Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: We're going into the vault for a classic episode from September.
Speaker 1: What was this episode about, Robert, Well, this is yeah.
Speaker 1: This one was titled Scalp Hunters and the Cobra Effect,
Speaker 1: and it basically dealt with the unintended consequences um of
Speaker 1: of of of putting value on certain things. What we're
Speaker 1: referencing with the title, of course, is what happens if
Speaker 1: you say, all right, we want to deal with the
Speaker 1: cobra problem, so we're gonna put a price on bringing
Speaker 1: in cobra's or in the one of the more you know,
Speaker 1: horrific stories of of American colonialism putting a price on
Speaker 1: the scalps of Native people. But then what happens when
Speaker 1: you do that? What kind of how does that shift
Speaker 1: the quota of violence? What do people start doing then
Speaker 1: to cheat the system? And in both of these cases
Speaker 1: you see people doing things to cheat the system. Well,
Speaker 1: it's sort of In the episode, we explore the nature
Speaker 1: of incentives and what what incentives due to address problems
Speaker 1: people think they're trying to address and then to create
Speaker 1: other problems people don't predict. Yeah. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: I've discussed this example uh in the episode, but it
Speaker 1: reminds me of when we're trying to potty train our
Speaker 1: child and we know you give did I give this
Speaker 1: this explanation? All right? Save it for the episode? Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: but it involves I'll just say it involves peepy nuts
Speaker 1: and poop candy and uh and and everyone can enjoy
Speaker 1: the either enjoy it a second time or you can
Speaker 1: enjoy it for the first time. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In this episode, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna be talking about some darker content towards
Speaker 1: the end, as the time all the episode implies, and
Speaker 1: indeed even the darker the less dark elements that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about are kind of a crash course
Speaker 1: in the the the Misadventures of colonialism. But before we
Speaker 1: get into all of that, we thought we'd we'd kick
Speaker 1: off with maybe some lighter content. Yeah, Robert, I understand
Speaker 1: that you want to tell me about peep nuts. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would love to tell you about not only peep nuts, Joe,
Speaker 1: but poop candy as well. Poop candy that's what the
Speaker 1: dog believes comes out of the cats. But oh, now
Speaker 1: you've taken into darker territory, Joe. But no I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the rearing of human children as opposed
Speaker 1: to dogs here. Um, and this ties into the overall
Speaker 1: theme here, the use of the often the use of
Speaker 1: bounties and bribes, and then what happens when the economics
Speaker 1: of that spirals out of control. So my son is
Speaker 1: for now, but there was a time not too long
Speaker 1: ago when we were trying to potty train him, to
Speaker 1: get him to actually um urinate and aivocate in the
Speaker 1: toilet when he needed to go to listen to his
Speaker 1: body and follow up. So it's apparently not enough just
Speaker 1: to say that is where you go do such business
Speaker 1: and point to the toilet. You actually you need to
Speaker 1: introduce some incentives to motivate this behavior, right and there.
Speaker 1: There there are as many different schools of parenting as
Speaker 1: there are parents. So some some people have a real
Speaker 1: problem with using bribes in any situation. But hey, that's
Speaker 1: what we did in work for us. Then you've also
Speaker 1: got the poop anywhere parents, who I hear a real trouble.
Speaker 1: Well that's now I know people who are using that
Speaker 1: technique and that that seems to work for them. But
Speaker 1: I was just kidding. Wait, that's a real parenting philosopher.
Speaker 1: I thought you were anywhere. Well, there's there are different
Speaker 1: toilet training techniques that imply it's not so much a
Speaker 1: poop anywhere. Um, what it means is like the kid
Speaker 1: will go around without pants on and then when they
Speaker 1: need to go, you scoop them up. Um, that's sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So that's what I thought you were, ok there,
Speaker 1: believe me, there are a lot of different techniques there.
Speaker 1: And uh, and and that one in particularly, I know
Speaker 1: some people have used that and it made work for them.
Speaker 1: In our case, though, we we issued a strict bounty
Speaker 1: for every successful urination in the potty. Um, he would
Speaker 1: get one honey sesame nut from this little bag honey sesame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you buy a Trader Joe's and they had that.
Speaker 1: Oh they're they're delicious. Um. I had to stop eating
Speaker 1: them for a while when they were when they became
Speaker 1: peepy nuts for me and kind of there by association.
Speaker 1: But they're great. Uh And on the other hand, for
Speaker 1: every successful poop in the toilet, which is was even
Speaker 1: more important to us at the time, he would get
Speaker 1: a single fruit gummy and that was the poop candy.
Speaker 1: So the policy proved effective for us, but it also
Speaker 1: led to a period during which he began to make
Speaker 1: a case that each piece of feces was surely a
Speaker 1: separate poop and should then result in additional poop candies
Speaker 1: as well as the is any interruption in the stream
Speaker 1: of urine would result in two or more instances of urination,
Speaker 1: and each would require a separate reward. Okay, well, this
Speaker 1: this is smart bargaining. Actually yeah, yeah, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy too when I look back and realize
Speaker 1: that he hadn't and he still hasn't really discovered the
Speaker 1: power of lying. Uh So, but there was still this
Speaker 1: tendency to bend the rule and even break the spirit
Speaker 1: of the rule for greater rewards. Now, after that we
Speaker 1: clarified the policy and then luckily we were able to
Speaker 1: phase it out shortly after that. But how might things
Speaker 1: have escalated if if we hadn't you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: something to think about, and I've been thinking about in
Speaker 1: researching this topic. Well, Robert, I want to tell you
Speaker 1: a story. It might not be a true story, but
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting story with some very true analogs
Speaker 1: about the power of incentives and the sometimes unintended consequences
Speaker 1: of incentives, and about serpents of course, asps very dangerous. Now,
Speaker 1: the story goes something like this, In colonial India, you
Speaker 1: had a British colonial administrator who decided there were too
Speaker 1: many cobras in the city of Delhi. You know, I
Speaker 1: got cobra's coming out of my ears. We gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of all these things. Though I wonder what that
Speaker 1: actually looked like. I mean, if this really happened. I
Speaker 1: imagine we're all picturing that scene in Raiders of the
Speaker 1: Lost Arc exactly, but it was probably more like, I
Speaker 1: saw one cobra and that was too many. We've got
Speaker 1: a cobra problem in the city. But anyway, so he
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of the cobras in the city,
Speaker 1: kill them all, get him out of here. So he
Speaker 1: came up with a solution. Put a bounty on the cobras.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, So if you kill a cobra, just
Speaker 1: bring the dead snake to the government office and receive
Speaker 1: a cash award. Yeah. They're making it worth your while
Speaker 1: to take time out of your day to kill a
Speaker 1: snake or two. Yeah. And at first it seemed like
Speaker 1: this was working great. They're collecting plenty of cobras. But
Speaker 1: before long the local administrators discovered a problem. The people
Speaker 1: have figured out a way to game the system and
Speaker 1: turn the snake bounty into free money. They weren't catching
Speaker 1: cobras from the city and killing them. They were farming
Speaker 1: cobras at home, killing them once they were mature, and
Speaker 1: then bringing them in to get the bounty. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: they couldn't allow this kind of mischief to continue, so
Speaker 1: the administrators ended the cobra bounty. But now you had
Speaker 1: all these snake breeders who had been farming cobras in
Speaker 1: order to get the bounty, and they're they're stuck with
Speaker 1: hundreds of worthless snakes. So what do you do with them.
Speaker 1: We'll just release them so they have no incidive for
Speaker 1: keeping them. They release them into the streets, and the
Speaker 1: cobra population in the city drastically increases. This leads to
Speaker 1: the principle that's now known to economists as the cobra effect,
Speaker 1: and it's when a strategy implemented to solve a problem
Speaker 1: directly makes the problem worse. And the story about cobras
Speaker 1: and Delhi, as I mentioned, might be nothing more than
Speaker 1: a modern folk tale. I haven't come across any evidence
Speaker 1: that it actually happened, But there are plenty of examples
Speaker 1: where exactly this type of thing has definitely occurred in
Speaker 1: the real world, that's right. And one of them occurs
Speaker 1: with another colonial situation, another infestation in Hanoi, Vietnam. Al right,
Speaker 1: this would have been the nineteenth century. So you have
Speaker 1: French colonial authorities in Vietnam, and you know, there are
Speaker 1: various problems to focus in on, but the one they
Speaker 1: choose to really apply their attention to is the city's
Speaker 1: rat problem. Now, I can imagine the rat problem was
Speaker 1: probably a real problem, probably a real problem that you know,
Speaker 1: like the cobra thing. You can imagine a colonial administrator
Speaker 1: sees one cobra and decides that there's a cobra problem
Speaker 1: in the city, right, Yeah, because I can't think of
Speaker 1: a situation where another city has had a had a
Speaker 1: snake infestation problem off hand. But rats. Of course, rat
Speaker 1: problems have been an issue throughout human history. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: quite common to have rat problems in any large population center.
Speaker 1: People produce a lot of garbage. Garbage is tasty. They
Speaker 1: have sewers that are great places to to dwell in
Speaker 1: and have your little breeding grounds. Yeah, they're smart and
Speaker 1: they're successful. And as was learned, and this is the
Speaker 1: other key thing, this is one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: they focused in on rats so much, is that in
Speaker 1: eighteen nine four, that's when Alexandra Yearson discovered that debonic
Speaker 1: plague was caused caused by little fleas that wrote on rats.
Speaker 1: So that so you can see why they were concerned.
Speaker 1: So what did they do. Well, they did what what
Speaker 1: often happens in these cases. They assigned some professional rat
Speaker 1: catchers to take care of everything. But then that's not enough,
Speaker 1: so they turned to volunteers. They turned to two mercenary
Speaker 1: rat catchers, and they offer a bounty of one cent
Speaker 1: per rat tail. And the idea here was that, especially
Speaker 1: since the disease was an issue, asking the rat catchers
Speaker 1: to handle the body was going to be too much
Speaker 1: to ask would be a burden and just a little
Speaker 1: growth right from what I've read. You know, they'd catch
Speaker 1: thousands of rats in the sewer in in a very
Speaker 1: short period of time. Lugging all those dead rat bodies
Speaker 1: would actually be really heavy, yeah, and then discussing, so
Speaker 1: just to prove how many you killed, really, just take
Speaker 1: the tail, right, So that's yeah, that's exactly what they did,
Speaker 1: brought in the tail, and it seemed to be working
Speaker 1: at first, But then the authorities began to notice something
Speaker 1: curious in the streets. They noticed a bunch of rats
Speaker 1: running around without tails. So they quickly realized that some
Speaker 1: of those enterprising rat catchers out there were simply lopping
Speaker 1: the tails off of the wild rats when they caught them,
Speaker 1: perhaps out of laziness, but more likely so that tail
Speaker 1: is rats could go forth breed and produce more rat
Speaker 1: tails to harvest. Yah know, they were being economically smart,
Speaker 1: they were they were trying to you know, if you
Speaker 1: are living off the land, you don't want to destroy
Speaker 1: all of the vegetation in the land, so you only
Speaker 1: pick from some of the plants. You don't kill every plant. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like the policy or the policy that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be in place with stone crabs. You harvest one of
Speaker 1: the of the clause and then you let the each
Speaker 1: your good. You don't harvest them both. So that that
Speaker 1: was one of the ramifications of the bounty. But much
Speaker 1: like our cobra example, this the exact same thing took place.
Speaker 1: Um others took advantage of the law by establishing rat farms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because rats are are easy to breed. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't even have to try. I really don't have to try.
Speaker 1: Just to collect some rats and let them do their thing,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have more rats, which you can then
Speaker 1: lock their tails off and collect your bounty. So the
Speaker 1: French were horrified that their efforts to curb the rat
Speaker 1: population was actually increasing it, and they scrapped the bounty
Speaker 1: program entirely, and in bubonic plague broke out in Annoy.
Speaker 1: So no, yeah, so there's there's a lot more there are.
Speaker 1: There are a number of more angles to this story.
Speaker 1: There's a great paper out there that ties all of
Speaker 1: this in with this sort of the doom nature of
Speaker 1: French rule in Vietnam, and it's titled of Rats, Rice
Speaker 1: and Race. The Great Annoying Rat Massacre, An episode in
Speaker 1: French colonial History by Michael G. Van yeah, And there's
Speaker 1: an older episode of Freakonomics Radio actually the deals exactly
Speaker 1: with the Cobra effect that I listened to, and it's
Speaker 1: a good episode. It's worth checking out. So we won't
Speaker 1: rehash everything they cover in their show, but just to
Speaker 1: mention a couple other interesting examples they bring up. One
Speaker 1: is a very similar situation to the rats in Hanoi,
Speaker 1: but this is with Ferrell pigs in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Speaker 1: So it's a local tale. Right. Have you been to
Speaker 1: Fort Benning. I've been through there, I believe yeeah, did
Speaker 1: you see any pigs? No? No, I saw. I saw
Speaker 1: an interesting overpass, and I believe that's that's the extent
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, Well, anyway, it's in I think southwest
Speaker 1: Georgia's right. Yeah, So there are a lot of wild
Speaker 1: pigs in this area. They're they're invasive Ferrell pigs, and
Speaker 1: they do a lot of damage. They dig everything up,
Speaker 1: they get into your garbage, they eat everything. They cause
Speaker 1: damage to government property and buildings. So people wanted to
Speaker 1: do something about this Ferrell pig problem. So there was
Speaker 1: a cash bounty exchange program or pigtails established to fight
Speaker 1: the feral pig problem, but same problems we've encountered before.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of suspicion that some of these pigtails
Speaker 1: people were turning in for a cash reward came from
Speaker 1: illicit sources, maybe some meat processing, We're not exactly sure.
Speaker 1: And then in the end it looks like baiting practices
Speaker 1: established by the pig bounty hunters actually probably increased the
Speaker 1: number of wild pigs in the area. So people claim
Speaker 1: all these cash rewards because they put out a bunch
Speaker 1: of food to attract pigs and then they shoot some
Speaker 1: of them. But you know, you were feeding the pigs,
Speaker 1: fattening them up for breeding and producing more pigs, because
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to put a value on the elimination
Speaker 1: of the animal, but in doing so, you've put a
Speaker 1: value on the continued life of the animal. Exactly. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's interesting how that how that plays out, And this
Speaker 1: brings me to a thought about the nature of incentives,
Speaker 1: because it's sort of highlights that you can't have an
Speaker 1: incentive that's just sort of logically associated with the outcome
Speaker 1: you want. In order to try to prevent the gaming
Speaker 1: of the system, you really need to make incentives as
Speaker 1: closely aligned to the actual desired outcome as possible. So
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is, if you want to
Speaker 1: eliminate cobras from the city, don't offer cash rewards for
Speaker 1: dead cobras because you don't want dead cobras. That's not
Speaker 1: the outcome you're looking for. You want an absence of cobras.
Speaker 1: So ind but that's a lot harder to incentivize, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to somebody come along and investigate for cobra
Speaker 1: free spaces exactly. Yeah, you need more complex systems to
Speaker 1: try to incentivize that. So for example, maybe you could
Speaker 1: establish a cobra control authority and then the employees of
Speaker 1: this organization are given a cash bonus that's proportional to
Speaker 1: how few cobra bytes are reported in local hospitals in
Speaker 1: a given year. But even with that, you run into
Speaker 1: some some problems, right like without strict controls on that,
Speaker 1: what if you have members of the cobra control authority
Speaker 1: intimidating people not to report their cobra bites or not
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital, or intimidating people at hospitals
Speaker 1: not to report them to the government. Uh So, it
Speaker 1: just seems like whenever you introduce incentive programs to to
Speaker 1: a wide ranging you know, a group of participants to
Speaker 1: the public. Essentially, you you introduce the problem that people
Speaker 1: are going to find ways to access the reward without
Speaker 1: helping you achieve your goal. It's it seems like it
Speaker 1: should be a Doctor Seuss book or kind of um,
Speaker 1: a Sourcer's Apprentice kind of tail, right, just as it
Speaker 1: spirals out of control on these examples, UM, I can't
Speaker 1: help but think of quotas that are set forth for
Speaker 1: law enforcements. Sometimes, you know, like you know, you've got
Speaker 1: to get so many speeding tickets out there, and so
Speaker 1: you end up having a police officers setting up and
Speaker 1: speed traps to to hit those quotas, which in that case,
Speaker 1: I guess it's not a clear it's not necessarily making
Speaker 1: the problem worse, but it's also just kind of like
Speaker 1: we're not really stopping it. We're just kind of like
Speaker 1: setting up a system to continually collect the bounty on speeding. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I guess I can see where there's a balance there, right,
Speaker 1: So if if it depends on how the quota is
Speaker 1: and how aggressive you are and carrying it out, because
Speaker 1: if there's a balance to where all right, You're just
Speaker 1: people know not to go above a certain speed or
Speaker 1: they should know and and if they don't, they get
Speaker 1: a ticket. So like both in that is going to
Speaker 1: make the roads safer. But I guess the more the
Speaker 1: focus is on hitting the quota, getting the essentially the bounty,
Speaker 1: and losing sight of the purpose of the law entirely,
Speaker 1: that's where things get out of whacking, you end up
Speaker 1: with like notorious speed traps, right. And I think this
Speaker 1: gets into a concept that's very closely related to the
Speaker 1: Cobra effect, though I think technically the Cobra effect wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to be just in incentives and economics if you're
Speaker 1: talking more generally about anything where an attempt to solve
Speaker 1: a problem makes the problem worse. You can even go
Speaker 1: to the example of of like aka Homo. You know
Speaker 1: that that great story of the person who is trying
Speaker 1: to touch up this this classic painting of Christ in
Speaker 1: his passion moment had some damage to it over the
Speaker 1: years trying to touch it up, and he ends up
Speaker 1: having this kind of wailing monkey face. Yes, which is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite images from the whole Internet. Yes,
Speaker 1: but and she wasn't working for a bounty, but imagine
Speaker 1: if there was a bounty out there on restoring old
Speaker 1: works of art, right, you could end up with with However,
Speaker 1: many of these strange little monkey faces just completely obliterating
Speaker 1: art history. Yeah. I guess the problem there is that
Speaker 1: you are you are giving people who don't have proper
Speaker 1: training in an area and incentive to participate in the area,
Speaker 1: and thus they're probably going to make things worse. But
Speaker 1: another way of framing the issue is just the concept
Speaker 1: of perverse incentives, meaning, specifically, in the Cobra effect, you're
Speaker 1: the intended solution to a problem makes that problem worse.
Speaker 1: Perverse incentives can just mean incentives that cause unintended negative outcomes,
Speaker 1: especially if they're contrary to the benefit of the people
Speaker 1: who offer the incentives. This all also reminds me of
Speaker 1: a moment in one of my favorite books, uh Cornman
Speaker 1: McCarthy's sentry. Oh yeah, we talked about this the other
Speaker 1: day where there's a bounty on I think rabies bats
Speaker 1: in that book in there, Yeah, like the local university
Speaker 1: there there they want to or is it the health department,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It's been amber there, but interested official
Speaker 1: parties would like to see the bodies of local bats. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's because of rabies. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a very enterprising young character in the book named Harrogate.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the book is a tested for
Speaker 1: having illicit relations with watermelons that did not belong to him.
Speaker 1: But then later on he comes up with some just
Speaker 1: ingenious schemes for collecting bats. I think far more bats
Speaker 1: than was really than he was intended to collect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he ends up strolling into town. Was just a sack
Speaker 1: of dead bats, which he gets. But I believe he
Speaker 1: buys some poison and he poisons little pieces of meat
Speaker 1: and slingshots them into the air because the bats are
Speaker 1: accustomed to praying on insects that are flying through the air.
Speaker 1: I believe that's the scheme. That's a great book. It
Speaker 1: is this is that makes me want to read it again.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, they end up kind of the doctor,
Speaker 1: the scientists confronting him when he brings this bag in
Speaker 1: and he's says, look, we know you you did not
Speaker 1: just find these bats, but we can't figure out how
Speaker 1: you did it. You've got to tell us how you
Speaker 1: actually killed these bats. And then he he relates the
Speaker 1: story of the slingshot Oh, yeah, that's it. He was
Speaker 1: supposed to be collecting dead bats. When I said he
Speaker 1: was killing, he was making dead bats. So you know,
Speaker 1: in a sense they were I guess the effort here
Speaker 1: was to protect humans, protect health, but also you know,
Speaker 1: not eradicate bats. That was not the intended outcome, but
Speaker 1: Harrogate did his best to do just that in order
Speaker 1: to get the sweet bounty. But of course that is
Speaker 1: not the only book by our great brutal novelist Cormick
Speaker 1: McCarthy to feature bounties. That's right, there's also Blood Meridian,
Speaker 1: great novel, horrific novel um in large ways I think
Speaker 1: unfilmable novel, and I kind of hope it's unfilmable. It is,
Speaker 1: uh would you would you call it nihilistic? Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's just not much redeemable in the world.
Speaker 1: And it is a book of uh, brutal and cruel
Speaker 1: people doing brutal and cruel things. Yeah. And one individual
Speaker 1: who might not be a person at all, who might
Speaker 1: be an embodiment of of awfulness, Judge Judge Holden, who
Speaker 1: himself is probably based very loosely on a real individual
Speaker 1: who was in a gang of scalp hunters led by
Speaker 1: an actual historic individual, one John Galton, who was indeed
Speaker 1: a superstar in the vile trade of scalp hunting um harvesting.
Speaker 1: By some accounts that two and fifty scalps in a
Speaker 1: single raid once, and fittingly, his group was eventually ambushed
Speaker 1: and scalped by a band of Quichian tribes people. So um,
Speaker 1: so we shouldn't dwell too much on the nasty details,
Speaker 1: but we do need to discuss what scalping is and
Speaker 1: and scalp hunting, what what this practice consists of, and
Speaker 1: where it came from? Yeah? So uh, I mean, most
Speaker 1: of you probably don't even need to be told, especially
Speaker 1: if you've consumed much in the way of American Western
Speaker 1: history or fiction. Not only Blood Meridian, but Larry mcmurtry'
Speaker 1: is a Lonesome Dove novels instantly come to mind as well,
Speaker 1: but actually never read Lonesome Dove. Oh it's it's quite
Speaker 1: it's quite good. Uh. Comanche Moon is another one in
Speaker 1: that series that I read that was really good and
Speaker 1: really bizarre in many ways. But both of these authors
Speaker 1: really really gaze deep into the gruesome spectacle of the act.
Speaker 1: It entails the slicing, fling, ripping away of a portion
Speaker 1: or all of the human scalp um and then then
Speaker 1: then you have this resulting trophy. The victim can be
Speaker 1: living or dead. And there are plenty of tales of
Speaker 1: scalping survivors, including in eighteen sixty four. Probably the most
Speaker 1: famous is a thirteen year old Robert McGee UM. And
Speaker 1: he's famous because there's a wonderful, gruesome photograph of him
Speaker 1: as an adult showing off his scalping scars scars so um.
Speaker 1: And in this case, he was scalped by a band
Speaker 1: of uh Sue Indians. So I look up that photo
Speaker 1: online if you really want to see it. Um. But
Speaker 1: where did the act come from? That's actually something that
Speaker 1: has been uh there's been a kind of a debate
Speaker 1: on that over the years, right, because we definitely do
Speaker 1: see it practiced by by both sides in the American frontier, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it comes down to, is this uh an
Speaker 1: ancient Native American act that various cultural groups took part in,
Speaker 1: or is this something that Westerners introduced, that the colonists
Speaker 1: introduced to the New World. Um. Now, certainly scalping was
Speaker 1: long attributed as a purely Native American act, and indeed
Speaker 1: we see plenty of examples of of scalping, both between
Speaker 1: tribes and against the colonial invaders. Yeah, and that that's
Speaker 1: something I think even when I was a kid. Just
Speaker 1: my idea of where this came from. I guess if
Speaker 1: you watch old cartoons or something like that, you get
Speaker 1: the idea that this is something that Native American tribes,
Speaker 1: that their warriors would do to the enemies, not something
Speaker 1: that was done by European settlers. But in fact, it
Speaker 1: was done by European settlers. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll see
Speaker 1: some plenty of examples of that to come here. But
Speaker 1: it was I think it is often presented as this
Speaker 1: kind of savage thing that savage tribes people do. Um
Speaker 1: eurocentric view of it. Yeah, Now, there was certainly a
Speaker 1: backlash against that view has pointed out in a wonderful
Speaker 1: article titled The Unkindest cut Or Who Invented Scalping by
Speaker 1: James Axtell and William C. Struvan in Night and if
Speaker 1: you want to blow by bloody blow account of the
Speaker 1: history of scalping, that's a good article to seek out.
Speaker 1: But they say that the the quote unquote savage Indian
Speaker 1: take on scalping was replaced during the twentieth century for
Speaker 1: a spell there by Native American activists who who really
Speaker 1: pushed for the view that all that it was basically
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty colonials who introduced the practice to the native peoples
Speaker 1: of the America's by encouraging them to do so by
Speaker 1: instituting bounties on on other on other tribes people and
Speaker 1: essentially teaching them to take these head skins from others. So,
Speaker 1: under this revisionist view, the scalping practice came from the
Speaker 1: European settlers and was transferred to the frontier tribes correct time. However,
Speaker 1: after this a lot of you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people on the other side of the the issue they
Speaker 1: waged in. And really, when you do look at the
Speaker 1: history and look at the historical accounts, you see that
Speaker 1: the practice of taking scalps goes back way through colonial
Speaker 1: invasion to pre Columbian times, okay, and it was quite
Speaker 1: widespread through North America even parts of South America. There's
Speaker 1: there's archaeological evidence that shows evidence of postmortem scalpings and
Speaker 1: skulls that showed evidence that the victim survived the mutilation
Speaker 1: long enough for the bone tissue to regenerate. And another
Speaker 1: point it's often brought up is that certainly Europeans had
Speaker 1: had plenty of ways to torment and torture and mutilate
Speaker 1: the body, trying to make them look good by comparison, right,
Speaker 1: But for all their drawing and quartering and hanging and
Speaker 1: hacking and what have you, you really don't see much
Speaker 1: in the way of scalp taking in European tradition prior
Speaker 1: to this point, and even in even language itself, um
Speaker 1: So scalping as a word. The word itself scalp predates
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century. It arises from a Scandi Navian route
Speaker 1: and uh, and it was featured in a in a
Speaker 1: sixteen o one edition of Plenty of the Elder's Natural History,
Speaker 1: though the explorers in the New World tended to be
Speaker 1: unversed in Latin classics, so they probably weren't exposed to
Speaker 1: it now. Instead, such trophies were described as head skins
Speaker 1: or hair scalps. They just talked about skinning and flying
Speaker 1: um until scalps and scalping became a popular term in
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy six, during King Phillip's War between Uh Native
Speaker 1: American tribes and the English colonists and their Native American allies.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile there's a On the other hand, though there's
Speaker 1: a fairly robust vocabulary for scalps in many of the
Speaker 1: native tongues. The the Ojibwa language distinguishes between scalp and
Speaker 1: sioux scalp. There's a separate word for each, while Eastern
Speaker 1: Abenaki language has special terminology for enemy scalps that are
Speaker 1: already taken as trop thieves, for scalps that could be taken,
Speaker 1: and scalps from the living and the dead. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like those uh the Old World where the
Speaker 1: old saying that Inuits have all these different words for
Speaker 1: snow because there's so much of it. You could make
Speaker 1: the argument that the scalping was enough of a practice
Speaker 1: that there were uh specific terms that were used in
Speaker 1: some of these cultures for specific types of scalps. Yes,
Speaker 1: but of course, as we see with the European invaders
Speaker 1: of the American continents, Uh, they they had all of
Speaker 1: their own barbaric and violent practices, and even though scalping
Speaker 1: doesn't traditionally appear to be strongly represented among them, they
Speaker 1: took to it quite rapidly. Yeah, you could definitely say that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were kind of like, well, the way
Speaker 1: we did it back home is we just tore a
Speaker 1: person into four pieces with horses. But hey, if you
Speaker 1: want to just take the scalp, we can do that too. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's the crazy part, because it's one thing to
Speaker 1: to look at these native tribes who had who had
Speaker 1: this in their culture and their tradition, and there may
Speaker 1: even be certain, you know, supernatural role elements that are
Speaker 1: factored into it, but the columnists had none of that.
Speaker 1: You just had a bunch of in most cases Protestants
Speaker 1: showing up in the New World and and readily getting
Speaker 1: into the act. Right, It's not a part of their
Speaker 1: traditional cultural war practice. It's more just sort of an
Speaker 1: adopted act of violence, and violence, of course, becomes a
Speaker 1: standard in relations between columnists and the native inhabitants of
Speaker 1: the America's pretty much pretty much from inception, pretty much
Speaker 1: from that first outside context event when the two met,
Speaker 1: violence just continues to be a part of their history.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And that's where the scalping really begins
Speaker 1: to to pick up. So it seems, based on most accounts,
Speaker 1: all right, it's a pre existing thing that happens between
Speaker 1: tribe members in their tribal wars, often as as a
Speaker 1: way to take a trophy and then travel a long
Speaker 1: distance back with it, kind of getting back to the
Speaker 1: idea of taking the tail of a rat, right. But
Speaker 1: then the Protestants, the Colonials here they begin um, they
Speaker 1: begin to perpetuate the practice by putting putting a bounty,
Speaker 1: say ten shillings worth of truck cloth on native scalps, uh,
Speaker 1: that are taken by your native ally, So take the
Speaker 1: scalps from the enemy tribes people to people that we
Speaker 1: don't have alliances with, and we will pay you in
Speaker 1: some cloth, all right. But then in the midst of
Speaker 1: kings King Philip's war, which we mentioned earlier, which went
Speaker 1: from about six to seventy eight, they extended the bounty
Speaker 1: to mercenaries thirty shillings per scalp um. And you you
Speaker 1: end up with plenty of horrific cases. There's there's this
Speaker 1: case of Puritan kidnappy Hannah Dustin Uh. She and her
Speaker 1: fellow kidnappies, they were held by by by a band
Speaker 1: of tribespeople, and then they escaped and they went on
Speaker 1: to execute two men to women in six children and
Speaker 1: they received fifty pounds as a as a reward for
Speaker 1: that act. And there's actually a statue of this woman
Speaker 1: in uh Boscowen, New Hampshire, just a statue of a murderer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because that's it really kind of sums up
Speaker 1: the weird ways we we have historically made sense of
Speaker 1: this violence between these two people. Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: talk about perverse incentives. So so you've got a rat
Speaker 1: bounty system where you assume, well, there's a rat problem,
Speaker 1: so we need to do something about it. So let's
Speaker 1: just collect rat tails and that will let us know
Speaker 1: there's at least some significant amount of rat killing going on.
Speaker 1: This seems like exactly the same principle being applied to
Speaker 1: human beings. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the thing. We
Speaker 1: see this this bounty system spiral ever more out of control.
Speaker 1: Um the French engaged in it, the English engaged in it,
Speaker 1: and it eventually becomes not only this thing that you're
Speaker 1: asking other tribes people to do, like hey, you guys,
Speaker 1: take scalps, right, take the scalps of our enemies and
Speaker 1: we'll pay you. Scalps become the become a valuable item
Speaker 1: for for colonial individuals as well, hunters and trappers, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just evidence that you are carrying out the genocide
Speaker 1: that we're encouraging. Yeah, the first Massachusetts Act of sixteen
Speaker 1: ninety four encouraged a bounty for Indie any Indian life,
Speaker 1: while a seventeen or four renewal of that act amended
Speaker 1: it so you only got a hundred pounds for adults,
Speaker 1: ten pounds for children ten and older, and nothing for
Speaker 1: kids under ten, which sounds semi decent at first. And
Speaker 1: to realize that those children would be sold as slaves
Speaker 1: or transported out of the country. Now, as early as
Speaker 1: seventeen twelve, some folks were uneasy about that, And this
Speaker 1: is this is kind of a sobering thought to realize
Speaker 1: that not everybody was just completely on board with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would hope not. I mean, this is straightforwardly encouraging
Speaker 1: a bounty for murder, right, I mean though, at the
Speaker 1: same point, you have to acknowledge that, like this was
Speaker 1: a this was a tough time to be alive, Like
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot of fear going on in these
Speaker 1: communities and among these lawmakers. But but even even then
Speaker 1: there were people who said, I'm not sure about this.
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Judge Samuel Sewell spoken a session of the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: General Court, and he said he he laid out that
Speaker 1: he really thought that that this was it was only okay.
Speaker 1: It should only be done if you're doing it to
Speaker 1: protict your family, and if it's becoming something that you're
Speaker 1: doing for commerce, then that's that's bad. Wait, so it's
Speaker 1: okay to murder a Native American, collect their scalp and
Speaker 1: turn it in for money, as long as the reason
Speaker 1: you did it wasn't the money so much that it
Speaker 1: was out of love for family. Yeah. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just the basic Protestant ethos, right, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. Yeah, but I mean, obviously that's the horrible
Speaker 1: situation here is that you have it becomes the practice,
Speaker 1: and then people have to people in positions of power
Speaker 1: and authority have to find ways to support it and
Speaker 1: rationalize it in their own mind. Yeah, but these rationalizations
Speaker 1: seem to be coming indirect conflict with the economic incentives
Speaker 1: being offered. If that's the case, why are you still
Speaker 1: offering the bounty? Yeah? Yeah, I agree, Um, and then it, uh,
Speaker 1: it gets ever more out of control there, especially when
Speaker 1: ministers are are speaking about it, and they're not condemning it.
Speaker 1: There's this wonderful quote here from actual Instruments Peace it
Speaker 1: goes when ministers not only look the other way but
Speaker 1: shared in the profits from Indian deaths, the moral barometer
Speaker 1: of America dipped dangerously low. At the bottom, however, lay
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, in which Englishmen scalped Englishmen in the
Speaker 1: name of liberty. Scalping and other techniques of Indian warfare
Speaker 1: placed in the hands of a larger European population eventually
Speaker 1: sealed the Indian's fate in North America, but not before
Speaker 1: wreaking upon the white man a subtle form of moral vengeance.
Speaker 1: At this point, I think when we think about the
Speaker 1: Cobra effect in relation to scalping, is this an example
Speaker 1: of the Cobra effects, right, Because on one hand, it's
Speaker 1: kind of doing exactly what the bounty is supposed to do,
Speaker 1: just bringing about genocidal violence against the native population. Then again,
Speaker 1: I guess if you interpret the purpose of such a
Speaker 1: bounty on on Indian scalps as to be, I don't know,
Speaker 1: to pacify the border, you know, to make the frontier
Speaker 1: less bloody, you're obviously having a perverse incentive there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're causing murderous havoc, right, And there are plenty
Speaker 1: of examples to where the scalp trade just intensifies the violence. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you end up with with with various native chiefs
Speaker 1: in some cases who are putting bounties then for their
Speaker 1: own people upon the white man. And and so you
Speaker 1: have this this kind of a war of extern a
Speaker 1: nation from both sides. There are examples, um, some of
Speaker 1: the like in the Mexican examples will get to in
Speaker 1: a second, where Galton and his gang in that specifically,
Speaker 1: they would roll into an area and violence would just
Speaker 1: intensify because they're just stirring up all of this hatred. So,
Speaker 1: of course scalp hunting continued, um and uh. And falsified
Speaker 1: scalping also pops up as an inevitability weight. So maybe
Speaker 1: just like collecting pigtails from a meat processing plan saying yeah,
Speaker 1: I shot all these pigs, you might have people getting
Speaker 1: scalps or parts of scalps from illicit sources, a sort
Speaker 1: of yeah, there's a there's a quote that I ran
Speaker 1: across these materials from nineteenth century American historian Francis Parkman,
Speaker 1: and he said the hunting of humans would constitute a
Speaker 1: profitable occupation if only the prey was not so shy
Speaker 1: and nimble. So I mean, well, you can't just with
Speaker 1: the rats. You can just raise them, right, and rats
Speaker 1: are everywhere. People are can prove a little harder to kill,
Speaker 1: even if you're a ruthless gang of mercenaries roving about.
Speaker 1: And people are gonna inevitably to figure out how can
Speaker 1: I get the most out of this kill? Uh? If
Speaker 1: you would read this next quote for us. It comes
Speaker 1: from twentieth century German ethnologist of European colonization George FREDERICI. Okay,
Speaker 1: it says this, along with the high profits of the
Speaker 1: fatal business, soon taught the shrewd tribes people and their
Speaker 1: quick learning students, the lawless backwoodsmen and hunters the art
Speaker 1: of skillfully making two, three, or even more scalps from
Speaker 1: one scalp and selling them. People were not always very
Speaker 1: particular about where the scalp came from, because it was
Speaker 1: difficult or impossible to distinguish between a French scalp and
Speaker 1: an English one. Members of friendly tribes and even fellow
Speaker 1: countrymen fell victim to greed and the scalping knife. Not
Speaker 1: even the dead were spared. Yeah, so you could This
Speaker 1: is interesting. It goes even beyond what what what Farci
Speaker 1: was talking about here, because you could apparently take a
Speaker 1: single adult scalp, you could stretch it as you dried
Speaker 1: it out, and you could cut it into a dozen
Speaker 1: different things that you could pass off or try to
Speaker 1: pass off as scalps, which is is quite You can
Speaker 1: see the financial possibilities there. This is one of those
Speaker 1: moments where it comes up every now and then. You
Speaker 1: just imagine aliens coming in and observing our behavior and
Speaker 1: they're seeing somebody take the skin off the top of
Speaker 1: another human's head and stretch it and cut it into
Speaker 1: a bunch of pieces. Yeah. Yeah. And it became such
Speaker 1: a problem in Mexico where you had the Mexican States,
Speaker 1: they're paying mercenaries to go around and hunt for scalps um.
Speaker 1: They had to demand that scalps include one or both
Speaker 1: ears or the crown, and they even set up regulatory committees.
Speaker 1: But the thing here is that and I guess you
Speaker 1: kind of have to put yourself in their their their shoes,
Speaker 1: or try to imagine the kind of individual who ends
Speaker 1: up take from the job as a scalp inspector. Uh,
Speaker 1: your job is to inspect these grizzly trophies of of
Speaker 1: human murder and genocide. Uh, and then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: reject it if it's the wrong type of scalp, or
Speaker 1: if it's been falsified. Apparently they were easily bought off
Speaker 1: and you could so you just bribe them, and then
Speaker 1: they'll accept a child scalp as an adult. And therefore,
Speaker 1: you know, there's even more incentive to kill a bunch
Speaker 1: of children. And that's exactly the type of behavior you
Speaker 1: saw from individuals such as John Glanton earlier. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: said Galton, but it was Glanton, the Glanton Gang. I
Speaker 1: think I had him confused with the The Eagles song
Speaker 1: about the Dalton's very different view of the American West.
Speaker 1: But still, the scalp trade continued, and in many cases
Speaker 1: it seemed to escalate and uh so like July four,
Speaker 1: eight sixty three, in response to raids by Dakota in
Speaker 1: southern Minnesota, the state issued twenty five dollar bonus pavements
Speaker 1: to scalps who brought back a scalp, a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for non soldiers, and this later hit two dred Bucks. So,
Speaker 1: needless to say, a lot of scalping ensued. Uh And
Speaker 1: in between eighteen thirty five and the eighteen eighties, Mexican authorities,
Speaker 1: as we already mentioned, they paid private armies to hunt
Speaker 1: Native Americans, specifically targeting apaches and comanches. And I always
Speaker 1: find the inclusion of comanches, um and stuff like this
Speaker 1: to be interesting because the Comanches in large part were
Speaker 1: um you know, there were the people of the horse.
Speaker 1: And where did they get this horse technology, this biotechnology?
Speaker 1: They got it from the Spanish who introduced the horse
Speaker 1: in North America. Yeah, so you you know, they encountered
Speaker 1: this this outside context problem. They survived it and and
Speaker 1: really became the the notorious uh warring people of the
Speaker 1: horse because of our interference. Um. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: a that's kind of a separate tangent. But Commanche history
Speaker 1: is very, very fascinating. But wherever these uh these bounties persisted,
Speaker 1: you just saw genocidal violence persist and it really really
Speaker 1: continue you until the balance was successfully tipped completely in
Speaker 1: favor of the colonials and then was replaced by new
Speaker 1: uh Anti native activities such as relocation programs and re
Speaker 1: education centers. Yeah, so that the horrible history um did
Speaker 1: not stop there by any means. So in one sense,
Speaker 1: this might not be an example of cobra effect at all.
Speaker 1: If you, just as we said, think of the the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal of the scalp bounty as being, well, just
Speaker 1: where we want to exterminate the people who live here
Speaker 1: so we can make room to uh to occupy the
Speaker 1: land ourselves. It seems like that's sort of worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the unintended consequence, if there is one here,
Speaker 1: aside from having to deal with with individuals who are
Speaker 1: falsifying scalps and and getting more money than they should have, UM,
Speaker 1: is just the like the backwash of bloodshed and the
Speaker 1: fact that we just the idea that that the colonists
Speaker 1: bloodied themselves, bloodied their souls and really just created this
Speaker 1: this stain of shame for all time. Yeah. Well, perhaps
Speaker 1: we should leave the realm of scalp hunting, human bounties
Speaker 1: and genocide and and uh come back to the idea
Speaker 1: of uh backfiring incentives in general. Yeah, it's on a
Speaker 1: lighter note. All right now, Robert, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the idea of negative incentives. So we've seen the
Speaker 1: idea that positive incentives can backfire. Sometimes they backfire in
Speaker 1: just ways that produce unintended negative consequences. Sometimes they backfire
Speaker 1: in a way that completely contradicts your intention setting out,
Speaker 1: you know, makes the problem worse. But there are also
Speaker 1: negative incentives. Sometimes you want to take steps to prevent
Speaker 1: something from happening and discourage it. But what about when
Speaker 1: that makes the thing you're trying to discourage more likely
Speaker 1: to happen. Here's one model. What if a punishment for
Speaker 1: a discouraged behavior itself becomes desirable in some way, especially
Speaker 1: like a symbol of coolness. So I can think of
Speaker 1: one good potential example of this, And there's a New
Speaker 1: York Times article from two thousand and seven I came
Speaker 1: across describing a problem within the Bangkok Police Department at
Speaker 1: the time. So department officials were, according to this article,
Speaker 1: trying to put a stop to misbehavior among the rank
Speaker 1: and file officers. So if you park in the wrong spot,
Speaker 1: if you show up for work late, if you get
Speaker 1: caught littering, etcetera. You know, there's some bad behavior among
Speaker 1: the cops and they're trying to disincentivize it. And the
Speaker 1: disincentive they came up with to stop this behavior was
Speaker 1: a form of a badge of shame, you know, like
Speaker 1: the red letter. You get to wear something that lets
Speaker 1: people know that you have behaved badly, and what they
Speaker 1: chose was a Tartan arm band. Unfortunately, this policy seemed
Speaker 1: to backfire and the officers ended up regarding the disciplinary
Speaker 1: arm band as collectible souvenirs to take home with them,
Speaker 1: So the badge of shame became a minor badge of honor.
Speaker 1: And in in trying to work around this problem, They're
Speaker 1: there chief of the crime Suppression division at the time,
Speaker 1: came up with Instead of Tartan arm bands, they used
Speaker 1: these Hello Kitty arm bands, hoping this would be seen
Speaker 1: as sort of a humiliating affront to the officer's sense
Speaker 1: of power and masculinity. I'm not sure how well that
Speaker 1: worked out in the end, but anyway, this one very
Speaker 1: small example illustrates the principle that a poorly conceived disincentive
Speaker 1: can not only fail to provide discouragement of a target behavior,
Speaker 1: it could potentially even increase the behavior if the disincentive
Speaker 1: comes to be seen as having some kind of value. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe that could be some kind of monetary or material value,
Speaker 1: or maybe it could just be some kind of cred
Speaker 1: or social capital coolness. There's certainly a sense of countercultural coolness, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like if if a certain kind of shaming
Speaker 1: can be taken with pride. Yeah, like, oh it's too
Speaker 1: extreme for TV, too hot for for prime time. If
Speaker 1: it's too hot for prime time, I've got to see it.
Speaker 1: How hot could this be? Right? But then, of course
Speaker 1: there are also examples where you could maybe have a
Speaker 1: material advantage. For example, I think I think about supposed
Speaker 1: tax schemes that reward people for making failed business investments,
Speaker 1: you know, supposedly like you can you can if you
Speaker 1: finance a really bad movie that bombs or something, you
Speaker 1: can end up manipulating your taxes in such a way
Speaker 1: that you end up with more money because the thing
Speaker 1: you financed bombed. Kind of a producer's scenario, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's really the case in any
Speaker 1: country today, but I've at least heard accusations that that
Speaker 1: is how some very bad films of the past few
Speaker 1: decades got financing. Don't know whether it's true. But there's
Speaker 1: another version of this I want to talk about, and
Speaker 1: that is the case of censorship. I think censorship is
Speaker 1: a classic example of attempts to stop a problem causing
Speaker 1: the opposite of the intended effect of the problem. Is
Speaker 1: there is a message or a meme or an idea
Speaker 1: or you know, anything that is spreading content that you
Speaker 1: don't want disseminated, and attempting to stop the dissemination of
Speaker 1: that content very very often seems to have the opposite
Speaker 1: of the intended effect. Yeah, it just makes you want
Speaker 1: to see it or hear it or read it. If
Speaker 1: the man's telling me not to consume it, I kind
Speaker 1: of want to consume it, at least to see what
Speaker 1: the fuss is all about exactly. So there is a
Speaker 1: I found a Mercury News article from way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand three describing the event that inspired what's now
Speaker 1: known as the Streisand Effect. I assume you've heard of this, Robberty.
Speaker 1: I had not. Actually I'm familiar with Barbara Streisand, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with the streisand effec. Well, that is
Speaker 1: indeed the title celebrity behind this effect. So here's how
Speaker 1: the story went. So there's an environmentalist photographer named Ken Edelman,
Speaker 1: not the same as the political operative, but he was
Speaker 1: operating a website that I think at the time was
Speaker 1: called California Coastline dot org. California coastline dot org dot
Speaker 1: org is still up, I checked. And the purpose of
Speaker 1: this was to photograph many, many miles of the California
Speaker 1: coast to have before and after pictures of coastal development projects,
Speaker 1: to tract sort of coastline erosion and other potentially destructive
Speaker 1: effects of building projects along the coast. So it's almost
Speaker 1: kind of like a Google Maps scenario where they're just
Speaker 1: gonna take a whole bunch of pictures to give an
Speaker 1: overall visual impression of something. Yeah, And I think the
Speaker 1: reasoning was that, so if you know you have a
Speaker 1: project come in build a bunch of stuff on the coast,
Speaker 1: you might think that they have been destructive to the
Speaker 1: coastal ecosystem, but you don't exactly no, because you don't
Speaker 1: have a picture of what it looked like before they build.
Speaker 1: But now you've got before and after photos. But apparently
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, the actress Barbara Streisand discovered that
Speaker 1: the site featured a photograph of her ocean front home
Speaker 1: in Malibu, and she felt this was an invasion of
Speaker 1: her privacy and filed a ten million dollar lawsuit to
Speaker 1: to have the photograph and references to her removed from
Speaker 1: the site or taken down. And before her lawsuit, it
Speaker 1: appears that the photo of her home was not not
Speaker 1: a big hit. It was accessed by only a handful
Speaker 1: of site visitors. But in the month after the suit
Speaker 1: was filed, according to this two thousand three article, more
Speaker 1: than four hundred and twenty thousand people visited the California
Speaker 1: coast Line site, presumably to see what all the fuss
Speaker 1: was about. Now, I I don't know what their traffic
Speaker 1: was before that month. It was a you know, coastal
Speaker 1: Coastal Photographs project in two thousand three, I can guess
Speaker 1: that it was not anywhere near fo any thousand visitors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably only the hottest websites out there, right. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one example. But are there any other examples of
Speaker 1: this strisand effect where the attempt to shut down discussion
Speaker 1: or or to hide evidence of something just draws more
Speaker 1: and more attention to it. I can definitely think of
Speaker 1: the example of Boycott's movie. Boycott's So, let's say we've
Speaker 1: got a new awesome demonic Possession movie coming out, and
Speaker 1: it's got tons of graphics, sex and violence and blasphemy,
Speaker 1: just wall to wall, and you get a bunch of
Speaker 1: church groups who call for a boycott of the film.
Speaker 1: They go stand outside theaters to protest it. Does this
Speaker 1: end up hurting the film's ticket sales or discouraging filmmakers
Speaker 1: from making movies like this in the future. Well, it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to say, because you can't go back in
Speaker 1: time and compare the film success under a boycott and
Speaker 1: protest with the success of the same film under normal conditions.
Speaker 1: Like you can't run the experiment with a control It
Speaker 1: happened in reality, um, and there's no way to control
Speaker 1: the experiment, but it is widely speculated. And I'm quite
Speaker 1: sure I'd agree that these kinds of responses more often
Speaker 1: have the opposite of the intended effect, generating more publicity
Speaker 1: for an interest in the movie. Yeah, Like, I can
Speaker 1: definitely think of films that were considered video nasties in
Speaker 1: the UK that we became underground hits, and we're the
Speaker 1: kind of things you go to kind of great links
Speaker 1: to get on video casset back in the day. Uh,
Speaker 1: And you look at them today now that kind of
Speaker 1: the you know, you can get anything. You can actually
Speaker 1: find these films that you heard about and having such
Speaker 1: notorious histories, and you you watch them. In many cases
Speaker 1: they're just they're they're horrible. There's just nothing. They're not
Speaker 1: even that shocking. But the mere fact that they were
Speaker 1: labeled as such, that they were banned, that they were
Speaker 1: prohibited and made this video nasties list, they they end
Speaker 1: up surviving, end up becoming far more famous than they
Speaker 1: had any right to be. Yeah. Uh yeah, the insistence
Speaker 1: that you must not look at a thing really increases
Speaker 1: your curiosity. Yeah. I mean there's plenty of people today
Speaker 1: who are seeking out and watching some really terrible, low
Speaker 1: budget Italian horror films and finding themselves very disappointed because
Speaker 1: they don't match up to the reputation they had acquired
Speaker 1: over the years. So here's the idea I have about
Speaker 1: how to how to turn the strisand effect into money. Okay, uh,
Speaker 1: if there aren't marketing and pr firms that already specialize
Speaker 1: in this, I suspect actually maybe there are, we just
Speaker 1: don't know about them. There should be, and what they
Speaker 1: should do is you come to them with a movie
Speaker 1: or you know, any kind of media property that you're
Speaker 1: trying to generate interest in, and what they do is
Speaker 1: put that thing in front of people who they know
Speaker 1: will hate it, and our activist in nature who start
Speaker 1: to generate a boycotting or censoring, calling for censorship kind
Speaker 1: of reaction to it. And then that of course draws
Speaker 1: in you know, all this curiosity. Oh, people are saying, well,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't look at this thing. I wonder what it is.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, send out screeners of the Exorcism film.
Speaker 1: You're talking about two church groups. Yeah, to to whoever
Speaker 1: is the most conservative and censorious person who would hate it?
Speaker 1: Or you could do it the other way around. Really
Speaker 1: you could be uh, I guess use using something that
Speaker 1: would be offensive to any group, and almost anything might
Speaker 1: be offensive to somebody, right, Yeah, I mean I can.
Speaker 1: I can think of several cases, none of I'm not
Speaker 1: going to mention any of their names because they don't
Speaker 1: deserve any more publicity. But there are several individuals who
Speaker 1: have who you know, continue to seek out that notoriety
Speaker 1: for their creations, to create things purely to just sicken
Speaker 1: and piss people off. And that that's there the whole
Speaker 1: appeal like that there's thinking about a film about a
Speaker 1: mini segmented creature. Uh, yeah, that's one that comes to mind,
Speaker 1: Like that's I think that's a clear case of a
Speaker 1: guy who like, there's nothing at the heart of anything.
Speaker 1: There's nothing artistically pure, there's nothing creative, there's nothing nothing
Speaker 1: even fun, not nothing fun or even all that shocking
Speaker 1: per se. In a grander scheme, there's certainly more shocking
Speaker 1: pieces of cinema out there that have been created by
Speaker 1: by by actual artists, but it's just the storm that
Speaker 1: they're able to to to raise up around those creations
Speaker 1: and then make it like a part of our culture,
Speaker 1: you know, just empty cynical bids for attention. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I think the takeaway from this is
Speaker 1: that there does seem to be almost no surer way
Speaker 1: to draw attention to something than to try to prevent
Speaker 1: people from seeing it, almost like any attempt to manipulate
Speaker 1: the attention that we give to something, be it negative
Speaker 1: or positive, Like it's just it's so easy, Like we
Speaker 1: think that it's going to be easy to economically manipulate
Speaker 1: something or even you know, through censorship, manipulate the scenario,
Speaker 1: manipulate the way we interact with something. But it's just
Speaker 1: such a complicated affair. It's just we're gonna, we're gonna
Speaker 1: over flow the tub either way. I think people do
Speaker 1: just have a sort of contrarian they tore where we
Speaker 1: want to try to uh upset the narrative of the
Speaker 1: institutional authority. I think about this with so the strisand
Speaker 1: effect definitely occurs with brands. You know, you'll have a
Speaker 1: an article or a meme or something like that that
Speaker 1: makes Coca Cola or Pepsi or McDonald's or something look bad,
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll try to shut it down, you know,
Speaker 1: no more than this, and that just doesn't work, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just draws more attention to it. And it especially
Speaker 1: happens when you see these uh you know these like
Speaker 1: social media crowdsourcing message campaigns, like I can't remember what
Speaker 1: any of these hashtags are, but you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. It will be like hashtag uh coke feelings,
Speaker 1: and Coca Cola is trying to get you to do
Speaker 1: free advertising for them on your social media page. But
Speaker 1: of course people respond to it with stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: diabetes or whatever. And I can just tell any time
Speaker 1: a brand tries to shut down those sort of mischievous
Speaker 1: responses to their campaign. They're just gonna make people want
Speaker 1: to do it more. Yeah. Indeed, you see that almost
Speaker 1: on a weekly basis these days. Yeah. All right, so
Speaker 1: there you have it. We went from cobras and rats
Speaker 1: and pigs to the horrors of scalp hunting, and then
Speaker 1: back into the world of censorship. Um. So hopefully we
Speaker 1: gave you a lot to consider in terms of the
Speaker 1: cobra effect here. I think this makes me want to
Speaker 1: hear what your thoughts are you out there, the listener,
Speaker 1: What what your thoughts are about the nature of incentives?
Speaker 1: How do you actually guide people's behavior in a reliable
Speaker 1: way that doesn't produce these unintended and perverse consequences? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean really, we can hear from just about anybody
Speaker 1: on this. Are you a pet owner? Are you a parent?
Speaker 1: Are you a boss? Are you at all involved in
Speaker 1: or at least a close follower of politics? Are you
Speaker 1: a government policymaker? Yeah? Yeah, what happens when you start
Speaker 1: trying to push an issue with a you know, stick
Speaker 1: with some money stuck on the end of it to
Speaker 1: get the results you need? YEA, let us know I'm
Speaker 1: sure some carrots work better than others. Yeah. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many different types of carrots, so many different types
Speaker 1: of sticks. Sometimes you just end up with no carrots
Speaker 1: or a horse that likes to be poked with the stick.
Speaker 1: I don't know how do we get there? Okay? Sorry, alright?
Speaker 1: So hey you wanna you wanna get in touch with
Speaker 1: us you want to share your thoughts on this topic
Speaker 1: or others. First of all, head on over to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com newly redesigned. It's looking great.
Speaker 1: Um easy to interact with. You'll find that again. It's
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Along with the
Speaker 1: various links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Instagram.
Speaker 1: We are Blow the Mind on most of those, and
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this directly
Speaker 1: to let us know feedback on this episode or any others,
Speaker 1: or to give us a suggestion for a topic we
Speaker 1: should cover in the future, you can email us directly
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com? Pay bigger, I think
Speaker 1: the biggest man. I do