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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to venture into the vault, this time for an

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Speaker 1: episode from August of This was an episode that I

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Speaker 1: really enjoyed where we got to talk about some of

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Speaker 1: the weirder grim fairy tales if I recall, Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: just like, how counterintuitive does a narrative need to be

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Speaker 1: to really work as a myth or a fairy tale?

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Speaker 1: And then at what point did it does it become

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Speaker 1: too convoluted to really have any staying power in the

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Speaker 1: in our zide geist. Uh? Yeah, it was a really

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Speaker 1: fun discussion. Now. I remember after this episode, I really

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Speaker 1: really wanted us to get in our T shirt store

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Speaker 1: online to get like a mock up of a cover

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Speaker 1: for what would be basically Walt Disney's The Donkey Cabbage Is. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know what would that look like as a Disney poster?

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Speaker 1: And we never got to make that happen. But hey,

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Speaker 1: if you're an artist out there, especially if you're in

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Speaker 1: I don't know, ooster design or whatever, will you make

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Speaker 1: us a Walt Disney's The Donkey Cabbage Is poster or

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Speaker 1: VHS box cover. Oh yeah, and by the way, we

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Speaker 1: do love listener submitted art. If you're ever inspired to

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Speaker 1: create art based in an episode or a vault episode

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Speaker 1: that you hear, or if you're inspired to do so

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Speaker 1: based on an episode of Invention, feel free to send

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Speaker 1: it in. If it all possible, we'll use it on

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Speaker 1: like a future Listener mail episode. You know it's the

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Speaker 1: landing page art. Yeah, we can't, We can't pay you,

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Speaker 1: but you'll get all the credit in the Listener Mail episode. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's venture once more into the vault.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: This might be kind of a strange question, but if

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Speaker 1: I forced you to tell me the whole story Cinderella

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Speaker 1: on Command, do you think you could tell me that

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Speaker 1: folk tale? All right, it's not one of my favorite

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Speaker 1: folk tales, but I believe it goes something like this,

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Speaker 1: poor lady puts on a magic shoe and becomes a

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Speaker 1: rich lady. Uh, the end you have? You have missed

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Speaker 1: some key elements, but I bet you could do it.

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Speaker 1: Come on you you know the story of Cinderella. Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: so there's some magic mice in there that that talk

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Speaker 1: and have engaged in some some comic mischief with a cat. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's an evil stepmother. Uh. They're evil step sisters. And

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Speaker 1: I believe in the more uh, you know, classic versions

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Speaker 1: of the tale, the non Disney versions, there's a little

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Speaker 1: bit of like nasty uh torture revenge at the end. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of foot cutting and stuff like that

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Speaker 1: in the in the classic versions, as told by like

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Speaker 1: the brothers Grim and Charles Perrault. Uh. These old classic

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Speaker 1: folk tales that were collected hundreds of years ago often

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Speaker 1: had very strong, bloody, uh sadistic elements to them, but

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Speaker 1: they're also intensely memorable. Yeah. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: it's you know, you get down to its roots. I

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Speaker 1: feel like it's a deeply unpleasant story. And then even

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Speaker 1: in the Disney version, like Nobody Nobody turns into a dragon.

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Speaker 1: There are no monsters. There's you know a little bit

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Speaker 1: of magic, but it's it has it has a lot

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Speaker 1: to compete with with when it comes to other like

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Speaker 1: major uh you know, you know tent poles fairy tales. Well, Robert,

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Speaker 1: you are a spoil sport for my examples today. Uh,

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Speaker 1: come on, you you know the story of Cinderella. You

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Speaker 1: definitely know the story of Rapunzel. That's got some good

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Speaker 1: eye gouging and all kinds of hard nous h. But

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Speaker 1: what I bet you don't know is the story of

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Speaker 1: the donkey cabbage is a k a. The Donkey Lettuce.

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Speaker 1: This is true. I was not familiar with this tale

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Speaker 1: prior to this recording. Also a story recounted by the

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Speaker 1: brothers grim. It's a classic folk tale that that has

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Speaker 1: been put into these collections of folk tales, and I

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Speaker 1: think maybe I'm going to do the horrible, horrible act

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Speaker 1: of trying to tell it from memory. Okay, stop me

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Speaker 1: if this is getting on horble, Okay, Donkey cabbages. So

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Speaker 1: you've got a young huntsman. He goes out one day

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Speaker 1: into the forest and he comes across an old crone

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Speaker 1: in the forest, and the old crone is begging for alms.

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Speaker 1: So he takes pity on her and he gives her

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Speaker 1: what he can afford. And she likes this. She's like, Wow,

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Speaker 1: you took pity on me. So I'm gonna give you

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Speaker 1: some advice. Up ahead in the forest, you're gonna come

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Speaker 1: across a tree that has nine birds in it, and

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Speaker 1: those birds are gonna be tearing at a cloak. Now,

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Speaker 1: what you need to do is shoot those birds, and

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Speaker 1: then one of them will fall dead, and you need

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Speaker 1: to take its heart out and eat it. And when

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Speaker 1: you eat the heart, every time, every time you wake up,

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Speaker 1: after you eat that bird's heart, you will have a

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Speaker 1: piece of gold under your pillow. And also hang onto

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Speaker 1: that cloak, because by putting it on, you can wish

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Speaker 1: yourself into any place and magically appear there. So the

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Speaker 1: young huntsman walks a little bit further into the forest.

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Speaker 1: Sure enough, he comes across the birds. He shoots into

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Speaker 1: the flock of birds, one of them falls dead. He

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Speaker 1: takes the cloak from the birds, and he cuts the

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Speaker 1: heart out of the dead bird and he eats it.

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Speaker 1: So then he goes home. He goes to sleep. Next day.

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Speaker 1: Sure enough, there's gold under his pillow, and so he

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Speaker 1: waits a while accumulating the wealth, right the sleep wealth,

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Speaker 1: until he's got a good collection of gold. And now

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Speaker 1: he thinks time to go explore the world. Right, I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm young, I've got a magic transportation cloak, and I've

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Speaker 1: got gold under my pillow every night. So he goes

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Speaker 1: roman all over the place and eventually ends up at

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Speaker 1: a castle. At the castle, he sees another ugly old Crone,

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Speaker 1: but not the original crone. This is a different crone

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Speaker 1: who is in fact a witch. And he sees a

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Speaker 1: beautiful young woman, and so he asks to be led

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Speaker 1: into the castle where there is a witch who knows

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Speaker 1: about his magical items and wants to take them. And

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Speaker 1: so the witch gets her beautiful young daughter to seduce

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Speaker 1: the huntsman so that they can steal his magical items.

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Speaker 1: And so, first of all, the young daughter gets him

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Speaker 1: to drink and poisonous draft that the witch has created

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Speaker 1: that will cause him to vomit up the bird heart

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Speaker 1: that he ate. And so she gets him to drink

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Speaker 1: that he vomits up the bird heart. She takes it

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Speaker 1: and she eats it, so now she can get the

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Speaker 1: Now she can get the gold under the pillow. Second thing,

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Speaker 1: the young the young beautiful daughter takes him up on

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Speaker 1: the mountains one day by saying, oh, I wish you

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Speaker 1: could use that cloak of transportation to take me where

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Speaker 1: we can gather some gyms up in the mountains, so

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Speaker 1: they travel there together with the use of the magic cloak,

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Speaker 1: and then while he is drowsy on the mountain, she

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Speaker 1: steals the cloak from him and leaves him there. He

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Speaker 1: comes across some giants on the mountain, and the giants

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Speaker 1: they discussed whether or not they should kill him, but

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Speaker 1: eventually they decide, now we'll just leave him here because

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Speaker 1: eventually the clouds will carry him away. So the young

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Speaker 1: huntsman gets carried away by the clouds. He ends up

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Speaker 1: getting deposited in the field of cabbage is. He's hungry

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Speaker 1: and so he eats some of the cabbage. This cabbage

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Speaker 1: transforms him into a donkey. He doesn't really like being

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Speaker 1: transformed into a donkey, but he eats some other cabbin

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Speaker 1: from a nearby field and transforms back into a human.

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Speaker 1: He realizes that each of these fields grows cabbage. One

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Speaker 1: type of cabbage transforms people into donkeys, the other type

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Speaker 1: transforms donkeys into people. So he takes cabbages of both

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Speaker 1: kinds and he goes back to the castle. He goes

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Speaker 1: to the old witch and tricks her into eating some

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Speaker 1: of the bad cabbage that turns you into a donkey.

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Speaker 1: The old witch turns into a donkey. He also accidentally

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Speaker 1: tricks the maid servant and the young daughter who are

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Speaker 1: at the castle also into eating the donkey cabbage, and

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Speaker 1: they turn into donkeys. Then he takes the donkeys to

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Speaker 1: a miller and he tells the miller to basically tells

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Speaker 1: them to mistreat the old donkey and to be nicer

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Speaker 1: to the young donkeys. The miller comes back to him

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Speaker 1: a little while after that and says, well, your old

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Speaker 1: donkey died, and the other two they're not going to

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Speaker 1: hang on much longer. But then the huntsman he relents

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Speaker 1: from his revenge and he says, you know what, I'll

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Speaker 1: transform those donkeys back into people. So he gives them

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Speaker 1: the good cabbage that transformed back into humans, and then

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Speaker 1: the the which his daughter and he get married and

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Speaker 1: they live happily ever after. Well that is quite a story, Joe.

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Speaker 1: If it were, I would say it was. It would

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Speaker 1: be pretty great if it were. If this was a

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Speaker 1: summary of kind of like a freewheeling like randomly generated

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Speaker 1: like dungeons and dragons in a series of encounters, you know,

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Speaker 1: because it has that kind of vibe to it, Like

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Speaker 1: there's just kind of a seeming randomness to it. The magic,

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Speaker 1: it feels convoluted, the characters are confusing. The moral message

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Speaker 1: of the piece is uh is equally lost on me.

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Speaker 1: Um now, I certainly. Well it's sort of a weird

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Speaker 1: revenge story. Yeah, but it it really takes this time

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Speaker 1: getting there. It's kind of it does kind of feel

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Speaker 1: like a winding Goat trail to nowhere. Uh, it's shaggy

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Speaker 1: dog story. Yeah. But but at the same time, it

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Speaker 1: does remind me of some of I mean, I've had

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Speaker 1: this experience with other folk tales before, where you start

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Speaker 1: reading it and it seems to be kind of going

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Speaker 1: in circles and it's making nonsensical choices. But then I

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Speaker 1: often end up reminding myself, well, I'm not encountering this

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Speaker 1: story in its original language. I am not a part

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Speaker 1: of the culture that that it was the intended. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, listener to the to the tale. Like I've

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Speaker 1: had a similar situation watching some of the old Russo

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Speaker 1: Finish fairytale epics. Oh, like Jack Frost, the one they

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Speaker 1: did on Mystery Science Theater three thousand, which is just

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Speaker 1: the best. Yeah, it's one of my favorite episode. It's

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Speaker 1: tremendous in the movie itself. That's father measure. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the movie is beautiful. I mean that if you challenge

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Speaker 1: anyone who has only seen that MST three K episode

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Speaker 1: to to look online and find a more pristine, uh

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Speaker 1: copy of it, because the footage is just beautiful. It's

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Speaker 1: this is a high budget film at the time. But

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Speaker 1: the story, yeah, for for for non russo finished viewers,

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Speaker 1: I guess it it is confusing and you kind of

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Speaker 1: lose track of like what magical piece of magic is

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Speaker 1: in play and what's the what's the morality of the

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Speaker 1: character turning in like having his head turned into the

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Speaker 1: head of a bear and then he he loses the

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Speaker 1: head of a bear just for promising to be good

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Speaker 1: to the outsider. That story just feels like the hell

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Speaker 1: you go to if you get killed in the Tiger

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Speaker 1: by a gnome. But it reminds me a bit of

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Speaker 1: Donkey Cabbages. Well yeah, so, I guess that the big

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Speaker 1: question that we're we've we've led ourselves to at this

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Speaker 1: point is like what is what is ultimately the difference?

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Speaker 1: What what makes one story Cinderella and one story uh

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Speaker 1: Donkey Cabbages and why does Cinderella stick with us, whereas

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Speaker 1: donkey cabbage is is just it's just leaking through your

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Speaker 1: your fingers almost immediately upon grasping it. Yeah, exactly. I mean,

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Speaker 1: one thing is that Cinderella is not just the the

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Speaker 1: sort of European tradition grim fairy tale Cinderella. They're Cinderella

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Speaker 1: type stories all over the world. This is almost one

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Speaker 1: of those those horror stories you know that seems to

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Speaker 1: have an ancient prototype that filters into cultures all around

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Speaker 1: the world or maybe has parallel development because it's themes

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Speaker 1: are so basic. Um, Cinderella is a widely known, widely distributed,

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Speaker 1: ineradicable myth. Meanwhile, donkey cabbages is it feels like donkey

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Speaker 1: cabbages could disappear from the earth and we would all

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Speaker 1: be poorer for having lost donkey cabbages because I kind

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Speaker 1: of love donkey cabbages, but nobody not that many people

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Speaker 1: would notice it was missing, right, Um, it has not

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Speaker 1: penetrated the culture in the same way that the Cinderella

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Speaker 1: archetype narrative has. And so the question is why are

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Speaker 1: some narratives more successful than others, Like you're saying, what

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Speaker 1: makes one story? Uh, the the the narrative equivalent of

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Speaker 1: a highly successful insect species and the other one and

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Speaker 1: endangered species. Why is donkey cabbages endangered while Cinderella is thriving.

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Speaker 1: It would be a shame if we lost donkey cabbages forever,

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Speaker 1: But it seems like that's much more plausible of an

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Speaker 1: outcome than losing Cinderella. Right, Okay, Well, we'll come back

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Speaker 1: to this question in just a minute. First, let's explore

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Speaker 1: a related question and see how these two subjects come together.

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Speaker 1: This question is why do religions emerge and what makes

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Speaker 1: one religion more successful than another in the same way

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Speaker 1: that one narrative can be more successful than another. You know,

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Speaker 1: we've talked before on the show about all of the

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Speaker 1: various psychological and biological explanations that people think may exist

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Speaker 1: for the emergence of religions. I think I think it's

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Speaker 1: safe to say this is not a subject where there

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Speaker 1: is a settled, known answer, But there are some answers

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Speaker 1: that seem more plausible than others, right, And I mean,

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Speaker 1: you have some answers are certainly models for how it

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Speaker 1: could occur. And I am often inclined to think, well,

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Speaker 1: it's probably multiple different models at once. Of course, it's

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Speaker 1: it's hard to just say that, like, this is the

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Speaker 1: equation for religion in human culture. Yeah, there's probably not

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Speaker 1: one cause of the emergence of religion, But what are

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Speaker 1: the dominant physical, biological, psychological factors that make a religion

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Speaker 1: a thing that exists? Why did how did we get

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Speaker 1: this way? Now some of you might be wondering what

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Speaker 1: you were talking about fairy tales, now you're talking about

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Speaker 1: about religion. You know, what is the connection between Cinderella

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Speaker 1: and the great religions of the modern world or the

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Speaker 1: ancient world or the ancient world? I mean, obviously one

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Speaker 1: of the big ones is that there is any religion

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Speaker 1: you look at, there is going to be some sort

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Speaker 1: of narrative or narratives that they're at the heart of

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Speaker 1: its sacred narratives upon which it is based. Yeah, there

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Speaker 1: are almost no successful religions that don't have at least

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Speaker 1: some strong narrative component in them. And uh, and so

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Speaker 1: obviously narrative might might be the common thread between the

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Speaker 1: success of folklore and the success of a religion. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: religions tend to have heroes. They didn't have villains. They

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Speaker 1: they they are stories. That have just taken on a

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Speaker 1: grander cultural and personal meaning. So as far as the

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Speaker 1: emergence of religion explanation goes that, there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of ideas that have been put forward by scholars over

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Speaker 1: the years. I know, actually recently, Robert, you talked a

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Speaker 1: little bit to Barbara J. King about this at the

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Speaker 1: World Science Festival, like what psychological drives and biological drives

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Speaker 1: play into the emergence of religion? And I know part

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Speaker 1: of her answer had to do with with social cohesion

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Speaker 1: and stuff, right, yeah, and in grieving and bereavement and

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Speaker 1: sort of the the precursors to grieving and bereavement that

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Speaker 1: it can arguably be identified in in certain animals, such

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Speaker 1: as some of our closer primate relatives exactly. Another very

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Speaker 1: common explanation from evolutionary psychology is the idea of the

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Speaker 1: hyperactive agency detection. And we've talked about this on the

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Speaker 1: show before, but the basic idea here is that there's

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Speaker 1: going to be an evolutionary selection pressure in favor of

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Speaker 1: people who are over sensitive about the possibility of detecting agents,

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Speaker 1: meaning beings with intentions like animals or other people from

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Speaker 1: ambiguous data. So the classic example as you imagine two

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Speaker 1: different scenarios. One is you hear a twig breaking in

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Speaker 1: the forest at night and you think it's a tiger,

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Speaker 1: or you know it's my nemesis, Jeffrey and he's come

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Speaker 1: for his revenge, and then you raise your guard and

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Speaker 1: try to get yourself out of the situation safely. The

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Speaker 1: other scenario is you hear a twig breaking in the

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Speaker 1: forest at night and you think it's probably nothing. You

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Speaker 1: just keep collecting firewood, and then I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 1: break some other horror movie sins. You split up, you

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Speaker 1: drink some beer, you do all the bad stuff. Those

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Speaker 1: are the very people who either are either eaten by

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Speaker 1: tigers are killed by Jeffrey. Right, So the people in

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Speaker 1: the latter scenario are probably going to be correct more

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Speaker 1: often right. More often it's probably nothing, But there's a

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Speaker 1: relatively small benefit to being correct. The person in the

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Speaker 1: first situation who's afraid hyper aware of what might be

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Speaker 1: an animal or a person, some kind of intentional agent.

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Speaker 1: They might waste some time and energy being overly cautious,

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Speaker 1: but they're less likely to get killed in the off

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Speaker 1: chance that they're correct about detecting an agent. And so

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Speaker 1: because this person survives more often the genes that put

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Speaker 1: them on the hyper active lookout for people or for animals.

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Speaker 1: These intentional agents, those genes proliferate in the gene pool

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Speaker 1: and this causes us to read intentions into our environment

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Speaker 1: at an unusual rate just to be safe. And this

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Speaker 1: reading of intentions into all kinds of random phenomena lead

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Speaker 1: us to the belief that there actually our minds controlling

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Speaker 1: events that we don't understand, in essence to the idea

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Speaker 1: of God's So that's one interesting possible explanation. There's also

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Speaker 1: like the meme obedience duality, which basically says there's a

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Speaker 1: selection advantage for children with brains that tend to tell

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Speaker 1: them to believe what adults tell them. You know, if

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Speaker 1: you are warned that it's dangerous to leave the camp

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Speaker 1: fire at night, more children who believe that warning and

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Speaker 1: accepted are going to survive to adulthood. And then pigging

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Speaker 1: backing on this, you'd eventually have adults spreading religious memes

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Speaker 1: by telling myths, stories, folk tales, and the beneficial belief

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Speaker 1: in obedience mechanism that causes children to survive after a

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Speaker 1: warning not to leave the firelight also causes them to

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Speaker 1: take these stories very seriously, to believe them, to pay

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Speaker 1: heed to their values. But whatever the actual biological and

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Speaker 1: psychological reasons for the emergence of religion, it leads to

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Speaker 1: this question that we asked a minute ago of why

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Speaker 1: some religions are more successful than others. I mean, there

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Speaker 1: are tons of religions throughout human history that have been

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Speaker 1: invented and now they're extinct, and very few people ever

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Speaker 1: followed them. Right, So they winted that the ancient Egyptian religion,

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Speaker 1: why is it? Why has it not survived in a

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Speaker 1: in a real tangible sense in the modern age? Why

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Speaker 1: did it not even travel well beyond Egypt in its

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Speaker 1: own day? But even it was relatively successful last time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, think about all the variations on it, or

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Speaker 1: all of the other types of mythologies that got started

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Speaker 1: but never really went anywhere. I think of all the

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Speaker 1: cults that emerge that we know relatively little about. I

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Speaker 1: think of all the heresies that were that were squashed

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Speaker 1: out before they could be really take a name beyond

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Speaker 1: heresy exactly. I think because you think about how we

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Speaker 1: refer to them, we don't even refer to them as religions.

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Speaker 1: They were just upstarts that were destroyed by the more

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Speaker 1: popular and powerful models of belief exactly. So the question

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Speaker 1: we want to look at today is could the variable

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Speaker 1: success of new religions have anything to do with the

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Speaker 1: question we were asking a minute ago why some folk

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Speaker 1: tales and legends are more successful than others, Because, Robert,

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned a minute ago, what religions and and

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Speaker 1: folklore have in common is narrative. Almost all of the

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Speaker 1: world's religions past and present have major narrative elements. They're

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Speaker 1: based on stories. Um So, even though there are other

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Speaker 1: components to religions, we know there's metaphysical incentives, a sense

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Speaker 1: of meaning, social inclusion, and all that stuff. Since the

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Speaker 1: narrative element is so common, wouldn't it be reasonable to

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Speaker 1: guess that part of what makes a successful religion is

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Speaker 1: containing successful stories, the right kind of stories that you know,

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Speaker 1: made me feel a little bit good and also makes

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Speaker 1: me feel a little bit bad and just the right way. Right,

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Speaker 1: A good religious narrative, it hurts so good. Uh So

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Speaker 1: this this could be wrong. I mean, maybe a narrative

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Speaker 1: is not actually a major element, but I think it's

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Speaker 1: a very reasonable starting assumption. And if this is the

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Speaker 1: case that the success of a narrative plays into the

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Speaker 1: success of a religion? What makes a story that leads

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Speaker 1: to a successful faith? Maybe we should take a quick

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Speaker 1: break and then explore more when we come back. Alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So we've asked the question what sort of narrative,

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Speaker 1: what kind of story is going to make a religion successful?

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Speaker 1: Or just make a story of a fairy tale successful?

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Speaker 1: In general? Like, what what are the elements that are

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Speaker 1: going to get guarantee that it resonates and remains in

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Speaker 1: human culture? Yeah, I guess maybe it makes sense to

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Speaker 1: start with narratives and then see how this applies to religions. Um,

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Speaker 1: so it's time to explore. Basically, I would say the

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Speaker 1: key idea of this episode the idea of what's come

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Speaker 1: to be known as minimally counterintuitive elements of belief. Now

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Speaker 1: we can't know for sure what makes one religion or

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Speaker 1: one story more successful than another, and it is probably

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Speaker 1: due to multiple factors rather than just one. But this

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Speaker 1: minimally counterintuitive elements paradigm, I think is a really clever answer,

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Speaker 1: offering what I guess is an important part of the

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Speaker 1: picture of the comparative success of stories. Narratives and belief structures.

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Speaker 1: There have been a ton of papers investigating this over

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Speaker 1: the years, a lot of studies, but I thought we

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Speaker 1: should examine the issue through one one important study from

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Speaker 1: the year two thousand six, and that's a paper published

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Speaker 1: in Cognitive Science by Aura norn Zion's got A tran

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Speaker 1: Jason Faulkner, and Mark Schaller called Memory and Mystery the

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Speaker 1: cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives. So I want to

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Speaker 1: read a quote from their introduction starts to set the

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Speaker 1: scene for why memory would be a relevant issue. Here

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Speaker 1: the author's right quote. Of the many ecological and psychological

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Speaker 1: factors that influence the extent to which any such narrative

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Speaker 1: achieves cultural success, Mnemonic resilience maybe one of the most important.

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Speaker 1: Memorability places necessary constraints on the cultural transmission of narratives

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Speaker 1: and ideas in oral traditions that characterize most of human

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Speaker 1: cultures throughout history. A narrative cannot be transmitted and achieve

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Speaker 1: cultural success unless it stands the test of memory. So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, in the telephone game of belief, you've

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Speaker 1: got to have a core story that is going to

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Speaker 1: remain more or less intact with each retelling in each embellishment. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I mean part of the problem is that most

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Speaker 1: of human history, most people have not had access to

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Speaker 1: any recording method for narratives. Most people throughout the history

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Speaker 1: of the world have been illiterate and have transmitted stories

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Speaker 1: orally by hearing them told and then retelling them to others.

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Speaker 1: So if a story cannot be accurately remembered, that story

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Speaker 1: doesn't really have much of a chance of survival, right, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm reminded. I want to in one of

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Speaker 1: our recent episodes that dealt with writing, I want to

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Speaker 1: say there was one description that uh discussed writing as

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Speaker 1: an ability to like freeze thought or to in some

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Speaker 1: way you have to to to to freeze thought in time,

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Speaker 1: And that's exactly what it's doing. When otherwise, Yeah, these

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Speaker 1: stories would be perpetually changing. Yeah, and of course I

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Speaker 1: think there there is plenty of evidence that stories do

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Speaker 1: change through transmission in in oral cultures, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: this happens all the time. Every time you tell the story,

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Speaker 1: you make little changes to it, and over time those

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Speaker 1: changes accumulate. But how does a story become resilient, How

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Speaker 1: do its key elements become set well enough that it

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Speaker 1: can survive the sort of changing landscape of of forcing,

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Speaker 1: of of being stored in human minds alone and being

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Speaker 1: transmitted through human retelling alone. Well, there's the old quote, right,

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Speaker 1: it don't mean it's sing if it if it ain't

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Speaker 1: got that swing right at this what you know, there's

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Speaker 1: gotta be this that, there's gotta be that element that

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Speaker 1: just really stands out right. It makes it stick. Um,

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Speaker 1: And I think that probably seems like a no brainer

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Speaker 1: on the surface, right, Memorable stories are going to resonate

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Speaker 1: and survive. I can't help but think of the modern

429
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:21,040
Speaker 1: elevator pitch idea and all of this. You know, like

430
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:23,360
Speaker 1: you you're in the elevator. You've got you got two

431
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:25,680
Speaker 1: sentences sell me on your script. You gotta you gotta

432
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 1: phrase it in a memorable way. Yeah, so what do

433
00:23:27,520 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 1: you say? Say Jaws with pause and they're like, that's brilliant.

434
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:32,879
Speaker 1: What does that mean? It's like ku jo, I guess

435
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:36,919
Speaker 1: you know, you took this thing that I was familiar with.

436
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:40,120
Speaker 1: It's just become mundane in my my world of cinema.

437
00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: But you put a twist on it. You put this

438
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,400
Speaker 1: there's there's this new idea and that's what's standing out

439
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:46,960
Speaker 1: in my mind. Plus it rhymes, well, I would certainly

440
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: not discount the power of rhyming. Rhyming poetry might be

441
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 1: selected not just because it sounds good, but because it's

442
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:55,600
Speaker 1: a memory ating device, right, And this can certainly be

443
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:58,840
Speaker 1: a factor, you know we're talking about Sometimes the fairy

444
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,920
Speaker 1: tale loses something in trent relation. Sometimes it just loses

445
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,440
Speaker 1: the rhyme, Like these are the connections between words that

446
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: make a fanciful story makes sense. But anyway, that the

447
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,560
Speaker 1: broader point here is that the contents of our narratives,

448
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:15,959
Speaker 1: our folk tales, and our religions are influenced by the

449
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:21,280
Speaker 1: underlying capabilities and biases of our brains. So just one

450
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 1: crazy example of this, all other things being equal, you

451
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:28,360
Speaker 1: probably would not expect a religion that offered a reward

452
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:31,520
Speaker 1: in the afterlife for good behavior of being thrown into

453
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:34,439
Speaker 1: an ocean of spiders. And there's a reason for that.

454
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:37,879
Speaker 1: People have enough of a natural dislike of spiders that

455
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:41,479
Speaker 1: this type of religion would not be successful. The human

456
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:45,720
Speaker 1: brain is not fertile soil in which to grow that myth, right,

457
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 1: it just naturally grows some types of content better than others,

458
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 1: based on natural predispositions, capabilities, and biases of the brain. Right, So,

459
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: the authors are pushing a hypothesis in this paper about

460
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:03,399
Speaker 1: one possible relationship between memory cognition and the success of

461
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:08,320
Speaker 1: narratives like religious myths. They write, quote, we hypothesize that

462
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 1: narratives combining mostly intuitive concepts with a minority of counterintuitive

463
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: ones enjoy a memory advantage and as a result, achieve

464
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: cultural success. Such a m c I template. An MCI

465
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: stands for minimally counterintuitive, a little bit counterintuitive, not totally counterintuitive.

466
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: Such an MCI template maybe no accident. Indeed, we propose

467
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 1: that it may be a recipe for cultural success compared

468
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:41,120
Speaker 1: to narratives that fit other templates, for example, no counterintuitive

469
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 1: concepts at all, or many counterintuitive concepts. Those that are

470
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:50,439
Speaker 1: minimally counterintuitive maybe especially memorable, and therefore more likely to

471
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 1: achieve cultural stability. All Right, So it's not a situation

472
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: where it's like going to the movie, right, the movie

473
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,720
Speaker 1: is not just an accurate depiction of real life. That

474
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: would be so boring. Right, But it's also not just

475
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: so bonkers, that is just complete surrealism, which granted can

476
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,200
Speaker 1: be great. Give but but but it's that middle ground

477
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: that's where you're gonna find the really successful films, right,

478
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:16,200
Speaker 1: It's where every most everything is pretty mundane, but there's

479
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: there's some element that's out of out of whack, there's

480
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 1: a mysterious stranger that's not what they seem, you know.

481
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:25,440
Speaker 1: I often think about how there are there are versions

482
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: of this that work at various levels of narrative that

483
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: contribute to their how aesthetically pleasing they are. One thing

484
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:36,520
Speaker 1: I think about is the realism of dialogue characters. Sometimes

485
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,160
Speaker 1: people say, I love the way that characters in this

486
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: movie talk how people really talk. The characters in that

487
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:44,840
Speaker 1: movie did not talk how people really talk. If they

488
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 1: actually talked how people really talked, you would be so bored.

489
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 1: You would think the movie was terrible. People do not

490
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: talk in deliverable dialogue that drives a plot. What you

491
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: probably mean is they talked in an unnatural way that

492
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:03,199
Speaker 1: was just bare really unnatural enough to be interesting, but

493
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: not so unnatural that it felt false, the way bad

494
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,359
Speaker 1: dialogue in a movie often does. And of course it's

495
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 1: easy to to just to to go to examples that

496
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: have like a specuative element that's thrown in, like everything

497
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: is normal, except one character is magic. But but it

498
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,120
Speaker 1: can also work in other ways to right, where there's

499
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: an inversion of of character, like the you know, the

500
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:28,119
Speaker 1: village priest is actually evil as opposed to good, and

501
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the expectation might be like that the

502
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 1: character that is that is expected to behave in one

503
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: way morally behaves another way. Yeah, aesthetically pleasing narratives are

504
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:43,879
Speaker 1: surprising enough, but they can't be too surprising otherwise you

505
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,360
Speaker 1: just stop being able to appreciate them as narratives. Right,

506
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,160
Speaker 1: you want to keep with it. It's like they say,

507
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: you want to keep one foot on the ground, right,

508
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:53,440
Speaker 1: you don't want to keep both feet on the ground.

509
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: And likewise you don't want both feet just floating free.

510
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 1: So but in this uh, we've been using the idea

511
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,680
Speaker 1: loosely here for a moment. What in the literature itself

512
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: makes a concept intuitive or counterintuitive? And so the author's

513
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 1: right quote. As several psychologists and anthropologists have noted, the

514
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: key is whether the concept is consistent with or violates

515
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 1: ontological assumptions about the properties of ordinary objects. So they're

516
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 1: going with this idea of ontologies, and all that means

517
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 1: is how things normally work, right. Um. The one trope

518
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: I'm instantly reminded of is just the the with a

519
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: heart of gold trope, you know, because there's she's a

520
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 1: prostitute with a heart of gold. He's a prostitute with

521
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: a heart of gold. Their assassins with hearts of gold. Uh,

522
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: you know that's the you see that spend time and

523
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 1: time again, right um? Or one of my favorite recent ones,

524
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:49,479
Speaker 1: even though I never actually watched the show. I just

525
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: really love the trailers. He's not just a pope, he's

526
00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: a young pope. Popes aren't supposed to be young, I know,

527
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:57,280
Speaker 1: and I want to find out just how young is

528
00:28:57,320 --> 00:29:02,480
Speaker 1: this pope. He's a baby, baby pope. I'd watch baby Pope.

529
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:05,320
Speaker 1: Actually that's not a bad idea for they had Boss Baby.

530
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: Um what does boss Baby? I don't I don't know,

531
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 1: I just know it exists. Um. You have that movie

532
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: where the horse played professional football. I don't know what

533
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: you're talking about, Like, was it like Airbud? It was, yeah,

534
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: basically the Airbud trope. Okay, but this was a horse

535
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 1: that was, due to some sort of loophole and the

536
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 1: rules was able to play a professional football and maybe

537
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 1: was college football. So This is not exactly what the

538
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 1: author noted and talking about, but it's pretty close. So

539
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: they're basically a few different types of intuitive ontologies that

540
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: govern our basic understanding of the world at several levels,

541
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 1: and the author's list for example, our intuitive theory of physics.

542
00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 1: This is the ontology of our basic understanding of how

543
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: objects and energy work. This is the intuitive theory you

544
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 1: used to conclude that a brick will sink in water

545
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: and not float, or to conclude that a falling snowflake

546
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: won't land with enough force to pierce a hole in

547
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: your skull. Right, then you've got the intuitive theory of biology,

548
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: and this is our basic understanding of life forms. This

549
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: one will intuitively tell you that trees do not speak French,

550
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: and sharks can't walk up onto the beach and bite

551
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 1: you off your towel, and snails don't live to be

552
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 1: thirty seven million years old. And then you've got your

553
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: theory of mind. And this ontology tells you that, for example,

554
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: other people can have both true and false beliefs, and

555
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 1: they can't read your mind, but they can see where

556
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: you're looking with your eyes, and they can imagine what

557
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: you're thinking based on external clues, And if you break

558
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: any of these theories, you instantly find yourself dealing with

559
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: narrative elements right now. Oh yeah, you break physics, theory

560
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 1: of physics, and then you have superpowers, you have miracles,

561
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: you you you break the theory of biology and you

562
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 1: get magical creatures and immortal bodies, and you break theory

563
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 1: of mind and you get things like psychics. Yeah, it's

564
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: almost It's kind of telling, isn't it that anytime you

565
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 1: come up with an idea of breaking one of these

566
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 1: intuitive ontologies, you instantly have what sounds like a concept

567
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: for a story. Isn't that odd? Now? The author is

568
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 1: right that there are some minor cultural differences in how

569
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: these ontologies work, like different cultures sometimes have slightly different

570
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 1: beliefs about theory of mind or biology. But then again,

571
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 1: some bottom level elements of these theories appears so early

572
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: in development and are found in so many different cultures

573
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 1: that it looks like they might be more sort of

574
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: hard coded instincts from primitive parts of the brain more

575
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: so than culturally conditioned belief And the examples that the

576
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: authors give or studies that have found evidence that babies

577
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: as young as four months old already show expectations based

578
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:36,719
Speaker 1: on some core aspects of our theory of physics. For example,

579
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 1: they've got the idea of a solid object, and they

580
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: clearly do not expect one solid object to be able

581
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: to pass through another solid object. And they also do

582
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: not expect that a solid object can be in more

583
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: than one place at a time. Yeah, I mean children

584
00:31:51,560 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: have an innate number sense. Each one is a natural Euclidean,

585
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,440
Speaker 1: born to navigate a three dimensional world of fixed and

586
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: movable objects. The words. We start utilizing geometry before we

587
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: can even name things. We don't understand wall or cap,

588
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 1: but we already can think in geometric terms. For instance,

589
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:13,240
Speaker 1: kids will use geometric clues to navigate through rooms, uh

590
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: and uh, And given all the means of navigating their environment,

591
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 1: they're most likely to use lengths of walls in a

592
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 1: room to remember where a toy is hidden, rather than

593
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: color or decoration. We're also born within anate understanding of

594
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:29,719
Speaker 1: basic physical laws. Only adults believe in magic. Well, toddler

595
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: will see right through all of the supernatural. There was

596
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: actually any m my T study that even found out

597
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: that young children understand that teleportation is not feasible. Yeah,

598
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:40,959
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes you wonder how much of our

599
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: understanding about the world, like our coded, our coded knowledge

600
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: about how things work is actually instinctual, like a kid

601
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 1: would know it without ever having to observe anything. Yeah,

602
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: like just sort of the basics of gravity, you know,

603
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: I mean that is the environment that we have evolved

604
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 1: to thrive it. Yeah, that's going to be an interesting

605
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: study when for the first time, when children are brought

606
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: up in space in microgravity environments. Though actually that might

607
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: be a really bad idea because that could disrupt development

608
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: and everything like that. But just assuming it were to

609
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: happen somehow, you'd wonder, would those kids have an intuitive

610
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: understanding of how gravity worked back on Earth? Would it

611
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 1: be that built in? Also, the authors of this paper

612
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: right that preschool aged kids in most cultures already have

613
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 1: a common set of biological intuitions. For example, they know

614
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 1: that making superficial alterations to an animal doesn't alter what

615
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:33,959
Speaker 1: kind of species it is, So they know that you

616
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: can't just like put a put a carrot on a

617
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: horse's head and make it a unicorn. It's still a horse. Also,

618
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 1: children from preschool age typically have a basic theory of mind.

619
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 1: The classic example is understanding that other people can have

620
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 1: false beliefs. Kind of a profound thing to realize. Do

621
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: you remember realizing that, Robert, I mean it might have

622
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: come from having younger siblings, you know. I feel like

623
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 1: that that that might be the area where those those

624
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 1: kind of ideas are initially introduced. You know, where you're

625
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: you're told you're younger sibling does not know not to

626
00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: touch this hot surface, you know, and then therefore there

627
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: might be some false belief baked into their understanding of

628
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:16,319
Speaker 1: their immediate surroundings. Yeah, I wonder well. Anyway, so the

629
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: authors observed that despite how universal or near universal these

630
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: beliefs are, our folk tales and religious mythologies are full

631
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:26,759
Speaker 1: of stories and images that violate these ontologies. We were

632
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: just talking about this. Anytime you you just say something

633
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:34,320
Speaker 1: that violates the ontology, immediately it sounds like a story

634
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: and not just like a concept. But you want to

635
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,840
Speaker 1: tell a story about it. Frogs that can talk, people

636
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 1: that can pass through walls like ghosts, or people who

637
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: can read minds or otherwise have knowledge of that they

638
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:49,200
Speaker 1: couldn't access. Nasty Old Richmond, who are capable of change

639
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 1: from Christmas, I can't. I kept thinking of that one

640
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: in the research. You know, Christmas Carol and Scrooge. Oh,

641
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a Christmas Carol lover. Actually, Oh, I mean,

642
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,240
Speaker 1: you can't help but love it. But I did keep

643
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 1: thinking of it. You know. It's like, ultimately, is is

644
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: it just this story where the the the one area

645
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: of inversion, the one area that is um that's counterintuitive

646
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: is that Scrooge was capable of turning his life around

647
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: and changing, whereas in many cases reality would seem to

648
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:21,080
Speaker 1: indicate that it's the opposite with old, nasty, rich people.

649
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:24,480
Speaker 1: I'm just throwing that out there. I'll probably come back

650
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: to that idea again. Well let's let's get there. I mean,

651
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:31,040
Speaker 1: so the question is, why do so many popular narratives

652
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: like mythology, folk tales and so forth, why do they

653
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 1: always violate our ontologies? Why is that just intuitive to

654
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: us at this point that oh, if you say a

655
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: frog that can talk, that's a story. And why do

656
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: almost all of our most popular stories do stuff like that?

657
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 1: The idea of realistic narratives is actually kind of an

658
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: unusual thing. And in the history of successful folk tales

659
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 1: and narratives, Yeah, I mean I remember in uh, in

660
00:35:57,520 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 1: creative writing classes where you know they would drive home.

661
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: Would just because it really happened doesn't mean it's interesting, right,

662
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,680
Speaker 1: which which is is true. But I think one of

663
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 1: the most obvious answers would be novelty, right. I mean,

664
00:36:08,160 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 1: we we we we create the idea of the black

665
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: swan even before we know what it acts, that it

666
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: actually exists, um and and and mentioning that I'm touching

667
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: on NASA Nicholas Talb's black Swan theory, UM, the idea

668
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 1: that major black Swan events are the norm uh and

669
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,879
Speaker 1: uh and and also the problem of induction induction here.

670
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 1: So I wonder if we're drawn to these novel ideas

671
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:36,879
Speaker 1: because human existence kind of demands that we both move

672
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 1: forward with expectations based on the known world, but with

673
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: an openness to the possible inversions that shake everything up. So,

674
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: you know, it basically comes back to the tiger in

675
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:48,879
Speaker 1: the grass and the high grass and when and how

676
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: we're going to judge the sound of a snapping twig. Oh.

677
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: I didn't expect us to come back and make a

678
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: connection between minimally counterintuitive ideas and UH and the hyperactive

679
00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:01,359
Speaker 1: agency detection, but I can see a through line there

680
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: and I also can't you know, I can't help it,

681
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:06,839
Speaker 1: but think about the the idea that inversions end up

682
00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 1: highlighting the reality. Right, So by having a story in

683
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: which Scrooge is able to turn his life around, it

684
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: just kind of also drives home that most people don't,

685
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: you know, by having somebody that acts heroically, like truly heroically,

686
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 1: it's kind of a reminded that, well, most people are

687
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: not heroes and would not do this. It's not how

688
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:28,520
Speaker 1: you see how things could be otherwise that you recognize

689
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,399
Speaker 1: how things are. Yeah, but you have another possible answer here,

690
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah. So the authors here are drawing on

691
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of research over the years that's indicated a

692
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 1: couple of things. First of all, there is the indications

693
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: that sometimes it appears that people are better able to

694
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:51,240
Speaker 1: remember counterintuitive ideas than intuitive ideas. So you tell somebody

695
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: a frog that talks, they'll remember that item better than

696
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: you saying a frog that jumps, right. A frog that

697
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:03,720
Speaker 1: jumps is not memorable. Right. But then again, in recent

698
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: years before the study, other research has made it clear

699
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 1: that there there's some pressure coming from the other side

700
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 1: that while some counterintuitive content makes ideas and narratives more

701
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: transmissible and easier to remember. There's also a limit to

702
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 1: this benefit. Uh So some examples of this balance, like

703
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,880
Speaker 1: ghosts and spirits are one of the most popular narrative

704
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,840
Speaker 1: subjects in history, but they've basically got the properties of

705
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: a person except somewhat counterintuitive, Like ghosts have the powers

706
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: that humans do not have, like moving through walls, but

707
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:40,720
Speaker 1: otherwise they behave is quote ordinary intentional agents. Well with ghosts,

708
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:43,320
Speaker 1: you guys, you can make the argument that, uh, any

709
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:45,840
Speaker 1: of like the ghostly details, like that's all just fluff.

710
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:49,280
Speaker 1: The basic mechanics are just it is a person without

711
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:53,680
Speaker 1: physical substance. Yeah, exactly. Another example the author's site of

712
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:57,839
Speaker 1: how people tend to limit the counterintuitive features of of

713
00:38:58,160 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 1: things they believe in is that research by Barrett and

714
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: Kyle in nineteen found quote people spontaneously anthropomorphize God in

715
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: their reasoning, even if doing so contradicts their stated theological beliefs.

716
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:15,839
Speaker 1: So while they don't, you know, they don't think that

717
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:19,280
Speaker 1: God is like a normal person, when they don't remember

718
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:21,879
Speaker 1: to limit themselves from doing so, they tend to think

719
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: of God as a normal person, but just with great

720
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 1: supernatural powers. And these types of limits on the wildness

721
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 1: of supernatural elements also seemed to be present in existing

722
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: cultural narratives. Just one example, an existing study of Ovid's

723
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:39,760
Speaker 1: metamorphosis from Kelly and Kyle in nineteen eighty five found

724
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,280
Speaker 1: that even though there were a lot of magic transformations

725
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:44,960
Speaker 1: of people and things, it was much more common to

726
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: transform a person into, say, an animal, than it was

727
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: to transform them into an an inanimate object. That was

728
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 1: sort of less of a violation of their ontology. But

729
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: this reminds me of the children's books Sylvester in the

730
00:39:57,560 --> 00:39:59,759
Speaker 1: Magic Pebble I wish I may have mentioned on the

731
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 1: show before. Um it's an award winning children's book about

732
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: a donkey who obtains the magic pebble, and the magic

733
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 1: pebble allows you to grants your wishes essentially, and the

734
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: donkey ends up being turned into a stone, and then

735
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:15,759
Speaker 1: the pebble falls and rolls away from him and he

736
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: stuck as the stone. Yeah, it's and it's it's kind

737
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: of a traumatic story to read. It's really good, but

738
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: I remember reading it to my son when he was

739
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 1: he was really young, and I feel like it was

740
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: difficult to get across this idea that a donkey turned

741
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: into rock not not a rock that looks like a donkey,

742
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,320
Speaker 1: but just a rock that looks like a rock. Whereas

743
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: stories of people turning into animals, donkey, cabbages, Yeah, yeah,

744
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:46,360
Speaker 1: those make I feel like those were more easily transferred

745
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:48,200
Speaker 1: to him, you know, like he was able to buy

746
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: into those stories a lot easier. Where this idea of

747
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: the pebble turning the donkey into just a rock, and

748
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,239
Speaker 1: then somehow the rock was still conscious of everything it was.

749
00:40:57,360 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: It was kind of a confusing magic to try and

750
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: relate it to him. Yeah, I mean, I'm there with you.

751
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: Like turning into a donkey that makes sense. Turning into

752
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: a rock, I don't know. Uh So, The authors write

753
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: how Barrett and Niehoff in two thousand one tested how

754
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 1: well people could remember and retell stories, and these stories

755
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: were broken down by how much they contained objects or

756
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 1: ideas in three different categories. You've got intuitive, normal stuff,

757
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:26,319
Speaker 1: intuitive but bizarre this is weird stuff that doesn't violate ontologies,

758
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 1: and then counterintuitive stuff that does violate ontologies. And they

759
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 1: found that after retelling the story through three generations of transmission,

760
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:38,400
Speaker 1: people remembered and passed on counterintuitive ideas better than simple

761
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:42,320
Speaker 1: intuitive ones, and after three months, participants could still recall

762
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: minimally counterintuitive elements better than other elements. And this delay

763
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 1: is an important part because how do stories get passed

764
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:53,280
Speaker 1: on in the wild. Right When you retell a story

765
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 1: to somebody, you don't usually tell it right after you

766
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: heard it, Right, You've had some time to ruminate on

767
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,959
Speaker 1: it and embellish it, both intentionally but also just through

768
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: the flaws of our memory systems. Yeah, memory mechanisms. I mean,

769
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: we've talked recently in UH, for example, the Illusory Truth episodes,

770
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: about the ways that we edit our memories just by

771
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: remembering them, right, And these are memories of things that

772
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,359
Speaker 1: actually happened as opposed to stories. I'm reminded of Carl

773
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:25,800
Speaker 1: Sagan writing about how how quickly an historical account became

774
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 1: a tale of ancient high magic, like while the actual

775
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: historic individuals were still alive. Yeah, that came up in

776
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: the story. I don't remember it was. I think it

777
00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: was a European UH account. I don't remember. We went

778
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 1: into this in I think Our Ancient Aliens episodes. But

779
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:48,239
Speaker 1: he was talking about just how unreliable of many of

780
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 1: these folk tales or fairy tales and legends could be

781
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:54,839
Speaker 1: in trying to find some nugget of the fantastic, because

782
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 1: they could very well just be completely embellished from a

783
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:01,800
Speaker 1: very mundane incident just in the course of a decade

784
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 1: or or thereabouts. Right So, given what seemed to be

785
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: the case from the existing literature, where people are more

786
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:11,359
Speaker 1: likely to remember things that are somewhat counterintuitive than they

787
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:14,359
Speaker 1: are to remember just totally mundane intuitive things, and at

788
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:18,400
Speaker 1: the same time are seem less likely to retell stories

789
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:21,720
Speaker 1: that are just full of counterintuitive stuff, you know, crammed

790
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: the gills with it. Is it the case that there's

791
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 1: a cognitive selection pressure in favor of m C I

792
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: are minimally counterintuitive elements and stories? Are we more likely

793
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 1: to remember and transmit ideas that violate our intologies a

794
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 1: little bit but don't violate them too much? Is there

795
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 1: a sweet spot for the kind of narrative that makes

796
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 1: it through our brains to the next generation of retelling

797
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: and gets retold. Now, one thing that the author's wonder about,

798
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: and you've got to wonder about, is if the hypothesis

799
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: is correct that people are more likely to remember minimally

800
00:43:56,040 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 1: counterintuitive things, Why don't minimally counterintuitive elements just dominate successful

801
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 1: cultural narratives even more than they do. Like many popular myths, legends,

802
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: and folk tales contain these elements, but they're outnumbered by

803
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: mundane intuitive concepts. I mean think about for example, stories

804
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: in the Bible. Stories in the Bible are actually mostly

805
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:21,480
Speaker 1: mundane if you read them, they're they're you know, long,

806
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:27,840
Speaker 1: mundane narratives with occasional punctuations of counterintuitive elements and magic

807
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:30,160
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Now, of course, there are a

808
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: few books and passages in the Bible, such as you know, Revelations,

809
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 1: Apocalypse is various prophetic visions that are sort of crammed

810
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: with bizarre and counterintuitive imagery and stuff. But most of

811
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 1: the time the basic stories are mostly mundane. Yeah. No, no,

812
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: even with something like the Book of Revelation, we we

813
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: do have to stop and you know, pause and wonders like,

814
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: just how counterintuitive is it really? Because at least on

815
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: face value, yeah, I mean face value for the the

816
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: average modern day individual picking up Book of Revelation, yeah,

817
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 1: it just seems like crazy town, right, But we do

818
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 1: have to remember the Book of Revelation is a symbolic

819
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,239
Speaker 1: work from the first century CE, and it's a work

820
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: of apocalyptic literature. So uh, it would have followed particular

821
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:16,920
Speaker 1: conventions of this style, conventions that would have been better

822
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 1: known and understood by the intended reader, and the intended

823
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: reader in this situation would have been very much an

824
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: insider as opposed to just your average Joe Christian. And

825
00:45:26,560 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 1: we touched on this. So the same situation with the

826
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:33,359
Speaker 1: highly symbolic work of Hieronymous Bosh before. You know, if

827
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 1: you look at it and you think, well, this is

828
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: just bizarre, this is crazy. Clearly this artist was just

829
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: on drugs. But the closer you look, you realize, well, okay,

830
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:44,719
Speaker 1: maybe some of that is true. But but on the

831
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: other hand, you do have a lot of of symbols

832
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: that are speaking to a different viewer, and you were

833
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:54,040
Speaker 1: not the intended audience totally. So even in some of

834
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: these cases, it might be that if you could, if

835
00:45:56,680 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 1: you could sort of decode the meaning of all of

836
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: these revelations, that it might actually sort of key out

837
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:06,919
Speaker 1: to a more mundane kind of message that has some

838
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: minimally counterintuitive suggestions in it, even though the face value

839
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 1: imagery is pretty off the wall. But of course, another

840
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: example would be standard folk tales like the stories of

841
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: the brothers Graham a Little Red Riding Hood is actually

842
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:23,800
Speaker 1: a mostly mundane narrative. There are only two really counterintuitive elopments.

843
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 1: You've got a talking wolf and then you've got a

844
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:28,800
Speaker 1: person who can survive being eaten alive by a wolf

845
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:31,279
Speaker 1: and come out of the stomach alive. Those are the

846
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: two magic parts. The rest of it is a normal

847
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: story with intuitive elements, and so the authors of the

848
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 1: study think that maybe we should think of each narrative

849
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:43,839
Speaker 1: as something like a single unit of transmission, rather than

850
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:46,839
Speaker 1: looking at individual elements within the story to see how

851
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: many counteract counterintuitive ideas the story elements contain. You think

852
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 1: about how many does the story as a whole contain,

853
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 1: Because you don't usually tell part of a story. Maybe

854
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:01,880
Speaker 1: the point of a story is to get transmitted as

855
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 1: a whole, and so the optimal level of counterintuitiveness might

856
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 1: function at the level of the whole narrative rather than

857
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: individual ideas within it. So it's possible that the narrative

858
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: itself as a whole might need to be minimally counterintuitive,

859
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: not just stuff within it being minimally counterintuitive. It needs

860
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: to violate our ontologies a little bit, but it can't

861
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 1: contain too many of these things, or maybe then it

862
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: becomes the donkey cabbages. And you know, once you start

863
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 1: piling up all the donkey cabbages stuff, I mean, who

864
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:34,480
Speaker 1: gives a dang like it? Just it's sort of makes

865
00:47:34,520 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: you stop caring, right, Right, it just become too many

866
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: fantastic elements and there's nothing I can relate to, right,

867
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: So how do you test to see whether this is true? Well?

868
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: The authors put together a couple of studies. The first

869
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: study was to look at lists of minimally counterintuitive ideas

870
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:53,360
Speaker 1: compared with intuitive ideas and to see how those lists

871
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:55,960
Speaker 1: fared in recall, and then the second one. The second

872
00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 1: study was to look at existing folk tales and to

873
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: see how well compared narratively minimally counterintuitive folk tales did. So,

874
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,440
Speaker 1: the researchers put together lists of two word ideas, some

875
00:48:06,520 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 1: of which were intuitive, some of which were minimally counterintuitive.

876
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:13,879
Speaker 1: Here's an example, closing door. How do you like that?

877
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: That's pretty normal? Right, thirsty cat, four legged table, confused student?

878
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 1: These are all you know? This is the right world, right,

879
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:27,759
Speaker 1: Everything's okay? How about thirsty door? Oh now it's getting

880
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:38,439
Speaker 1: a little poetic. Confused table, mischievous coat, impatient fist, contrived dog. Yes,

881
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: these are minimally counterintuitive for sure, And so the researchers

882
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:45,800
Speaker 1: tested how well group of ninety four students could remember

883
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,280
Speaker 1: stories like this uh in immediate recall three minutes after

884
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:53,040
Speaker 1: studying a list, and then also in um and then

885
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:56,239
Speaker 1: also in a later test after a week, and the

886
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: results were that in immediate recall three minutes after studying

887
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 1: the list of entirely intuitive items were actually remembered best,

888
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 1: just kind of strange like the ones that were just

889
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 1: all normal concepts were remembered the best of all. But

890
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 1: delayed recall was a different story. After a week, there

891
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: was massive overall degradation of memory, but the lists that

892
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: people could recall the best were the ones that had

893
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 1: a minimal number of minimally counterintuitive elements in them. So

894
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: after a week, if the list was all intuitive ideas,

895
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 1: people remembered it less. If the list contained equal numbers

896
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: of intuitive and counterintuitive ideas, or contained all counterintuitive ideas,

897
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: people remembered it less. What people remembered best after one

898
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: week where lists that had a minority of weird monster

899
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: concepts in them but were otherwise unremarkable. And note that

900
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:48,440
Speaker 1: this is for lists, not individual concepts. And this seems

901
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:51,920
Speaker 1: to partially back up the idea that this works at

902
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,280
Speaker 1: the function of a of a narrative as a whole

903
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 1: instead of just individual ideas that you would remember as

904
00:49:57,600 --> 00:50:01,879
Speaker 1: a single concept or object or word phrase. And then

905
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: in the second study, they tested a survey of folk

906
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: tales from the collections of the brothers grim and they

907
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:11,280
Speaker 1: counted numbers of counterintuitive elements that they contained and compared

908
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: that to how successful and well known these folk tales were.

909
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 1: So like, if you count all the stuff in the

910
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:19,839
Speaker 1: Donkey Cabbages, you'll get a pretty big number, versus if

911
00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 1: you count all the stuff in Cinderella, you'll get a

912
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 1: smaller number. And so they made a chart basically of

913
00:50:25,680 --> 00:50:29,880
Speaker 1: all these stories and compared how successful the story was

914
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:33,319
Speaker 1: as measured by how familiar test subjects were with them

915
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 1: and how many Internet hits they got about these stories

916
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 1: versus how many counterintuitive elements were in the stories, and

917
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:42,239
Speaker 1: they got the same kind of result. They found that

918
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:45,880
Speaker 1: for the less memorable folk tales, as measured by familiarity

919
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: and the Internet results, there was a pretty flat distribution.

920
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: Uh there were mci tales, tales that were highly intuitive,

921
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: tales that were as bonkers as the donkey cabbages or worse.

922
00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:59,919
Speaker 1: But for the more memorable tales, the really successful ones,

923
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:04,320
Speaker 1: there was a clustering around a small number of counterintuitive elements,

924
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:08,720
Speaker 1: and that means that the m CI narrative template seems

925
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 1: somewhat validated. Those that had penetrated the culture more deeply,

926
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:15,360
Speaker 1: on average were the ones that had a small number

927
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:19,440
Speaker 1: of counterintuitive elements. And in their discussion, the authors proposed

928
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:22,640
Speaker 1: that mc I narratives are more successful partially because they're

929
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: easier to remember as a whole, and they write, quote,

930
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 1: these deviations involve evocative, minimal counterintuitions that are quote relevant mysteries.

931
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: They are closely connected to background knowledge, but do not

932
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:40,759
Speaker 1: admit to a final interpretation. As a result, they are

933
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: attention arresting and inferentially rich, and therefore encourage further cognitive

934
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:50,839
Speaker 1: processing and multiple interpretations over time that facilitate the cognitive

935
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,759
Speaker 1: stabilization of narratives. And I thought that was interesting because

936
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 1: it made me think of a discussion we were having

937
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:59,320
Speaker 1: in the episode about finite and infinite games and the

938
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: religious scholarly work by James P. Carse about the idea

939
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:07,960
Speaker 1: of of mythology and um, whether a mythology can survive

940
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:11,640
Speaker 1: if it is made finite, or if a mythology is

941
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:15,239
Speaker 1: is only kept alive by sort of like the the

942
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: unending tendency to change it and and keep working on it,

943
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 1: to keep asking questions. Yeah, I mean, ultimately I think

944
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:24,719
Speaker 1: that is how that is how the stories stay relevant

945
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,399
Speaker 1: without having to just like bend and break your interpretation

946
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: of them. I mean, I think they may be onto

947
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:35,800
Speaker 1: something here with the idea that stories are can only

948
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:40,360
Speaker 1: be properly mysterious and arresting to us and keep prodding

949
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 1: our brains if they have the right balance of mundane

950
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: content and confusing content, right, I mean, like, if if

951
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:53,320
Speaker 1: something is just totally unfamiliar and unrelatable, then you you

952
00:52:53,360 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: don't even have a context in which to frame questions

953
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:59,320
Speaker 1: or which in questions can feel like they mean something.

954
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:01,839
Speaker 1: But if a story is totally mundane, you don't end

955
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:04,520
Speaker 1: up asking questions. All right, don't not know. We're going

956
00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:06,399
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.

957
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 1: Thank thank you, thank you. All right, we're back. So,

958
00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: if the authors of the study we just looked at

959
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 1: are correct, that minimally counterintuitive narratives, narratives that have some

960
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:21,280
Speaker 1: weird counterintuitive content but not too much. If those types

961
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,360
Speaker 1: of narratives are key to the success of folk tales

962
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:27,560
Speaker 1: and mythology that spread throughout oral cultures that have to

963
00:53:27,560 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 1: be remembered and transmitted, is it also true that modern

964
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: literate societies, or even ancient literate society, societies in which

965
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 1: stories can be written down before they're transmitted, that those

966
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: societies make room for more highly counterintuitive narratives or for

967
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 1: more mundane, totally intuitive narratives. Does that make sense what

968
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 1: I'm asking like, if if that's the sweet spot for

969
00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 1: oral culture transmission, does writing change what type of mythology

970
00:53:56,719 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 1: becomes salient? Well, we come back to this idea that

971
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: writing freezes thought right, and nothing frees his thought, And

972
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: this goes back to some of the ideas of James P.

973
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: Cars as well. Nothing is going to freeze thought like

974
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 1: sacred literature. Yeah, And I actually found out a wonderful

975
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:17,240
Speaker 1: paper on some of this um It is titled uh

976
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: An Alternative Account of the Minimal Counterintuitives Effect, and it

977
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: was by by cognitive scientist Muhammad afzal Opal And this

978
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand ten in cognitive systems Research,

979
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: and he argues that that essentially we have WE WE WE.

980
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:36,720
Speaker 1: You can look at m c I in two different ways.

981
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,479
Speaker 1: You have concept based m c I, and that's where

982
00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: just the concept itself is resonating, right, because it's it's

983
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:48,000
Speaker 1: a it's a donkey that talks, etcetera. Right. But then

984
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:51,880
Speaker 1: you can also look at it as context based, and

985
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: he makes the case that counterintuitive concepts lose their advantages

986
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: as they become widely accepted in part of the culture.

987
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:01,720
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So if I introduce to you a new

988
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,480
Speaker 1: counterintuitive concept, you might be more likely to remember that

989
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: than if I just say, like a ghost, which is

990
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:11,479
Speaker 1: a counterintuitive concept, but you're familiar with it, right, Or

991
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 1: a vampire. You know, it's like, I know that I'm

992
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 1: bored with vampires. Give me something with a little more

993
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:18,760
Speaker 1: jazz to it, right, But if I say a turtle

994
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 1: that drinks human blood, people are probably going to remember that. Yeah. Therefore,

995
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:28,680
Speaker 1: he argues that ideas with enhanced counterintuitiveness obtain transmission advantages,

996
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 1: and this results in a ratcheting up of counterintuitiveness that

997
00:55:33,680 --> 00:55:38,360
Speaker 1: may help explain cultural innovation and dynamism. Interesting, So this

998
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 1: would be bigger than just religions. This would be for

999
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 1: ideas in general and narratives in general. Right, though he

1000
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: is particularly interested in religion. That's like one of his Uh,

1001
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 1: that's one of of Upaul's areas of expertise is cognitive

1002
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: science of religion. And he he says that quote it

1003
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 1: also allows us to account for the development and spread

1004
00:55:56,360 --> 00:56:00,480
Speaker 1: of complex cultural ideas, such as the overly counter intuitive

1005
00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:05,320
Speaker 1: religious concepts, including the Judeo Christian Islamic conceptions of God.

1006
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 1: Does that mean like overly counterintuitive because not anthropomorphic enough? Um? Yeah?

1007
00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:13,439
Speaker 1: And just I mean I think part of it also

1008
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:16,319
Speaker 1: comes back to examples like revelation. You know, you have

1009
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 1: just to to a modern readers, just completely counterintuitive. What

1010
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 1: does it mean? Why is it there? What is it

1011
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 1: supposed to be saying to me? Part of the problem

1012
00:56:24,120 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 1: is that it's sacred, right, it's it's it's it's frozen

1013
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 1: in time. It's no longer speaking to the people. Uh,

1014
00:56:30,120 --> 00:56:33,160
Speaker 1: the specific individuals who would have who would have understood

1015
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:38,399
Speaker 1: it without a bunch of you know, theological dissection. Interesting. Uh. So,

1016
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 1: Paul writes the context based view posits that religious concepts

1017
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 1: such as God's ghost, angels, and devil have become maximally

1018
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:51,279
Speaker 1: counterintuitive in the barn and Boyer sense because they have

1019
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:53,880
Speaker 1: had to survive in the minds of an adaptive and

1020
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:57,320
Speaker 1: innovative population of human beings over a long period of time.

1021
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:00,720
Speaker 1: In light of the model we develop here, one should

1022
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: not be surprised to see maximally counterintuitive concepts to form

1023
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 1: a significant part of religious beliefs. Indeed, it would be

1024
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:14,200
Speaker 1: surprising if they did not maximally counterintuitive. So stuff that, um,

1025
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 1: because it's hard to get your counterintuitive juice is flowing

1026
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 1: anymore because you've been so exposed to ideas like spirits

1027
00:57:21,520 --> 00:57:26,480
Speaker 1: and ghosts that they want to offer you visions that

1028
00:57:26,400 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 1: that tell you, like, you're not going to get a

1029
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: weirder idea than this. Yeah, I mean you get into areas.

1030
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:34,080
Speaker 1: Uh and this this is me commenting on his material.

1031
00:57:34,080 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: He didn't make the specific point, but you know, stuff

1032
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 1: like the transfiguration of Christ and the Holy Trinity and

1033
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:42,640
Speaker 1: these kind of complex ideas of of what what is

1034
00:57:42,680 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: the nature of God? You know, right is it's it's

1035
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:49,200
Speaker 1: built into it. That's that it's a mystery and you

1036
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 1: can't understand it, right, and then added to that too

1037
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: that you have you know, these ancient religions are I

1038
00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:58,400
Speaker 1: often use this analogy for for Hinduism, Like, Hinduism is

1039
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:02,880
Speaker 1: not this one product. It is this well of time

1040
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 1: and culture with all of these varying ideas and different

1041
00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:09,160
Speaker 1: interpretations of gods that are then uh, spun around and

1042
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:11,080
Speaker 1: used in different ways. And you do see that in

1043
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 1: Christian traditions as well. Hinduism is a world of belief

1044
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: and layer upon layers. It's like an archaeological dig Yeah.

1045
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:21,480
Speaker 1: But then of course that raises the question of modern religions,

1046
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:24,840
Speaker 1: right yeah, And so I would wonder if the m

1047
00:58:24,840 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: c I hypothesis is correct as an explanation for the

1048
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:32,600
Speaker 1: success of religious narratives. Shouldn't it be that we see

1049
00:58:32,960 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 1: unusual religions emerging in a mostly literate world where things

1050
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:40,200
Speaker 1: get written down a lot, and those religions have more

1051
00:58:40,280 --> 00:58:44,240
Speaker 1: permission to be the donkey cabbages of religion, Right? Well,

1052
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:46,360
Speaker 1: I mean it, if you can write it down, you

1053
00:58:46,400 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 1: can make it sacred, and you can say nobody touched this. Uh.

1054
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:51,320
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the points that to

1055
00:58:51,600 --> 00:58:55,160
Speaker 1: Paul makes about this, he compares it to emergent religions,

1056
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: and how you have you have new religions that have emerged,

1057
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:03,320
Speaker 1: and they generally have an uphill battle because they're they're

1058
00:59:03,360 --> 00:59:06,800
Speaker 1: having to go up against the established religions that have

1059
00:59:07,160 --> 00:59:09,640
Speaker 1: in you know, in many cases centuries upon centuries, thousands

1060
00:59:09,680 --> 00:59:13,360
Speaker 1: of years of history, all these sacred texts, and somebody saying,

1061
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:16,520
Speaker 1: you don't alter this. This is the text and uh,

1062
00:59:16,560 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 1: and this is the accepted interpretation of it. And if

1063
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:22,200
Speaker 1: you tweak it in any way, well that's heresy and

1064
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 1: we will punish that. Uh. And but then he points

1065
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:27,480
Speaker 1: out what you end up with with something like say,

1066
00:59:27,520 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 1: the Church of Scientology emerging, getting enough power, and what

1067
00:59:31,680 --> 00:59:34,000
Speaker 1: what do they turn around and do they kind of

1068
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:36,680
Speaker 1: they make their own sacred text and they say, you

1069
00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: can't mess with this, you can't take these don't be

1070
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:41,680
Speaker 1: a squirrel and turn these concepts around and try and

1071
00:59:41,720 --> 00:59:46,800
Speaker 1: market them off into your own heretical religion? Is squirrel

1072
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:50,040
Speaker 1: part of their whole thing? I I wasn't aware of squirrels? Yes,

1073
00:59:50,160 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: uh oop, al rightes quote. For instance, the founder of Scientology,

1074
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:57,120
Speaker 1: or On Hubbard, is reported to have referred to those

1075
00:59:57,160 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 1: who modify as techniques as squirrels who should be harassed

1076
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:04,640
Speaker 1: asked in any possible way. Weapons used to discourage any

1077
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:09,600
Speaker 1: change in religious doctrine in practice include ridicule, expulsion, and harassment.

1078
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: Continuity and religious doctrine is explained to the extent that

1079
01:00:13,360 --> 01:00:17,160
Speaker 1: such thought control techniques are successful. So it's kind of

1080
01:00:17,160 --> 01:00:20,960
Speaker 1: a it feels like a struggle between the uh, the

1081
01:00:20,960 --> 01:00:24,880
Speaker 1: the oral stories and the written stories, right, the one

1082
01:00:24,920 --> 01:00:27,360
Speaker 1: that wants to live and change, and the other that

1083
01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:31,440
Speaker 1: we're trying to artificially set in stone. Here's a question

1084
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 1: I have, and I think it is to some degree

1085
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:36,480
Speaker 1: addressed by this literature, but I'm not sure if there

1086
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:40,080
Speaker 1: is a settled answer on it. What is the stronger tendency,

1087
01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: the the counterintuitive element adding tendency or the subtraction tendency?

1088
01:00:47,120 --> 01:00:50,040
Speaker 1: Do stories over time tend to undergo more adding of

1089
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: donkey cabbages style elements are more subtraction of donkey cabbages

1090
01:00:54,040 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: style elements? Well, I I like the like Coopa's argument

1091
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,120
Speaker 1: that there's a there's a dynamism in place that going

1092
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 1: to have You're gonna have it come in waves. To

1093
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:06,040
Speaker 1: think of it this way, right, you have alien it's

1094
01:01:06,080 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: just about a person you know, a crew on a

1095
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:11,600
Speaker 1: ship against one alien, and then things get crazy. You

1096
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:14,840
Speaker 1: get aliens, and you've got multiple aliens, You've got new

1097
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:17,280
Speaker 1: kinds of aliens, and it's a it's a it's a

1098
01:01:17,320 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 1: fiesta but aliens. I would say it's minimally counterintuitive. I mean,

1099
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:25,919
Speaker 1: it is a mostly mundane narratives, like one thing, which

1100
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:28,280
Speaker 1: is that there are these horrible monsters. But but there's

1101
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,680
Speaker 1: a ratcheting up. So think of it like one one

1102
01:01:31,760 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 1: alien is one m c I and then multiple aliens.

1103
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:38,560
Speaker 1: That's a bunch of m ciyes, and then Alien three

1104
01:01:38,600 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: comes around or what alien cubed sometimes it's display does

1105
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:44,240
Speaker 1: and that when they're like, all right, let's boil it

1106
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:48,120
Speaker 1: back down. Just one m c I alien in play

1107
01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 1: and then four things get crazy again and you see

1108
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 1: this back and forth. Right, um but I feel like

1109
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,640
Speaker 1: that's probably the tendency, right, is that you'll ratchet things

1110
01:01:56,720 --> 01:01:59,680
Speaker 1: up more and more um M CIEs are added, and

1111
01:01:59,760 --> 01:02:01,920
Speaker 1: then in it kind of goes in reverse, fewer and fewer,

1112
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 1: sort of getting back to the it becomes more relatable

1113
01:02:05,160 --> 01:02:07,840
Speaker 1: as it is it is. It is a transferred from

1114
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:10,320
Speaker 1: user to user. Yeah, this is all real interesting, but

1115
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 1: now I'm I'm I'm undercutting myself because I'm thinking about

1116
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:18,520
Speaker 1: the difference, uh, of there being both kinds of narratives

1117
01:02:18,560 --> 01:02:22,400
Speaker 1: going way back. So if you go back sixteen years ago, uh,

1118
01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:26,400
Speaker 1: think about the difference between the basically emergent Catholic Christian

1119
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: story compared to the narratives you find of Gnostic Christian texts.

1120
01:02:31,480 --> 01:02:35,440
Speaker 1: At the same time, the Gnostic Christian texts are wonderful.

1121
01:02:35,640 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: They they are worth reading, and they're so interesting, But

1122
01:02:38,960 --> 01:02:42,920
Speaker 1: they're cosmology narratives are they're they're off the you know,

1123
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: they're outlandish, they're super counterintuitive. They're barely tethered to any

1124
01:02:47,320 --> 01:02:50,480
Speaker 1: kind of understandable or munday and earthly story. You've got

1125
01:02:50,520 --> 01:02:55,160
Speaker 1: the Pleroma and YadA both. Uh, it's just not it's

1126
01:02:55,240 --> 01:03:00,360
Speaker 1: not as earthly and tethered and relatable as most mythologies

1127
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:02,640
Speaker 1: that you're used to. It's, yeah, this is where you

1128
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:06,000
Speaker 1: have like the ideas like the first creation and the secondary,

1129
01:03:07,160 --> 01:03:10,320
Speaker 1: the dimmi urge, the different levels of creation, the beings

1130
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: of light and all this stuff. I mean, it's not

1131
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:16,600
Speaker 1: stuff that's easy to picture. It doesn't work like a

1132
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:21,160
Speaker 1: normal human story. It's very abstract and removed from from

1133
01:03:21,240 --> 01:03:25,680
Speaker 1: grounded reality. It seems too counterintuitive to be successful. But

1134
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:29,400
Speaker 1: then again, I guess historically it was not successful, true,

1135
01:03:29,760 --> 01:03:32,560
Speaker 1: but maybe it was only it can only be successful

1136
01:03:32,600 --> 01:03:34,720
Speaker 1: in a time in which this uh, and say that

1137
01:03:34,720 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 1: the Catholic narrative was just so widespread and so dominant

1138
01:03:38,040 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 1: that it it kind of took on the trappings of

1139
01:03:40,120 --> 01:03:43,200
Speaker 1: the physical laws of the of of life. Yeah, and

1140
01:03:43,240 --> 01:03:46,160
Speaker 1: I guess it also happened within a broader Christian context,

1141
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:49,280
Speaker 1: so many of the people who practiced Gnostic Christianity would

1142
01:03:49,280 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: think of it as a sort of like an extra

1143
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:54,600
Speaker 1: helping It's like the secret add on mythology that you

1144
01:03:54,680 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 1: take in addition to your regular Catholic mythology. So in

1145
01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 1: a sense, Catholicism was roller skates and then uh and

1146
01:04:01,720 --> 01:04:06,560
Speaker 1: then a NaSTA. The Gnostic Bulley system was was roller blades. Maybe,

1147
01:04:06,640 --> 01:04:08,760
Speaker 1: I mean it'd be like roller skates with an extra

1148
01:04:08,920 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: rocket booster or something or Robert. This has been fun

1149
01:04:12,400 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a really compelling explanation for

1150
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:19,440
Speaker 1: the dynamics of of narratives and memory and human culture.

1151
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:22,680
Speaker 1: I I don't think I'd fully tried to put all

1152
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:26,400
Speaker 1: this together before, but once funny enough, it is very

1153
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:29,840
Speaker 1: intuitive once you hear it. Yeah, yeah, I agree, it doesn't.

1154
01:04:29,920 --> 01:04:33,280
Speaker 1: It makes you rethink everything from your you know, your

1155
01:04:33,280 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: favorite books and movies to major world religions. Uh. And

1156
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,120
Speaker 1: I do think it is it is getting at the

1157
01:04:41,320 --> 01:04:43,560
Speaker 1: at some of the truth of what's going on, but

1158
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:46,479
Speaker 1: maybe a minimal part of the truth. Well, we shall see.

1159
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:50,640
Speaker 1: There's always a lot of pizza pie left over all. Right, Well,

1160
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 1: there you go. If you want to check out more

1161
01:04:52,400 --> 01:04:54,000
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over

1162
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:56,120
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

1163
01:04:56,160 --> 01:04:59,280
Speaker 1: where you will find all the episodes, including the various

1164
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:04,160
Speaker 1: episodes we've done on religious and narrative topics over the years. Uh.

1165
01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:07,160
Speaker 1: And if you want to support the show, really, as

1166
01:05:07,240 --> 01:05:10,160
Speaker 1: I've said before, rate and review us wherever you have

1167
01:05:10,200 --> 01:05:12,480
Speaker 1: the ability to do so. That helps us out immensely

1168
01:05:13,360 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 1: big thanks as always for our wonderful audio producers Alex

1169
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:19,120
Speaker 1: Williams and Torry Harrison. If you would like to get

1170
01:05:19,160 --> 01:05:21,840
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly with feedback about this episode

1171
01:05:21,920 --> 01:05:24,680
Speaker 1: or any other UH to let us know where you

1172
01:05:24,720 --> 01:05:26,840
Speaker 1: listen to the show from, how you found out about it,

1173
01:05:26,920 --> 01:05:29,840
Speaker 1: or suggest a topic for a future episode, you can

1174
01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:32,720
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works

1175
01:05:32,840 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1176
01:05:44,960 --> 01:06:02,280
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot Com. The D three

1177
01:06:02,400 --> 01:06:05,480
Speaker 1: part Proper par