WEBVTT - A Boy Named Sue 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:13.760 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.320 My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:21.200 Henry Doug Bliss. Really that's really your middle name. But 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.599 if I could choose a guy's name, I think it 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.440 would be Henry. Henry. Good solid name to me, Henry, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.600 I guess. Yeah, it's kind of ordinary. But that's it's 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:34.239 the thing about names. So often they're ordinary, and then 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:36.920 what happens when they're a little different Henry James. And 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.840 it's all about associations, right, That is good? That is good. Yeah, 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:44.519 there are so many associations with names. There's family history. 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.159 Names are both so simple and too simple and then 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.200 just overly complicated the more you look at it. And 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.120 could they possibly be so freighted with meaning that they 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.600 come to actually form who we are? Yeah, that's the thing. 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.360 The name that you're given is the name the secret 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:05.120 ruler of your life? Did that determine everything in your 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.479 life from the cradle to the grave, all because your 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.319 your your mother and father decided to name you. Say 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.720 say Sue, I was about to say. Johnt Cash had 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.960 an idea about this long before researchers started to say 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.119 what are the cognitive effects of naming children? Or rather, 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:25.279 Shell Silverstein did, oh yeah, yeah, he wrote the lyrics 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:27.480 to that song, or rather that was his poem that 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.000 became the Johnny Cash song. I did not know that. 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:33.280 That makes it even better, Shall I go for it? Yeah? 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:35.800 My daughter left home one hours three and he didn't 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.479 leave much to moll and me, just this old guitar 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.600 and empty pol labooze. Now, I don't blame him close 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:44.920 he running hit. But the meanest thing he ever did 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.040 was before he left, he went and named miss Sue. 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:50.960 And then, of course the song goes on and on 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.520 to detail his life as a boy named Sue. It's 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.640 a rough life, it's a hard life. But eventually he 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:00.520 confronts his father. He says, yeah, he's pretty much like 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.320 why did you do that? And his dad's like, well, 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:04.520 I know it's a rough life, and I thought you 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:06.440 had to be tough, so of course I named you 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.040 sous that you'd have like a banackbone. And that's how 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:10.960 much I love you, because I knew I wasn't gonna 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.880 be there. Yeah, he's saying, I essentially put a target 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.000 on your head. Because I knew that either everyone around 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.880 you would destroy you or and what did you know 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:22.960 his Nieji says, what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger. 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.240 So um, that was the whole, the whole idea here, 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.839 that's what Shell Silverstein was going for a little Niegi. Yeah. Yeah, 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:31.799 and I can't help. But I mean we've both been 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.320 through the naming process for a child at this point. 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:40.240 Did you have any names that you ended up rejecting? Um, well, yeah, 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.240 but but obviously I liked them, they were on my list, 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:46.600 you know. But um, but my grandmother used to to 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:48.760 ask every day like what are you gonna name or 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:50.040 what are you gonna name her? And I would just 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.639 come up with ridiculous names to annoy her. Garlic sorbet 0:02:55.240 --> 0:03:02.400 toad stool ivory nice, a period person a person you. 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.720 Oh yeah, I had a short list of Sagan okay, 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:11.440 that was a strong contender, a tray um Zevon, Shoehorn, Quantis, 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.639 ny are leptap yasav Off. But they got just going 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:20.400 with Sebastian instead, which is great. I love that name. Um. 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:22.919 But yeah, this is just becomes a really important thing, 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.760 that's naming of the child, and in fact it's so 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:29.160 important that you know, people published tons of books about it, 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:32.120 like name giving Advice, and there was even a two 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.800 thousand and ten British study of three thousand parents that 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:37.760 revealed that one in five parents regret the name that 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:40.840 they chose for their child. So it would make sense 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:44.720 that a parenting website like I don't know baby Center 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:49.000 would be so um well visited by parents to see 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.120 what are the most popular names for boys and girls. 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.560 But also they put out information like what are the 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:58.080 weirdest names? And in two thousand and thirteen they have 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.880 some real hunting urs. Yeah. Um, there were at least 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.840 three baby boys named Cheese yes, which which is nice. Um. 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.640 I believe there was a character on the wire named Cheese. Yeah, 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:11.360 there was. I have to point out at this point 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.000 there was also a child named Danish, and I was 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:17.599 really hoping that, like, yeah, that they were twins like 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:19.560 Cheese in Danish, but I don't think that was the case, 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:26.520 Little Cheese. Uh. And then some of the other names Panda, yeah, Rocket, 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.480 which is you know, you want an explosive child, it's 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.159 just gonna get out there in the world. I have 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:33.800 a rocket in my neighborhood. He's great. Yeah, and when 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.560 in doubt, you know, in terms of coming with a 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:39.640 name for your child, just name them after a primordial 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:45.120 sea monster that that that rise in the prehistoric darkness 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:49.280 and h and rivals the might of an ancient Hebrew deity. 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.520 I just name your kid Leviathan, which somebody did. I mean, 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.800 there's there's no weight there, There's there's there's nothing there 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:58.840 that would make that job feel sort of bogged down 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.719 to the phil his or her destiny. Um, there's also 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.440 Drago and bullet. So all of this kind of whirligig 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.679 naming here made us wonder how does this play out 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:15.240 in something called nominative determinism. Yeah, this is basically the 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.640 idea that we're talking about here, except with science behind it. 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.640 The idea that any name, yeah name, the name that 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.039 we're given determines who we are, how we behave, and 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:26.880 how the world's gonna treat us, how the world's gonna 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.920 perceive us. That it really gets down into the complexity 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:35.000 of language, right. We we end up acquiring language, building language, 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.719 using languages, an operating system for the human brain, and 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:39.680 the system that we based all of our culture on. 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:44.120 And what I was really struck with in researching this topic. 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.839 Is that UM is that nominative determinism is kind of 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:50.760 it's almost like a mistake in the programming or a 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:53.680 side effect of the programming that the name that you 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:58.240 give an individual carries a lot of obvious weight. You know, 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.680 if you name your your kid after a mythological hero, 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.760 you're obviously drawing upon that you can call your kid 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:09.080 thor is a certain thoroughness um that you're you're dragging 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:10.719 in there. But then there's a lot of stuff that's 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.359 happening at a subconscious level. It's just uh, you know, 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:17.000 tendrils reaching out through the canvas of language, as do 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.800 you mean, like the symbol wasn't necessarily meant to be internalized, 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:23.359 but it's so easy for our brains to make that 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:26.480 little walk over there. And we talked about this kind 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:29.080 of in the last episode, about how if you have 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:33.760 a limb that's next to your limb, and you begin 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.200 to see it from your first person perspective, then you 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:37.880 sort of adopt that limb as your own, and all 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:40.440 of a sudden you have three limbs. Um And we 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:42.440 won't go into that, but the point is is that 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.360 it's really easy to sort of take these things on 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:49.919 as yourself, and that is at the heart of nominative determinism. 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.159 And I wanted to read this little bit from a 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:57.480 Mental Plus article on the topic. Quote Dr rich Dick 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:01.159 chop Is in Austin, you're erologist. He was known for 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.080 performing best ectomies. Really other doctors at the same urology 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:10.560 clinic include Dr Hardeman and Dr Wang. Is this coincidence? 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.560 Probably um, but there may be something there. That's that's 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.200 why we're discussing it obviously. Well, in my experience, I 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.600 am My father was a dentist, so I've always from 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.320 a very little kid, I would always noticed the signs 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.280 for dentist offices anywhere we went. And even then I 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:28.440 remember thinking, there are a lot of dentists who have 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.480 the last name Pain P A y. And even why, like, 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:33.200 wouldn't you want to change that? Do you really want 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:35.080 to be Dr? Pain when people go to get their 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:37.720 teeth worked on? And I did a quick Google search 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.200 before we came to the podcast Camber and and just 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.960 page after page of of of dentist named Pain, and 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.640 it it makes you think again, are they are they 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:51.440 drawn to dentistry somehow subconsciously because of that name or 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.640 and then why maybe not change it if you're going 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:56.720 to make a go out of business, because you wouldn't 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.000 you wouldn't hesitate to change the name of the business 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.520 off if the business name were somehow a counterpoint to 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:05.720 what you're trying to the experience that you're trying to 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.520 sell to the customer. So so it seems like you 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:10.200 would you would want to do that with your your 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:12.680 professional name as well. I don't know, I'm about to 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:14.480 tell you something that I think might end up in 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:19.400 an awkward silence moment. Uh my gas Row anthrologist. His 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:24.520 name is doctor Sunshine, And I'm not kidding. Yeah, So 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:26.560 I think on that a moment, And then let's sort 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:28.960 of switch gears here back to a boy named Sue, 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:34.839 because apparently if you're a boy named Ashley or Shannon Um, 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.040 there are some things that will be needed out to 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:40.880 you because of having that name. In fact, research psychologist 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:45.400 David Figlio of Northwestern University in Illinois looked at millions 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.280 of birth certificates and then he broke them down by 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.520 phonemics and behavior, and he found a bunch of different things, 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:55.680 not just about Ashley and Shannon Um, but in terms 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.160 of those names. He did to find that the boys 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.720 with names traditionally given to girls are more likely to 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:07.400 misbehave than their counterparts with masculine names, which is interesting 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.120 because it lines up with the song. Right, boy named 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:12.200 Sue winds up getting a lot of fights as an 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.559 embattled life that makes him tougher. Uh, they found it 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:17.840 up into a certain age. I think it was like 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.960 age six. I think sixth grade. Sixth grade rather up. 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:22.880 Unto a certain point, it didn't really make any difference. 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:27.080 But then sixth grade hits and and so that's when 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:31.000 the embattlement begins to really take hold. Suddenly, these these 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.680 male individuals with feminine names are misbehaving and acting out 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.080 all the time. Yeah, gender norms are in full force, right, 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.920 and so you have kids who are are really trying 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:47.320 to reinforce that idea and to make things worse. And 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.720 I think this will be obvious if there happened to 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.360 be a girl with the name of Shannon or Ashley 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:56.200 in the same class as that boy, exactly, because there 0:09:56.240 --> 0:10:00.520 you have confirmation that you have a feminine because that 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.079 kid is right there with it. Now. As a side note, 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:08.080 I wondered to what extent this phenomenon might disappear as 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:13.960 hopefully culture becomes increasingly sensitive to the the idea of 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:17.000 gender and that gender is not an issue of one 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.000 fortress and another fortress. Or does that even trickle down 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.440 to kids or kids always going to be boys versus girls. 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:25.560 I think it takes a while, because I try with 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.560 my own daughter to try to live in a not 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.000 a gender free world, but to not make that as 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.400 as the starting point for for conversations or decisions. But 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:39.840 I do see her teachers maybe unconsciously putting that dynamic 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.240 in play and really talking a lot about boys and 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:47.679 girls and the girls are lovely, and the boys are handsome, 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.240 and the girls are well behaved, and that so on 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.400 and so forth, and spice and everything nice exactly. Yeah, 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.480 And and to that point, Um, I didn't want to 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:01.160 point out that David Biglio found that girls with names 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.479 that are relatively feminine in high school choose advanced coursework 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.880 and humanities and less feminine names, Um they are given 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.560 to girls, those girls are more likely to choose math 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:15.839 and science courses. Interesting. So here's an idea, and one 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.960 that I am really having trouble by, the idea that 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:24.360 a name could not only determine how the society will 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.640 view you and how your view your own place in society. 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.280 But could a name actually make you more prone to 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.960 disease or make you more unhealthy? Mm? I know you're 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:36.760 talking about You're talking about the Brady Bunch study that 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:38.199 they called the Brake I don't think they call it 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:40.200 a pretty much study. But it was a study about 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.840 people with a surname of Brady. This is in Doublin 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.480 right researchers in Dublin. They wanted to discover whether or 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.640 not a person's name might influence their health, and so 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.080 they looked at whether people with his surname Brady had 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.280 a higher incidence of Brady cardia that is a slow 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.000 heart rate. How did they get funding for this? This 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.079 just sounds in aimed to me, where someone and as 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.720 we'll see, the research is really fat. I mean they 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:07.480 find it's really fascinating. But who said I wonder if 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:09.920 people with the name Brady are more likely to suffer 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:14.720 from Brady Brady cardia. Like it's almost to propose that question, 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:18.000 you have to feel like the answer might be yes. Yeah. 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:20.880 I also kind of wondered to what degree were people 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:25.000 familiar with the term Brady cardia and knew about it 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:27.199 and maybe internalized it because that's the idea, right. Yeah, 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:29.000 I was not familiar with the term, so it didn't 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.119 play into my view of the Brady punch. YEA. Researchers 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.520 used data from a hospital database and the percentage of 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.679 the population of surname Brady, of course, and they determined 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:43.480 through use of online telephone listenings in Dublin between two 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.199 thousand and seven and two thousand and thirteen that they 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.360 were something like five dred seventy nine Bradies listed in 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:54.040 total and one thousand and twelve pacemakers fitted during this time, 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.640 and the median age of the patients seventy seven years old, 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:05.040 and the proportion of pacemaker recipients among Brady's one point 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:13.400 three was significantly higher than among non Brady's point six one. Okay, 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:15.520 so there's something there. It's not huge. I mean, we're 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.400 not saying, well, what a huge this. This completely says 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:21.199 that this is going on, right. It's like a number 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:22.920 of the things that we're talking about here, a number 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.600 of the examples rather on an individual basis, you're just 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.000 looking around at the people, you know it, there's a 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.120 good chance it's not going to line up. But when 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:35.160 you look at larger population groups and larger sample groups, 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.320 that's where you begin to see these interesting statistics to uh, 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.480 you know emerging. Yeah, and they did say in the study, hey, 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.280 there are limitations to this. We don't know that the 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.600 patient's background. We don't know if they were related and 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.960 they had genetic predispositions, and this could have skewed results. 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.720 We also don't know whether or not because this is 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.920 a city center for um, this procedure that drew more 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:03.960 bradyes and so that kind skew the results as well. So, um, 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:05.760 you know, it's just kind of an interesting thing that's 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.120 put out there. You know, you begin to wonder, should 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:10.839 I name Mike, you know, just be on the safe side, 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.760 I'll just go ahead and name my kid Methuselah or 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:16.600 you know, just to ensure that they have a long life. 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:18.480 But then, in my tempting fate, what happens when a 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.520 kid named Methusela dies at age fifty? Then you're gonna 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.680 feel really like I did that by giving him this 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.720 name and trying to force the universe to make them 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:29.800 live a really long time. I think it's okay. I 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.880 think that sometimes kids will buck against their names. And um, 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.560 this was actually in one of the articles that we read. Um, 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:38.040 I'll have to look at it in a moment and 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.200 bring up the title. But the article was saying that 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.800 there was a father who named his kid loser lane 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:47.800 and then purpose or was this one of those incidents 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.840 where they thought it would be pronounced differently? Well you 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:55.200 decided after tell you the next kid's name, Winner Lane. Okay, 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.640 Loser ends up to be like an upstanding citizen. I 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:00.640 don't think he's a cop or something, but I mean 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.160 he's done well for himself. Winner turns out to be 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:08.360 like in the Pokey all the time. His crime written 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:11.200 What kind of father was this is? I'm just imagining 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:13.520 it means it was like a B. F. Skinner type 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.040 of ploy here. Well, did you hear about the sociologist 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:20.080 who wrote Parentology. He named his children their first names, 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.320 his daughter's e and then his other son or his 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.560 son is yo, and then beyond like the first names, 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.720 they have a million other names tacked onto it. And 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:35.600 then they are not of Asian descent, But he decided 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.440 to throw in some Asian names in there, just to 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:43.920 kind of throw off the paradigm. He says of immigrants 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:50.880 taking on um that country's name messed with the paradigm 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.400 there um. Anyway, there was an interview with his kids, 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:55.960 and his kids are like, yeah, we're fine with it, 0:15:56.160 --> 0:16:02.080 but yes, sometimes they're sociologists who unleash some experiments at home. Yeah, now, 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.240 of course there's well this is we'll discuss this some 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:06.000 more as well. But of course any name you give 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.360 somebody who does not exist in a vacuum, there are 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.880 plenty of other factors at play. We're gonna take a break, 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:20.520 and when we come back, this will come directly into play. 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:24.000 All Right, we're back. We're going to talk a little 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:26.240 bit about fre Economics, because this is a book if 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:28.440 you're not familiar with it, that sort of takes this 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.520 um socio economic view of things that we don't normally 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.640 apply that sort of lens to and tries to figure 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.240 out if there's some sort of algorithm that is driving 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.360 our behavior and the things that we do. And of 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.200 course naming came up in Fre Economics, um Steve Levitt, 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.800 the author of Economics and Harvard Economics Roland G. Friar. 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:51.320 They wanted to see if the trend of black parents 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.280 naming their children distinctly non white names. They wanted to 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:58.040 see if this had an impact on those kids later 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:02.280 on socially and comically. Yeah. So what Friar did is 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.040 he looked at birth certificate information for every child born 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.679 in California since nineteen sixty one and uh and what 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.960 he found uh initially matches up pretty well with with 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:16.400 I think everyone's experience of names. Up until the early seventies, 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.440 there was a more overlap in white black names. But 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.880 then by nineteen eighty you see an explosion of distinctly 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.880 black names. Uh. And some of the fuel for this, 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.760 uh you can find in the Black power movement and 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:34.040 the push to accentuate African culture and African roots and uh. 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.280 And so you see this this divide. So suddenly you 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.080 see more distinctly black names, increasing number of distinctly black 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.720 names in the black community. So Friar found that the 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:47.359 data showed that on average, person with a distinctly black 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.520 name had a worse life outcome than an individual with 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.720 a more common name. Now, it's important to note, and 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.560 the authors of economic note that it's not the fault 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:00.159 of their names. Okay, it has to do with the 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.280 parents who select a particular sort of name. So again, 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:05.880 like I said earlier, names don't exist in a vacuum. 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.800 Names are coming from parents. And so you see trends 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.879 where certain names are more likely to be bestowed by 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:19.320 members of various levels of the socio economic scale. And 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.120 and and this this is in the data that they discussing. 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.520 Fre economics concerns more than just the white black divide, 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.960 but also uh, the economic divide. What names are more 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:33.880 common among lower income households versus higher income households. So 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.919 we already know that there are unconscious associations. There's just 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.560 all sorts of biases here. Yeah, not not to mean 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:44.119 not to count out just overt bias and racism exactly. Yeah, 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:48.280 so this is really interesting. Um Latonia Russell, Harvard Professor 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.879 of Government Technology. She published a study about search results 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:58.280 in Google related to name searches and racial profiling in 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:01.440 in the ad works for Good Well. And she did 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.440 this after a search for her name served up an 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.080 AD next to her name with find an arrest record 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:11.840 and it was actually a colleague of hers um who 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:15.240 was not black, who they were searching something about some 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:17.840 of the work that they were doing and student in 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:19.760 the search they were of course looking for their names 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:21.560 to see how that would come up, and he was 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.640 the first person to tag like, oh, that's weird. Mine 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.760 doesn't come up with this arrest record ad over here, 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.320 but yours does. And so he started to do a 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.520 couple of different searches and came up with the idea 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.399 of I think it's kind of tied to black sounding names, 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:37.600 and she was appalled. She said, no, no no, no, no, 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:40.879 I'm a scientist here. I'm going to conduct a formal 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.399 um study of this, and I'm going to prove you wrong, 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:46.520 because she didn't want to believe that that was actually 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.560 like regional profiling was happening in the ad words. And 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:54.720 she found that a black identified name was twenty more 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:56.960 likely than a white identified name to get an add 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:02.080 suggestive of an arrest record, huh, which is troublesome because 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:04.280 you see that and it does have this sort of 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.080 association of like, well, perhaps this person does have an 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:10.440 arrest record, right, and then that's just more fire to 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.840 just sort of the subliminal messaging that's coming at you 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:16.120 through your your search engine, through one of the ways 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:18.920 that you're interacting with the world, and so at least 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.520 subliminally your search engine is saying, hey, you're the type 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:24.760 of person who might be arrested, and then you're going 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.720 to absorb that information and have to deal with And 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.960 as David Eagleman might say, the problem with us is 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:35.120 that all of this is happening under the cover of unconscious. 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:38.600 Right You're unconscious is meeting all of this out and 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:43.359 serving it up to your conscious as this idea, and 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:45.439 you don't even know what's going on. And he calls 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:50.720 this implicit bias. This implicit bias is within us. We're 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.000 not aware of it. It's it's acting um sort of 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.840 independently to our consciousness. And he said that this is 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:02.800 borne out in reaction time and hesitations during computer models 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.960 that allow us to like or dislike images or words 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.679 to show how we're driven by our unconscious and he 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:12.119 gives a couple of examples of this, but the one 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:14.639 that I like best is um this one that begins 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:18.359 with a screen that has like and dislike at the 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.600 top of the screen, and then in the middle there 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.840 is a name that appears. So he says, like you 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.240 could have the name of a religion appearing in the middle, 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.200 And he said, what's interesting about this is not just 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.919 the speed of the participants selecting like or dislike, but 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:39.520 that this program actually tracks the trajectory of the mouse 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:43.679 movements and it can show the drift. So it shows like, 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.640 maybe you're going toward no, and then you correct yourself 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:51.320 and go to um or not no, maybe you're going 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.679 towards dislike, and then you correct yourself and go toward 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.520 like UM. And he's saying that that is showing that 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:03.439 you're you're doing the more social appropriate response. Your conscious 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:07.639 is catching up to your unconscious and correcting it. So 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.760 he's saying that even people with certainty about their attitudes 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.680 and beliefs um, they can find themselves surprised and sometimes 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.080 appalled by what's lurking within their brains that they're not 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:21.000 even aware of. So it's it's like the gut reaction 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:25.320 versus the actual conscious thought reaction. Sort of if someone 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.399