Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode. This episode originally published on
Speaker 1: October thirty one, Halloween Day, twenty nineteen, and it's our
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror Volume three. That's right, horror themed TV
Speaker 1: anthology episodes that are used as a springboard to discuss
Speaker 1: science and historically, you know, stuff to blow your mind topics.
Speaker 1: This one is fun in that one of the anthology
Speaker 1: episodes we discuss is a Simpsons tree House of Horror episode.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you enjoy the moments where we frequently
Speaker 1: referenced Simpsons episodes, well then this is the main event
Speaker 1: because we're going to spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 1: about the Simpsons. Here. Let us be your hang in Kodos.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio's House to Work. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Gooley Lamb.
Speaker 1: I forgot we were doing the voices. Let's see, I
Speaker 1: am what's my name? Also, I'm Corrosive Joseph McCormick exactly,
Speaker 1: and we're here with our excellent audio producer death Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: It is Halloween. It is Halloween itself, I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so we are presenting Anthology of Horror volume three.
Speaker 1: So this will be a sequel to our two previous
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror episodes where we look at old episodes
Speaker 1: of horror anthology TV shows and figure out how they
Speaker 1: might often be deeper than they seem. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and also sometimes they're not very deep, but we we
Speaker 1: have a knack for finding some hidden depth in horror
Speaker 1: and science fiction. Now. In the last episode, which should
Speaker 1: have been just a couple of days ago, we talked
Speaker 1: about an episode of The Twilight Zone concerning how you
Speaker 1: can know whether or not you are in a dream
Speaker 1: or whether you are someone else's dream. And we talked
Speaker 1: about an episode of the old horror anthology Monsters that
Speaker 1: featured story about ghoules called down Below and related to
Speaker 1: that to cities dealing with rat problems. Uh So, today
Speaker 1: I think we were going to start by looking at
Speaker 1: an episode of The Outer Limits, right, yes, the Sixth Finger.
Speaker 1: This is the fifth episode of the first season of
Speaker 1: ABC sci fi anthology series legendary sci fi anthology series
Speaker 1: The Outer Limits, which originally ran from through It was
Speaker 1: created by Leslie Stevens, and unlike a lot of these shows,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a true horror or sci fi host.
Speaker 1: It didn't have like a puppet or an actor that
Speaker 1: spoke to you and introduced everything. But it did have
Speaker 1: the control voice, which in and of itself is pretty classic.
Speaker 1: Explain the control voice. So we will control the vertical,
Speaker 1: we will control the horizontal. You know, it's like this,
Speaker 1: this disembodied voice that is taking over your television set
Speaker 1: and presenting you with some sort of cosmic transmission from
Speaker 1: the out or Limits. I see, Is this the one
Speaker 1: that's there's no need to adjust your television exactly? Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I for some reason confused that I thought
Speaker 1: that was like an alternate opening to the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 1: Uh no, no, no, that Twilight Zone is always like
Speaker 1: Rod Serling being like you were entering another dimension. Yeah, etcetera. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Outer Limits was definitely more in the in the
Speaker 1: science fiction domain. It was in many ways kind of
Speaker 1: like the sci fi side of the coin to the
Speaker 1: Twilight Zones horror, but it also got a little spooky,
Speaker 1: a little scary at times. Uh and certainly falls under
Speaker 1: the domain of our our mission statement here. Now wait
Speaker 1: a second, sorry, I just realized that the Outer Limits
Speaker 1: introduction you're doing here, that this might be the first
Speaker 1: sort of hint or attempt at doing a kind of
Speaker 1: found footage thing. Right. It's saying like you are receiving
Speaker 1: a transmission. It's like implying that you're part of the
Speaker 1: narrative because your TV set is something's being beamed from
Speaker 1: another place to it. Yeah, to a limited extent. I mean,
Speaker 1: once the episode starts, it's pretty leer. You're still safely
Speaker 1: in television land, but you're also in a place that
Speaker 1: still feels a little less safe. But this ain't I
Speaker 1: love Lucy exactly. So The Outer Limits went two seasons
Speaker 1: and produced forty nine episodes. Again, it's just always amazing
Speaker 1: just how robust these some of these older seasons television were.
Speaker 1: Not all of the episodes are classics, but some stand
Speaker 1: out amid the all time greatest achievements in science fiction
Speaker 1: television even today in this sort of golden age of
Speaker 1: television and television options. Some of the most famous episodes
Speaker 1: include uh for instance, Demon with a Glass Hand, which
Speaker 1: was scripted by Harlan Ellison, but the Sixth Finger is
Speaker 1: also rather iconic. Like a lot of the episodes, it
Speaker 1: features some alien makeup effects that that are pretty astounding.
Speaker 1: A lot of the alien designs on the Outer Limits,
Speaker 1: uh kind of you know, leaned into old school ideas
Speaker 1: of what an extraterrestrial might look like. You know. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of oversized heads and long ears and whatnot,
Speaker 1: like the rain mutant from the Silent Earth. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so some of them are a little bit dated, but
Speaker 1: but they were still pulled off exceptionally well, shot in
Speaker 1: black and white, and and and you know, sometimes with
Speaker 1: an almost avant garde kind of style. That being said,
Speaker 1: there are some effects that they pulled off on that
Speaker 1: show that stand up I think really well today. The
Speaker 1: Galaxy being I think, is an exception where we had
Speaker 1: like this kind of sharp contrast of black and white
Speaker 1: where it seems to be just radiating on the screen.
Speaker 1: But the Sixth Finger was directed by James Goldstone, who
Speaker 1: also directed the pilot for a little show called Star Trek. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's before Kirk is the captain, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was written by Ellis st. Joseph, who did
Speaker 1: a lot of TV work in his career and It
Speaker 1: also starred British American actor David McCallum, who starred opposite
Speaker 1: Robert Vaughan in The Man from Uncle. So McCollum stars
Speaker 1: in this episode as the character Griffiths, a Welsh miner
Speaker 1: who agrees to let a rogue scientist named Professor Mathers
Speaker 1: experiment on him, which is of course always a solid
Speaker 1: life choice. Mathers played a role, we're told, in the
Speaker 1: development of atomic weaponry, and he wants to aid humanity instead,
Speaker 1: and so he has invented of means of speeding up
Speaker 1: evolutionary development and he wants to try it out on
Speaker 1: a human being. Now, I can say, in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties this would actually be not that far fesched
Speaker 1: of a scenario. I mean, I think there were a
Speaker 1: number of scientists who were known at the time to
Speaker 1: have worked on the creation of atomic weaponry who were
Speaker 1: deeply publicly regretful of their work. Even Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean to typified for the most part by the
Speaker 1: the heavily quoted bit from from Oppenheimer Now and become Death,
Speaker 1: where he himself is of course to quoting Vedic scriptures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because certainly the atomic bomb is this uh, you know,
Speaker 1: continues to to loom over us as this the symbol
Speaker 1: of of of of great human achievements that are put
Speaker 1: to work in in the name of our worst impulses
Speaker 1: as as a species, as a civilization. Totally and uh
Speaker 1: and yes, So the idea of someone involved with that
Speaker 1: wanting to do something that that you know, that it
Speaker 1: saves us, that changes us, that you know, that puts
Speaker 1: us in a different direction, I think that that makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. And I think a lot of people would
Speaker 1: would agree that. You know, this, this period of of
Speaker 1: of nuclear power, you know, is something we hope it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a bottleneck, right, It's like it's a
Speaker 1: period of extreme danger to the species that we hope
Speaker 1: to move past, we hope to evolve through. And and certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, we tend to think of that evolution as
Speaker 1: more or less biological and more cultural, more political. But
Speaker 1: in a science fiction story, you know, it makes sense
Speaker 1: to go with the more literal interpretation of that, like
Speaker 1: human beings need to evolve beyond this point of extreme danger.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to put a human being inside of
Speaker 1: a crazy sci fi contraption and see what kind of
Speaker 1: you know, peaceful being comes out the other side, right
Speaker 1: as you increase our oldie to destroy ourselves in one another.
Speaker 1: It seems like every year that goes by, we're just
Speaker 1: sort of like barely eking. You know, we're just making
Speaker 1: it if we don't use that power unless you change
Speaker 1: us somehow, that it would be inconceivable to us to
Speaker 1: use it right now. To be clear, evolution, as we've
Speaker 1: discussed plenty of times on the show, is a process
Speaker 1: of mutation and natural selection that takes place across the
Speaker 1: vast periods of time due to various environmental stressors. Would
Speaker 1: you agree with that? You're more Darwin's bulldog on this
Speaker 1: show than I am. I mean, our modern picture of
Speaker 1: evolution I think has become a little bit more nuanced,
Speaker 1: and that we we learn more and more things that
Speaker 1: uh that affect it, like epigenetic factors possibly and things
Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, basically, I mean the standard model
Speaker 1: is that there is variation and then there is selection
Speaker 1: by the environment. And yeah, the big thing, of course,
Speaker 1: the way this happens in nature is it happens over
Speaker 1: many generations. The way evolution is often conceived of in
Speaker 1: stories like this is it basically just means like changing
Speaker 1: somebody like changing an individual's body in their lifetime, which
Speaker 1: would be different from biological evolution. That would be more
Speaker 1: like that, I don't know, bioengineering of the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and also I mean the other thing too, is
Speaker 1: this this model in this science fiction story it has
Speaker 1: this It kind of implies that there's an exact map
Speaker 1: of our evolution inside of our bodies, inside of our genes.
Speaker 1: You know, is if like we're a Pokemon and you
Speaker 1: can look at a chart saying like how it advances
Speaker 1: to its final form, if I have my Pokemon references correct,
Speaker 1: I don't know my Pokemon all that well. But but
Speaker 1: still yet it implies that there's like a certain path
Speaker 1: that an organism should take and it's all written in
Speaker 1: the genes, as opposed to being this process, uh you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, driven by this process of natural selection
Speaker 1: that depends so heavily upon environment. So on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's a tad silly to think that some manner of
Speaker 1: mad science process could simply speed up human evolution. But
Speaker 1: again they're trying to make a statement here, so we'll
Speaker 1: roll with it, okay, So as Griffith evolves and there
Speaker 1: there this is a this is a real talking. By
Speaker 1: the way, as far as um you know, anthology shows
Speaker 1: Go and Outer Limits tended to be I think a
Speaker 1: little more cerebral than the many of the other anthology
Speaker 1: and you know shows that would come in its wake.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of discussing what this means and discussing, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, how we might apply it to our understanding
Speaker 1: of the world. And so Griffith's you know, he goes
Speaker 1: through these prod like a I guess a treatment of evolution.
Speaker 1: Then he comes back out and he's changed, and he
Speaker 1: talks about it, and he goes back in, he gets
Speaker 1: another treatment, he comes back he's even different. But basically
Speaker 1: these are the changes biological and mental that take place. Okay,
Speaker 1: First of all, he gets an extremely over developed cortex
Speaker 1: like a giant alien melon head, which again is very
Speaker 1: impressive makeup effects, but at the same time it's kind
Speaker 1: of a dated look for our idea of like a
Speaker 1: far future speaking. Okay, so just to clarify, basically is
Speaker 1: the idea that this is naturally how humans would evolve
Speaker 1: if we were allowed to just you know, keep living
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. But the scientist has figured out
Speaker 1: a way to get us there. Down the already mapped
Speaker 1: path ahead of time, right. I think that's what the
Speaker 1: model is here. We just have to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: take their word for it on the sci fi process
Speaker 1: that's getting it to us. Sure, so huge yet great Now,
Speaker 1: as the title implies, one of the other major changes
Speaker 1: is that there is a sixth finger on each hand,
Speaker 1: so a total of twelve digits on the hands. Now
Speaker 1: better to press nuclear launch buttons with yeah. In addition,
Speaker 1: long l fears, which you know isn't I don't really
Speaker 1: have a good discussion lined up for that, but there
Speaker 1: are L fears uh, mental powers such as telekinesis, vastly
Speaker 1: enhanced intelligence and ultimately enhanced empathy and understanding, and in
Speaker 1: the original script, he also eventually develops a means of
Speaker 1: photosynthitus and lives on pure light and kind of transcends
Speaker 1: into a being of light. In the show, however, he
Speaker 1: attempts to push himself even further in evolution, but his
Speaker 1: wife betrays him out of love and turns him back
Speaker 1: into his original self, you know, turns back the dial
Speaker 1: on the evolution machine to try and get the you know,
Speaker 1: the man that she loves back in the room. But
Speaker 1: the process ends up killing him. It's just too much
Speaker 1: for him. So it all makes for a great mad
Speaker 1: science tale and one that I think works well thematically.
Speaker 1: Plus McCallum has that kind of like old school Leslie
Speaker 1: Howard Delivery, you know which show, which I really love,
Speaker 1: because if you're watching a show like The Outer Limits
Speaker 1: of the Twilight Zone, you do have to you find
Speaker 1: a reason to love some of the more you know,
Speaker 1: by today's standards antiquated uh aspects of say acting or
Speaker 1: pacing or even the effects. And Joe, I have a
Speaker 1: picture of of the the being here for you, and
Speaker 1: it certainly anybody wants to see this. Just look up
Speaker 1: The Outer Limits the sixth Finger. You can also find
Speaker 1: it on like Hulu or Netflix, naming pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1: But you can also find lots of images of this.
Speaker 1: It's very iconic cost him. Okay, so first of all,
Speaker 1: I see the giant melon head and that look that
Speaker 1: looks great because you fit so much brain in there.
Speaker 1: I am immediately imagining some problems having to do with birth,
Speaker 1: like the size of the human birth canal, which you
Speaker 1: would have to assume it would also evolve to be
Speaker 1: much bigger to allow a birth of that kind of creature,
Speaker 1: though I believe it's it's widely thought that we're already
Speaker 1: pretty much as sort of the limits of what our
Speaker 1: bodies will allow in terms of cranial size, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: And the other thing that comes to mind is our
Speaker 1: discussions in our episode on brain soup and liquefied brains. Uh,
Speaker 1: the actual size of the brain would not be as
Speaker 1: important as the number of neurons within it, right, So,
Speaker 1: I think by our modern understanding, it was kind of
Speaker 1: it was very much in vogue at the time to
Speaker 1: to see, like, you know, outside craniums as being a
Speaker 1: sign of super intelligence and your fictional creatures. But I
Speaker 1: think nowadays we realize that would not be necessary. But
Speaker 1: I mean, like I are you mentioned this island Earth.
Speaker 1: It shows up in a lot of sci fi from
Speaker 1: the mid century that you've got aliens with huge old heads.
Speaker 1: I guess because they're very smart. But also I like
Speaker 1: how he's got extremely defined facial bone structure, like this
Speaker 1: guy has cheekbones to die for? He does, yes. And
Speaker 1: then of course there are the lf ears, which, again
Speaker 1: we don't really have anything to say about them. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what point of ears would really accomplish evolutionarily.
Speaker 1: Oh man, this seems like something that has to have
Speaker 1: been explored in a kind of speculative paper, like somebody
Speaker 1: who's an expert on the morphology of the ears and
Speaker 1: how they help you here, How would you hear differently
Speaker 1: if you had l f ears. I don't know, we
Speaker 1: should come I bet we should come back to that,
Speaker 1: because there is a good answer for it. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a whole world of of elve and ear structure
Speaker 1: that we could discuss in the future. But what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about is that extra finger. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will get into the the five digit rule invertebrate
Speaker 1: evolution and we'll discuss the possibility of a sixth finger
Speaker 1: coming into play. All right, we're back. So we've been
Speaker 1: talking about the classic Outer Limits episode The sixth Finger,
Speaker 1: about a man who speeds up his own evolution within
Speaker 1: his own lifetime and he gets a gigantic melon head,
Speaker 1: he gets really defined facial bones, beautiful cheekbones, he gets
Speaker 1: elf ears, but he also grows a sixth finger. And
Speaker 1: so Robert, you looked into what it would mean to
Speaker 1: grow a six finger is that kind of thing possible?
Speaker 1: Why or why would not we Why wouldn't we see
Speaker 1: that in human evolution or primate evolution. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating because, first of all, the five digit
Speaker 1: rule does run pretty deep invertebrate evolution. According to Michael Coates,
Speaker 1: Associate professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
Speaker 1: at the University of Chicago and co editor of Evolution
Speaker 1: and Development, writing for Scientific American, the condition of having
Speaker 1: no more than five fingers and toes probably goes back
Speaker 1: before the evolutionary divergence of amphibians and amniots, birds, mammals, reptiles.
Speaker 1: We were talking three hundred and forty million years ago.
Speaker 1: Go back three hundred sixty million years ago, and there's
Speaker 1: evidence of tetrapods with six, seven, eight digits. Uh. The
Speaker 1: the decrease to five or fewer came about alongside the
Speaker 1: development of sophisticated wrist and ankle joints. So basically, the
Speaker 1: creatures with more digits had simpler skeletons and simpler limb mobility,
Speaker 1: and they were generally, you know, something along the line
Speaker 1: of flippers. Because we're talking about creatures of the water here.
Speaker 1: But as these limbs evolved to allow certain organisms to
Speaker 1: stand or to push off with those limbs essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: as they move towards being land creatures, we see the
Speaker 1: reduction of digits, and indeed we tend to see, you know,
Speaker 1: the further reduction of digits because the rule of evolutionary
Speaker 1: thumb here is that it's easier to lose something than
Speaker 1: it is to gain something. Absolutely. I mean you can
Speaker 1: see that with many tetrapod mammals to for example, look
Speaker 1: at a dog's paw. I mean, they have a sort
Speaker 1: of vestigial other thumb type thing up there on the
Speaker 1: on the leg, but basically they got four toes that
Speaker 1: go go down on the ground. It's the what the
Speaker 1: do claw? Yeah, yeah, up there? Or I mean even
Speaker 1: look at the feet of ungulates. Yeah, I mean, horses
Speaker 1: are a great place to look because we see how
Speaker 1: far it's reduced now. But you know, various prehistoric horses
Speaker 1: had three or four toes. And when animals actually do
Speaker 1: gain digits well, uh Coats points out that the lack
Speaker 1: of true six toed or six fingered creatures in today's
Speaker 1: fauna quote highlights some sort of constraint. For instance, one
Speaker 1: of the rare cases we see of you know, the
Speaker 1: creature gaining digits is the marine reptile uh Ethosaurus. This
Speaker 1: is the these sixty years ago. We've talked abou about
Speaker 1: them on the show before. They essentially are dolphin like creatures.
Speaker 1: They have that same sort of shape, but they they
Speaker 1: are reptiles um and as a result alt to returning
Speaker 1: to the sea, they eventually developed paddles that sometimes had
Speaker 1: you know, quite a number of digits in there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the athosaurs, like the marine mammals of today, in
Speaker 1: their evolutionary history, went to land and then went back
Speaker 1: to water, right, Yeah, So, which again lines up nicely
Speaker 1: with this idea of of as long as you're a
Speaker 1: sea creature, you can have multiple digits within that paddle.
Speaker 1: But when you start using that paddle increasingly again over
Speaker 1: you know, generation after generation after generation, if it's used
Speaker 1: to push off, if it's new, used even to hold
Speaker 1: up your weight, it becomes increasingly um more beneficial to
Speaker 1: have fewer digits in that at the end of that limb. However,
Speaker 1: we do see creatures like the mole and the panda,
Speaker 1: both of which benefit from remodeled wrist bones that essentially
Speaker 1: serve as a six finger, but which are not true fingers.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't seen a picture of this, I
Speaker 1: encourage everyone to look up pictures of panda's paw or
Speaker 1: the laws of a mole, and you will. You know,
Speaker 1: if you start doing some counting, you'll be like, okay,
Speaker 1: one too, three, four, five, and oh kind of six
Speaker 1: again not a true thumb. But for the panda, for instance,
Speaker 1: it serves as a thumb. It has like the roll
Speaker 1: of a thumb in helping them handle food. The panda,
Speaker 1: of course, is the herbivore of the bare world, and
Speaker 1: and the and it has to eat constantly, and therefore
Speaker 1: it has eventually used the point where it needs a
Speaker 1: little extra thumblike appendage to get the job done. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: for moles, uh, this extra little thumblike appendage it helps
Speaker 1: them tunnel through the earth, so being almost more like
Speaker 1: a flipper, Yeah, help it swim through the earth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These are, in Coats's words quote, rather baroque solutions to
Speaker 1: the apparently straightforward task of growing an extra finger. So
Speaker 1: you know, if we're going to think back to our
Speaker 1: outer limits example here, it would be far more likely
Speaker 1: that one would grow some sort of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: a paddle of a pseudo finger as opposed to growing
Speaker 1: a full finger. No matter how many keyboards you're having
Speaker 1: to use, no matter you know, how many you know,
Speaker 1: you know, mad science gadgets you're having to manipulate with
Speaker 1: your far future digits. But I want to talk about
Speaker 1: another even more amazing example from real world biology. And
Speaker 1: for this we have to turn to the world of
Speaker 1: the Lemur, as recently reported in Smithsonian. The I I
Speaker 1: Lemur known for its weird looks and it's elongated middle
Speaker 1: finger which it uses to fish grubs out of trees.
Speaker 1: You may have seen this in various documentaries before. It
Speaker 1: looks like a tree goblin and it's I think it
Speaker 1: has unfortunately suffered from like superstitious killings in the past,
Speaker 1: but it has this it's nocturnal, and it has this
Speaker 1: fabulous super elongated in some people's eyes, and I think
Speaker 1: it's creepy middle finger which it uses you have to
Speaker 1: fish out a grub and uh and then it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's this highly specialized digit and once it
Speaker 1: gets the about I was reading that it will also
Speaker 1: like pluck the top of the grub. Off and like
Speaker 1: suck the inside of the grub out, like it is
Speaker 1: just a highly evolved grub the eater. But in addition
Speaker 1: to this, it also boasts an extra tiny thumb or
Speaker 1: pseudo thumb, complete with a fingerprint. This according to Adam
Speaker 1: Hearstone Rose, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina
Speaker 1: State University, It's a pseudo thumb made of bone and cartilage,
Speaker 1: but it can be moved in three directions, much like
Speaker 1: a human thumb. Now you might wonder, why, why why
Speaker 1: is this creature so greedy for crazy digits? It already
Speaker 1: has this super elongated specialized digit. What does it need
Speaker 1: an extra digit for? You know what? I realized The
Speaker 1: II hand reminds me of I just looked it up
Speaker 1: to see it again. It reminds me of the of
Speaker 1: klaus Kinsky's hands in Werner Hertzog's nose fur Aw too,
Speaker 1: He's got the long nails and the creepy fingers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It does seem like a true creature of
Speaker 1: the night, doesn't it. But basically it seems to have
Speaker 1: developed this this additional pseudo thumb because the other fingers
Speaker 1: are elongated and specialized like Essentially it's lost that middle
Speaker 1: fingers specialized usage, and so it has had to develop
Speaker 1: a pseudo thumb to make up for that special specialization.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, you'll you'll sometimes find a six
Speaker 1: finger occurring on a human as a as a birth defect.
Speaker 1: And in fact, since we're celebrating Halloween, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that Hannibal Lecter in the books um has an extra
Speaker 1: digit on his left hand like that that occurs, but
Speaker 1: it is not, you know, it's not a naturally you know,
Speaker 1: evolved feature. So you're probably wondering where does this leave
Speaker 1: our six fingered man in the outer limits. So Griffith
Speaker 1: kind of essentially dodges the question when at one point
Speaker 1: of scientists actually asked him about the six finger, like
Speaker 1: what's what's up with that extra finger, and he just
Speaker 1: kind of starts talking about something else. But but it's implied,
Speaker 1: especially given the prior scene in which he played as
Speaker 1: a piano, that it enables the better manipulation of interface
Speaker 1: tools like the keys of a piano or the keys
Speaker 1: of a computer, etcetera. Now, if again, this is suggesting
Speaker 1: this would be selected for an evolution, that would imply
Speaker 1: that at some point people are like dying or not
Speaker 1: reproducing as much because they can't type as fast. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's where we get into some some problems with
Speaker 1: this this model if you look at it too closely. Um.
Speaker 1: I also had to realize as I was typing up
Speaker 1: notes for this, I was hyper conscious of how little
Speaker 1: I actually use my pinky fingers while typing. Now, ultimately
Speaker 1: I'm probably using some sort of weird hybrid of of
Speaker 1: actual typing with a little hunt and peck thrown in there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know that I use my pinkies
Speaker 1: all that much, if at all, Unless I'm doing some
Speaker 1: sort of weird hot key, I definitely use mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's semicolon, you know, for cle and sentences. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wait, I gotta think of okay, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do it, Okay, all right, to each is all right.
Speaker 1: I'm not bragging. I mean no, no, I mean I thought,
Speaker 1: because my pinky fingers are way better than yours, well
Speaker 1: you know they're not. They're not holding me back. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that, like, you know, when I catch myself typing,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't think the pinkies are really carrying
Speaker 1: their weight here. So it's kind of silly to imagine
Speaker 1: a scenario in which being able to type extra hard
Speaker 1: and be able to hit like crazier hot keys on
Speaker 1: a keyboard would would have this kind of impact on
Speaker 1: human evolution. At the same time, maybe it's for the
Speaker 1: next level of PC gaming. Yeah, that's but But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it is true that habitual tool use
Speaker 1: has led to the evolved state of the modern human hand,
Speaker 1: including thumb length. So tool use has shaped our bodies,
Speaker 1: it has shaped our hand in the past, so it's
Speaker 1: not ridiculous to say that the future human evolution would
Speaker 1: continue to reshape the human hand. But there you would
Speaker 1: be contending with the fact that I think there's you know,
Speaker 1: in the environments that we mostly live in today, not
Speaker 1: being able to use a tool as well doesn't usually
Speaker 1: mean that you're going to, you know, on average, have
Speaker 1: fewer children than the people next door. That that seems
Speaker 1: like a thing that would be more the case in
Speaker 1: like a hunter gatherers survival scenario exactly. Yeah, And ultimately
Speaker 1: we have to remember that you were no longer subject
Speaker 1: to purely natural selection at this stage of the human experience.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's more of an unnatural selection. We
Speaker 1: also have to consider the potential of directed evolution that
Speaker 1: we will, in the future continue to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to manipulate our own genes, which brings up the possibility
Speaker 1: that perhaps our far future selves have simply added on
Speaker 1: an extra finger. Right, it's not a situation where we
Speaker 1: evolved when, but we realize, hey, having two pinkies on
Speaker 1: each hand would be nice. Let's do it, and then
Speaker 1: we just we just do it. We just check it
Speaker 1: off on the menu of g manipulation, which which reminds
Speaker 1: me of Less Grossman's The Magician and the sci fi
Speaker 1: uh TV series that's based on it. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a dark wizard in the show called the Beast, and
Speaker 1: he has an extra finger on each hand because in
Speaker 1: the in The Magician's casting spells involves a lot of
Speaker 1: like fine manipulation of your digits, like sort of like
Speaker 1: the the use of moodras and whatnot. Uh So, if
Speaker 1: you had an extra digit on each hand, you'd be
Speaker 1: able to cast improve variations of spells. You'd be able
Speaker 1: to cast spells that a normal individual with five digits
Speaker 1: would be incapable of. Well, that makes me wonder who
Speaker 1: invented those spells then, I mean, I guess they're of
Speaker 1: his own creation. Well, yes, and of course there are
Speaker 1: a lot of inhuman being entities in this world as well.
Speaker 1: He could be going to them for such spells. However, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, discussing this idea of like, you know, growing
Speaker 1: extra fingers to manipulate technology, etcetera. As Peter Ward pointed
Speaker 1: out in his Scientific American article The Future of Man,
Speaker 1: how will evolution change humans? We also have to consider,
Speaker 1: you know, not only like computer interfaces like keyboards, but
Speaker 1: more drastic interfaces, some of the sort of futuristic mind
Speaker 1: computer interfaces that we've discussed in the show before. Um.
Speaker 1: He points to a quote from George Dyson in his
Speaker 1: book Darwin Among the Machines. Quote, everything that human beings
Speaker 1: are doing to make it easier to operate computer networks
Speaker 1: is at the same time, but for different reasons, making
Speaker 1: it easier from computer networks to operate human being. Darwinian evolution,
Speaker 1: in one of those paradoxes with which life abounds, may
Speaker 1: be a victim of his own success, unable to keep
Speaker 1: up with non Darwinian processes that it has spawned. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot to that. I mean, I would say,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is in the nineteen nineties, before you
Speaker 1: could anticipate a lot of the stuff that's going on
Speaker 1: now with say social media, in the many ways that
Speaker 1: our our technology is influencing us. But yeah, just one
Speaker 1: thing I would say here is that this person probably
Speaker 1: lived through the transition from command line computers to graphical
Speaker 1: user interfaces, and so the obviously having a graphical user
Speaker 1: interface makes it way easier for people who don't know
Speaker 1: much about how the computer works or understanding directories and
Speaker 1: commands and all that stuff to use it because it's intuitive.
Speaker 1: It's easy. You just look at the thing, you recognize that,
Speaker 1: you click on it. All that, but also those graphical
Speaker 1: user interfaces I think led to all of the ways
Speaker 1: that computers are now just completely attention monopolizing devices. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So Ward basically concludes that we'll have to go one
Speaker 1: of three different ways as humans continuitive to evolve. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's these There's the stasis direction where we mainly just
Speaker 1: stay the same but with minor tweaks, and also a
Speaker 1: kind of merging of races. There's also a speciation in
Speaker 1: which we break off into different species. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and hopefully none of them are are more locks, because
Speaker 1: ultimately a speciation is the model that H. G. Wells
Speaker 1: explorers in the time machine. And then he also talks
Speaker 1: about the board grout, which is symbiosis of machines. I
Speaker 1: find it kind of hard to believe that there could
Speaker 1: be human speciation unless you're talking about space colonization, like
Speaker 1: fully separating human populations from one another so that they
Speaker 1: cannot physically come together at all for you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of hundreds of years. Even if you sent some of
Speaker 1: them below ground to man all the machines and keep
Speaker 1: the surface world running, well, I guess it would depend
Speaker 1: on whether you could go back and forth between I mean,
Speaker 1: I think as long as humans stay in physical contact
Speaker 1: with each other, I find it hard to believe that
Speaker 1: there will be actual human speciation. But then, yeah, space
Speaker 1: colonization does seem like that creates a kind of like
Speaker 1: a certain hard divide. It is it is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of having a species wind up on an island and
Speaker 1: um and and co eval. So War doesn't specifically chime
Speaker 1: in on the six finger thing. He doesn't reference that,
Speaker 1: but he does dismiss the idea of giant brained futurized
Speaker 1: humans like we see in the sixth Finger. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: the big brain vision has no real scientific basis. The
Speaker 1: fossil record of skull sizes over the past several thousand
Speaker 1: generations shows that our days of rapid increase in brain
Speaker 1: size are long over. Yeah. In fact, we we already peaked, right,
Speaker 1: We're we're our average brain sizes in the modern world
Speaker 1: are smaller than they used to be. Yeah. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: this episode of Outer Limits is not just about biological evolution,
Speaker 1: is about the evolution of of what it means to
Speaker 1: be human? Uh, you know, can is there a potential
Speaker 1: for us to change in a more meaningful way? Can
Speaker 1: we become, for instance, more empathetic? Can we become more
Speaker 1: present as a species kinder? Uh? This is the idea
Speaker 1: that the episode is playing with and hoping for and
Speaker 1: and ultimately, like that's where it gets to at the
Speaker 1: end with this, he the character, while he's still more human,
Speaker 1: is you know, possessed by this this quest for vengeance
Speaker 1: against the people who operate the mind in which he works.
Speaker 1: And by the end of it, he has evolved beyond
Speaker 1: these feelings of vengeance. Like there's a period in the
Speaker 1: in the episode where he wants to use his crazy
Speaker 1: you know future brain powers to go you know, wreak
Speaker 1: havoc on them, but by the end of it he realizes, no,
Speaker 1: that is not the way. Well, I would say, I
Speaker 1: think it certainly is possible for us to become more empathetic, um, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, less vengeful and violent and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But I don't think you necessarily need biological
Speaker 1: changes for that to happen. I mean, I think we've
Speaker 1: seen massive changes in the levels of like violence and
Speaker 1: vengefulness you see in the average person across different societies
Speaker 1: through time, and the main changes are through like culture,
Speaker 1: like like social norms, how children are educated, what's acceptable
Speaker 1: socially within your friend groups, and the culture. Right, So
Speaker 1: changes in the software as opposed to the hardware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then of course we have to we have to
Speaker 1: consider like the rate of which software can change, at
Speaker 1: the rate of which it may evolve, uh, you know
Speaker 1: how and no matter how pleasant uh a human civilization's
Speaker 1: current software, maybe how much has to happen to it
Speaker 1: to make it well to to use a naughty word
Speaker 1: on this show, devolve into some lesser state. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that's the danger. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: cultural changes can can be undone, maybe as quickly as
Speaker 1: they can be done, or even quicker. By the way,
Speaker 1: I was reading about the original script and the production
Speaker 1: of this episode of The Outer Limits, and according to
Speaker 1: the Outer Limits companion by David J. Scoe, uh Dorothy Brown,
Speaker 1: the ABC sensor at the time, had objected to the
Speaker 1: Darwinism and promotion of evolution inherent in the sixth finger
Speaker 1: so one. In fact, one of the early deletions from
Speaker 1: the script was a speech on the topic of evolution.
Speaker 1: Well that's funny, I mean again, like to really explore
Speaker 1: the what's happening to the character in the episode is
Speaker 1: not actually Darwinian evolution. But but that's funny. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it does rely on the idea that there's
Speaker 1: like a roadmap for our species generally, which also is
Speaker 1: not part of Darwinian evolution. So it's not like not
Speaker 1: really hitting the viewer over the head with, you know,
Speaker 1: a hardcore speech on evolution. But I think just the
Speaker 1: mere fact that they were citing evolution and speaking speaking
Speaker 1: of evolution um and the works of Darwin as being
Speaker 1: you know, something that we can actually you know, hang
Speaker 1: our scientific hat on. Um, they were afraid it was
Speaker 1: going to offend people. Well yeah, I mean I I
Speaker 1: grew up surrounded by that kind of opposition and and
Speaker 1: sensitivity to ideas about evolution. But I I don't know,
Speaker 1: despite that, I'm kind of surprised that it made ABC
Speaker 1: censorship priorities. Yeah, especially in a show like this, which
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately is you know, kind of high minded
Speaker 1: and stuffy. Well, I guess also trading and science fiction,
Speaker 1: which would have had a you know, a certain amount
Speaker 1: of appeal to younger audiences as well. But still absolutely say,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty solid episode of The Outer Limits.
Speaker 1: I think it stands up really well today. You have
Speaker 1: to go into it knowing you're not going to get
Speaker 1: an action packed, um you know episode here this is
Speaker 1: this is a very talky episode mode, but it's it's
Speaker 1: really solid, well shot, well acted, um worth checking out.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the best anthology, sci fi
Speaker 1: and horror episodes are not actually action packed. Uh. They
Speaker 1: often tend to be rather subdued, just dealing with a
Speaker 1: strange idea as discussed by a handful of characters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes you do see this kind of
Speaker 1: unevenness to the perceived budget of a show, like you
Speaker 1: know that some of those anthology episodes maybe they had
Speaker 1: a had a few more bucks to spend on the cast,
Speaker 1: on the locations, and some are essentially kind of bottle
Speaker 1: episodes where there's just like one set or it's it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of a stage piece, but there's you know
Speaker 1: when it when it's really well done, you know that
Speaker 1: will certainly get you there to serve. Man, is an
Speaker 1: action packed either is? Yeah, it's just and that's the
Speaker 1: one that we talked about last year. Right, speaking of Joe,
Speaker 1: what is your selection your final selection for this year's
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror Episodes? Well, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: my favorite all times since Treehouse of Horror episode Citizen Kang.
Speaker 1: This is from Simpson's tree House of Horror seven. It
Speaker 1: originally aired October, and I think this is this is
Speaker 1: not only one of my favorite uh Simpson's bits, ever,
Speaker 1: I think it is some of the best political satire
Speaker 1: in American media history. Yeah. This this is just a
Speaker 1: great tree House episode period. I rewatched it the other
Speaker 1: night with the family, and I must have seen it
Speaker 1: a dozen times in the in the past because in
Speaker 1: addition to Citizen Kang. It also contains the genesis tub.
Speaker 1: This is where Lise's tooth grows a civil of civilization
Speaker 1: after it gets a little static shock from Bart, which
Speaker 1: is very similar to a tale by George R. Martin
Speaker 1: that was adapted by the nineteen nineties revival of The
Speaker 1: Outer Limits more or less along the same time. And
Speaker 1: then this episode also has The Thing and I, which
Speaker 1: is a great more of sort of a straight up
Speaker 1: horror piece, which contains twist ending that I have to
Speaker 1: say is nearly identical to the twist ending of a
Speaker 1: certain top twenty nineteen horror film. Okay, well, let's not
Speaker 1: say any more than that. I think you know the one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to spoil it for anybody else. All Right, we
Speaker 1: need to take a quick commercial break, but we will
Speaker 1: be right back. Thank Okay, So this Simpson's tree House
Speaker 1: of Horror again. It aired at the end of October nineteen,
Speaker 1: and at the time it actually aired, the United States
Speaker 1: was right in the final days of a presidential election
Speaker 1: that was pitting incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton against Republican
Speaker 1: Senator Bob Dole from Kansas. And in this tree House
Speaker 1: of Horror segment, alien invaders Kang and Kodos, who are
Speaker 1: from a certain ringed planet who they prefer not to
Speaker 1: mention um. They plot to take over the world by
Speaker 1: body snatching both Clinton and Dole and taking their places
Speaker 1: in the election as lookalikes, and the idea is stated
Speaker 1: pretty dire actually by Kang and the guys of Bob Dole.
Speaker 1: A reporter asks the Kang Dole Senator Dole, why should
Speaker 1: people vote for you instead of President Clinton? And Kang
Speaker 1: Dole responds, it makes no difference which one of us
Speaker 1: you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed, doomed
Speaker 1: replacing both. That's a good idea, right, Yeah, then there's
Speaker 1: no risk, right either way, they're gonna win. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in this uh, in this little plot, Homer becomes aware
Speaker 1: of the alien takeover plot because he happened to be
Speaker 1: on the alien ship when Clinton and Dole were replicated.
Speaker 1: So he decides he's got to reveal Kang and Kodos
Speaker 1: for what they are. So he runs on stage at
Speaker 1: an event I think at the Capitol Building where both
Speaker 1: candidates are speaking, and he rips off their disguises, revealing
Speaker 1: them both as hideous space reptiles, but Kangan Kodos seem unfazed, declaring,
Speaker 1: it's true we are aliens, but what are you going
Speaker 1: to do about it. It's a two party system. You
Speaker 1: have to vote for one of us. And then some
Speaker 1: in the crowd suggests voting for a third party candidate,
Speaker 1: and Kodo says, go ahead, throw your vote away. So
Speaker 1: the Americans, of course, end up electing Kang, who immediately
Speaker 1: enslaves all humans and he puts them to work constructing
Speaker 1: a giant laser to aim at some third, unspecify, unspecified planet.
Speaker 1: And then Marge laments the state of affairs that they're
Speaker 1: they're suffering under right now, and Homer smugly declares, don't
Speaker 1: blame me. I voted for Kodos. I think this this
Speaker 1: might be the best nine minutes of political science, satire
Speaker 1: and American pop culture history. Uh. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to be misunderstood there based on some of the themes
Speaker 1: in the episode, because, of course, a major theme here
Speaker 1: is the pointlessness and futility of some parts of the
Speaker 1: democratic process. I don't want to be mistaken for saying
Speaker 1: I think it makes no difference who you vote for
Speaker 1: for president, or that all politicians are the same. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that's the kind of thing that it's like
Speaker 1: easy to say and feel superior or about saying when
Speaker 1: you don't want to put in the work to learn
Speaker 1: what's going on and what's at stake. Right, it was
Speaker 1: the kind of statement I would have found very attractive
Speaker 1: when I was like a first year college student, kind
Speaker 1: of intellectually lazy but wanting to stake ammorl claim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I're wanting to to differentiate yourself from you know, the
Speaker 1: politics that you might have been born into. It's easier.
Speaker 1: Instead of saying, actually, I disagree with you completely and
Speaker 1: I go to this side, you can just say, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I don't sorry, I don't go for any
Speaker 1: of it, right, Yeah, you know, I can remember being
Speaker 1: like that. I wanted to have a strong opinion without
Speaker 1: having to do the work to earn an opinion. So
Speaker 1: I don't think that way anymore. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: while I don't generally feel the field that's always true
Speaker 1: about elections, I think there is some real cutting wisdom
Speaker 1: in that satire, because even though it's not the case
Speaker 1: that all politicians are the same, in elections don't matter
Speaker 1: people often overestimate how much their democratic choice will make
Speaker 1: a difference to particular issues they really care about. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many big problems that you thought electing the
Speaker 1: right person might solve, and then that person was elected
Speaker 1: and the problem stayed the same or got worse. But
Speaker 1: even more than that, I think this episode is brilliant
Speaker 1: at highlighting the absurd and nonsensical conclusions often reached by
Speaker 1: group choice algorithms that we follow in our politics. And
Speaker 1: that's sort of what I wanted to look at here
Speaker 1: in relation to this episode. In that mein, I want
Speaker 1: to explore the question of whether or not the election
Speaker 1: of Kang is an example of the Abilene paradox. Robert,
Speaker 1: had you ever come across this concept before? I don't
Speaker 1: believe I had no. Yeah, I I think this is
Speaker 1: very useful to have in your tool kit of of
Speaker 1: concepts to apply to the world, because it's absolutely something
Speaker 1: that explains many unfortunate group behaviors in politics, in business,
Speaker 1: even in like family vacations and and hang out with
Speaker 1: your friends. Uh So, this paradox was explained in a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four paper by the George Washington University scholar
Speaker 1: Jerry B. Harvey, which was published in the journal Organizational Dynamics,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to give a kind of updated scenario
Speaker 1: here for you to consider. So imagine the following scenario.
Speaker 1: You are hanging out with your friends p J, Nancy,
Speaker 1: and Jamie Lee. It's October. You're all just finished babysitting.
Speaker 1: You're at Nancy's house carving a pumpkin, and you're watching
Speaker 1: an old Howard Hawks movie on TV, The Thing from
Speaker 1: Another World. You're hanging out, You're having an okay time.
Speaker 1: But then suddenly Nancy says, hey, does anybody want to
Speaker 1: go out and see a movie? And p J says, yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be cool. Let's see what's playing. So you
Speaker 1: look up show times at the local theater and the
Speaker 1: only show left tonight is a midnight showing of The
Speaker 1: Purge seventeen as the World Purges. Uh So p J says, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could see that if you guys want, and Nancy says, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I could be down to go to the Purge, and
Speaker 1: Jamie Lee says sure, if you two want to see it,
Speaker 1: I'm in. So since all of your friends agreed, you
Speaker 1: resign yourself. You say, okay, let's see it. Tickets are
Speaker 1: fourteen dollars apiece. Uh. The movie stars Fred Durst and
Speaker 1: Tim Allen. It's three and a half hours long. At
Speaker 1: multiple moments, you consider leaving the theater, but you don't
Speaker 1: want to go out alone and leave your friends behind,
Speaker 1: So you sit through this whole terrible movie, and when
Speaker 1: the credits finally roll, you leave the theater with a
Speaker 1: throbbing headache, and you immediately ask why did we do
Speaker 1: that to ourselves? And Jamie Lee says, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It sounded pretty bad to me, but I thought the
Speaker 1: rest of you wanted to see it, And Nancy says, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to see it. I just thought the
Speaker 1: rest of you did. And p J says, well, don't
Speaker 1: look at me. I just said I was okay with
Speaker 1: it if you guys wanted to go. Weren't you the
Speaker 1: one who suggested it? And Nancy, the one who did
Speaker 1: suggest going to a movie finally says well, I just
Speaker 1: thought you guys might be bored hanging out at the house.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that none of the four of
Speaker 1: you actually wanted to see this movie, and yet somehow
Speaker 1: you collectively decided it would be the best thing to
Speaker 1: do with your time together. Everybody agreed on a course
Speaker 1: of action that nobody individually wanted. Robert. Can I assume
Speaker 1: this experience is somewhat familiar to you? Yeah? Maybe from
Speaker 1: I think probably the best example I can think of
Speaker 1: is like when as a family when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: sometimes we would agree on what to watch, and you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's something that one of us had a definite
Speaker 1: steak in, but other times it kind of felt like
Speaker 1: this where we ended up agreeing to watch a movie
Speaker 1: just because it was it was a major film that
Speaker 1: came out, and we're like, Okay, I guess we're watching
Speaker 1: Oh uh God. I can't even think of a good
Speaker 1: example of just something, you know, whatever the big mainstream
Speaker 1: family film was that had to hit theaters and was
Speaker 1: now on VHS Christmas with the Cranks. Well, maybe not
Speaker 1: that bad, but but stuff stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this would be a prime example of what Harvey
Speaker 1: calls the Abeleyan paradox, and the name Abolean paradox comes
Speaker 1: from the story Jerry Harvey tells to open his paper.
Speaker 1: It's similar to the story I told, but it's about
Speaker 1: a family in Texas making a long drive to a
Speaker 1: Baleen in a non air conditioned car in hot weather.
Speaker 1: It's a completely miserable experience, as you would expect. And
Speaker 1: it turns out nobody actually wanted to go to Abilene
Speaker 1: in the first place. Every member of the family just
Speaker 1: thought the other family members wanted to go and then
Speaker 1: failed to communicate their actual preferences. And as Harvey puts
Speaker 1: it in this article, the Abilene paradox is the fact
Speaker 1: that quote organizations frequently take actions in contradiction to what
Speaker 1: they really want to do and therefore defeat the very
Speaker 1: purposes they're trying to achieve. And any characterizes the Abilene
Speaker 1: paradox says not a failure to manage disagreement, but a
Speaker 1: failure to manage agreement. Uh So, when I first read
Speaker 1: about this at some point in the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I recognize so much of this in the world. How
Speaker 1: have I gone this long without a name for it?
Speaker 1: It seems to me to be a problem for group
Speaker 1: choice at all kinds of levels. Again, you mentioned you
Speaker 1: know a family trying to to decide what movie to see,
Speaker 1: but you know a group of friends trying to decide
Speaker 1: what to do, how to spend their Sunday, or a
Speaker 1: democratic society trying to elect their leaders. Many kinds of
Speaker 1: group choice problems I think arise, of course, from the
Speaker 1: inability to manage conflict. But this is the opposite. Harvey
Speaker 1: argues that even more group choice problems arise from the
Speaker 1: inability to manage agreement. And another real world example that
Speaker 1: Harvey gives in his paper is the Watergate scandal. He
Speaker 1: he quotes a number of people involved in Nixon's came
Speaker 1: the Nixon campaign's dirty Tricks team, who all claimed privately
Speaker 1: that they had doubts not only about the morality about
Speaker 1: but about the practical wisdom of their scheme that to
Speaker 1: each of them privately seemed like the payoffs were not
Speaker 1: really worth the risks. But they each assumed they were
Speaker 1: the only ones with such doubts, and thus acted along
Speaker 1: with the rest of the group in a way that
Speaker 1: hurt all of them, even though they privately most or
Speaker 1: all thought it was a bad idea. Uh So, it's
Speaker 1: like Nixon wants to purge, Lily wants to purge. So
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, I don't really want to purge,
Speaker 1: but if everybody's in the mood to purge, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm in right and uh. In a lot of his paper,
Speaker 1: Harvey just analyzes what he sees, or like the he
Speaker 1: he thinks the common organizational symptoms of the Abilene paradox.
Speaker 1: For example, he talks about the idea of action anxiety. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He explains this by quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet. He says, action
Speaker 1: anxiety is that which quote makes us rather bear those
Speaker 1: ills we have than fly to others we know not,
Speaker 1: of which, of course, is what you know. Hamlet talks
Speaker 1: about the idea of going on through pain rather than
Speaker 1: like ending it and going on to see what undiscovered
Speaker 1: country lies beyond the grave. Um. But it's a fear
Speaker 1: of acting on your actual preferences, an environment that makes
Speaker 1: pursuing the path that you don't want seem like the
Speaker 1: less scary option than asking for the path that you
Speaker 1: do want. Well. That's also touched on a little bit
Speaker 1: in Macbeth. Right, idea about it having waited so far
Speaker 1: through the blood that it's better to just go on
Speaker 1: through to the other side of this this blood lake
Speaker 1: than to turn back around, even if turning back around
Speaker 1: is what you really want to do. Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: and Harvey roots a lot of this actually and appeals
Speaker 1: to human psychology. He says, you know, some of our
Speaker 1: greatest fears are expressed as negative fantasies about fear, about
Speaker 1: fears of separation and ostracization. You know, it's like terrifying
Speaker 1: to be the one to step out and say, I'm
Speaker 1: going to challenge the momentum of this group that you
Speaker 1: know that like whether it's even in simple things like
Speaker 1: going out to a movie. Like you're going out to
Speaker 1: a movie with friends. I mean, maybe you're comfortable enough
Speaker 1: with the friends to say no, actually I don't want
Speaker 1: to do this. But like a lot of times, especially
Speaker 1: if you don't know people as well, you'd rather just
Speaker 1: not be thought of as the jerk who said let's
Speaker 1: not do it. Yeah, because you're engaging, and you're you're
Speaker 1: kind of engaging in this group. Think you know, it's
Speaker 1: something as simple as say, like a group of friends
Speaker 1: getting together to to play Dungeons and Dragons. You know
Speaker 1: you're not, you know, you're not a dirty tricks counsel
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know you're not. All you're doing is
Speaker 1: just trying to hang out and play a game. But
Speaker 1: you know, still don't want to shake the boat if
Speaker 1: somebody wants to get fried pickles, you know, um, even
Speaker 1: if you really don't care for fried pickles all that much. Right,
Speaker 1: But maybe the person who suggested it doesn't either, and
Speaker 1: they're just saying because they thought somebody else did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you reach a point where every week you
Speaker 1: order fried pickles, even though nobody's really crazy about fried pickles,
Speaker 1: and everybody probably feels a little bad about eating them
Speaker 1: every week. Yeah. So in the end, Harvey comes up
Speaker 1: with a couple of recommendations for diagnosing and dealing with
Speaker 1: UH with abilene paradox is in a business context. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's no special magic trick. Basically, he says, he thinks
Speaker 1: the best way to deal with it is for an
Speaker 1: authority figure who detects a situation like this to call
Speaker 1: a meeting, frankly, articulate their doubts in a group setting,
Speaker 1: and then ask others to share their honest thoughts. If
Speaker 1: you're an authority figure, you have you know, it's safer
Speaker 1: for you to go out on a limb and question
Speaker 1: the direction that you're going in, all right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's why they make the big bucks, right. This,
Speaker 1: This is the this is the moment when they can
Speaker 1: really earn that higher pay that the higher pay grade
Speaker 1: right right be the authority figured that comes in and
Speaker 1: shuts down, uh, you know, things that nobody really wants
Speaker 1: to do, or that there's no real advantage to doing
Speaker 1: from a business standpoint. Yeah. Now, in the political context,
Speaker 1: I think the Kang in Kodos situation kind of highlights
Speaker 1: a satirical absurd version of this, with the idea that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously humans would all recognize like, okay, we
Speaker 1: we are all in agreement. We're in agreement. We don't
Speaker 1: want either Kang or Kodos. That's the position shared by
Speaker 1: everybody voting at this point. But they're able to cause
Speaker 1: this action anxiety about organizing any kind of third option,
Speaker 1: the idea of throwing your vote away on any kind
Speaker 1: of third party candidate. When you've got Kang in Kodos,
Speaker 1: there is going out on a limb. You fear ostracization,
Speaker 1: you fear being separated, you fear being different, and so
Speaker 1: eventually they just kind of decide, well, which one will
Speaker 1: I take, Hanger Kodos, And despite everybody agreeing that neither
Speaker 1: option is wanted, but it keeps everybody together I mean,
Speaker 1: humanity is united at the end in their enslavement to
Speaker 1: these uh, these terrible alien overlords. No they're not. They're
Speaker 1: still bickering. Don't blame me. That's genius of it is there.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're essentially unified, but they still have the
Speaker 1: mindset of division. Uh uh yeah. And so I think
Speaker 1: the way around that, of course, would be that it
Speaker 1: requires some kind of uh risk of leadership for somebody
Speaker 1: to say, hey, wait a minute, can we try to
Speaker 1: organize some way to get around this too? You know,
Speaker 1: the two options we've got here that we all agree
Speaker 1: we don't want. That sounds like a really wicked problem
Speaker 1: to deal with them. Well, yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the point the writers are making there is that we're
Speaker 1: just not good at organizing that kind of agreement effectively. Now,
Speaker 1: what do we do about the fact that we're often
Speaker 1: not good at me and ing agreement? And this leads
Speaker 1: to repeated absurdities like the kang and like the election
Speaker 1: of kang Um. Well he actually Harvey ends his paper
Speaker 1: with a strangely philosophical note for an organizational dynamics paper. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says that, you know, sometimes these situations simply cannot
Speaker 1: be resolved, and he calls to mind the myth of Sysyphus,
Speaker 1: the character from Greek mythology who was condemned to forever
Speaker 1: repeat the task of pushing a boulder up a hill,
Speaker 1: only for it to fall back down to the bottom again,
Speaker 1: making a mockery of his effort. Says, not only painful
Speaker 1: but pointless. Uh. And in Albert Camus version of the myth,
Speaker 1: he adds a detail that sometimes, in his endless loop
Speaker 1: of absurd toil, Sisyphus would get near the top of
Speaker 1: the hill, but then release the boulder of his own accord,
Speaker 1: letting it roll back down to the bottom on purpose.
Speaker 1: And Harvey says, in this act he could transcend the
Speaker 1: absurdity of his struggle. Uh. And I think this is
Speaker 1: sort of the bull's eye of existential philosophy, right, life
Speaker 1: is absurd, and you transcend that absurdity by recognizing your
Speaker 1: radical freedom and acting authentically, which means basically without lying
Speaker 1: to yourself about the absurdity of life. Like this is
Speaker 1: when you write in a third candidate, Now, I think
Speaker 1: actually in this case it might be more like voting
Speaker 1: for Kang or not voting or something what While recognizing
Speaker 1: the absurdity and unwinnable nous of the scenario. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the best thing to do in
Speaker 1: the alien election. I would say, actually try to organize
Speaker 1: the third party. But I think the uh, this whole
Speaker 1: discussion actually does bring us back to real questions about
Speaker 1: the field of astro politics. I mean, this is something
Speaker 1: I think we could devote whole episodes to in the future.
Speaker 1: There's actually a field of study and people have written
Speaker 1: about like what would happen if aliens arrived on Earth?
Speaker 1: Like what would be the political response to that? How
Speaker 1: would different world economic and military powers behave? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: would we all ban together, would we put aside our
Speaker 1: differences and are elf interest and say we need to
Speaker 1: organize an act together as Earth? Or would aliens be
Speaker 1: able to exploit our petty grievances and our differences and
Speaker 1: turn us against one another? And I think, unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: think there are some pretty good signs pointing towards the ladder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, our only model for intelligent life in the
Speaker 1: cosmos is our model of intelligent life of of a
Speaker 1: technologically advanced civilization. And when we look at the way
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, certainly the way the civilizations have
Speaker 1: interacted with each other. And I certainly look at the
Speaker 1: way that you know, Western colonization, how that transpired. We
Speaker 1: see time and time again basically the Kyan Kodos model.
Speaker 1: Manipulate their their leaders and their leadership, corrupt their uh,
Speaker 1: their their rule, and work one side against the other,
Speaker 1: ultimately overpower and bring enslavement and death. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that is the story of of human history, sadly, and
Speaker 1: so when we look to the stars, you know, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of people have said, well, that's basically what
Speaker 1: we can expect based on our models, based on our
Speaker 1: knowledge of our self, knowledge of how we work, that
Speaker 1: is what we can expect from a superior technological force.
Speaker 1: Like we want to imagine the independence day scenario where
Speaker 1: we all come together and join forces. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be overly optimistic. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, unless we look to our optimism in the
Speaker 1: sixth finger. And I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of certainly the various um New
Speaker 1: Age religions that have popped up around the idea of aliens.
Speaker 1: You know, they look to aliens as a possibly we're
Speaker 1: all we're all messed up in this world and we're
Speaker 1: you know, we we have just committed crime after crime,
Speaker 1: and we're shackled to the terror of history. Maybe something
Speaker 1: will come down from above that has evolved beyond this
Speaker 1: state and that can guide us, that can help us
Speaker 1: find this new uh, you know, shape of being. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe that's the case. But again, if
Speaker 1: we're looking at our own example of intelligent life, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that that's going to happen. I wouldn't put
Speaker 1: hope in aliens being being a good influence on us.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put hope in us biologically evolving beyond our
Speaker 1: our petty grievances and all that. I think the hope
Speaker 1: lies in culture, unfortunately, and thus it is up to
Speaker 1: people like writers and political leaders and those kinds of
Speaker 1: figures to help shape human culture in a way that
Speaker 1: that allows us to to act collectively in our own
Speaker 1: best interest. I know that's not the easiest thing to
Speaker 1: put hope in, but I think that might be the
Speaker 1: only hope personally. Yeah, I mean, well, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the hard answer. That's a difficult answer, but it's that's
Speaker 1: that's the one that requires us to work. That's the
Speaker 1: one that requires us to do the heavy lifting here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got to fix our own problems, mostly using words.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm sure we'll come back to this topic
Speaker 1: in the future of Oh, I definitely. I think we
Speaker 1: could do some stuff on astro politics. Absolute, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be down for that. Absolutely. But there you
Speaker 1: have it. This is gonna be our third installment of
Speaker 1: the Anthology of Horror uh kangan Kodo's willing. We will
Speaker 1: return next October with at least one at least a
Speaker 1: volume four, if not a volume four and five, And
Speaker 1: of course, ironically that'll be pretty much just uh you know,
Speaker 1: right before the the the peak moment of American politics
Speaker 1: heading into the next presidential election. Probably won't do politics
Speaker 1: when then, probably not all right. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find them. You
Speaker 1: can also find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: But again, this was how our Anthology of Horror Volume three,
Speaker 1: Volume two came out Tuesday, and we reran volume one
Speaker 1: over the weekend. Also, if you want to check out
Speaker 1: our other show, Invention. You can find that at invention
Speaker 1: pod dot com and that's available everywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Oh and also the fiction podcast the Second oil Age
Speaker 1: launched as well. The first three episodes of that are
Speaker 1: live wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, congratulations man, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you alright, Uh, so that's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Certainly we have not seen all of the
Speaker 1: horror anthology episodes out there. Uh, we're not familiar with
Speaker 1: all the shows. So from now until next October, if
Speaker 1: you have specific episodes of various anthology shows you would
Speaker 1: like us to consider for next time, let us know.
Speaker 1: If they're just whole shows, whole buckets of content that
Speaker 1: we're not aware of, please enlighten us. One of the
Speaker 1: cool places you can find us for that, uh is
Speaker 1: our our Facebook discussion group. It is the Stuff Table
Speaker 1: Your Mind discussion module. Go check that out huge. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: No wait, death, Nicholas Johnson. That's right. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us directly with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
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