WEBVTT - Echoborg: The Computer Controls You 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.960 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.840 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe mccormicks, and uh, 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.200 I want to take you into the future here for 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:23.239 a minute. I want you to imagine this scenario. You've 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.360 been contacted by an artificial intelligence, an AI that identifies 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:31.560 itself only as Mind your Manners or MIM, and MIM 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:34.519 as a wonderful job opportunity for you. It needs an 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:38.440 echo borg as it attends an industry conference related to 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:40.479 the corporation it heads. In other words, it needs to 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.479 augment a human with a non invasive sensory array so 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.960 as to use them as its living avatar. Hold on 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.199 a second, this sounds like a creepy job. Now, what 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.480 exactly does this job involve? Essentially, MIM is going to 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:57.400 speak into your ears through this sensory array. It's gonna 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.840 pick up and everything going around in your surroundings, and 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.560 and you will repeat or shadow its words in conversation 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:07.760 with various unaugmented humans throughout the week at this conference. 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.319 So you're gonna be its mouth, it's face, it's every 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:15.400 expression as MIM attends several key meetings and networks with 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.759 industry leaders. You will be the human mask for all 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.600 its interactions. Now, you of course be required to sign 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.200 a standard nondisclosure agreement, and as Men's schedule for the 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:28.240 conference is fairly rigorous, you're gonna be swapping out duties 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.080 for the week with a second echo board selected for 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:35.080 more casual and interactions. But this is a huge opportunity 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:37.640 for you. Aies like them are known to establish a 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.400 harem of echo bots, each suited to a particular culture 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.960 or setting. This could be your big break. You could 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:49.040 become the pampered meat suit of a powerful machine brain. Yes, 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:51.280 and it's you know, a great gig if you can 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:53.320 get it, you know. Yeah. And now I'm sure that 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.920 this job, while it might be physically demanding, is it 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.680 probably doesn't require all that much skill, right, So you 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.800 just have to be able to repeat words pretty much 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.760 in real time and give some convincing facial expressions and 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.720 hand gestures. Yeah, you would need to bring life to 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:12.960 its words to a certain extent. I mean, that's part 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.720 of being the mask. Like when one example that comes 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:19.360 to mind, of course is Arrested Development. They had the 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:24.200 the the surrogate character that shows up while George sr. 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:27.200 Is the under house arrest. This character was just a 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:29.040 ball cap with a video camera on, and he gives 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.200 a very dead pan version of everything that George is saying, 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:33.760 and in that he would be you would be a 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:38.840 terrible echo borg or cylonohite, as we're going to discuss. Uh. Ideally, 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:43.120 the individual repeating the computer's words would would make it 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:46.600 make the words come alive. Okay, So what we're envisioning 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:50.040 here is sort of the exact opposite of what certain 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:54.200 sci fi writers have predicted with robot avatars. The idea 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.919 of a robot avatar, like in the movie Avatar, you 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:58.679 could probably say, Oh, though I don't know if that's 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.679 a robot, I don't know, it's in plenty of sci fi. 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:04.440 You you hook your brain up to a computer, and 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:09.519 through the computer, you control the actions and words and deeds, 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.600 all of the outward motion of some kind of physical 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.959 embodiment that's not really your body. Yeah, Like I've seen 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:18.799 it employed as a possibility for space exploration. Right, it's 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:20.920 too much for us to send a human, delicate human 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:22.800 body to this other world. But you send a robot 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:24.959 and then fat make that robot the avatar for the 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.000 human explorer, which is great for space exploration because it 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.840 combines the sort of reactiveness and ingenuity of the human 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.720 mind with the hardiness of a robot body and the 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:39.160 hardiness and expendability, let's be frank of the robot body. Um. 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.960 So yeah, So what we're envisioning here is the exact 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:47.080 opposite a computer mind controlling your body. Yes, I mean 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.680 a computer using a human It's kind of a meat 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:53.680 puppet to to give life to its its voice and 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.360 its will in human and our actions. All right, So 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.160 you mentioned the terms serenoid a minute ago, and I'm 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.000 gonna assume. Actually, I don't need to assume, because I 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:07.119 know that comes from Serrano de Bergerac. Yes, Serrano de Berjack, 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.840 Edmund Roston play. A lot of people may be familiar 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.560 with this, of course, from the Steve Martin movie Roxanne, 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.279 which is a retelling of the same story. My first 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:21.599 introduction to syran No was the Wishbone episode when I 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:24.360 was a kid peek behind the curtain. Robert did not 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:26.440 know what wishbone was. I I had to explain it 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:27.880 to him. I I don't know how I missed this. 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:29.960 It sounds the lifeful. Now, who who did the dog 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.440 play character? I think it was Syrano, right, so the dog. 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.520 If you're not familiar with this story, Serrano de Bergerac 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.359 is based on a real life character from history, but 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:44.520 in the play it's sort of dramatized, fictionalized made more exciting. 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:47.040 And the idea is that he is a very ugly 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.280 man with a big nose, so he has a hard 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:53.280 time wooing women. But he's also very clever and brave. 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.720 He has a great mind in the wrong kind of body. 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:01.320 But if he teams up was somebody who's very handsome 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:06.240 and very stupid, together they make the perfect package. So 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:08.440 all he needs to do is get a handsome man 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.320 to pairt every single word he tells him, and there 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:15.960 you've got the perfect suitor. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh, you know, 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:18.320 and it's often played for for comedy, right, because you 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.560 have especially unarrested development. You end up with with signals 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.440 getting crossed. Uh, you know, the individual who is who 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:29.159 is informing the surrogate says something that's not intended to 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:31.680 be transmitted and it ends up transmitted and then all 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:33.960 sorts of hilarity ensues. Yeah. I think it's played for 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:38.120 comedy and the rust and play also. But but it 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:43.240 raises some interesting questions about how we perceive other people 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.880 and how we perceive the will behind other people. Yeah. Well, 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.640 one thing that I think is certainly true is that 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:55.880 people are very sensitive to the outwardly visible source of information, 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.520 oftentimes more than they are sensitive to the content of 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.520 the informa issue like if somebody is making an argument 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.960 to you, it's very likely that you're judging the merits 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.200 of that argument more on what the person looks like 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.320 and what their voice sounds like than the actual merits 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.120 of the arguments they're making. And indeed, you have just 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.880 a whole communication array that is delivering this information. I mean, 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:23.040 it's it's the voice. It's also often the hands of 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.919 the individual, to body language, the expressions, the micro expressions, 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.000 the eye contact, all of the all of these features 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.000 that add that that additional level of engagement to any 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:35.960 sort of information. Yeah, the quality of the tuxedo. And 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:40.040 so this connects in a strange way with a question 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.800 that has often come up in artificial intelligence, which is 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:46.920 the idea of the touring test. And I think the 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:51.960 way it relates is if you are the tuxedo, if 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:56.600 you're the meat tuxedo for an artificial intelligence speaking through you. 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.680 Does that in any way influence how people receive the 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.520 messages coming from an artificial intelligence. So we should probably 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.640 explain a little bit the idea of the touring test 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.960 for people who aren't familiar. This is a standard often 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:14.160 referred to concept in in the progress of artificial intelligence, 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.520 and it comes from the computer scientist and sort of 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:23.480 a I pioneer Alan touring. And there's no actual one 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:27.320 touring tests. You can't buy the kit online and bring it, 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:29.600 bring it home and to start being pulling it against 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.520 every toaster in your vicinity. Right, It's more of a 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:35.560 general concept that's been applied in a lot of ways. 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.280 And the most basic, stripped down version of the test 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:45.000 is can a human chatting through text only tell if 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.880 the person they're chatting with is a real human being 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.680 or a computer program designed to talk like a real 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:55.000 human being. I mean, it basically comes down to two 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:59.080 tourings insistence that, uh, the question of whether a machine 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.240 can think is too meaningless to really waste time on, 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.560 so you have to instead think, well, am I am 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.960 I buying it? Am I am I fooled by it? 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.160 It is it is creating the the semblance of intelligence, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.320 and and it deceives me, then that's what we need 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.000 to look for, exactly right. And I think I largely 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.840 agree with the point he's making, because how can you 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:24.640 tell that other humans possess real intelligence? I mean, come 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.400 up with a way of explaining how you know other 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.000 humans really think? You say, well, I mean listen to 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:32.880 the way they talk, look at the way they react 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.920 to what I say. It's a very complex kind of reaction. Well, 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:39.280 what if you could have a computer or robot that 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.439 does all of the same things, then would that not 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.080 be thinking? I mean, all we have to go by 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:50.599 in science is externally measurable phenomena. You can't get inside 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:53.880 someone else's sentience and judge whether or not they're thinking 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.600 by I don't know, just sort of like your phenomenal intuition. 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:00.880 I think it's in carry practice The hog Father, where 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.920 there's a essentially a thinking machine that's used by the 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:08.079 wizards there and uh and and when somebody asks the 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.560 wizard they're using the machine if if the machine thinks 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:13.080 for itself and uh and he says, uh, says, don't know, 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.400 it just it just appears, makes it has the appearance 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:17.719 of thinking for itself, and the oh the character says, well, 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.360 it's just like everyone else then all right, right, yeah, 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:23.880 if you want to be a solop syste you could say, well, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.280 I'm actually the only object in the entire universe that thinks, 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:31.600 and I'm just surrounded by very convincing artificial intelligences. Yeah. 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:33.920 I mean, as we discussed in our Alien episode that 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.400 we did recently, it's when you start trying to it's 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.840 it's hard enough for us to to decide and quantify 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.199 what human consciousness is, what intelligence is, and when we 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:47.559 start looking for artificial versions of it, uh, it becomes difficult. 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:49.560 So you have to have some sort of standard to say, 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:51.520 all right, this is this is enough. And that's what 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:53.560 the Turing Test sets out to do. Right. It's the 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.720 idea not can computers think, but can they convincingly appear 0:09:57.800 --> 0:09:59.679 to think? Yeah, And of course this shows up in 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.359 a lot of science fiction. I believe it. Uh, it's 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:03.960 in Blade Runner. It's been a while since I've seen 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:08.880 Blade Runner, but more recently, um in x Makina. Oh yeah, 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:11.480 I just saw that movie, and maybe we should talk 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.160 about that later in this episode. Yeah, but I'll go 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:16.959 ahead and give my endorsement. Now, I thought it was 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:19.800 pretty awesome. Yeah, it's it's a it's a very very 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:22.320 engaging film. I recommend it to anyone who is who's 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.440 a listener to the show. Okay, but let's describe a 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.920 turing test scenario. Like I said, there's no one test, 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.600 but lots of people try to put together some kind 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.280 of touring test type scenario to test their chat bot 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:38.040 to see how good it is. And the chat bot 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:41.319 is just a program that you have a conversation with 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.160 if you've ever engaged, if you've ever been in a website, 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:46.679 and that little, you know, text stuff screen comes up, 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.080 and there's some sort of little uh, you know, stock 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.240 art of an individual you might be talking to one 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.960 of these chatterpots. Yeah. Yeah, so let's paint a little picture. 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:58.600 Let's say you walk into a mostly empty warehouse and 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:00.400 right in the center of the warehouse us as a 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:04.040 card table and a folding chair and a computer terminal. 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.240 And you go and you sit down at the terminal 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.960 and there's a little blinking cursor and you type hello, 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:15.320 and it responds hello back, and then you type some 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.680 more things, and it types some more things back to you, 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:20.440 and you get to talk to it for some length 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:22.680 of time it was pre specified. Maybe you talk to 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:24.440 it for five minutes, maybe you talk to it for 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.640 twenty minutes. But at the end of the session, it's 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.480 your job to say, now, what was I just interacting with? 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.960 Was that a computer program or was that a person 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.400 sitting at a terminal like mine in the warehouse next door. 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:42.040 These days, most of the time, I think it's still 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:44.720 going to be pretty easy to tell, especially if you 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.880 have a limited amount of time to interact, and if 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:52.000 the chat bot program operates within some kind of I 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.920 don't know, borderline cheating kind of kind of conditions, Like 0:11:56.000 --> 0:12:00.080 some of these bots might suggest they have a conver 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.320 sational limitation, like oh, I'm a real person who is 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.720 a child from another country and I don't natively speak 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.199 your language. That makes it a little easier to be convincing. 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:15.079 Or you could say that you suffer from some kind 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:19.400 of condition that makes you interact socially in a different 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.160 way than most people would. And in any of these cases, 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.600 you're sort of like putting dampeners on our judgment. You're 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.640 saying like, Okay, I shouldn't be expecting somebody who interacts 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:31.800 just like anybody I would meet, you know, at work 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.520 or at a party or something like that. This person 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:36.839 might very well be a human and still be acting 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.480 kind of strange. But once you say okay, you can 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.880 talk for four hours and this is just you know, 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:46.000 a regular person who doesn't have any kind of limitations 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:49.680 on their conversation you, you'll pretty much always be able 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:51.959 to tell these days, I would say, yeah, and you know, 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:53.920 and a lot of this is gonna, you know, at 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.880 least start off as just small talk, you know, like 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.000 you were saying, hello, what's your name, what do you what? 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:01.520 What do you what? What's your favorite band? You know, 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.920 that's something, and then that the the the AI or 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.960 the attempted in AI, the chatter bought attempts to answer 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:09.800 those in a way to fool you into thinking as 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.200 a real person. In fact, let's go ahead and just 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:17.920 roll through a short script from a chatter bot conversation. Yeah, 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:19.920 so we'll reveal the source of this in a bit. 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:26.160 But Hi, Robert, what kind of movies do you like? Um? Historical? 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.520 I prefer modern era films. Great, what are your favorites? 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.360 My favorite movie so far is The Imitation Game. It's 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.520 about my idol, Alan Turing. What did you like most 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:43.600 about it? I like fruit trees? Were there lots of 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:47.680 fruit trees in the movie. Maybe we can talk about 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:52.000 that later. Okay, shall I continue with gardening or do 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.400 you want me to move on? You can move on. 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.960 So I think it's pretty obvious who is the chatter 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.400 bought in that conversation. Yeah, so I was the chatter 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.880 bot there. That was coming from a chat bought named Rose, 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:10.400 which was created by Bruce Wilcox and documented. That was 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.199 verbat on a transcript of a video produced by some 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.240 researchers that we're going to talk about in a minute. 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.840 But there's a variation on that script we just read 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.760 because in the video that didn't take place at a 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.680 text terminal. All the lines that both of us said 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:31.320 were spoken out loud by human beings. Now, how could 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:33.440 that be. Well, that's going to tie into the concept 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:35.720 of echo borgs, which we brought up at the beginning. 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.200 So to get into echo borgs, we need to talk 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:43.560 about a favorite figure in the weird history of psychological 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.960 research in the United States, and that's Stanley Milgram. Yes, 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:54.200 Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, best known for his controversial 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:59.200 obedience experiments actually a series of social psychology experiments about 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.920 nineteen in all, all conducted by Milgram in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.400 you probably have heard about these, if you're familiar with Milgram, 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.840 it's probably from the they're often just called the Milgram experiments, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.880 and they sort of give him a bad name because 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:15.560 they were they were kind of nasty. Yeah, they're they're 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:17.280 generally anytime you see a list of like, you know, 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:22.520 top ten scariest or weirdest or most evil psychological experiments, 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:24.800 they tend they tend to throw this one in though, uh, 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:26.960 you know, it's it's really more troubling and what it 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:31.160 reveals about about human human nature. So what was the deal. Well, 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:33.800 it's important to note that the first one of these 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.640 took place in nineteen sixty one, just three months after 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.600 the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:43.480 Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and so Milgram wanted to see 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:45.520 just how far we'd go in the name of a 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:47.720 band an authority figure of course, of course, because the 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.360 whole argument is are that these bad people were they 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.440 just simply following orders? Right. It was the idea that 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:56.680 the Germans are especially evil. Where the were the people 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:01.200 who became the you know, guards at Auschwitz just from birth, 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:04.560 truly evil people who were susceptible to that kind of behavior, 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.920 or would we behave the same way in the same circumstances. So, Yeah, 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.120 the experiment revolved around, you know, an individual in a 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.520 room and you hear the sounds of someone being shocked 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.280 in the next room whenever that individual pushes a button, 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.880 pulls a lever, or whatever on the command of an 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.360 authority figure. And so the question is how far will 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.280 you go to when will you stop shocking? Would you 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.960 ever stop shocking that individual in the next room if 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:29.760 an authority figure is telling you to do it and 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:32.720 telling you that it's okay. Yeah, And what Milgram claimed 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.560 to find through his experiments is, yeah, even you know, 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.240 your regular people, your next door neighbor Americans, if they've 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.800 got somebody in a white lab coat who's supposedly in 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.000 charge of the experiment saying please continue shocking them, they've 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.720 agreed to this in advance. Lots of people will continue 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.520 shocking even after the supposed victim of the shocking. Now 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:54.640 we should say that in this experiment, nobody was acting. 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.360 Nobody actually electrocuted in the next room. Yeah, there were 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:01.640 actors pretending to be in in immense pain from these 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.760 shocks that lots of people in the experiment would supposedly 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.119 continue shocking them. Yeah. And if you want to hear 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.280 more about that, that series of experiments and what some 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.240 of the ramifications of it, uh, stuff to bow your mind. 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:16.680 Did an episode earlier in the year titled The Power 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:18.879 of Polite, and I'll make sure to link to that 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:23.040 on the landing page for this episode. But Stanley Milgram 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.879 also had some other experiments going on, right, He wasn't 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:30.439 just doing the shocking people and Nazi experiments. He was 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:33.719 into other ways to make us feel a bit troubled 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.160 about our humanity. Where they all creepy? Did he specialize 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:39.560 only in creepy science? And I think he had some 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:41.880 less creepy ones, you know, I mean, you know, they 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:44.959 involve how we I think most of his work revolved 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.360 around how we view ourselves and how we vie your bodies, 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.760 et cetera. By texts of puppies and lollipops on our psyche. Yeah, 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:54.359 but you know, not everything was necessarily um you know, 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.439 people in the next room dying. Sure, but we referred 0:17:57.440 --> 0:17:59.280 to a term at the beginning of this episode, which 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:03.000 is serra woid. And this also comes from Stanley Milgram, 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:07.080 I believe from unpublished results of some experiments he conducted, 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:09.359 right right, He he never published any of these. They 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.119 ended up, you know, putting some work into it, but 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.600 then going off in a different direction with his research. Yeah. So, 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.240 as we said, the term serenoid comes from Syrano to 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.280 bears your act. But what was the deal with Milgram's experiments? 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:22.800 So Milgram essentially wanted to say, hey, if you're that 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:27.200 the woman that is being wooed bye bye bye by 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.600 Syrano's meat puppet's handsome. It's handsome young man. I think 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.720 her name was Roxanne x. Roxane's on the balcony being 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.920 wooed by a handsome meat puppet that's being fedlines by Syrano. Yeah, 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:41.720 if you're Roxanne, would you be able to detect something 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.359 was weird? Would you would you encounter this young man 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:46.440 and say, hmm, he you know, he seems a little 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:49.560 more clever than than he should be, or there's a 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:51.760 delay in in what he's telling me, you know, would 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:53.520 there be something that would tip you tip you off 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:57.159 to the deception you know, with modern technology, I'd imagine 0:18:57.160 --> 0:18:59.760 you can carry out that experiment pretty easily. Yeah, I 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:02.600 mean even at the time, the technology was good enough. 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:06.840 So in these unpublished experiments, he had a source speak 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:11.200 into a microphone and a shadower listened through a hidden earpiece. 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.399 Then he or she would repeat whatever they heard, you know, 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.960 basic you know, arrested development, surrogate kind of situation. But 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.720 here's the thing. You found that with practice, speech shadowing 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.639 becomes easier and easier, Like we really take to it 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:26.960 rather naturally. They say, it's not that hard at all. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.080 I read in one of the sources we used for 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.879 this episode that sometimes it only takes a few milliseconds 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:35.000 of delay between the speech being fed in through the 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:38.520 earpiece and saying it. We're ready, willing and able to 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:42.280 not think for ourselves, and so yeah, he observed that 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.320 he set all this up, put people in motion with 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:47.960 these with a source and a shadower, and then a 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.440 test subject having to interact with this individual or is 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.560 it his individuals um and then give feedback about what 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.159 they thought. And he observed that people couldn't tell the 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.960 difference between a Syran wid again that person. Uh that 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.800 that that Shadower, who was informed by another source just 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.680 repeating words that are entering his or her ears, could 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.160 not tell the difference between syenoid and a normal human 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.720 being during interactions. Yeah, so that's what Milgram reported. And 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.880 I don't know, that's surprising and creepy. Yeah, I would 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:21.920 think that I would easily be able to tell the 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:25.120 difference between a person speaking of their own free will 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.680 and somebody who's just being fed lines in a near piece. Yeah. 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.560 And one experiment Milgram's sourced in other words, fed you know, 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.400 lines to a pair of eleven and twelve year olds. 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:36.520 So they the eleven and twelve year olds where the 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.080 shadows and Milgram himself was speaking correct. Uh Yeah, the 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.040 the children were the serenoids, if you will, and a 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.320 group of observing teachers never suspected that they were chatting 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:49.480 with anything other than a normal, though very bright child. 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:53.320 Uh and uh. And and it is experiments he found 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.240 that most people could have a lengthy twenty minute conversation 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:01.560 with a serenoid without noticing anything amiss. Wow. Yeah, but 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:03.719 I mean again, that's that's hard to believe. I mean, 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:05.560 it just seems like you'd be able to notice that 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:08.159 right off the bat. But well, but just think how 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:12.600 easily we we buy into an actor's presentation. I think 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:15.000 and think of all the interactions we have in the 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:19.320 course of of our lives where the individual we're talking 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:24.040 to is maybe not completely yeah, genuine, maybe that you know, 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:27.000 maybe you're interacting with with someone that's doing customer service 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.040 or they're trying to sell you something or can you, etcetera. 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:33.080 It's like, it's not always going to come off is oh, 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.800 this person is completely fake. It's gonna It's just an 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:40.200 aspect of human interaction. Well, it's funny you mentioned actors 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:42.600 because I had this thought when I was reading this research. 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.280 In a strange kind of way, all actors in movies 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:50.200 are seronoids. Like you have the writer coming up with 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.720 lines for many types of characters that aren't anything like 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:56.760