Speaker 1: Hey, you. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday,
Speaker 1: time for a vault episode. We hear that door creaking
Speaker 1: open and what is it? It is part three of
Speaker 1: our series on the mirror. This episode originally aired August twelve.
Speaker 1: Get ready to put it in your brain. Welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. Production of my heart radio. Hey, you,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and we're back with
Speaker 1: part three of our talk about mirrors. If you haven't
Speaker 1: listened to the first two parts, should probably go back
Speaker 1: check those out first. But, rob to get US started today,
Speaker 1: I wanted to revisit one of your favorite topics, are
Speaker 1: our failures of intuition and understanding how mirrors work. So
Speaker 1: we we talked in previous parts of out uh, your
Speaker 1: point about the rokeby Venus. You know how there's that
Speaker 1: painting of Venus looking in the mirror and we see
Speaker 1: her face and we assume she's looking at herself, but
Speaker 1: since we see her looking at us, she actually couldn't
Speaker 1: be looking at herself. She's looking at us. As you know,
Speaker 1: and as you love to point out, our misunderstanding is
Speaker 1: about the physics of mirrors. Don't stop there, and so
Speaker 1: so I actually came across one recently that I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Rachel and I were doing this experiment earlier today. So
Speaker 1: so you at home can play along. Um, a couple
Speaker 1: of questions. Imagine yourself standing in front of a bathroom
Speaker 1: mirror and looking at your own reflection. You're looking at
Speaker 1: your head. You're regarding this glorious orb of bone and meat.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's got some hair on it. And the question is,
Speaker 1: how big is your reflection of your head on the Mirror?
Speaker 1: If you were to measure it? Is it smaller than
Speaker 1: your actual head, bigger than your actual head or the
Speaker 1: same size? Yeah, this is it's a great question, because
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? You're gonna moving closer and
Speaker 1: measure it. Well, you could measure if your normal bathroom
Speaker 1: mirror size. You could measure it without stepping forward. You
Speaker 1: can just reach out and mark the places you know,
Speaker 1: touch the mirror where your chin is and where the
Speaker 1: top of your head is. But before you do that,
Speaker 1: just just guess, before you actually measure it. The second
Speaker 1: thing is, after you do that, imagine walking backwards away
Speaker 1: from a mirror. So you take a few steps back.
Speaker 1: What is going to happen to the size of your
Speaker 1: head in your reflection? Is it going to get larger?
Speaker 1: Is it going to stay the same size, or will
Speaker 1: it get smaller? Now My intuitions about this were apparently
Speaker 1: exactly the same as most people's intuitions about these, the
Speaker 1: answers to these questions, which are both wrong. My intuition was, well,
Speaker 1: I think my head in my reflection is going to
Speaker 1: be the same size as my real head and I
Speaker 1: think as I walk backward, the size of that head
Speaker 1: in my reflection is going to be smaller. And in
Speaker 1: fact both of these are wrong, as intuitive as they feel,
Speaker 1: if you actually reach out and measure it, your reflection
Speaker 1: of your head is half the size of your real
Speaker 1: head and as you walk backwards away from the Mirror,
Speaker 1: from your perspective, your reflected head will stay exactly the
Speaker 1: same size, no matter how far you get away. Very odd.
Speaker 1: It seems totally counterintuitive until you start thinking about what's
Speaker 1: actually happening with a mirror. If you imagine a mirror
Speaker 1: as a sort of window into the mirror world. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit easier to think about because if you're
Speaker 1: looking at your reflected self as a person in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in that other mirror world, your reflection is
Speaker 1: always at exactly the halfway point between yourself and that
Speaker 1: reflected version of yourself. So in fact, given the vantage
Speaker 1: point of your eyes, your reflected head is always going
Speaker 1: to appear to be half the size of your real
Speaker 1: head from wherever you are and as you move backwards
Speaker 1: in a mirror, if someone were standing in the same
Speaker 1: place and looking at your reflection as you move backwards,
Speaker 1: it would appear to get smaller. But since your eyes
Speaker 1: are moving back with you as you retreat from a mirror,
Speaker 1: your reflection actually never gets smaller. It stays exactly the same. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's it's really mind blowing when you think about it.
Speaker 1: For sure, Um again, these just strange objects in our
Speaker 1: in our lives, but it's almost when you're talking about
Speaker 1: the reflected world, the specular world, it's not even that.
Speaker 1: That itself is not the object. That is this uh,
Speaker 1: this this unreality, this uh, this inverse kingdom that we
Speaker 1: seem to glimp through the glass. You know, we've talked
Speaker 1: a bit in previous parts here about the possible effects
Speaker 1: on our our self image and self consciousness that could
Speaker 1: be created by different types of mirrors. Like if you
Speaker 1: have a culture where most mirrors are slightly convex, and
Speaker 1: you know convex mirrors lead to particular kinds of distortions,
Speaker 1: widening of the field u around the head and sort of,
Speaker 1: depending on where you hold it and how far away,
Speaker 1: sort of pronouncement of certain features. Uh. You you wonder
Speaker 1: if slightly convex mirrors give way to a culture with
Speaker 1: a slightly convex self image and but but it also
Speaker 1: makes me wonder, like, what are the self image properties
Speaker 1: that cause us to believe that our face in the
Speaker 1: mirror is the same size as our real face when
Speaker 1: actually it's half the size? It's almost kind of comical
Speaker 1: to think about you like looking at this little tiny
Speaker 1: things like a few inches uh, and thinking that it's
Speaker 1: exactly the same as yours, your big old head and
Speaker 1: meat space. Yeah, I mean it. It falls in line
Speaker 1: with some of the other ideas we've discussed here, including,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that that is what I look like, uh,
Speaker 1: and that it is not a flipped version of my face. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that effect that we we sometimes get
Speaker 1: when we see a photograph of ourselves and it does
Speaker 1: not look like our mirror reflection and therefore we're a
Speaker 1: little turned off by it because, you know, our right
Speaker 1: side of our faces on the left side, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, and and of course it also goes
Speaker 1: without saying that the mirror is always staring back at us.
Speaker 1: You know that, Um, that that that can't be avoided
Speaker 1: as well. So in the last episode we talked about
Speaker 1: the emergence of metal mirrors in the ancient world, with
Speaker 1: copper and copper alloy looking glasses in Egypt and Mesopotamia
Speaker 1: from around the third millennium BC on. So these would
Speaker 1: be highly polished pieces of metal people would use to uh,
Speaker 1: would use to look at their reflections for mundane cosmetic purposes,
Speaker 1: but also, for, say, religious symbolism. Maybe in Egypt you
Speaker 1: might put a polished piece of metal, a Metal Mirror,
Speaker 1: on the top of a staff and it might symbolize
Speaker 1: something about the sun. You know that Egypt has a
Speaker 1: very solar oriented, uh Pantheon. But over time the mirror
Speaker 1: technology would expand to include all kinds of metals first,
Speaker 1: so not just a later forms of copper alloys, meaning
Speaker 1: especially bronze, you know higher qualities of bronze, but also
Speaker 1: things like gold and silver, and so in say, ancient
Speaker 1: Rome you can find various types of silver mirrors and
Speaker 1: things like that. So metal technology and different types of
Speaker 1: metals become more available and uh, and and so mirrors
Speaker 1: based on those metals also proliferate. And one thing I
Speaker 1: was thinking about that this is noted in that paper
Speaker 1: by J Enoch that I referenced in the past couple
Speaker 1: of episodes, uh, is that you know, sometimes when we
Speaker 1: talk about inventions, there are these technical developments that stay
Speaker 1: relatively isolated in one place for a long time. Maybe
Speaker 1: you get some little like curio exported to some of
Speaker 1: their culture and it gets written about. But then there
Speaker 1: are the other ones that really just proliferate throughout the globe,
Speaker 1: whether by trade and contact or just by parallel invention.
Speaker 1: And the Mirror is definitely one of these technologies that proliferates.
Speaker 1: Eventually you find it everywhere. Enoch writes. Quote, by approximately
Speaker 1: two thousand BC there existed dispersed utilization of mirrors in
Speaker 1: virtually every major region of the world, with settled society ease.
Speaker 1: This includes Central and South America. After that time, mirror
Speaker 1: distribution and quality increased rapidly so, but by a certain point.
Speaker 1: Deep into the ancient world, mirrors are everywhere, partially as
Speaker 1: a product of of parallel invention and partially through trade
Speaker 1: in contact. In one place where it seems to be
Speaker 1: that mirrors tend to take on a lot of religious
Speaker 1: and cultural significance is in China. Yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was reading about this and it was it was really fascinating. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like you were saying, mirror technology spreads, but
Speaker 1: then also, uh, technology metaphors spread as well, and the
Speaker 1: use of of our ideas concerning mirror. So that's that
Speaker 1: was one of the things I was really looking at
Speaker 1: when I was researching for this episode. And so it
Speaker 1: led me to a wonderful Um article about Chinese mirrors
Speaker 1: and UH and Um and particularly how different ancient philosophers
Speaker 1: looked at them and used mirror or reflection metaphor wars
Speaker 1: and it was it was titled Mirrors, minds and Metaphors,
Speaker 1: published in Philosophy East and West two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: by Aaron M Klein and uh, this particular paper was
Speaker 1: largely looking at a couple of different Chinese philosophers from
Speaker 1: the fourth and third century, B C, e and Um
Speaker 1: and and dealing with like how they dealt with the
Speaker 1: idea of mirrors and reflections. Um. But, but I want
Speaker 1: to first drive home that, yeah, you have middle metal
Speaker 1: mirrors that were popping up in China, uh, certainly as
Speaker 1: as early as this second millennium B C. and if
Speaker 1: you look at some of the examples of of bronze
Speaker 1: mirrors from ancient China particularly, I was looking at some
Speaker 1: images of of some mirrors discovered in a two thousand
Speaker 1: year old treasure trove that was turned up in recent years.
Speaker 1: They're quite interesting. You'll typically see one side of them
Speaker 1: photographed because they had two different sides. One side they're
Speaker 1: going to be more or less flat, generally circular, though
Speaker 1: I think I've seen Um that had a slightly different shape. Uh.
Speaker 1: So flat, circular Um. One side is going to be
Speaker 1: featureless and reflective, but the other side is going to
Speaker 1: be often just ornately decorated. So it can be a
Speaker 1: bit be a little off putting when you see a
Speaker 1: picture and and it's described as a mirror and you're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out where you're supposed to look for
Speaker 1: the reflection. This is so funny. I was actually looking
Speaker 1: at a bunch of mirrors in the Met Museum collection,
Speaker 1: just on their website, uh, and I kept noticing this.
Speaker 1: I would look at it, I'd be like what, that's
Speaker 1: not a mirror, but then I realized they're showing me
Speaker 1: the back of the mirror, I think, because the back
Speaker 1: has all the interesting decorations and everything on it. And
Speaker 1: this was true of so some ancient Roman mirrors. I
Speaker 1: was looking at some Iranian mirrors, uh, some, and some
Speaker 1: ancient Chinese mirrors where in all cases all of the
Speaker 1: beautiful decorations, the inlays any writing or script or imagery
Speaker 1: on them. That was all on the back side. And
Speaker 1: it always looks like yeah, how does anybody see the
Speaker 1: reflection in this? Oh, okay, yeah, looking at the other
Speaker 1: the other side. But but certainly this would be the
Speaker 1: side with the most, most of the eye catching decoration.
Speaker 1: This would be the side that had birds or dragons
Speaker 1: or depictions of deities, and sometimes good luck wishes were
Speaker 1: also inscribed there. Now, the two different philosophers that that
Speaker 1: Klein is looking at here were dallast, philosopher Gengi and
Speaker 1: Confucian philosopher Hina. They each had their own separate worldviews,
Speaker 1: but they seem to come together on the idea of
Speaker 1: of how we might view the Shin which kleient translates
Speaker 1: his heart mind. But I think we can also translate
Speaker 1: it as US intention or center or core. But I
Speaker 1: think heart mind is seems to be a pretty strong translation,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of center of being and contemplation.
Speaker 1: But both of these philosophers tended to look at ways
Speaker 1: in which this heart mind might best resemble, Um, a mirror,
Speaker 1: that it might be like a reflecting pool. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this seems to be something that that turns up in
Speaker 1: a lot of thought about mirrors throughout the world. Is
Speaker 1: that the mirror is often seen as a a way
Speaker 1: to see one's true self, maybe to see the part
Speaker 1: of you that is integral. Yeah, so, so Jeong Gi
Speaker 1: wrote that that a sage's heart mind should quote in stillness,
Speaker 1: is the Mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of
Speaker 1: the ten thousand things and and I'll break down what
Speaker 1: all this means in just a second. But but Shinja,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, wrote that the heart mind bust
Speaker 1: must be like a mirror in order to fully contemplate
Speaker 1: the way. So the use of the mirror metaphor here
Speaker 1: seems to largely revolve around, of course, the reflective qualities
Speaker 1: of water Um, and each each of these different philosophers
Speaker 1: kind of uses a different version of that. I think
Speaker 1: with in the Dallas sense, you see more of this
Speaker 1: use of an actual body like the ocean or a
Speaker 1: lake or a pond or something, while the Confucian model
Speaker 1: that is employed here has more of a uh, more
Speaker 1: of a like a man made reflective pool, like a
Speaker 1: basin of water that you might have inside of a
Speaker 1: house or some sort of a domicile in order to
Speaker 1: view your reflection, something you might use for self care,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Sure. So the idea here is
Speaker 1: that the surface of the water must be still in
Speaker 1: order to more perfectly reflective viewer's face or, in the
Speaker 1: case of something in a more natural model, the brilliance
Speaker 1: of the sky in the mountains. Now client goes on
Speaker 1: to discuss the history and understanding of mirrors and Chinese culture,
Speaker 1: and I found this was this really interesting. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that they point out is that while
Speaker 1: in modern times we tend to think of Mirrors as passive. Uh.
Speaker 1: To the ancient Chinese, mirrors, especially metal mirrors, especially like
Speaker 1: those bronze mirrors we were discussing, they were seen as, quote, active,
Speaker 1: responsive objects. So they're there are things that respond to
Speaker 1: our world. Um, an understanding that is Um. You know.
Speaker 1: It was also linked to the observation that mirrors had
Speaker 1: the ability to gather and produce. Oh, this is very
Speaker 1: interesting because it reminds me of the the alternate and
Speaker 1: you could argue, physically incorrect model of the eye, which,
Speaker 1: you know, it was common to believe in the ancient
Speaker 1: world that the eye was not just a passive receptor
Speaker 1: of light but actually sent something out that retrieved the
Speaker 1: image and brought it back. Uh. And I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: you could argue that the eye is not in fact
Speaker 1: totally passive because the eye moves, it focuses, it increases
Speaker 1: or decreases the aperture that allows light in. Um. But
Speaker 1: but it it is at least only receiving light. But
Speaker 1: it was natural for people to think throughout history that
Speaker 1: the eye was going out and getting images, it was
Speaker 1: sending something. It was like beaming out the power of sight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in the for the ancient Chinese this, apparently, was
Speaker 1: also compounded by observations of what you could do with
Speaker 1: a mirror. So on one hand you could take a mirror,
Speaker 1: you could focus sunlight and you could produce fire, and
Speaker 1: it was also known that a mirror left in the
Speaker 1: moonlight would gather condensation. So, uh, this is interesting because
Speaker 1: we're talking about the generation of fire or the collection
Speaker 1: of water, and water and fire are the elemental essence
Speaker 1: of Yin and Yang, the dual energies of the cosmos. Wow, quote,
Speaker 1: this is from Klein. The fact that mirrors appeared to
Speaker 1: draw these substances from the sun and moon reinforce the
Speaker 1: cosmological power that was already associated with them. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: this makes me think of yet another way that that
Speaker 1: it could be natural to assume that a mirror has
Speaker 1: a gathering and production power, which is that by making
Speaker 1: a mirror, for example, concave, you can give it magnifying power.
Speaker 1: And in a way it's hard not to see a
Speaker 1: lens or a mirror that has magnified buying power as
Speaker 1: in some way going out and gathering, because what it
Speaker 1: is quite literally doing is taking something that is invisible
Speaker 1: to the naked eye and making it visible. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: not not to jump around too much here, but this
Speaker 1: reminds me of something I read in M Geraldine Pinch's
Speaker 1: book on Egyptian mythology concerning the eye of raw. She
Speaker 1: writes the ancient Egyptian word for I, uh you, sounded
Speaker 1: like a word for doing or acting. This may be
Speaker 1: why the eyes of Deities are associated with divine power
Speaker 1: as its most uh, interventional. So I keep coming back
Speaker 1: to that as well. That's kind of been in the
Speaker 1: background as we've been discussing that. You know, the idea
Speaker 1: of like what is what is a mirror doing, and
Speaker 1: is it passive or is it active? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on your definition of passive or
Speaker 1: active there, because obviously, again like a concave mirror that produces, say,
Speaker 1: a telescope image. You know, most of our most powerful
Speaker 1: telescopes today are not based on our on transparent refractive lenses,
Speaker 1: but they're based on mirrors. The Hubble telescope has a
Speaker 1: gigantic mirror in it and, though I think it is
Speaker 1: meant with a slightly different connotation, what even astronomers talk
Speaker 1: about these mirrors, quote, gathering light. What they mean is,
Speaker 1: you know, they are taking an amount of information that
Speaker 1: is that is too diffuse for our eyes to make
Speaker 1: any sense of, but then turning it into an image
Speaker 1: that is recognizable to us. Yeah, yeah, I guess one
Speaker 1: of the things that that that I find super interesting
Speaker 1: about all this is that if you do see the
Speaker 1: mirror as is more active as opposed to passive, I
Speaker 1: feel like perhaps you're more inclined to engage in metaphors
Speaker 1: for the self based on that device. You know, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, we've talked about the idea of thinking about
Speaker 1: your brain as a in your visual system is being
Speaker 1: like a security camera, like a security camera is Um,
Speaker 1: you know, to a certain extent is acting passively, but
Speaker 1: it is acting, you know it is. It is, it
Speaker 1: is doing something, and if it is doing something in
Speaker 1: the world, then perhaps we're more more inclined to compare
Speaker 1: ourselves to it or compare some aspect of our our
Speaker 1: of our physiology, to it Um. And so, likewise we
Speaker 1: see that reflected in the Chinese view here. Um Gengi writes.
Speaker 1: Perfect persons use their heart mind like mirrors, going after nothing,
Speaker 1: welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore they can win
Speaker 1: out over things and not hurt themselves. So again, the
Speaker 1: idea is that a mirror is not passive, it's active,
Speaker 1: but it's responsive. It does not in sight, um anything
Speaker 1: and it also does not store the images that it
Speaker 1: responds with. It lets them go. And this, of course,
Speaker 1: brings me back to this, you know, this loose metaphor
Speaker 1: that we often employ of the video camera or the
Speaker 1: camera itself as a technological metaphor for how we perceive
Speaker 1: the world and think about it and remember things. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the more I wonder if if, ultimately, that's
Speaker 1: like more of a harmful metaphor to engage in when
Speaker 1: we think about how we engage in the world. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should think of ourselves more as a mirror. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that the reality is in fact,
Speaker 1: somewhere in between. Like I agree that it's totally a
Speaker 1: harmful metaphor to think of, say, your memory, of your
Speaker 1: vision of events, as like a video camera, because the
Speaker 1: video camera is, you know, with some constraints. You could
Speaker 1: think of it as objective in a way that your
Speaker 1: memory just is not, though then again, your memory is real,
Speaker 1: like it is storing something that is based on events
Speaker 1: you actually witnessed. It's just not objective in the way
Speaker 1: that a video recording is. Yeah, now another interesting bit
Speaker 1: here's that Janshi also writes of mirrors illuminating and Klein
Speaker 1: writes that mirrors in early China were thought to illuminate
Speaker 1: and reveal objects as well. So that's another spin on
Speaker 1: the UH. You know that the active aspect of the mirror.
Speaker 1: Now one of the quotes you read earlier from Jeng
Speaker 1: Gi had something in it that I didn't understand. It
Speaker 1: was the quote about in stillness, is the Mirror of
Speaker 1: heaven and earth, the glass of the ten thousand things
Speaker 1: or the ten thousands things. Well, what are the ten
Speaker 1: thousand or ten thousands things? So it's possible. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: missing some like more esoteric understanding of this, but based
Speaker 1: on reading clients article, my understanding is that it's the
Speaker 1: idea like these are the things reflected in the mirror,
Speaker 1: all the things of the world. And and what's crucial
Speaker 1: here is that the more the heart mind is like
Speaker 1: a mirror, the more one sense of self fades away.
Speaker 1: The more I am a mirror, the more I am
Speaker 1: just a reflection of the ten thousand things in the
Speaker 1: world as opposed to myself. You know, Um, which which
Speaker 1: I find rather beautiful, really flows into this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, of of of losing oneself in the now,
Speaker 1: of losing oneself in the sort of, you know, unlanguaged
Speaker 1: contemplation of one's immediate surroundings. Oh yeah, that sense of
Speaker 1: by becoming the mirror, you become the world. That's the
Speaker 1: sins of oneness sought after by so many different religious
Speaker 1: traditions and types of mysticism. Now, Shin Jo was not
Speaker 1: a dallast again was. It was a confusion different views
Speaker 1: of the world, but again they were mostly aligned in
Speaker 1: this idea of the mirror like aspects of the heart mind. Um,
Speaker 1: the idea that perfectly still waters allow one to see
Speaker 1: details of one's reflection in the water, but the slightest breeze, uh,
Speaker 1: he writes, can both disturb the surface and stir the
Speaker 1: silt that has sunk to the bottom. Uh. Tilting the
Speaker 1: PAN likewise can make the water and reflection murky. Uh
Speaker 1: So uh. Client points out that, yeah, that the pan
Speaker 1: of water metaphor here is more in line with self
Speaker 1: cultivation practices than, you know, the natural world. Um, and
Speaker 1: I guess that I kind of took it to mean
Speaker 1: this is largely just sort of creative choices based, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, based in the writings of the individual philosophers
Speaker 1: and not necessarily something that is like Taoism versus Confusism,
Speaker 1: but I could be wrong on that. And of course
Speaker 1: they're not alone in, of course, employing mirror metaphors, as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss a little bit more mirror metaphors. It's like
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire through through our language and through our
Speaker 1: philosophies and our literature. Um. Client also points out that
Speaker 1: Western thinkers, including nineteenth century Danish philosopher Sore and Cureka
Speaker 1: Guard and century American philosopher Richard Rorty, uh, they all
Speaker 1: also employed similar metaphors to those of these ancient Chinese thinkers,
Speaker 1: and if you want to read more about how they
Speaker 1: compare to each other, I highly recommend looking up that
Speaker 1: client article. I believe I was able to pull it
Speaker 1: up on Jay store. Um, as you know, just free
Speaker 1: access if you're logged in. But it's it's funny that,
Speaker 1: as much as people are trying to sort of come
Speaker 1: up with metaphors to live by and, uh, and image
Speaker 1: that allows them to shape their own behavior on the
Speaker 1: basis of thinking about a mirror it seems pretty clear.
Speaker 1: There's some evidence that a literal physical mirror can also
Speaker 1: have effects on your behavior. Yeah, this idea of forced
Speaker 1: self awareness, Um, which it's just just the phrase forced
Speaker 1: self awareness. It does make me think of all the
Speaker 1: places you one might encounter mirrors where one does not
Speaker 1: want to encounter mirrors, you know, because clearly you want
Speaker 1: a mirror when you go to a restroom. You that
Speaker 1: that is the established place that you want to check
Speaker 1: in on your appearance. But there are other places where
Speaker 1: I find I personally would rather go mirror less. One example,
Speaker 1: I guess, would be like a waiting room. If I'm
Speaker 1: just waiting around, I don't want to encounter mirrors because
Speaker 1: mirrors not only can give you a self awareness you're
Speaker 1: not comfortable with, they can lead, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've encountered this show, to this weird situation where you
Speaker 1: might find yourself staring at other people in ways that
Speaker 1: you might not normally stare at them because you're doing
Speaker 1: it through the mirror. M You know this is funny.
Speaker 1: I almost brought this up in our queuing episode because
Speaker 1: there is a famous anecdote from the history of q
Speaker 1: design where I don't remember all the details now, but
Speaker 1: I think it was like people waiting for an elevator
Speaker 1: in a very busy building. Um, they were unhappy with
Speaker 1: their wait times and the person who was designing the
Speaker 1: building said, Hey, I think we can solve this problem,
Speaker 1: not by speeding up the wait times, but just by
Speaker 1: putting a big mirror in the room where everybody's waiting,
Speaker 1: and that will solve the problem of boredom, because people
Speaker 1: will be very interested in looking at their own reflections
Speaker 1: while they wait for the elevator. And allegedly, according to
Speaker 1: this sort of this tale about about queuing, uh, this
Speaker 1: did solve the problem because people are, you know, now
Speaker 1: they're obsessed looking at themselves in the mirror. They're no
Speaker 1: longer boared the way it just breezes by and they're
Speaker 1: no longer complaining. I think I ended up not talking
Speaker 1: about that because I couldn't verify that the story was
Speaker 1: actually true. It's one of those possibly Apocryphal Tales, but
Speaker 1: but this is sort of the the site of what
Speaker 1: you're saying here, that you know, the people behind the
Speaker 1: story at least, are like hey, people are gonna love
Speaker 1: to look at themselves in a mirror in a waiting room. Well,
Speaker 1: and I would say the other area where I tend
Speaker 1: to not want to encounter mirrors would be an exercise environment,
Speaker 1: particularly a yoga environment, because on one hand you do
Speaker 1: encounter mirrors a lot of times, sometimes a whole wall
Speaker 1: of mirrors in a Yoga Studio, and of course that
Speaker 1: that sort of thing can be very helpful if you're
Speaker 1: wanting to see what you look like in a pose,
Speaker 1: like how straight is my arm? Well, a mirror allows
Speaker 1: you to find out. But on the other hand, for me,
Speaker 1: and I think for a lot of people like one
Speaker 1: of the reasons you do you engage in yoga is
Speaker 1: to sort of become the mirror. You know you you
Speaker 1: don't want to. You know you want to be in
Speaker 1: your body, you want to think about the poses that
Speaker 1: you're doing, but you don't want to necessarily engage with
Speaker 1: this kind of egoic self by looking at your appearance,
Speaker 1: because that kind of can bring you back around into
Speaker 1: the very sort of thinking you're trying to overcome. Yeah, ironically,
Speaker 1: looking in a mirror seems like one of the worst
Speaker 1: possible things to do if you're trying to become the
Speaker 1: mirror in the Taoist sense. Yeah, but again with Yoga.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a mixed you can see it both
Speaker 1: ways because, yes, it can be very helpful in a
Speaker 1: physical sense, but maybe not so much in a mental sense.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You can also make an argument that
Speaker 1: it's something. It would help you, I guess, overcome uh,
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking as well, if you're forced to uh,
Speaker 1: to be in the presence of your own reflection, but
Speaker 1: not obsess about it, I guess. But coming back to
Speaker 1: that idea of forced self awareness in psychology, there are
Speaker 1: a ton of psychological studies, uh, that have just tried
Speaker 1: to see if people's behavior changes when there's a big
Speaker 1: mirror in the room with them, if when they can
Speaker 1: see their own reflection. And you know, you can think,
Speaker 1: for pretty understandable reasons, that this might be the case.
Speaker 1: It's a reasonable thing to test out because, for example,
Speaker 1: people tend to behave differently when they're being watched as
Speaker 1: opposed to when they're not being watched. So might assume
Speaker 1: people would behave differently when they can see themselves. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so one of these studies that I was looking at
Speaker 1: was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology back
Speaker 1: in I believe, by McRae Bodenhausen and milne, and they
Speaker 1: found that people in a room with a mirror were
Speaker 1: comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes,
Speaker 1: stereotypes concerning, for example, sex, race or religion. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the idea there might be, you know, if this finding
Speaker 1: holds up, you might interpret it to mean that people
Speaker 1: who can see their own reflection or sort of more
Speaker 1: self conscious about the more the ethics of their own
Speaker 1: behavior and are less likely to do something that they
Speaker 1: might be ashamed about just because the you know, the
Speaker 1: mirror reflection creates a kind of self consciousness. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the idea would be the difference between like setting
Speaker 1: there having stereotypical thoughts and then setting there seeing yourself
Speaker 1: and on some level going hey, there, I am having
Speaker 1: stereotypical thoughts. Right, it invites you to sort of judge
Speaker 1: yourself and correct yourself. So there's a funny wrinkle that
Speaker 1: I was reading about in a New York Times article
Speaker 1: from two thousand and eight by Natalie Angier that mentions
Speaker 1: the same study by mccrae at all. But so it's
Speaker 1: in the context of Engineer's writing about a number of
Speaker 1: studies along these lines that sort of forced self awareness
Speaker 1: by way of a mirror can cause people to behave differently,
Speaker 1: and often in positive ways. So so angier points out
Speaker 1: research that has found subjects in a room with a
Speaker 1: mirror are more likely to quote, work harder, be more
Speaker 1: helpful and to be less inclined to cheat compared with
Speaker 1: control groups performing the same exercises in non mirrored settings.
Speaker 1: But the funny detail about the mccrae at all finding was,
Speaker 1: again yes, that that people in a room with a mirror,
Speaker 1: in the presence of a mirror, seemed to be less
Speaker 1: likely to rely on stereotypes. And they found this was
Speaker 1: true about negative stereotypes, about things like sex, race and religion,
Speaker 1: but not for all types of stereotypes. So, to quote
Speaker 1: from the article, when it comes to socially acceptable forms
Speaker 1: of stereotyping, said Dr Bodenhausen, like branding all politicians liars
Speaker 1: or all lawyers Crooks. The presence of a mirror may
Speaker 1: end up augmenting rather than curbing the willingness to Pigeonhole.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was funny because maybe the idea
Speaker 1: there is that when people say something like Oh, all
Speaker 1: politicians are liars or all lawyers or Crooks. That is
Speaker 1: something that people maybe are less likely to feel ashamed
Speaker 1: about doing and more likely to feel self righteous about
Speaker 1: doing so. It actually makes you more likely to do
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Oh it's been like, look at me,
Speaker 1: setting there dropping truth bombs in my head about politics.
Speaker 1: So that's funny. Does a mirror make you more self righteous? Uh,
Speaker 1: this is just a little anecdote, but I wonder. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that would fall the right in line with
Speaker 1: the UH you know, with with the with the idea
Speaker 1: of ego being bound up in the reflection and uh
Speaker 1: you know, reflective contemplation of self, Um, and and even
Speaker 1: the myth, the myth of narcissus becoming just entranced by
Speaker 1: his own reflection. There's another thing I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: another one of the ways that mirrors have played a
Speaker 1: major role in scientific research, and this is the so
Speaker 1: called mirror self recognition test, and this has come up
Speaker 1: on the show a couple of times before, but I
Speaker 1: just thought it would be interesting to revisit briefly. So
Speaker 1: this is sometimes presented as a test to see if
Speaker 1: animals possess consciousness like we have, you know, self conscious awareness,
Speaker 1: and though I don't have any reason to doubt that
Speaker 1: at least some types of animals have something analogous to
Speaker 1: human consciousness. We don't know, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: reasonable assumption to me. I'm not convinced that consciousness is
Speaker 1: really what these studies demonstrate, but they do demonstrate something interesting.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's better to call the mirror self recognition test
Speaker 1: a test for self awareness or something like that. So
Speaker 1: the setup is pretty simple. You take an animal and
Speaker 1: you put a mark somewhere on its body so that
Speaker 1: it can't see the mark naturally and it's not aware
Speaker 1: that you've put it there. So an example might be
Speaker 1: that you put a yellow dot on an animal's forehead
Speaker 1: or on its throat while it's under general anesthesia, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't know that you've put it there and it
Speaker 1: can't see it unless it looks in a mirror. And
Speaker 1: then you give that animal access to a mirror. Now,
Speaker 1: most animals don't react in a particularly notable way to mirrors,
Speaker 1: except unless they're they're reacting to their image in a
Speaker 1: mirror as if it were another animal. But some animals,
Speaker 1: especially after they've been exposed to mirrors for extended periods,
Speaker 1: presumably to learn how they work. They start to respond
Speaker 1: with behaviors indicating that they may actually understand that the
Speaker 1: reflection in the mirror is an image of themselves, of
Speaker 1: their own body. So in the case of putting a
Speaker 1: yellow dot on their forehead or on their their throat,
Speaker 1: they will reach up and touch themselves in the spot
Speaker 1: where the yellow dot is or try to groom themselves
Speaker 1: on that spot, which requires a different kind of consciousness.
Speaker 1: That's you know that that an animal, you could presume,
Speaker 1: would not do that unless they had some kind of
Speaker 1: inkling that this image on the mirror was actually their
Speaker 1: own body. Yeah, and it's again when we approach mirrors
Speaker 1: with this uh, you know, less everyday understanding and we
Speaker 1: try and we lean into what's actually going on, it
Speaker 1: is pretty remarkable because it means, it would mean, that
Speaker 1: that animal has on some level an understanding of the
Speaker 1: virtual world. It's funny that you say that because that
Speaker 1: same New York Times article by Angier, it quotes one researcher,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name, but somebody, who says that
Speaker 1: in a way mirrors were the first virtual reality, and
Speaker 1: I like that metaphor. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because we often
Speaker 1: like what we doing when we uh, we're looking at
Speaker 1: ourselves in the mirror, you know, just the normal stuff like,
Speaker 1: you know, getting ready to leave the house or something.
Speaker 1: We're moving around, we're causing our reflected self to move around,
Speaker 1: we are we are, you know, controlling our avatar in
Speaker 1: the mirror world. It's just very responsive. Usually, let's you
Speaker 1: have one of those roles, you know those, uh, those
Speaker 1: cheaply made mirrors, and then you can make it a
Speaker 1: little bit of active. And then how about when you
Speaker 1: go and get your hair cut and you get that
Speaker 1: that wonderful the two mirror trick, when you have to
Speaker 1: look at the back of your head? That thing just
Speaker 1: I'm I'm stupid. That thing just breaks my brain. I
Speaker 1: can never figure out how to make two mirrors work
Speaker 1: to look at the back of my head. I keep
Speaker 1: moving them around and I just can't see it. How
Speaker 1: about when the barber, the hairstylis holds it behind your head?
Speaker 1: I guess they've got experience, I don't know, but anyway. So,
Speaker 1: coming back to the mirror self recognition test, as as
Speaker 1: used on animals as a test for whatever this this
Speaker 1: x factor is consciousness or self awareness or psycho somatic
Speaker 1: representational consciousness whatever you would call it. One of the
Speaker 1: first big studies on this was by a researcher named
Speaker 1: Gordon G Gallop, and it was called chimpanzees self recognition,
Speaker 1: published in the journal Science in the year nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: and I'll just read the abstract. It's very short quote.
Speaker 1: After prolonged exposure to their reflected images and mirrors, chimpanzees
Speaker 1: marked with red dye showed evidence of being able to
Speaker 1: recognize their own reflections. Monkeys did not appear to have
Speaker 1: this capacity. So he was comparing different species here, right,
Speaker 1: different species of primates. On one hand you've got a
Speaker 1: great ape, the chimpanzee, but then you've also got a
Speaker 1: number of different monkey species. The monkeys used in the
Speaker 1: study were reesus monkeys, stump tailed macaques and something called
Speaker 1: Cino mulgus monkeys, which had never heard of before. But
Speaker 1: these are also known as crab eating macaques. CINOMALGUS is
Speaker 1: does that mean crab eating? Maybe Um? weirdly enough, I
Speaker 1: believe I'm looking this up. I believe it actually means
Speaker 1: dog milk, having to do with some erroneous claim that
Speaker 1: that these monkeys were capable of milking female dots Oki Doki.
Speaker 1: You know, you learn something new every day anyway. So
Speaker 1: coming back to the study by Gallop. So the chimpanzees
Speaker 1: who had experience with mirrors, uh, they were able to
Speaker 1: reach for the red dot on themselves when they saw
Speaker 1: it in the mirror, but the monkeys did not do
Speaker 1: the same, and this would again seem to indicate that
Speaker 1: the chimpanzees had the ability to learn over time that
Speaker 1: the animal they're seeing in the mirror is themselves, while
Speaker 1: the monkeys don't usually have this capacity. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: the Red Dye helps provide a clear point of comparison
Speaker 1: that you can test on command between different species. But
Speaker 1: in fact Gallup reported that you you didn't actually need
Speaker 1: the die test to observe that chimpanzees could adapt to
Speaker 1: the presence of a mirror and understand what it was,
Speaker 1: because you could observe spontaneous behaviors that were pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: So Um Gallup reported with his small group of chimpanzees
Speaker 1: that when he first introduced a mirror to their enclosure,
Speaker 1: for the first few days the chimpanzees would react to
Speaker 1: the mirror as if another animal had been introduced to
Speaker 1: the area. So Gallup called this a social stimulus reaction
Speaker 1: and it would produce behaviors like bobbing, threatening, vocalizing. It
Speaker 1: was like there's there's another animal that's roughly like me
Speaker 1: in here and I need to, you know, figure out
Speaker 1: what his steel is. One of the things that's that
Speaker 1: has always interested me about mirror tests is that among
Speaker 1: animals that that are known to have failed the mirror test,
Speaker 1: you do see that distinction, like, for instance, with cats.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they react with hostility towards the reflection, but other
Speaker 1: times it's just straight up indifference. I witnessed this the
Speaker 1: other day. I was actually putting a rather large mirror
Speaker 1: on the wall of our house and I had it
Speaker 1: had it leaned up against the couch there. The cat
Speaker 1: came over and checked it out and, you know, she
Speaker 1: just kind of looked in. It didn't seem that interested,
Speaker 1: and then she found the instruction booklet for the Mirror
Speaker 1: and sat on it and that was her complete interaction
Speaker 1: with this new mirror. So, you know, it's it's like Oh,
Speaker 1: I oh, they're like it's it seems like there's such
Speaker 1: a there's such a gap between those two different possible reactions, though,
Speaker 1: that this is a thing that I must attack and
Speaker 1: put in its place, or that it's just nothing at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have always noticed. Now, I know sometimes dogs will
Speaker 1: react to a mirror and bark at it, but that's
Speaker 1: never been my experience in real life. Dogs I've always
Speaker 1: known to be utterly it's like they can't even see
Speaker 1: the mirror, you know, no reaction at all to their reflection. Um,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if that has to do with just,
Speaker 1: you know, the different sense world the dog lives in,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about many times. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know this. I'm just wondering maybe if another,
Speaker 1: if the image of another dog is not a come
Speaker 1: a need by some kind of dog smell, it doesn't
Speaker 1: even really register as a dog. Yeah, that I think
Speaker 1: that that makes a lot of sense because, yes, we
Speaker 1: discussed before, dogs live in just an entirely different a smell,
Speaker 1: realm than human beings and and likewise, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: cats are are so based, you know, so much of
Speaker 1: their perception is based on their hearing. If it doesn't,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't sound like a cat, could it possibly
Speaker 1: be a cat? If it doesn't smell like another dog,
Speaker 1: then what is it? Is it even real? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean maybe that's something that. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you know about good research on the subjects and
Speaker 1: send it our way. I always want to know about
Speaker 1: dogs and their level of self awareness. I mean because
Speaker 1: the REVERB, because what is what are you doing? When
Speaker 1: you show a mirror to an animal like this? You're
Speaker 1: giving them a oftentimes near perfect visual version of another animal.
Speaker 1: Uh and yeah, the dog might not care about that.
Speaker 1: The cat might not care about that. But what if
Speaker 1: you bring something in it smells like another dog, what
Speaker 1: have you? Play the sound effect of a mewing kitten
Speaker 1: on a on a good speaker in your house. I
Speaker 1: think you'll find that you'll get totally different reactions from
Speaker 1: these animals. Oh Yeah, so my dog, who does not
Speaker 1: care about reflections and mirrors at all, will go absolutely
Speaker 1: nuts if we say, bring in an object from another
Speaker 1: house that a dog lives in. This unleash is a
Speaker 1: storm of sniffing and interest and in this item. Oh,
Speaker 1: but sorry. Anyway, coming back to to the Gallop study,
Speaker 1: so I mentioned that when a mirror is first put
Speaker 1: into the enclosure, at least as Gallop reported in in
Speaker 1: the chimpanzees that he was working with, when the mirror
Speaker 1: first went into the enclosure. They would at first react
Speaker 1: as if it was another animal. You know, they would
Speaker 1: try to threaten it, they might Um do displays at
Speaker 1: it or make vocalizations at it. But these social type
Speaker 1: reactions decreased rapidly over the course of two or three
Speaker 1: days and by like day four or five they were
Speaker 1: just not doing this anymore and the social reactions over
Speaker 1: the course of a few days tended to be replaced
Speaker 1: with behaviors that Um that were directed toward the self
Speaker 1: and which Gallop took as evidence of understanding that the
Speaker 1: chimpanzees were interacting with representations of their own bodies. So
Speaker 1: to read from gallops report quote, such self directed responding
Speaker 1: took the form of grooming parts of the body which
Speaker 1: would otherwise be virtually inaccessible without the Mirror, picking bits
Speaker 1: of food from between the teeth while watching the mirror image,
Speaker 1: visually guided manipulation of the anal genital areas by means
Speaker 1: of the Mirror, picking extraneous material from the nose by
Speaker 1: inspecting the reflected image, making faces at the Mirror, blowing
Speaker 1: bubbles and manipulating food wads with the lips by watching
Speaker 1: the reflection. In all instances of self directed behavior, the
Speaker 1: self is the referent through the reflection, whereas in cases
Speaker 1: of social behavior the reflection is the referent. So once
Speaker 1: they've been exposed to a mirror for a few days,
Speaker 1: the chimpanzees would start performing all kinds of exploratory and
Speaker 1: grooming behaviors with respect to their own bodies, which is fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it's very difficult to try and put
Speaker 1: ourselves in the mind of a chimpanzee, Um, but but
Speaker 1: on a human law like, imagine if you had had
Speaker 1: no access to mirrors and then you were given one,
Speaker 1: like it would, it would really just, you know, open
Speaker 1: open a gateway into a new realm of self awareness
Speaker 1: and self grooming. Yeah, so, as Gallup reported, in this
Speaker 1: study at least the chimpanzees passed the mirror self self
Speaker 1: recognition test and the monkeys did not, the recess monkeys
Speaker 1: and the macaques did not. But since then a number
Speaker 1: of studies have found other animals, to quote, pass versions
Speaker 1: of the mirror self recognition test. Uh, though, again I
Speaker 1: want to emphasize there is debate about some of these
Speaker 1: findings and again, debate about the best ways to interpret them.
Speaker 1: So I do find these studies really interesting, but I
Speaker 1: would say interpret them with caution. Yeah, yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times, just the idea of the
Speaker 1: mirror test is is sort of engage with, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of simplistically, at least by you know, not non
Speaker 1: scientists and general public sort of thing. Uh. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do see plenty of articles that question the the
Speaker 1: usefulness of, say, trying to get an octopus to look
Speaker 1: in the mirror. Right, but with all those caveats. Some
Speaker 1: of the examples of animals that have, in some way
Speaker 1: or another, been interpreted to have passed the mirror self
Speaker 1: recognition test? Uh. These would include other great apes, so
Speaker 1: animals like guerrillas and Orangutans and, I think Binobo's to
Speaker 1: some extent, elephants, some corvids, but not others. Definitely Magpies have,
Speaker 1: in some studies, or at least one study, been found
Speaker 1: to try to groom a spot on their body where
Speaker 1: a dot of die has been placed, and also perhaps
Speaker 1: some dolphins. I think of his bottle nose dolphins, though
Speaker 1: their behaviors are harder to interpret than the behaviors of
Speaker 1: animals that can groom themselves with beaks or hands or
Speaker 1: trunk you know, I haven't read anything recently about Dolphin Cognition.
Speaker 1: I'd love to come back to dolphins and and really
Speaker 1: go in at great depth, but I guess one question
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is, in an underwater environment, to
Speaker 1: what extent was is a dolphin going to encounter a
Speaker 1: reflection of itself? Would you would it be able to
Speaker 1: encounter a reflection of itself at the surface of the water? Uh,
Speaker 1: from the submerged side? I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer because some of these other animals, it seems
Speaker 1: like you could, you know, perhaps simplistically ask the question. Well,
Speaker 1: wouldn't they occasionally encounter reflections of themselves in the water?
Speaker 1: You know, wouldn't they have? Wouldn't they encounter that stimuli
Speaker 1: in the natural world under the right conditions? Yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Or maybe I don't know. Maybe when
Speaker 1: you go to a still pool of water and you're
Speaker 1: an orangutan or something, you're you're just thirsty and you're
Speaker 1: just getting the water real fast. You don't stop and look.
Speaker 1: Who knows? Yeah, I I know it is. It's particularly
Speaker 1: weird when you think about humans in their mirrors, about
Speaker 1: how we inflict them on the World Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't think about this a lot. We don't think. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't really put a lot of mirrors outside, but
Speaker 1: of course you have traffic mirrors and every vehicle that
Speaker 1: we put out there on the street they have at
Speaker 1: least two mirrors on the outside of the vehicle. So
Speaker 1: just the other day I was watching a bird. I'm
Speaker 1: almost positive it was not a corvette. It was, but
Speaker 1: it kept coming landing right next to the Automobile Mirror,
Speaker 1: looking at itself and then flying up and then flying
Speaker 1: back down and then flying up then flying back down
Speaker 1: to the mirror. And it did this on a loop
Speaker 1: for like, Um, you know, like two or three dozen times.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was interpreting the reflection as a
Speaker 1: as a strange bird, as another animal. Yeah, perhaps. So.
Speaker 1: Just one last note. So as far as I can
Speaker 1: tell it seems that dogs do not generally pass the
Speaker 1: mirror self recognition test, but I was reading an article
Speaker 1: on NPR from years ago. Is from like two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: I think. Um, that was talking about one researcher who
Speaker 1: was proposing an alternate uh, an alternate version of the
Speaker 1: mirror self recognition test for a dog. That would involve
Speaker 1: smells rather than reflection, which is a little bit different,
Speaker 1: because the smell would have to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: the smell of something produced by the body, like the
Speaker 1: smell of its own urine or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this raises interesting questions about like what is the
Speaker 1: boundary of the self for something like a dog? Is
Speaker 1: the smell of its own urine in a way itself
Speaker 1: for distinguishable as something that is produced by the body
Speaker 1: but not co extensive with the body? Interesting, Rob, rob
Speaker 1: what's that magic I feel? What's that strange sensation in
Speaker 1: the air? Is that the fairy king of a four
Speaker 1: part series coming down to bless this episode with with,
Speaker 1: with the extended life of going on into yet one
Speaker 1: more part? I think it is. Yes, Um and I
Speaker 1: realized at this point we're we're definitely in the hall
Speaker 1: of Mirrors. Uh, it's it's you know, we're so far
Speaker 1: into the topic we may not be able to determine
Speaker 1: how much further we have to go and how far
Speaker 1: we have in fact come, but we will be back
Speaker 1: for at least one more mirror episode. I know we
Speaker 1: have some more stuff to talk about concerning will metal mirrors.
Speaker 1: For starters, we haven't really uh discussed them at length yet,
Speaker 1: and we also have some more about mirrors in as
Speaker 1: they're as they are used in, or invoked in technological
Speaker 1: metaphors in in some other cultures around the world. So
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot more to discuss and perhaps, uh,
Speaker 1: if there, if you get to us in time, you
Speaker 1: might be able to ask hey, how about this, and
Speaker 1: maybe we can even include it into the next episode.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the time will work perfectly on that,
Speaker 1: but certainly if you're listening to these episodes and you
Speaker 1: have thoughts about your own interactions with mirrors, your pets
Speaker 1: and their interactions with mirrors, cultural ideas concerning mirrors, all
Speaker 1: of it is on the table. Ryan, let us know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking and in the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: how on over to the stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed. That is where you will find our episodes,
Speaker 1: our core episodes, published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have
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Speaker 1: and then on Fridays we do Weird House cinema. That's
Speaker 1: our time to talk about a strange movie, and on
Speaker 1: the weekends we do where we run huge thanks, as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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