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

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

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Speaker 1: We're going into the vault for a classic episode from September.

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Speaker 1: What was this episode about, Robert, Well, this is yeah.

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Speaker 1: This one was titled Scalp Hunters and the Cobra Effect,

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Speaker 1: and it basically dealt with the unintended consequences um of

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Speaker 1: of of of putting value on certain things. What we're

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Speaker 1: referencing with the title, of course, is what happens if

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Speaker 1: you say, all right, we want to deal with the

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Speaker 1: cobra problem, so we're gonna put a price on bringing

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Speaker 1: in cobra's or in the one of the more you know,

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Speaker 1: horrific stories of of American colonialism putting a price on

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Speaker 1: the scalps of Native people. But then what happens when

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Speaker 1: you do that? What kind of how does that shift

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Speaker 1: the quota of violence? What do people start doing then

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Speaker 1: to cheat the system? And in both of these cases

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Speaker 1: you see people doing things to cheat the system. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's sort of In the episode, we explore the nature

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Speaker 1: of incentives and what what incentives due to address problems

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Speaker 1: people think they're trying to address and then to create

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Speaker 1: other problems people don't predict. Yeah. I can't remember if

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Speaker 1: I've discussed this example uh in the episode, but it

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Speaker 1: reminds me of when we're trying to potty train our

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Speaker 1: child and we know you give did I give this

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Speaker 1: this explanation? All right? Save it for the episode? Okay, alright,

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Speaker 1: but it involves I'll just say it involves peepy nuts

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Speaker 1: and poop candy and uh and and everyone can enjoy

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Speaker 1: the either enjoy it a second time or you can

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Speaker 1: enjoy it for the first time. Welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In this episode, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna be talking about some darker content towards

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Speaker 1: the end, as the time all the episode implies, and

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Speaker 1: indeed even the darker the less dark elements that we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about are kind of a crash course

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Speaker 1: in the the the Misadventures of colonialism. But before we

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Speaker 1: get into all of that, we thought we'd we'd kick

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Speaker 1: off with maybe some lighter content. Yeah, Robert, I understand

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Speaker 1: that you want to tell me about peep nuts. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I would love to tell you about not only peep nuts, Joe,

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Speaker 1: but poop candy as well. Poop candy that's what the

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Speaker 1: dog believes comes out of the cats. But oh, now

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Speaker 1: you've taken into darker territory, Joe. But no I'm not.

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about the rearing of human children as opposed

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Speaker 1: to dogs here. Um, and this ties into the overall

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Speaker 1: theme here, the use of the often the use of

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Speaker 1: bounties and bribes, and then what happens when the economics

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Speaker 1: of that spirals out of control. So my son is

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Speaker 1: for now, but there was a time not too long

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Speaker 1: ago when we were trying to potty train him, to

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Speaker 1: get him to actually um urinate and aivocate in the

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Speaker 1: toilet when he needed to go to listen to his

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Speaker 1: body and follow up. So it's apparently not enough just

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Speaker 1: to say that is where you go do such business

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Speaker 1: and point to the toilet. You actually you need to

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Speaker 1: introduce some incentives to motivate this behavior, right and there.

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Speaker 1: There there are as many different schools of parenting as

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Speaker 1: there are parents. So some some people have a real

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Speaker 1: problem with using bribes in any situation. But hey, that's

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Speaker 1: what we did in work for us. Then you've also

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Speaker 1: got the poop anywhere parents, who I hear a real trouble.

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Speaker 1: Well that's now I know people who are using that

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Speaker 1: technique and that that seems to work for them. But

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Speaker 1: I was just kidding. Wait, that's a real parenting philosopher.

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Speaker 1: I thought you were anywhere. Well, there's there are different

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Speaker 1: toilet training techniques that imply it's not so much a

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Speaker 1: poop anywhere. Um, what it means is like the kid

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Speaker 1: will go around without pants on and then when they

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Speaker 1: need to go, you scoop them up. Um, that's sort

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Speaker 1: of thing. So that's what I thought you were, ok there,

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Speaker 1: believe me, there are a lot of different techniques there.

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Speaker 1: And uh, and and that one in particularly, I know

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Speaker 1: some people have used that and it made work for them.

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Speaker 1: In our case, though, we we issued a strict bounty

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Speaker 1: for every successful urination in the potty. Um, he would

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Speaker 1: get one honey sesame nut from this little bag honey sesame. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like you buy a Trader Joe's and they had that.

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Speaker 1: Oh they're they're delicious. Um. I had to stop eating

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Speaker 1: them for a while when they were when they became

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Speaker 1: peepy nuts for me and kind of there by association.

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Speaker 1: But they're great. Uh And on the other hand, for

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Speaker 1: every successful poop in the toilet, which is was even

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Speaker 1: more important to us at the time, he would get

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Speaker 1: a single fruit gummy and that was the poop candy.

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Speaker 1: So the policy proved effective for us, but it also

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Speaker 1: led to a period during which he began to make

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Speaker 1: a case that each piece of feces was surely a

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Speaker 1: separate poop and should then result in additional poop candies

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Speaker 1: as well as the is any interruption in the stream

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Speaker 1: of urine would result in two or more instances of urination,

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Speaker 1: and each would require a separate reward. Okay, well, this

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Speaker 1: this is smart bargaining. Actually yeah, yeah, and it's I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's crazy too when I look back and realize

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Speaker 1: that he hadn't and he still hasn't really discovered the

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Speaker 1: power of lying. Uh So, but there was still this

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Speaker 1: tendency to bend the rule and even break the spirit

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Speaker 1: of the rule for greater rewards. Now, after that we

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Speaker 1: clarified the policy and then luckily we were able to

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Speaker 1: phase it out shortly after that. But how might things

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Speaker 1: have escalated if if we hadn't you know, that's that's

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Speaker 1: something to think about, and I've been thinking about in

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Speaker 1: researching this topic. Well, Robert, I want to tell you

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Speaker 1: a story. It might not be a true story, but

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Speaker 1: but it's an interesting story with some very true analogs

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Speaker 1: about the power of incentives and the sometimes unintended consequences

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Speaker 1: of incentives, and about serpents of course, asps very dangerous. Now,

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Speaker 1: the story goes something like this, In colonial India, you

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Speaker 1: had a British colonial administrator who decided there were too

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Speaker 1: many cobras in the city of Delhi. You know, I

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Speaker 1: got cobra's coming out of my ears. We gotta get

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Speaker 1: rid of all these things. Though I wonder what that

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Speaker 1: actually looked like. I mean, if this really happened. I

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Speaker 1: imagine we're all picturing that scene in Raiders of the

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Speaker 1: Lost Arc exactly, but it was probably more like, I

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Speaker 1: saw one cobra and that was too many. We've got

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Speaker 1: a cobra problem in the city. But anyway, so he

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Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of the cobras in the city,

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Speaker 1: kill them all, get him out of here. So he

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Speaker 1: came up with a solution. Put a bounty on the cobras.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense, So if you kill a cobra, just

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Speaker 1: bring the dead snake to the government office and receive

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Speaker 1: a cash award. Yeah. They're making it worth your while

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Speaker 1: to take time out of your day to kill a

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Speaker 1: snake or two. Yeah. And at first it seemed like

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Speaker 1: this was working great. They're collecting plenty of cobras. But

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Speaker 1: before long the local administrators discovered a problem. The people

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Speaker 1: have figured out a way to game the system and

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Speaker 1: turn the snake bounty into free money. They weren't catching

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Speaker 1: cobras from the city and killing them. They were farming

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Speaker 1: cobras at home, killing them once they were mature, and

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Speaker 1: then bringing them in to get the bounty. Now, obviously

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Speaker 1: they couldn't allow this kind of mischief to continue, so

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Speaker 1: the administrators ended the cobra bounty. But now you had

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Speaker 1: all these snake breeders who had been farming cobras in

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Speaker 1: order to get the bounty, and they're they're stuck with

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Speaker 1: hundreds of worthless snakes. So what do you do with them.

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Speaker 1: We'll just release them so they have no incidive for

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Speaker 1: keeping them. They release them into the streets, and the

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Speaker 1: cobra population in the city drastically increases. This leads to

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Speaker 1: the principle that's now known to economists as the cobra effect,

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Speaker 1: and it's when a strategy implemented to solve a problem

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Speaker 1: directly makes the problem worse. And the story about cobras

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Speaker 1: and Delhi, as I mentioned, might be nothing more than

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Speaker 1: a modern folk tale. I haven't come across any evidence

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Speaker 1: that it actually happened, But there are plenty of examples

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Speaker 1: where exactly this type of thing has definitely occurred in

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Speaker 1: the real world, that's right. And one of them occurs

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Speaker 1: with another colonial situation, another infestation in Hanoi, Vietnam. Al right,

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Speaker 1: this would have been the nineteenth century. So you have

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Speaker 1: French colonial authorities in Vietnam, and you know, there are

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Speaker 1: various problems to focus in on, but the one they

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Speaker 1: choose to really apply their attention to is the city's

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Speaker 1: rat problem. Now, I can imagine the rat problem was

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Speaker 1: probably a real problem, probably a real problem that you know,

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Speaker 1: like the cobra thing. You can imagine a colonial administrator

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Speaker 1: sees one cobra and decides that there's a cobra problem

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Speaker 1: in the city, right, Yeah, because I can't think of

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Speaker 1: a situation where another city has had a had a

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Speaker 1: snake infestation problem off hand. But rats. Of course, rat

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Speaker 1: problems have been an issue throughout human history. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: quite common to have rat problems in any large population center.

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Speaker 1: People produce a lot of garbage. Garbage is tasty. They

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Speaker 1: have sewers that are great places to to dwell in

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Speaker 1: and have your little breeding grounds. Yeah, they're smart and

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Speaker 1: they're successful. And as was learned, and this is the

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Speaker 1: other key thing, this is one of the reasons that

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Speaker 1: they focused in on rats so much, is that in

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Speaker 1: eighteen nine four, that's when Alexandra Yearson discovered that debonic

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Speaker 1: plague was caused caused by little fleas that wrote on rats.

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Speaker 1: So that so you can see why they were concerned.

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Speaker 1: So what did they do. Well, they did what what

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Speaker 1: often happens in these cases. They assigned some professional rat

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Speaker 1: catchers to take care of everything. But then that's not enough,

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Speaker 1: so they turned to volunteers. They turned to two mercenary

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Speaker 1: rat catchers, and they offer a bounty of one cent

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Speaker 1: per rat tail. And the idea here was that, especially

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Speaker 1: since the disease was an issue, asking the rat catchers

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Speaker 1: to handle the body was going to be too much

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Speaker 1: to ask would be a burden and just a little

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Speaker 1: growth right from what I've read. You know, they'd catch

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Speaker 1: thousands of rats in the sewer in in a very

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Speaker 1: short period of time. Lugging all those dead rat bodies

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Speaker 1: would actually be really heavy, yeah, and then discussing, so

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Speaker 1: just to prove how many you killed, really, just take

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Speaker 1: the tail, right, So that's yeah, that's exactly what they did,

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Speaker 1: brought in the tail, and it seemed to be working

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Speaker 1: at first, But then the authorities began to notice something

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Speaker 1: curious in the streets. They noticed a bunch of rats

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Speaker 1: running around without tails. So they quickly realized that some

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Speaker 1: of those enterprising rat catchers out there were simply lopping

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Speaker 1: the tails off of the wild rats when they caught them,

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Speaker 1: perhaps out of laziness, but more likely so that tail

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Speaker 1: is rats could go forth breed and produce more rat

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Speaker 1: tails to harvest. Yah know, they were being economically smart,

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Speaker 1: they were they were trying to you know, if you

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Speaker 1: are living off the land, you don't want to destroy

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Speaker 1: all of the vegetation in the land, so you only

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Speaker 1: pick from some of the plants. You don't kill every plant. Right.

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Speaker 1: It's like the policy or the policy that's supposed to

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Speaker 1: be in place with stone crabs. You harvest one of

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Speaker 1: the of the clause and then you let the each

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Speaker 1: your good. You don't harvest them both. So that that

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Speaker 1: was one of the ramifications of the bounty. But much

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Speaker 1: like our cobra example, this the exact same thing took place.

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Speaker 1: Um others took advantage of the law by establishing rat farms. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because rats are are easy to breed. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: don't even have to try. I really don't have to try.

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Speaker 1: Just to collect some rats and let them do their thing,

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Speaker 1: and you're gonna have more rats, which you can then

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Speaker 1: lock their tails off and collect your bounty. So the

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Speaker 1: French were horrified that their efforts to curb the rat

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Speaker 1: population was actually increasing it, and they scrapped the bounty

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Speaker 1: program entirely, and in bubonic plague broke out in Annoy.

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Speaker 1: So no, yeah, so there's there's a lot more there are.

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Speaker 1: There are a number of more angles to this story.

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Speaker 1: There's a great paper out there that ties all of

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Speaker 1: this in with this sort of the doom nature of

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Speaker 1: French rule in Vietnam, and it's titled of Rats, Rice

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Speaker 1: and Race. The Great Annoying Rat Massacre, An episode in

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Speaker 1: French colonial History by Michael G. Van yeah, And there's

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Speaker 1: an older episode of Freakonomics Radio actually the deals exactly

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Speaker 1: with the Cobra effect that I listened to, and it's

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Speaker 1: a good episode. It's worth checking out. So we won't

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Speaker 1: rehash everything they cover in their show, but just to

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Speaker 1: mention a couple other interesting examples they bring up. One

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Speaker 1: is a very similar situation to the rats in Hanoi,

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Speaker 1: but this is with Ferrell pigs in Fort Benning, Georgia.

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Speaker 1: So it's a local tale. Right. Have you been to

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Speaker 1: Fort Benning. I've been through there, I believe yeeah, did

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Speaker 1: you see any pigs? No? No, I saw. I saw

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Speaker 1: an interesting overpass, and I believe that's that's the extent

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Speaker 1: of it. Okay, Well, anyway, it's in I think southwest

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Speaker 1: Georgia's right. Yeah, So there are a lot of wild

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Speaker 1: pigs in this area. They're they're invasive Ferrell pigs, and

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Speaker 1: they do a lot of damage. They dig everything up,

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Speaker 1: they get into your garbage, they eat everything. They cause

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Speaker 1: damage to government property and buildings. So people wanted to

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Speaker 1: do something about this Ferrell pig problem. So there was

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Speaker 1: a cash bounty exchange program or pigtails established to fight

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Speaker 1: the feral pig problem, but same problems we've encountered before.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of suspicion that some of these pigtails

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Speaker 1: people were turning in for a cash reward came from

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Speaker 1: illicit sources, maybe some meat processing, We're not exactly sure.

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Speaker 1: And then in the end it looks like baiting practices

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Speaker 1: established by the pig bounty hunters actually probably increased the

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Speaker 1: number of wild pigs in the area. So people claim

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Speaker 1: all these cash rewards because they put out a bunch

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Speaker 1: of food to attract pigs and then they shoot some

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Speaker 1: of them. But you know, you were feeding the pigs,

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Speaker 1: fattening them up for breeding and producing more pigs, because

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Speaker 1: you're you're trying to put a value on the elimination

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Speaker 1: of the animal, but in doing so, you've put a

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Speaker 1: value on the continued life of the animal. Exactly. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting how that how that plays out, And this

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Speaker 1: brings me to a thought about the nature of incentives,

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Speaker 1: because it's sort of highlights that you can't have an

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Speaker 1: incentive that's just sort of logically associated with the outcome

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Speaker 1: you want. In order to try to prevent the gaming

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Speaker 1: of the system, you really need to make incentives as

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Speaker 1: closely aligned to the actual desired outcome as possible. So

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Speaker 1: what I mean by that is, if you want to

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Speaker 1: eliminate cobras from the city, don't offer cash rewards for

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Speaker 1: dead cobras because you don't want dead cobras. That's not

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Speaker 1: the outcome you're looking for. You want an absence of cobras.

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Speaker 1: So ind but that's a lot harder to incentivize, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you have to somebody come along and investigate for cobra

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Speaker 1: free spaces exactly. Yeah, you need more complex systems to

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Speaker 1: try to incentivize that. So for example, maybe you could

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Speaker 1: establish a cobra control authority and then the employees of

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Speaker 1: this organization are given a cash bonus that's proportional to

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Speaker 1: how few cobra bytes are reported in local hospitals in

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Speaker 1: a given year. But even with that, you run into

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Speaker 1: some some problems, right like without strict controls on that,

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Speaker 1: what if you have members of the cobra control authority

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Speaker 1: intimidating people not to report their cobra bites or not

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Speaker 1: to go to the hospital, or intimidating people at hospitals

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Speaker 1: not to report them to the government. Uh So, it

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Speaker 1: just seems like whenever you introduce incentive programs to to

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Speaker 1: a wide ranging you know, a group of participants to

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Speaker 1: the public. Essentially, you you introduce the problem that people

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Speaker 1: are going to find ways to access the reward without

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Speaker 1: helping you achieve your goal. It's it seems like it

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Speaker 1: should be a Doctor Seuss book or kind of um,

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Speaker 1: a Sourcer's Apprentice kind of tail, right, just as it

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Speaker 1: spirals out of control on these examples, UM, I can't

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Speaker 1: help but think of quotas that are set forth for

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Speaker 1: law enforcements. Sometimes, you know, like you know, you've got

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Speaker 1: to get so many speeding tickets out there, and so

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Speaker 1: you end up having a police officers setting up and

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Speaker 1: speed traps to to hit those quotas, which in that case,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's not a clear it's not necessarily making

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Speaker 1: the problem worse, but it's also just kind of like

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Speaker 1: we're not really stopping it. We're just kind of like

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Speaker 1: setting up a system to continually collect the bounty on speeding. Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 1: I guess I can see where there's a balance there, right,

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Speaker 1: So if if it depends on how the quota is

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Speaker 1: and how aggressive you are and carrying it out, because

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Speaker 1: if there's a balance to where all right, You're just

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Speaker 1: people know not to go above a certain speed or

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Speaker 1: they should know and and if they don't, they get

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Speaker 1: a ticket. So like both in that is going to

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Speaker 1: make the roads safer. But I guess the more the

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Speaker 1: focus is on hitting the quota, getting the essentially the bounty,

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Speaker 1: and losing sight of the purpose of the law entirely,

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Speaker 1: that's where things get out of whacking, you end up

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Speaker 1: with like notorious speed traps, right. And I think this

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Speaker 1: gets into a concept that's very closely related to the

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Speaker 1: Cobra effect, though I think technically the Cobra effect wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have to be just in incentives and economics if you're

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Speaker 1: talking more generally about anything where an attempt to solve

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Speaker 1: a problem makes the problem worse. You can even go

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Speaker 1: to the example of of like aka Homo. You know

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Speaker 1: that that great story of the person who is trying

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Speaker 1: to touch up this this classic painting of Christ in

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Speaker 1: his passion moment had some damage to it over the

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Speaker 1: years trying to touch it up, and he ends up

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Speaker 1: having this kind of wailing monkey face. Yes, which is

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite images from the whole Internet. Yes,

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Speaker 1: but and she wasn't working for a bounty, but imagine

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Speaker 1: if there was a bounty out there on restoring old

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Speaker 1: works of art, right, you could end up with with However,

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Speaker 1: many of these strange little monkey faces just completely obliterating

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Speaker 1: art history. Yeah. I guess the problem there is that

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Speaker 1: you are you are giving people who don't have proper

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Speaker 1: training in an area and incentive to participate in the area,

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Speaker 1: and thus they're probably going to make things worse. But

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Speaker 1: another way of framing the issue is just the concept

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Speaker 1: of perverse incentives, meaning, specifically, in the Cobra effect, you're

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Speaker 1: the intended solution to a problem makes that problem worse.

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Speaker 1: Perverse incentives can just mean incentives that cause unintended negative outcomes,

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Speaker 1: especially if they're contrary to the benefit of the people

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Speaker 1: who offer the incentives. This all also reminds me of

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Speaker 1: a moment in one of my favorite books, uh Cornman

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Speaker 1: McCarthy's sentry. Oh yeah, we talked about this the other

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Speaker 1: day where there's a bounty on I think rabies bats

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Speaker 1: in that book in there, Yeah, like the local university

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Speaker 1: there there they want to or is it the health department,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember. It's been amber there, but interested official

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Speaker 1: parties would like to see the bodies of local bats. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I think it's because of rabies. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: a very enterprising young character in the book named Harrogate.

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Speaker 1: At the beginning of the book is a tested for

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Speaker 1: having illicit relations with watermelons that did not belong to him.

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Speaker 1: But then later on he comes up with some just

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Speaker 1: ingenious schemes for collecting bats. I think far more bats

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Speaker 1: than was really than he was intended to collect. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he ends up strolling into town. Was just a sack

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Speaker 1: of dead bats, which he gets. But I believe he

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Speaker 1: buys some poison and he poisons little pieces of meat

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Speaker 1: and slingshots them into the air because the bats are

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Speaker 1: accustomed to praying on insects that are flying through the air.

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Speaker 1: I believe that's the scheme. That's a great book. It

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Speaker 1: is this is that makes me want to read it again.

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Speaker 1: But at any rate, they end up kind of the doctor,

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Speaker 1: the scientists confronting him when he brings this bag in

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Speaker 1: and he's says, look, we know you you did not

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Speaker 1: just find these bats, but we can't figure out how

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Speaker 1: you did it. You've got to tell us how you

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Speaker 1: actually killed these bats. And then he he relates the

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Speaker 1: story of the slingshot Oh, yeah, that's it. He was

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Speaker 1: supposed to be collecting dead bats. When I said he

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Speaker 1: was killing, he was making dead bats. So you know,

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Speaker 1: in a sense they were I guess the effort here

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Speaker 1: was to protect humans, protect health, but also you know,

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Speaker 1: not eradicate bats. That was not the intended outcome, but

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Speaker 1: Harrogate did his best to do just that in order

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Speaker 1: to get the sweet bounty. But of course that is

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Speaker 1: not the only book by our great brutal novelist Cormick

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Speaker 1: McCarthy to feature bounties. That's right, there's also Blood Meridian,

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Speaker 1: great novel, horrific novel um in large ways I think

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Speaker 1: unfilmable novel, and I kind of hope it's unfilmable. It is,

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Speaker 1: uh would you would you call it nihilistic? Yes, it is.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's just not much redeemable in the world.

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Speaker 1: And it is a book of uh, brutal and cruel

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Speaker 1: people doing brutal and cruel things. Yeah. And one individual

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Speaker 1: who might not be a person at all, who might

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Speaker 1: be an embodiment of of awfulness, Judge Judge Holden, who

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Speaker 1: himself is probably based very loosely on a real individual

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Speaker 1: who was in a gang of scalp hunters led by

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Speaker 1: an actual historic individual, one John Galton, who was indeed

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Speaker 1: a superstar in the vile trade of scalp hunting um harvesting.

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Speaker 1: By some accounts that two and fifty scalps in a

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Speaker 1: single raid once, and fittingly, his group was eventually ambushed

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Speaker 1: and scalped by a band of Quichian tribes people. So um,

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Speaker 1: so we shouldn't dwell too much on the nasty details,

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Speaker 1: but we do need to discuss what scalping is and

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Speaker 1: and scalp hunting, what what this practice consists of, and

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Speaker 1: where it came from? Yeah? So uh, I mean, most

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Speaker 1: of you probably don't even need to be told, especially

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Speaker 1: if you've consumed much in the way of American Western

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Speaker 1: history or fiction. Not only Blood Meridian, but Larry mcmurtry'

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Speaker 1: is a Lonesome Dove novels instantly come to mind as well,

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Speaker 1: but actually never read Lonesome Dove. Oh it's it's quite

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Speaker 1: it's quite good. Uh. Comanche Moon is another one in

396
00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:03,000
Speaker 1: that series that I read that was really good and

397
00:22:03,040 --> 00:22:06,720
Speaker 1: really bizarre in many ways. But both of these authors

398
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Speaker 1: really really gaze deep into the gruesome spectacle of the act.

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Speaker 1: It entails the slicing, fling, ripping away of a portion

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Speaker 1: or all of the human scalp um and then then

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Speaker 1: then you have this resulting trophy. The victim can be

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Speaker 1: living or dead. And there are plenty of tales of

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Speaker 1: scalping survivors, including in eighteen sixty four. Probably the most

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Speaker 1: famous is a thirteen year old Robert McGee UM. And

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Speaker 1: he's famous because there's a wonderful, gruesome photograph of him

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Speaker 1: as an adult showing off his scalping scars scars so um.

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Speaker 1: And in this case, he was scalped by a band

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Speaker 1: of uh Sue Indians. So I look up that photo

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Speaker 1: online if you really want to see it. Um. But

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Speaker 1: where did the act come from? That's actually something that

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Speaker 1: has been uh there's been a kind of a debate

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Speaker 1: on that over the years, right, because we definitely do

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Speaker 1: see it practiced by by both sides in the American frontier, right. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So it's it comes down to, is this uh an

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Speaker 1: ancient Native American act that various cultural groups took part in,

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Speaker 1: or is this something that Westerners introduced, that the colonists

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Speaker 1: introduced to the New World. Um. Now, certainly scalping was

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Speaker 1: long attributed as a purely Native American act, and indeed

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Speaker 1: we see plenty of examples of of scalping, both between

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Speaker 1: tribes and against the colonial invaders. Yeah, and that that's

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Speaker 1: something I think even when I was a kid. Just

422
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Speaker 1: my idea of where this came from. I guess if

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Speaker 1: you watch old cartoons or something like that, you get

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Speaker 1: the idea that this is something that Native American tribes,

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Speaker 1: that their warriors would do to the enemies, not something

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Speaker 1: that was done by European settlers. But in fact, it

427
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:51,160
Speaker 1: was done by European settlers. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll see

428
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 1: some plenty of examples of that to come here. But

429
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: it was I think it is often presented as this

430
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:59,680
Speaker 1: kind of savage thing that savage tribes people do. Um

431
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: eurocentric view of it. Yeah, Now, there was certainly a

432
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 1: backlash against that view has pointed out in a wonderful

433
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 1: article titled The Unkindest cut Or Who Invented Scalping by

434
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:15,440
Speaker 1: James Axtell and William C. Struvan in Night and if

435
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:17,359
Speaker 1: you want to blow by bloody blow account of the

436
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:19,440
Speaker 1: history of scalping, that's a good article to seek out.

437
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 1: But they say that the the quote unquote savage Indian

438
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,720
Speaker 1: take on scalping was replaced during the twentieth century for

439
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: a spell there by Native American activists who who really

440
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: pushed for the view that all that it was basically

441
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty colonials who introduced the practice to the native peoples

442
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:39,960
Speaker 1: of the America's by encouraging them to do so by

443
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 1: instituting bounties on on other on other tribes people and

444
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: essentially teaching them to take these head skins from others. So,

445
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: under this revisionist view, the scalping practice came from the

446
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: European settlers and was transferred to the frontier tribes correct time. However,

447
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 1: after this a lot of you know, a lot of

448
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 1: people on the other side of the the issue they

449
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: waged in. And really, when you do look at the

450
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: history and look at the historical accounts, you see that

451
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:12,640
Speaker 1: the practice of taking scalps goes back way through colonial

452
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: invasion to pre Columbian times, okay, and it was quite

453
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:19,760
Speaker 1: widespread through North America even parts of South America. There's

454
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: there's archaeological evidence that shows evidence of postmortem scalpings and

455
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: skulls that showed evidence that the victim survived the mutilation

456
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:31,439
Speaker 1: long enough for the bone tissue to regenerate. And another

457
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: point it's often brought up is that certainly Europeans had

458
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: had plenty of ways to torment and torture and mutilate

459
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: the body, trying to make them look good by comparison, right,

460
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:46,959
Speaker 1: But for all their drawing and quartering and hanging and

461
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: hacking and what have you, you really don't see much

462
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 1: in the way of scalp taking in European tradition prior

463
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,119
Speaker 1: to this point, and even in even language itself, um

464
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: So scalping as a word. The word itself scalp predates

465
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,560
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century. It arises from a Scandi Navian route

466
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: and uh, and it was featured in a in a

467
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 1: sixteen o one edition of Plenty of the Elder's Natural History,

468
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 1: though the explorers in the New World tended to be

469
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: unversed in Latin classics, so they probably weren't exposed to

470
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: it now. Instead, such trophies were described as head skins

471
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: or hair scalps. They just talked about skinning and flying

472
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:30,520
Speaker 1: um until scalps and scalping became a popular term in

473
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy six, during King Phillip's War between Uh Native

474
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: American tribes and the English colonists and their Native American allies.

475
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:43,360
Speaker 1: And meanwhile there's a On the other hand, though there's

476
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: a fairly robust vocabulary for scalps in many of the

477
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:51,359
Speaker 1: native tongues. The the Ojibwa language distinguishes between scalp and

478
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: sioux scalp. There's a separate word for each, while Eastern

479
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: Abenaki language has special terminology for enemy scalps that are

480
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 1: already taken as trop thieves, for scalps that could be taken,

481
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 1: and scalps from the living and the dead. So it's

482
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 1: kind of like those uh the Old World where the

483
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,239
Speaker 1: old saying that Inuits have all these different words for

484
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: snow because there's so much of it. You could make

485
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,560
Speaker 1: the argument that the scalping was enough of a practice

486
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 1: that there were uh specific terms that were used in

487
00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: some of these cultures for specific types of scalps. Yes,

488
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:25,520
Speaker 1: but of course, as we see with the European invaders

489
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: of the American continents, Uh, they they had all of

490
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 1: their own barbaric and violent practices, and even though scalping

491
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: doesn't traditionally appear to be strongly represented among them, they

492
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 1: took to it quite rapidly. Yeah, you could definitely say that.

493
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 1: I mean, they were kind of like, well, the way

494
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: we did it back home is we just tore a

495
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,639
Speaker 1: person into four pieces with horses. But hey, if you

496
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,200
Speaker 1: want to just take the scalp, we can do that too. Um.

497
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: And that's the crazy part, because it's one thing to

498
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:56,239
Speaker 1: to look at these native tribes who had who had

499
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:58,280
Speaker 1: this in their culture and their tradition, and there may

500
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 1: even be certain, you know, supernatural role elements that are

501
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 1: factored into it, but the columnists had none of that.

502
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 1: You just had a bunch of in most cases Protestants

503
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 1: showing up in the New World and and readily getting

504
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 1: into the act. Right, It's not a part of their

505
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:15,679
Speaker 1: traditional cultural war practice. It's more just sort of an

506
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: adopted act of violence, and violence, of course, becomes a

507
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:27,399
Speaker 1: standard in relations between columnists and the native inhabitants of

508
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 1: the America's pretty much pretty much from inception, pretty much

509
00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 1: from that first outside context event when the two met,

510
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 1: violence just continues to be a part of their history.

511
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And that's where the scalping really begins

512
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: to to pick up. So it seems, based on most accounts,

513
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,959
Speaker 1: all right, it's a pre existing thing that happens between

514
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: tribe members in their tribal wars, often as as a

515
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 1: way to take a trophy and then travel a long

516
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: distance back with it, kind of getting back to the

517
00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: idea of taking the tail of a rat, right. But

518
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 1: then the Protestants, the Colonials here they begin um, they

519
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: begin to perpetuate the practice by putting putting a bounty,

520
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: say ten shillings worth of truck cloth on native scalps, uh,

521
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,600
Speaker 1: that are taken by your native ally, So take the

522
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: scalps from the enemy tribes people to people that we

523
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: don't have alliances with, and we will pay you in

524
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: some cloth, all right. But then in the midst of

525
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: kings King Philip's war, which we mentioned earlier, which went

526
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:31,280
Speaker 1: from about six to seventy eight, they extended the bounty

527
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: to mercenaries thirty shillings per scalp um. And you you

528
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: end up with plenty of horrific cases. There's there's this

529
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: case of Puritan kidnappy Hannah Dustin Uh. She and her

530
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: fellow kidnappies, they were held by by by a band

531
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: of tribespeople, and then they escaped and they went on

532
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: to execute two men to women in six children and

533
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: they received fifty pounds as a as a reward for

534
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: that act. And there's actually a statue of this woman

535
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 1: in uh Boscowen, New Hampshire, just a statue of a murderer. Yeah,

536
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: I mean, because that's it really kind of sums up

537
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:18,040
Speaker 1: the weird ways we we have historically made sense of

538
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: this violence between these two people. Well, yeah, I mean

539
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 1: talk about perverse incentives. So so you've got a rat

540
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: bounty system where you assume, well, there's a rat problem,

541
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: so we need to do something about it. So let's

542
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: just collect rat tails and that will let us know

543
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 1: there's at least some significant amount of rat killing going on.

544
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: This seems like exactly the same principle being applied to

545
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: human beings. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the thing. We

546
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: see this this bounty system spiral ever more out of control.

547
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: Um the French engaged in it, the English engaged in it,

548
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: and it eventually becomes not only this thing that you're

549
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 1: asking other tribes people to do, like hey, you guys,

550
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: take scalps, right, take the scalps of our enemies and

551
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: we'll pay you. Scalps become the become a valuable item

552
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 1: for for colonial individuals as well, hunters and trappers, etcetera. Yeah,

553
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:11,959
Speaker 1: it's just evidence that you are carrying out the genocide

554
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: that we're encouraging. Yeah, the first Massachusetts Act of sixteen

555
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 1: ninety four encouraged a bounty for Indie any Indian life,

556
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: while a seventeen or four renewal of that act amended

557
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: it so you only got a hundred pounds for adults,

558
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: ten pounds for children ten and older, and nothing for

559
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: kids under ten, which sounds semi decent at first. And

560
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: to realize that those children would be sold as slaves

561
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,959
Speaker 1: or transported out of the country. Now, as early as

562
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: seventeen twelve, some folks were uneasy about that, And this

563
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: is this is kind of a sobering thought to realize

564
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: that not everybody was just completely on board with this. Yeah,

565
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: I would hope not. I mean, this is straightforwardly encouraging

566
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: a bounty for murder, right, I mean though, at the

567
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:58,960
Speaker 1: same point, you have to acknowledge that, like this was

568
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:01,959
Speaker 1: a this was a tough time to be alive, Like

569
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot of fear going on in these

570
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: communities and among these lawmakers. But but even even then

571
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 1: there were people who said, I'm not sure about this.

572
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Judge Samuel Sewell spoken a session of the Massachusetts

573
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: General Court, and he said he he laid out that

574
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 1: he really thought that that this was it was only okay.

575
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: It should only be done if you're doing it to

576
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: protict your family, and if it's becoming something that you're

577
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: doing for commerce, then that's that's bad. Wait, so it's

578
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: okay to murder a Native American, collect their scalp and

579
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: turn it in for money, as long as the reason

580
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 1: you did it wasn't the money so much that it

581
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 1: was out of love for family. Yeah. I mean, that's

582
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 1: just the basic Protestant ethos, right, that's the that's the

583
00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. Yeah, but I mean, obviously that's the horrible

584
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: situation here is that you have it becomes the practice,

585
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 1: and then people have to people in positions of power

586
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 1: and authority have to find ways to support it and

587
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 1: rationalize it in their own mind. Yeah, but these rationalizations

588
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 1: seem to be coming indirect conflict with the economic incentives

589
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 1: being offered. If that's the case, why are you still

590
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: offering the bounty? Yeah? Yeah, I agree, Um, and then it, uh,

591
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: it gets ever more out of control there, especially when

592
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 1: ministers are are speaking about it, and they're not condemning it.

593
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: There's this wonderful quote here from actual Instruments Peace it

594
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 1: goes when ministers not only look the other way but

595
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: shared in the profits from Indian deaths, the moral barometer

596
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: of America dipped dangerously low. At the bottom, however, lay

597
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, in which Englishmen scalped Englishmen in the

598
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: name of liberty. Scalping and other techniques of Indian warfare

599
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: placed in the hands of a larger European population eventually

600
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 1: sealed the Indian's fate in North America, but not before

601
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: wreaking upon the white man a subtle form of moral vengeance.

602
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: At this point, I think when we think about the

603
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: Cobra effect in relation to scalping, is this an example

604
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,839
Speaker 1: of the Cobra effects, right, Because on one hand, it's

605
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: kind of doing exactly what the bounty is supposed to do,

606
00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 1: just bringing about genocidal violence against the native population. Then again,

607
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: I guess if you interpret the purpose of such a

608
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 1: bounty on on Indian scalps as to be, I don't know,

609
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: to pacify the border, you know, to make the frontier

610
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: less bloody, you're obviously having a perverse incentive there. I mean,

611
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:41,320
Speaker 1: you're you're causing murderous havoc, right, And there are plenty

612
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 1: of examples to where the scalp trade just intensifies the violence. Uh.

613
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:50,880
Speaker 1: And you end up with with with various native chiefs

614
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 1: in some cases who are putting bounties then for their

615
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: own people upon the white man. And and so you

616
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 1: have this this kind of a war of extern a

617
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: nation from both sides. There are examples, um, some of

618
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: the like in the Mexican examples will get to in

619
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 1: a second, where Galton and his gang in that specifically,

620
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: they would roll into an area and violence would just

621
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:16,400
Speaker 1: intensify because they're just stirring up all of this hatred. So,

622
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: of course scalp hunting continued, um and uh. And falsified

623
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 1: scalping also pops up as an inevitability weight. So maybe

624
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:29,879
Speaker 1: just like collecting pigtails from a meat processing plan saying yeah,

625
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:32,280
Speaker 1: I shot all these pigs, you might have people getting

626
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:35,879
Speaker 1: scalps or parts of scalps from illicit sources, a sort

627
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: of yeah, there's a there's a quote that I ran

628
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: across these materials from nineteenth century American historian Francis Parkman,

629
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: and he said the hunting of humans would constitute a

630
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: profitable occupation if only the prey was not so shy

631
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: and nimble. So I mean, well, you can't just with

632
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:55,959
Speaker 1: the rats. You can just raise them, right, and rats

633
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: are everywhere. People are can prove a little harder to kill,

634
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 1: even if you're a ruthless gang of mercenaries roving about.

635
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 1: And people are gonna inevitably to figure out how can

636
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: I get the most out of this kill? Uh? If

637
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 1: you would read this next quote for us. It comes

638
00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 1: from twentieth century German ethnologist of European colonization George FREDERICI. Okay,

639
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: it says this, along with the high profits of the

640
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: fatal business, soon taught the shrewd tribes people and their

641
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: quick learning students, the lawless backwoodsmen and hunters the art

642
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: of skillfully making two, three, or even more scalps from

643
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: one scalp and selling them. People were not always very

644
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: particular about where the scalp came from, because it was

645
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 1: difficult or impossible to distinguish between a French scalp and

646
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: an English one. Members of friendly tribes and even fellow

647
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: countrymen fell victim to greed and the scalping knife. Not

648
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: even the dead were spared. Yeah, so you could This

649
00:36:56,239 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 1: is interesting. It goes even beyond what what what Farci

650
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: was talking about here, because you could apparently take a

651
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: single adult scalp, you could stretch it as you dried

652
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:08,720
Speaker 1: it out, and you could cut it into a dozen

653
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: different things that you could pass off or try to

654
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:14,759
Speaker 1: pass off as scalps, which is is quite You can

655
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: see the financial possibilities there. This is one of those

656
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,239
Speaker 1: moments where it comes up every now and then. You

657
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: just imagine aliens coming in and observing our behavior and

658
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: they're seeing somebody take the skin off the top of

659
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,359
Speaker 1: another human's head and stretch it and cut it into

660
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of pieces. Yeah. Yeah. And it became such

661
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:40,760
Speaker 1: a problem in Mexico where you had the Mexican States,

662
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:44,399
Speaker 1: they're paying mercenaries to go around and hunt for scalps um.

663
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: They had to demand that scalps include one or both

664
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: ears or the crown, and they even set up regulatory committees.

665
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: But the thing here is that and I guess you

666
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,440
Speaker 1: kind of have to put yourself in their their their shoes,

667
00:37:57,520 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: or try to imagine the kind of individual who ends

668
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 1: up take from the job as a scalp inspector. Uh,

669
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,520
Speaker 1: your job is to inspect these grizzly trophies of of

670
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: human murder and genocide. Uh, and then uh, you know,

671
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: reject it if it's the wrong type of scalp, or

672
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:14,479
Speaker 1: if it's been falsified. Apparently they were easily bought off

673
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: and you could so you just bribe them, and then

674
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: they'll accept a child scalp as an adult. And therefore,

675
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:22,759
Speaker 1: you know, there's even more incentive to kill a bunch

676
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 1: of children. And that's exactly the type of behavior you

677
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 1: saw from individuals such as John Glanton earlier. Yeah, we

678
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: said Galton, but it was Glanton, the Glanton Gang. I

679
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: think I had him confused with the The Eagles song

680
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: about the Dalton's very different view of the American West.

681
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,760
Speaker 1: But still, the scalp trade continued, and in many cases

682
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:47,640
Speaker 1: it seemed to escalate and uh so like July four,

683
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,920
Speaker 1: eight sixty three, in response to raids by Dakota in

684
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: southern Minnesota, the state issued twenty five dollar bonus pavements

685
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:57,800
Speaker 1: to scalps who brought back a scalp, a hundred dollars

686
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: for non soldiers, and this later hit two dred Bucks. So,

687
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,319
Speaker 1: needless to say, a lot of scalping ensued. Uh And

688
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:08,280
Speaker 1: in between eighteen thirty five and the eighteen eighties, Mexican authorities,

689
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 1: as we already mentioned, they paid private armies to hunt

690
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:15,320
Speaker 1: Native Americans, specifically targeting apaches and comanches. And I always

691
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:18,319
Speaker 1: find the inclusion of comanches, um and stuff like this

692
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: to be interesting because the Comanches in large part were

693
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: um you know, there were the people of the horse.

694
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 1: And where did they get this horse technology, this biotechnology?

695
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 1: They got it from the Spanish who introduced the horse

696
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 1: in North America. Yeah, so you you know, they encountered

697
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 1: this this outside context problem. They survived it and and

698
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 1: really became the the notorious uh warring people of the

699
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:47,239
Speaker 1: horse because of our interference. Um. But that's kind of

700
00:39:47,239 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: a that's kind of a separate tangent. But Commanche history

701
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: is very, very fascinating. But wherever these uh these bounties persisted,

702
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: you just saw genocidal violence persist and it really really

703
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: continue you until the balance was successfully tipped completely in

704
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:07,399
Speaker 1: favor of the colonials and then was replaced by new

705
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 1: uh Anti native activities such as relocation programs and re

706
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:16,919
Speaker 1: education centers. Yeah, so that the horrible history um did

707
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 1: not stop there by any means. So in one sense,

708
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 1: this might not be an example of cobra effect at all.

709
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:27,239
Speaker 1: If you, just as we said, think of the the

710
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 1: ultimate goal of the scalp bounty as being, well, just

711
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 1: where we want to exterminate the people who live here

712
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: so we can make room to uh to occupy the

713
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: land ourselves. It seems like that's sort of worked. Yeah,

714
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: I mean, the the unintended consequence, if there is one here,

715
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 1: aside from having to deal with with individuals who are

716
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,760
Speaker 1: falsifying scalps and and getting more money than they should have, UM,

717
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:53,560
Speaker 1: is just the like the backwash of bloodshed and the

718
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:57,400
Speaker 1: fact that we just the idea that that the colonists

719
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: bloodied themselves, bloodied their souls and really just created this

720
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: this stain of shame for all time. Yeah. Well, perhaps

721
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:08,200
Speaker 1: we should leave the realm of scalp hunting, human bounties

722
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:11,759
Speaker 1: and genocide and and uh come back to the idea

723
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 1: of uh backfiring incentives in general. Yeah, it's on a

724
00:41:16,239 --> 00:41:18,959
Speaker 1: lighter note. All right now, Robert, I want to talk

725
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:22,880
Speaker 1: about the idea of negative incentives. So we've seen the

726
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:27,839
Speaker 1: idea that positive incentives can backfire. Sometimes they backfire in

727
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: just ways that produce unintended negative consequences. Sometimes they backfire

728
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:37,080
Speaker 1: in a way that completely contradicts your intention setting out,

729
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:40,279
Speaker 1: you know, makes the problem worse. But there are also

730
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: negative incentives. Sometimes you want to take steps to prevent

731
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:47,359
Speaker 1: something from happening and discourage it. But what about when

732
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:50,720
Speaker 1: that makes the thing you're trying to discourage more likely

733
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: to happen. Here's one model. What if a punishment for

734
00:41:55,320 --> 00:42:01,360
Speaker 1: a discouraged behavior itself becomes desirable in some way, especially

735
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:06,520
Speaker 1: like a symbol of coolness. So I can think of

736
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 1: one good potential example of this, And there's a New

737
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: York Times article from two thousand and seven I came

738
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: across describing a problem within the Bangkok Police Department at

739
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:21,840
Speaker 1: the time. So department officials were, according to this article,

740
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: trying to put a stop to misbehavior among the rank

741
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:28,480
Speaker 1: and file officers. So if you park in the wrong spot,

742
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,919
Speaker 1: if you show up for work late, if you get

743
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:34,080
Speaker 1: caught littering, etcetera. You know, there's some bad behavior among

744
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: the cops and they're trying to disincentivize it. And the

745
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: disincentive they came up with to stop this behavior was

746
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: a form of a badge of shame, you know, like

747
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,799
Speaker 1: the red letter. You get to wear something that lets

748
00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: people know that you have behaved badly, and what they

749
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 1: chose was a Tartan arm band. Unfortunately, this policy seemed

750
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:59,320
Speaker 1: to backfire and the officers ended up regarding the disciplinary

751
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: arm band as collectible souvenirs to take home with them,

752
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: So the badge of shame became a minor badge of honor.

753
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: And in in trying to work around this problem, They're

754
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:13,760
Speaker 1: there chief of the crime Suppression division at the time,

755
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,919
Speaker 1: came up with Instead of Tartan arm bands, they used

756
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:20,640
Speaker 1: these Hello Kitty arm bands, hoping this would be seen

757
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: as sort of a humiliating affront to the officer's sense

758
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: of power and masculinity. I'm not sure how well that

759
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:29,359
Speaker 1: worked out in the end, but anyway, this one very

760
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 1: small example illustrates the principle that a poorly conceived disincentive

761
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: can not only fail to provide discouragement of a target behavior,

762
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: it could potentially even increase the behavior if the disincentive

763
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:46,399
Speaker 1: comes to be seen as having some kind of value. Now,

764
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:49,600
Speaker 1: maybe that could be some kind of monetary or material value,

765
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 1: or maybe it could just be some kind of cred

766
00:43:53,080 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 1: or social capital coolness. There's certainly a sense of countercultural coolness, right,

767
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 1: you know, like if if a certain kind of shaming

768
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: can be taken with pride. Yeah, like, oh it's too

769
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:09,840
Speaker 1: extreme for TV, too hot for for prime time. If

770
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:12,200
Speaker 1: it's too hot for prime time, I've got to see it.

771
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: How hot could this be? Right? But then, of course

772
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: there are also examples where you could maybe have a

773
00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: material advantage. For example, I think I think about supposed

774
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 1: tax schemes that reward people for making failed business investments,

775
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,080
Speaker 1: you know, supposedly like you can you can if you

776
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: finance a really bad movie that bombs or something, you

777
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:41,359
Speaker 1: can end up manipulating your taxes in such a way

778
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: that you end up with more money because the thing

779
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: you financed bombed. Kind of a producer's scenario, right, yeah, exactly.

780
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:50,879
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's really the case in any

781
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: country today, but I've at least heard accusations that that

782
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,879
Speaker 1: is how some very bad films of the past few

783
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:00,879
Speaker 1: decades got financing. Don't know whether it's true. But there's

784
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 1: another version of this I want to talk about, and

785
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: that is the case of censorship. I think censorship is

786
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: a classic example of attempts to stop a problem causing

787
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: the opposite of the intended effect of the problem. Is

788
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 1: there is a message or a meme or an idea

789
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: or you know, anything that is spreading content that you

790
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:28,799
Speaker 1: don't want disseminated, and attempting to stop the dissemination of

791
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: that content very very often seems to have the opposite

792
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: of the intended effect. Yeah, it just makes you want

793
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:37,359
Speaker 1: to see it or hear it or read it. If

794
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:40,279
Speaker 1: the man's telling me not to consume it, I kind

795
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: of want to consume it, at least to see what

796
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: the fuss is all about exactly. So there is a

797
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 1: I found a Mercury News article from way back in

798
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: two thousand three describing the event that inspired what's now

799
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 1: known as the Streisand Effect. I assume you've heard of this, Robberty.

800
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 1: I had not. Actually I'm familiar with Barbara Streisand, but

801
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:00,920
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with the streisand effec. Well, that is

802
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:04,640
Speaker 1: indeed the title celebrity behind this effect. So here's how

803
00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: the story went. So there's an environmentalist photographer named Ken Edelman,

804
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: not the same as the political operative, but he was

805
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:15,960
Speaker 1: operating a website that I think at the time was

806
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 1: called California Coastline dot org. California coastline dot org dot

807
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,759
Speaker 1: org is still up, I checked. And the purpose of

808
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:27,359
Speaker 1: this was to photograph many, many miles of the California

809
00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 1: coast to have before and after pictures of coastal development projects,

810
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 1: to tract sort of coastline erosion and other potentially destructive

811
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 1: effects of building projects along the coast. So it's almost

812
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 1: kind of like a Google Maps scenario where they're just

813
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: gonna take a whole bunch of pictures to give an

814
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 1: overall visual impression of something. Yeah, And I think the

815
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 1: reasoning was that, so if you know you have a

816
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 1: project come in build a bunch of stuff on the coast,

817
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 1: you might think that they have been destructive to the

818
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: coastal ecosystem, but you don't exactly no, because you don't

819
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,400
Speaker 1: have a picture of what it looked like before they build.

820
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: But now you've got before and after photos. But apparently

821
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, the actress Barbara Streisand discovered that

822
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,799
Speaker 1: the site featured a photograph of her ocean front home

823
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: in Malibu, and she felt this was an invasion of

824
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 1: her privacy and filed a ten million dollar lawsuit to

825
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,839
Speaker 1: to have the photograph and references to her removed from

826
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: the site or taken down. And before her lawsuit, it

827
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,440
Speaker 1: appears that the photo of her home was not not

828
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:34,800
Speaker 1: a big hit. It was accessed by only a handful

829
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:37,480
Speaker 1: of site visitors. But in the month after the suit

830
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:40,480
Speaker 1: was filed, according to this two thousand three article, more

831
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: than four hundred and twenty thousand people visited the California

832
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:47,320
Speaker 1: coast Line site, presumably to see what all the fuss

833
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 1: was about. Now, I I don't know what their traffic

834
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: was before that month. It was a you know, coastal

835
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 1: Coastal Photographs project in two thousand three, I can guess

836
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:01,120
Speaker 1: that it was not anywhere near fo any thousand visitors. Yeah,

837
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: probably only the hottest websites out there, right. So, Yeah,

838
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: that's one example. But are there any other examples of

839
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 1: this strisand effect where the attempt to shut down discussion

840
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: or or to hide evidence of something just draws more

841
00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: and more attention to it. I can definitely think of

842
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: the example of Boycott's movie. Boycott's So, let's say we've

843
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:29,399
Speaker 1: got a new awesome demonic Possession movie coming out, and

844
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: it's got tons of graphics, sex and violence and blasphemy,

845
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,799
Speaker 1: just wall to wall, and you get a bunch of

846
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 1: church groups who call for a boycott of the film.

847
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 1: They go stand outside theaters to protest it. Does this

848
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 1: end up hurting the film's ticket sales or discouraging filmmakers

849
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:50,040
Speaker 1: from making movies like this in the future. Well, it's

850
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:52,920
Speaker 1: almost impossible to say, because you can't go back in

851
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: time and compare the film success under a boycott and

852
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: protest with the success of the same film under normal conditions.

853
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: Like you can't run the experiment with a control It

854
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 1: happened in reality, um, and there's no way to control

855
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 1: the experiment, but it is widely speculated. And I'm quite

856
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:14,840
Speaker 1: sure I'd agree that these kinds of responses more often

857
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: have the opposite of the intended effect, generating more publicity

858
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:23,359
Speaker 1: for an interest in the movie. Yeah, Like, I can

859
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 1: definitely think of films that were considered video nasties in

860
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: the UK that we became underground hits, and we're the

861
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:33,800
Speaker 1: kind of things you go to kind of great links

862
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: to get on video casset back in the day. Uh,

863
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: And you look at them today now that kind of

864
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: the you know, you can get anything. You can actually

865
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: find these films that you heard about and having such

866
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: notorious histories, and you you watch them. In many cases

867
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,080
Speaker 1: they're just they're they're horrible. There's just nothing. They're not

868
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: even that shocking. But the mere fact that they were

869
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: labeled as such, that they were banned, that they were

870
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:58,480
Speaker 1: prohibited and made this video nasties list, they they end

871
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 1: up surviving, end up becoming far more famous than they

872
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:04,959
Speaker 1: had any right to be. Yeah. Uh yeah, the insistence

873
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 1: that you must not look at a thing really increases

874
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:10,479
Speaker 1: your curiosity. Yeah. I mean there's plenty of people today

875
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:13,239
Speaker 1: who are seeking out and watching some really terrible, low

876
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: budget Italian horror films and finding themselves very disappointed because

877
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: they don't match up to the reputation they had acquired

878
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:24,840
Speaker 1: over the years. So here's the idea I have about

879
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: how to how to turn the strisand effect into money. Okay, uh,

880
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: if there aren't marketing and pr firms that already specialize

881
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:35,880
Speaker 1: in this, I suspect actually maybe there are, we just

882
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: don't know about them. There should be, and what they

883
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:40,360
Speaker 1: should do is you come to them with a movie

884
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:42,359
Speaker 1: or you know, any kind of media property that you're

885
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: trying to generate interest in, and what they do is

886
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: put that thing in front of people who they know

887
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 1: will hate it, and our activist in nature who start

888
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:57,040
Speaker 1: to generate a boycotting or censoring, calling for censorship kind

889
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 1: of reaction to it. And then that of course draws

890
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:03,400
Speaker 1: in you know, all this curiosity. Oh, people are saying, well,

891
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:05,359
Speaker 1: I shouldn't look at this thing. I wonder what it is.

892
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,040
Speaker 1: So you're saying, send out screeners of the Exorcism film.

893
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:10,800
Speaker 1: You're talking about two church groups. Yeah, to to whoever

894
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: is the most conservative and censorious person who would hate it?

895
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:16,279
Speaker 1: Or you could do it the other way around. Really

896
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: you could be uh, I guess use using something that

897
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 1: would be offensive to any group, and almost anything might

898
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:24,480
Speaker 1: be offensive to somebody, right, Yeah, I mean I can.

899
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 1: I can think of several cases, none of I'm not

900
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: going to mention any of their names because they don't

901
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 1: deserve any more publicity. But there are several individuals who

902
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 1: have who you know, continue to seek out that notoriety

903
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 1: for their creations, to create things purely to just sicken

904
00:51:39,960 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: and piss people off. And that that's there the whole

905
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:47,279
Speaker 1: appeal like that there's thinking about a film about a

906
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:51,279
Speaker 1: mini segmented creature. Uh, yeah, that's one that comes to mind,

907
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: Like that's I think that's a clear case of a

908
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:55,720
Speaker 1: guy who like, there's nothing at the heart of anything.

909
00:51:55,760 --> 00:51:59,320
Speaker 1: There's nothing artistically pure, there's nothing creative, there's nothing nothing

910
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,400
Speaker 1: even fun, not nothing fun or even all that shocking

911
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:06,719
Speaker 1: per se. In a grander scheme, there's certainly more shocking

912
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 1: pieces of cinema out there that have been created by

913
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 1: by by actual artists, but it's just the storm that

914
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:17,719
Speaker 1: they're able to to to raise up around those creations

915
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: and then make it like a part of our culture,

916
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 1: you know, just empty cynical bids for attention. Yeah, exactly.

917
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:26,400
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I think the takeaway from this is

918
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 1: that there does seem to be almost no surer way

919
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: to draw attention to something than to try to prevent

920
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:35,800
Speaker 1: people from seeing it, almost like any attempt to manipulate

921
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 1: the attention that we give to something, be it negative

922
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:41,759
Speaker 1: or positive, Like it's just it's so easy, Like we

923
00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 1: think that it's going to be easy to economically manipulate

924
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:48,960
Speaker 1: something or even you know, through censorship, manipulate the scenario,

925
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:52,360
Speaker 1: manipulate the way we interact with something. But it's just

926
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:55,120
Speaker 1: such a complicated affair. It's just we're gonna, we're gonna

927
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 1: over flow the tub either way. I think people do

928
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: just have a sort of contrarian they tore where we

929
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:04,319
Speaker 1: want to try to uh upset the narrative of the

930
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 1: institutional authority. I think about this with so the strisand

931
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:12,560
Speaker 1: effect definitely occurs with brands. You know, you'll have a

932
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 1: an article or a meme or something like that that

933
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:19,399
Speaker 1: makes Coca Cola or Pepsi or McDonald's or something look bad,

934
00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:21,719
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll try to shut it down, you know,

935
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:25,479
Speaker 1: no more than this, and that just doesn't work, right. Yeah,

936
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 1: it just draws more attention to it. And it especially

937
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 1: happens when you see these uh you know these like

938
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:35,440
Speaker 1: social media crowdsourcing message campaigns, like I can't remember what

939
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: any of these hashtags are, but you know what I'm

940
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:40,400
Speaker 1: talking about. It will be like hashtag uh coke feelings,

941
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:44,080
Speaker 1: and Coca Cola is trying to get you to do

942
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: free advertising for them on your social media page. But

943
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: of course people respond to it with stuff, you know,

944
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:53,879
Speaker 1: diabetes or whatever. And I can just tell any time

945
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:57,320
Speaker 1: a brand tries to shut down those sort of mischievous

946
00:53:57,400 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: responses to their campaign. They're just gonna make people want

947
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,800
Speaker 1: to do it more. Yeah. Indeed, you see that almost

948
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: on a weekly basis these days. Yeah. All right, so

949
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: there you have it. We went from cobras and rats

950
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:14,359
Speaker 1: and pigs to the horrors of scalp hunting, and then

951
00:54:14,400 --> 00:54:18,759
Speaker 1: back into the world of censorship. Um. So hopefully we

952
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:20,759
Speaker 1: gave you a lot to consider in terms of the

953
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 1: cobra effect here. I think this makes me want to

954
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 1: hear what your thoughts are you out there, the listener,

955
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: What what your thoughts are about the nature of incentives?

956
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 1: How do you actually guide people's behavior in a reliable

957
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:39,480
Speaker 1: way that doesn't produce these unintended and perverse consequences? Yeah?

958
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 1: I mean really, we can hear from just about anybody

959
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:43,799
Speaker 1: on this. Are you a pet owner? Are you a parent?

960
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:47,799
Speaker 1: Are you a boss? Are you at all involved in

961
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:51,040
Speaker 1: or at least a close follower of politics? Are you

962
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,600
Speaker 1: a government policymaker? Yeah? Yeah, what happens when you start

963
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: trying to push an issue with a you know, stick

964
00:54:57,640 --> 00:54:59,640
Speaker 1: with some money stuck on the end of it to

965
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:03,399
Speaker 1: get the results you need? YEA, let us know I'm

966
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:06,160
Speaker 1: sure some carrots work better than others. Yeah. Yeah, there's

967
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:08,359
Speaker 1: so many different types of carrots, so many different types

968
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:12,360
Speaker 1: of sticks. Sometimes you just end up with no carrots

969
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 1: or a horse that likes to be poked with the stick.

970
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:18,840
Speaker 1: I don't know how do we get there? Okay? Sorry, alright?

971
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:20,279
Speaker 1: So hey you wanna you wanna get in touch with

972
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:22,440
Speaker 1: us you want to share your thoughts on this topic

973
00:55:22,520 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: or others. First of all, head on over to stuff

974
00:55:24,600 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com newly redesigned. It's looking great.

975
00:55:28,120 --> 00:55:31,160
Speaker 1: Um easy to interact with. You'll find that again. It's

976
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Along with the

977
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:37,759
Speaker 1: various links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Instagram.

978
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 1: We are Blow the Mind on most of those, and

979
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:42,320
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this directly

980
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:44,920
Speaker 1: to let us know feedback on this episode or any others,

981
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 1: or to give us a suggestion for a topic we

982
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:50,240
Speaker 1: should cover in the future, you can email us directly

983
00:55:50,280 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com

984
00:56:02,040 --> 00:56:04,440
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

985
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com? Pay bigger, I think

986
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 1: the biggest man. I do