't help it. It
Speaker 1: was drawn to that super stimuli of the colors in
Speaker 1: the markings, because the colors in the markings in the
Speaker 1: natural world, in the in the in the natural course
Speaker 1: of events, would indicate the healthier eggs, which ones have
Speaker 1: the highest grade of survival, and therefore that's where the
Speaker 1: bird is going to focus his attention. This artificial egg, though,
Speaker 1: just pumps that completely out of proportion, and the bird
Speaker 1: cannot help but respond by setting on this lifeless but beautiful,
Speaker 1: gaudy egg and in riding that egg to the detriment
Speaker 1: of its actual biological offspring in the surrounding eggs, which
Speaker 1: are which are okay but less amazing. Yeah. This is actually,
Speaker 1: to me the really depressing part when you see this
Speaker 1: in nature, because it really does bear out this idea
Speaker 1: that a lot of this is sort of hardwired in
Speaker 1: us and all organisms. He also found that territorial male
Speaker 1: stickleback fish would attack a wooden fish model more vigorously
Speaker 1: than a real male if it's underside was redder, so
Speaker 1: again pumping up those signs to it that would make
Speaker 1: it say, oh that that's a competitor. Look how red
Speaker 1: that underbelly is. And this is interesting too. I want
Speaker 1: to make sure everyone sort of bookmarking this for later. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here we have supernormal stimuli that is in kind of
Speaker 1: in the negative realm as opposed to the positive, something
Speaker 1: that's based in fear as opposed to desire. That's a
Speaker 1: really good point, the aggressive part of it, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Another experiment was that he constructed a cardboard dummy butterfly
Speaker 1: with more defined markings. Uh, that male butterflies would actually
Speaker 1: try to mate with in preference to actual real female butterflies.
Speaker 1: And that's another one to to definitely remember for later
Speaker 1: when we can start getting into the human versions of
Speaker 1: these same principles. Yeah, because if you think about um,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this later, but you know, I
Speaker 1: always talk about gender performance. And Okay, if you take
Speaker 1: a female and a male and you don't do really
Speaker 1: much to them in terms of grooming them and clothing
Speaker 1: them in ways that are coded for their gender, there's
Speaker 1: not a ton of difference between them. But if you
Speaker 1: slap on a bunch of makeup on a female plug
Speaker 1: her eyebrows, she's really performing that gender. And I think
Speaker 1: about it that with these butterflies like this must have
Speaker 1: been like the Marylyn mon row of that butterfly. Yes,
Speaker 1: and all the other male butterflies are like, yes, that
Speaker 1: one even though she's wooden, looks great. Yes, the butterfly
Speaker 1: becomes this a little closer to this, this ideal butterfly. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's what really gets me about the topic of
Speaker 1: super normal stimuli. Um My mind, in reading this get
Speaker 1: kept returning to a Plato's theory of forms Plato's in
Speaker 1: The Philosopher of Course, um he proposed that we live
Speaker 1: in this material realm, right, okay, and beyond our plane
Speaker 1: of existence, there's an immaterial realm of ideal forms, all right,
Speaker 1: you can you can think of these ideal forms is
Speaker 1: the absolute perfection of a given thing, a truth that
Speaker 1: cannot be manifested in the material world. All we can
Speaker 1: do is echo it. Okay. So in this world there's
Speaker 1: no true beauty, but we have an innate understanding and
Speaker 1: longing for the true form of beauty as as it
Speaker 1: exists beyond the limits of the material world. In a
Speaker 1: similar sense, see would argue that there's no true justice here,
Speaker 1: but we all have a sense of justice because there's
Speaker 1: an unreachable ideal that exists beyond our realm, okay, out
Speaker 1: there in the realm of forms. And you can apply
Speaker 1: this to just about any anything like the one argument
Speaker 1: is often made as a chair, Like every chair in
Speaker 1: our world is just to take an attempt to capture
Speaker 1: the perfect chairness that we would find in the world
Speaker 1: of forms beyond our material world. Every pretty face, every feeling,
Speaker 1: every world of art, it's just a take on the ideal.
Speaker 1: And so it's tempting to view a supernormal stimuli in
Speaker 1: the same way we innately long for the true forms,
Speaker 1: forms that simply do not occur in the natural world.
Speaker 1: We do it through our art and our technology, and
Speaker 1: in doing this we're able to inch a little closer
Speaker 1: and a little closer to this awesome and terrible perfection
Speaker 1: that we crave. And so so we end up engine
Speaker 1: closer and closer and in creating an artificial thing that
Speaker 1: just cannot exist in this world, and we're craving nothing
Speaker 1: but but shadows of that and imitations of that. And
Speaker 1: we're taking to your point that, I mean, the makeup
Speaker 1: argument is perfect because we're taking real versions of beauty
Speaker 1: and in a sense of defacing them and trying to
Speaker 1: carve them into uh, into avatars of this true form,
Speaker 1: this this perfect form that just cannot be achieved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is essentially the Platonic ideal, right, this idea that
Speaker 1: you're trying to get to this ideal as close to
Speaker 1: perfection as possible. Other would Plato would say, there's no
Speaker 1: perfection because we are mere copies of what God intended. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's this obsession with, as you say, uh, perfection
Speaker 1: and idealism and that this supernormal stimuli is really a
Speaker 1: stand in for it. It's such an intriguing idea, especially
Speaker 1: when we get to another section in which we talk
Speaker 1: about porn and and other things that other types of
Speaker 1: media that we consume. Um. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a break, and when we get back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about why humans are essentially like feagel
Speaker 1: chicks when it comes to art. Alright, we're back. We
Speaker 1: are going to revisit this topic art and why we're
Speaker 1: drawn to it um because we need to podcast on this.
Speaker 1: I believe it was like the Science of beauty or
Speaker 1: along so lines, and we talked about vs. Roma Gendren,
Speaker 1: who has some really great and interesting ideas about art.
Speaker 1: He says that are hardwired to the way that we
Speaker 1: respond to our environments, and particularly he says, um, we
Speaker 1: evolved in a camouflage environment, and we are rewarded when
Speaker 1: we identify objects and patterns, and that's why we like
Speaker 1: to seek them out so often in this idea called grouping.
Speaker 1: So he says that when you are looking at an artwork,
Speaker 1: you can't help but be pleased on some level if
Speaker 1: you can detect those patterns. Now, he says, to really
Speaker 1: understand why we are drawn to certain works of art,
Speaker 1: you have to look at seagull chicks because when they hatch,
Speaker 1: they start pecking at the mother's beak for food, and
Speaker 1: the mother seagulls beak is a long yellow thing with
Speaker 1: a red spot on the end. So for those chicks,
Speaker 1: that red spot is that kind of stimuli that they
Speaker 1: know if they tap it they get food. So action, reaction,
Speaker 1: and reward. The archers quickly found is that you have okay,
Speaker 1: so you have the beak with the markings, but you
Speaker 1: can you can have just a beak. You don't need
Speaker 1: the mother because the because nature takes shortcuts in our
Speaker 1: associations here or and certainly in the associations of birds,
Speaker 1: so you can take the mother out of the equation.
Speaker 1: You can just put a beak on a stick and
Speaker 1: they will respond to that. So that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: the has to have the spot, has has to have
Speaker 1: the appropriate markings. But where it gets even crazier is
Speaker 1: that you turn those markings into super stimuli. You you
Speaker 1: put three red lines on there, and then that just
Speaker 1: makes it irresistible to the chick, like it just it
Speaker 1: just overflows the circuitry overloads the circuitry, and they have
Speaker 1: to go to that beak. Now, yeah, and actually you're
Speaker 1: on chound and says that the chick prefers the fetishize
Speaker 1: highly abstract representation of a beak to the real beak. Again,
Speaker 1: will depressing here because the mother is attached to the
Speaker 1: real beak. And yet here are these three stripes that
Speaker 1: are very strong. Um, they're they're exhibiting a crazy reaction
Speaker 1: to And this was researched done by mythologist Tim Burton,
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, not to be confused with the
Speaker 1: Tim Burton. Yeah, I was trying to because I was
Speaker 1: reading the interview with the Ramashan Brennager for it to
Speaker 1: Tim Burton. So I started doing all these searches for
Speaker 1: Tim Burton birds, Tim Burton biologists, and it was still
Speaker 1: getting nothing but information on the director Tim Burton. That's
Speaker 1: bad because I would love to see some sort of
Speaker 1: mash up like him directing a film about super normal stimuli. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel I want to see nothing but
Speaker 1: films about super normal stimula. Now, um, super stimuli about
Speaker 1: super stimuli indeed, But Ramaon says that this is the
Speaker 1: same reason that we humans gravitate towards art, that these abstractions,
Speaker 1: these metaphors and unusual combinations of elements play to instincts
Speaker 1: wired deep in our reptilian brains, instincts that really don't
Speaker 1: have any bounds, because, again Bartlett says, everything that's available
Speaker 1: to us today and the supersized fashion is not something
Speaker 1: that was available, you know, ten thousand years ago, and
Speaker 1: so our brains and our bodies just have not been
Speaker 1: able to be conscious enough really to tamp this down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love how he referred to the artificial beak
Speaker 1: for the bird as as a fetish, because it instantly
Speaker 1: brings to mind some of these these ancient fetishes that
Speaker 1: you see the venus figurines right where it's during like
Speaker 1: almost a headless woman, bosoms and valley and uh. And
Speaker 1: in a sense, even in a in a very primitive sense,
Speaker 1: this is an idealized female form. And of course, through
Speaker 1: the history of art you see lots of idealized versions
Speaker 1: of the of the female form. I mean, the Venus
Speaker 1: de Milo, for example, is just another venus in a
Speaker 1: very long tradition of venus is well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the code of those pieces of art is basically that
Speaker 1: your genetic material is going to survive better in this person,
Speaker 1: maybe because perhaps there there would be um stronger offspring
Speaker 1: or more of a chance to copulate with this person,
Speaker 1: or you know. I mean, those are all the signs
Speaker 1: that are coming from that particular piece of art. And
Speaker 1: Rom Trndon says that artists are tapping into the figural
Speaker 1: primitives of our perceptual grammar and creating ultra normal stimuli
Speaker 1: that are more powerfully exciting certain visual neurons in our
Speaker 1: brains as opposed to realistic looking images. Yeah, like when
Speaker 1: we did our podcast in the art Savannahs came up
Speaker 1: landscapes that there are certain artistic interpretations of landscapes that arguably,
Speaker 1: uh get into our brain more, that are more pleasing,
Speaker 1: more pleasing, but essentially get their claws into us because
Speaker 1: on a very primitive level, we see it and we
Speaker 1: know that this would be a good place to live.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, there's some trees, I can seek some cover. There,
Speaker 1: there's some water I can drink. Everything that Bob Ross
Speaker 1: describes when he's painting a landscape like those are all
Speaker 1: things that are those are all aspects of of a
Speaker 1: landscape that would be pleasing to the human organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but from that too, that um, the vantage point was
Speaker 1: really important that you would want to be up on
Speaker 1: a hill in those landscape um paintings so that you
Speaker 1: would be able to see out not just you know,
Speaker 1: over your kingdom, but be able to see any intruders
Speaker 1: coming upon your al Right. So that's art. That's one.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to think about the aesthetic world. But
Speaker 1: but how do we take this and apply it to
Speaker 1: the the less aesthetic worlds of say, fast food? Well,
Speaker 1: as we had mentioned before, you mean, especially with sugar,
Speaker 1: our bodies need a little bit of it, and so
Speaker 1: we have those big crazy anime eyes looking at that
Speaker 1: and taking all of that in and thinking I want
Speaker 1: the entire thing. Um. So you know, for me, I
Speaker 1: think this topic is really very large in junk food
Speaker 1: because food is energy. We gravitate to it, um, But
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily know when to stop, right, That's the
Speaker 1: whole boundary thing with our instincts. So if you look
Speaker 1: at a giant jar of peanut butter on on a shelf,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm talking about Costco or any of those
Speaker 1: other like super crazy places where they've got just giant
Speaker 1: oversized cans of all types of food. On some level,
Speaker 1: that's tapping into the primal brain in somewhere. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, some evolutionary bioto just might say that jar
Speaker 1: of peanut butter is a promise to you that you're
Speaker 1: not going to have to leave your cave very often
Speaker 1: for food and you won't encounter as much danger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because your body is saying that stuff is great. That
Speaker 1: is what I create. I want as much as that
Speaker 1: as we can possibly get, so that I can stockpilot
Speaker 1: and have it whenever I want. I will not have
Speaker 1: to leave my apartment for three months with that jar
Speaker 1: of peanut butter. But you know, of course, there's an
Speaker 1: idea here that we live so much in the symbolic world.
Speaker 1: So some of these meetings can't help but drill down
Speaker 1: into us. No, I can't help but think of French
Speaker 1: fries um in terms of super normal stimuli, because what
Speaker 1: our French fries. Your average order of French fries, you know,
Speaker 1: covered with ketchup, and that's and that's not counting if
Speaker 1: you're adding bacon or chili or nacho cheese or whatever.
Speaker 1: The latest s t g I Fridays sort of twist
Speaker 1: on it happens to be. But in one plate, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're satisfying your cravings for fat, for crispiness, that
Speaker 1: you're that you're on on a on a on one level,
Speaker 1: associating with fresh vegetables. You're getting sweetness, you're getting salt,
Speaker 1: maybe you're getting a hit of hint of meat if
Speaker 1: you have some sort of weird topping on it. And
Speaker 1: all of this in one big blasphem is serving. You know.
Speaker 1: What's really interesting about that is there is an article
Speaker 1: out there somewhere about the physics of a potato chip
Speaker 1: and why it's so appealing to us. And if I'm
Speaker 1: remembering this correctly, the kind of crunch, that popping sound
Speaker 1: that the chips make is the exact same that a
Speaker 1: fresh fruit or vegetable might feel like in your mouth.
Speaker 1: And this is something that our brains have been tagging for,
Speaker 1: you know, tens of thousands of years, and so that
Speaker 1: chip is really just riding into the circuitry of your
Speaker 1: brain saying fresh, fresh, this is good, this is healthy.
Speaker 1: Let's we cannot just eat just one eat the whole bag.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, all right. In another area that uh again,
Speaker 1: there's some there's a level of aesthetics involved in this
Speaker 1: as well. But the world of gaming, video gaming everything
Speaker 1: from you know, playing what is it candy corn candy
Speaker 1: crush on your phone to some sort of deep MMO
Speaker 1: immersion experience, because what do you get with video games?
Speaker 1: You get an instant entry into a world of goal
Speaker 1: achievement UM neurological award for that goal achievement, empowerment in
Speaker 1: some cases graphic violence exploration. UM. The goal achievement is
Speaker 1: something I often think about as when I find time
Speaker 1: these days to to play like a quick video game,
Speaker 1: like I think, well, this is clearly what's happening here
Speaker 1: is my brain is adjusting to this false environment and saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we just achieved something there, We just achieved something there,
Speaker 1: even if in the course of the day maybe I
Speaker 1: didn't actually close any loops, you know, or I am
Speaker 1: closing loop after loop and just say fifteen minutes of gameplay.
Speaker 1: So this reminds me of two things. One is the
Speaker 1: stickleback fish, right, because you've got that the red underside
Speaker 1: of the wooden fish, that more aggression towards that and
Speaker 1: via games are so beautiful if I may say that, UM,
Speaker 1: the way that they're rendered in the colors and the
Speaker 1: sa creation. All of that is very intriguing and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like hyper realism. So that's one thing I
Speaker 1: think that people fall into. The other is this is
Speaker 1: really playing into for me is an episode of It's
Speaker 1: Always Sunny in Philadelphia And are you familiar with it?
Speaker 1: I've watched the number of episodes. It's great. And when
Speaker 1: the characters is D and she's kind of always shoved
Speaker 1: around by the other guys in this gang of theirs,
Speaker 1: so to speak, um, and she turns to the virtual
Speaker 1: world with avatars to try to vanquish them in a sense,
Speaker 1: because in real life she has not much power or
Speaker 1: control over the situation. But she creates these characters and
Speaker 1: everybody in the town gets to know the virtual reality
Speaker 1: players in this game get to know that gang, and
Speaker 1: they know what how D is describing them in this
Speaker 1: other world. It is probably my favorite It's Always Funny
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia episode, and there's this great idea behind it
Speaker 1: all that um, they're just all in a turtle stream
Speaker 1: and outer space. Oh, that's pretty awesome. I'll have to
Speaker 1: check that episode out. Yes, I love the mention of
Speaker 1: the word avatar because certainly, avatar in the gaming world
Speaker 1: is one thing. It's the version of us that goes
Speaker 1: into this lesser world. And in the the world of
Speaker 1: cosmology and religion, an avatar is a version of a
Speaker 1: God that we as humans can interact with, or at
Speaker 1: least some aspect of a God uh that we can
Speaker 1: comprehend and uh. And in thinking about the ideal forms
Speaker 1: of Plato, I can't help but think of those forms
Speaker 1: in that in that ideal realm as being kind of
Speaker 1: like God's, kind of like a pantheon of God's, where
Speaker 1: each deity is again an idealized version of something that
Speaker 1: we want out of life. And in the gaming world,
Speaker 1: this adversary that you're you're you know, you're shooting in
Speaker 1: this uh this fifteen minutes of game play in the evening,
Speaker 1: that is the ideal version of an adversary, kind of
Speaker 1: an avatar of some uh, of some ideal enemy, and
Speaker 1: you're vanquishing it. In the same way that h this uh,
Speaker 1: this artificial version of a beautiful woman in a magazine
Speaker 1: is again an avatar of of ideal beauty that we've created,
Speaker 1: some version of the unimaginable perfection beyond our realm that
Speaker 1: we have made, we've cobbled together in our realm. Well,
Speaker 1: let's jump off on that because I think the beautiful
Speaker 1: woman thing that really plays into this idea of porn
Speaker 1: and again gender performance. And when we talked about lust
Speaker 1: uh an episode of one of Our Seven Sins, we
Speaker 1: talked about this article called the Internet is for porn.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: reference it real quick in light of why we seek
Speaker 1: super normal stimuli. Before um yield Internet, I'm supposed by now,
Speaker 1: there were fewer than ninety porn magazines published in the US. Today,
Speaker 1: more than two point five million porn sites are blocked
Speaker 1: by CYBERsitter. That's not all of them, but that's as
Speaker 1: many as CYBERsitter has comed through. So now, consider that
Speaker 1: porn is tapping into the reward circuitry of your brain
Speaker 1: with the release of dopamine. And dopamine is really that neurotransmitter,
Speaker 1: that chemical that keeps you seeking out that experience again
Speaker 1: and again. It's what helps form habits. So porn is
Speaker 1: this kind of really interesting aspect of supernormal stimuli because
Speaker 1: you know, you could have a person in the other
Speaker 1: room who is more than willing to have sex with you.
Speaker 1: But some people will actually opt to say, just look
Speaker 1: at porn instead and um interact with that image in
Speaker 1: their mind. And that is fascinating because here you might
Speaker 1: have the real thing, but you know, just like the beak,
Speaker 1: the fake beak with the three stripes on it, you
Speaker 1: keep sort of going towards that fake thing, or even
Speaker 1: more to the point, like the gaudy golden egg in
Speaker 1: the bird's nest. It's not going to produce anything. It
Speaker 1: has no substance, it's it's just a just a gateway
Speaker 1: to the abyss that you're going to choose that over
Speaker 1: over actual human interaction or at least even the you know,
Speaker 1: if not, you know, because certainly not everyone's in a
Speaker 1: position where they can as easily find human interaction and
Speaker 1: ultimately some sort of sexual experience. But still to choose
Speaker 1: that over the even the attempt at it, the attempt
Speaker 1: at human interaction. And think about that egg again, you know,
Speaker 1: the big giant egg with US spots on it, the
Speaker 1: polka dots and it's day glow yellow. And then think
Speaker 1: about the women that are represented in porn and their dimensions.
Speaker 1: Quite often you have I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 1: there's even any um porn that features women that aren't
Speaker 1: augmented or at least approaching certain dimensions with their bodies. Well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different types of pornography. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously seventies porn. I'll tell you what. Paton Oswald,
Speaker 1: the stand up comedian, he um he did did a
Speaker 1: bit and I imagined still does a bit, uh, pointing
Speaker 1: out that no matter what ones like, whatever a person's
Speaker 1: particular individual fetishes, no matter you know, this dark thing
Speaker 1: that they haven't told anybody somewhere out there in the world.
Speaker 1: There there's like a team of people who have a
Speaker 1: magazine devoted to that, and they're just so bored with it.
Speaker 1: It's just so every day. Now. It's an older bil
Speaker 1: that he did imagines you could basically extrapolate this to
Speaker 1: websites and pornography in general. So but every corner of
Speaker 1: of of of sexuality, within limits or maybe not even
Speaker 1: within limits, is represented out there, and that's part of
Speaker 1: the supernormal stimuli of it. Like you could you could
Speaker 1: just go out there and just fall down the whole
Speaker 1: of pornography and almost never reached the bottom. And again,
Speaker 1: dopamine would be really helping to carve out those neural
Speaker 1: pathways to keep you going again and again. So obviously
Speaker 1: we are conscious of our behavior. We humans. We have
Speaker 1: that beautiful prefrontal cortex which is helping us manage all
Speaker 1: these different things about our lives and helping us to
Speaker 1: be conscious. Um, so how do we want to look
Speaker 1: at this? Because I mean, you can look at this
Speaker 1: in a light of like, uh positive light supernormals to
Speaker 1: be in general, or just pornography basically, um, super normal
Speaker 1: in in general, because with pornography we could certainly got
Speaker 1: a lot deeper into that topic and just discussing like,
Speaker 1: because you have super normal stimuli, and then how does
Speaker 1: that affect just everything in life? How does that affect uh,
Speaker 1: you know, underlying currents of misogyny and culture. How does
Speaker 1: that affect your personal interactions, your expectations from real world sexuality?
Speaker 1: How does it change real world sexuality? But for other
Speaker 1: for another podcast. I guess what I'm saying is there
Speaker 1: are two different ways to look at this. So you
Speaker 1: want to take good copp or bad cop? Um, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll take a bad cop it. Okay, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the bad cop version of of looking at
Speaker 1: the super normal stimuli is that. I mean, we're kind
Speaker 1: of we're kind of boned, and we always have been.
Speaker 1: We're tied to these these cravings and these desires for
Speaker 1: these ideal forms, and we thanks to our technology, thank
Speaker 1: to our thanks to our art, we're able to craft.
Speaker 1: We're able to sort of scratch away at that layer
Speaker 1: between us and the ideal to create these artificial versions
Speaker 1: of the things we want. And then we were kind
Speaker 1: of powerless to resist them, you know that we we
Speaker 1: we end up not leaving our apartments because the Internet
Speaker 1: provides us just instant access to whatever our whim might be,
Speaker 1: instant access to just you know, an endless stream of
Speaker 1: whatever kind of sexuality we want to immerse our selves in.
Speaker 1: We can we can order any kind of tantalizing junk
Speaker 1: food we want and have it delivered right to our
Speaker 1: home and whatever quantities we want. And so we end
Speaker 1: up just setting on that big golden egg, just riding
Speaker 1: it into extinction, like the like the atomic bomb at
Speaker 1: the at the end of Doctor Strange Lots, And indeed
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb is an example aggression of aggression of
Speaker 1: just of of super stimuli in the world of of
Speaker 1: protection and the desire to be protected against aggression from
Speaker 1: these uh outsider forces. Okay, I'll have one thing to
Speaker 1: that before I go to a good cop. All right,
Speaker 1: um see, because you're a bad cop too, that's the thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I can be a good cop. Yeah. Do you remember
Speaker 1: we're talking about our episode on habits and we were
Speaker 1: talking about like something like forty five percent of the
Speaker 1: decisions that we make on a daily basis are rooted
Speaker 1: inhabit And if habits are driven by reward systems, then
Speaker 1: that means that that's not stig thing right, Like, it
Speaker 1: would be very hard for us to overcome these sort
Speaker 1: of routinized neural pathways that are happening every single day,
Speaker 1: Like you might have to be as zen as a
Speaker 1: monk and as conscious of your behaviors. But now I
Speaker 1: will go to DJ Bartlett. She's really a good cup here,
Speaker 1: and she says humans have one stupendous advantage over Tinbergen's birds.
Speaker 1: That's Nicolas Tinbergen. Um. She says, we have a giant brain,
Speaker 1: and this would give us the unique ability to exercise
Speaker 1: self control and override instincts that lead us astray and
Speaker 1: extricate ourselves from civilizations gaudy traps. Do you think, so
Speaker 1: I think we can do it. Maybe, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a colossal idea because again, I I
Speaker 1: kind of like to look at these super stimuli entities
Speaker 1: as kind of dark gods from beyond our universe, and
Speaker 1: then what standing, what do we have to combat them?
Speaker 1: We have, we have a nice brain, we have some
Speaker 1: willpower that we can summon, we have some self knowledge
Speaker 1: of our relationship with super stimuli. We can conceivably stop
Speaker 1: and realize, oh that, even without getting into porn, to
Speaker 1: go back to just just beauty, you know, to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: well that that version of Scarlett Johansson that's on the
Speaker 1: front of that magazine is actually she's wearing makeup. She
Speaker 1: has probably been photoshopped, Like even though that is a
Speaker 1: real woman, that is an idealized version of a real woman.
Speaker 1: So we can we can be self aware, we can
Speaker 1: exert willpower. So yeah, I will. I will agree with
Speaker 1: the good Cops to a certain extent on that. But
Speaker 1: I feel like we're we're up against some pretty overwhelming odds. No, No,
Speaker 1: we like to rely on our lazy blueprint that we've
Speaker 1: created for ourselves. At least I do. Because back to willpower,
Speaker 1: we've done, of course, uh podcasts on willpower, and we
Speaker 1: know that willpower is at a pleadable resource. So when
Speaker 1: we're we're most of command, most in command of ourselves,
Speaker 1: when we're most awake and aware of ourselves, then maybe
Speaker 1: we're the equal of this of these forces. But we
Speaker 1: can't stay awake all the time. We can't stay uh
Speaker 1: you know, completely tanked up on willpower all the time
Speaker 1: unless we have a third eye that we can open
Speaker 1: to consciousness. But I think that kind of concludes where
Speaker 1: we are with this topic. Um, you know, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of bright spots in this world and which
Speaker 1: symbolic meaning is underpinning everything that we do. Indeed, we
Speaker 1: have that we have the equipment to fight the good fights.
Speaker 1: So so just keep that in mind. Suit up, yeah,
Speaker 1: the next time cheesy fries come out. All right, Obviously
Speaker 1: this is a topic that everyone is going to have
Speaker 1: experience with on multiple levels, so we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from just about everybody on it. Um, you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us a number of ways. Of course,
Speaker 1: as always, go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the mothership, that is where you will find
Speaker 1: all the podcast episodes and our latest blogs, videos links
Speaker 1: out to the social media accounts that we use, and uh,
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Speaker 1: mind Stuff Show and you can subscribe there to stay
Speaker 1: on top of our latest videos. Yep. And if you
Speaker 1: have some storm feelings about like what sort of super
Speaker 1: stimiline makes you go, I will go, you know, with
Speaker 1: the big cartoon eyes that come out of your head.
Speaker 1: Let us know. You can send us an email at
Speaker 1: below the mind at discovery dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com