Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and m Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you a second dose of one of
Speaker 1: our favorite episodes from last year to dealt with a
Speaker 1: topic that once we brought it up, we could we
Speaker 1: just couldn't stop seeing it. In additional topic, we're talking,
Speaker 1: of course, about super normal stimula. Yeah, that explains so
Speaker 1: much in our daily lives. If you look around and say, ah,
Speaker 1: that is why that thing exists. Yeah, it's some core
Speaker 1: sceptable your mind content. So if you enjoy it the
Speaker 1: first time, enjoy it again if not prepared to have
Speaker 1: your mind on it. Today is an episode of where
Speaker 1: we can call out a particular listener for suggesting it. Yeah, listener, Serena.
Speaker 1: She sent us this excellent life Hacker article about why
Speaker 1: we feel the need to fill our pie holes in
Speaker 1: our eye holes with exaggerated versions of stimuli every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at the startup because you think life Hacker, do
Speaker 1: you think I am? I'm reading a life Hacker article
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be a better equipped to sort
Speaker 1: of make the best out of my day. You know,
Speaker 1: there's kind of an uplifting aspect to that. And so
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I entered into this
Speaker 1: topic with that sort of idea in mind, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a little quirky inside into how we go
Speaker 1: about our daily lives and maybe how you might improve
Speaker 1: it a little bit. But I found this topic to
Speaker 1: be one of the more ultimately disturbing topics that we've
Speaker 1: looked at, like this condemning of of of human nature
Speaker 1: and sort of makes you want to crawl into a
Speaker 1: cave to a certain extent. Yeah, because you're right. The
Speaker 1: premise was like, hey, we all love cheesecake, right, it's delicious,
Speaker 1: it's patty, it's got tons of sugar. But this happens
Speaker 1: to be something called a super normal stimuli. Um. This
Speaker 1: is a term evolutionary biologist used to describe any simulus
Speaker 1: that a listits a response stronger than the stimulus for
Speaker 1: which it evolved, even if it's artificial. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: we like sugar because that's a quick hit of energy.
Speaker 1: We needed that back in the day. Um, but we
Speaker 1: don't need a slice of cheesecake. Yeah, sugar is probably
Speaker 1: the easiest example to to just call out and and
Speaker 1: and generally a well not even really a harmless one,
Speaker 1: but a less harmful version of some of the things
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at here, because the basic ideas, how
Speaker 1: much raw sugar can you find in the natural environment
Speaker 1: if you're a you know, a prehistoric hunter gatherer. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'll find some berries, maybe you'll find some sort of
Speaker 1: a carrot, uh, but you're not gonna find, you know,
Speaker 1: a big sucker, a big dumb, dumb of a whole
Speaker 1: field of TUTSI rolls to feast on. That is super
Speaker 1: normal stimuli. That is a a version of the stimuli
Speaker 1: that we seek as a as an organism, except it
Speaker 1: is it is blown out of proportion. It is the
Speaker 1: crack cocaine of sugar, and certainly crack and heroin, methamphetamines.
Speaker 1: These are these are other examples of of super normal
Speaker 1: stimuli that have had a huge effect on humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in my mind, there's a whole class of desserts called
Speaker 1: porn desserts, you know what I'm talking about. Like there's
Speaker 1: like sixteen layer caramel cakes that are just so huge
Speaker 1: and big and with you know, red frosting, and it's
Speaker 1: so over the top. And we'll be talking about porn
Speaker 1: by the way later on. But it's like such a
Speaker 1: good example, another great example, um of the sort of
Speaker 1: supernormal stimuli, giant eyed dolls or even anime character. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this cute. Yes, we've we've we've recorded
Speaker 1: at least one podcast in the in the past on
Speaker 1: the power of cute and and how cute really taps
Speaker 1: into our our primal instincts to want to care for
Speaker 1: like a small child. And so we end up seeing
Speaker 1: that smash small child's face in a cat in a
Speaker 1: cartoon character. But you look at some of these just
Speaker 1: super cute, hypercute, dangerously cute anime characters or the or
Speaker 1: the or certainly the avatar of this Hello kitty, and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's overpowering. It's cuteness almost beyond our human ability
Speaker 1: to take it in right. And as Dedra Bartlett of,
Speaker 1: a Harvard psychologist and the author of super Normal Stimuli,
Speaker 1: how primal urges overran the revolutionary purposes says, this human
Speaker 1: instinct for food, sex, or even territorial protection, all of
Speaker 1: that is rooted in our instincts evolved, as you say,
Speaker 1: for hunting and gathering. An early man and she says
Speaker 1: that evolution has been unable to keep up with the
Speaker 1: pace of change, this rapid change in the modern life,
Speaker 1: in which a taco bell, Dorito's Loco taco, you know,
Speaker 1: day glo orange in your hand suddenly arrives. Um Our bodies,
Speaker 1: in our minds aren't really unable to water down that instinct,
Speaker 1: that response to that food or that stimulus. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: because that on a basic level, what does the human
Speaker 1: creature need in order to survive? It needs to mate
Speaker 1: and uh and and and report use. It needs to
Speaker 1: take in food, um, it needs to find uh these
Speaker 1: various tastes that please it. It needs protection. It doesn't
Speaker 1: need a lot of things. But then we layer on
Speaker 1: all the complexities of human civilization, our technology, our art,
Speaker 1: our ability to find all the stimuli that we crave,
Speaker 1: and then just just pump them up to an unbelievable degree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bartlett says that as a result, we have a glut
Speaker 1: of larger than life objects, from candy to pornography to
Speaker 1: atomic bombs, that cater to outmoded but persistent drives with
Speaker 1: dangerous results. Indeed, now, in order to fully understand this,
Speaker 1: we have to go to the roots of the term
Speaker 1: supernormal stimuli, which are based in some rather uh simple
Speaker 1: biological principles, which is nice because again, all these these
Speaker 1: human layers of human civilization technology, it complicates the issue.
Speaker 1: But when we look to the animal world we can
Speaker 1: find a far simpler model, and we we find that
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen thirties with the work of Dutch
Speaker 1: Noble laureate Nico Tinbergen. That's right, he is the person
Speaker 1: who coined the term super normal stimuli to describe these
Speaker 1: these uh sort of imitations that appeal to primitive instincts
Speaker 1: and exert stronger attraction than the real thing. So this biologist,
Speaker 1: he set about isolating traits that trigger certain instincts in
Speaker 1: animals and insects, and he manipulated these traits in nature
Speaker 1: to see what would happen. So this next bit is
Speaker 1: from the Live Hacker article by Daniel Jodi or Giotty.
Speaker 1: I suppose it says that he constructed plaster eggs to
Speaker 1: see which one a bird would prefer to sit on,
Speaker 1: finding that they would select those that were larger, had
Speaker 1: more defined markings or more saturated color. A day glow
Speaker 1: bright egg with black polka dots, for instance, would be
Speaker 1: selected over the bird's own pale, dappled eggs, and in
Speaker 1: fact that bert would keep slipping off the huge one,
Speaker 1: but it couldn't help it. It was drawn to that
Speaker 1: super stimuli of the colors in the markings, because the
Speaker 1: colors in the markings in the natural world, in the
Speaker 1: in the in the natural course of events, would indicate
Speaker 1: the healthier eggs, which ones have the highest graded survival,
Speaker 1: and therefore that's where the bird is going to focus
Speaker 1: his attention. This artificial egg, though, just pumps that completely
Speaker 1: out of proportion, and the bird cannot help but respond
Speaker 1: by setting on this lifeless but beautiful, gaudy egg and
Speaker 1: in riding that egg to the detriment of its actual
Speaker 1: biological offspring in the surrounding eggs, which are which are
Speaker 1: okay but less amazing. Yeah, this is actually, to me
Speaker 1: the really depressing part when you see this in nature, Yes,
Speaker 1: because it really does bear out this idea that a
Speaker 1: lot of this is sort of hardwired in us and
Speaker 1: all organisms. He also found that territorial male stickleback fish
Speaker 1: would attack a wooden fish model more vigorously than a
Speaker 1: real male if it's underside was redder, so again, pumping
Speaker 1: up those signs to it that would make it say,
Speaker 1: oh that that's a competitor. Look how red that underbelly is.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting too. I want to make sure
Speaker 1: everyone sort of bookmark this for later. Uh. Here we
Speaker 1: have supernormal stimuli that is in kind of in the
Speaker 1: negative realm as opposed to the positive, something that's based
Speaker 1: in fear as opposed to desire. That's a really good point,
Speaker 1: the aggressive part of it, right. Okay. Another experiment was
Speaker 1: that he constructed a cardboard dummy butterfly with more defined
Speaker 1: markings that male butterflies would actually try to mate with
Speaker 1: in preference to actual real female butterflies. And that's another
Speaker 1: one to to definitely remember for later when we can
Speaker 1: start getting into the human versions of these same principles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you think about, um, we'll get into this later.
Speaker 1: But you know, I always talk about gender performance. And Okay,
Speaker 1: if you take a female and a male and you
Speaker 1: don't do really much to them in terms of grooming
Speaker 1: them and clothing them in ways that are coded for
Speaker 1: their gender, there's not a ton of difference between them.
Speaker 1: But if you slap on a bunch of makeup on
Speaker 1: a female, plug her eyebrows. She's really performing that gender.
Speaker 1: And I think about it that with these butterflies like
Speaker 1: this must have been like the Marilyn Monroe of that butterfly. Yes,
Speaker 1: and all the other male butterflies are like, Yes, that one,
Speaker 1: even though she's wooden, looks great. Yes, the butterfly becomes
Speaker 1: this a little closer to this, this ideal butterfly. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's what really gives me about the topic of
Speaker 1: supernormal stimuli. Um My mind in reading this get kept
Speaker 1: returning to a Plato's theory of forms. Plato's in The
Speaker 1: Philosopher of Course, Um. He proposed that we live in
Speaker 1: this material realm, right, okay, and beyond our plane of existence,
Speaker 1: there's an immaterial realm of ideal forms, all right, you
Speaker 1: can you can think of these ideal forms is the
Speaker 1: absolute perfection of a given thing, a truth that cannot
Speaker 1: be manifested in the material world. All we can do
Speaker 1: is echo it. Okay. So in this world there's no
Speaker 1: true beauty, but we have in an understanding and longing
Speaker 1: for the true form of beauty as as it exists
Speaker 1: beyond the limits of the material world. In a similar sense,
Speaker 1: see would argue that there's no true justice here. But
Speaker 1: we all have a sense of justice because there's an
Speaker 1: unreachable ideal that exists beyond our realm okay out there
Speaker 1: in the realm of forms. And you can apply this
Speaker 1: to just about any anything like a one argument is
Speaker 1: often made as a chair, Like every chair in our
Speaker 1: world is just a take, an attempt to capture the
Speaker 1: perfect chairness, uh that we would find in the world
Speaker 1: of forms, beyond our material world. Every pretty face, every feeling,
Speaker 1: every work of art, it's just a take on the ideal.
Speaker 1: And so it's tempting to view a supernormal stimuli in
Speaker 1: the same way we innately long for the true forms,
Speaker 1: forms that simply do not occur in the natural world.
Speaker 1: We do it through our art and our technology, and
Speaker 1: in doing this we're able to inch a little closer
Speaker 1: and a little closer to this awesome and terrible perfection
Speaker 1: that we crave. And so so we end up engine
Speaker 1: closer and closer and in creating an artificial thing that
Speaker 1: just cannot exist in this world, and we're craving nothing
Speaker 1: but but shadows of that and imitations of that. And
Speaker 1: we're taking to your point that, I mean, the makeup
Speaker 1: argument is perfect because we're taking real versions of beauty
Speaker 1: and in a sense of defacing them and trying to
Speaker 1: carve them into into avatars of this true form. This
Speaker 1: this perfect form that just cannot be achieved. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is essentially the Platonic ideal, right, this idea that you're
Speaker 1: trying to get to this ideal as close to perfection
Speaker 1: as possible. Other Plato would say there's no perfection because
Speaker 1: we are mere copies of what God intended. Right, So
Speaker 1: there's this obsession with, as you say, uh, perfection and idealism,
Speaker 1: and that this supernormal stimuli is really a stand in
Speaker 1: for it. It's such an intriguing idea, especially when we
Speaker 1: get to another section in which we talk about poor
Speaker 1: and and other things that other types of media that
Speaker 1: we consume. Um. But before we do that, let's take
Speaker 1: a break, and when we get back, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about why humans are essentially like sea gold chicks
Speaker 1: when it comes to art. Alright, we're back. We are
Speaker 1: going to revisit this topic art and why we're drawn
Speaker 1: to it, um because we need to podcast on this.
Speaker 1: I believe it was like the science of beauty or
Speaker 1: along there's lines, and we talked about vs. Roma Tendren,
Speaker 1: who has some really great and interesting ideas about art
Speaker 1: that he says that are hardwired to the way that
Speaker 1: we respond to our environments. And particularly he says, um,
Speaker 1: we evolved in a camouflage environment, and we are rewarded
Speaker 1: when we identify objects and patterns, and that's why we
Speaker 1: like to seek them out so often in this idea
Speaker 1: called grouping. So he says that when you are looking
Speaker 1: at an artwork, you can't help but be please on
Speaker 1: some level if you can detect those patterns. Now, he's
Speaker 1: just to really understand why we are drawn to certain
Speaker 1: works of art, you have to look at seagull chicks
Speaker 1: because when they hatch, they start pecking at the mother's
Speaker 1: beak for food. And the mother seagulls beak is a
Speaker 1: long yellow thing with a red spot on the end.
Speaker 1: So for those chicks, that red spot is that kind
Speaker 1: of stimuli that they know if they tap it they
Speaker 1: get food. So action, reaction, and reward. But the researchers
Speaker 1: quickly found is that you have okay, so you have
Speaker 1: the beak with the markings, but you can you can
Speaker 1: have just a beak. You don't need the mother because
Speaker 1: the because nature takes shortcuts in our associations here or
Speaker 1: and certainly in the associations of birds. So you can
Speaker 1: take the mother out of the equation. You can just
Speaker 1: put a beak on a stick and they will respond
Speaker 1: to that. So that's that's kind of the spot has
Speaker 1: to have the spot has has to the the appropriate markings.
Speaker 1: But where it gets even crazier is that you turn
Speaker 1: those markings into super stimuli. You you put three red
Speaker 1: lines on there, and then that just makes it irresistible
Speaker 1: to the chick, like it just it just overflows the circuitry,
Speaker 1: overloads the circuitry, and they have to go to that beak. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And actually Ron Chandon says that the chick prefers the fetishized,
Speaker 1: highly abstract representation of a beak to the real beak. Again,
Speaker 1: little depressing here because the mother is attached to the
Speaker 1: real beak. And yet here are these three stripes that
Speaker 1: are very strong. Um, they're that they're exhibiting a crazy
Speaker 1: reaction to. And this was researched done by athologist Tim Burton,
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, not to be confused with the
Speaker 1: Tim Burton. Yeah, I was trying to because I was
Speaker 1: reading the interview with the Rama shandren Nafer it to
Speaker 1: Tim Burton. So I started doing all these searches for
Speaker 1: Tim Burton Birds, Tim Burton Biologist, and it was still
Speaker 1: getting nothing but information on the director Tim Burton, because
Speaker 1: I would love to see some sort of mash up
Speaker 1: like him directing a film about super normal stimuli. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel I want to see nothing but
Speaker 1: films about super normal stimuli now, um super stimuli about
Speaker 1: super stimuli. Indeed, but rum Children says that this is
Speaker 1: the same reason that we humans gravitate towards art, that
Speaker 1: these abstractions, these metaphors and unusual combinations of elements play
Speaker 1: to instincts wired deep in our reptilian brains, instincts that
Speaker 1: really don't have any bounds because, again, as Bartlett says,
Speaker 1: everything that's available to us today and the super sized
Speaker 1: fashion is not something that was available, you know, ten
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and so our brains and our bodies
Speaker 1: just have not been able to be conscious enough really
Speaker 1: to tamp this down. Yeah. And I love how he
Speaker 1: referred to the artificial beak for the bird as as
Speaker 1: a fetish, because it instantly brings to mind some of
Speaker 1: these these ancient fetishes that you see the the venous
Speaker 1: figurines right where it's during like almost a headless woman
Speaker 1: bosoms and valley and uh. And in a sense, even
Speaker 1: in a in a very primitive sense, this is an
Speaker 1: idealized female form. And of course through the history of
Speaker 1: art you see lots of idealized versions of the of
Speaker 1: the female forming the venus de Milo, for example, is
Speaker 1: just another venus in a very long tradition of venus
Speaker 1: is well, yeah, I mean the code of those pieces
Speaker 1: of art is basically that your genetic material is going
Speaker 1: to survive better in this person, maybe because perhaps there
Speaker 1: would there would be um stronger offspring or more of
Speaker 1: a chance to copulate with this person, or you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, those are all the signs that are coming
Speaker 1: from that particular piece of art. And rom Trondon says
Speaker 1: that artists are tapping into the figural primitives of our
Speaker 1: perceptual grammar and creating ultra normal stimuli that are more
Speaker 1: powerfully exciting certain visual neurons in our brains as opposed
Speaker 1: to realistic looking images. Yeah. Like when we did our
Speaker 1: podcast on the art, Savannahs came up landscapes that there
Speaker 1: are certain artistic interpretations of landscapes that arguably, uh get
Speaker 1: into our brain more that are more pleasing, more pleasing,
Speaker 1: but essentially get their claws into us because on a
Speaker 1: very primitive level, we see it and we know that
Speaker 1: this would be a good place to live. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's some trees, I can seek some cover. There, there's
Speaker 1: some water I can drink. Everything that Bob Roth describes
Speaker 1: when he's painting a landscape like, those are all things
Speaker 1: that are those are all aspects of of a landscape
Speaker 1: that would be pleasing to the human organism. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember from that too, that, um, the vantage point was
Speaker 1: really important that you would want to be up on
Speaker 1: a hill and those landscape painting so that you would
Speaker 1: be able to see out not just you know, over
Speaker 1: your kingdom, but be able to see any intruders coming
Speaker 1: upon you. Right, all right, So that's art. That's one.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to think about the aesthetic world. But
Speaker 1: but how do we take this and apply it to
Speaker 1: the the less esthetic worlds of say fast food. Well,
Speaker 1: as we had mentioned before, you mean the especially with sugar.
Speaker 1: Our bodies need a little bit of it, and so
Speaker 1: we have those big crazy anime eyes looking at that
Speaker 1: and taking all of that in and thinking I want
Speaker 1: the entire thing. Um. So you know, for me, I
Speaker 1: think this topic is really very large in junk food
Speaker 1: because food is energy. We gravitate to it, um, but
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily know when to stop, right. That's the
Speaker 1: whole boundary thing with our instincts. So if you look
Speaker 1: at a giant jar of peanut butter on on a shelf,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm talking about Costco or any of those
Speaker 1: other like super crazy places where they've got just giant,
Speaker 1: oversized cans of all types of food. On some level,
Speaker 1: that's tapping into the primal brain in somewhere. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, some evolutionary bottles just might say that jar
Speaker 1: of peanut butter is a promise to you that you're
Speaker 1: not going to have to leave your cave very often
Speaker 1: for food and you won't encounter as much danger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because your body is saying that stuff is great, that
Speaker 1: is what I crave. I want as much of that
Speaker 1: as we can possibly get, so that I can stockpilot
Speaker 1: and have it whenever I want. I will not have
Speaker 1: to leave my apartment for three months with that jar
Speaker 1: of peanut butter. But you know, of course there's an
Speaker 1: idea here that we live so much in the symbolic world,
Speaker 1: and so some of these meetings can't help but drill
Speaker 1: down into us. Now, I can't help but think of
Speaker 1: French fries um in terms of super normal stimuli, because
Speaker 1: what our French fries, your average order of French fries,
Speaker 1: you know, covered with ketchup, and that's and that's not
Speaker 1: counting if you're adding bacon or chili or nacho cheese
Speaker 1: or whatever the latest t G. I. Friday's sort of
Speaker 1: twist on it happens to be. But in one plate,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're satisfying your cravings for fat, for crispiness,
Speaker 1: that you're that you're on on a on a on
Speaker 1: one level, associating with fresh vegetables. You're getting sweetness, you're
Speaker 1: getting salt, maybe you're getting a hit of hint of
Speaker 1: meat if you have some sort of weird topping on it.
Speaker 1: And all of this in one big blasphem is serving.
Speaker 1: You know what's really interesting that is there is an
Speaker 1: article out there somewhere about the physics of a potato
Speaker 1: chip and why it's so appealing to us. And if
Speaker 1: I'm remembering this correctly, the kind of crunch, That popping
Speaker 1: sound that the chips make is the exact same that
Speaker 1: a fresh fruit or vegetable might feel like in your mouth.
Speaker 1: And this is something that our brains have been tagging for,
Speaker 1: you know, tens of thousands of years, and so that
Speaker 1: chip is really just riding into the circuitry of your
Speaker 1: brain saying fresh fresh, this is good, this is healthy.
Speaker 1: Let's we cannot just eat just one eat the whole pag.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's salty too. Yeah, alright, another area that again,
Speaker 1: there's some there's a level of aesthetics involved in this
Speaker 1: as well, but the world of gaming video gaming everything
Speaker 1: from you know, playing what is it candy corn candy
Speaker 1: crush on your phone to some sort of deep m
Speaker 1: emo immersion experience, because what do you get with video games?
Speaker 1: Do you get an instant entry into a world of
Speaker 1: goal achievement UM neurological award for that goal achievement, empowerment
Speaker 1: in some cases graphic violence, exploration UM. The goal achievement
Speaker 1: is something I often think about as when I find
Speaker 1: time these days to to play like a quick video game, like,
Speaker 1: I think, well, this is clearly what's happening here is
Speaker 1: my brain is adjusting to this false environment and saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we just achieved something there. We just achieved something there,
Speaker 1: even if in the course of the day maybe I
Speaker 1: didn't actually close any loops, you know, here I am
Speaker 1: closing loop after loop and just say fifteen minutes of gameplay.
Speaker 1: So this reminds me of two things. One is the
Speaker 1: stickleback fish, right, because you've got that the red underside
Speaker 1: of the wooden fish. That more aggression towards that. And
Speaker 1: video games are so beautiful, if I may say that, Um,
Speaker 1: the way that they're rendered in the colors and the saturation,
Speaker 1: all of that is very intriguing and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like hyper realism. So that's one thing I think that
Speaker 1: people fall into. The other is this is really playing
Speaker 1: into for me, is an episode of It's Always Sunny
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia And are you familiar with us? I've watched
Speaker 1: the number of episodes. It's great. And when the characters
Speaker 1: is d and she's kind of always shoved around by
Speaker 1: the other guys in this gang of theirs, so to speak, um,
Speaker 1: and she turns to the virtual world with avatars to
Speaker 1: try to vanquish them in a sense because in real
Speaker 1: life she has not much power or control over the situation,
Speaker 1: but she creates these characters, and everybody in the town
Speaker 1: gets to know the virtual reality players in this game
Speaker 1: get to know that gang, and they know how d
Speaker 1: is describing them in this other world. It is probably
Speaker 1: my favorite It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode, and there's
Speaker 1: this great idea behind it all that they're just all
Speaker 1: in a turtle dream and outer space. Oh, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: I'll have to check that episode out. Yes, I love
Speaker 1: the mention of the word avatar because certainly avatar in
Speaker 1: the gaming world is one thing. It's the version of
Speaker 1: us that goes into this lesser world. And in the
Speaker 1: the world of cosmology and religion, an avatar is a
Speaker 1: version of a God that we as humans can interact with,
Speaker 1: or at least some aspect of a God uh that
Speaker 1: we can comprehend and uh. And in thinking about the
Speaker 1: ideal forms of Plato, I can't help but think of
Speaker 1: those forms in that in that ideal realm as being
Speaker 1: kind of like God's, kind of like a pantheon of
Speaker 1: God's where each deity is again an idealized version of
Speaker 1: something that we want out of life. And in the
Speaker 1: gaming world, this adversary that you're you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: shooting in this uh this fifteen minutes of game play
Speaker 1: in the evening. That is the ideal version of an adversary,
Speaker 1: kind of an avatar of some uh of some ideal enemy,
Speaker 1: and you're vanquishing it in the same way that uh, this, uh,
Speaker 1: this artificial version of a beautiful woman in a magazine
Speaker 1: is again an avatar of of ideal be that we've
Speaker 1: created some version of the unimaginable perfection beyond our realm
Speaker 1: that we have made we've cobbled together in our realm. Well,
Speaker 1: let's jump off on that, because I think the beautiful
Speaker 1: woman thing that really plays into this idea of porn
Speaker 1: and again gender performance. And when we talked about lust
Speaker 1: uh in an episode of one of Our Seven Sins,
Speaker 1: we talked about this article called the Internet is for porn.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: reference it real quick in light of why we seek
Speaker 1: super normal stimuli before um yield Internet. I suppose by
Speaker 1: now there were fewer than ninety porn magazines published in
Speaker 1: the US. Today, more than two point five million porn
Speaker 1: sites are blocked by CYBERsitter. That's not all of them,
Speaker 1: but that's as many as CYBERsitter has comed through. So
Speaker 1: now consider that porn is tapping into the reward circuitry
Speaker 1: of your brain with the release of dopamine, and dopamine
Speaker 1: is really that neurotransmitter, that chemical that keeps you seeking
Speaker 1: out that experience again and again. It's what helps form habits.
Speaker 1: So porn is this kind of really interesting aspect of
Speaker 1: supernormal stimuli because you know, you could have a person
Speaker 1: in the other room who is more than willing to
Speaker 1: have sex with you, but some people will actually opt
Speaker 1: to say, just look at porn instead and um interact
Speaker 1: with that image in their mind. And that is fascinating
Speaker 1: because here you might have the real thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: just like the beak, the fake beak with the three
Speaker 1: stripes on it, you keep sort of going towards that
Speaker 1: fake thing, or even more to the point, like the
Speaker 1: gaudy golden egg in the bird's nest. It's not going
Speaker 1: to produce anything. It has no substance. It's it's just
Speaker 1: a just a gateway to the abyss. But you're going
Speaker 1: to choose that over over actual human interaction or at
Speaker 1: least even the you know, if not, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: not everyone's in a position where they can as easily
Speaker 1: find human interaction and ultimately some sort of sexual experience,
Speaker 1: but still to choose that over the even the attempt
Speaker 1: at it, the attempt at human interaction. And think about
Speaker 1: that egg again, you know, with a big giant egg
Speaker 1: with US spots on it, the Polka dots and as
Speaker 1: day glow yellow. And then think about the women that
Speaker 1: are represented in porn and their dimensions. Quite often you
Speaker 1: have I mean, I don't know that there's even any
Speaker 1: um porn that features women that aren't augmented or at
Speaker 1: least approaching certain dimensions with their bodies. Well, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different types of pornography. Well, and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously seventies porn. I'll tell you what. Paton Oswald, the
Speaker 1: stand up comedian he um, he did did a bit
Speaker 1: and I imagine still does a bit, uh pointing out
Speaker 1: that no matter what ones like, whatever a person's particular
Speaker 1: individual fetish is, no matter you know, this dark thing
Speaker 1: that they haven't told anybody somewhere out there in the world.
Speaker 1: There there's like a team of people who have a
Speaker 1: magazine devoted to that, and they're just so bored with it.
Speaker 1: It's just so every day. Now it's an older bit
Speaker 1: that he did imagines you could basically extrapolate this too
Speaker 1: websites and pornography in general, so that every corner of
Speaker 1: of of of sexuality within limits or maybe not even
Speaker 1: within limits, is represented out there, and that's part of
Speaker 1: the supernormal stimuli of it. Like you could you could
Speaker 1: just go out there and just fall down the whole
Speaker 1: of pornography and almost never reached the bottom, and again
Speaker 1: dopamine would be really helping to carve out those neural
Speaker 1: pathways to keep you going again and again. So obviously
Speaker 1: we are conscious of our behavior. We humans. We have
Speaker 1: that beautiful prefrontal cortex which is helping us manage all
Speaker 1: these different things about our lives and helping us to
Speaker 1: be conscious. Um, so how do we want to look
Speaker 1: at this, because I mean, you can look at this
Speaker 1: in a light of like uh, positively light super normal
Speaker 1: in general, or just pornography basically, um, supernormal in general,
Speaker 1: because with pornography we could certainly got a lot deeper
Speaker 1: into that topic and just discussing like because you have
Speaker 1: super normal stimuli, and then how does that affect just
Speaker 1: everything in life? How does that affect uh, you know,
Speaker 1: underlying currents of misogyny and culture. How does that affect that,
Speaker 1: your personal interactions, your expectations from real world sexuality, How
Speaker 1: does it change real world sexuality? But for another podcast,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is there are two different
Speaker 1: ways to look at this. So you want to take
Speaker 1: good copper, bad cop um, I guess I'll take a
Speaker 1: bad cop knew it? Okay, Okay, Well, I mean the
Speaker 1: bad cop version of of looking at the super normal
Speaker 1: stimuli is that I mean, we're kind of we're kind
Speaker 1: of boned, and we always have been. We're tied to
Speaker 1: these these cravings and these desires for these ideal form ms,
Speaker 1: and we, thanks to our technology, thank to our thanks
Speaker 1: to our art, we're able to craft. We're able to
Speaker 1: sort of scratch away at that layer between us and
Speaker 1: the ideal to create these artificial versions of the things
Speaker 1: we want. And then we were kind of powerless to
Speaker 1: resist them. You know that we we we end up
Speaker 1: not leaving our apartments because the Internet provides us just
Speaker 1: instant access to whatever our whim might be, instant access
Speaker 1: to just you know, an endless stream of whatever kind
Speaker 1: of sexuality we want to immerse ourselves in. We can
Speaker 1: we can order any kind of tantalizing junk food we
Speaker 1: want and have it delivered right to our home and
Speaker 1: whatever quantities we want. And so we end up just
Speaker 1: setting on that big golden egg, just writing it into extinction,
Speaker 1: like the like the atomic bomb at the at the
Speaker 1: end of Doctor Strange Luck. And indeed the atomic bomb
Speaker 1: is an example of aggression of just of of super
Speaker 1: stimuli in the world of of protection and the do
Speaker 1: ire to be protected against aggression from these uh outsider forces. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll add one thing to that before I go to
Speaker 1: a good cop. All right, um, see, because you're a
Speaker 1: bad cop too, that's the thing. Well, I can be
Speaker 1: a good copy. Do you remember we're talking about our
Speaker 1: episode on habits, and we were talking about like something
Speaker 1: like forty five percent of the decisions that we make
Speaker 1: on a daily basis are rooted in habit And if
Speaker 1: habits are driven by reward systems, then that means that
Speaker 1: that's not such a great thing, right, Like it would
Speaker 1: be very hard for us to overcome these sort of
Speaker 1: routinized neural pathways that are happening every single day. Like
Speaker 1: you might have to be as zen as a monk
Speaker 1: and as conscious of your behaviors. But now I will
Speaker 1: go to DJ Bartlett. She's really a good cup here,
Speaker 1: and she says humans have one stupendous advantage over tim
Speaker 1: Bergen's bird, that Nicolas tinbergen Um. She says, we have
Speaker 1: a giant brain, and this would give us the unique
Speaker 1: ability to exercise self control and override instincts that lead
Speaker 1: us astray and extricate ourselves from civilizations gaudy traps. You think,
Speaker 1: so I think we can do it. Maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a colossal idea, because again, I'm
Speaker 1: I kind of like to look at these super stimuli
Speaker 1: entities as kind of dark gods from beyond our universe,
Speaker 1: and then what standing, what do we have to combat them?
Speaker 1: We have, we have a nice brain, we have some
Speaker 1: willpower that we can summon, we have some self knowledge
Speaker 1: of our relationship with super stimuli. We can conceivably stop
Speaker 1: and realize oh that even without getting into the porn,
Speaker 1: to go back to just just beauty, you know, to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: well that that version of Scarlett Johansson it's on the
Speaker 1: front of that magazine is actually she's wearing makeup she
Speaker 1: has probably been photoshopped, like even though that is a
Speaker 1: real woman, that is an idealized version of a real woman.
Speaker 1: So we can, we can be self aware, we can
Speaker 1: exert willpower. So yeah, I will. I will agree with
Speaker 1: the good Cops to a certain extent on that. But
Speaker 1: I feel like we're we're up against some pretty overwhelming odds. No, no,
Speaker 1: we like to rely on our lazy blueprint that we've
Speaker 1: created for ourselves, at least should say I do, because
Speaker 1: back to willpower. We've done, of course, the podcasts on willpower,
Speaker 1: and we know that willpower is at a pleadable resource.
Speaker 1: So when we're most of command, most in command of ourselves,
Speaker 1: when we're most awake and aware of ourselves, then maybe
Speaker 1: we're the equal of this of these forces. But we
Speaker 1: can't stay awake all the time. We can't stay uh
Speaker 1: you know, completely tanked up on willpower all the time
Speaker 1: unless we have a third eye that we can open
Speaker 1: to consciousness. But I think that kind of concludes where
Speaker 1: we are with this topic. You know, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of bright spots in this world, and weren't symbolic
Speaker 1: meaning is under pinning everything that we do. Indeed, we
Speaker 1: have the we have the equipment to fight with good fights,
Speaker 1: so so just keep that in mind. Suit up yeah
Speaker 1: the next time cheesy fries come inat so that you
Speaker 1: have it. Uh, one of our favorite episodes from the
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Speaker 1: of fast food that you may or may not engage
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