Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: I describe your desk here at work for us, Well,
Speaker 1: today it's a little messy. I have some stacks of paper,
Speaker 1: I have a tiger, I have clu waca av my
Speaker 1: sign uh, and I don't know, just a bunch of
Speaker 1: other myrriad objects there. Yeah. Yeah, I've got a beautiful leaf, uh,
Speaker 1: photos uh, Kinsey knife yeah yeah, you um well, minds
Speaker 1: a lot neater now, Like we we moved to locations
Speaker 1: shortly after my son arrived, so for the longest my
Speaker 1: desk was pretty messed up because it's just like a
Speaker 1: pile of art that I wanted to somehow stick to
Speaker 1: our art resistant surfaces around our desk area, like the wall.
Speaker 1: It's not really cubicle, but just I'm lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have to surfaces like the wall in front of me,
Speaker 1: the wall beside me. But it's it's it's made in
Speaker 1: a way to where you can't it's really difficult to
Speaker 1: stick things to and uh and the only way you
Speaker 1: can really do it is like this, this sort of
Speaker 1: complex system where you use uh, pins and um and
Speaker 1: tape at the same time and kind of like sow
Speaker 1: your art into the wall and it takes forever. So that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really the only way to do it. So for
Speaker 1: the longest, my desk was just like piles of notes
Speaker 1: for podcast book screen about a monitor that I didn't
Speaker 1: have hooked up yet. Um and you know, it's just
Speaker 1: just awful. I saw it as a fortress of papers
Speaker 1: and books, like you were walling everybody out. I know
Speaker 1: it probably looked pretty bad with the monitor because the
Speaker 1: monitor was was not hooked up, and it was like
Speaker 1: between me and Jonathan Strickland as if I was never
Speaker 1: going to hook up this monitor and I was gonna
Speaker 1: use it slowly as a divider and uh and so
Speaker 1: I'm glad to have that hooked up so people can see, Oh,
Speaker 1: he's not just a defensive clutter. Yeah he was. He
Speaker 1: was going to get there, go somewhere with that at
Speaker 1: some point. So yeah, well, and we are going to
Speaker 1: talk to you about spaces, orderly spaces, chaotic spaces, how
Speaker 1: do they affect us? And I will say that I
Speaker 1: do like a nice orderly space, but when I'm working
Speaker 1: on a project, things spirals sort of everywhere, and that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me because I'm referencing a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. But I might be an order muppet an order. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the idea that, of course we have casks
Speaker 1: in order. The two great movements in life, right, A
Speaker 1: movement towards order, a movement away from order. Of course,
Speaker 1: to quote while Stevens the poet, a violent order is
Speaker 1: a disorder, and a great disorder is an order, and
Speaker 1: these two things are one. So it's a complicated topic.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of back and forth, but a simplified
Speaker 1: way is too. Indeed, look at Jim Hinson's The Muppets
Speaker 1: and divide them into agents of order and agents of chaos.
Speaker 1: That's right. Dahlia Lithwick, writing for Slate, talked about this,
Speaker 1: this idea that you either fall into one of two
Speaker 1: categories chaos muppet, which are out of control, emotional, volatile.
Speaker 1: They tend towards this is for saying this. They tend
Speaker 1: towards the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through
Speaker 1: life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects,
Speaker 1: and the letter C. We're talking about Cookie Monster, Ernie Grover, Guns,
Speaker 1: Dr Bunsen, Honeydew Animal, and she says, Zelda Fitzgerald, here's
Speaker 1: here's a historical figure who was a chaos Muppet. Okay,
Speaker 1: But on the other side, you've got your order Muppet.
Speaker 1: And she says she's thinking about Bert Scooter Sam the
Speaker 1: Eagle Kermit of course, right, and the blue guy who
Speaker 1: is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants. She says, the
Speaker 1: order Muppet, every Man, that blue Guy. They tend to
Speaker 1: be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises, and they sport
Speaker 1: monstrously large eyebrows. She said. They represent the responsibility of
Speaker 1: running the world and they feel weighed down by it,
Speaker 1: but they secretly revel the knowledge that they keep things afloat. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which are you? Well, we were talking about this earlier
Speaker 1: and I'm still struggling to come with an answer because
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not the guy who threw the sword fish.
Speaker 1: Like that's like to me, like he and uh An
Speaker 1: Animal are right up there like the extremes of chaos
Speaker 1: mupet Gonzo too. Really, they're they're right up there at
Speaker 1: the threshold of of of utter chaos. And then of
Speaker 1: course on the other end, you have uh, Sam the Eagle,
Speaker 1: I guess would be like the most orderly Muppet because
Speaker 1: Kermit will wave his arms around a bit. But but
Speaker 1: Sam is a rock and he's gonna stick to it,
Speaker 1: uh no matter what. And I feel like I'm maybe
Speaker 1: a little more towards the middle. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: hard to I mean, maybe some of the members of
Speaker 1: the band were a little more balanced and laid back,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I'm a doctor, both because I
Speaker 1: had to have seen you as a chaos muppet when
Speaker 1: you're working and you're in the middle of something. But
Speaker 1: I have also seen you as the order muppet who
Speaker 1: every six months goes around the office and says, why
Speaker 1: is all this chalk around and clings things up and
Speaker 1: you get rid of all the jars of urine and
Speaker 1: whatnot hanging around. Well, maybe I'm maybe I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like the Count, because the Count is there's yes, the
Speaker 1: Count one, two, three, Uh, he's because he's orderly in
Speaker 1: a very and he's all about the numbers. But this
Speaker 1: his obsession with the numbers tends to disrupt everything else
Speaker 1: in his life. So I feel I feel like, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's a one to one comparison,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I'm kind of that kind of
Speaker 1: mixed where they're they're parts of me that are very orderly,
Speaker 1: but sometimes those get in the way of other stuff
Speaker 1: and causes disorder over here. I'm kind of in flux.
Speaker 1: I guess well, I'm with Dhlia Lithwick. She says that
Speaker 1: she is a faux chaos muppet. Yeah, but at the
Speaker 1: center is order. What about you? That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I'm with I'm with her, that your faux chaos muppet. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it also depends on the situation and um my
Speaker 1: environments and everybody's environment as well. Discuss But the thing is,
Speaker 1: those chaos muppets, they always get a bad rap, right
Speaker 1: because the surroundings they don't look so good, and people
Speaker 1: perceive them as you know, just sort of lay about
Speaker 1: who can't even be bothered to clean up their spaces.
Speaker 1: In fact, it brings to mind the broken windows theory, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that that the way that you ultimately combat
Speaker 1: um social upheaval and problems of crime is that you
Speaker 1: focus on all the little things you focus on. Say
Speaker 1: that broken window or some graffiti because of the windows
Speaker 1: are broken. If there's graffiti on the wall, it's sending
Speaker 1: this message to everyone else that minor transgressions are okay,
Speaker 1: and therefore we can extrapolate that that the less minor
Speaker 1: and fractions are okay as well. And then it becomes
Speaker 1: more and more chaotic. It builds up like kibble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like one broken window begets several broken windows, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you've got mayhem going on. And
Speaker 1: I think about the Crag Street Tunnel in Atlanta as
Speaker 1: an example of a graffiti ridden tunnel but also an
Speaker 1: example of extreme creativity. In fact, on any given day
Speaker 1: you can pass by this tunnel and see people getting
Speaker 1: their photograph taken in front of it or making videos
Speaker 1: in front of it, because ultimately it's this stand in
Speaker 1: for an act of creativity. Yeah, it's a graffiti free zone.
Speaker 1: And I think about this a lot every time I
Speaker 1: go past it. I wonder about graffiti free zones and
Speaker 1: to what extent, uh, basically, what affect they have on creativity,
Speaker 1: because it's not it's it's a situation where suddenly it's
Speaker 1: not just like a daring graffiti artist can go there
Speaker 1: and tag. And it's not just you know, somebody throwing
Speaker 1: up some sort of a gang tag either. It's everybody,
Speaker 1: even people who would normally not even think about it. Well,
Speaker 1: the crop tunnel does have a good amount of very
Speaker 1: interesting art, and what I think it's interesting about it
Speaker 1: is that it requires you to stop and take a
Speaker 1: second look. And so that's sort of this idea that
Speaker 1: we're going to look at when we talk about spaces,
Speaker 1: in particular workspaces clutter versus order. Yes, all right, So
Speaker 1: as luck would have it, we have a study that
Speaker 1: looks at how um chaotic versus clean, neat and orderly
Speaker 1: environments affect our productivity, affect our creativity, affect our sponse
Speaker 1: to stimuli. Because again, to your point, we tend to
Speaker 1: put it in a quick Felix and Oscar odd couple
Speaker 1: scenario right where one is the slav and one is
Speaker 1: the orderly individual, and and the slab is just he's
Speaker 1: just a slab. All he's doing is contributing to the
Speaker 1: comedic environment. But that's about it. Where it's it's this
Speaker 1: is study reveals it's a lot more nuanced than that,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a really good study for those of
Speaker 1: us whose desk get a little bit um chaotic from
Speaker 1: time to time. The title this study is physical order
Speaker 1: produces healthy choices, generosity, and conventionality, whereas disorder produces creativity.
Speaker 1: It's a two thousand thirteen paper from the Carlson School
Speaker 1: of Management at the University of Minnesota, and it's it.
Speaker 1: It basically revolves around three different experiments involving an orderly
Speaker 1: work environment and a disorderly work environment. Yeah, and let's
Speaker 1: just read out the first line, because I think this
Speaker 1: sets the tone. The first line is order and disorder
Speaker 1: are prevalent in both nature and culture, which suggests that
Speaker 1: each environ confers advance edges for different outcomes. So it's
Speaker 1: not so black and white as the order and the
Speaker 1: chaos muppets. Yeah, it's not a situation where all right,
Speaker 1: we have the orderly muppets in the calf muppets are
Speaker 1: just tearing down society. Like, both have survived, both have
Speaker 1: are here due to an evolutionary process, so they must
Speaker 1: both must both be important. Like I always come back
Speaker 1: to the cuttlefish and about how you have these larger
Speaker 1: cuttle fish that are mating and you have the masculine
Speaker 1: cuttlefish who are all about brute strength and UH and
Speaker 1: say and and just making sure they get their mate
Speaker 1: that way. And then you have the sneakier, smaller cuttlefish
Speaker 1: who disguised themselves as females. And the ultimate take home
Speaker 1: there is that cuttlefish evolution UH has favored both styles,
Speaker 1: both types of cuttlefish, and ultimately both types of cuttlefish
Speaker 1: are necessary for the survival of the species. And so
Speaker 1: we see a similar thing with disorder muppets and order
Speaker 1: muppets in human society. And you see this in this study,
Speaker 1: which is so interesting because, as you mentioned, there are
Speaker 1: three experiments that Kathleen DeVos and the other re searchers conducted,
Speaker 1: and in the first experiment, they randomly assigned a group
Speaker 1: of college age students to spend time in adjacent office spaces.
Speaker 1: One was tidy, the other was cluttered with papers and
Speaker 1: other work related to try to us, and the students
Speaker 1: spent their time filling out questionnaires that were unrelated to
Speaker 1: the study, so the students didn't know really why they
Speaker 1: were there. After ten minutes, they were told they could
Speaker 1: leave and they were offered an apple or a chocolate bar. Okay,
Speaker 1: So those students who sat in the orderly office were
Speaker 1: twice as likely to choose the apple than those who
Speaker 1: sat amid the chaotic mess of papers. In addition, when
Speaker 1: the participants were presented with the opportunity to donate to
Speaker 1: a charity, those placed in the orderly room donated more
Speaker 1: of their own money. Interesting. Okay, so what's coming out
Speaker 1: of this? The pro I guess you could say for
Speaker 1: the orderly room here is that we were talking about
Speaker 1: more civic minded behavior, more generous and conscientious at least
Speaker 1: in terms of their diets. You know, their their minding,
Speaker 1: their peas and cues. Now, what strikes me about this
Speaker 1: experiment is it I inevitably draw back to our our
Speaker 1: podcasts about symbols and the power of symbols, and the
Speaker 1: idea too about clothed cognition, that our our clothing is
Speaker 1: a kind of symbol that informs how we behave and
Speaker 1: how we carry ourselves. And here we see a physical
Speaker 1: environment that is a symbol for order, a symbol for
Speaker 1: what is expected of us, uh, the symbol for cleanliness,
Speaker 1: and that kind of translates into our mind in terms
Speaker 1: of cleanliness of of ethics, cleanliness of of our of
Speaker 1: our of our dietary habits and uh and and just
Speaker 1: an interesting insight into how spaces control our behavior. So yeah,
Speaker 1: back to the broken window theory. If you're in that
Speaker 1: room that's cluttered, messy, apparently nobody has been paying attention.
Speaker 1: You could eat that chocolate bar. You don't need to
Speaker 1: give that much money to charity, right. Yeah. It also
Speaker 1: reminds me of the Panopticon, you know, because because the
Speaker 1: Panopticon is of course a structure of order. And if
Speaker 1: you if things are disorderly, then you're you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I guess nobody's watching. It doesn't it doesn't matter. But
Speaker 1: if everything is lined up, if everything seems to be
Speaker 1: in this heightened states state of order, then you also
Speaker 1: feel like you're more responsible for your actions. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if you out there are messy desk dwellers, you probably
Speaker 1: wanted to get vindicated here and you will in the
Speaker 1: next study. Yeah. So similar deal participants were put into
Speaker 1: the messy room with disorder everywhere they put into the nice, clean,
Speaker 1: or early room. But this time they're asked to come
Speaker 1: up with new uses for ping pong balls and and
Speaker 1: so and of course, which makes me wonder, how many
Speaker 1: different uses can you find for ping pong balls. They're
Speaker 1: pretty pretty specific and what you can do with them,
Speaker 1: but I'll leave that to everyone's imagination. Uh. Anyway, the result, overall,
Speaker 1: participants in the messy room came up with the same
Speaker 1: number of ideas for new ways to use these ping
Speaker 1: pong balls as the clean room counterparts, but their ideas
Speaker 1: were rated as more interesting and creative when evaluated by
Speaker 1: the judges. So dependent judges. The judges they were judging,
Speaker 1: they just like a list of ideas, brainstormed ideas for
Speaker 1: what you could do with a pair of ping ball
Speaker 1: balls and anyway, So ultimately we're showing here that participants
Speaker 1: in the disorderly room were more creative. They were able
Speaker 1: to come up with more novel ideas for what to
Speaker 1: do with those ping boonballs, which again a very limited
Speaker 1: object to have to brainstorm around. Then they're clean room counterparts.
Speaker 1: So making this case that creativity or the ability to
Speaker 1: take a risk in your thought processes is also borne
Speaker 1: out in their final experiment, in which they were given
Speaker 1: the choice of adding a health boost to their lunch
Speaker 1: time smoothie that was labeled either new or classic. Guests
Speaker 1: who chose the classic, well, the classic is going to
Speaker 1: be chosen by the clean room people because they want
Speaker 1: to stick with something that is proven, that is established.
Speaker 1: They're not going to take any risk on some sort
Speaker 1: of new fangled smoothie editive, that's right. But those in
Speaker 1: the messy room, they were like, bringing on, want the
Speaker 1: new formula. Let's go crazy with this smoothie. Just put
Speaker 1: everything in it. I don't care, wood chips, ping pong balls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ping pong ball smoothie was born of this experiment,
Speaker 1: I bet. Yeah. So that messy environment can actually cause
Speaker 1: people to feel inspired to break free of tradition, right
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, that window is broken, let's let's do
Speaker 1: something with that. Let's make some artwork out of it.
Speaker 1: You know. I feel like at times it even it
Speaker 1: even helps to have like a disorder avatar to turn to,
Speaker 1: you know, like like a figure like an animal or
Speaker 1: a hunter s Thompson, where you could you you sort
Speaker 1: of think around them, you sort of you sort of
Speaker 1: live vicariously through them for a few moments, and it
Speaker 1: has an overall creative benefit to you, sort of like
Speaker 1: a spirit animal. Yeah, like you know, you have a
Speaker 1: spirit animal is animal you can sort of draw from
Speaker 1: that and uh and yeah, and at least for for
Speaker 1: for a little bit. As you you you sort of
Speaker 1: bath in his glow, you're able to feel a little
Speaker 1: more liberated, a little bit more daring in your ideas.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break, and when come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to try to get at the bottom
Speaker 1: of why this creativity, in this sort of inspiration and
Speaker 1: perhaps even learning are linked to messy environments. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and you know it just real quick, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about working in disorderly environments, chaotic environments. And I
Speaker 1: think to coffee shops again, a place where both of
Speaker 1: you and I working coffee shops a lot, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really interesting history about the coffee shops
Speaker 1: roll in uh in creative thought in Western culture, and
Speaker 1: that is a chaotic environment. And in the best of situations,
Speaker 1: because you have people ordering different drinks, you have all
Speaker 1: sorts of weird sounds of the espresso. You know, God
Speaker 1: knows what kind of music we're gonna play. People from
Speaker 1: an in and out, and if you're lucky, it's a
Speaker 1: variety of people. So it's you know, it's beautiful people,
Speaker 1: ugly people. People you know, from from the top of
Speaker 1: the ivory tower, people who sleep under the tower, all
Speaker 1: coming into the same space, and it I for one,
Speaker 1: feel that creative energy rolling off of it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean you talked about the periody of enlightenment and this
Speaker 1: convergence of coffee houses, people turning away from from the liquor,
Speaker 1: from the alcohol and going towards coffee as a stimulant
Speaker 1: and as a result, sharing more of their ideas in
Speaker 1: this community centered, uh sort of area, And the same
Speaker 1: thing today is going on. Although a lot of us
Speaker 1: are wearing headphones, you do get exposure to everyone, and
Speaker 1: so it does make sense to me that the chaos
Speaker 1: of all of that might create these associations that would
Speaker 1: help you kind of ping pong around until you get
Speaker 1: these novel associations, these novel ideas. In fact um, it
Speaker 1: really helps when you're studying a topic. And most people think, oh,
Speaker 1: when I go to study, it should be in a quiet,
Speaker 1: orderly room. But there is a New York Times article
Speaker 1: called Forget what You Know about good study habits, and
Speaker 1: it says in a classic nine experiments, psychologist found that
Speaker 1: college students who study need a list of forty vocabulary
Speaker 1: words in two different rooms, one window lists and cluttered
Speaker 1: and the other modern with a view of the courtyard
Speaker 1: did far better on a test than students who studied
Speaker 1: the words twice in the same room, And later studies
Speaker 1: have confirmed the confirmed the finding for a variety of topics.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that the outside context is varied,
Speaker 1: the information is enriched, and this slows down the forgetting
Speaker 1: process because the more layers of chaos, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say here, um, the more sort of patterns and
Speaker 1: things that you have to take in data, the more
Speaker 1: points of association your brain makes to whatever it is
Speaker 1: that you are concentrating on at that very moment, and
Speaker 1: so it becomes a stickier memory for people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it lines up kind of well with what Wall Steven
Speaker 1: says about the more chaos you have, the chaos kind
Speaker 1: of becomes an order, and the more order you have,
Speaker 1: it kind of comes comes more and more chaotic. Now,
Speaker 1: in talking about learning and chaos, one has to visit
Speaker 1: the world of the child, of the todd of the baby,
Speaker 1: because for one thing is we've touched on many times before.
Speaker 1: Humans are natural born scientists, even the very little wee ones,
Speaker 1: their their their brains are open to the world. There
Speaker 1: they have this lamp like view of things. They're bringing
Speaker 1: in all this data, but at the same time, they
Speaker 1: often seem to be agents of chaos. They seem to
Speaker 1: revel in making a mess. They seem to know no
Speaker 1: other way of life than to smear it on the
Speaker 1: wall on their face, to eat noddles with their hands,
Speaker 1: and then and then rub their their pesto covered fingers
Speaker 1: through their hair. I mean, never was there a better
Speaker 1: chaos muppet than any child, particularly the age of two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are all animal uh and with maybe a little
Speaker 1: Gonza or the swordfish dude thrown in for for that
Speaker 1: whole period of time. I actually had a professor in
Speaker 1: college who said that the reason why children love animals
Speaker 1: and stories is that they tend to really um mine
Speaker 1: with them and be like and see themselves as animals,
Speaker 1: unpredictable and crazy and running around until they get more
Speaker 1: of their humanness under their belts. But in this case,
Speaker 1: there is a study that shoes up this idea that
Speaker 1: this uh animal like behavior is helpful in learning things. Yes,
Speaker 1: researches at the University of Iowa study how sixteen month
Speaker 1: old children learn words for non solid objects. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about stuff like oatmeal, glue, peace peas, uh, you know, mucus. Uh,
Speaker 1: all the various non solid objects that they be coming
Speaker 1: out or going into your child. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: traffic there. Uh. Now, previous researches coming out for sure,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, out the nose that it just happens. Now,
Speaker 1: the previous research on this topic had shown that Toddler's
Speaker 1: learn more readily about solid objects because they can easily
Speaker 1: identify them due to their unchanging size and shape. So
Speaker 1: an apple is always shaped like an apple, whereas apple sauce,
Speaker 1: you know, is shaped like whatever the container is. That's
Speaker 1: basic physics and they get it and their brain is
Speaker 1: processing that data. So but but but the previous data said, yeah,
Speaker 1: as far as the oozy stuff, the running stuff, the
Speaker 1: apple sauce, the snot the pas, but what have you,
Speaker 1: They were that they're maybe not as good about identifying
Speaker 1: that stuff. Now, what this study did. The researchers decided
Speaker 1: to test this. They said, is this really the case?
Speaker 1: Is it's just you know, our bias on this particular situation.
Speaker 1: So they exposed sixth sixteen month olds to fourteen non
Speaker 1: solid objects. Mostly it was food and drink stuff like
Speaker 1: you know, apple sauce and pudding and soup. And then
Speaker 1: they presented the items and gave them made up words.
Speaker 1: So like some of the examples though, we're like Dax
Speaker 1: and Kiv, nonwords used to uh to identify these various
Speaker 1: gooey foods. So that this is this idea that they're
Speaker 1: to be purity here, there's no associations because other words
Speaker 1: that they might have learned in relation to this exactly,
Speaker 1: just to test what the sort of information they would
Speaker 1: retain by interaction with this food exactly. And then a
Speaker 1: minute passes and they asked the children to identify the
Speaker 1: same foods in different sizes or shapes uh, so you know,
Speaker 1: again different containers, different visual presentation of this non solid doctor.
Speaker 1: And then so this required the answers to go beyond
Speaker 1: relying simply on shape and size and to explore what
Speaker 1: the substances were made off to make the identification. So
Speaker 1: you can see where this is going in terms of
Speaker 1: how toddlers behave with with dewey foods and UH, and
Speaker 1: how you might interact with them. So of course they
Speaker 1: started prodding it and probing it and pushing it up
Speaker 1: in their fingers and smearing it out on their bodies,
Speaker 1: throwing it at the walls, watching the noodles worm their
Speaker 1: way down right, and rubbing it into their heads. Just
Speaker 1: just just this ecstasy of of of handling the non
Speaker 1: solid stuffs and this tactile experience actually allow this toddlers
Speaker 1: to learn to better learn the names of foods when
Speaker 1: they got to play with them. Yeah, which I love
Speaker 1: this idea because all of a sudden, everything in that
Speaker 1: world makes sense. As a parent, when when your kid
Speaker 1: is lobbying this this disgusting liquefied peace at your face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you think, ah, yes, you're learning, my love. They transforms
Speaker 1: this moment where they're playing with with pricey organic apple
Speaker 1: sauce or something, you know, and you're just like, are
Speaker 1: you're wasting your food? You're playing with it, why don't
Speaker 1: you eat it? And it turns that into this fabulous
Speaker 1: moment of oh, you were discovering the universe. You are,
Speaker 1: you were learning, you're using your your tactile senses to
Speaker 1: better identify non fluid objects. It's uh, it's it's the
Speaker 1: kind of study that makes makes parenting a little easier.
Speaker 1: It really does. And you sent uh some pictures of children,
Speaker 1: toddlers who were just covered in various kinds of pasta,
Speaker 1: including spaghetti that I think, I don't know how you're
Speaker 1: going to feel about. This made me want to jump
Speaker 1: in there with them. Really yeah, oh, we'll see. This
Speaker 1: is if you do a search, do like a Google
Speaker 1: image search for pasta party or toddler pasta party, baby
Speaker 1: pasta party, you have to play around with a little bit.
Speaker 1: You will see images of this where generally it'll consist
Speaker 1: of like a very small child swimming pool filled with
Speaker 1: pasta noodles, cooked pasta noodles, and then there'll be some
Speaker 1: like naked or maybe diapered or swimsuited babies in there
Speaker 1: just lounging around with handfuls, just fistfuls of spaghetti, some
Speaker 1: of it in their mouth, you know, fist in it
Speaker 1: right into their mouth, smearing it on their bodies, noodles
Speaker 1: hanging off of them, and uh, it can be a
Speaker 1: bit frightening, especially since U some of the photography is
Speaker 1: good and some of it is a little sketchy looking.
Speaker 1: Well you see, you sent that to me, and I'm
Speaker 1: a really tuckedile person and my first impulse was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to feel that. I want to feel those
Speaker 1: spirals of pasta in my hands and I want to
Speaker 1: squish them. I actually started to grip my cheek. Well,
Speaker 1: I tell you, I first discovered this phenomenon, uh, prior
Speaker 1: to having a son, and at the time I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is grim. This looks like something out
Speaker 1: of a horror movie. I want no part of this. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to say that my my thinking on it is, well,
Speaker 1: if I knew for certain that it would distract him
Speaker 1: for thirty minutes, I would totally fill that tub up
Speaker 1: with with noodles. Uh. So you're your perspective on these changes,
Speaker 1: and certainly, knowing what we know now from the study,
Speaker 1: I definitely see the value in it. Now you could
Speaker 1: go to go a little overboard. You could decide that
Speaker 1: you're you need to throw a party for every non
Speaker 1: fluid object or slightly squishy your gooey thing, uh, and
Speaker 1: then you're just just just gonna eat your food budget up.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of the world peas in a
Speaker 1: kiddie pool. I'm going to stick to the pasta myself.
Speaker 1: But it does give you this idea that you have
Speaker 1: this uh, this access to this rich patina of associations.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to figure out the world. If you're
Speaker 1: trying to explore it, name it. Then the more you
Speaker 1: can add to that database, including tactile things. But that
Speaker 1: would allow you to know that this noodle is squishy,
Speaker 1: or this noodle is spiral, this noodle is super long
Speaker 1: and thin. The more you can really get a bead
Speaker 1: on what this whole kind of human existence thing is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and certainly educators are onto this. You know,
Speaker 1: you go to a you go to a museum that
Speaker 1: really has a robust children's area or or a children's
Speaker 1: museum a hands on learning center. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff they're gonna they're gonna really push. It's
Speaker 1: not just look at the alligator. Here's a section of
Speaker 1: of of an alligator's hide or a representation of it.
Speaker 1: You can actually touch. Here is some It's one thing
Speaker 1: to look at some sea life in the in the
Speaker 1: aquarium behind glass, but let's actually have a touchdank where
Speaker 1: you can reach in and actually have that tactile experience.
Speaker 1: And uh and and all of that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: makes just so much more sense once you once you
Speaker 1: really dive into the data here, I think it's adult
Speaker 1: swe shild erasist as well before we're learning new things.
Speaker 1: Perhaps not everybody would like to see us squishing pasta
Speaker 1: or other types of adventures, but you know, well, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm writing something for the upside about chemical weapons right now.
Speaker 1: I'm probably not going to try and saren or or
Speaker 1: mustard gas or or clorine gas on my own just
Speaker 1: to have that pacto experience, because those are certainly um
Speaker 1: non solid objects. I'm glad that you've made that decision
Speaker 1: not to do that. All right. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's call the robot over and catch up on some
Speaker 1: listener mail. All right, This one comes to us from Jerry,
Speaker 1: who's responding to our Panopticon episode. He says, Hello, Julian Robert,
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to your episode on the Panopticon,
Speaker 1: which I found both interesting and informative. I am in
Speaker 1: the business of information security, and one aspect of the
Speaker 1: Panopticon as life concept that may not be obvious to
Speaker 1: all is that it isn't always a deterrent against antisocial behavior.
Speaker 1: In fact, it can have quite the opposite effect by
Speaker 1: inciting a segment of society into antisocial behavior. A great
Speaker 1: example of that is the hacktivist Anonymous movement of the
Speaker 1: past few years. Now. Those movements are all over the
Speaker 1: map in terms of motivations, but a common focal point
Speaker 1: is on the loss of privacy, liberties and so on.
Speaker 1: As an observer, it's particularly interesting to watch as the
Speaker 1: establishments they are rebellion against use the very rebellion to
Speaker 1: justify additional laws which further erode those things that the
Speaker 1: activists are fighting for in the first place. I also
Speaker 1: think that a key element of the movement is for
Speaker 1: participants to stay out of the eye of the panopticon
Speaker 1: as they carry out protests by using various means of obstucation,
Speaker 1: hence the name anonymous. To carry on the analogy, the
Speaker 1: movement uses the gaps in the panopticon's vision to hide
Speaker 1: their antisocial behavior, at least what those involved believed to
Speaker 1: be gaps, as recent prosecutions would lead one to realize
Speaker 1: the shadows are not as dark as they might see.
Speaker 1: I think that is an important faucet because I strongly
Speaker 1: suspect that the desire to rebel would be far smaller,
Speaker 1: if not non existent, if those involved were carrying out
Speaker 1: their activities in the public eye. Like social disobedience of
Speaker 1: days gone by in respect, the panopticon both drives them
Speaker 1: to rebel and drives them to do so only from
Speaker 1: the perceived blind spots of the watchful eye. Anyhow, I
Speaker 1: thought it was an interesting active. They didn't come up
Speaker 1: on the show, Jerry. I think that Jerry gives us
Speaker 1: so much to think about here because mostly and I'm
Speaker 1: going to play a lot of Devil's advocate here, but
Speaker 1: I think mostly that when we think about anonymous or hacktivists,
Speaker 1: we tend to think of it more as them bringing
Speaker 1: transparency to previously hidden information. But what he is saying
Speaker 1: is very interesting in the fact that they're not out
Speaker 1: there front and center actually allows them, people who are
Speaker 1: not necessarily trying to bring things to transparency, to be
Speaker 1: a little bit more devious and that they should be
Speaker 1: out there front and center to actually enact justice. But
Speaker 1: the question is do you think that they could. Do
Speaker 1: you think that the anonymous activists, the people who are
Speaker 1: you know, on the side of social justice? I should say,
Speaker 1: do you think that if they were there for us
Speaker 1: to see that they could accomplish the same amount of
Speaker 1: information as the question? Yeah, I don't know. I have
Speaker 1: my I have my doubts on that too. It seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, to his point, the days of like pure
Speaker 1: social disobedience, Um, I mean, you still see examples of it,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to imagine large masses of people engaging
Speaker 1: in it without mass these days. Of course, he's coming
Speaker 1: at it from a security perspective, and so it's just
Speaker 1: really interesting to to bring that to light. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if anybody has any thoughts, and I'd love to know,
Speaker 1: because this is a very rich argument pro and con,
Speaker 1: and Jerry makes some really good points. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: here's another bit of listener maile related to the Panopticon episode.
Speaker 1: Um Hi, guys Sean from Saskatoon here with the with
Speaker 1: the least to contribute to a conversation that I've ever
Speaker 1: had in so far as my primary idea of boils
Speaker 1: down to nothing. Sounds good, Do go on? He says,
Speaker 1: I believe that the normalization associated with having an all
Speaker 1: seeing I on seven does not necessarily lead to a
Speaker 1: perpetual state of stress of paranoia. We're not equipped to
Speaker 1: handle something like that, and those who do do so
Speaker 1: not because of an external situation but a chemical imbalance.
Speaker 1: It's the very basis for realization. I'm thinking primarily of
Speaker 1: a study examining driving habits in the real world, where
Speaker 1: cameras were mounted in hundreds of people's cars for years
Speaker 1: to study how distracted or careful drivers were. They all
Speaker 1: knew they were under observation and got paid to be
Speaker 1: in the study every year in case they needed a
Speaker 1: reminder that they were being watched. Uh. They soon behaved
Speaker 1: as though they were quite alone, covorting with ladies in
Speaker 1: the night. In some cases, we're leaving themselves while driving,
Speaker 1: juggling multiple phones and a cigarette. Some behavior may be
Speaker 1: curb due to cameras, as they are correlated with a
Speaker 1: decline and crime, but by and large they are ignored
Speaker 1: and don't cause significant grief that There are obvious residents
Speaker 1: of London and New York to cite two examples of
Speaker 1: cities almost entirely under CCTV observation who feel that their
Speaker 1: rights are being violated and who rail against the intrusion.
Speaker 1: But uh, and I could be wrong here. There are
Speaker 1: probably people who would be railing against other government intrusion
Speaker 1: or civil rights violations where there are no cameras at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a complicated issue, and I'm not a state
Speaker 1: security apologist, but the mere presence of cameras everywhere, or
Speaker 1: the omnificence of government about all internet traffic doesn't really
Speaker 1: bug me nearly as much as their ability to act
Speaker 1: without a warrant. Keep up the great work. I look
Speaker 1: forward as always to your next philosophical, psychological, biological, and
Speaker 1: technological musics. All right, very good point. Here are we
Speaker 1: equipped to even deal with this idea that we're constantly
Speaker 1: being surveiled and perhaps under uh, this construct that we
Speaker 1: are not we just fold into it as the people
Speaker 1: who were being watched on these security cameras and their
Speaker 1: camera became normalized to the whole situation. So I think
Speaker 1: that's a good question. But I also wonder if it
Speaker 1: is part and parcel of the idea that's ingrained in
Speaker 1: all of us that when we get in the car,
Speaker 1: no matter if there's a camera watching us, we are
Speaker 1: in a private space. Hence all the news pickers on
Speaker 1: the highway. Yes, yeah, it's always kind of better than
Speaker 1: that is when you see somebody really dancing out to music, though, yeah,
Speaker 1: I always like that. Well, you know, here's a here's
Speaker 1: a little bit of listener mail comes in in response
Speaker 1: to our Cubicle Doom episode. Which has some crossover into
Speaker 1: the Panopticon area. Um this one, Louis writes and says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm catching up on old episodes, and I thought I'd
Speaker 1: tossed in my two cents about pink noise. Years ago,
Speaker 1: I worked at a startup web company and we, unbeknowns
Speaker 1: to the workers, had a pink noise generator in the building.
Speaker 1: This all came to light in the summer when the
Speaker 1: temperatures were really hot and the electric company was asking
Speaker 1: larger office buildings to shut down non essential electrical devices.
Speaker 1: The pink noisemakers were deemed to be such devices. I
Speaker 1: worked in a cubicle farm, and the change was instant
Speaker 1: and dramatic. While the pink noise was on, you couldn't
Speaker 1: hear a phone conversation for more than about a cubicle away.
Speaker 1: When the pink noise was off, you could clearly hear
Speaker 1: the same conversation from five cubes over. UH. To this point,
Speaker 1: everyone assumed that we were always hearing the air handling system,
Speaker 1: until our maintenance person pointed out that the tiny one
Speaker 1: demeter one diameter speakers in the ceiling space about seventy
Speaker 1: to ten feet apart. Thank you for all the great content.
Speaker 1: Out of about thirty different podcast series I listened to
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, you are my favorite. Thank you again, Louis.
Speaker 1: Thanks Louis. So that's nice because that angle is a
Speaker 1: benevolent panopticon that was looking out for them, piping in
Speaker 1: some pink noise and in our new office space. I
Speaker 1: really wish that we had the same scenario. It would
Speaker 1: be kind of cool. Yeah, certainly an example here though,
Speaker 1: where they didn't necessarily believe in God until God stopped
Speaker 1: believing in them. If you think of God as a
Speaker 1: pink noise machine. All right, um, here we have a
Speaker 1: quick bit of a listener mail from Eric. Eric writes
Speaker 1: in in response to a cute episode The Science of Cute,
Speaker 1: because I wonder how many people react to too much
Speaker 1: cute or attempts at cute that fail. In Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: Dolores Umbridge has has described as a hard person to
Speaker 1: display many cute kittens in her rooms. The pictures were
Speaker 1: called horrid in the books not cute, and Umbridge herself
Speaker 1: tries to sound and dress cute, but was grossly overweight
Speaker 1: and looked like a toad in the book I wish
Speaker 1: you had talked about what happens when people go for
Speaker 1: cute and end up in the opposite direction. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that's whole, that whole caricature thing, right, when someone
Speaker 1: takes something to an extreme than it becomes the uncontny
Speaker 1: valley or horrific. And I think about that when I
Speaker 1: think about clowns, no offensive clowns out there, or even
Speaker 1: um dragon performance, because sometimes it is such a performance
Speaker 1: of the female model that it looks um what is
Speaker 1: the word that I'm going for, ghoulish, foolish? Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: part of it is just our ability to you know,
Speaker 1: to see those patterns and to realize something is not right. This,
Speaker 1: this individual or this thing the cute is trying way
Speaker 1: too hard, and therefore it must cover up some sort
Speaker 1: of malign uh instinct at the heart of it. That's
Speaker 1: not really that's not really a cute cartoon character. There
Speaker 1: must be some sort of horrible monster inside of It's
Speaker 1: gonna eat me, you know. I was thinking about that
Speaker 1: in the context of staring, because we talked about this
Speaker 1: um inability to look away when we should. It is
Speaker 1: just our mind trying to square what it's seeing, because
Speaker 1: it's saying this is this is outside of what I
Speaker 1: normally see. I can't stop looking. I need more data exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It all comes back comes down to our processing of
Speaker 1: the world around us and trying to realize what's a
Speaker 1: risk to us, what's not really a risk, and how
Speaker 1: we should react. So can cute be awful? Yes? Oh yes,
Speaker 1: all right, So there you have some interesting listener mail
Speaker 1: to cap off what I think is a really interesting
Speaker 1: uh insight into our our orderly and disorderly lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a comforting aspect of why a child is making
Speaker 1: an incredible mess for you to clean up and peas
Speaker 1: are splattering on your walls. Yeah. And the next time
Speaker 1: you're walking around at work and you notice, like I do,
Speaker 1: that some people have cubes that look like they've barely
Speaker 1: been moved into and other people look like they have
Speaker 1: lived there for centuries. Understand that we need both types.
Speaker 1: We need we need the creative energy of the chaos,
Speaker 1: we need the we need the the the refining order
Speaker 1: of that neat space as well. All of it comes
Speaker 1: together and it's it has survived evolution for a reason, right,
Speaker 1: and we should flip between those spaces that we have
Speaker 1: a nice balance perspective. There you go alrighty, all right?
Speaker 1: You wanna check out our blog posts. You want to
Speaker 1: check out all these podcast episodes that we're talking about,
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Speaker 1: need to go to stuff blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's our mothership, that's our main homepage. You will find
Speaker 1: again the blogs, the videos, the podcast uh, all sorts
Speaker 1: of new content, as well as links out to all
Speaker 1: of our social media sites. You can find us on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter,
Speaker 1: Google Plus. We're on YouTube is mind stuff show Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a soundcount cloud account if you're into that. You
Speaker 1: can find episodes there. Just have at it yep. And
Speaker 1: if you strongly identify with muppet, let us know which
Speaker 1: muppet that is, and you can do so below the
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