Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's your pal Josh. And for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Guessing Works.
Speaker 1: It was one of those great ideas for a topic
Speaker 1: that didn't pan out to have much information on it actually,
Speaker 1: so we just talked a lot about subjective stuff instead,
Speaker 1: and it turned out well, I think in the end.
Speaker 1: If I may say so, I hope you enjoy Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you should know, a production of my Heart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over
Speaker 1: there in the corner. Everybody puts Jerry in a corner,
Speaker 1: but you shouldn't, uh, and this is stuff you should not.
Speaker 1: She's the opposite of baby. Jerry's back. She was back
Speaker 1: from the mall. That's how where she's been. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember we we said that she was at the mall.
Speaker 1: She was buying a how she's doing all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: But she's back now and things are normal again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was at the beach and she's now eating in
Speaker 1: front of me. What I ate about an hour ago?
Speaker 1: Do you want to throw up? Or do you want more?
Speaker 1: I don't it's it's this weird in between. I'm drawn
Speaker 1: to the smell, but I'm also full, so I'm kind
Speaker 1: of like boo, yeah, oh man, what a life? I know?
Speaker 1: Eating Who needs it? Right? Me? I do too? I
Speaker 1: love eating, love it? You know what else? I love? What?
Speaker 1: Really good? Magic? Like illusions? Well where does uh? What
Speaker 1: do you mean? Because that could mean two different things. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, um, so I went you mean,
Speaker 1: and I went to New York recently we saw this show.
Speaker 1: It's called in and of itself. It's a one man
Speaker 1: stage magic I guess you could call it that illusion
Speaker 1: show by a guy named Derek del Guadio. That's how
Speaker 1: you say his last name. I strongly recommend anyone go
Speaker 1: see this show. It's it's um I think they extended
Speaker 1: it through the rest of the year, but it's it's
Speaker 1: like kind of his life story. It told like through
Speaker 1: these different um these different acts, and like just the
Speaker 1: the stuff he's doing is not like, oh man, that
Speaker 1: rabbit came out of nowhere, nothing like that. It's all
Speaker 1: much more psychological than that. But the basis of it
Speaker 1: is that this guy must be just one of the
Speaker 1: better guesters walking around today. He's just good. He's also
Speaker 1: like a card shark. It's just a really neat show.
Speaker 1: It's really original and different. But just to see somebody
Speaker 1: do something to where they probably are guessing, but they're
Speaker 1: doing such an amazing job at it that it just
Speaker 1: appears to be magic. That's one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: in the world to see, Like when he talks to
Speaker 1: people and like think of a number except obviously more
Speaker 1: fun and complex and that. Yes, yeah, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to give any of it away. I don't want
Speaker 1: to give it any bit of it away. Like for
Speaker 1: anybody who's gonna go see it, everyone should go into
Speaker 1: it fresh. But um, but yeah, just just after you
Speaker 1: see it, go back and listen to this episode again
Speaker 1: and you'll be like, oh, yeah, totally now. I think
Speaker 1: the deal a lot of times with that situation is
Speaker 1: powers of suggestion, correct. I don't know. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what this guy's doing or not. No,
Speaker 1: he's not doing like cold readings or something like that
Speaker 1: like John Edwards. No, no, no, nothing like that. But
Speaker 1: powers of suggestion in that if you you can lead
Speaker 1: someone to to think of a certain thing that they
Speaker 1: then guess I guess, so get it didn't even mean that,
Speaker 1: but that kind of dives into what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is guessing in general. Um, there's this whole like
Speaker 1: like science really doesn't have any idea about how we
Speaker 1: make guesses. All we know is that we are capable
Speaker 1: of making guesses, and that we make guesses almost constantly,
Speaker 1: and that like our our brain is basically set up
Speaker 1: to guests, Like our construction of reality is a series
Speaker 1: of guesses, most of which pan out to be right,
Speaker 1: but then can also be terribly wrong, which is what
Speaker 1: optical illusions prove, you know. Yeah, and uh, I found this.
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be more interesting than
Speaker 1: it was initially when I picked this one out, so
Speaker 1: I was a little disappointed. And then we found like
Speaker 1: other supplemental stuff that kind of helped it. But in
Speaker 1: the end it felt a little unwieldy. But I think
Speaker 1: that's just because of the nature of the topic, Like
Speaker 1: there isn't a concise beginning, middle, and end to this
Speaker 1: kind of topic, you know, no, because again science is
Speaker 1: pretty well stumped, like even and sometimes Chuck, if you'll remember,
Speaker 1: these can be our best episodes, like unless the ones
Speaker 1: where there's just like a clear cut, complete, understandable, neat
Speaker 1: explanation ones are great, and then on the other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, like this one, were the ones where
Speaker 1: science is just kind of like maybe this is it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, this could be it. Those are usually
Speaker 1: pretty good too, So this could this one has has potential. Alright,
Speaker 1: that's my that's my estimation. Well, I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting that in our very own house Stuff Works article
Speaker 1: and they started talking about um the in days of
Speaker 1: yore with starting with took took and you know, basically
Speaker 1: up until the point where we could like you know,
Speaker 1: measure things or prove things, like, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of and there's still a lot of guessing going on,
Speaker 1: but like guessing was a daily survival tactic, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's how that's how we learned. Should I go this
Speaker 1: way and fall off a cliff? You know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take a guess? Or should I eat this thing?
Speaker 1: Will it kill me? Or like in the case of
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark, I remember, um, Clark estimated and you
Speaker 1: know they're guesses, and we'll get into different types of
Speaker 1: an estimation is a kind of a guess, even if
Speaker 1: it's informed and well reasoned. In Clark's case, of course,
Speaker 1: he estimated. I think he's only off about forty miles
Speaker 1: when they got to the Pacific. Uh. Oh really, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that. Yeah, he he estimated four thousand, one
Speaker 1: sixty two miles when he's off by forty I mean
Speaker 1: that's remarkable. Yeah, but it wasn't a wild guess. It
Speaker 1: was Clark being a very smart dude who probably took
Speaker 1: copious notes. Not probably, he definitely took copious notes. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I just never really thought about
Speaker 1: guessing back in those days. Could you know you could?
Speaker 1: You could end up a bad guest means the end
Speaker 1: of view, Yes, But if your friends were standing around
Speaker 1: watching you guess that that um lizard over there wasn't poisonous,
Speaker 1: you can just go ahead and eat it raw and
Speaker 1: then you keel over and die, they learned from your
Speaker 1: bad guests taking one for the team very much. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's before the universal edibility test. Man, you were just
Speaker 1: have you been going through the archives or something? No,
Speaker 1: but I wrote that article back then, so that one
Speaker 1: stuck with me because you know, I mean, we're I
Speaker 1: thought you were too. I'm cursed with that new information
Speaker 1: in old information getting squeezed out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: should we get into this I guess, So, I'm not
Speaker 1: I don't mean to do this. I'm sorry what saying
Speaker 1: I guess? Yeah, it's pretty commonplace, but it does kind
Speaker 1: of under underscore just how much we do guess in
Speaker 1: our lives. You know. Yeah, here's all right, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and start it with the brain then, because while
Speaker 1: you're correct in saying that they don't know the the
Speaker 1: pathways necessarily of a guess, um, all different kinds of
Speaker 1: all different parts of the brain, not all the parts,
Speaker 1: but many different parts of the brain are at work,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense when you think about
Speaker 1: what different kinds of guesses can al, whether you're guessing
Speaker 1: someone's age or guessing you know, because that involves like,
Speaker 1: you know, recognition with your eyeballs or a memory of
Speaker 1: someone else who was a certain age who looked like
Speaker 1: that like you're you know, recall, Uh, there's all different
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that are lighting up whenever you're
Speaker 1: guessing something. Yeah, they they think that it's a global,
Speaker 1: a global phenomenon, right, like brain brain a lely global Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly right. So, um, there's like some region of your
Speaker 1: brain that specializes in the particular task at hand. The
Speaker 1: thing you're guessing about, whether it's say, like volume or
Speaker 1: like you said, someone's age. UM, that region of the
Speaker 1: brain that that has to do with say numbers, UM
Speaker 1: would light up. I think it's the um parietal uh
Speaker 1: anterior gyrus or something like that that lights up when
Speaker 1: you're trying to guess someone's age based on how they look.
Speaker 1: But then that that's just one I think right using
Speaker 1: the Wonder Machine night. But that's just one functional part
Speaker 1: of the whole process that the brain is going through.
Speaker 1: They know that it's there's a number of different regions
Speaker 1: that are operating at any given point in time when
Speaker 1: you're making a guess, But they still can't say, well,
Speaker 1: if somebody's guessing this, this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Here's the here's the cascade that's going to go through
Speaker 1: the brain. We haven't reached that point yet. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: think that, um, if you're guessing about a visual object
Speaker 1: or subject, then your frontal lobe and occipital lobe are
Speaker 1: at work. Numerical quantities like how many uh jelly beans
Speaker 1: are in that jar. That's kind of the common thing
Speaker 1: they mentioned that like that still happens. Is that sort
Speaker 1: of thing? Um, you know, who is a jelly bean
Speaker 1: jar guessing champions? My wife really is, yes, longstanding, her
Speaker 1: special reasoning is is outstanding well. Spatial reasoning and new
Speaker 1: miracle quantities are a big part of trying to guess
Speaker 1: the quantity of something into something right And and so
Speaker 1: if you, if your brain is kind of specialized in
Speaker 1: that manner, um, you are probably going to be better
Speaker 1: at it than somebody whose brain is not right. So
Speaker 1: Umi would beat me every time. My spatial reasoning is horrific. Right,
Speaker 1: But um, I'm really good at recognizing faces, so I'm
Speaker 1: probably better at at guessing the someone's age based on
Speaker 1: their face um or possibly how they're feeling based on
Speaker 1: their facial expression than she might be. That's a whole
Speaker 1: like I didn't even think about that being part of guessing.
Speaker 1: But the emotional thing of guessing, uh yeah, like someone's feelings,
Speaker 1: what they're thinking like that, that's a whole different thing
Speaker 1: than guessing jelly beans in a jar, which is different
Speaker 1: than guessing someone's age. It's like all lumped into guessing.
Speaker 1: It's really more varied than I ever considered, right, And
Speaker 1: so with with UM, well, let's talk about the different
Speaker 1: different types of guesses you might make. That. So, I
Speaker 1: think what you just kind of did, Chuck, was you
Speaker 1: divided UM guesses into UM like buckets, the two buckets.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to decide what the buckets would be called though.
Speaker 1: So one bucket would be UM just kind of work,
Speaker 1: working knowledge, and the other would be say, like emotional, right, Like, so,
Speaker 1: how many jelly beans are in a jar? Would that
Speaker 1: be in the working knowledge bucket? What somebody's feeling based
Speaker 1: on your guests, based on say their facial expression, that's
Speaker 1: that's emotional um or or intellectual. Yeah, that's why intellectual
Speaker 1: or emotional buckets. BAM just carved them up. But I
Speaker 1: think those are kind of like the two categories you
Speaker 1: can put guesses into. Even though you can break types
Speaker 1: of guesses down further. Yeah, and uh, breaking them down further,
Speaker 1: you have your wild guesses. This is when you have
Speaker 1: no information, no outside input whatsoever. And you know, you
Speaker 1: often say, this is just a wild guess if I
Speaker 1: had to guess, Yeah, something like that. You're saying here,
Speaker 1: listen to me, I can speak has no basis in
Speaker 1: factor reality or anything like that. Then you have your
Speaker 1: educated guests, which is in the middle, and that's when
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of information. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: military term that I had never heard of called swag,
Speaker 1: which stands for um stuff we all get no scientific uh,
Speaker 1: wild ass guessing okay, which is like a guestimate. But
Speaker 1: it's a military term by all accounts. Uh. Most people
Speaker 1: say it started in Vietnam with General Westmoreland. Um. And
Speaker 1: you will hear military people say swag, and that's when
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a little information. I'm not just
Speaker 1: wild guessing here. This is a ballpark educated guess, right,
Speaker 1: but it's not still less than an estimate. That's when
Speaker 1: we have a lot more information. Yeah, just a lot
Speaker 1: more information. But you're you're pretty familiar also with the
Speaker 1: topic that you're you're guessing at as well. Right. So
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark, I think both of them, Um, we're surveyors.
Speaker 1: So they would have had a lot of training as
Speaker 1: far as you know, judging distance goes. They would have
Speaker 1: had some information to put together. So Clark coming up with,
Speaker 1: you know, with an estimate of how why the continent
Speaker 1: is and just being off by forty miles, like you said,
Speaker 1: that's remarkable, But if you had had one of us
Speaker 1: do it, it would have been a wild guess. So
Speaker 1: it has to do with the training, the expertise really UM,
Speaker 1: and then the amount of information you have. That's that's
Speaker 1: what an estimate is. Yeah, And you may not even
Speaker 1: know that you have information stored away in your brain
Speaker 1: that you're recalling when you're trying to hazard a guess
Speaker 1: on something. You might just be uh, you might think
Speaker 1: it's a wild guess, but you're really kind of picking
Speaker 1: out something that happened in your past maybe, right. Or
Speaker 1: another way to look at it is that UM is intuition,
Speaker 1: which is um. From what I understand, intuition is kind
Speaker 1: of its own category. But if it's most closely related
Speaker 1: to any type of those three guests, as we just mentioned,
Speaker 1: it would be an estimate. And it comes from years
Speaker 1: and years and years of training UM or exposure to
Speaker 1: whatever you're guessing at to the point where your guesses
Speaker 1: don't even seem like guesses. It just seems like for
Speaker 1: knowledge of what you're about to do. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: used to be really really bad at guessing crowd sizes,
Speaker 1: but through our live shows, I've gotten pretty good at
Speaker 1: it because when you go to these theaters, you know
Speaker 1: how many people are in there, and then you stand
Speaker 1: in front of that many people. And if you do
Speaker 1: that enough times, I can now say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: when people when I'll go to a show or something,
Speaker 1: they'll be like, how many people you think this place holds?
Speaker 1: I used to let's say like, I have no idea
Speaker 1: I know, but now you say, you know better eight
Speaker 1: or nine people. Yeah, and you're probably pretty close within
Speaker 1: forty miles. All bad. And that's just because of exposure
Speaker 1: and learning, right, And that actually brings up a really
Speaker 1: good point that you can actually get better at guessing.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that right after this break. How
Speaker 1: about that, Chuck, right? Mm hmmm. Alright, So Chuck, you
Speaker 1: said that, um, that you got better at estimating crowd
Speaker 1: sizes by just performing at Our Lives shows. Right, So
Speaker 1: you were terrible at it before, very bad, but just
Speaker 1: from from exposing yourself to it, going out on stage
Speaker 1: and exposing yourself to crowds that you could judge the
Speaker 1: size of Um, and everybody clapped that guy, yeah, Nelson
Speaker 1: pointed in laughs Portland, Um, you you got better at it.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to especially but probably both, but
Speaker 1: especially intellectual guesses intellectual bucket guesses. Um, you can train
Speaker 1: yourself to get better at it, and part of that
Speaker 1: is making a guess, getting um, pretty much immediate feedback,
Speaker 1: and then learning from that. Yeah, like you're wrong, this
Speaker 1: is what the answer is. It's like anything else exactly.
Speaker 1: Do that enough, you're gonna get better at it. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's this pretty interesting UM, I guess. That was
Speaker 1: interesting little kind of sidetrack that the author of the
Speaker 1: guesses article, Alea hoyt Um, took, and I have to say, no,
Speaker 1: it is Aliyah. It's not Alicia. No, it's Aliyah. There's
Speaker 1: no saying Alicia for not only is the C silent,
Speaker 1: it's not the it's invisible. So Aaliyah hoyt my hats
Speaker 1: off to her because doing supplemental research for this, there
Speaker 1: are not a lot of people who are coming up
Speaker 1: with really substantial stuff about guesses. It's like it's barren.
Speaker 1: It's probably the least amount of research I've ever encountered
Speaker 1: in all of our almost thousand plus episodes. So the
Speaker 1: fact that she put this together, my hats off to her.
Speaker 1: But a sidetrack she takes is to teach the reader,
Speaker 1: how to um get better at guessing a jar full
Speaker 1: of jelly beans? Yeah, well that was exciting, I mean that,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, because always, I mean my method was
Speaker 1: always to pick out a smaller area, like the bottom
Speaker 1: inch of the jar, count as many as I could,
Speaker 1: and estimate that and then multiply that out. That's actually
Speaker 1: a great techniquead. Well, I don't know, I haven't guessed
Speaker 1: jelly beans in a jar since I was probably twelve, right,
Speaker 1: But that was always my method, which has a little
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of method to it, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely not as good as as this one. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so this one it sounds a little more complex than
Speaker 1: than it actually is. But if you say, if you
Speaker 1: look at a jar and it's filled with jelly beans,
Speaker 1: you can say, um, that jar is the volume of
Speaker 1: that jar is say a court Okay, but then you
Speaker 1: kind of want to begin with sure, right, But you
Speaker 1: can learn, right, you can just look around, Like here's
Speaker 1: the point. If you want to get good at guessing
Speaker 1: jelly beans. It just takes a little bit of work.
Speaker 1: Most people would walk up, say a million jelly beans,
Speaker 1: and they're off by like nine thousand. They're like well,
Speaker 1: I'm terrible at guessing jelly beans. I'm going to sleep
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. But if you want
Speaker 1: to get good at guessing at jelly beans, all you
Speaker 1: have to do is poke around, learn a few things,
Speaker 1: and then you can basically apply those to every situation.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you would need to learn
Speaker 1: is how to judge the volume of the container to
Speaker 1: start correct. So that's one part, right, yeah, which you
Speaker 1: know most people would do that that by comparing it
Speaker 1: to like a milk jug or a two leader bottle
Speaker 1: or something like that, right, But in this case, to
Speaker 1: get a really accurate estimate, you would want to know specifically,
Speaker 1: say how many ounces a container held correct. Um. And
Speaker 1: then another thing you would probably do if you started
Speaker 1: researching guessing jelly beans and jar on the internet, um,
Speaker 1: you would you would run across some research that found
Speaker 1: that if you have uh, spherical objects in a jar,
Speaker 1: they typically take up about if you fill the thing up,
Speaker 1: they take typically take up about sixty four of the
Speaker 1: actual volume of the jar. And that's if it's they're
Speaker 1: just randomly dumped. Right. So if you come across a
Speaker 1: jar and you say, um, and it's filled with like
Speaker 1: perfectly round. Um, okay, perfectly round bouncy balls, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you can say, well, those are spherical and they're taking
Speaker 1: up about six of the jar. So all I have
Speaker 1: to do is figure out the um the basically the
Speaker 1: size of each of the ball, right, and then divide
Speaker 1: it by the volume, and then bam, you just guessed
Speaker 1: how many are in there, and you're probably pretty close
Speaker 1: to right. Sure, So this all sounds mind numbing. I've
Speaker 1: got a little, um, a little trickle blood coming out
Speaker 1: of my ear right now. But you can the whole point,
Speaker 1: and you can train yourself to make better guesses, to
Speaker 1: estimate better. That's the whole point. Yeah. And if it's
Speaker 1: a non spherical by the way, like if it's peanuts
Speaker 1: or something like that, or ice cubes, not disgusting circus peanuts.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the that conjures up so many memories. Did
Speaker 1: you like those? Well? I think I might have when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I haven't had one in
Speaker 1: forty years. But I still remember the taste you me
Speaker 1: just had something. She says, they still hold up, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't like him, then I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: like him now. Well, they hold up for you in
Speaker 1: a bad way, right right, yeah, exactly, So I know,
Speaker 1: I know I'm not supposed to yuck. Anyone's young, but yuck.
Speaker 1: So uh, if it's circus peanuts, let's say, um, that
Speaker 1: would be between fifty and of the space, not sixty four. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: what is you mean's method? Did you ask her? She
Speaker 1: says she just kind of knowsh So she's a precock exactly.
Speaker 1: She she shaves her head once a while and lays
Speaker 1: around in a vat of liquid. Wow, that would be see,
Speaker 1: I would that would scare me if that would if
Speaker 1: that was my wife's answer, if she just like kind
Speaker 1: of walked by and said I just know, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be like, well, what else do you just know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: She's kind of unstoppable too. You have no idea how
Speaker 1: many calves we've won at county fairs in the last
Speaker 1: year alone. Our house is overrun with them. Um. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's just guessing volume of a thing and a thing.
Speaker 1: That's an it's intellectual guessing. Yeah, right, But you can
Speaker 1: train yourself to guess better. What's really up for for
Speaker 1: questioning is whether you can train yourself to get better
Speaker 1: at the other bucket of guessing emotional type of guessing
Speaker 1: right where you're walking around and you are interacting with
Speaker 1: other people and you're making judgments about how they're feeling
Speaker 1: right then, about what they're thinking, right then, what their
Speaker 1: motives are. Um, you know, how how well they're actually
Speaker 1: listening to you all of these things right? It's part
Speaker 1: of our interaction with other people. And there's something that
Speaker 1: UM two researchers called X and took great combo that
Speaker 1: back established this kind of field of inquiry in which
Speaker 1: they were trying to get to the bottom of what
Speaker 1: they called empathic accuracy, which is how accurately we can
Speaker 1: we can surmise what someone actually is feeling or thinking
Speaker 1: just from interacting with them. Some people are supposedly good
Speaker 1: at it, some people are not. And from what I saw,
Speaker 1: there's a big kind of push and pull about whether
Speaker 1: it's worth practicing or whether you should just not do
Speaker 1: that at all for the sake of your own sanity
Speaker 1: and just say, if you tell me that you're in
Speaker 1: a good mood, I'm going to take that at face value.
Speaker 1: And if you're actually not, then you're you're covering up
Speaker 1: your feelings for your own reason, and that's that's fine.
Speaker 1: If you want to just keep them to yourself, that's fine.
Speaker 1: If you want to share them, I'm here, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna take what you're saying on face value,
Speaker 1: so Bully for you, that to me is sanity. He's
Speaker 1: like going, how are you really feeling that you can? Uh,
Speaker 1: one can spend a lot of time doing that, so
Speaker 1: so can I share a little bit about myself here?
Speaker 1: I know it's weird, feels gross, but um. For a
Speaker 1: very long time, Chuck, I thought that I was a
Speaker 1: born and bread and path that like I could understand
Speaker 1: what anyone was thinking and feeling, maybe even better than
Speaker 1: they knew how they were thinking and feeling. And I
Speaker 1: finally finally came to the hard truth that I was
Speaker 1: wrong almost all the time. And in figuring this out,
Speaker 1: like this was really jarring, and it took a little
Speaker 1: while for me to like really for this to sink in.
Speaker 1: But once I figured out that I'm actually terrible at
Speaker 1: reading engaging other people's thoughts and feelings, it was one
Speaker 1: of the most liberating things that's ever happened to me
Speaker 1: because I just stopped. I stopped, and I realized how
Speaker 1: much of my life I've been walking around wasting just
Speaker 1: thinking about know what people really think or you know,
Speaker 1: do people really like me? They probably don't, or do they?
Speaker 1: Or what do they mean by that look or whatever?
Speaker 1: And just taking people in life on face value. UM
Speaker 1: is so much. It's just it occupies so much less
Speaker 1: of your mind on any given moment. It's just great.
Speaker 1: That's my prescription. Stop trying to figure out what other
Speaker 1: people are really thinking and feeling. You should have You
Speaker 1: should have just asked me a long time ago. And
Speaker 1: when he told you, I was like, you're terrible at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to listen. You know,
Speaker 1: it took it took a little while, but to walk
Speaker 1: through their own doors. You know what I'm saying? That
Speaker 1: is well put man, You're you're a stoic sage. So
Speaker 1: cognitive distortion is is a phrase you hear pop up
Speaker 1: a lot when it comes to assessing another person's emotions.
Speaker 1: And these are these inaccurate thoughts that you have in
Speaker 1: your brain. Sometimes they leave to negative thinking or encourage
Speaker 1: that I think probably most times is probably the case. UM.
Speaker 1: And then polarized thinking is another bucket, I guess since
Speaker 1: we're bucketing everything today. UM, which is you know, everything
Speaker 1: is great or everything is terrible. And the example they
Speaker 1: give in this in this article is, you know, it's
Speaker 1: simply I mean, it's a little boy reading a girl's
Speaker 1: face that you know she doesn't like me, but that
Speaker 1: that's a kid in the elementary school. You can apply
Speaker 1: this to anyone walking into a room and basically reading
Speaker 1: either the room or reading a person and saying like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like the way that that person
Speaker 1: just looked at me. Um, that's bad, and so I
Speaker 1: don't think they like me. And those are both of
Speaker 1: those things at work, cognitive distortion and polarized thinking, right,
Speaker 1: which which I think polar is thinking is a type
Speaker 1: of cognitive distortion. I think that's the umbrella term for
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Right, Yeah, that makes sense, So
Speaker 1: um yeah, I think this is kind of where you
Speaker 1: get to why a lot of people are terrible at
Speaker 1: guessing or get get their guessing wrong, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes saying what other people are thinking and feeling. Is
Speaker 1: that your guess is, whether you realize it or not,
Speaker 1: are actually colored and come through a lens of your
Speaker 1: past history. Right, So, like if if you were raised
Speaker 1: in a house where people your family members are really
Speaker 1: critical of you and one another. If you see two
Speaker 1: people in a corner like kind of like having a
Speaker 1: quiet conversation but laughing too, you're probably gonna think they're
Speaker 1: laughing at you, even though they may not even be
Speaker 1: paying the least bit of attention to you. But because
Speaker 1: of the history of how you grew up, that's what
Speaker 1: you're gonna guess at, right. Whereas if somebody was raised
Speaker 1: in a house where they were instilled with a lot
Speaker 1: of confidence and like a great sense of humor, that
Speaker 1: person might just think, man, they must be talking about
Speaker 1: something hilarious. I wish I knew what the joke was,
Speaker 1: or they might have so much confidence in sense of
Speaker 1: humor they might even walk up and engage them and say,
Speaker 1: what do you guys laughing at? Right? Huh? And if no, no, nothing,
Speaker 1: never mind, then you may be onto something. Right. But
Speaker 1: there was the some there's this blog post and man,
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember what the site was. I
Speaker 1: apologize sight, but it was basically like stopped trying to
Speaker 1: read other people's minds was the gist of it. And
Speaker 1: they actually used that example, and they went on to say, like,
Speaker 1: even if the person who thinks that that they're laughing
Speaker 1: at them turns out to be right. That's not the
Speaker 1: worst thing that can happen to you. Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Who cares, you know, Like, like some people aren't gonna
Speaker 1: like you, some people will. It doesn't really matter. Like
Speaker 1: if somebody doesn't like you, You've got to have a
Speaker 1: little more self confidence than the let that just completely
Speaker 1: derail your day. Yeah, and you and you have to
Speaker 1: find it within yourself, Yeah, for sure. And some people
Speaker 1: get that through years of therapy. Some people are born
Speaker 1: with it. Some people never achieve it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's you know, even if you are born with I
Speaker 1: think you can lose it from time to time. If
Speaker 1: you're not born with it, you can gain it from
Speaker 1: time to time. But it's not something I think you
Speaker 1: have every moment of every day necessarily. Yeah. Boy, people
Speaker 1: with just too much confidence are so annoying. They really
Speaker 1: are because everyone wants that, you know. I think that's
Speaker 1: why it's annoying. Sure, just like, man, I wish I
Speaker 1: could be that confident about everything. I hate that guy,
Speaker 1: and then you end up in a corner talking to
Speaker 1: somebody else about how much you hate that person with
Speaker 1: so much confidence totally lost on the other person. So
Speaker 1: I have another theory that's not scientific at all. It's
Speaker 1: just my personal theory that when it comes to guessing things,
Speaker 1: your own not well, your past experiences certainly influence it,
Speaker 1: but your own how you are also influences like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like I think a liar is more apt to think
Speaker 1: people are lying to them precisely. Yeah, no, that's absolutely
Speaker 1: I agree. I was gonna say it's absolutely true, but
Speaker 1: I agree with you. Yeah, because who knows. It's just
Speaker 1: a theory, right, but I mean it's it's based it's
Speaker 1: based on some pretty ancient folk wisdom, like that whole
Speaker 1: thing about how um you know, when you're pointing a
Speaker 1: finger at somebody three fingers pointing at you or judge
Speaker 1: not lest you be judged. Like when you think about
Speaker 1: people in that way, you think that they're doing the
Speaker 1: same thing to you, even when they're not. It's your own,
Speaker 1: um hilarious little personal hell yeah, and it's not always that, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that dude's ripping me off. Maybe
Speaker 1: you've been ripped off before and that's where that's coming from.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you've ripped someone off before. But about one
Speaker 1: of the two has happened, I think though, What more,
Speaker 1: what you're what you're talking about is are like core
Speaker 1: core character traits though, like judge, being judgmental, or being
Speaker 1: a liar or um, you know, being a b s
Speaker 1: or something like that. Like when when you do notice that, though,
Speaker 1: What's great is there's so much room for growth when
Speaker 1: you when you realize that that, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I think everybody's judging me because I'm so judgmental. I
Speaker 1: need to work on being judgmental. What's what's almost magical
Speaker 1: is that when you when you realize that and you
Speaker 1: work on not being judgmental, you stop thinking that other
Speaker 1: people are judging you, and your life is just freer. Well,
Speaker 1: there are these uh so I cologists um and all
Speaker 1: over this article that uh Aaliyah just rocked my world
Speaker 1: with that wrote, and one of them was talking about
Speaker 1: these interpretations without evidence. And her advice, which is very
Speaker 1: simple and it seems like a no brainer though, is
Speaker 1: to like maybe just focus on things you know to
Speaker 1: be true and not inventing and surmising, like well what
Speaker 1: if what if they're talking about this and you know
Speaker 1: you're you're just kind of inventing all that? Like if
Speaker 1: you concentrate on what you know to be true, then
Speaker 1: life gets a lot simpler, right, But that's that same
Speaker 1: shrink also pointed out that one of the big problems
Speaker 1: with guessing, and especially guessing incorrectly, is that, um, we
Speaker 1: tend to forget that we're guessing at stuff. We take
Speaker 1: our own guesses as as fact, and since they can
Speaker 1: be so horribly wrong. Um, if you if you're guessing
Speaker 1: that other people are judging you even when they're not, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna basically walk around feeling judged all the time
Speaker 1: because you think that that's absolutely accurate when it's when
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily fascinating. All right, you want to take
Speaker 1: a break. I was just gonna say the same thing.
Speaker 1: All right, Well we'll take a break and we are
Speaker 1: going to come back talk a little bit about guessing
Speaker 1: on tests, how to win it rock paper scissors and
Speaker 1: apes and guessing. M h. All right, So we we've
Speaker 1: talked in esoteric terms about guessing so far. But I
Speaker 1: think what everyone really wants to know is how do
Speaker 1: I pass a multiple choice test? Right? Because that's another
Speaker 1: kind of guessing. Um, it's you know, guessing runs the
Speaker 1: gamut uh, from emotional to stuff like this. There or
Speaker 1: have been different theories over the years, like well, first
Speaker 1: of all, back in the day and I guess until
Speaker 1: semi recently, for like the S A T and A
Speaker 1: C T and other standardized tests, you would be penalized
Speaker 1: for an incorrect guess. I don't remember that, do you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you guess something wrong, it's like a quarter point deduction.
Speaker 1: I think was the deal. Oh, it sounds familiar. I
Speaker 1: think I may have blocked it out. But they don't
Speaker 1: do that anymore. So now they say guest guest guests
Speaker 1: if you don't know the answer, um, and you know
Speaker 1: they're there. That has run the gamut from always guests
Speaker 1: C because it's in the middle to uh, this one person.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily agree with this one. But they say,
Speaker 1: just choose the same letter every time, like always guess B,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be right one out of every five
Speaker 1: times if it's A B, C, D right. Which makes
Speaker 1: sense though, I mean, because if you jump around, you
Speaker 1: lessen your chances every time, whereas if you use the
Speaker 1: same one you have the same chances of getting it
Speaker 1: right every time. Yeah. Um, but this guy wrote a
Speaker 1: he actually did a little studying um, Paula pound Stone.
Speaker 1: That wasn't his name, was it. It was William pound Stone,
Speaker 1: her brother. Yeah, and he did actual research on He
Speaker 1: studied tests and did a statistical analysis of one hundred
Speaker 1: different tests ranging from middle school, high school, college, professional exams,
Speaker 1: driver's tests, firefighters, radio operators. He studied all kinds of
Speaker 1: tests and he has four what he calls four ways
Speaker 1: to outsmart to multiple choice tests, and a couple of
Speaker 1: these make a lot of sense to me. The first one,
Speaker 1: he said, is to ignore conventional wisdom because you kind
Speaker 1: of always have heard teachers say like avoid answers that
Speaker 1: say never, always or none, So like all of the
Speaker 1: above or none of the above, don't choose those, And
Speaker 1: he found the opposite to be true. Yeah, he found
Speaker 1: that none of the above or all of the above
Speaker 1: are correct of the time. Him. Yeah, So if that's
Speaker 1: offered up as an option, and you have, first of all,
Speaker 1: we should couch this with always try and you know,
Speaker 1: deduce the answer with intelligence, well yeah, pound Stone says,
Speaker 1: there's nothing None of this is meant to replace knowledge
Speaker 1: of your subject, and you get knowledge of your subject
Speaker 1: by studying ahead of time. But he's saying, if you're
Speaker 1: facing a question on a multiple choice test and you
Speaker 1: have no idea what the answer is you there's some
Speaker 1: techniques you can choose to to to increase the likelihood
Speaker 1: that your guests will be right. Right, So all the
Speaker 1: above or none of the above, if you really have
Speaker 1: no idea about that, I would I would say pick
Speaker 1: that one. Um. That's weird though, because later on he
Speaker 1: says he says so first he says, ignore conventional wisdom,
Speaker 1: but then later on the one piece of conventional wisdom
Speaker 1: I've always heard, um he says, is actually true. That
Speaker 1: is that you want to choose the longest answer on
Speaker 1: any multiple choice test, right, Because if if you are
Speaker 1: saying something's true, most of the time you have to
Speaker 1: add qualifying language to make it absolutely true, because you
Speaker 1: don't want somebody come back and be like, well, that's
Speaker 1: actually not quite true. So when you start adding qualifying
Speaker 1: language into an answer, it gets longer than the other ones,
Speaker 1: and the the test writers probably not going to go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of making the wrong answers similarly long.
Speaker 1: So the longest answer is very frequently the correct answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that one was a really good piece of advice.
Speaker 1: That's the one I always heard. That's really the only
Speaker 1: one I've ever known. Really, did you remember scantron sheets? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you ever? Were you ever so recklessly wild that
Speaker 1: you like, made a Christmas tree out of a test?
Speaker 1: Did you ever have the gall to do that? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think never did bad because there are kids that
Speaker 1: listen to this. But I had to take a test
Speaker 1: one time that was not for school, but it was
Speaker 1: something I didn't want to do. I won't get into
Speaker 1: the details, but I made a big snake and it
Speaker 1: was bad. And I looked back and I'm ashamed of it.
Speaker 1: I made a mockery of their process. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't that kind of kid. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: I was generally a good kid and a good student.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised to hear this, I know, but it sticks.
Speaker 1: It's I feel so bad. It's still really stands out
Speaker 1: in my mind. Is what a jerk move that was
Speaker 1: on my part. I'm not only surprised, though, Chuck, I'm
Speaker 1: a little delighted. Good a outed myself. Um alright, So
Speaker 1: one of the other pieces of advice from Dr pound Stone, Doctor,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's no doctor. He did write a book, though,
Speaker 1: it's called Rock Breaks Scissors colon. Why does everything you
Speaker 1: have to have a colon? Now it makes it smarter?
Speaker 1: Rock Breaks Scissors Colin a practical guide outguessing and outwitting
Speaker 1: almost everybody. One of his other ones is to look
Speaker 1: at the surrounding answers because he's found the correct answer.
Speaker 1: Choices are rarely repeated consecutively, so you rarely get two
Speaker 1: b s in a row as the answer. So if
Speaker 1: you definitely know the answer in front of it and
Speaker 1: the answer behind it, then it's probably not one of
Speaker 1: those two. So if you've you've just whittled down your
Speaker 1: options yep. Advice No, not not bad at all. What else? Um?
Speaker 1: And the last one he's got eliminate the outliers. If
Speaker 1: there's anything that that seems like it doesn't really fit
Speaker 1: with the rest of the stuff, you can automatically get
Speaker 1: rid of that. And then conversely, if there's anything if
Speaker 1: there are two answers that seem extremely close, they probably
Speaker 1: can be gotten rid of as well, because it's the
Speaker 1: same thing basically, So if you have say five, five
Speaker 1: potential answers, and one of them doesn't fit with the
Speaker 1: other four, get rid of that. Two of them are similar.
Speaker 1: Get rid of those two. You're down to two. You
Speaker 1: got a chance of getting at right. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: the example they used in here was pretty fascinating because
Speaker 1: they didn't even use the question sen or give the
Speaker 1: question on this s a T practice test. They just
Speaker 1: give the answer for A, B, C, D haphazard, uh
Speaker 1: is too radical, inherent is to controversial, improvises to startling,
Speaker 1: methodical is the revolutionary derivative is to gradual. And if
Speaker 1: you just look at the right hand side, you have radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary,
Speaker 1: and gradual, and obviously gradual stands out is just being
Speaker 1: different than those other words. Right, radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary,
Speaker 1: gradual doesn't makes sense, right, So that makes I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really a good piece of advice. And then if
Speaker 1: you look on the left hand side for A and C,
Speaker 1: haphazard and improvised are really close. So he says you
Speaker 1: should eliminate those two as well. Yea, I wish I
Speaker 1: would have had this kind of advice for the S
Speaker 1: A T. Well, I'll tell you what. That's an actual
Speaker 1: s A T set of answers. So if you ever
Speaker 1: run into haphazard, radical, inherent, controversial, improvised, startling, methodical revolutionary
Speaker 1: and derivative gradual. You want to go with the methodical revolutionary,
Speaker 1: and we just got you into college. You ever wanted
Speaker 1: to take the s A T again? Like? Now, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's funny. I really don't. I've never wanted to. I was.
Speaker 1: I've been glad since the moment I finished that test
Speaker 1: that I was done. I only took it twice. I
Speaker 1: took it once and I was like, good enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I took it twice. I did not score very well
Speaker 1: the first time, and I scored pretty well the second time,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't want to know which
Speaker 1: one is the real me, I said, So I'm done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I scored blandly the first time, and I was like,
Speaker 1: that's fine, that's fine, that's fine. I'll get by on
Speaker 1: my my wits and real life skills. Look at you.
Speaker 1: You've done great. I've done okay. Um, so you want
Speaker 1: to talk about rock paper scissors a little bit? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I thought this was awesome. Our friends over at motherboard
Speaker 1: and we can say that because we used to have
Speaker 1: a short lived call him on motherboard from vice yep um.
Speaker 1: They have a German outfit called appropriately Motherboard Germany. And
Speaker 1: they ran a post um called win at Rock paper
Speaker 1: Scissors every Time with math colon what's with the colon's
Speaker 1: And they basically got into how using game theory, you
Speaker 1: can win at rock paper scissors basically all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did, uh, or they didn't do the research, but
Speaker 1: they got together with some researchers at the University of
Speaker 1: hang Zoo in China, and um, they got three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixties students to pair up and play three hundred
Speaker 1: rounds each of rock paper scissors. Uh. And then they
Speaker 1: tracked that please please let us stop, and they said, no,
Speaker 1: this is communist China. Do it again again. Uh. So
Speaker 1: they charted all those out and then summarized it with
Speaker 1: some strategies. I don't know if this would you would
Speaker 1: win every time? No, I mean there's always like the
Speaker 1: what they call in rock paper says, there's the October
Speaker 1: surprise where somebody just pulls something out of nowhere. Well,
Speaker 1: so I mean a kid dynamite, right, Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: off shoots. Remember kids that would do those? Oh really yeah,
Speaker 1: some interesting people. Yeah, they would add other other weapons. Basically, well,
Speaker 1: the the um this the Motherboard article talks about UM,
Speaker 1: there's this other guy who came up with, um, a
Speaker 1: whole different variation of it. That's like five or twenty
Speaker 1: six different different possible ones. I would never remember all
Speaker 1: of them, No, how could you? But at least one
Speaker 1: guy does. No one can remember things, yeah right, but
Speaker 1: so so okay, there's a few things. And this this
Speaker 1: falls in line with learning how to get better at guessing, um,
Speaker 1: how many jelly beans are in a jar. If you
Speaker 1: arm yourself with a little bit of fore knowledge, you
Speaker 1: can better guess at what your opponent's gonna come at you.
Speaker 1: Within a game of rock paper scissors. Starting with that,
Speaker 1: men tend to open a game with rock. Of course
Speaker 1: they do. Yeah, that's such a man thing, rock smash,
Speaker 1: you know, right, So if you're if your opponent as
Speaker 1: a man, um and there's a pretty good chance they're
Speaker 1: going to come out with rock the first time, go paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although they do say statistically the opening uh scissors is
Speaker 1: the one that will win you the most games. But
Speaker 1: I guess that's if you're not playing a man. I
Speaker 1: guess they kind of counteract themselves or contradict themselves statistically.
Speaker 1: More women play rock paper scissors, I guess is that true.
Speaker 1: Here's what I thought. I don't think. So here's one.
Speaker 1: I've been making a lot of this stuff up in
Speaker 1: this episode. Um, here's here's one that I thought was
Speaker 1: kind of funny. Basically, this is like the Babe Ruth move,
Speaker 1: say what you're going to pick before the game, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick scissors next, and then the persons like,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna pick scissors, but you just psyched them out.
Speaker 1: And when you throw scissors, baby, they're gonna be blown
Speaker 1: away because they threw paper and they thought you were
Speaker 1: gonna throw rocky. It's like that the Princess Bride. And
Speaker 1: what part was that with the man sitting at the
Speaker 1: place talking about the poison drink? Oh yeah, yeah, remember
Speaker 1: like trying to get the other guy to drink the
Speaker 1: poison drink? I wish Yeah, he was awesome. Uh inconceivable?
Speaker 1: What is another strategy? Um to counter attacks? So if
Speaker 1: you played scissors and your opponent plays rock on the
Speaker 1: first move, uh, and they win, obviously the chance that
Speaker 1: they h they have confidence now in that move, so
Speaker 1: you might be able to guess that they will play
Speaker 1: rock again because the chances are pretty high that they
Speaker 1: will do. So, then you anticipate that play paper. So
Speaker 1: basically it says, play the option that wasn't played in
Speaker 1: the previous round. Right, And you can also mirror um
Speaker 1: your opponent. Right, So if you just one around, play
Speaker 1: what your opponent just played, because they probably are thinking
Speaker 1: that you're going to play with the same gesture that
Speaker 1: you won with a second ago, really throws them off.
Speaker 1: So the idea is they're probably going to play the
Speaker 1: same thing that they just won with and if you
Speaker 1: one don't do that, and that'll frustrate them to that's
Speaker 1: the rock paper scissors version of why you're hitting yourself.
Speaker 1: If you get into that thing when you're you both
Speaker 1: throw rock, and you throw rock again, you both throw
Speaker 1: a rock and you keep that's when the psychological warfare starts,
Speaker 1: like who's gonna break first and go with paper and
Speaker 1: then ideally you go with scissors and you have thus
Speaker 1: outsmarted your opponent. Right. So interesting, So we were talking, Um,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that we were going to talk about apes, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand this, so maybe you can help me.
Speaker 1: I don't know that um that science fully understands it.
Speaker 1: But basically so so let me give you an example here. Okay,
Speaker 1: we were talking about how the brain. They're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what regions of the brain are activated to
Speaker 1: form like this cascade of thought that results in a guess. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things I ran across was one theory
Speaker 1: of how we guess what other people are going to
Speaker 1: do UM is through mirror neurons, where if we see
Speaker 1: somebody doing something, our mirror neurons are activated and it
Speaker 1: puts us in a mind of how we feel when
Speaker 1: we're doing something, and we use that past experience and
Speaker 1: that current sensation of Like the example I ran across
Speaker 1: with somebody grabbing an apple to guess what the person
Speaker 1: is going to do next. Right, So you would say, um, well,
Speaker 1: I know most times when I grab an apple, I
Speaker 1: take a bye it out of it because I'm usually hungry.
Speaker 1: When I grab an apple, that's after I rub it
Speaker 1: on my shirt to give it a nice shine. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's just showboating. If you're gonna if you guess
Speaker 1: the person is going to rub it on their shirt
Speaker 1: first before taking a bite, that's showing off. But that's
Speaker 1: so your mirror neurons are the part of your brain
Speaker 1: that's triggered that that um that that sets that off right.
Speaker 1: That gives you that the basis the foundation for making
Speaker 1: a guess of what the person is going to do next.
Speaker 1: And then it gets run through again that lens of
Speaker 1: your past experience, your history, everything from how you were
Speaker 1: raised to what you do with apples, to what you've
Speaker 1: seen other people do with apples, and you come up
Speaker 1: with a short list of possibilities of what the person
Speaker 1: is going to do with that apple, and it includes
Speaker 1: rubbating out on their shirt, taking a bite, putting it
Speaker 1: away in a cupboard, throwing it at a wall. And
Speaker 1: then you're going to pare down based on what you
Speaker 1: know about that person, like is that person neat freak?
Speaker 1: If so, they're probably going to put that apple away
Speaker 1: in a cupboard, which who does that except for neat freaks?
Speaker 1: And you may be right at at your guess, right, well,
Speaker 1: they're definitely not wall throwers at least right right, because
Speaker 1: yeah so if and that's that's how you that's how
Speaker 1: Apparently that's one theory for how we make guesses, starting
Speaker 1: from brain based, going through personal history and then making
Speaker 1: the guests. And what some research found was that the
Speaker 1: ultimately what we're doing here is called theory of mind
Speaker 1: right where we are have a capability of bestowing the
Speaker 1: idea that other people have thoughts and feelings on other people,
Speaker 1: right that we it's so common to us that we
Speaker 1: take it for granted that we can attribute mental states
Speaker 1: to other people. But that's that's a pretty significant thing.
Speaker 1: And for a very long time researchers thought that just
Speaker 1: humans were capable of of that. But they found out
Speaker 1: that no, actually some apes at the very least just
Speaker 1: apes um and do the same thing. They can attribute
Speaker 1: mental states like thoughts and feelings and emotions to other
Speaker 1: apes UM. And that's that shows like a higher form
Speaker 1: of reasoning. That was basically the gist of it. That
Speaker 1: makes sense, And they found that true in chimpanzees, bonobo's
Speaker 1: and orangutangs. H. That's pretty neat, it is, and one
Speaker 1: of them so sa UM. Sasha Barren Cohen, his cousin
Speaker 1: Simon Barren Cohen is one of the leaders in UM
Speaker 1: in theory of mind. Yeah, we've talked about him before,
Speaker 1: I remember, but UM. One of the one of the
Speaker 1: big areas that it like influences is autism. UM that
Speaker 1: that people with autism tend to have more difficulty attributing
Speaker 1: mental states and theory of mind to other people than
Speaker 1: people who don't have autism. Right, And but one of
Speaker 1: the one of the ways that they find this out,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the ways that they detect
Speaker 1: autism and young kids is by attributing false beliefs to
Speaker 1: other people. This is like an early part of human development.
Speaker 1: And apparently apes are good at it too. Where you
Speaker 1: are an observer, right, and you're watching a scene and
Speaker 1: there's a little boy named Tommy, and Tommy comes in
Speaker 1: the room and he grabs the three Musketeers off of
Speaker 1: the kitchen counter, and he walks over to a chest
Speaker 1: of drawers and he puts it in one of the
Speaker 1: drawers and walks out of the room. Well, Sally comes in,
Speaker 1: and the narrator says, Sally is really hungry for three musketeers.
Speaker 1: She knows it was last on the table. Where is
Speaker 1: she going to look for the three Musketeers? And people
Speaker 1: with um with theory of mine, who are able to
Speaker 1: attribute false beliefs to other people will say, well, Sally
Speaker 1: is gonna go look on the table even though it's
Speaker 1: not there any longer, because Tommy put it in the drawer.
Speaker 1: You can know that Sally can believe something that's no
Speaker 1: longer correct if you have trouble with theory of mind,
Speaker 1: and specifically if you're testing for autism, um that child,
Speaker 1: a child with autism might say, well, Sally's gonna go
Speaker 1: look in the drawer, because that's where it is. They
Speaker 1: have trouble attributing false beliefs to people. What's true is
Speaker 1: true and everybody would know that. And that's one way
Speaker 1: that they test for autism. And it has to do
Speaker 1: a theory of mine. Interesting, isn't it. And it has
Speaker 1: to do with guessing. It all has to do with guessing. Man,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Well, just that Tommy should uh
Speaker 1: not be so uh touchy? Well, yeah, and like share
Speaker 1: the three Musketeers, Yeah, you go around. Do you know
Speaker 1: why three Musketeers are called that? I have no idea,
Speaker 1: my friend. It used to be a Neopolitan candy that
Speaker 1: came in three different pieces, chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, and
Speaker 1: they just went with chocolate after a while and kept
Speaker 1: the name because why not. Yeah. Interesting, Well, that's it
Speaker 1: about three Musketeers for today. And hey, Chuck, before we
Speaker 1: go to listener mail, I want to give a huge
Speaker 1: congratulations from us to Stephen and Jane, our buddies, the Bars,
Speaker 1: on the birth of their firstborn child. Yeah, how about that.
Speaker 1: Congratulations you guys. Good looking baby too. Yeah? Is they're
Speaker 1: not all good looking? No, No, it's true, especially like
Speaker 1: right after birth. And because they're New Yorkers, they walked
Speaker 1: home from the hospital. Like, how great is that they
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they didn't take the subway, but what you do?
Speaker 1: It is they are pretty New York. It's awesome. But congratulations.
Speaker 1: It's one congratulations Bars. Okay, well, since we said congratulations Bars,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this one was a
Speaker 1: little long, but it's about registering to vote in Texas.
Speaker 1: You got an email for Monica and her story goes
Speaker 1: as such, Uh, two thousand thirteen to move from Alabama
Speaker 1: to Texas. Had a really horrific time trying to register
Speaker 1: to vote where I went to the county clerk's office.
Speaker 1: I looked online to check what I needed, downloaded the
Speaker 1: application so I could have filled out in advance. It
Speaker 1: took my Alabama driver's license, my lease, my birth certificate,
Speaker 1: and because I'm divorced, my divorce decree stipulating my legal
Speaker 1: name change. You'd probably think that would be else you needed,
Speaker 1: right right, no. No. Once I got there, I was
Speaker 1: told that the lease was not sufficient to prove residency
Speaker 1: and that I would need to bring two pieces of
Speaker 1: official mail, like utility bill, tax bill. So I leave
Speaker 1: after spending the better part of a day waiting in
Speaker 1: line waiting UH for my power and gas bill to
Speaker 1: come in order to add the other documents. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, with all of the documents in hand,
Speaker 1: I took another day off work went back to try again.
Speaker 1: This time, the clerk looks over the divorce decree and
Speaker 1: notices my name change wasn't to go back to my
Speaker 1: maiden name. This was a name change that was ordered
Speaker 1: by a court in Alabama and explicitly spelled out in
Speaker 1: a notarized document that the clerk was disputing its validity.
Speaker 1: When I asked what the problem was, he said, well,
Speaker 1: that's in Alabama. If you want to that to be
Speaker 1: your official name in Texas, you have to go through
Speaker 1: the courts. UH, have a a draw at noon in
Speaker 1: the center of town with a judge, a shootout. What's
Speaker 1: that called a shot? A quick draw? Now, he said,
Speaker 1: you'll have to go through the courts and have it
Speaker 1: declared here in Texas. After literally blinking at him silently
Speaker 1: with my mouth agape for a moment, I said, you're
Speaker 1: telling me that the divorce in Alabama is a valid
Speaker 1: because it was judicated in Alabama, that I am going
Speaker 1: to have to go through the whole process of getting
Speaker 1: a divorce again for it to be official in Texas.
Speaker 1: That correct. His reply was, well, when you put it
Speaker 1: that way, it sounds silly, but yes, though. I demanded
Speaker 1: to speak with a supervisor. Clark got the supervisor, who
Speaker 1: looked over everything and asked why I didn't just go
Speaker 1: back to my maiden name, which I replied, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what I changed my name to. You have the
Speaker 1: official document, signed by a judge and notarized, and this
Speaker 1: should be all you need because of the Constitution of
Speaker 1: the United States that all judicial rulings and contracts that
Speaker 1: are valid one state are valid in every state. At
Speaker 1: that point, the clerk walked off. The supervisor said, okay,
Speaker 1: gave my stuff to another clerk who simply smiled to
Speaker 1: enter my application and took my check, uh, pointing me
Speaker 1: toward the desk where I could get my picture taken. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then she closes by saying, imagine how this would
Speaker 1: have gone. I would have been an hourly worker, had
Speaker 1: less of an understanding boss and not known about the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of the constitution, or didn't have access
Speaker 1: to all these documents. Chances are I would have been
Speaker 1: disenfranchised driving around with an expired license. These laws are
Speaker 1: absolutely created to suppress voter registration and participation, and they
Speaker 1: work spectacularly well man, And that is Monica's story. Thanks Monica,
Speaker 1: uh and welcome to Texas too. By the way, Yeah Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this and
Speaker 1: tell us a real life adventure that has something to
Speaker 1: do with one of our episodes, we want to hear
Speaker 1: about it, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh
Speaker 1: Um Clark and at s y s K podcast on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Ran on Facebook or at Facebook dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email the
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us at at home on the web. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is
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