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

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so I have

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Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This is going to be

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Speaker 1: part three of four in our Cynicism series. This episode

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Speaker 1: originally published four twenty two, twenty twenty five. Let's dive

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Speaker 1: right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today we are

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Speaker 3: returning with part three in our series on cynicism, the

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Speaker 3: tendency to believe that other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral.

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Speaker 3: In part one of the series, we defined cynicism in

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Speaker 3: its modern usage along the lines I just said, and

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Speaker 3: we distinguished it from other concepts like pessimism and from

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Speaker 3: the cynic school of philosophy founded in ancient Greece, which

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Speaker 3: was not defined by thinking about other people as morally

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Speaker 3: bad and undeserving of trust, but instead by the idea

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Speaker 3: that people should strive for self sufficiency and moral integrity

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Speaker 3: based on living according to our nature, sort of throwing

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Speaker 3: off the hypocrisies that are mandated by culture. And I

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Speaker 3: think This goal of exposing hypocrisy is one of the

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Speaker 3: few threads you might find between modern cynicism and ancient

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Speaker 3: cynic philosophy, though still with some differences. It's not quite

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Speaker 3: this simple. But I was thinking the other day about it.

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Speaker 3: I think you could say cynic philosophy was like, hypocrisy

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Speaker 3: is bad, and I'm going to try to get rid

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Speaker 3: of it, whereas modern cynicism is more like everybody's a hypocrite.

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Speaker 3: You can't trust them, So a decay from what was

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Speaker 3: once a positive mission for truth into a kind of

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Speaker 3: surrender to the idea that we're all living a lie.

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Speaker 3: In Part one, we also talked about re search into

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Speaker 3: the correlates of modern cynicism. So like, if I am

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Speaker 3: highly cynical, what are the effects of that on my life?

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Speaker 3: It turns out there's a lot of research on this question,

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Speaker 3: and the answer is the effects are overwhelmingly negative. Cynicism

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Speaker 3: appears to be bad for health outcomes, leading to things

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Speaker 3: like cardiovascular disease, depression, substance abuse, and early death. It

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Speaker 3: is correlated with lower quality relationships, a decreased tendency to

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Speaker 3: pursue certain types of goals, and even contrary to the

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Speaker 3: very familiar image of the cynical Machiavelian elite power player,

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Speaker 3: and of course we can think of individual examples of

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Speaker 3: this from the real world. On average, cynicism actually makes

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Speaker 3: it harder for regular people to achieve even cynically coded

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Speaker 3: material goals like money and positions of power, probably because

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Speaker 3: in part, cynicism makes people less likely to cooperate with

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Speaker 3: others and thus less likely to benefit from relationships of

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Speaker 3: mutual trust. In Part two, we followed up on a

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Speaker 3: number of tangents from the first episode, and we also

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Speaker 3: took a detailed look at a paper on the so

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Speaker 3: called cynical genius illusion. The short version of this is

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Speaker 3: that while people don't necessarily like cynics, we do tend

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Speaker 3: to believe, on average that cynics are more intelligent and

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Speaker 3: more cognitively competent than non cynics. For example, people are

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Speaker 3: more likely to assign a cynical person jobs like doing

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Speaker 3: mathematical calculations or reviewing charts of scientific results, and this

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Speaker 3: is in line with the long running archetype and fiction

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Speaker 3: of the cynical genius, like Sherlock Holmes, someone who withholds

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Speaker 3: trust and has a very low opinion of human nature,

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Speaker 3: but also has superior knowledge, memory, and powers of reasoning.

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Speaker 1: One thing that I neglected to bring up when we

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Speaker 1: were talking about the Sherlock Holmes trope is that you know,

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Speaker 1: there is a distinction to be made between skepticism and cynesism. Yes, now,

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Speaker 1: you can imagine where the line begins to blur at

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Speaker 1: some points, and certainly, as we've been discussing, you know,

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Speaker 1: your cynicism level may not be constant throughout your life.

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Speaker 1: You may drift back and forth, and so you can

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Speaker 1: imagine a scenario where one is essentially a skeptic, but

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Speaker 1: then that may sort of stray into cynical territory.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I was thinking about the distinction there also.

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Speaker 3: I was in fact talking about this with Rachel and

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Speaker 3: I guess we never got into this in the previous parts,

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Speaker 3: but I think there is a big difference between how

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Speaker 3: I use the word cynicism and skepticism. For me, skepticism

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Speaker 3: is an attempt to dole out your trust according to

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Speaker 3: how trustworthy something is based on the evidence. It's essentially

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Speaker 3: trying to overcome your natural biases to be more trusting

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Speaker 3: or less trusting than the situation actually deserves. It's just

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Speaker 3: trying to be as rational as you can. What reasons

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Speaker 3: do I have to trust or distrust? Whereas is just

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Speaker 3: a bias toward distrust.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.

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Speaker 1: One of the interesting things, though, is that someone who

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Speaker 1: is truly cynical about a given topic may self label

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Speaker 1: as skeptical, and that can lead to a fair amount

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Speaker 1: of confusion.

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Speaker 3: Right. Well, of course, if skepticism is defined as being

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Speaker 3: as reasonable as you can with trust, the cynic always

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Speaker 3: thinks they're being reasonable, or usually probably thinks they're being reasonable.

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Speaker 3: They just think it is reasonable to have very low

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Speaker 3: trust and think everyone's going to stab them in the back.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And in fact, that brings us back coming back to

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Speaker 3: the recap of the cynical genius illusion, The question is

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Speaker 3: are they correct in thinking that is the cynic in

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Speaker 3: fact being reasonable and having correct insights that non cynics lack.

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Speaker 3: The other half of the finding in that paper was

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Speaker 3: that the cynical genius illusion is actually an illusion. Highly

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Speaker 3: cynical people are not smarter or more knowledgeable on average.

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Speaker 3: In fact, in the majority of scenarios tested, the association

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Speaker 3: runs the other way, with education and intelligence being correlated

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Speaker 3: with a greater tendency to trust. The big caveat here,

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Speaker 3: of course, is that cynicism is warranted in some situations,

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Speaker 3: in particularly corrupt situations and scenarios. So it seems like

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Speaker 3: a common pattern the researchers found is that knowledgeable and

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Speaker 3: intelligent people might be might be more trusting by default,

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Speaker 3: but shift into cynical mode when they recognize that they

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Speaker 3: are dealing with a corrupt and untrustworthy situation or environment.

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Speaker 3: And in fact, that would sort of line up with

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Speaker 3: how I just defined skepticism, right. It's sort of like

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Speaker 3: detecting reliable signals from your environment, essentially paying attention to

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Speaker 3: evidence of how trustworthy the situation you're in is. But anyway,

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Speaker 3: this study and some studies cited by it helped us

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Speaker 3: answer some questions we raised in Part one. First of all,

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Speaker 3: I'll do cynics or nonsenics have a more accurate model

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Speaker 3: of the world. Of course, it's hard to answer that

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Speaker 3: question in a way that averages out all environments in

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Speaker 3: all situations. It's kind of hard to say, like who's

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Speaker 3: more correct overall, but at least in a bunch of

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Speaker 3: experimental scenarios like random strangers are much more trustworthy than

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Speaker 3: we tend to give them credit for. One example of

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Speaker 3: this was that trust based investing game we talked about,

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Speaker 3: where researchers give you an initial reward of money, So

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Speaker 3: they give you five dollars, and then you have the

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Speaker 3: option to either just keep the five or hand that

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Speaker 3: money to a stranger, which quadruples the initial sum, turning

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Speaker 3: five dollars into twenty dollars. And then the stranger has

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Speaker 3: the option to either keep all the money or give

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Speaker 3: you back half of the total sum, doubling your initial investment.

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Speaker 3: So you started with five, you end up with ten

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Speaker 3: if the stranger gives you the money back. And in

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Speaker 3: these types of experiments, strangers tended to be cooperative and trustworthy.

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Speaker 3: In the overwhelming number of cases people doubted them way

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Speaker 3: too often. So again, that doesn't tell you about every

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Speaker 3: situation in life, but it is a piece of evidence

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Speaker 3: that people on average tend to overestimate other people's selfishness,

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Speaker 3: and thus the highly cynical person is probably going to

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Speaker 3: miss out on lots of opportunities to trust and to

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Speaker 3: benefit from cooperation. But the other question that study shed

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Speaker 3: some light on for us was since generalized cynicism has

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Speaker 3: so many horrible downsides. It's like really bad for you

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Speaker 3: in so many ways, not just for the people around

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Speaker 3: the cynic, but for the cynic themselves. What are its

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Speaker 3: upsides if any? And there were a few answers here.

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Speaker 3: If you are not good at being able to recognize

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Speaker 3: the difference between a corrupt situation and a trustworthy one,

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Speaker 3: generalized cynicism may help you avoid catastrophic outcomes from misplacing

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Speaker 3: your trust. But again, this comes at great cost. It's

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Speaker 3: sort of you know, we have to destroy the town

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Speaker 3: in order to save it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Or you can imagine, like a biological analogy would

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Speaker 1: be some sort of an organism that has had to

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Speaker 1: extend a great deal of energy into evolving some sort

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Speaker 1: of like highly protective shell that also slows it down

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Speaker 1: and restricts it restricts its range, or something to that

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Speaker 1: effect exactly.

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Speaker 3: I think that's a great analogy. And then the other

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Speaker 3: thing being that cynicism may have, according to the cynical

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Speaker 3: genius effect, the socially desirable effect of making you appear

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Speaker 3: smarter and more competent to others. Again, this comes at

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Speaker 3: great cost. Like Sherlock Holmes is cool, you might want

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Speaker 3: to seem smart like Sherlock Holmes, but given all the downsides,

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Speaker 3: the Sherlock gambit is probably not worth it, at least

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Speaker 3: in my opinion. Anyway, we're back today to talk about more.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and in this episode we're going to get a

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Speaker 1: little bit into social media and politics, which shouldn't come

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Speaker 1: as a surprise, right. Cynicism, social media, politics, these are

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Speaker 1: all I think expected Waters.

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Speaker 3: Wait, did you mean to sound cynical when you were

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Speaker 3: saying that? Was that the joke?

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Speaker 1: Probably? Probably? Yeah, I mean it's easy to feel cynical

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Speaker 1: about all of this sort of thing, right, So just

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Speaker 1: looking considering just say, cynicism and social media like this

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Speaker 1: alone is a really big area to get into, and likewise,

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Speaker 1: political cynicism is another huge topic. Both of these have

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Speaker 1: been topics of discussion and analysis for years and years

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Speaker 1: and years.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and I would say, of course the relationship between

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Speaker 3: cynicism and politics is especially important to understand within democracies.

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Speaker 3: You know, within places of popular political participation and civil

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Speaker 3: liberties and freedoms. You know, whether you are cynical about

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Speaker 3: the political structures you live under matters a lot less.

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Speaker 3: If you are like a peasant in medieval France than

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Speaker 3: it does if you are somebody who is free to

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Speaker 3: act within a democracy, free to vote and run for

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Speaker 3: office yourself and engage in political rhetoric.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because it means coming to believe that the

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Speaker 1: thing that you can do that matters doesn't matter, and then,

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Speaker 1: like the old saying, by doing nothing, you know, all

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Speaker 1: problems are solved. So one of the books that I

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Speaker 1: referenced in the first episode is the MIT Press book

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Speaker 1: on Cynicism by anskar Allen and Alan digs into this

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Speaker 1: topic a lot, and I want attempt to cover every

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Speaker 1: point that he makes and every point that he brings

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Speaker 1: up on the matter. But there's some really good nuggets

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Speaker 1: of wisdom and observation in here related to the level

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Speaker 1: of high energy, negative and critical rhetoric that you tend

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Speaker 1: to find on the Internet and on social media, very

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Speaker 1: much encouraged for profit by service providers and social media companies,

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Speaker 1: as we've discussed in the past.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I've long been a fan of the La based

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Speaker 1: artists collective known as Everything Is Terrible, Joe, I know

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Speaker 1: you're familiar with them as well. They're slow is. If

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Speaker 1: everything is terrible, then nothing is that's great.

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Speaker 3: I think that statement is meant with a dash of irony.

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Speaker 3: But but yeah, everything is terrible is great. You know,

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Speaker 3: you may have seen videos of theirs, even if you're

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Speaker 3: not familiar with the name of like super cuts of

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Speaker 3: weird moments from old found media. One of my favorites

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Speaker 3: of all times. I think everything is Terrible did the

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Speaker 3: video of it was just moments from a video cassette

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Speaker 3: that accompanied a Star Trek board game where there's a

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Speaker 3: like a kling on guy who keeps like screaming at

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Speaker 3: you to punish you. It was one of the one

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Speaker 3: of those things where they were trying to do like

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Speaker 3: mixed media board games I think in the late eighties

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Speaker 3: or early nineties, where like I don't know, you'd put

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Speaker 3: the tape in and then you'd have to roll stuff

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Speaker 3: and anyway, this guy keeps Suddenly there's a klingon popping

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Speaker 3: on the TV saying like you the one who is

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Speaker 3: moving now.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they several different the individuals involved with that

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Speaker 1: over the years, and the resurrect different bits of old

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Speaker 1: media and now often super cut them into some sort

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Speaker 1: of a presentation. If you ever get to get the

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Speaker 1: chance to see them live, it's it's well worth it.

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Speaker 1: So if everything is terrible, then nothing is. Alan brings

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Speaker 1: up this exact point amid contemplations on the possible death

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Speaker 1: of philosophy in modern times, citing German philosopher and social

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Speaker 1: critic Peter Slaughterdyke, who frequently cites ancient cynic Diogenes is

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Speaker 1: pooping in public in his evaluation of modern cynicism as well.

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Speaker 1: So Alan now I should clarify though, Alan, in discussing

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Speaker 1: Slaughterdyke's ideas, he sees them as an overstatement. But slaughter

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Speaker 1: Dyke says that quote, because everything has become problematic, everything

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Speaker 1: is also now a matter of indifference.

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Speaker 3: So I'm not sure I understand the context of that, right,

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Speaker 3: But the way I guess i'd inter but that at

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Speaker 3: face value is like, because of our increasing sort of

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Speaker 3: critical consciousness and awareness of the world, you can sort

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Speaker 3: of find that there are flaws in literally everything, and

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Speaker 3: thus if there are flaws in literally everything, nothing matters.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and especially if you are just hyper aware

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Speaker 1: of all of the negative stories. You know, and this

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Speaker 1: has been this has been the case for a while.

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Speaker 1: I mean it comes back to some of the you know,

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Speaker 1: the very ancient ideas of how do you survive in

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Speaker 1: the world by maybe focusing a little more on the dangers. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: you know, if it bleeds, it leads and so forth.

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Speaker 1: But the social media age, as we've discussed on the

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Speaker 1: show before, you know, various social media algorithms have long

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Speaker 1: favorite engagement over everything else. And engagement can certainly mean

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Speaker 1: things like love and excitement, like look a cute cat

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Speaker 1: or look, there's a new John Carpenter blu ray, but

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Speaker 1: it can also just mean hate, anger, and disgust.

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Speaker 3: Yes, where you're emotions become a tech company's business model

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Speaker 3: because your emotions are correlated to behavior on the app

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Speaker 3: and your susceptibility. You know, how long you stay on

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Speaker 3: the app, how long you scroll, you know whether you're

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Speaker 3: likely to click on ads and things like that. And

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Speaker 3: it turns out that certain emotions, I think positive and

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Speaker 3: negative emotions, when manipulated in certain ways, have been found

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Speaker 3: to increase people's engagement. But the negative emotions, it seems

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Speaker 3: like those are really easy. That's an easy button to push.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And you know, it can often feel like

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Speaker 1: you're just being bombarded by all of this. And I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's a strong case to be made that this is

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Speaker 1: weaponized to a certain extent by various players. Right, if

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Speaker 1: there's just enough bad news coming at you, there's enough controversy,

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Speaker 1: then you know, what are you going to respond to?

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Speaker 1: You can't possibly respond to all of it, and maybe

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Speaker 1: you end up responding to nothing at all.

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Speaker 3: But you have to keep scrolling because what if there's

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Speaker 3: something you don't know about yet.

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Speaker 1: Now, Alan site that all of this is an overstatement because,

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Speaker 1: according to him, for individuals to truly feel this way,

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Speaker 1: their cynicism would have to be complete. And this reminds

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Speaker 1: me a bit in theme of something that's come from

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Speaker 1: the show before. The author R. Scott Baker had this idea,

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Speaker 1: something he called the somatic apocalypse, in which quote, all

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Speaker 1: the shoulds of a meaningful life are either individual or subcultural.

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Speaker 1: As a result, the only universal imperatives that remain are

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Speaker 1: those arising out of our shared biology are fears and hungers.

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Speaker 1: So everything else just kind of shuts down, descends into

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Speaker 1: chaos or entropy. So absolute widespread cynicism would, to paraphrase

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Speaker 1: the words of Slaughterdyke, be a situation where everything is

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Speaker 1: poop in the street and people are nauseated all the time.

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Speaker 3: Okay, sounds bad.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, my understanding, as we would be talking about

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Speaker 1: a world in which cynicism concerning the human experience at

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Speaker 1: large becomes more absolute, and you know, basically we withdraw

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Speaker 1: into individual and localized efforts. But Allen's counter argument here

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Speaker 1: is that most people are not so absolutely cynical. He contends,

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Speaker 1: quote modern cynicism is driven not by generalized apathy, but

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Speaker 1: by incomplete disenchantment. In other words, his argument here is

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Speaker 1: that modern cynics have not entirely submitted themselves to cynicism.

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Speaker 1: They never hit rock bottom, the point at which they

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Speaker 1: might be forced to confront their own cynicism. And so

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Speaker 1: he mentions, how, you know, coming back to the idea

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Speaker 1: of diogenies, you know again living in the streets among

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Speaker 1: dogs and you know, and rags and shrouds, pooping in

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Speaker 1: the streets. He brings up this public defecation as a

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Speaker 1: shock tactic that's meant to make a point quote, how

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Speaker 1: funny is it that you find this upsetting and that

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Speaker 1: the modern cynic is just not nauseated enough by the

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Speaker 1: reality they're faced with to the point where they make

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Speaker 1: that big see cynic shift toward the pursuit of virtue. Hmm, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so almost as if we're forever weightless in our cynicism,

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Speaker 1: free falling toward a point a forced self recognition and

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Speaker 1: revelation we never quite reach, like an imagined space vessel,

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Speaker 1: inching ever closer to the speed of light, but unable

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Speaker 1: to actually touch it. Or to quote Alan again, he

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Speaker 1: refers to it as quote unembedded but is yet underdeveloped negativity.

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Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay, wait, so am I interpreting this right?

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Speaker 1: Then?

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Speaker 3: Essentially that Allan is suggesting that maybe if cynicism were

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Speaker 3: more intense and more total, that would actually lead to

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Speaker 3: a kind of horseshoe boomerang into seeing value and virtue.

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Speaker 1: Again exactly, Yeah, that is exactly the point I believe

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Speaker 1: he's making is that, yeah, we're just with this incomplete

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Speaker 1: disenchantment with the world, like we think things were bad,

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Speaker 1: We've lost trust and establishments. We haven't completely bottomed out,

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Speaker 1: like to the point where we actually look up and

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Speaker 1: potentially begin scaling back up this ladder of virtue.

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Speaker 3: Hmmm, I wonder I wonder about that. I don't know

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Speaker 3: if it really works that way, but I'm interested in

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Speaker 3: the idea.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting concept. And the idea here

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Speaker 1: is that social media would be part of that equation.

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Speaker 1: Alan writes the quote the visceral discomfort of a live

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Speaker 1: audience gathered before the defecating cynic that's a capital cynic,

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Speaker 1: as in the philosopher has been replaced by a virtual

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Speaker 1: audience that turns indignation into profit. So an Internet ecosystem

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Speaker 1: that thrives on bad sentiments and becomes characterized by just

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Speaker 1: non stop righteous indignation.

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Speaker 3: But one that is discouraged from actually going anywhere positive

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Speaker 3: instead just kind of festering negative emotion.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now this made me think about past discussions of

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Speaker 1: the ideas of Jaron Lanier, and I don't know that

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Speaker 1: he ever directly invoked cynicism in any of his works,

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Speaker 1: or not the ones I'm familiar with, but one of

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Speaker 1: his basic observations was that social media companies reduce us

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Speaker 1: to data and to a product that's sold to advertisers.

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Speaker 1: And you know, there's an inherent modern cynicism to that

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Speaker 1: view of people, like the people are the product and

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Speaker 1: people are data. While at the same time realizing this

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Speaker 1: can fuel individual cynicism towards the entire social media endeavor

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Speaker 1: to the point that it's really hard to trust even

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Speaker 1: you know, alternate decentralized social media alternatives, or at least

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Speaker 1: that's how it seems to me now. There have been

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Speaker 1: a number of papers about this over the years. Have

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Speaker 1: been some studies. A recent study published in the International

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Speaker 1: Journal of Press Politics by Hassel at all digs into

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Speaker 1: this a little bit, and also there have been some

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Speaker 1: pass papers by the lead author here, Ariel Hassel. The

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Speaker 1: basic idea that I was reading about from this author

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Speaker 1: is that in political is that political cynicism is on

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Speaker 1: the rise in democracies around the world, as people increasingly

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Speaker 1: use social media to access their news as well as

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Speaker 1: additional political information, much of which is hostile and lacking

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Speaker 1: in civility. This should come as no surprise. If you're

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Speaker 1: not aware of this phenomena, then God bless you because

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Speaker 1: you have stayed out of the mud of all of

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Speaker 1: this over the past decade.

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Speaker 3: I think this is broadly what's found by research in general,

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Speaker 3: but Rob, maybe you can let me know what you've

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Speaker 3: come across here. At least in myself, I've noticed that

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Speaker 3: there is a huge difference in how I feel about

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Speaker 3: the same news when I'm getting it from like reading

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Speaker 3: articles in a newspaper or online newspaper versus seeing it

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Speaker 3: by scrolling social media. Gigantic difference in how I process that,

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Speaker 3: you know, even very bad and distressing news. When I'm

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Speaker 3: reading about it in you know, in news articles, I

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Speaker 3: feel like my response to it is more measured and productive.

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Speaker 3: My mind tends to go to what would be things

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Speaker 3: that could be done to fix this situation, well, you

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Speaker 3: know that sort of thing, Whereas when I consume basically

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Speaker 3: the same news events by like say, scrolling on a

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Speaker 3: social media I tend to not do this these days,

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Speaker 3: but you know, I can remember from other times, and

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Speaker 3: I have done it a few times recently, profoundly different

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Speaker 3: emotional experience, one that is much more distressing, and it

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Speaker 3: just creates a feeling of despair and helplessness. Like I

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Speaker 3: do not have a productive response to it, like thinking

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Speaker 3: about things that could be done to make the situation better.

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Speaker 3: It's more just like I want to surrender and curl

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Speaker 3: up in a ball, you know. It's much more disempowering

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Speaker 3: and horrifying.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's that's not an uncommon experience. Now,

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Speaker 1: coming back to this study from the International Journal of

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Speaker 1: Press Politics, this is basically what they found out based

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Speaker 1: on a panel survey of eighteen hundred American American adults

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Speaker 1: during the twenty twenty election. They found that the more

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Speaker 1: a person was exposed to political attacks on social media,

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Speaker 1: the more politically cynical they became. Yeah, okay, exposure led

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Speaker 1: to anger with increased political cynicism. Thus it became this

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Speaker 1: kind of like rodent wheel of exposure, anger, rising cynicism,

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Speaker 1: then more exposure, more anger, more rising cynicism. And to

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Speaker 1: be clear, they characterized this not as a kind of

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Speaker 1: healthy cynicism in response to corruption or failure, which they acknowledge.

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Speaker 1: You know, when the system is corrupt, when they're failures,

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Speaker 1: it's right to have like some response of cynicism. But

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Speaker 1: this is the sort of cynicism that is much more

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Speaker 1: dangerous and it can ultimately lead to the delegitimization of

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Speaker 1: democratic process.

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Speaker 3: I might make the distinction we talked about earlier between

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Speaker 3: skepticism and cynicism, like that it can be very health

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Speaker 3: healthy to be skeptical of politics, to not just take

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Speaker 3: politician's word for it, you know, to look for evidence

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Speaker 3: of claims and things like that, versus cynicism where you

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Speaker 3: just have a bias toward negative emotion and low opinions

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Speaker 3: of moral character.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And and what's interesting here too is that

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Speaker 1: it ultimately goes beyond the sort of like you could

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Speaker 1: frame it as positive political fear mongering or you know,

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Speaker 1: the sort of anxiety fueling messaging that does get people

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Speaker 1: to the polls, that does inspire some sort of action,

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Speaker 1: But instead we're getting to like the level where it

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Speaker 1: can result in cynical inaction, where it's it's not like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm revved up, I'm going to go do something about it.

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Speaker 1: It's I'm revved up, but I can do nothing about it,

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Speaker 1: because thus is the world world now. To go back

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Speaker 1: to that discussion of cynical poop in the streets again,

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Speaker 1: it's not that you're fed up with all the poop

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Speaker 1: and want to do something about it or in response

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Speaker 1: to it. Rather, you're just generally nauseated by all the

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Speaker 1: poop you see and you dis engage from seeing it

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Speaker 1: all together.

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Speaker 3: So that is one type of response to political cynicism.

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Speaker 3: I came across a paper talking about talking about it

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Speaker 3: a little bit differently that I think has some interesting

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Speaker 3: insights here. So I was looking for research that study

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Speaker 3: the particular characteristics of how cynicism is expressed in political behavior,

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Speaker 3: and it turns out there's a decent amount of research

435
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 3: on this going back many years. Actually, there's a long

436
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 3: running link in the literature between high cynicism and a

437
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:51,160
Speaker 3: preference for authoritarian rhetoric and governance. Authoritarianism being the concentration

438
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 3: of power under a central authority, under a figure or structure,

439
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:58,879
Speaker 3: often a single person, and the repression of individual freedoms,

440
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:03,680
Speaker 3: especially the for full suppression of dissent. So I wanted

441
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 3: to look at one pretty highly cited paper on the

442
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:09,679
Speaker 3: subject of cynicism in politics, and this was published in

443
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 3: the year twenty twelve in the European Journal of Personality

444
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 3: by Svin Patten, Elaine van Heil, Christoph Daunt and Emma

445
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 3: Onrit and it's called Stripping the Political Political cynic a

446
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:27,199
Speaker 3: psychological exploration of the concept of political cynicism. Now, this

447
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 3: was a study of how cynicism manifests in politics in

448
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 3: multiple samples, specifically from Western Europe, and the authors note

449
00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 3: multiple times that some of these results could be culture specific,

450
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:45,360
Speaker 3: and so cynicism could manifest differently in one culture than

451
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 3: it does in another, or differently in one type of

452
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 3: political system than it does in another but at least

453
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 3: looking at these samples in Belgium and the Netherlands, they

454
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 3: found some interesting results. And now I'm not going to

455
00:26:57,280 --> 00:26:59,199
Speaker 3: be able to get into everything the study found, but

456
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 3: a few bullets that stood out to me. The authors

457
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 3: were able to detect political cynicism as its own variable,

458
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 3: which was distinct from just generalized social cynicism, which we've

459
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 3: been talking about throughout this series, and from a somewhat

460
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 3: distinct from what they call political distrust. Now, what would

461
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:25,160
Speaker 3: be the difference there. Political cynicism is cynicism applied specifically

462
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:29,439
Speaker 3: to politics and politicians. So if general cynicism is the

463
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 3: belief that people are bad, people are selfish, and morals

464
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 3: are fake, political cynicism is the belief that politics and

465
00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:40,360
Speaker 3: politicians are bad, they're motivated by self interest and are

466
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:45,680
Speaker 3: unbound by professed morals. Political cynicism is also differentiated here

467
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:51,159
Speaker 3: from simple distrust of politicians and of politics, And I

468
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 3: think a simple way of explaining this slight difference is,

469
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 3: if I have political distrust, I am cautious about believing

470
00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 3: politicians and what they say. I think that politicians and

471
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 3: political institutions may in some cases have incentives to lie

472
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 3: or to make promises they can't keep. So I am

473
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:12,399
Speaker 3: skeptical of what they say and I try. You know,

474
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 3: I am withholding some trust. So there is this withholding

475
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:20,439
Speaker 3: trust element. But if I have high political cynicism, I

476
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:24,439
Speaker 3: not only treat their claims skeptically and withhold trust, but

477
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 3: I also think politicians and political institutions are bad, corrupt,

478
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 3: and in it exclusively for themselves. So it's like more

479
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 3: of a negative emotional and moral judgment against politics, not

480
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 3: just caution or skepticism about the claims emanating from it.

481
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 3: Does that distinction makes sense?

482
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: Yes?

483
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 3: So in this study, the authors found evidence that political

484
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 3: cynicism was its own thing, and while related to general

485
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 3: social cynicism and political distrust, it had its own distinct

486
00:28:55,960 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 3: predictive characteristics separate from those other two categories. Political cynicism,

487
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 3: in particular, was a predictor of a bunch of other

488
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 3: variables in a person. It tended to be related to

489
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 3: feelings of political powerlessness and political normlessness, so kind of

490
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 3: there's nothing I can do, and also there is no

491
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 3: right or wrong in politics, just power. The authors also

492
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 3: find that people high in political cynicism do not always

493
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 3: just sit out of politics, and we've talked about, or

494
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 3: we mentioned at least in previous parts some other studies

495
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 3: finding that people high in general cynicism were less likely

496
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 3: to vote, less likely to be involved in the political process.

497
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 3: But in this study they did not find that political

498
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 3: cynics were always sitting things out with at least within

499
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 3: the context of the samples from Belgium and the Netherlands.

500
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 3: The rate of voting among political cynics is not very

501
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 3: different from that of less cynical people, but people high

502
00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 3: in political cynicism tended to view their vote more as

503
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 3: a prote or as a rebuke of the political system,

504
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 3: rather than a means of advancing a specific policy agenda. Quote,

505
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 3: political cenics boost parties not for their ideological program per se,

506
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 3: but rather because of their supposed integrity, you know. So

507
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 3: it's like it's not so much about the policies that

508
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 3: the party they're supporting is proposing, but more often about like,

509
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 3: this is the only party that really tells it like

510
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 3: it is. The authors say, political cynicism can be found

511
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 3: all across the political spectrum, but in this context, in

512
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 3: these Western European democracies, it tended to manifest most in

513
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 3: support of extreme right wing protest parties that use anti

514
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 3: establishment rhetoric, and the authors say it's possible that this

515
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 3: link is specific to Belgium and the Netherlands. At this time,

516
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 3: the study was from twenty twelve, and it's possible that

517
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 3: in a different political environment, cynicism could be more left

518
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 3: wing coded or maybe even centrist. More research would be

519
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 3: needed on that. However. Another dimension is that the authors

520
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 3: here also found a link between high political cynicism, racial prejudice,

521
00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 3: and intolerance. This is in line with previous findings in

522
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 3: political psychology, and the research was only able to establish

523
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 3: a correlation, not to determine if there was a causal

524
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 3: effect between these variables, and so it invites the question,

525
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 3: if there is an effect, which way does the effect go.

526
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 3: Does racial prejudice tend to cause people to become politically cynical,

527
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:30,240
Speaker 3: or does political cynicism tend to cause people to become

528
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 3: more racist. It could be thought, of course, that political

529
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 3: cynicism serves to support racist assumptions if the racist believes

530
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 3: the political system is working to the benefit of racial

531
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 3: groups they dislike. But it also could be that racial

532
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 3: prejudice itself is maybe a particular variety or expression of

533
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 3: underlying cynicism. So ultimately, political cynicism, it seems, is certainly

534
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 3: a thing that is distinct in itself. It's related to,

535
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:02,600
Speaker 3: but distinct from, general social cynisism, and its expression is

536
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 3: a very important factor in understanding how democracies work. So

537
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:09,479
Speaker 3: if you're involved in political science or political psychology and

538
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 3: you want to understand and be able to model and

539
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 3: predict predict democracies, you need to understand political cynicism. It

540
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 3: is a factor. But another way I was thinking about

541
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 3: the expression of political cynicism is actually related to what

542
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 3: we talked about last time, to the cynical genius illusion.

543
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 3: The cynical genius illusion study found that while people don't

544
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 3: necessarily love cynics or think that they are the best

545
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 3: at everything, remember, people were less likely to trust cynics with,

546
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 3: say a social task like cheering up a depressed friend

547
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 3: or taking care of a stray animal or something like that.

548
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 3: It found that, you know, so we don't love cynics

549
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 3: for everything. We do tend on average to assume highly

550
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 3: cynical people are smarter and more cognitively competent. And you

551
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 3: know who doesn't want to be seen as smart. So specifically,

552
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 3: I was thinking about how this applies to conversations about politics,

553
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 3: where I've had this thought for a while that I

554
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 3: think people often selectively deploy cynical rhetoric in political conversations,

555
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 3: whether or not they really believe it all that strongly,

556
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 3: in order to look like they know what they're talking

557
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 3: about without having to get into specifics, so like broad

558
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 3: sweeping statements of political cynicism. I think last time we

559
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 3: mentioned the example in all politicians they're all the same,

560
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 3: you know, it's just they're all liars, they're all the same.

561
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 3: It allows you to sound like you know what you're

562
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 3: talking about and sit up on a high horse about

563
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 3: the subject without having to know anything or read anything

564
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 3: or follow the news. You can loftily condemn others without

565
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 3: having to do any homework.

566
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. I think we've seen some very

567
00:33:55,680 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: strong examples of this over the past ten years, and

568
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: sometimes sadly you see it puppeted in say comedy, in

569
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 1: mainstream rhetoric. One of the main examples being in any

570
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 1: case where someone is just talking about a given election

571
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:17,280
Speaker 1: and saying it's just a choice between two bad choices.

572
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 1: You know, it was like both of the choices are

573
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:21,359
Speaker 1: just as bad. I mean, that's just like, I mean,

574
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 1: that's a great example of lowercase the cynicism, where it's

575
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter, everything's just as bad. It doesn't

576
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:30,319
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if I vote for one or the other.

577
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:32,759
Speaker 1: But it also means you don't have to get into

578
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:35,439
Speaker 1: actually comparing the two if you just assume they're all

579
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: just as bad, which I mean, is there ever a

580
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:41,439
Speaker 1: case where two bad choices are exactly as bad? Yeah?

581
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:43,760
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're given a choice between two different

582
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,759
Speaker 1: toxic mushrooms, there are going to be different symptoms, there

583
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 1: are different dosages and so forth, Like, they're not exactly

584
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: the same, even if yes, in this one cherry picked example,

585
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: the end result is the same for you, the consumer

586
00:34:58,239 --> 00:34:59,240
Speaker 1: of the toxic mushroom.

587
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 3: I think that's a great analogy. And it's not to

588
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 3: say it is illegitimate to say in a you know,

589
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:07,360
Speaker 3: in a two party democracy to dislike both major parties

590
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 3: or can today it's and you know that's fair, but like, yeah,

591
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 3: the statements like they're all the same, Like if you

592
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 3: if you really meant that, that would be absurd. It

593
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,319
Speaker 3: couldn't be all exactly the same. Maybe neither is to

594
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 3: your liking. But but but if you phrased it that way,

595
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 3: that might invite people to ask follow up questions like, well,

596
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:27,359
Speaker 3: in what way you know, Yeah, like.

597
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 1: What's your scoring method? And is it a scoring method

598
00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 1: where yeah, you reach an absolute zero, but you can't

599
00:35:32,080 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: get underneath the zero, so you can just have have

600
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 1: them bottomed out an equal I guess, but that doesn't

601
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 1: sound like a great scoring mechanism.

602
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 3: And you know what I want to say also that

603
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 3: I think there is a more innoxious version of this

604
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 3: exact thing. I mean, I've been framing it in a

605
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 3: kind of like I'm framing this hypothetical person in a

606
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 3: kind of unfriendly way, like they're trying to seem smart

607
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 3: without doing any homework. But there's also a more common,

608
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,280
Speaker 3: you know, you might say, at least seemingly benign version

609
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 3: of it, where you're just trying to like sort of

610
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 3: get through a tense moment in a conversation, or like

611
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:10,400
Speaker 3: get through something quickly I don't know, with a relative

612
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 3: or something like that, just by making a kind of

613
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:17,160
Speaker 3: quick sweep it all under the rug conversation, you know,

614
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:21,239
Speaker 3: statement about politics, just to like avoid having a difficult conversation,

615
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 3: go on, do you know what I'm talking about?

616
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, just as an escape hatch for an unpleasant conversation,

617
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.

618
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 3: I think people do that sort of thing all the time,

619
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:33,799
Speaker 3: even if they're not like trying to look like a

620
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 3: cynical genius, and to an extent that functions the same

621
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,840
Speaker 3: kind of way. It's just like it's a defense mechanism.

622
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 3: It's a way of using cynicism to to avoid uncomfortable specifics,

623
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 3: whether that's like revealing that you don't have as much

624
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 3: knowledge as you would like to appear to have, or

625
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 3: you know, revealing sort of uncomfortable tensions and differences between people.

626
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:00,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think also we have to ignore knowledge

627
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: that this sort of cynicism can arise, and certainly in

628
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: response to the very sort of social media bombardment so

629
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, but also as a direct result

630
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: of manipulation and disinformation that can force you into this mode.

631
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,839
Speaker 1: So I want to be not to completely forgive cynicism

632
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:22,919
Speaker 1: as it manifests, but we have to acknowledge the complexity

633
00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: of its manifestation in a given person as a response

634
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:32,280
Speaker 1: to streams of information and their overall media, political, social environment.

635
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 3: So in this series, I think at several points it's

636
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 3: clear I'm coming down somewhat normatively against cynicism in a

637
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:42,719
Speaker 3: lot of scenarios. But I also think it's very important

638
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,799
Speaker 3: to understand and be sympathetic to the pressures that give

639
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:50,839
Speaker 3: rise to cynicism, and to understand how we're all susceptible

640
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 3: to it, even people who are not high in cynicism,

641
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 3: like you've talked about, we have cynical moments, and we

642
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 3: might well become more cynical over time if we sort

643
00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 3: of water those little cine instincts and let them grow.

644
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to that idea raised of trying

645
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 3: to leverage expressions of cynicism to make yourself look better

646
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:12,279
Speaker 3: or to come off more favorably in conversation, I did

647
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,720
Speaker 3: find a study on this, so it wasn't just a hunch.

648
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,880
Speaker 3: There's a study in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly in

649
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four by Hillary K's Style called Impression Management

650
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 3: and Expectations of Political Cynicism, and this found that cynicism,

651
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 3: specifically with reference to politics, was a means that people

652
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 3: use to try to control how others perceive them. To

653
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 3: read from the abstract quote. In three studies, I demonstrate

654
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 3: that people report they are cynical in order to avoid

655
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:45,879
Speaker 3: giving the impression they do not know much about politics.

656
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 3: Political cynicism is not a socially desirable characteristic. People do

657
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 3: not believe cynicism is normatively good. At the same time,

658
00:38:56,680 --> 00:39:00,640
Speaker 3: many see value to cynicism in politics, fine, which carries

659
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 3: broad implications for the relationship between cynicism and perceived knowledge

660
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 3: in political discourse. And so I think that's important too,

661
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:13,800
Speaker 3: like recognizing that you might not be overall a highly

662
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 3: cynical person, and yet you might still deploy cynicism specifically

663
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 3: with reference to politics, maybe because of a response to

664
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 3: how you perceive politics. You know, maybe you think you're

665
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 3: just rationally responding to politics being very corrupt and something

666
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 3: that is not worthy of trust, or investing the time

667
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 3: and energy to figure out who is worth trusting within politics,

668
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 3: or maybe you're trying to manage the impressions you make

669
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 3: on other people. Which, again, despite the kind of unfriendly

670
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 3: way I was phrasing it earlier, I mean that's something

671
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:48,399
Speaker 3: we're all always trying to do. I mean, let's be real,

672
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 3: everybody's always to some extent, even if you're a very

673
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,720
Speaker 3: authentic person or you think you are, you're somewhat trying

674
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:57,319
Speaker 3: to control how other people think about you. And it

675
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 3: seems that people often think cynicism is one way of

676
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 3: avoiding coming off as dumb or not knowing anything about politics.

677
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,719
Speaker 1: Right right, and perhaps a way to express neutrality, but

678
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: kind of like a hard edge neutrality that keeps people

679
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 1: from poking at you, because if you're just like, you know,

680
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:19,920
Speaker 1: I don't know yet, I'm just kind of in a

681
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:22,919
Speaker 1: fact finding area right now, then the people might want

682
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,799
Speaker 1: to understandably help you with your fact finding. But if

683
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: you're like, no, I've already figured it all out and

684
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: everything is horrible, then that kind of pushes people away

685
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:33,479
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, okay, fair enough.

686
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 3: But though, another thing that is interesting, going back to

687
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:39,800
Speaker 3: the previous study is you might assume at first glance

688
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 3: that if you express generalized political cynicism that is politically neutral,

689
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 3: but it turns out that is not the case. In fact,

690
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 3: people who express generalized political cynicism were often fans of

691
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:57,759
Speaker 3: extreme parties. There actually were supporters of people within the

692
00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 3: political system very often what are can considered by most

693
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 3: people the extreme wings of the political spectrum, especially at

694
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:08,160
Speaker 3: least within the Western European sample here the extreme right

695
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:12,400
Speaker 3: wing anti establishment parties. But also coming back to the

696
00:41:12,440 --> 00:41:16,239
Speaker 3: idea of impression management and these little moments in conversation

697
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 3: where we might use cynicism to paper over something or

698
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 3: try to come off a certain way to kind of

699
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 3: get through a tough spot. I had to wonder to

700
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 3: what extent these little acts of performative political cynicism, which

701
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 3: again may seem harmless enough because you're just trying to

702
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,759
Speaker 3: get through a conversation without revealing you don't know much,

703
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 3: or trying to get through some tension, to what extent

704
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 3: these actually contribute over time to genuine generalized political cynicism,

705
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:49,240
Speaker 3: which is sometimes linked to these toxic attitudes like racism

706
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 3: and intolerance, which can erode the legitimacy of democracies, can

707
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 3: lead people toward authoritarianism or make them submit to it

708
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 3: more easily, even if they don't love it. You know,

709
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 3: I think most people listening will probably agree these are

710
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 3: like bad outcomes, And I don't have a way of

711
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 3: proving that these little, more harmless seeming moments contribute to

712
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:15,360
Speaker 3: that snowball effect overall, but I have to suspect that

713
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 3: they do, And it makes me think that I, at

714
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 3: least personally want to be more careful about having these

715
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 3: little harmless seeming moments of cynicism, even in passing, because

716
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 3: I think they do kind of add up when you

717
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 3: hear things like that over and over.

718
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I feel like on a personal level, you're

719
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: just kind of going into that cynical mindset more and

720
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: potentially going into at the very least that area of

721
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:43,799
Speaker 1: no hope and no action. But then perhaps in our

722
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: social interactions you're kind of like greasing the shoot of

723
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: cynicism for everyone else. Like everyone if someone has like

724
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:53,359
Speaker 1: a cynical trajectory going on in the way they're viewing

725
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 1: the world and interacting with others, if they come, if

726
00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: they interact with you, and you're just kind of like,

727
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,200
Speaker 1: carry on, let me actually speed you up a little

728
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 1: bit as you head down that huot, Like, obviously that's

729
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:05,919
Speaker 1: not helping anyone, and we don't want to find it out.

730
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: What is it the end of that shoot? Yeah, Now,

731
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 1: at this point I wanted to turn our attention not

732
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: completely away from this topic because it's actually rather related

733
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: to it, and that is to the interactions between cynicism

734
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 1: and conspiracy theories and conspiracy thought.

735
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:33,880
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, I think this is going to be some

736
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 3: fertile ground.

737
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: Yeah. We of course, we've talked about conspiracy theories quite

738
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: a bit on the show before, generally and often discussing

739
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 1: the dangers of following their siren song to easy wonder,

740
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: to prejudice, endorsement, and more harmful worldviews and studies have

741
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: indeed linked belief in conspiracy theories to not only distrust

742
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: of authority, but also general political cynicism and just general

743
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 1: cynicism as well. One paper I was looking at on

744
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:07,840
Speaker 1: this topic is from twenty thirteen by Einstein and Glick

745
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:12,239
Speaker 1: titled Scandals, Conspiracies, and the Vicious Cycle of Cynicism, and

746
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,840
Speaker 1: this is from the annual meeting of the American Political

747
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 1: Science Association, and the authors here describe a cycle of

748
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:23,360
Speaker 1: cynicism that goes as follows quote political scandals, diminished trust

749
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:27,760
Speaker 1: in government. This lower confidence, in turn spurs higher levels

750
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: of conspiracy belief, even in claims unrelated to ongoing scandals.

751
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:35,360
Speaker 1: So the idea of being you know, I think we

752
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: can all sort of imagine the scenario here. There's some

753
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: sort of sex scandal here that you're hearing about some

754
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: sort of you know, money scandal here with other politicians,

755
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,440
Speaker 1: and it kind of like, in your viewpoint, like muddies,

756
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 1: the water makes them for a cynical political environment, and

757
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 1: in that cynical political environment, it seems more likely that

758
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 1: they're perhaps covering up UFO or what have you.

759
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about this and about how this

760
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:06,719
Speaker 3: type of thinking I think benefits from what to use

761
00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:09,800
Speaker 3: mathematical terms, might be sort of like the transitive property

762
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 3: of distrust, where it's like if if one politician or

763
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:20,279
Speaker 3: political institution, government, or whatever has done something to earn

764
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:24,479
Speaker 3: your distrust, that therefore is evidence against all of them

765
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,799
Speaker 3: or all objects of that class. So it's like, you know,

766
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 3: a politician A lied, therefore we know politician B is lying.

767
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And my own tendency here is also to

768
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:39,600
Speaker 1: think about, you know, the desire for we've talked about

769
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:43,839
Speaker 1: the desire for for there to be aliens, for there

770
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: to be UFO visitations, and uh, you know, and this

771
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:49,440
Speaker 1: this is a pretty you know, rich area as well.

772
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: You know, in some levels, perhaps it's most pure form.

773
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,279
Speaker 1: There is the idea of like I want aliens to

774
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 1: be real because I want them to come here and

775
00:45:57,000 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 1: solve our problems. Oh yeah, or you know, or it's

776
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 1: somehow you drop aliens into all of this and everything

777
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,560
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's going to be a way to understand

778
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 1: a confusing world, a confusing and troubling world. But if

779
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 1: you want to believe strongly enough, and the scientific world

780
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: is saying there's no evidence for this, and the government

781
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: or various government agencies and different governments are saying there's

782
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 1: no evidence for this, then one response, one way to

783
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 1: keep the dream alive is to just assume that all

784
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: of these voices that are telling you no are doing

785
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: so because they are covering something up.

786
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, they must all be evil, otherwise why would they lie.

787
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: Now. Of course, this is not to say that a

788
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: government or some sort of governmental body wouldn't have reason

789
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 1: to keep the discovery of alien technology or alien existence.

790
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 3: Secret exactly, But you know, hypothetical incentive to lie is

791
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 3: not evidence for the underlying premise. It's like how I

792
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 3: could say, if my wife had actually been replaced by

793
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,239
Speaker 3: the thing from John Carpenter's The Thing, it would make

794
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 3: sense for her to lie and say she was not

795
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:06,719
Speaker 3: the thing and was in fact still a human. But

796
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 3: that is not evidence that she has in fact been

797
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 3: cloned by an alien.

798
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: That's a good point. That's a good point. So I

799
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 1: was looking around for some additional thoughts in all of this,

800
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 1: and I found a twenty twenty four article for Proceedings

801
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 1: of the International Astronomical Union from philosopher Tony Milligan. And

802
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:27,800
Speaker 1: this is interesting because Milligan argues that belief in UFO

803
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 1: visitation may well at this point constitute a true societal problem.

804
00:47:33,600 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: And while he contends that certainly low level belief and

805
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 1: stuff like this, and you know, fringe belief and enthusiasm

806
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: for stuff like this is nothing to get bent out

807
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 1: of shape about, his point is that is it edges

808
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:50,600
Speaker 1: closer to like mainstream belief. Three major problems emerge, one

809
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: of which is central to our discussion here, and the

810
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 1: other two I think are also interesting in their own right.

811
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:59,760
Speaker 1: One of them is that UFO narratives can sometimes infringe

812
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: upon and even overwrite, indigenous storytelling. I found this interesting because,

813
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 1: of course, we see examples of this in popular conspiracy theories,

814
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 1: where they link indigenous beliefs and stories to UFOs and

815
00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 1: cryptids and so forth, reinterpreting those traditional stories as a

816
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: kind of proof and potentially corrupting those stories in the process.

817
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 3: And not letting those stories just be what they actually are.

818
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,239
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, it's you know, you can note

819
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: that we do see this with all aspects of history,

820
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: myth and religion. But I think the kicker here is

821
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:40,360
Speaker 1: the power imbalance and the appropriation involved. Milligan also says

822
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:44,280
Speaker 1: that it all generates noise that distracts from genuine science

823
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: quote background noise which impedes science communication. So you know,

824
00:48:48,480 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, like putting scientists on the

825
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 1: defensive regarding something like the UFOs and so forth, instead

826
00:48:55,960 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: of you know, actually highlighting legitimate scientific efforts that can

827
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: improve our world.

828
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 3: Well, right, because the kind of UFO conspiracy ideation we're

829
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:10,279
Speaker 3: talking about is always engaging in motivated reasoning. I mean,

830
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 3: you can hypothetically imagine a you know, just a sort

831
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:20,279
Speaker 3: of a maximally unbiased, skeptical UFO researcher who's like, I'm

832
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:22,120
Speaker 3: just going to look into these claims and see what

833
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 3: I find. But there are people like that, and in

834
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 3: my experience, they always find that, like, yeah, there's no

835
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 3: good reason to believe any of these stories and so

836
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 3: and so what you're left with among the UFO believers

837
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 3: is people who are highly for a variety of reasons,

838
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:40,239
Speaker 3: motivated to believe already that yes, UFOs are real, yes

839
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 3: they're being hidden. And thus the fact that you do

840
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:47,120
Speaker 3: not agree with me is evidence that you are at best,

841
00:49:47,360 --> 00:49:50,120
Speaker 3: you know, woefully naive, and at worst you're part of

842
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:50,919
Speaker 3: the conspiracy.

843
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:55,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the number one point that Milligan makes is

844
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:58,320
Speaker 1: that it can lead to erosion of trust in governments

845
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: and institutions, because again, if you want to believe, if

846
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:05,719
Speaker 1: this is your like core belief, then you just you

847
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: just assume that everyone else is covering the aliens up.

848
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: So of course you're not going to trust governments, you're

849
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: not going to trust institutions, you're not going to trust experts,

850
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 1: and you know, yeah, if you're a true believer, it

851
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: seems to me one of the problems here is you'd

852
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: never be able to one hundred percent shut off the cynicism.

853
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 1: You know, like if the government or institution said tomorrow, okay,

854
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 1: you got this alien life exists, but they say, here's

855
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:36,719
Speaker 1: the kicker though it's only microbial or it, you know,

856
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:40,440
Speaker 1: or even if they were just to go even further

857
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 1: than that and say, all right, here's the deal, gray,

858
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 1: aliens absolutely real, but like Nordic aliens, green aliens and

859
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:50,920
Speaker 1: reptilians are totally not real. Would that that would not

860
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 1: please everyone? There's no way you could please everyone, like

861
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: there's I'm you know, I'm certainly willing to admit that

862
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 1: it's possible that some of what's out there in the

863
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:07,040
Speaker 1: ufology world is real, but is all of it one

864
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: absolutely not, There's no way it could be. So you're

865
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: always going to have like some level of conspiracy thinking

866
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 1: and no matter what could conceivably be revealed.

867
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 3: I think this is actually a good point that in

868
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 3: some cases could get through to people who are fond

869
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 3: of this type of conspiracy ideation, because I think a

870
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,680
Speaker 3: lot of people in that situation and I'm trying to

871
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 3: be sympathetic to people with whom I disagree about a

872
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:37,279
Speaker 3: lot of things, but I think a lot of them

873
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:40,040
Speaker 3: would recognize if you bring it up that there really

874
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:44,239
Speaker 3: isn't a plausible scenario they could imagine where they would

875
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 3: be satisfied, right Like what, Okay, imagine you know to

876
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 3: them that actually we had not been visited by aliens.

877
00:51:55,120 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 3: I know that's not what you think, but imagine it

878
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 3: turns out you're wrong, and that is the case, what

879
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 3: what would satisfy you of that fact? What piece of evidence? What?

880
00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: Like?

881
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 3: How would you be like, Okay, I'm convinced now.

882
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:11,240
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's like it's it is. It becomes

883
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:14,640
Speaker 1: a worldview, right, I mean, and the conspiracy is part

884
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:17,239
Speaker 1: of the worldview. So you would have to like it

885
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: would completely turn everything on its head if you were

886
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,640
Speaker 1: able to do that. So instead, it just seems like

887
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:27,000
Speaker 1: it would be a case where you would have this revelation,

888
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:30,640
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't please everyone, and so everyone would just

889
00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 1: assume some greater revelation is possible and that some cover

890
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:36,239
Speaker 1: up is still in place, like Okay, they told us

891
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: about the Grace, Why are they not telling us about

892
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:38,560
Speaker 1: the Greens?

893
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:41,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, And coming back to your point about the erosion

894
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 3: of trust, I mean, one problem with this sort of

895
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 3: the fondness for conspiracy narratives is really it makes trust impossible.

896
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 3: No matter how trustworthy you know an institution has a

897
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 3: track record of being institutions are actually of variable trustworthiness.

898
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 3: Some lie more than a there's some I think of,

899
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:04,440
Speaker 3: you know, overall or quite trustworthy institutions. Others are not

900
00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:08,160
Speaker 3: very trustworthy, And so like a skeptical person as opposed

901
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:11,320
Speaker 3: to a cynical person would try to evaluate the track

902
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 3: record of an institution or of an individual spokesperson and say, like,

903
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:18,080
Speaker 3: you know what, do we have reason to trust them

904
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:21,400
Speaker 3: or not. But if you take a sort of a

905
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:24,400
Speaker 3: conspiracy cover up as a starting point, and you start

906
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:28,000
Speaker 3: with that conclusion, you will always have evidence that anybody

907
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 3: who doesn't agree with you has already violated your trust.

908
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:35,200
Speaker 3: They've already lied to you. So you're taking instead of

909
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 3: the thing we talked about earlier, with the kind of

910
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:43,080
Speaker 3: applying a you know, a distrust inducing incident from one

911
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:46,839
Speaker 3: politician to another. What in that example, we use something

912
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:50,000
Speaker 3: that really happened, like so and so politician lied about something,

913
00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:53,080
Speaker 3: you know, assuming that lie was real. Now I can't

914
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 3: trust Politician B because Politician A lied. What if the

915
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 3: initial thing was not even actually a lie, it's just

916
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:01,880
Speaker 3: something you were your assuming they're not telling you the

917
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:04,800
Speaker 3: truth because they don't agree with you that we're hiding

918
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:06,440
Speaker 3: an alien spacecraft somewhere.

919
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:10,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this like imagined original sin that prevents any

920
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: kind of legitimate trust to ever take place. Another thing

921
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:16,320
Speaker 1: I was thinking about in all of this. You know,

922
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: we've talked a good bit in over the past year

923
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:22,399
Speaker 1: or so about low res ambiguous data. You know, it's

924
00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 1: like it could be visual, it could be some other

925
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: kind of information. And certainly we can get even get

926
00:54:28,160 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 1: out of the realm of recorded information and into just

927
00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: sightings and observations, you know, cases where you can make

928
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:38,880
Speaker 1: a case for it. It's blurry. It could be a

929
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: UFO it's blurry, or you know, or we don't know

930
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: exactly what we're looking at. It could be an antenna

931
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the ocean floor. And this is

932
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 1: interesting because I was looking back and there were various

933
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:54,720
Speaker 1: headlines several years ago talking about an end of UFO

934
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:58,440
Speaker 1: ology that arguing that, Okay, we're getting in this information

935
00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: age full of you liquid as visual data gathering. You know,

936
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 1: we're just we're just going to see this stuff dry

937
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 1: up and go away. But I don't see that happening,

938
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:11,440
Speaker 1: Like there's always going to be low res ambiguous data.

939
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's right. I mean one thing you might

940
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 3: have assumed that as like everybody's got a camera in

941
00:55:15,960 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 3: their pocket, and the cameras have become sharper and they

942
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:20,919
Speaker 3: get clearer images and stuff, You're not going to see

943
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 3: all these like blurry kind of like what is that

944
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 3: in the sky. No, it turns out like as the

945
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,400
Speaker 3: resolution gets better and these images, in fact, they'll just

946
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 3: capture things that are further away, yeah, or they're like

947
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 3: still ambiguous, just like what's that dot? And you know,

948
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:40,719
Speaker 3: in some cases people actually can figure out like oh,

949
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 3: you know, that's a star. You know you're or that

950
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:46,960
Speaker 3: is a mylar balloon or something like that. In other cases,

951
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:49,000
Speaker 3: like you can't figure it out. There's just a dot

952
00:55:49,120 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 3: on your image of the sky and you don't know

953
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:53,680
Speaker 3: what it is. And it's in those situations where it's

954
00:55:53,719 --> 00:55:56,919
Speaker 3: low resolution and there's not enough image, there's not enough

955
00:55:56,920 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 3: information to really reach a solid conclusion, where this kind

956
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 3: of these thoughts can always bloom. There's always still the

957
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:06,000
Speaker 3: possibility you don't know what it is, so why isn't

958
00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:06,600
Speaker 3: it aliens?

959
00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:09,920
Speaker 1: Or it's just the information is complex and you don't

960
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 1: have the background to understand it, or you don't have

961
00:56:13,080 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 1: the additional insight and layers to understand it. And therefore

962
00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:23,120
Speaker 1: it allows you to apply the script of the paranormal

963
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:26,360
Speaker 1: to it in order to interpret it. The script that

964
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:30,480
Speaker 1: is very malleable. It can be shifted and applied to

965
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: any ambiguous data to produce the desired result.

966
00:56:34,320 --> 00:56:37,960
Speaker 3: But it's funny even in this area of vieufology. I mean,

967
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:40,400
Speaker 3: this is something I read about sometimes. I mean, cynicism

968
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:43,160
Speaker 3: plays in here too, because often people will be able

969
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 3: to come in and say, oh, you know this image

970
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 3: that you were very excited about of like a thing

971
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 3: moving in the sky, I was able to calculate this

972
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 3: is actually an artifact created by the camera system used,

973
00:56:57,560 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 3: and I can show you how, Like, you know, a

974
00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 3: lot of times people just be like, you know, why

975
00:57:01,680 --> 00:57:03,760
Speaker 3: would I believe you. You've been part of the UFO

976
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:06,200
Speaker 3: cover up for years, You've been posting articles like that,

977
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 3: and so like, there is a kind of cynicism that

978
00:57:09,120 --> 00:57:12,239
Speaker 3: just prevents you from accepting a what looks to me

979
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:15,680
Speaker 3: like a pretty good explanation of a weird looking image.

980
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 3: What this is really getting into, I think is that

981
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:20,440
Speaker 3: we've just sort of, for a few minutes now, been

982
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 3: dancing around this. But I think another big thing about

983
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 3: cynicism is that it functions as an excuse. Cynicism functions

984
00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:35,919
Speaker 3: as an excuse to excuse bad behavior on your own part.

985
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:38,320
Speaker 3: For one thing, we've been mentioning this less but I

986
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:42,120
Speaker 3: think this is absolutely true that if you get caught

987
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 3: doing something wrong that you really know is wrong, you

988
00:57:45,920 --> 00:57:47,600
Speaker 3: can't really make a defense of what you did. What

989
00:57:48,040 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 3: do people say? They say, everybody does it. Yeah, cynicism

990
00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:57,120
Speaker 3: is just like projecting cynicism onto others excuses your undeniable

991
00:57:57,200 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 3: bad behavior because it's just what everybody does. Everybody's like

992
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 3: this this, So, of course, in the realm of politics,

993
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 3: this happens all the time. When somebody's favorite politician, it's

994
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:09,840
Speaker 3: really undeniable. You know, they get caught on camera doing

995
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:13,120
Speaker 3: something really bad. If they can't deny it. What people

996
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:16,000
Speaker 3: say everybody does it, they're all you're so naive, you

997
00:58:16,040 --> 00:58:19,480
Speaker 3: think the other ones are better than this, So it

998
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,800
Speaker 3: excuses bad behavior. But then the other way it's an

999
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:27,600
Speaker 3: excuse is that it excuses poor epistemic practices. When you

1000
00:58:27,680 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 3: don't have you want to believe something and you don't

1001
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 3: have good reasons too, and in fact people are giving

1002
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 3: you very good reasons not to believe the thing you believe,

1003
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 3: you can resort to cynicism so that you don't have

1004
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:41,480
Speaker 3: to pay attention to that. It's like, well, you're just

1005
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 3: all part of it. You're all just all lying. Why

1006
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 3: should I believe anything you say.

1007
00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it lowers the horizon of like the

1008
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 1: moral universe around us to the level of the of

1009
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 1: whatever fallen star we're looking at.

1010
00:58:53,560 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we have gotten into a lot of dark

1011
00:58:56,840 --> 00:58:59,520
Speaker 3: territory today. But next time we do want to focus

1012
00:58:59,560 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 3: on the topic of how to avoid and combat cynicism.

1013
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 3: So I think coming a little bit back into the light.

1014
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:10,480
Speaker 1: All right, so join us on Thursday for that. Just

1015
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 1: a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow

1016
00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:14,720
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with

1017
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:18,080
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on

1018
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:20,760
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns

1019
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1020
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1021
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:28,840
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1022
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:31,200
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1023
00:59:31,200 --> 00:59:33,240
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1024
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:35,840
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1025
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:44,480
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1026
00:59:44,600 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1027
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:50,440
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1028
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:53,280
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

1029
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 1: Nations later,