Speaker 1: Here, then I repeat and sum up. During the endless
Speaker 1: train journey which took me from Eisenach to Berlin, across
Speaker 1: the Thuringia and Saxony in Ruins, I noticed for the
Speaker 1: first time, and I don't know how long that man
Speaker 1: whom I call my double to simplify matters, or else
Speaker 1: my twin, or again and less theatrically the traveler. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today I thought we might have a
Speaker 1: discussion bringing together the seemingly disparate topics of familiarity, doppelgangers
Speaker 1: or doubles, cap gross syndrome, and social media. And I
Speaker 1: got the idea to talk about this today because a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago I read this interesting article that had
Speaker 1: a very intriguing central comparison or image. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a thought provoking essay by the Stanford Nero Endo
Speaker 1: chronologist Robert Sapulsky. It was originally published a few years
Speaker 1: ago in Nautilus, and it was an article comparing the
Speaker 1: effects of social media and and sort of the digital
Speaker 1: world like Facebook, and you know, all that to a
Speaker 1: psychological condition known as Capgrass syndrome. And so today I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe we should start by explaining and discussing Sepulsky's comparison
Speaker 1: and argument in that article and just see where we
Speaker 1: go from there. Now, capgrass syndrome has definitely come up
Speaker 1: on the show before. I don't know that we've done
Speaker 1: like a designated show on the topic, but it'd certainly
Speaker 1: come up. But either way, we we we do need to,
Speaker 1: you know, provide a brief refresher on its history for
Speaker 1: our listeners. Right. One of the important cases and which
Speaker 1: Sapulsky discusses in his article, is the case of Madam
Speaker 1: im This. This was a woman who lived in France
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century who had this persistent idea.
Speaker 1: She was fixated on the idea that her loved ones,
Speaker 1: including her husband, family members, people she knew, had been
Speaker 1: replaced by doubles or doppel gangers who looked exactly like them.
Speaker 1: So she would say, my husband is not really my husband.
Speaker 1: He's a man who looks exactly like my husband used
Speaker 1: to and I don't know what happened to my real husband.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't her only symptoms. She had a number
Speaker 1: of symptoms. She believed that all kinds of things were
Speaker 1: happening to UH, to her children. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: tragic story, but the underlying UH, the underlying cause of
Speaker 1: what would lead someone to believe that people around them
Speaker 1: were being replaced by doppel gangers or doubles is is
Speaker 1: interesting to consider. And so the way Sepulsky in this
Speaker 1: article characterizes the ultimate disconnect under lyon cap Grass syndrome
Speaker 1: is that when the module of the brain used in
Speaker 1: recognition of faces, specifically involving the fusiform gyrus in the brain,
Speaker 1: does cognitively recognize someone, but at the same time, the
Speaker 1: different module of the brain that normally responds to this
Speaker 1: recognition with the emotion that we call familiarity does not
Speaker 1: kick in. And this brain function responsible for generating the
Speaker 1: emotion of familiarity is what Sopolsky calls the extended face
Speaker 1: processing system. It's quote a diffuse network including a variety
Speaker 1: of cortical and limbic regions. And apparently, when we recognize
Speaker 1: someone but we don't feel the necessary familiarity emotion that
Speaker 1: follows when we normally recognize somebody, What the brain often
Speaker 1: does when faced with this contradiction is to conclude that
Speaker 1: someone has been replaced by a double. It looks like them,
Speaker 1: but this person doesn't feel familiar to me, thus they
Speaker 1: must be a physically identical impostor. In the past, I
Speaker 1: looked at a two thousand four paper from the Canadian
Speaker 1: Journal of Psychiatry titled cap Grass Syndrome. A Review of
Speaker 1: the neuro physiological correlates and presenting clinical features in cases
Speaker 1: involving physical violence and UH. In this point out that
Speaker 1: the delusional identification syndrome generally involves right brain anomalies linked
Speaker 1: to a number of illnesses and neurological disorders, ranging from
Speaker 1: UH schizo effective disorder and Alzheimer's disease to severe head injuries,
Speaker 1: pituitary tumors and migraines. Even alcoholism can play a role.
Speaker 1: You know, basically, each each of us has a visual
Speaker 1: system and olympic system, and the ladder helps us to
Speaker 1: generate and process emotions. Damage or disrupt communication between these
Speaker 1: two systems, and suddenly a familiar face can in suspire,
Speaker 1: can inspire suspicion instead of comfort. Now, Fortunately, kept Grass
Speaker 1: syndrome usually subsides with the successful treatment of the underlying
Speaker 1: medical condition. You know, the tumor goes away, and thankfully
Speaker 1: so does this. Uh. This, you know, suspicion and that
Speaker 1: people are not what they seem to be. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in some cases doctors can prescribe antipsychotic drugs to also
Speaker 1: achieve the same effect. But you can easily see why
Speaker 1: the idea of someone being replaced by a double or
Speaker 1: a doppelganger would be such a captivating one. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something that, um, it's something that feels very perverted.
Speaker 1: You know, it plays on our great vulnerabilities. And I
Speaker 1: think it is not a coincidence that this kind of
Speaker 1: thing has featured into some of the horror folklore of
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, you think about the idea of
Speaker 1: the changeling uh in in fairy folklore, where there was
Speaker 1: this idea that where the fairy folk would come in
Speaker 1: and replace someone you knew, often a child, but sometimes
Speaker 1: like a husband or wife, or you know, someone you
Speaker 1: knew with a fairy double who looked like them but
Speaker 1: wasn't familiar to you, didn't act like them. And now
Speaker 1: this is often described as something that people would use
Speaker 1: to explain you know, maybe when somebody's behavior changed and
Speaker 1: they didn't seem themselves. They think, oh, maybe they've been
Speaker 1: replaced with a changeling uh or used to explain why
Speaker 1: people might feel that their children weren't their own, or
Speaker 1: something like that. But then also you have to wonder
Speaker 1: if some kinds of neurological issues maybe at work here
Speaker 1: in the minds of the people making the accusation that
Speaker 1: someone is is a fairy. Yeah. And and this obviously,
Speaker 1: this idea in and of itself has played into some
Speaker 1: so many myths throughout history and also continues to just
Speaker 1: resound in our our popular media. Um. This is slightly
Speaker 1: older work, of course, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
Speaker 1: I mean that plays heavily on this trope, right, that
Speaker 1: people are being replaced by something else, People that we
Speaker 1: think we know we're not are not actually those individuals anymore.
Speaker 1: It's been a huge yet you often find it also
Speaker 1: not only in speculative fiction, but in literary fiction as well. Um.
Speaker 1: The quote that a right at the top of this
Speaker 1: episode is from a two thousand and four novel UH
Speaker 1: titled Repetition by one of my favorite French authors, Alan
Speaker 1: Robe Guerrilla, who often this is one of This is
Speaker 1: a trope that he often rule into his books, like
Speaker 1: the idea of a double or some sort of an
Speaker 1: alter ego. And this book in particularly been in particular
Speaker 1: like starts off with a character on a train having
Speaker 1: glimpsed his double once more. Yeah, it's a very unsettling image. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the plurality of self. Right. Um well, and because so
Speaker 1: there are double ways that it can be unsettling. There's
Speaker 1: the idea that someone you know is replaced by a double. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you were to come to believe that through you know,
Speaker 1: whether you had like a brain injury or a neurological
Speaker 1: condition that caused you to believe that, or I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you just believed in fairies and thought maybe that
Speaker 1: this was happening because your cultural conditioning. Either way, that
Speaker 1: would be a terrifying thing. It's another thing entirely to
Speaker 1: see it, to believe that you see another version of yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, to think that you had your own double,
Speaker 1: or there was a doppelganger of you. So I think
Speaker 1: most of us are probably familiar with this, the the
Speaker 1: the the idea of a doppelganger. Um. I you know,
Speaker 1: I would love to say that I learned about doppelgangers
Speaker 1: for the first time by either consulting a nice, you
Speaker 1: know book on Germanic mythology, and certainly I read a
Speaker 1: lot of different mythology books when I as a kid. Also,
Speaker 1: I would love to say that my first encounter with
Speaker 1: doppel gangers was a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual, because
Speaker 1: there's another huge place that they're highly visible, as they've
Speaker 1: long been a staple of Dungeons and Dragons, So they're
Speaker 1: in there. Oh yeah, I mean it's a great way
Speaker 1: to introduce a little uh, suspense and chaos into a campaign,
Speaker 1: right somebody you know an MPC that the character's trust
Speaker 1: has been replaced, or adoppel gangers trying to or even
Speaker 1: successfully replaces a member of the party. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fun to be had with a doppelganger. Um,
Speaker 1: but I have to admit that neither of these cases
Speaker 1: is true. I heard about them initially in the nineties
Speaker 1: via the Drew Barrymore movie that aired on the Sci
Speaker 1: Fi Channel back when this is the old days, back
Speaker 1: when before there were wise in sci Fi Wise inside
Speaker 1: Oh Siffy you mean Siffy Yeah, Ciffy Channel. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I remember next to nothing about this film, but it
Speaker 1: was heavily promoted on the channel, and it introduced the
Speaker 1: idea to me initially, and then I you know, followed
Speaker 1: up by you know, asking around, Hey, Dad, what's a Doppelganger?
Speaker 1: And then I looked it up, etcetera. Well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: so it was called Doppelganger the name of the movie.
Speaker 1: That was, at least that was the title of the film,
Speaker 1: as was promoted on Sci Fi Channel at the time.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's often the case with films of this caliber.
Speaker 1: They may have had multiple titles, and who knows, they
Speaker 1: may have been promoted elsewhere under a different title. I
Speaker 1: just looked it up. It's also known as Doppelganger colon
Speaker 1: the Evil Within. Just to be clear, that was for
Speaker 1: the people who didn't know what a doppel ganger was.
Speaker 1: Always got to have a colon, real title. So but here,
Speaker 1: here's an interesting thing that I didn't realize until I
Speaker 1: was researching this episode. I just kind of assumed, you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: the doppelganger itself, the term is Germanic origins, and I
Speaker 1: figured this is a creature that emerges from German folk traditions,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, you know, and in the same way
Speaker 1: that that crampus came down from the mountains and uh
Speaker 1: and alpine traditions. I just figured the doppelganger was just
Speaker 1: a standard because the again, the idea of a mysterious double,
Speaker 1: either of self or other, is long established, but this
Speaker 1: does not seem to be the case. Apparently, the word
Speaker 1: doppelganger wasn't coined to know the eighteenth century, and it
Speaker 1: was coined by German novelist Jean Paul in his seventeen
Speaker 1: nine novel uh Sebenkas, in which the main character encounters
Speaker 1: his own doppel ganger or double goer uh in the
Speaker 1: the In this case, the dopel ganger convinces him to
Speaker 1: fake his own death and start a new life. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I had to I had to look in closer
Speaker 1: on this. It's it's not as straightforward as I would
Speaker 1: like it to be, where he's just like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is the doppelganger. Apparently he invinced two similar words in
Speaker 1: this book. He invinced the word doppeled ganger. Um, so
Speaker 1: this would be the name for people who see themselves.
Speaker 1: But then he also talks about doppel ganger as a
Speaker 1: as a word for the second court when the second
Speaker 1: course of a meal arrives along side the first course,
Speaker 1: because ganga all means both you know, go or walker
Speaker 1: as well as course in a meal, so technically doppelt
Speaker 1: Ganger would be the mysterious double idea that he introduces.
Speaker 1: And doppelganger itself is just a weird mishap of ordering
Speaker 1: a multi course meal at a restaurant. But nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: say doubled ganger, not anymore, no dafeld ganger. But this
Speaker 1: is this is a good idea. Next time someone introduces
Speaker 1: the dappel ganger in your dn D campaign, remind the
Speaker 1: d M that that's a culinary term sort of. Uh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the termines up resonating in German literature, and
Speaker 1: it became popular in romantic horror literature in general by
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds. So I think originally the the
Speaker 1: this idea was always something scary or dangerous, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not as much. It's seemingly in the original and
Speaker 1: I didn't read the original German novel This is stress,
Speaker 1: so you know, feel free to correct me if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is more familiar with the with the literature
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, but it certainly took on sinister
Speaker 1: connotations within the literary tradition. But then I was reading
Speaker 1: about the term on websters and the sinister connotations have
Speaker 1: apparently dropped off somewhat in its English language usage, which
Speaker 1: is surprising to me. But then again, I'm coming from
Speaker 1: the standpoint of knowing them mostly through Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 1: and Horrible Drew Barrymore movies, so I'm probably not like
Speaker 1: the the key candidate here. Um. I guess the other thing, too,
Speaker 1: is I really don't use the term outside of a
Speaker 1: fantasy context. Like if I encounter someone who looks a
Speaker 1: lot like someone I know, I don't say, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: I saw your doppelganger today. I'm more like, hey, I
Speaker 1: saw your Maybe I'll say evil twin, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: another variation on this trope. Or I'll say oh, I
Speaker 1: just I saw someone who looked just about like you,
Speaker 1: or I I'm in another city, I might say oh
Speaker 1: I saw your Chicago you or whatever you know. So
Speaker 1: that's the other thing. I just don't use doppelganger outside
Speaker 1: of fantastic settings. Myself. I think most people just use
Speaker 1: it to me and the look alike. Now, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I guess I don't even use it that way. Like
Speaker 1: for me, I just if I think of Doppelganger, I
Speaker 1: think of something like that creature and Kroll which pretends
Speaker 1: to be the Wizard, you know. I think something that
Speaker 1: when you reveal it, it's a horrible, pallid creature with
Speaker 1: jet black eyes. So if I'm not specifically talking about
Speaker 1: like a monstrous scenario, I'm not gonna use Doppelganger. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's just me. I also think that part of but
Speaker 1: I think part of this whole idea of the sinister
Speaker 1: connotations fading away, it might have to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that if it is used by and large for
Speaker 1: just somebody's double Like if someone is to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I saw your doppelganger today at Showney's, they're not gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's not gonna be a creepy connotation
Speaker 1: to that that sighting. We're not gonna say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I saw your doppelganger at Showny's and I was super
Speaker 1: creeped out. I think we need to call somebody. No,
Speaker 1: you're you're just gonna it's just gonna be a point
Speaker 1: whimsy And the other thing is that more than likely
Speaker 1: it was a first glance situation, Like at first glance,
Speaker 1: I thought it was you. At second glance, I saw
Speaker 1: that it was clearly another person and nothing to freak
Speaker 1: out about. Well, I would be shocked though, if people
Speaker 1: didn't still interpret this kind of thing is some kind
Speaker 1: of weird omen or demon or whatever. Oh yeah, And
Speaker 1: I was glancing around on the internet and there's still
Speaker 1: plenty of that um And I think a large part
Speaker 1: of that is, you know, as with all paranormal UH
Speaker 1: experiences or supernatural explanations for mundane UH encounters, the supernatural
Speaker 1: explanation is going to be more appealing. It's going you know,
Speaker 1: it makes us feel more important, Like you want to
Speaker 1: feel like you're in an Alan Rogue Relay novel and
Speaker 1: you saw your mysterious double and it, you know, reveals
Speaker 1: something about your you know, your your inner subconscious nature
Speaker 1: or something, or that you you saw a ghost that
Speaker 1: looked like you. I mean, all these are four more
Speaker 1: interesting then, yeah, they're you know, there are a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people in the world, and it was bound
Speaker 1: to happen sooner or later. But I saw somebody that
Speaker 1: kind of looked like me, and had some more facial hair.
Speaker 1: The way that you look isn't all that unique. That's
Speaker 1: like the worst news of all. Yeah, that's that's just
Speaker 1: nothing exciting about that that story. You don't run rush
Speaker 1: home to tell that to your significant other. But it
Speaker 1: does bring up the question what are your chances of
Speaker 1: running into your own unrelated double, or for that matter,
Speaker 1: running into an unrelated double with someone you know well.
Speaker 1: According to ananimous Dr Tiggan Lucas quoted in the BBC
Speaker 1: Future article, you're surprisingly likely to have a doppel game,
Speaker 1: which I think is slightly confusing title given the contents
Speaker 1: of the article, but still uh said that the chances
Speaker 1: of sharing just eight dimensions with someone else are less
Speaker 1: than one in a trillion, and with a seven point
Speaker 1: four billion people on the planet, it was only there
Speaker 1: was only a one in one five chants that there's
Speaker 1: a single pair of true doppel gagers. No, wait, what
Speaker 1: are these dimensions you're talking about? Like eight facial dimensions?
Speaker 1: Like if you you take you take facial features and
Speaker 1: you divide them up into eight mentions and go to
Speaker 1: match those up. So yeah, not like a spatial dimensions.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that would work. Basically, the eight
Speaker 1: sliders on your character creator right now. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: though again we're not talking about exact doubles. You know, generally,
Speaker 1: these are just faces that are similar to our own
Speaker 1: or similar to someone we know. When we focus on
Speaker 1: the familiarity in a way that may be tied to
Speaker 1: a means of identifying close kin uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: early human history, like that's what this recognition system is,
Speaker 1: perhaps four um and you know, think again about how
Speaker 1: generally how you know, generally, doubles are kind of a
Speaker 1: first glance thing. The similarities may be jarring, but the
Speaker 1: differences will be pronounced as well. Now, the thing is,
Speaker 1: there are so many humans on the planet now, and
Speaker 1: we live in you know, closer confines. In many situations,
Speaker 1: seeing familiar features, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's any
Speaker 1: shared genetic heritage between two given individuals, you know, except
Speaker 1: in the sense that all humans share most in the
Speaker 1: grander yeah, and the grander scheme, yes, but yeah, if
Speaker 1: you just if you're in another city you see someone
Speaker 1: who looks kind of like you, or looks kind of
Speaker 1: like a friend, it doesn't mean they're your long last
Speaker 1: cousin or their long last cousin. Of an of your friend.
Speaker 1: But it's a situation where we kind of broke the
Speaker 1: system through population growth in the birth of cities and
Speaker 1: and self facial recognition and facial recognition abilities. They're also
Speaker 1: going to vary from person to person, so your doppelganger
Speaker 1: alarms just may not be as easy to set off
Speaker 1: as someone else's. So anyway, that's that's doppel gangers in
Speaker 1: a nutshell, both the origin of the term, but then
Speaker 1: a little bit about the science and the potent that
Speaker 1: the potentiality of seeing a double or near double uh
Speaker 1: somewhere in the world. But thinking about what is at
Speaker 1: work with the the erroneous detection of doubles in cop
Speaker 1: cross syndrome, uh is I guess maybe what we should
Speaker 1: get back to when we come back after a break. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back and it's really us. We weren't replaced by
Speaker 1: strange creatures from the Monster Manual over the course of
Speaker 1: the advertisement. No, we're here, it's really us and we're
Speaker 1: going to continue our exploration. You know, I wanted to
Speaker 1: answer that with the body snatchers noise, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can make it exactly from the Donald
Speaker 1: Sutherland version, Yeah, which is a great version by I
Speaker 1: still haven't seen that. I've only seen the old black
Speaker 1: and white original. Oh, the Donald Sutherland one is great.
Speaker 1: He's got Lambert from Alien, it's got Jeff Goldblum, He's
Speaker 1: he's feisty. It's got oh and it's got from another
Speaker 1: sci fi classic. It's got what's his name who played
Speaker 1: spok Leonard n Yeah, Leonard Nimoy is fantastic in it.
Speaker 1: I think it's his it's his great performance. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a great cast. But the nineteen fifty six original had
Speaker 1: had had Kevin McCarthy in the lead role. It was terrific.
Speaker 1: You also had Carol and Jones, who had played more
Speaker 1: Tisha on The Adams Family. Cool. Yeah, but also it
Speaker 1: was it was just black and white, and it just
Speaker 1: it really, at least the version I saw of it,
Speaker 1: like the darkness felt just so murky and uh and
Speaker 1: dirty somehow, Like it was just a very nightmare inducing
Speaker 1: film when I saw it as a kid. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: paranoid visual vibe, it's got a it's got a kind
Speaker 1: of a communist infiltration thing. Oh, definitely, definitely. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a very strong element of it, which just goes
Speaker 1: to show like the ideas of like why this concept
Speaker 1: of of doubles resonates so because you can apply it
Speaker 1: to all these other scenarios social and political. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a common thing for people to say
Speaker 1: when they don't literally think that someone they know has
Speaker 1: been physically bodily replaced by a by a supernatural double,
Speaker 1: they might often think, I don't know this person anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a similar like, you know, they've been
Speaker 1: replaced with somebody, somebody replaced you with a different person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it just would. Really, you just found out you're
Speaker 1: getting to know them better, You found out something about
Speaker 1: them you didn't know before, and now you think that
Speaker 1: they're like a different being entirely. And now it's just
Speaker 1: because yeah, it turns out that they were maybe communists
Speaker 1: or like a different football team. Well, to be fair, also,
Speaker 1: it could be a case of um, you know, people
Speaker 1: over emphasizing disposition all traits, thinking that people thinking that
Speaker 1: they should expect their loved ones to be incredibly consistent
Speaker 1: and trait predictable, when in fact people are inconsistent. That
Speaker 1: it depends on the circumstances how they behave. Maybe sometimes
Speaker 1: you are used to seeing someone only in one type
Speaker 1: of context, maybe used to only seeing them at work,
Speaker 1: and then when you see them in a different context,
Speaker 1: when you see them, you know, out with their friends
Speaker 1: or with their family, they seem like a totally different
Speaker 1: person to you. It can be jarring when you see
Speaker 1: those differences, and yet they're there for almost all of us,
Speaker 1: almost none of us, like really behave the same way
Speaker 1: in all contexts. Well, let's talk about the about those contexts,
Speaker 1: especially those social contexts. Yeah, so I want to come
Speaker 1: back to So we've talked about doppelgangers a bit and
Speaker 1: the idea of doubles and and familiarity and recognition, But
Speaker 1: I want to come back to uh that article I
Speaker 1: mentioned at the beginning where Robert sapulse Key makes this
Speaker 1: comparison between what is made clear about the brain basis
Speaker 1: of familiarity with cop Cross syndrome and the ways that
Speaker 1: technology is changing our social relationships. So in in Sapolski's words,
Speaker 1: Capcross syndrome makes clear the brain basis for quote, the
Speaker 1: differences between the thoughts that give rise to recognition. Remember
Speaker 1: recognition as cognitive You see somebody and you cognitively know
Speaker 1: who they are, and the feelings that give rise to familiarity.
Speaker 1: That's the emotion that says, yes, I know this person,
Speaker 1: they're different things. And Sapolsky's main point is quote, these
Speaker 1: functional fault lines in the social brain, when coupled with
Speaker 1: advances in the online world, have given rise to the
Speaker 1: contemporary Facebook generation. They have made cop cross syndrome a
Speaker 1: window on our culture and minds today where nothing is
Speaker 1: quite recognizable but everything seems familiar. And I would actually
Speaker 1: go further than that and say, I think that's an
Speaker 1: interesting point, but the the inverse is true as well,
Speaker 1: that the online world creates these situations where you have
Speaker 1: familiarity without recognition and recognition without familiarity. So to further
Speaker 1: explore the point, he makes a little bit so he
Speaker 1: points out that you know, essentially, for all of our
Speaker 1: evolutionary history, are only social relationships have been face to
Speaker 1: face ones. And I'm struggling to think of a counter example.
Speaker 1: I can't really think of a counter example for relationships
Speaker 1: with real people. But for tens of thousands of years,
Speaker 1: of course, we have had language, and we could have
Speaker 1: felt as if we had relationships with people we only
Speaker 1: heard about in stories for example. Now, obviously we do
Speaker 1: eventually reach the point where we have the ability to
Speaker 1: engage in activities like having a pinpal and that maybe
Speaker 1: you know, that's a case where you can have certainly
Speaker 1: a non face to face example. But but prior to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the advent of the necessary um, you know,
Speaker 1: systems and technology. Yeah, I struggle to think of an
Speaker 1: example as well. I mean even sort of semi imagined
Speaker 1: situations such as speaking to the spirit of a dead
Speaker 1: ancestor or dead relative, like you're still depending upon a
Speaker 1: previous face to face relationship. Yes, and even even with
Speaker 1: pin pals, I mean even the oldest versions of this,
Speaker 1: the non digital communications, just writing to people with letters
Speaker 1: even if you've never met them before. That that is
Speaker 1: anatomically recent. I mean, the vast majority of the time
Speaker 1: our species has been around, we didn't have writing. We
Speaker 1: couldn't do that. The only relationships we had were face
Speaker 1: to face relationships. And so it's entirely clear that our
Speaker 1: bodies and our brains have been shaped by an evolutionary
Speaker 1: niche and when in which all relationships were face to
Speaker 1: face ones. Right, even our history is a symbolic Uh.
Speaker 1: Species is mostly based on, almost exclusively based on face
Speaker 1: to face communication. Yeah, and so when our only social
Speaker 1: relationships were face to face relationships, it was natural for
Speaker 1: face facial recognition and familiarity at an in person body
Speaker 1: sensing level to be one of our main mediators of
Speaker 1: how we conceptualized, evaluated, and formed beliefs about our relationships.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you live in this non technological world
Speaker 1: where your only relationships are face to face, it totally
Speaker 1: makes sense for you to use moment to moment, face
Speaker 1: to face, say, visual and touch data and things like
Speaker 1: that to get the best idea of what your relationships
Speaker 1: are and how you should feel about them, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of that goes back to the you know we're
Speaker 1: discussing earlier about uh, you know, can identification being able
Speaker 1: to tell like this, this is a relative, I can
Speaker 1: see it in their face exactly. But of course there
Speaker 1: have been these technological changes that now allow relationships to
Speaker 1: exist and persist under circumstances other than face to face interaction.
Speaker 1: Of course, we already mentioned writing in literacy. Now this
Speaker 1: allows you to maybe send letters, though I'd say even
Speaker 1: for most of the time that's been around, that has
Speaker 1: been something that is limited to a small percent of humans,
Speaker 1: you know, because for most of human history. Most people
Speaker 1: have not been literate, that's true. And then and then,
Speaker 1: of course again, I feel I feel like the pinpal,
Speaker 1: like the the the pinpal situation in which there is
Speaker 1: never a face to face meeting. Like that's a slim
Speaker 1: slice of the overall pie. Most of the other um
Speaker 1: written communications are going to be carried out with individuals
Speaker 1: um in which there was at least a previous face
Speaker 1: to face communication. Yeah, but then think about how hard
Speaker 1: this kind of thing can make relationships. I bet every
Speaker 1: single person listening has had the experience of relationships strife
Speaker 1: caused by a feeling by a misunderstanding or some kind
Speaker 1: of feeling of emotional estrangement brought on by the media
Speaker 1: through which you communicate. A lot of us don't feel
Speaker 1: very comfortable talking to people on the phone. A lot
Speaker 1: of us, don't you know, we have the experience of
Speaker 1: sending email else and being misunderstood, having people not read
Speaker 1: your tone correctly, or getting worried about the way somebody
Speaker 1: punctuated a sentence and an email. I mean, I bet
Speaker 1: you've had this experience. Oh yeah, absolutely, And I think
Speaker 1: we all have both in personal contacts and work contacts.
Speaker 1: You know, um says, I guess, you know, hopefully if
Speaker 1: you have, if you're dealing a lot via email with someone,
Speaker 1: you'll kind of get a feel for their tone and
Speaker 1: how they tend to speak. But even then there's so
Speaker 1: much room for miscommunication, like even when you feel like
Speaker 1: you really uh you know, or or up to speed
Speaker 1: on how they present themselves in a textual manner. Robert,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind me saying you're kind of a
Speaker 1: terse emailer, am I I can see people getting worried
Speaker 1: when they get an email from you that maybe you're
Speaker 1: mad at them or something. I don't think that's necessarily
Speaker 1: always the king. Maybe sometimes you're mad at me, But
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you just tend to not spend
Speaker 1: a whole lot of time, you know, worrying about how
Speaker 1: to phrase stuff on email. You just kind of bang
Speaker 1: it out, and which I admire because you know, I
Speaker 1: it is, you know, the amount of time that people
Speaker 1: waste trying to phrase stuff on email is is it's
Speaker 1: a horror. The thing is I used I remember when
Speaker 1: I was younger, I would have these these long email
Speaker 1: correspondence is going on with friends where we would respond
Speaker 1: like like sometimes sentence by sentence or atleast paragraph by
Speaker 1: paragraph where we'd respond to specific points and uh and
Speaker 1: and right at length in response, and at some point
Speaker 1: this just faded away. I haven't really I haven't really
Speaker 1: thought about it too much to to try and figure
Speaker 1: out exactly like at what point, like which like technological
Speaker 1: or communications change altered that or and or what life
Speaker 1: changes led to that occurring. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to have of, you know, long
Speaker 1: phone conversations with people, and now it's really it's it's
Speaker 1: extremely rare for me to have a long phone conversation.
Speaker 1: It's there's basically like two people in the world that
Speaker 1: I have phone conversations within a regular basis, and once
Speaker 1: my wife and once with my mother, and that's pretty
Speaker 1: much it. Do you think maybe these changes have been
Speaker 1: brought on by other technological changes, like the rise of
Speaker 1: social media. I suspect they have. Yeah, Like instead of
Speaker 1: having this this more, this longer, more thoughtful stream of
Speaker 1: communication with somebody that you know now lives in another city,
Speaker 1: you just have a continual trickle, you know, so again
Speaker 1: we just have that familiarity, like a tripical familiarity going
Speaker 1: on instead of like an actual stream of communication well,
Speaker 1: and it also I think that the way that technology
Speaker 1: has changed our communication sometimes forces us to become a
Speaker 1: version of ourselves that we don't recognize. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was talking about how we write work emails. I actually
Speaker 1: don't love the way that I write work emails. I
Speaker 1: feel like often I have to I overuse like exclamation
Speaker 1: points and smiley faces and all that. And it's mainly
Speaker 1: just because I don't ever want to accidentally make somebody
Speaker 1: feel bad over email, or make them get the wrong
Speaker 1: idea that I'm ad at them or something like that.
Speaker 1: On the emotional intention, yeah, and of the statement, I
Speaker 1: hate it because I can feel myself feeling insipid and
Speaker 1: feeling not like myself as I type it. But I
Speaker 1: would rather feel like that than worry that I'm giving
Speaker 1: people the wrong idea or letting them think I'm mad
Speaker 1: at them or something like that. You know, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but I totally understand it. Yeah, sometimes you feel like
Speaker 1: you have to really make it clear. And I do
Speaker 1: find myself doing more and more of that with texts
Speaker 1: when I'm sending a text, you know, via my tiny
Speaker 1: pocket computer. Oh your pocket god, yes, pocket guy. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so we've got to obviously, you know, all the
Speaker 1: stuff we're talking about email, phone, uh, text messages and
Speaker 1: internet communications. The photograph in a way kind of kind
Speaker 1: of a modern communication method sort of. Yeah, as it's become,
Speaker 1: you know, increasingly easy to to take digital photographs and
Speaker 1: send them to other people, it'd be comes a form
Speaker 1: of communication as does you know you mentioned emoticons as
Speaker 1: being like a way of of of tweaking textual content,
Speaker 1: but in many cases, like they're the prime uh language
Speaker 1: that is used in communicating to say nothing of memes. Oh,
Speaker 1: I shudder at this thought. Memes or there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a day in which the English language is replaced by memes.
Speaker 1: It's just like instead of an alphabet, you have a meme,
Speaker 1: a bet and you just like put you paste the
Speaker 1: memes together to form ideas. Yeah, I mean I already feel, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe this is just me feeling old,
Speaker 1: but um, I feel we we've already reached the point
Speaker 1: where there'll be a threat about something sound Reddit and
Speaker 1: there'll be a meme and I have to I have
Speaker 1: to research what the meme means, Like it's a new
Speaker 1: meme and I have to figure out like where it
Speaker 1: came from how it's used and how it's potentially being misused,
Speaker 1: and how it's like evolving out of that misuse to
Speaker 1: understand like what the prevailing idea is that is being
Speaker 1: expressed memes as a whole or exactly like words in
Speaker 1: the sense that you can try to write down a
Speaker 1: definition for a word, but where do uses changes over time?
Speaker 1: I mean, words don't actually have fixed definitions. You can't
Speaker 1: control how people use them. Yeah, it kind of like
Speaker 1: the whole like literally right, yeah, um, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: sorry you lost that battle that words changed. You can
Speaker 1: cling to the past, but sorry, it was just misused
Speaker 1: into a new usage. So I try not to correct
Speaker 1: people on that one, but that does it still gets me.
Speaker 1: My blood was literally boiling and it literally took his
Speaker 1: head off. Yes, but yeah, So we're talking about the
Speaker 1: you know, the technological media on which our relationships happened.
Speaker 1: And I think many of our relationships, especially in the
Speaker 1: last you know, ten years now, happened primarily on these media.
Speaker 1: And on one hand, that can be a good thing
Speaker 1: because it allows us to maintain relationships with people who
Speaker 1: we want to have relationships with, but can't you know,
Speaker 1: people we can't practically arrange to see in person as
Speaker 1: often as we'd like to. Several of my best friends
Speaker 1: live in different cities, and we've been friends for years,
Speaker 1: and I'm only able to maintain friendships with them because
Speaker 1: of this technology. So I would hate to lose those friendships.
Speaker 1: But also I wonder about the fact that what is
Speaker 1: it doing to our culture when there's a substantial number
Speaker 1: of people who, like, I don't know, maybe seventy percent
Speaker 1: of their friendly social interactions happen over a machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean even people like flesh and blood friends that
Speaker 1: I have in the city with me, Like, we still
Speaker 1: have to do like a like a you know, a
Speaker 1: thirty email chain to plan to meet each other in
Speaker 1: real life. Like even if it's like a semi regular thing,
Speaker 1: like we know where we're gonna go, we know when
Speaker 1: we're going to do it, but we still have to
Speaker 1: coordinate all of these things. So how much of the
Speaker 1: relationship is truly face to face versus digital? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: so Sapolsky says in this article that this technological reality
Speaker 1: has conditioned us in a way to dissociate our traditional
Speaker 1: pathways of recognition and familiarity. Uh So, he writes, quote thus,
Speaker 1: not only has modern life increasingly dissociated recognition and familiarity,
Speaker 1: but it has impoverished the latter in the process. So
Speaker 1: impoverished familiarity. This is worsened by our frantic skill at multitasking,
Speaker 1: especially social multitasking. A recent Pew study reported that eighty
Speaker 1: nine percent of cell phone owners use their phones during
Speaker 1: the most recent social gathering. That sounds low to me. Um,
Speaker 1: we reduce our social connotations to mere threads so that
Speaker 1: we can maintain as many of them as possible. This
Speaker 1: leaves us with signposts of familiarity that are frail remnants
Speaker 1: of the real thing. And I think he's really onto
Speaker 1: something there about the idea of um maintaining it's almost
Speaker 1: like putting up the scarecrows of things like these technological
Speaker 1: stand ins for relationships that are not really functioning biologically
Speaker 1: and psychologically for us the way relationships should. But we'd
Speaker 1: rather maintain as any of those as we can rather
Speaker 1: than have fewer relationships but more face to face interaction,
Speaker 1: you know, quality time and all that. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: we end up maintaining these trickles of of of actual
Speaker 1: social connections as opposed to streams of social connection. So
Speaker 1: he's saying there that we essentially degrade our sensitivity to
Speaker 1: the familiarity aspect of of what knowing somebody is a
Speaker 1: social interaction, it's recognition and familiarity. And when we degrade
Speaker 1: the familiarity thing, he says, quote uh, that we become
Speaker 1: increasingly vulnerable to imposts. Our social media lives are rife
Speaker 1: with simulations and simulations of simulations of reality, and so
Speaker 1: of course you know that's uh, you know, one example
Speaker 1: there is people who claim to know you, but they're not.
Speaker 1: They're uh, you know, a friends email account gets hacked,
Speaker 1: some hacker contacts you and tries to get you to
Speaker 1: open some malware. That's one example. But there's a million
Speaker 1: versions of this thing where where are sort of like
Speaker 1: a low resolution familiar already detectors than this digital world
Speaker 1: are being exploited by people who are not actually our
Speaker 1: real friends. So and basically, our online our online version
Speaker 1: of ourselves is essentially as a lay low resolution simulation,
Speaker 1: and so if someone comes along to hijack that simulation,
Speaker 1: it's all the easier to do. So you don't have
Speaker 1: to be a high level magic user to to to
Speaker 1: take on the likeness of another individual. When the threshold
Speaker 1: for duplication is so low. Yeah, but then here here's
Speaker 1: the turn. So Sapolsky says, by any logic quote, this
Speaker 1: should induce us all to have cap craw delusions, to
Speaker 1: find it plausible that everyone we encounter is an impostor.
Speaker 1: After all, how can one's faith in the veracity of
Speaker 1: people not be shaken when you sent all that money
Speaker 1: to the guy who claimed he was from the I R. S.
Speaker 1: And I think there is something going on here. It
Speaker 1: didn't start with this, but this this impostor kind of
Speaker 1: thing that the doppelgang or effect of the online world
Speaker 1: and the fact that it's easy to be tricked by
Speaker 1: an online doppel gang or does help contribute, I think
Speaker 1: to this concept. I'm sure you've encountered this, Robert, that
Speaker 1: the Internet is not real life. People always say this, right,
Speaker 1: It's like I talked about somebody being a friend in
Speaker 1: real life, in real life versus on the Internet. But
Speaker 1: if most of your social interactions are happening on the Internet,
Speaker 1: in what sense is that not real life? I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, the Internet is real life. It is It
Speaker 1: is a it's like a technology. The stuff you're doing
Speaker 1: on it is actually happening. It's not like something that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. But you are making a distinction there people
Speaker 1: in some way or seeing these interactions is derealized or
Speaker 1: as not having uh you know, not material in the
Speaker 1: way that other interactions are. And yet there where we're
Speaker 1: doing most increasingly all of our stuff. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if part of that, you know, I would I
Speaker 1: wonder how this plays out generation to generation, because I
Speaker 1: feel like from me, I maybe I had had a
Speaker 1: sense of the Internet is being real life more so
Speaker 1: early on, because the Internet was in some respectfully kind
Speaker 1: of an escape. I mean at the same time, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I remember having a union, use a like
Speaker 1: a college email address, and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, So you're still you're still doing in real,
Speaker 1: real life stuff via the Internet. But then a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff is is about escaping either just in general,
Speaker 1: like escaping into the into fantasy or like escaping geographical boundaries,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh in you know, being able to
Speaker 1: connect with people in other cities. Well, I think there's
Speaker 1: another way in which there are multiple ways in which
Speaker 1: people came to see the Internet is not real life,
Speaker 1: and one of them is is anonymity. You know that
Speaker 1: if you could go around invisible all day, what's that
Speaker 1: Harry Potter cloak that makes you invisible? Oh the the
Speaker 1: what was the type? I mean, it's a new clak
Speaker 1: of invisibility, but I don't remember if it had any
Speaker 1: particular name. Well, whatever that is, you could be invisible
Speaker 1: in a way that would feel not real, right, because
Speaker 1: if nobody can see you and nobody knows who you
Speaker 1: are wherever you are, then there are no consequence, and
Speaker 1: consequences are kind of what gives us the feeling of reality.
Speaker 1: So that's part of it. But I think also Sopulski
Speaker 1: is onto something here and that like this estrangement of
Speaker 1: the sense of recognition and familiarity is it makes the
Speaker 1: Internet start to feel like this world of social delusion,
Speaker 1: this sort of like always cap Graw vulnerable type landscape
Speaker 1: where nothing is really real and you can't trust anything,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time we're we're constantly forced
Speaker 1: to put our trust in it as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: because that's where we're doing everything. But then, of course,
Speaker 1: uh back to the idea of like all these you know,
Speaker 1: threads that people maintain and sort of mistake for meaningful
Speaker 1: relationships online. Uh. He comes back and on that and says, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems more the opposite has happened than
Speaker 1: than inducing us to all have cap graw delusions where
Speaker 1: we see people we knew and we think of them
Speaker 1: see people we know and we think of them as
Speaker 1: as you know, being a doppelganger or not familiar. Instead,
Speaker 1: we go the other way and we see, well, we
Speaker 1: don't really know very well, but we just have to
Speaker 1: attach this feeling of familiarity to them. It allows all
Speaker 1: of this false familiarity. And this really comes up in
Speaker 1: I don't know, how have you read about the the
Speaker 1: idea of you know, paras social interactions on social media.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think prior to this episode I
Speaker 1: knew it by that term, but of course you do
Speaker 1: see it all the time. Yeah, it's it's just it's
Speaker 1: ubiquitous on the Internet. It's the idea, you know, it's
Speaker 1: an asymmetrical relationship, the way like you follow a public
Speaker 1: figure who doesn't know who you are. But there are
Speaker 1: all of these indications that many people think of these
Speaker 1: para social asymmetrical relationships as relationships. It's like they almost
Speaker 1: view this Instagram influencer that they follow as like an
Speaker 1: acquaint somebody they know, but of course that person doesn't
Speaker 1: know them. Yeah. I really started thinking about this classification though,
Speaker 1: para social relationships, uh and in wondering like to what
Speaker 1: extent it can or could have existed in previous times,
Speaker 1: Like what is the earliest possible example of a para
Speaker 1: social relationship? Like maybe it could be a situation where
Speaker 1: you have like a h an like a leader um
Speaker 1: in a given community, and then you have like a
Speaker 1: very low level person in that community that that the
Speaker 1: you know, the tribal leader just has no uh, you know,
Speaker 1: real idea of who they are, but of course you
Speaker 1: know who the leader is. I mean, I guess that's
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the the in real life version
Speaker 1: of this. But we see it seems like we see
Speaker 1: far more of it, uh in in in modern civilization,
Speaker 1: um in certainly an Internet age, but even pre Internet,
Speaker 1: like the idea of celebrity just enables this sort of
Speaker 1: relationship to be possible celebrities and leaders. And of course
Speaker 1: I would say that social media, of course did not
Speaker 1: invent the idea of celebrities and so so it didn't
Speaker 1: invent these relationships like you're talking about. You know, you've
Speaker 1: always had leaders, You've always had public figures in some
Speaker 1: way or another. So media I think has increased the
Speaker 1: day to day relevance of these types of relationships, you know,
Speaker 1: where you can like check in on on the accounts
Speaker 1: of the people that you follow every day and they
Speaker 1: don't know you, but you know you. Especially, I feel
Speaker 1: like Instagram, especially of all the platforms I can think of,
Speaker 1: is is really rife with this um of like these
Speaker 1: influencers and people who lead kind of glamorous lives and
Speaker 1: allow you to see into their lives by showing you
Speaker 1: their house and their pets and their lunch and you know,
Speaker 1: you get all these interior views and it's very visceral
Speaker 1: because it's visual and often you know, visual even in
Speaker 1: a way that's edited to make it more colorful and
Speaker 1: exciting with the post processing filters and all that. Right,
Speaker 1: And of course, at the same time, like like all
Speaker 1: social media representations like this, they are they're incomplete. We're crafted,
Speaker 1: and they're crafted there, uh, they're they're maintain in a
Speaker 1: very strategic way usually so you don't even have like
Speaker 1: a full vision of what you know, random celebrities life
Speaker 1: actually is you just have this idealized version of it.
Speaker 1: So I just want to read one last quote from
Speaker 1: Sapulski's article before we move on. So he says, um uh.
Speaker 1: He ends by saying quote. Throughout history, cap Cross syndrome
Speaker 1: has been a cultural mirror of a dissociative mind, where
Speaker 1: thoughts of recognition and feelings of intimacy have been sundered.
Speaker 1: It's still that mirror today. We think that what is
Speaker 1: false and artificial in the world around us is substantive
Speaker 1: and meaningful. It's not that loved ones and friends are
Speaker 1: mistaken for simulations, but that simulations are mistaken for them.
Speaker 1: I think I kind of disagree with them a little
Speaker 1: bit because I think it's actually both of those things.
Speaker 1: It's like that that the dissociation goes two ways in
Speaker 1: either case, though we we do typically we often find
Speaker 1: ourselves in situations though where we are we are distracted
Speaker 1: from from real life um relationships and real life socialization,
Speaker 1: and instead we have to check in on these little
Speaker 1: streams on our phone. Did to these, uh, these simulated
Speaker 1: relationships that we have on social media. Do you ever
Speaker 1: have the sort of direct doppelgang Er experience like with
Speaker 1: the fairy change links or the doppelganger for a friend
Speaker 1: on the internet, Like you have a family member, you
Speaker 1: have a friend who you love in real life, but
Speaker 1: when you see the way they are on the internet,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it. You know, the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff they post on social media or whatever, you don't
Speaker 1: feel like you recognize them and you don't really like them.
Speaker 1: I've definitely known people who are like that. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna name any names who are like that on say Twitter, Like,
Speaker 1: I think, like I love this person, but if all
Speaker 1: I knew about them was the way they act on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I would I wouldn't be able to stand them well.
Speaker 1: Social media, especially as it pertains to you know, some topics,
Speaker 1: take politics for instance, I think it does tend to
Speaker 1: bring out the worst in us. Uh. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that is a risky comment to make. I think
Speaker 1: we can all think to specific examples of that in
Speaker 1: all of our own lives. And yeah, that can lead
Speaker 1: you to a situation where you're like, well, I thought
Speaker 1: I knew that person, but I guess I don't because
Speaker 1: look at this meme they just shared, you know, um
Speaker 1: and uh. But I think also though, when that happens,
Speaker 1: we're just not appropriately appreciating the way that circumstances and
Speaker 1: situations change change people's behavior, that we are the same way. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: all right on that note, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. Thank Alright, we're back. You know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about what you said about about my emails,
Speaker 1: but I feel like like sixty maybe my emails or
Speaker 1: me just saying um, cool, sounds good. I think that's
Speaker 1: my my standard, which I feel is sufficient. It's just
Speaker 1: me saying yes to whatever you just said. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm cool with it. Do you have an Android phone? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. Okay, use Gmail, Yeah, you use Gmail, but
Speaker 1: I don't use the I know you have the sort
Speaker 1: of you know, like the auto language feature starts telling
Speaker 1: you what to say. It's like, here's the email you
Speaker 1: could write. Man, when I saw that thing, I was like,
Speaker 1: get out, what the heck? No, no, no, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's an easy jump to go from there
Speaker 1: to like authorized simulations of yourself, you know, just which
Speaker 1: I really I mean, that's not far off. That's it's
Speaker 1: basically already here, where you just give your account the
Speaker 1: authority to to make responses like this. Like cool, sounds good,
Speaker 1: I'll get back to you, you know that sort of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna. I don't know. I mean, even if
Speaker 1: I would type exactly the words it's suggesting, I still
Speaker 1: don't want to let it do that. The fact that
Speaker 1: like Gmail is gonna is going to compose an email
Speaker 1: for me to my parents or my wife that no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, unacceptable. There's so much room for misunderstanding. Even
Speaker 1: if we're applying um, you know, most or all of
Speaker 1: our attention to crafting an email. Uh, it feels like
Speaker 1: a machine, even a very like talent had Ai would
Speaker 1: have difficulty with that. There's just so much nuance in
Speaker 1: human communication and knowing who you're communicating to. Like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a matter of knowing there are certain words you
Speaker 1: shouldn't use with another individual, like maybe you're aware of
Speaker 1: what you know maybe uh you know some sort of
Speaker 1: a trigger for them, or or you know it may
Speaker 1: pertain to some sort of you know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: incident from from from your personal past with that person.
Speaker 1: Like there's so many potential uh holes to fall into
Speaker 1: when composing written communication. Why trust that the to the
Speaker 1: machine or I don't know, maybe the reverse is true.
Speaker 1: Always trusted the machine as long as they have all
Speaker 1: those caveats in mind, you know. I think one thing
Speaker 1: that's interesting to me is about the psychological effects of
Speaker 1: heavy social media use. Um, I feel like we're still
Speaker 1: in the early days of getting a picture of what
Speaker 1: that's like, and that there appears to be a lot
Speaker 1: of conflicting evidence. I think, I think because we we
Speaker 1: haven't refined all our categories and ways of testing things yet.
Speaker 1: I do often say that I think in emerging this
Speaker 1: is just a prediction. I could turn out to be
Speaker 1: totally wrong. But my guess is that in the coming
Speaker 1: years there's going to be emerging consensus that heavy social
Speaker 1: media us, especially say among young people like teenagers and stuff,
Speaker 1: is correlated with a lot of negative psychological outcomes and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, depression and things like that, and that there
Speaker 1: will be like a new cottage industry of like the
Speaker 1: lobbyists who deny the emerging science on on social media.
Speaker 1: But uh, I mean, I guess that's still to be seen.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've only got a few years of data
Speaker 1: to work with so far. Yeah, when trying to imagine
Speaker 1: the future, it's difficult. And also, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: you know, anxiety and docing to try and think where
Speaker 1: where our social media usages going. On one hand, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm I'm hopeful that more and more people will
Speaker 1: you choose to, if if not, opt out of social media,
Speaker 1: but or you know, at least rethink how they're using it,
Speaker 1: step back from it. Even I kind of think of it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a hot tub. You know, when
Speaker 1: you first get into a hot tub, you just juice
Speaker 1: all in. You know, It's like, let me just go
Speaker 1: all the way up to my ears in this, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'll zone and zone out, and you know, that's good
Speaker 1: for a while, but then eventually realize if I stay
Speaker 1: in here, um, I am going to die. So maybe
Speaker 1: I need to like only put half of my body
Speaker 1: in here. Maybe I should just sit on the side
Speaker 1: and get my feet in here, or maybe better yet,
Speaker 1: maybe I should go get in the pool for a
Speaker 1: while and do that. Or even maybe I should leave
Speaker 1: all together and go home and see my family. That's
Speaker 1: sort of thing, you know, It is nice at first.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking about when I very first got on Twitter,
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was nice for a while that
Speaker 1: I was mostly just seeing things that like learning and
Speaker 1: things that people were enthusiastic about. People were sharing their enthusiasms,
Speaker 1: here's a great thing, and uh, and over time, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what happened, but it seemed like it
Speaker 1: transformed into more like this, uh, this swamp of misery,
Speaker 1: where the primary emotions coming off of it was just
Speaker 1: that everybody hates everything. Of course, all of this, of course,
Speaker 1: is depending on on how exactly when uses a social
Speaker 1: media platform, who you follow, um like for instance, like
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Obviously there's a lot of celebrity worship going on,
Speaker 1: a lot of para social relationships taking place there, as
Speaker 1: we already mentioned. I don't see as much of that,
Speaker 1: and part of that is just because I like only
Speaker 1: follow family and friends, and I only use it myself
Speaker 1: for family photos, and it's like, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: closed account. Well, I do think that there is some
Speaker 1: evidence I've seen so far that and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how solid this is yet, but there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: there's a pretty big difference in the psychological effects of
Speaker 1: social media depending on whether you primarily use it too
Speaker 1: as a way of keeping up with family and friends
Speaker 1: versus as a way of interacting with public accounts. Right
Speaker 1: but I think. But then again, one of the dangers
Speaker 1: in all of this is even if there is a
Speaker 1: preferred if there is a healthier way to use a
Speaker 1: given platform, you are still fighting against the intended usage
Speaker 1: of that platform, as engineered by the makers of that platform.
Speaker 1: The intended usage of the platform is to open it
Speaker 1: up and never get off. It's just and so like,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to compete with that. I mean, we've talked
Speaker 1: about it this on the show before. Uh, in terms
Speaker 1: of gambling technology and then social media technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're really up against a fearsome adversary in telling yourself,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to use this in a way that
Speaker 1: is mentally beneficial for me and not just purely economically
Speaker 1: beneficial for the masters of the medium. You know, Jared Lannier,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about on the show before, has written
Speaker 1: a book about it. Basically, it's saying everybody should delete
Speaker 1: their social media accounts, just get off these platforms, and
Speaker 1: that will be it will make a much better world.
Speaker 1: And he's got a whole argument for it in the
Speaker 1: in this book, which I haven't read yet but I
Speaker 1: planned to. In fact, we asked for some review copies,
Speaker 1: but I think we should see if we can try
Speaker 1: to get uh Jared Lannier on the podcast. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think we should. I also wonder what he would think
Speaker 1: about this uh comparison. I still feel like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to work out, but I I sense
Speaker 1: that the Sopulski's comparison here about the the rift between
Speaker 1: the emotion of familiarity and the and the cognitive recognition
Speaker 1: function of the brain, uh, that that's at work in
Speaker 1: Capgrass syndrome. This is a really rich kind of comparison
Speaker 1: for for social media and media technology generally, and I
Speaker 1: expect to keep having more thoughts about it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't want to just sound like I'm just
Speaker 1: saying like the people are awful and that technology makes
Speaker 1: us more awful. Uh. You know, I don't want that
Speaker 1: to be my ultimate argument. Ultimately, I would say that
Speaker 1: technology enables humans to do amazing things, and if we
Speaker 1: direct this power in the right way. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's plenty that we can do. There's plenty we have
Speaker 1: done to connect people and and and build a better
Speaker 1: world out of those connections. But obviously there's more that
Speaker 1: we could do. And I guess the worrisome thing with
Speaker 1: these platforms, the various platforms that we're talking about, is like,
Speaker 1: what is the the ultimate advantage, What is the ultimate
Speaker 1: intention of the masters of those given platforms. What do
Speaker 1: they want? And even in cases where they may say, no,
Speaker 1: we want to build something that brings people together, we
Speaker 1: want to build something that empowers, you know, a better world. Like,
Speaker 1: is that impulse going to win out in the overall
Speaker 1: structure of this given social media platform or is it
Speaker 1: going to be profitability or engagement or some other metric
Speaker 1: that is ultimately more important to the corporate entity. It's
Speaker 1: always profitability, and of course that's always what's going to
Speaker 1: win out. But I feel like there's I have to
Speaker 1: hold onto the possibility that that humans can do better
Speaker 1: though well, I mean, that does make me wonder if
Speaker 1: perhaps what you could do instead is have some kind
Speaker 1: of nonprofit, open source social media platform that would would
Speaker 1: compete and try to replace these for profit forms that
Speaker 1: are deranging our relationships and and causing this familiarity recognition
Speaker 1: rift and potentially having all these psychologically negative consequences on
Speaker 1: our lives and on our culture broadly. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly what that would look like. I mean, it would
Speaker 1: probably be a start if there was just something that
Speaker 1: was like Facebook, but that did not manipulate what people
Speaker 1: saw and prioritize you know, conflict and paid content. But
Speaker 1: then again, even just with the you know, the bare
Speaker 1: bones basics of Facebook, I wonder about, you know, having
Speaker 1: these friend networks. Uh does does the even the most
Speaker 1: basic mechanic of something like Facebook encourage people to go
Speaker 1: through these mental processes where they sort of degrade their
Speaker 1: standards of what counts as a healthy relationship. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe ultimately that's where where AI can come in, you know,
Speaker 1: and we just need we need artificial intelligence to dictate
Speaker 1: where and how to maintain healthy relationships online. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the ultimate answer. I don't know, just hand it
Speaker 1: off to an aidity. Why I'm not hopeful about that either. Again,
Speaker 1: this is back to like I'm worried about these l
Speaker 1: Ai squirrels, not the I'm not worried about the great basilisk.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about the minor dumb aies that that are
Speaker 1: running through our lives like a pest infestation. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not not to end things into a negative
Speaker 1: a place, I do want to refer listeners back to
Speaker 1: our episode the Great Episodes, The Great Eyeball Wars, where
Speaker 1: we went into a lot of this particularly about, you know,
Speaker 1: about how social media and these platforms and our phones
Speaker 1: are gamed to capture our attention and hold our attention.
Speaker 1: In those episodes, we also shared some some advice that
Speaker 1: experts have given about how to fight back, how to
Speaker 1: limit your use of social media and or your phone,
Speaker 1: and uh and so, I mean there and there are
Speaker 1: increasingly more tools out there. I believe you know, some
Speaker 1: of these these phones have ways, you know now, to
Speaker 1: to track how much you're using them, or even to
Speaker 1: remind you not to use them in certain situations. Yeah. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I mean I I can't honestly and non hypocritically tell
Speaker 1: people to get entirely off of social media because one
Speaker 1: of the things is I have to maintain social media
Speaker 1: accounts because of my job at this podcast, where we've
Speaker 1: got to like promote stuff on social media, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've got to We've got a Facebook discussion module that
Speaker 1: I really enjoy using. I probably would have deleted my
Speaker 1: Facebook account, but I enjoy our our discussion module with
Speaker 1: our fans there. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's probably one of
Speaker 1: the main reasons I go on Facebook these days. So
Speaker 1: discussion module, don't screw this up. Let's keep keep this
Speaker 1: positive relationship. But I mean, I will say that the
Speaker 1: reason it's on there, it's not any inherent strength of Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's on there because of audience inertia. I mean that
Speaker 1: that's where the people are. Like, if you want to
Speaker 1: have a place where people already have accounts and they
Speaker 1: can join Facebook, is they tell us the place where
Speaker 1: you can do that? You know, I'd love a world
Speaker 1: where somebody created some kind of non destructive, open source,
Speaker 1: uh you know, nonprofit platform where you could do a
Speaker 1: similar thing if enough people could get on there. All right,
Speaker 1: So so there you have it. Obviously, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of there's a lot of areas here we can
Speaker 1: call out to listeners on I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: have you ever encountered a really um impressive double in
Speaker 1: your life, like someone that required uh, you know, not
Speaker 1: even just a first and second glance, maybe a third
Speaker 1: glance to realize that they were not your friend or
Speaker 1: perhaps not yourself. We'd love to hear from that all.
Speaker 1: I mean for to that. You know, so if you've
Speaker 1: actually had any experience with cap gross syndrome. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we would we would really appreciate any firsthand knowledge of
Speaker 1: experiences like that. Uh. And then beyond that when we
Speaker 1: get into the you know, the of course, the literary
Speaker 1: and the you know, the fictional and the mythological connotations.
Speaker 1: If you have a particular you know, favorite double you
Speaker 1: want to share. But certainly we spent most of the
Speaker 1: time you're talking about this social media doppel gang or idea,
Speaker 1: and so I mean, you're pretty much all on social
Speaker 1: media at this point. We're really you're either on social
Speaker 1: media or you've made a very uh, you know, firm
Speaker 1: choice not to be. So whichever category you fall into,
Speaker 1: I feel like you probably have thoughts really added to
Speaker 1: this episode, and we'd love to hear from you. Absolutely
Speaker 1: get in touch. In the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: listen to more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the mothership. That's we'll find all the episodes.
Speaker 1: You'll find a link there to our little merchandise store.
Speaker 1: We can get some squirrel shirts. It's a fun way
Speaker 1: to support the show, but the best way to support
Speaker 1: the show is to simply rate and review us wherever
Speaker 1: you have the power to do so. If you can
Speaker 1: leave some stars, leave a nice review, do that. And
Speaker 1: best of all, tell somebody about the show. Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: them online, but even better if you see somebody in
Speaker 1: real life, tell him about the show in real life,
Speaker 1: because I feel like, uh, you know, it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna impress people all the more. That's right, huge, thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Terry Harrison. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with this direct Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm laughing because Robert has got a little stress ball
Speaker 1: over here and he's squishing the guts out of it
Speaker 1: as we speak. Yeah, there's like some sort of white
Speaker 1: pus coming out of it. I had it for like
Speaker 1: two weeks and it's already squeezed out. So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to name the brand because maybe I just haded tractically. Anyway. Sorry,
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us directly,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
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