Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And the new episode this week is about happiness and
Speaker 1: the big question can money buy any happiness? This episode, however,
Speaker 1: is going to be a little something from the way
Speaker 1: Back Machine, one of one from our seven Deadly Sin
Speaker 1: series about greed and the science of creed and well,
Speaker 1: so we decided to replay this episode because there are
Speaker 1: obvious connections between between greed and what we take for
Speaker 1: greed and human behavior and that, uh, and the idea
Speaker 1: that money is going to give us happiness and that
Speaker 1: the things that we that we want are going to
Speaker 1: make us happy. Yeah, that's right. So we thought this
Speaker 1: would compliment the next episode. In the meantime, as you
Speaker 1: listen to this, you are going to hear us talk
Speaker 1: a bit about the jerky behavior of luxury car drivers,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to mention that there's a newer study
Speaker 1: out two thousand and thirteen that actually pinpoints seat design
Speaker 1: is the possible culprit for behaviors from luxury drivers like
Speaker 1: running stop signs and so on. And so forth. Turns
Speaker 1: out that the seats are more expansive. And if you
Speaker 1: think back to one of our episodes on expansive postures
Speaker 1: and how they can make a person feel more powerful
Speaker 1: like a king on a laid back on a throne. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: as some luxury cars have that kind of seating, that
Speaker 1: throne like seating, then you can kind of see how
Speaker 1: that might actually change someone's behavior in the car. Interesting. So,
Speaker 1: the individual who is in a fancy car is in
Speaker 1: a fancy seat, and that fancy seat allows them to
Speaker 1: to lounge about and feel superior to everyone else else
Speaker 1: around them. That's right, I'm so fancy. I don't need
Speaker 1: this stop sign that I think that's the thought bubble. Now.
Speaker 1: You were telling me when you encounter jerky rider, you
Speaker 1: you have a reaction that lignes up with this research.
Speaker 1: If I'm driving on the highway and I generally speed
Speaker 1: anyway and there's someone behind me who's super close, I
Speaker 1: tend to reach out and put my my arm reach
Speaker 1: it across the other seat. As if you know, I'm
Speaker 1: on a date and I'm the alpha male, and I've
Speaker 1: noticed my behavior in doing this, and I think that
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to signal like I'm not intimidated. So
Speaker 1: maybe there's something here to that. It brings to mind
Speaker 1: two things. First, there there might I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: an added level of them having poor posture in these
Speaker 1: in these reclined positions, and maybe if they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're all lounged back, they're also less happy and less
Speaker 1: uh you know, less less secure in themselves as they're driving,
Speaker 1: whereas somebody that's in a less comfortable seat is maybe
Speaker 1: setting up a little more straight with their with their
Speaker 1: chest puffed out, and maybe they're they're gonna have a
Speaker 1: little more a little more confidence and only just less
Speaker 1: lucky to the lash out of those around them. Maybe
Speaker 1: unless greedy. Perhaps maybe let's find out the third circle
Speaker 1: of Dante's Inferno is where the glutton of hang out,
Speaker 1: and the fourth circle is where the greedy hang out.
Speaker 1: To be more specific, this is the circle of avarice
Speaker 1: and prodigality. It's it's interesting Dante is really down on greed.
Speaker 1: It's not like one of these sins like lust, which
Speaker 1: he has a lot of sympathy for. Well, because he's human,
Speaker 1: yeah right, yeah, he has like he has a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathy for some of the individuals. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm getting too. He hasn't he has needs. But when
Speaker 1: he encounters the greedy, he's it's it's a lot harsher.
Speaker 1: He divides it up. You have the prodigal and the
Speaker 1: more typically miserly greedy. So the prodigal, they're reckless spenders.
Speaker 1: It's coming in and it's it's going out twice as fast.
Speaker 1: I think that's something we can all, if not relate
Speaker 1: to personally, we can, we can we definitely witness in
Speaker 1: the world around us. And then you have the the
Speaker 1: truly greedy, the hoarders and the misers, the ones that
Speaker 1: take the money, hold the money, that are just in
Speaker 1: it for the money itself. Okay. And so when Dante
Speaker 1: and his guy Virgil show up an inferno, first of all,
Speaker 1: they're greeted by Plutus, which is the god of riches,
Speaker 1: with a little a little pluto, god of the underworld
Speaker 1: thrown in because you know, the underworld, underground, that's where
Speaker 1: gold and silver come from. And he's beast, he always
Speaker 1: full of rage, and he's babbling and he's saying poppy Satan,
Speaker 1: poppy Satan, Nalipi which is kind of just nobody. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion about what in the heck that means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, like poppy Satan sounds a little poppy
Speaker 1: Satan pop Satan. Yeah, I mean there's a sense like
Speaker 1: maybe it's something papal, because certainly there's a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion of sinful popes in the Inferno and then Satan
Speaker 1: of course. But but this is actually one of the
Speaker 1: few instances where Satan is actually mentioned, because when you
Speaker 1: actually encounter the big demon himself the bottom of Inferno,
Speaker 1: he's referred to as Lucifer. So anyway, back to these centers,
Speaker 1: so you have the spin Thrifts and the Misers, and
Speaker 1: they're all first of all, they're all so abby you
Speaker 1: can't even recognize them, Like Dante is all like, I'm
Speaker 1: probably gonna look around here, I'm gonna know some people
Speaker 1: that I met know from life, and that your Italian
Speaker 1: accent very mildly. Your Italian is much better. And the
Speaker 1: Virgils like, now you're not gonna You're not gonna recognize anybody,
Speaker 1: because everyone's so twisted here from their lives, from their
Speaker 1: their earthly lives full of greed and and overspending that
Speaker 1: you're just not gonna be able to reckon? Is that
Speaker 1: part of the punishment? Um, it's not as much a
Speaker 1: part of the punishment. It's just kind of like the
Speaker 1: reality of the like the like spiritually there deformed from
Speaker 1: this life of the task. The punishment itself is that
Speaker 1: they have there. It's kind of a joust between the
Speaker 1: spinthrifts and the greedy, except instead of having like you know,
Speaker 1: swords or spears or any kind of typical jousting equipment,
Speaker 1: they are rolling large objects against each other using only
Speaker 1: like their chests. And if you look at the illustrations
Speaker 1: provided by good staff Dora, the large objects that they're
Speaker 1: jousting with their giant money bags. So if you imagine
Speaker 1: these these hideous looking like naked people and they're all
Speaker 1: sort of like pushing big money bags, rolling them around
Speaker 1: with their chest into each other and arguing with each
Speaker 1: other and calling each other's other names, and so there
Speaker 1: there there are no demons um staffed here to punish
Speaker 1: these guys. They provide their own punishment to each other. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's like a scene from Eyes Wide Shut Well no, no, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, Okay, maybe more accessible is the illustration
Speaker 1: that you sent me, and it showed a lucky cat
Speaker 1: a mountain, and the mountain was there was a little
Speaker 1: trail going to the very top with a lucky cat
Speaker 1: is perched, and there's mice with big hunks of cheese
Speaker 1: weighing them down as they bring it to the lucky cat. Yes,
Speaker 1: I will, I will link to this in the blog
Speaker 1: post that goes with this podcast, and cause you're interested
Speaker 1: in saying that. But there there are many artistic interpretations.
Speaker 1: And now if one goes into Dante's purgatory and this
Speaker 1: again is the mountain that connects Earth to the to
Speaker 1: the heaven, and well, you're you're you're complicating the matter
Speaker 1: with lucky cat. At this point, there's no lucky cat
Speaker 1: in this thing. It's just a mountain. It connects Earth
Speaker 1: and hell beneath it to the heavens above. And if
Speaker 1: you travel up the mountain, each terrace purges you of
Speaker 1: a sin so that you'll be clean enough to enter heaven.
Speaker 1: So the fifth terrace is where you would purge yourself
Speaker 1: of all this greed, and you do it by lying
Speaker 1: lying face down on a hard rock floor, weeping and
Speaker 1: praying until the greed has washed away from you. That's
Speaker 1: your punishment. Yeah, it's kind of It's not a punishment, remember,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a cleansing. Okay, seems kind of weak sauce.
Speaker 1: It is. It is kind of weak sauce. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe Dante just wasn't bringing his a game when thinking
Speaker 1: about greed. He's really down on it. But it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not like they're like, you know, boiling rivers of
Speaker 1: blood and feces. They're just dudes in hell pushing bags
Speaker 1: of money against each other. And and here a lot
Speaker 1: of people pray. So the eyes being soon shut as
Speaker 1: in with v right, and there's some gas ler ones ahead.
Speaker 1: But um, let's look to Buddhism real quick again before
Speaker 1: we get into the real science of all this. In Buddhism, greed,
Speaker 1: along with delusion, slash, ignorance, and hate, is one of
Speaker 1: the three poisons at the heart of all suffering. So
Speaker 1: if you look at the center of the Tibetan wheel
Speaker 1: of life, the wheel of sam Sorrow, which we have
Speaker 1: an excellent interactive illustration of in the How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: article how sky Burial Works, if you look at the
Speaker 1: center of this wheel, you'll find three animals, a pig,
Speaker 1: a cock, and a snake, and they are all biting
Speaker 1: each other's tails, forming a ring. And each of these
Speaker 1: three animals represents one of the three poisons. The snake
Speaker 1: is hate, the pig is delusion or ignorance, you see
Speaker 1: it referred to as is either, and then the cock
Speaker 1: represents greed. It's interesting how Buddhism greed is very central
Speaker 1: to everything that is wrong with life here on earth.
Speaker 1: And just as a side note, some people are really
Speaker 1: into like crazy burgers. I think it would be it
Speaker 1: would be fascinating if someone were too concoct a burger
Speaker 1: that contains three meats snake meat, pig meat, and rooster meat.
Speaker 1: And then you could have it be the the three
Speaker 1: poison burger or the the burger that is the root
Speaker 1: of all suffering. Well, isn't there already the true ducan?
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that your're duncan, except um, it's
Speaker 1: responsible for all of man's woes. Okay, so it's more
Speaker 1: of a some and it'd probably be a pretty heavy
Speaker 1: launch too. Yeah, And just throwing that out there, if
Speaker 1: anyone wants to create such a blasphemy or if if
Speaker 1: you know, next Thanksgiving when that rolls are in. You
Speaker 1: can't take your tree duc in, which is a turkey, chicken,
Speaker 1: and duck all roll together, right, and you can offer
Speaker 1: it up as a way to consume the sins of
Speaker 1: the past year. Yeah, because I think that would go
Speaker 1: over really well at Thanksgiving table. You know, people don't
Speaker 1: think about that. So that's kind of the there's the
Speaker 1: religious introduction, and both of these examples are very down
Speaker 1: on the idea of greed. But it is this poisonous thing.
Speaker 1: It is this this awful thing that that distorts the
Speaker 1: soul and renders us unrecognizable in the afterlife, that is
Speaker 1: responsible for all of this pain around us. But then
Speaker 1: there's another way of looking at it, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you write a more materialistic view. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: Gordon Gecko? Yes, read from us from the book of
Speaker 1: of Gecko. Alright, Gordon Gecko, the character in Wall Street.
Speaker 1: We're talking to high eighties here, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can do a Michael Douglas voice. The point is,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, greed is good, Greed works, Greed is right.
Speaker 1: Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the
Speaker 1: evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, money, love,
Speaker 1: knowledge has marked the upward surge in mankind and greed.
Speaker 1: Mark my words. We'll say you've not only telled our
Speaker 1: paper that the other malfunctioning corporation called the U s
Speaker 1: a W. Yeah, well, okay also fights stains. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I've got a greed stick at home. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, this is an idea that isn't
Speaker 1: too far away from reality and certain eras of our existence.
Speaker 1: Certainly in nineteen eighties, you know, accumulation of wealth is
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people are concentrating on, and
Speaker 1: there is this idea that greed is this sort of
Speaker 1: evolutionary birthright that we can't evolve without continuing to amass
Speaker 1: more and more and sort of step over each other
Speaker 1: in order to get to it. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: you can go with the I mean, the classic argument
Speaker 1: that stuff like Indian greed, these are the motivating forces
Speaker 1: of ambition, and we need ambition in life. Like on
Speaker 1: some level, greed maybe is good because I need things
Speaker 1: to live, right, I need a little money and a
Speaker 1: little more is maybe even a little better, So I
Speaker 1: should want those things, right, yeah, but it's the excess part, right, Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's this guy named Andrew Low, and he's the
Speaker 1: Harris and Harris Group professor m I T and the
Speaker 1: director of its Laboratory for Financial Engineering. And in a
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine interview with Freakonomics, he commented on
Speaker 1: the unprecedented air of wealth just recently that we have, right, um,
Speaker 1: and he said that quote extended periods of prosperity act
Speaker 1: as an anesthetic and human brain. Okay, so that's here's
Speaker 1: one reason why greed isn't so grand. Right. Essentially, he's
Speaker 1: saying that all of us who were trading in on
Speaker 1: the real estate based financial bubble, we're in a quote
Speaker 1: drug induced stupor that causes us to take risks that
Speaker 1: we know we should avoid. He's saying basically that monetary
Speaker 1: gain and we've we've seen this before, certainly in the
Speaker 1: laboratory is uh. It stimulates the same reward securitary as cocaine.
Speaker 1: And in both cases, again we've talked about this, you know,
Speaker 1: over and over in terms of this, and since dopamine
Speaker 1: is released into the nucleus incumbents um and then the
Speaker 1: opposite of this, this is really interesting. Financial loss activates
Speaker 1: the same fight or flight circuitry as physical attacks, releasing
Speaker 1: adrenaline in the cortisol in the bloodstream. So I mean,
Speaker 1: here you have different sides of the coin, but certainly
Speaker 1: you've got dopamine and you've got madrinaline on the other side,
Speaker 1: and all of this is tied to finance. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the Again, he's in the drug example,
Speaker 1: a young man takes cocaine and then writes a really
Speaker 1: horrible song or it gets a really or is really
Speaker 1: into an idea that is just dreadful. Likewise, a young
Speaker 1: man who has a financial success for a short amount
Speaker 1: of time. During that success, everything is so great he decides,
Speaker 1: I'm going to buy a sailboat, right right, I mean anything,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna blow my money on this, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spend it on this. I'm gonna do this because
Speaker 1: things are great. This couldn't possibly wear off. And of
Speaker 1: course both individuals quickly find that, uh, the sensation does
Speaker 1: wear off, right, I mean, basically, this is deadening that
Speaker 1: part of your brain that meaning not literally deadening, but
Speaker 1: certainly the part of your brain that is thinking about
Speaker 1: the long term is now offline, and you know your
Speaker 1: short term brain is like, hey, do whatever, Like let's
Speaker 1: go buy a boat. It sounds like a great idea. Um,
Speaker 1: So it would make sense that in terms of economics,
Speaker 1: there's something happening in the brain that really feeds into greed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this question comes up, greed. Everybody is greedy to
Speaker 1: to some extent or another. Right, Um, but who could
Speaker 1: be the greediest jerks out there? Is there is there
Speaker 1: natural answer to that question? Who could be? Or who
Speaker 1: who might be? Who might be? Who might be? Like
Speaker 1: who out there in the world is the greediest jerk? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well one would. I mean, if you go on with
Speaker 1: the stereotype, you're looking at people like your Gordon geckos,
Speaker 1: like your Scrooge McDuck's a lot, you know, the individuals
Speaker 1: that have so much. It's an addiction, you know, like
Speaker 1: the money and the money unto itself, is an addiction. Okay,
Speaker 1: So bingo wealth corrupting? Right, And you're right, this is
Speaker 1: you know, somewhat of a cliche. But there are some
Speaker 1: scientists who decided to put this to the test or
Speaker 1: whether psychologists Paul piff of the University of California at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: He conducted seven different studies that the seven different scenarios
Speaker 1: really testing out socio economic levels and ethics, wondering if
Speaker 1: indeed wealth corrupts. And I'm just gonna highlight a couple
Speaker 1: of them because I think that they're interesting, but I
Speaker 1: should point out and that all seven scenarios, the overwhelming
Speaker 1: evidence is that people with higher socio economic levels tend
Speaker 1: to have uh dodgy ethics, or that that was the
Speaker 1: conclusion that was drawn from this um There was a
Speaker 1: study in which uh PIF and his team monitored traffic
Speaker 1: at a four waist stop in San Francisco, and they
Speaker 1: noted all the makes and the models of automobiles because
Speaker 1: that's a really good indicator of your socio economic level
Speaker 1: usually right, Um, so guests who more often than not
Speaker 1: cut the other drivers off the fancy cars fancy cars,
Speaker 1: I mean overwhelmingly. Okay. So then there's another study that
Speaker 1: they did, and this was they had test takers asked
Speaker 1: to imagine themselves being very rich or very poor and
Speaker 1: then given an opportunity to take candy from a jar
Speaker 1: that would next be delivered to children in another lab.
Speaker 1: Like really like taking candy from from a baby. Right, see,
Speaker 1: all I can think it is a Simpsons episode where
Speaker 1: though of course that Mr Burns is another I mean,
Speaker 1: if not a few examples of the stereotypically rich, misurely
Speaker 1: awful person who's been totally corrupted by wealth. But there's
Speaker 1: an episode, of course where he he actually steals or
Speaker 1: attempts to steal candy from a baby. Well, right, there
Speaker 1: you go. He in this study certainly would have borne
Speaker 1: out the results. But so again here here you see
Speaker 1: the people who are imagining themselves is very rich somehow
Speaker 1: distancing themselves from their action and saying and taking asually
Speaker 1: more candy than the other people who imagine themselves is
Speaker 1: very poor. H And again seven of these different scenarios. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you'd have to have many more studies in order
Speaker 1: to have more conclusive data on this, I think. But
Speaker 1: I think at least it gives us an idea of
Speaker 1: the direction of what happens when you are exposed to
Speaker 1: extreme wealth and the sort of distancing that you experience.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sure that the lab full of
Speaker 1: babies or children actually need that candy, though, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I have to say I thought that too, because I
Speaker 1: thought well I might be. Okay, you know what those
Speaker 1: two roles, that kid doesn't need it, nobody has to
Speaker 1: go to the dentist. And what kind of candy is it?
Speaker 1: Because there's there's candy, and there's candy. Like if it's
Speaker 1: if it's like um, you know, the office bank suckers
Speaker 1: or candy corn, then by all means like other children
Speaker 1: have it. But if it's upscale candy that's clearly designed
Speaker 1: for a more sophisticated adult palette, then then I'm not
Speaker 1: sure taking it is really the best. I agree, I agree, Um.
Speaker 1: But there there's this evolutionary psychologist and he's a consumer
Speaker 1: researcher in his name is Vladists of the University of Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and he says this work is important because it suggests
Speaker 1: that people often act unethically, not because they are desperate
Speaker 1: and in the dumps, but because they feel entitled and
Speaker 1: they want to get ahead. Okay, so that exactly what
Speaker 1: I just did. I laid out my entitlement for the
Speaker 1: fancy candy, that the that this candy would be lost
Speaker 1: on these children, and therefore I'm i a am doing
Speaker 1: them a favor because they don't need it, and be
Speaker 1: I am the intended audience for this candy. So I've
Speaker 1: already I've already rationalized stealing candy from a baby. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a great day in my life. You know what,
Speaker 1: all your gold rings with your diamonds were kind of
Speaker 1: shining pretty rightly. Can you kind of just take a
Speaker 1: couple off their Mr Money bags? Um? Okay? So what
Speaker 1: is the opposite of greed, Well, not necessarily opposite, but
Speaker 1: a reaction that you might have to greed, revulsion, a
Speaker 1: sense of injustice. Right, Because we were discussing this the
Speaker 1: other day, like, like, there's something particularly foul about greed,
Speaker 1: especially when we I mean well pretty much only when
Speaker 1: we glimpsed it in others, because when we glimpse it
Speaker 1: in ourselves, we tend to, like everything else, we tend
Speaker 1: to find more enlightened ways of of understanding it or
Speaker 1: lying to ourselves about it. You know. But when you
Speaker 1: see greed in another person, it's like, I mean it
Speaker 1: all bows send the money right and money on on
Speaker 1: a on a very crucial level, it's not real. Like
Speaker 1: even when you're dealing with like gold coins, it's just
Speaker 1: it's all it's all ultimately kind of arbitrary. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: there's there's a great deal of numbers and mathematics backing
Speaker 1: it up, but it's all and none of it is real,
Speaker 1: you know. And then when when we when we when
Speaker 1: we raise that this abstract thing, this unreal thing, above
Speaker 1: everything else that is real in life, when we place
Speaker 1: this in this this made up money, above the heads
Speaker 1: of very real people, it's terrifying and awful and absurd.
Speaker 1: Right well, when the fantasy of this, right, it becomes
Speaker 1: grotesque and you can't really see the reality around you, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it clouds your vision of your ability to
Speaker 1: actually accurately since what's going on around you. That's when
Speaker 1: I when I think, you know, you make decisions that
Speaker 1: perhaps and other people creates this of disgust, because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you become this person who is a
Speaker 1: caricature yourself to a certain degree. There's something called the
Speaker 1: ultimatum game, and it's interesting the premises. Okay, I have
Speaker 1: ten dollars that I can share with you, Robert Land,
Speaker 1: anyway I choose. Okay, if you accept my offer, then
Speaker 1: we both keep my proposed shares. If you reject my offer,
Speaker 1: neither of us sees any of the money. Wait now,
Speaker 1: what's the offer? Okay, um, okay, have ten dollars, I
Speaker 1: will give you a quarter a quarter of the money
Speaker 1: or just what do I have to do? Do you
Speaker 1: mean you just can you can take or you can
Speaker 1: leave it. Well, in that case, I would take it
Speaker 1: because is better than no money. Right, you are so rational,
Speaker 1: But most people would actually reject it. Huh yeah, because
Speaker 1: you would think like the rational thing to do is
Speaker 1: to say, like, um, you know, sure, now we're both
Speaker 1: richer for this, right, But there's a sense of injustice
Speaker 1: going on, like someone might think, that's not really why
Speaker 1: are you keeping and I'm getting but I didn't do
Speaker 1: anything to earn it. You just you have ten dollars,
Speaker 1: you're giving me twenty cents and I'm and and if
Speaker 1: you give me that cents, I'm halfway to getting something
Speaker 1: out of the office snack machine. All I have to
Speaker 1: do is find one more quarter and I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: rolling in granola bar. Okay, Well, if you were a normal,
Speaker 1: flawed person, you would say, no, I'm going to penalize
Speaker 1: you for your stinginess. No, I'm not gonna like neither
Speaker 1: of us are going to get anything, right. That's weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So even Ian, it's understandable, like I can totally I
Speaker 1: can totally get it. Yeah, like I have. And it
Speaker 1: is in a way, if you think about it, um,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a power structure, right, because if that
Speaker 1: person has the money and they're offering it to you,
Speaker 1: how do you get your power back if you have nothing,
Speaker 1: if you don't have really, uh any choice in the matter. Right,
Speaker 1: So I guess I could I could considerably make the argument, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you you know you're keeping nine five, why
Speaker 1: don't you just give me one quarter more? And then
Speaker 1: I can go ahead and at that granola bar instead.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm tempted. I'm with half. I'm here with half
Speaker 1: a granola bar, basically that I can't eat. Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're gonna get, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You start to think about that, and what happens in
Speaker 1: your brain, Uh, the anterior insula starts to get activated.
Speaker 1: And this is the area associated with negative emotions. And
Speaker 1: this has been seen by Jonathan Cohen, He's a Princeton neuroscientist.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that when you up the amount
Speaker 1: of money, like, for instance, if if I said I
Speaker 1: have twenty three dollars and I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: eight dollars. Then you start to see people go okay,
Speaker 1: well that's that's a little bit fairer, and the part
Speaker 1: of the brain, the the anterior insula, actually starts to
Speaker 1: die down a little bit in terms of activity as
Speaker 1: a way to tamp down this and say, okay, let's
Speaker 1: start to be rational about this, because now the stakes
Speaker 1: are getting a little bit higher. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: more money here, and it really I think it's very
Speaker 1: telling on how we make some portant decisions. Huh. So
Speaker 1: this is definitely the part of the brain is lighting up.
Speaker 1: When you've just had a dinner with those some friends
Speaker 1: at a restaurant and you have to figure out how
Speaker 1: the bill works, or or even when like far before
Speaker 1: the bill comes, say when the guacamole comes out, or
Speaker 1: the pizza's placed on the table and food has to
Speaker 1: be divvied up, I can see that kicking in, you know,
Speaker 1: because you're wondering about how things are going to be
Speaker 1: distributed and parsed out, and then how are they going
Speaker 1: to be paid for? Like even if you're not like
Speaker 1: a stingy kind of person who's counting the slices of
Speaker 1: pizza as they leave the table, like your brain can't
Speaker 1: help but sort of think in those terms, right. Well,
Speaker 1: and they've seen this in babies, they've seen this in
Speaker 1: primates too, that there's a sense of injustice. Study after
Speaker 1: study that people are mentally taking notes on what is
Speaker 1: being parsed out at that time. Well, because I mean,
Speaker 1: we have to live in a community. We have to
Speaker 1: live in some sort of a group. Be at a
Speaker 1: primitive group that is just you know, crawling through the
Speaker 1: grasses and prehistoric times, or a community of people who
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out how in the heck they're
Speaker 1: gonna do the tip with a group on discount at
Speaker 1: a restaurant. Right, Yeah, that's just the recipe for disaster
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, Yeah, the whole group on thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: not to say that I haven't taken advantage of it's great,
Speaker 1: but yes, um, you have to come to some sort
Speaker 1: of point of cooperation. And like you said, that's that's
Speaker 1: what really makes a society. That's that's the glue of it.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, more of the science of greed. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. Why do donuts distract Summer Simpson. Why is
Speaker 1: Hommer Sipson obsessed with with donuts? We had to boil
Speaker 1: this down to a single Oh, I don't know, brain hormone,
Speaker 1: what would it be? Delicious dopamine exactly. Just the mere
Speaker 1: thought of the donut can can result in dopamine release.
Speaker 1: Just the the the anticipation of rewarding yourself with those
Speaker 1: delicious cowards. I have to say, I think I might
Speaker 1: be salivating a little bit right now. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: picturing that. I don't even really eat donuts, but I'm
Speaker 1: picturing that that Simpsons doughnut with the pink I sang
Speaker 1: in the sprinkles. Yeah. Dopamine keeps popping up in these
Speaker 1: podcasts we're doing. I mean, dopamine pops up a lot
Speaker 1: because it's anytime we're trying to figure out neurologically why
Speaker 1: we do the things we do, because dopamine is the
Speaker 1: reward juice, and uh, most of it were not most,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the things we do are about
Speaker 1: releasing that chemical, about achieving the reward. Our life is
Speaker 1: kind of this game, and when we, uh, we actually
Speaker 1: hit the points where we get the achievements, we get
Speaker 1: the dopamine it's not surprisingly would show up here. It
Speaker 1: show it seems to have shown up in all the
Speaker 1: other sense. And it's one of these things that we
Speaker 1: learned a game a long time ago. Primitive man kind
Speaker 1: of figured out what was going on with the dopamine
Speaker 1: and figured out, hey, I can actually cheat and get
Speaker 1: all the dopamine I want. Right, so we end up
Speaker 1: with this whole legacy of bad habits and addictions and
Speaker 1: and sins if you will, And greed seems to play
Speaker 1: especially well with dopamine because it's tied up in three
Speaker 1: of the big needs that we have in life, the
Speaker 1: needs for safety, the need for approval, and the need
Speaker 1: for esteem. Right, we need safety because we want to survive.
Speaker 1: We need approval because we want to live in a
Speaker 1: community d uh. And we need a steam because we
Speaker 1: want to rise up in that community. And money, as
Speaker 1: it happens, and pretty much buy any of those things.
Speaker 1: You have money, you can buy safety for yourself. You
Speaker 1: want to be approved of, You can buy the right clothing,
Speaker 1: you can buy the right lifestyle to do that, and
Speaker 1: if you want to steam as pretty much any stay
Speaker 1: presidential election or or you know, or a political kind
Speaker 1: of gate illustrates you can buy that if you have
Speaker 1: enough money and enough will to invest in it. So
Speaker 1: money is the ultimate dopamine inducer. If money in and
Speaker 1: of itself doesn't create fuel the dopamine, then it can
Speaker 1: buy something that will, which makes sense again why people
Speaker 1: would be chasing that high with with wealth or greed,
Speaker 1: right um. And it actually plays into something that has
Speaker 1: been called the scrabble strategy before, and again we're talking
Speaker 1: about the short term versus the long term, and the
Speaker 1: scrabble strategy is actually called the greedy algorithm. And this
Speaker 1: is a computational mathematics term, and basically it say is
Speaker 1: that you can do well by making whichever move seems
Speaker 1: best at that moment and not worrying too much about
Speaker 1: future consequences. And in mathematics, the greedy algorithm builds up
Speaker 1: a solution piece by piece, always using the next piece
Speaker 1: that offers the most obvious and immediate benefits. So for us, right,
Speaker 1: that would translate to dopamine ding ding ding. Okay. So
Speaker 1: in the scrabble scenario, the the idea here is that
Speaker 1: I get a high number value kyle like an X
Speaker 1: or a Z or something I'm better off holding onto it,
Speaker 1: but instead I play it immediately, right, Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean that is not playing game, right. It's not like
Speaker 1: chess where you have to really consider, you know, three
Speaker 1: moves ahead, you just have to. In scrabble, it really
Speaker 1: is like whatever you have right in front of you
Speaker 1: at that very moment, you have to play and you'll
Speaker 1: you'll benefit from that strategy. So you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: what greed sort of falls into, is this greedy algorithm.
Speaker 1: Although the greedy algorithm obviously isn't sustainable because at some
Speaker 1: point you have to uh, you know, inhabit your future
Speaker 1: rain and start thinking about consequences. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 1: with human lives, the problem is that by the time
Speaker 1: you start realizing you need to play the long game,
Speaker 1: there's not In many cases there's not been much game left.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you didn't see that a lot. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like we said earlier, it's like people end
Speaker 1: up not caring during the rich years, during the bountiful years,
Speaker 1: which are there the grasshopper, right, the grassopper in the
Speaker 1: ant That sounds right because the grasshopper, Yeah, the aunt
Speaker 1: in the fable, right, is is piling away for the
Speaker 1: becoming winter, and the grasshopper is like, whoa, I'm having
Speaker 1: a great time and then it gets cold and the
Speaker 1: ants like I'm set in the Grasshopper dies. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a right from your Rosebud we walked. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't leap to that logic. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that actually plays in all that well, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: He was chasing after greed, Yeah, well he was, he was.
Speaker 1: He is another iconic greedy character. But but yeah, when
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of the of the Plenty, we're
Speaker 1: not thinking about the long game, and it's easier to
Speaker 1: think about the long game when there's not that much
Speaker 1: game left. I don't know if I'm making sense on that. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm getting it. I'm getting if you are obsessed your
Speaker 1: whole life with chasing after the Precious and uh and
Speaker 1: trying to battle do battle with the sneaky little hobbits
Speaker 1: is for the Precious. Well, the Precious was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: It was one of the rings of power. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I you could you kind of have to side with
Speaker 1: Gollum on that one, I know, But the point is
Speaker 1: that that you could you could waste your entire life,
Speaker 1: you know, obsessing over the precious and then you no
Speaker 1: longer have a life. You just have a shiny did
Speaker 1: get to travel pretty well, and he lived a long life.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on here, Robert Lamb. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, you know, greedy got just coming out, don't
Speaker 1: you know, hate on Sneakle too much because you know,
Speaker 1: you got to see the world of mental Earth, and
Speaker 1: you know, and he and he his spoiler, he dies
Speaker 1: by falling into a volcano, which is something I kind
Speaker 1: of want for myself. So okay, So there we are
Speaker 1: revealing something about you right now, into your affinity for snag.
Speaker 1: Like imagine if your if your obituary said something like
Speaker 1: Robert Land has away today when he fell into the
Speaker 1: mountain Doon, Like that's pretty after chasing absolute power. Well,
Speaker 1: now that makes it not kind of sad. I guess
Speaker 1: all right, you've got You've got a point we were
Speaker 1: discussing earlier, like the research into degreed doesn't go quite
Speaker 1: as deep to some of the other ones we've we've
Speaker 1: talked about. Yeah, I was thinking about Dante. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, he's like this is awful. This is bad.
Speaker 1: It's awful, it's bad. But I'm not really going to
Speaker 1: devote a lot of time. Same thing with researchers so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess a lot of its kind of
Speaker 1: surface level comes down to you. We want money because
Speaker 1: money makes a lot of things possible. It allows us
Speaker 1: to have safety, it allows us to to eat, to
Speaker 1: to have shelter, it allows us to move through life.
Speaker 1: So of course we want it. And like with all
Speaker 1: the sins we've looked at, there's like a tipping point
Speaker 1: between like a normal level of wanting money and an
Speaker 1: unbalanced level. You know, what I think would be interesting
Speaker 1: is some research on the super wealthy and wondering there
Speaker 1: or not if you reach a certain point of wealth
Speaker 1: that you become more altruistic and you actually become more ethical.
Speaker 1: That isn't because a number of billionaires have taken that
Speaker 1: pledge to donate a large portion of their their wealth charities.
Speaker 1: And there are for every you know, miserly Scrooge McDuck
Speaker 1: type individual in the world, you can you can generally
Speaker 1: think of someone else who is using their fortune, or
Speaker 1: at least a large portion of their fortune to try
Speaker 1: and do good things and not just as a tax,
Speaker 1: right right, right, So yeah, I would like to see
Speaker 1: more more numbers on that, for sure, because there are
Speaker 1: there are certainly some individuals that really make a case
Speaker 1: for the old adage money corrupts and money is the
Speaker 1: root of all evil. But then there are some individuals
Speaker 1: who seem to stand apart from that and and really
Speaker 1: give us a little hope. Yeah, and and some people
Speaker 1: who I'm sure at four waste uff and they're driving
Speaker 1: a luxury car that that actually, uh, they're not jerks,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let me get that. Let Dante have
Speaker 1: the last word on this though, because there's a lovely
Speaker 1: little line and this is of course translated from the
Speaker 1: Italian and then this is Virgil talking to Dante. He says,
Speaker 1: now you can see, my son, the brief mockery of
Speaker 1: the goods that are committed to fortune, for which the
Speaker 1: human race of squabbles, for all the gold that is
Speaker 1: under the moon and that ever was, could not give
Speaker 1: rest to even one of these weary souls. So that's that,
Speaker 1: as they're looking at the tortures and help. So there
Speaker 1: you go, all right, So there you have it, one
Speaker 1: of our favorite episodes from one of our favorite series.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to hear the other episodes in the
Speaker 1: seven Deadly Sin series. Then be sure to check out
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