WEBVTT - From the Vault: Cynicism, Part 3 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:08.119 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:10.360 name is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so I have 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:12.680 a vault episode for you. This is going to be 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:17.920 part three of four in our Cynicism series. This episode 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:21.960 originally published four twenty two, twenty twenty five. Let's dive 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:22.560 right in. 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:32.320 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:37.600 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:38.239 is Robert. 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.159 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today we are 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:45.239 returning with part three in our series on cynicism, the 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:50.720 tendency to believe that other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral. 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.400 In part one of the series, we defined cynicism in 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.040 its modern usage along the lines I just said, and 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:01.760 we distinguished it from other concepts like pessimism and from 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.479 the cynic school of philosophy founded in ancient Greece, which 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.440 was not defined by thinking about other people as morally 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.080 bad and undeserving of trust, but instead by the idea 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:16.720 that people should strive for self sufficiency and moral integrity 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:20.120 based on living according to our nature, sort of throwing 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:24.280 off the hypocrisies that are mandated by culture. And I 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.920 think This goal of exposing hypocrisy is one of the 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:32.200 few threads you might find between modern cynicism and ancient 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:35.800 cynic philosophy, though still with some differences. It's not quite 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.399 this simple. But I was thinking the other day about it. 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.000 I think you could say cynic philosophy was like, hypocrisy 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.200 is bad, and I'm going to try to get rid 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:48.320 of it, whereas modern cynicism is more like everybody's a hypocrite. 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.720 You can't trust them, So a decay from what was 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.600 once a positive mission for truth into a kind of 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.360 surrender to the idea that we're all living a lie. 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:00.760 In Part one, we also talked about re search into 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:04.040 the correlates of modern cynicism. So like, if I am 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.320 highly cynical, what are the effects of that on my life? 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:09.959 It turns out there's a lot of research on this question, 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:14.359 and the answer is the effects are overwhelmingly negative. Cynicism 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.960 appears to be bad for health outcomes, leading to things 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:24.240 like cardiovascular disease, depression, substance abuse, and early death. It 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.359 is correlated with lower quality relationships, a decreased tendency to 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.960 pursue certain types of goals, and even contrary to the 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.959 very familiar image of the cynical Machiavelian elite power player, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.920 and of course we can think of individual examples of 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:43.120 this from the real world. On average, cynicism actually makes 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:47.600 it harder for regular people to achieve even cynically coded 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.680 material goals like money and positions of power, probably because 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.120 in part, cynicism makes people less likely to cooperate with 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.600 others and thus less likely to benefit from relationships of 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.359 mutual trust. In Part two, we followed up on a 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:04.680 number of tangents from the first episode, and we also 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:06.840 took a detailed look at a paper on the so 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:12.239 called cynical genius illusion. The short version of this is 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.640 that while people don't necessarily like cynics, we do tend 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.800 to believe, on average that cynics are more intelligent and 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:25.480 more cognitively competent than non cynics. For example, people are 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.320 more likely to assign a cynical person jobs like doing 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:33.040 mathematical calculations or reviewing charts of scientific results, and this 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:35.400 is in line with the long running archetype and fiction 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.720 of the cynical genius, like Sherlock Holmes, someone who withholds 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.640 trust and has a very low opinion of human nature, 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.960 but also has superior knowledge, memory, and powers of reasoning. 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:49.440 One thing that I neglected to bring up when we 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:55.240 were talking about the Sherlock Holmes trope is that you know, 0:03:55.280 --> 0:04:01.920 there is a distinction to be made between skepticism and cynesism. Yes, now, 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.160 you can imagine where the line begins to blur at 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.000 some points, and certainly, as we've been discussing, you know, 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:12.040 your cynicism level may not be constant throughout your life. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:14.560 You may drift back and forth, and so you can 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:18.040 imagine a scenario where one is essentially a skeptic, but 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.359 then that may sort of stray into cynical territory. 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:26.360 Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I was thinking about the distinction there also. 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:28.680 I was in fact talking about this with Rachel and 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:30.760 I guess we never got into this in the previous parts, 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.279 but I think there is a big difference between how 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:37.600 I use the word cynicism and skepticism. For me, skepticism 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:42.280 is an attempt to dole out your trust according to 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.960 how trustworthy something is based on the evidence. It's essentially 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.840 trying to overcome your natural biases to be more trusting 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:54.240 or less trusting than the situation actually deserves. It's just 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.240 trying to be as rational as you can. What reasons 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.719 do I have to trust or distrust? Whereas is just 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:02.720 a bias toward distrust. 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:04.800 Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:09.200 One of the interesting things, though, is that someone who 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.440 is truly cynical about a given topic may self label 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.679 as skeptical, and that can lead to a fair amount 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:17.240 of confusion. 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.679 Right. Well, of course, if skepticism is defined as being 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.640 as reasonable as you can with trust, the cynic always 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.480 thinks they're being reasonable, or usually probably thinks they're being reasonable. 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:32.479 They just think it is reasonable to have very low 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:34.720 trust and think everyone's going to stab them in the back. 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:35.279 Yeah. 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.800 And in fact, that brings us back coming back to 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.520 the recap of the cynical genius illusion, The question is 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.039 are they correct in thinking that is the cynic in 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:49.120 fact being reasonable and having correct insights that non cynics lack. 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:52.440 The other half of the finding in that paper was 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:56.039 that the cynical genius illusion is actually an illusion. Highly 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.320 cynical people are not smarter or more knowledgeable on average. 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:04.560 In fact, in the majority of scenarios tested, the association 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.799 runs the other way, with education and intelligence being correlated 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.280 with a greater tendency to trust. The big caveat here, 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.679 of course, is that cynicism is warranted in some situations, 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:21.600 in particularly corrupt situations and scenarios. So it seems like 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:25.359 a common pattern the researchers found is that knowledgeable and 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:29.760 intelligent people might be might be more trusting by default, 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.000 but shift into cynical mode when they recognize that they 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.840 are dealing with a corrupt and untrustworthy situation or environment. 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:40.400 And in fact, that would sort of line up with 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:42.720 how I just defined skepticism, right. It's sort of like 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:48.320 detecting reliable signals from your environment, essentially paying attention to 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:53.560 evidence of how trustworthy the situation you're in is. But anyway, 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:57.000 this study and some studies cited by it helped us 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.960 answer some questions we raised in Part one. First of all, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.520 I'll do cynics or nonsenics have a more accurate model 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.000 of the world. Of course, it's hard to answer that 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.240 question in a way that averages out all environments in 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.080 all situations. It's kind of hard to say, like who's 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.280 more correct overall, but at least in a bunch of 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:21.200 experimental scenarios like random strangers are much more trustworthy than 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.400 we tend to give them credit for. One example of 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.960 this was that trust based investing game we talked about, 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.600 where researchers give you an initial reward of money, So 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:33.160 they give you five dollars, and then you have the 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:36.480 option to either just keep the five or hand that 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:40.320 money to a stranger, which quadruples the initial sum, turning 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:43.880 five dollars into twenty dollars. And then the stranger has 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.520 the option to either keep all the money or give 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:50.040 you back half of the total sum, doubling your initial investment. 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:52.080 So you started with five, you end up with ten 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.720 if the stranger gives you the money back. And in 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:58.680 these types of experiments, strangers tended to be cooperative and trustworthy. 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:01.960 In the overwhelming number of cases people doubted them way 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.200 too often. So again, that doesn't tell you about every 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.120 situation in life, but it is a piece of evidence 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.760 that people on average tend to overestimate other people's selfishness, 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.040 and thus the highly cynical person is probably going to 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.360 miss out on lots of opportunities to trust and to 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:24.239 benefit from cooperation. But the other question that study shed 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:28.080 some light on for us was since generalized cynicism has 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:31.520 so many horrible downsides. It's like really bad for you 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.840 in so many ways, not just for the people around 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.160 the cynic, but for the cynic themselves. What are its 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.320 upsides if any? And there were a few answers here. 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.760 If you are not good at being able to recognize 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:48.400 the difference between a corrupt situation and a trustworthy one, 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:54.000 generalized cynicism may help you avoid catastrophic outcomes from misplacing 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.000 your trust. But again, this comes at great cost. It's 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:58.880 sort of you know, we have to destroy the town 0:08:58.960 --> 0:08:59.880 in order to save it. 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:05.120 Yeah. Or you can imagine, like a biological analogy would 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.840 be some sort of an organism that has had to 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:10.880 extend a great deal of energy into evolving some sort 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:14.040 of like highly protective shell that also slows it down 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.760 and restricts it restricts its range, or something to that 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:18.800 effect exactly. 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:21.720 I think that's a great analogy. And then the other 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.720 thing being that cynicism may have, according to the cynical 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:30.280 genius effect, the socially desirable effect of making you appear 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.640 smarter and more competent to others. Again, this comes at 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.960 great cost. Like Sherlock Holmes is cool, you might want 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.800 to seem smart like Sherlock Holmes, but given all the downsides, 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.480 the Sherlock gambit is probably not worth it, at least 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.600 in my opinion. Anyway, we're back today to talk about more. 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.280 Yeah, and in this episode we're going to get a 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.920 little bit into social media and politics, which shouldn't come 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:57.160 as a surprise, right. Cynicism, social media, politics, these are 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.800 all I think expected Waters. 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:01.880 Wait, did you mean to sound cynical when you were 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:03.040 saying that? Was that the joke? 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:08.080 Probably? Probably? Yeah, I mean it's easy to feel cynical 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:10.600 about all of this sort of thing, right, So just 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.920 looking considering just say, cynicism and social media like this 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:18.320 alone is a really big area to get into, and likewise, 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:22.080 political cynicism is another huge topic. Both of these have 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.760 been topics of discussion and analysis for years and years 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:26.199 and years. 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.079 Yes, and I would say, of course the relationship between 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:36.280 cynicism and politics is especially important to understand within democracies. 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:40.800 You know, within places of popular political participation and civil 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.800 liberties and freedoms. You know, whether you are cynical about 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.920 the political structures you live under matters a lot less. 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:51.880 If you are like a peasant in medieval France than 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.120 it does if you are somebody who is free to 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:57.600 act within a democracy, free to vote and run for 0:10:57.679 --> 0:10:59.920 office yourself and engage in political rhetoric. 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.440 Yeah. Yeah, because it means coming to believe that the 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:09.040 thing that you can do that matters doesn't matter, and then, 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:11.760 like the old saying, by doing nothing, you know, all 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:16.320 problems are solved. So one of the books that I 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:20.320 referenced in the first episode is the MIT Press book 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:24.280 on Cynicism by anskar Allen and Alan digs into this 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.280 topic a lot, and I want attempt to cover every 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:28.040 point that he makes and every point that he brings 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.040 up on the matter. But there's some really good nuggets 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.760 of wisdom and observation in here related to the level 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:37.120 of high energy, negative and critical rhetoric that you tend 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.240 to find on the Internet and on social media, very 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:45.959 much encouraged for profit by service providers and social media companies, 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:47.360 as we've discussed in the past. 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:48.400 Yeah. 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:52.480 So I've long been a fan of the La based 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:57.200 artists collective known as Everything Is Terrible, Joe, I know 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.800 you're familiar with them as well. They're slow is. If 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.280 everything is terrible, then nothing is that's great. 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:06.760 I think that statement is meant with a dash of irony. 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:10.720 But but yeah, everything is terrible is great. You know, 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:13.880 you may have seen videos of theirs, even if you're 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.679 not familiar with the name of like super cuts of 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:22.720 weird moments from old found media. One of my favorites 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:25.000 of all times. I think everything is Terrible did the 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:29.520 video of it was just moments from a video cassette 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.440 that accompanied a Star Trek board game where there's a 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.439 like a kling on guy who keeps like screaming at 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.600 you to punish you. It was one of the one 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:40.920 of those things where they were trying to do like 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:43.200 mixed media board games I think in the late eighties 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:46.800 or early nineties, where like I don't know, you'd put 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:48.800 the tape in and then you'd have to roll stuff 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.840 and anyway, this guy keeps Suddenly there's a klingon popping 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.520 on the TV saying like you the one who is 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:55.280 moving now. 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.280 Yeah. Yeah, they several different the individuals involved with that 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:05.679 over the years, and the resurrect different bits of old 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.520 media and now often super cut them into some sort 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:10.199 of a presentation. If you ever get to get the 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.959 chance to see them live, it's it's well worth it. 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:17.360 So if everything is terrible, then nothing is. Alan brings 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.600 up this exact point amid contemplations on the possible death 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.760 of philosophy in modern times, citing German philosopher and social 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:32.000 critic Peter Slaughterdyke, who frequently cites ancient cynic Diogenes is 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.360 pooping in public in his evaluation of modern cynicism as well. 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.439 So Alan now I should clarify though, Alan, in discussing 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:47.600 Slaughterdyke's ideas, he sees them as an overstatement. But slaughter 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.920 Dyke says that quote, because everything has become problematic, everything 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.400 is also now a matter of indifference. 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:58.600 So I'm not sure I understand the context of that, right, 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:00.480 But the way I guess i'd inter but that at 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:05.320 face value is like, because of our increasing sort of 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:10.640 critical consciousness and awareness of the world, you can sort 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:14.560 of find that there are flaws in literally everything, and 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.920 thus if there are flaws in literally everything, nothing matters. 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:22.120 Yeah, yeah, and especially if you are just hyper aware 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.720 of all of the negative stories. You know, and this 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:27.720 has been this has been the case for a while. 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:29.920 I mean it comes back to some of the you know, 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.440 the very ancient ideas of how do you survive in 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.960 the world by maybe focusing a little more on the dangers. Certainly, 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.880 you know, if it bleeds, it leads and so forth. 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.480 But the social media age, as we've discussed on the 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.160 show before, you know, various social media algorithms have long 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:49.080 favorite engagement over everything else. And engagement can certainly mean 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:51.840 things like love and excitement, like look a cute cat 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.000 or look, there's a new John Carpenter blu ray, but 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.520 it can also just mean hate, anger, and disgust. 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:03.800 Yes, where you're emotions become a tech company's business model 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.280 because your emotions are correlated to behavior on the app 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.000 and your susceptibility. You know, how long you stay on 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.520 the app, how long you scroll, you know whether you're 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:16.680 likely to click on ads and things like that. And 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.360 it turns out that certain emotions, I think positive and 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:24.280 negative emotions, when manipulated in certain ways, have been found 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:28.200 to increase people's engagement. But the negative emotions, it seems 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:31.480 like those are really easy. That's an easy button to push. 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:34.680 Yeah, yeah, And you know, it can often feel like 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.800 you're just being bombarded by all of this. And I mean, 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:39.560 there's a strong case to be made that this is 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.880 weaponized to a certain extent by various players. Right, if 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.680 there's just enough bad news coming at you, there's enough controversy, 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:49.800 then you know, what are you going to respond to? 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:51.840 You can't possibly respond to all of it, and maybe 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:53.360 you end up responding to nothing at all. 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:55.960 But you have to keep scrolling because what if there's 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:57.280 something you don't know about yet. 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:02.160 Now, Alan site that all of this is an overstatement because, 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.760 according to him, for individuals to truly feel this way, 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:10.240 their cynicism would have to be complete. And this reminds 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.080 me a bit in theme of something that's come from 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:16.200 the show before. The author R. Scott Baker had this idea, 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.920 something he called the somatic apocalypse, in which quote, all 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:25.160 the shoulds of a meaningful life are either individual or subcultural. 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.120 As a result, the only universal imperatives that remain are 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:31.600 those arising out of our shared biology are fears and hungers. 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:34.720 So everything else just kind of shuts down, descends into 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:41.480 chaos or entropy. So absolute widespread cynicism would, to paraphrase 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.040 the words of Slaughterdyke, be a situation where everything is 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:49.800 poop in the street and people are nauseated all the time. 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:51.760 Okay, sounds bad. 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.640 Yeah, yeah, my understanding, as we would be talking about 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.240 a world in which cynicism concerning the human experience at 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:02.400 large becomes more absolute, and you know, basically we withdraw 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:07.359 into individual and localized efforts. But Allen's counter argument here 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:12.200 is that most people are not so absolutely cynical. He contends, 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:16.600 quote modern cynicism is driven not by generalized apathy, but 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:20.600 by incomplete disenchantment. In other words, his argument here is 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:25.040 that modern cynics have not entirely submitted themselves to cynicism. 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:27.959 They never hit rock bottom, the point at which they 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:31.639 might be forced to confront their own cynicism. And so 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:33.840 he mentions, how, you know, coming back to the idea 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:38.000 of diogenies, you know again living in the streets among 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:42.600 dogs and you know, and rags and shrouds, pooping in 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:47.600 the streets. He brings up this public defecation as a 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.880 shock tactic that's meant to make a point quote, how 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:53.399 funny is it that you find this upsetting and that 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.320 the modern cynic is just not nauseated enough by the 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.120 reality they're faced with to the point where they make 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:04.200 that big see cynic shift toward the pursuit of virtue. Hmm, Okay, 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.280 so almost as if we're forever weightless in our cynicism, 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:11.639 free falling toward a point a forced self recognition and 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:15.679 revelation we never quite reach, like an imagined space vessel, 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.760 inching ever closer to the speed of light, but unable 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:23.960 to actually touch it. Or to quote Alan again, he 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:28.640 refers to it as quote unembedded but is yet underdeveloped negativity. 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:32.240 Interesting. Okay, wait, so am I interpreting this right? 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:32.440 Then? 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:37.280 Essentially that Allan is suggesting that maybe if cynicism were 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:41.480 more intense and more total, that would actually lead to 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:46.240 a kind of horseshoe boomerang into seeing value and virtue. 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.960 Again exactly, Yeah, that is exactly the point I believe 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:52.520 he's making is that, yeah, we're just with this incomplete 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:57.320 disenchantment with the world, like we think things were bad, 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.760 We've lost trust and establishments. We haven't completely bottomed out, 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.000 like to the point where we actually look up and 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:08.960 potentially begin scaling back up this ladder of virtue. 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.199 Hmmm, I wonder I wonder about that. I don't know 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:14.760 if it really works that way, but I'm interested in 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:15.280 the idea. 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.680 Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting concept. And the idea here 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:22.240 is that social media would be part of that equation. 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.440 Alan writes the quote the visceral discomfort of a live 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:30.800 audience gathered before the defecating cynic that's a capital cynic, 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.080 as in the philosopher has been replaced by a virtual 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:39.360 audience that turns indignation into profit. So an Internet ecosystem 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.439 that thrives on bad sentiments and becomes characterized by just 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:45.960 non stop righteous indignation. 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.160 But one that is discouraged from actually going anywhere positive 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:52.199 instead just kind of festering negative emotion. 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:57.000 Yeah. Now this made me think about past discussions of 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.199 the ideas of Jaron Lanier, and I don't know that 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.359 he ever directly invoked cynicism in any of his works, 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.879 or not the ones I'm familiar with, but one of 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:12.280 his basic observations was that social media companies reduce us 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:16.160 to data and to a product that's sold to advertisers. 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.560 And you know, there's an inherent modern cynicism to that 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:22.280 view of people, like the people are the product and 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.520 people are data. While at the same time realizing this 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.840 can fuel individual cynicism towards the entire social media endeavor 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:31.320 to the point that it's really hard to trust even 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:36.280 you know, alternate decentralized social media alternatives, or at least 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:38.040 that's how it seems to me now. There have been 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:39.919 a number of papers about this over the years. Have 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.800 been some studies. A recent study published in the International 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.680 Journal of Press Politics by Hassel at all digs into 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.760 this a little bit, and also there have been some 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:54.000 pass papers by the lead author here, Ariel Hassel. The 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:58.480 basic idea that I was reading about from this author 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:02.679 is that in political is that political cynicism is on 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.320 the rise in democracies around the world, as people increasingly 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:09.320 use social media to access their news as well as 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:13.960 additional political information, much of which is hostile and lacking 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.680 in civility. This should come as no surprise. If you're 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:20.919 not aware of this phenomena, then God bless you because 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.800 you have stayed out of the mud of all of 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:26.160 this over the past decade. 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.359 I think this is broadly what's found by research in general, 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.160 but Rob, maybe you can let me know what you've 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:36.280 come across here. At least in myself, I've noticed that 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.720 there is a huge difference in how I feel about 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:45.320 the same news when I'm getting it from like reading 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.919 articles in a newspaper or online newspaper versus seeing it 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.920 by scrolling social media. Gigantic difference in how I process that, 0:21:55.680 --> 0:21:59.200 you know, even very bad and distressing news. When I'm 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:03.720 reading about it in you know, in news articles, I 0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:07.480 feel like my response to it is more measured and productive. 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:11.240 My mind tends to go to what would be things 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:14.080 that could be done to fix this situation, well, you 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:17.520 know that sort of thing, Whereas when I consume basically 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:22.199 the same news events by like say, scrolling on a 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.119 social media I tend to not do this these days, 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:27.159 but you know, I can remember from other times, and 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:30.840 I have done it a few times recently, profoundly different 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:35.840 emotional experience, one that is much more distressing, and it 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.639 just creates a feeling of despair and helplessness. Like I 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:43.520 do not have a productive response to it, like thinking 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:46.920 about things that could be done to make the situation better. 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.280 It's more just like I want to surrender and curl 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.360 up in a ball, you know. It's much more disempowering 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:55.280 and horrifying. 0:22:55.680 --> 0:23:08.000 Yeah, and I think that's that's not an uncommon experience. Now, 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:11.679 coming back to this study from the International Journal of 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.720 Press Politics, this is basically what they found out based 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:19.919 on a panel survey of eighteen hundred American American adults 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:23.360 during the twenty twenty election. They found that the more 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.919 a person was exposed to political attacks on social media, 0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:32.160 the more politically cynical they became. Yeah, okay, exposure led 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:36.320 to anger with increased political cynicism. Thus it became this 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:40.640 kind of like rodent wheel of exposure, anger, rising cynicism, 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:44.879 then more exposure, more anger, more rising cynicism. And to 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:47.600 be clear, they characterized this not as a kind of 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:51.640 healthy cynicism in response to corruption or failure, which they acknowledge. 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:55.680