WEBVTT - Cynicism, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:15.640 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:16.680 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.119 And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with Part 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:23.480 two in our series on cynicism, the tendency to believe 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:29.200 other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral. In Part one, 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:33.040 we talked about what cynicism means in its modern usage, 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:38.159 and we contrasted that with similar but distinct concepts like pessimism, 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:42.160 and also with cynic philosophy, the latter being a school 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:46.400 of philosophy born in ancient Greece that emphasized moral integrity, 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:52.000 self sufficiency, and virtue, and achieved in part by shedding pretensions, 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.880 like ignoring the pressure to conform and living in accordance 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.280 with our nature. The word cynic comes from the Greek 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.360 word for, and so a cynic philosopher in the ancient 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:05.840 sense might say that we can all learn something from 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.440 watching the honest way that a dog lives according to 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.440 its nature. This, of course, is quite different from what 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.200 we mean by cynicism today in common language, which is 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:19.679 a disposition of low social trust, the tendency to believe, 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:22.440 as we put it, last time, that people are bad, 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.240 people are selfish, and morals are fake. Yeah. 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:33.120 Yeah, ancient philosophic cynics be like a dog. Modern cynics 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:34.240 dog eat dog. 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.000 Yes, now, last time, we also talked a bit about 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:41.520 cynicism in literature, with my observation that really, like the 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.959 most cynical writing I could find anywhere was all in 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.480 the Bible, which I'm not sure exactly what to make 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:53.440 of that, but that is kind of surprising and counterintuitive perhaps, 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.720 But it's like, especially in the books of the prophets 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:00.360 in the Hebrew Bible, like Micah and Jeremiah, full of 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:05.200 just very eloquent, devastating condemnations of human nature. The heart 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.880 is deceitful above all things. There is none that doeth good, No, 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:14.440 not one, that sort of thing. We also discussed medical, psychological, 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:18.960 and sociological research on the correlates of cynicism, with the 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:23.960 overwhelming conclusion being that holding cynical beliefs about human nature 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.919 and low trust in others is quite harmful to us 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.400 in many different ways. It appears to be bad for 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.960 our health, mental and physical health. It is correlated with 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:38.560 all kinds of undesirable outcomes, including early death. We didn't 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:40.800 really get into this research last time, but you probably 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.320 won't be surprised to learn it is associated with low 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:49.519 quality social relationships, and despite the archetype of the ruthless, 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:53.320 cynical striver and achiever, it also tends, on average to 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:56.639 make it harder for us to reach even our material 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.720 goals like making money and attaining positions of leadership, at 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.440 least in part because cynical people waste a lot of 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:07.120 time and resources trying to avoid being made a sucker 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.960 and miss out on opportunities to cooperate with others for 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:14.200 mutual benefit. So I think it's safe to say that 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:17.920 believing everyone is just in it for themselves and cannot 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:21.919 be trusted is in so many ways bad, bad, bad 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.920 for us. It's bad for our lives. But of course, 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.440 the somewhat heartwarming implied inverse of all this is the 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.760 evidence that it really does us good to cooperate and 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:32.519 trust people. 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:36.960 Definite silver lining there to all all of this research 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:38.120 we've been doing here now. 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:40.480 In the last episode, we also raised a number of 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.520 questions that we weren't able to fully answer yet, and 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:45.320 we'll come back to them throughout the series. I think 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.680 we'll look at at least one study today that sheds 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.640 some light on this. But these were questions like, do 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.720 more cynical or less cynical people actually have a better 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:01.040 predictive model of the world, who's model of how other 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.920 people behave is more accurate? And in any given situation, 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:09.080 how can we know if we're being too trusting, too cynical, 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:13.520 or if we're striking just the most reasonable balance. And also, 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.200 given that it comes with so many clear downsides, what 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.680 if anything, is the benefit of cynicism. 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:23.599 Well, I'm not sure this will actually help us answer 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:27.040 any of these questions, but then maybe it'll give us 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:29.479 just a little more elbow room to work with the concept. 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:36.120 Reading through Anscar Allen's cynicism book Mit that I reverenced 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:40.240 in the last episode, and he covers several subsets of 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:43.360 modern cynicism, and here are a few that I thought 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:47.960 might help us out. So one category is insider cynics, 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.400 So the cynicism of contemporary professionals who believe that people 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:55.080 are ultimately selfish, and these individuals do their best to 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:59.160 survive in their organizations by dealing with their colleagues on 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.880 those terms. So we might think of it as a 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.520 you know, I'm not here to make friends approach, but 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.599 you know, only to work or specifically to work, with 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:10.359 the idea being that maybe outside of that work environment 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:11.839 they are less cynical. 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.359 Oh okay, well, I would certainly have questions about how 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.440 skilled people are actually are at like turning cynicism on 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:25.040 and off when switching between contexts. But you can certainly 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.560 see how that would be useful, maybe because you know, 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.919 it's quite reasonable to understand that, like, certain professional environments 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.000 require a lot less trust, require you to be more 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.240 doubting of people. Maybe if you are, I don't know, 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.560 investigating murders or something like that, like you you really 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:43.320 need to not just like trust people. 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.960 There are so many movies about murder detectives being able 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:53.640 to neatly separate their work life from their home life. 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.920 Yeah, but so hopefully if you were in a job 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:58.440 like that, or if you're in just in kind of 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.760 a cutthrow business environment where everybody, you know, everybody's trying 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.360 to edge other people out in deals, you would hope 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.720 to be able to turn that off when you come 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.400 out of that and get into your relationships in life. 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.680 I guess it's questionable to what extent people can do 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:13.560 that very well. 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.880 I would agree with that. Yes, Another classification that he 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:22.080 singles out are the master cynics, so rich and powerful 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:26.120 contemporary cynics who hide their own cynicism by adopting the 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.599 values and beliefs of people they hold power over. In 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.200 a weird sense, system's kind of kind of a puzzle 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:37.320 because a person who's really cynical about politics would no 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.600 doubt assume that every politician is a master cynic, that 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:44.360 they're just when they're glad handing and so forth, they're 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:48.080 just pretending to take on these values where deep down 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.440 they know the truth, like I know that people are 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:53.880 just selfish and they're exploiting everyone as well. 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:55.800 We're going to have to come back to the question 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.480 of cynicism in politics and political participation because I think 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:01.600 that raises all sorts of interesting questions. 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:03.360 Yeah, and there's been a lot of research, a lot 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:07.040 of writing just on that area alone. Now, the third 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:09.240 of the categories that I'm going to reference here. There 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.480 are some additional ones that I'm not getting into, but 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.720 the third one I want to reference here is paternalistic cynicism, 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:18.120 and in this one holds a cynical view of human 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:22.120 motivations and seeks to capitalize on those motivations, but not 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.200 for personal gain, but for the greater good. And that one, 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:27.800 you know, made me think a little bit more and 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:29.960 maybe gives us a little more room to play when 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:35.080 considering the effectiveness or possible effectiveness of cynicism. I was thinking, like, 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.600 let's say you wanted to encourage a certain behavior in 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.160 the general public, and you're presented with two messaging options, 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.760 one that works based on a cynical view of human motivations, 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.960 you know, greed and self interest, while the other appeals 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.800 to the higher angels of their nature. Well, which is 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.200 more likely to work. It's going to depend on the messaging, 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.960 of course, and the exact details of the target audience, 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.080 you know, general audience versus you know, some narrow or audience. 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:05.920 But yeah, which worldview is a better starting place? I 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:07.840 feel like this might work as a good sort of 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.080 practical thought experiment because it entails making a choice about 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:13.960 how you're going to model the motivations of a given population. 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:16.640 But on the other hand, we kind of come back 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.240 to that sliding scale of cynicism. If one is cynical 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:23.480 enough about the intended audience, then would any messaging seem 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:25.720 like it would work, like why are you even bothering? 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.520 If you're just assuming that everyone out there is just selfish, 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:31.480 you might not be able to get them to stop littering, 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.800 or to recycle or to I don't know where seat belts. 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:40.040 But maybe the paternalistic cynicism model is like, you must 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.360 stop littering and you must be kind to your fellow 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.200 human being or you will go to hell something you know, 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.040 like appealing to your base personal interest in order to 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.280 get you to do something that the messager sees as good. 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.199 Yeah, bring it back to fear right. Maybe I'm just 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.920 muddying the waters. But there's so many different areas you 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:01.720 can get into in discussion of modern cynicism. Rob. 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:04.080 One thing you said in the last episode that I 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.120 thought was really insightful and I have kept thinking about 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.560 ever since we recorded that is that you said maybe 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.480 one of the appeals of cynicism is that expressions of 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:21.000 cynicism are cathartic statements, like people suck. They when you 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.240 say things like that, or when somebody else says that 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.080 and you get to agree with them, it feels like 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:30.439 a psychological pressure release valve by like making a statement 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.640 of that sort you're sort of blowing off steam. And 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:36.880 of course this can be true even for people who 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.920 are not especially cynical on average, having these little moments 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.280 of situational cynicism. But I was thinking more about the 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:50.520 Catharsis element, and I wonder if this association of cynicism 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.360 with cathartic relief also tells us something about how people 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:59.960 can acquire generalized dispositional cynicism. Like what if the person 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.640 who is very cynical on average gets to be that 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.840 way by creating by like habituating themselves to a desire 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.800 for that momentary catharsis that you get from saying people suck? 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:13.240 Does that make any sense? 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.040 Yeah, Like you dip your hand into the cynicism cookie 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:20.040 jar a few times too often and the crumbs begin 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.520 to stick. Yeah. I was thinking about this when I 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.080 was looking at some material related to cynicism in the workplace, 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.319 which is its own huge area of consideration that we're 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.240 not really going to get into in this episode per se. 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.600 But I was just thinking about, Okay, if one's really 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:43.559 cynical regarding one's employers, one's corporate overlords, you might excuse 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.679 any amount of inaction or slacking based on the view that, well, 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.520 they don't really care about me, they're not invested in me, 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:53.600 they're not paying me enough, and so forth, all any 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:58.120 grievance you might imagine. And maybe, just maybe in small doses, 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.800 this gives you space to let things glide in ways 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:03.720 that ease your work burden or create space for something 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:08.040 else you want to do. And yeah, maybe it's a 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:10.240 situation where if you stick your hand into that cookie 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:14.320 jar too often, it does become your default view, at 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.439 least of your work situation. And maybe it bleeds over 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:18.640 into other areas as well. 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:21.839 That is an interesting possibility. So you're in a kind 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:27.360 of a pressure inducing scenario and you, for whatever reason, 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:31.079 you can get little moments of relief from that pressure 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:36.199 by resorting to cynical evaluations. And so does that create 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.320 a kind of addiction, Like you associate the moment of 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:45.480 cathartic cynicism with relaxation of the pain, or with pleasure 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:47.800 even or something like that, and you just kind of 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.200 keep pressing the pleasure button until that's just what your 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:55.080 personality is. Yeah, I don't have research to back up 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.200 that interpretation of where cynicism comes from, but I think 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:00.880 that is an interesting possibility or if it ever sets 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:01.440 in that way. 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.840 Yeah, yeah, I also was thinking, you know, in terms 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.120 of dealing with this a corporation or a company, like 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.960 it's one thing to sort of initially think cynically about, 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.600 like this faceless thing, this organization. But of course organizations 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:20.679 are made up of people, and so I wonder how 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.640 the cynicism might spread where you might generally have cynical 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.360 ideas about a company, but then those cynical ideas end 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.240 up applying to certain heads of that company. But then 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.600 it could potentially trickle down and then where does it stop? 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:35.960 Like who stops being the face of the company. I 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:37.679 guess they have to be cynical enough. They have to 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:40.400 share your cynicism in order to be like your your 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:44.280 brothers in arms against the company, that sort of thing. 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:47.400 Yeah, yeah, you know, Actually this sort of gets a 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.760 little bit into something I'm gonna talk about in the paper. 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:55.559 I'm about to explain. But there are different environments. There 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.720 are different sort of environments and contexts that encourage and 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:02.840 or different levels of cynicism. And so there can be 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.760 very like cynicism positive organizations, like if you are within 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.040 a company that is very cruel and in which you 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:14.880 know you don't do very well by placing trust in people, 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.160 it can be quite reasonable to end up responding with 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:24.360 the generalized cynicism about interactions within that company. Organizational culture 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.560 is a thing. So anyway, So I want to turn 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:33.680 to a concept in psychological research on cynicism that I 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:38.360 found really interesting, and that is the so called cynical 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:43.520 genius illusion. So I was reading about this in a 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.000 paper by a couple of researchers that I cited in 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:50.040 part one of the series. These scientists are Olga Stavrova, 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.440 a professor of psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.440 and Daniel Illbracht at the University of Cologne in Germany. 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.040 These two published a paper in the year twenty eighteen 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.599 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and the 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:09.200 paper was called the Cynical Genius Illusion, Exploring and Debunking 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:15.040 lay beliefs about cynicism and competence. Now they begin by 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.440 acknowledging a lot of the things we talked about in 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:21.160 the last episode. They define cynicism as you know, the 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.960 main cognitive component of hostility. They're talking about it pretty 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:26.640 much in the same terms we are a belief that 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.680 other people you know, you should be suspicious of their motives, 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.960 that they that they are primarily motivated by self interest, 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:37.000 that they can't be trusted and will harm you. And 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.520 then they run through the long list of ways that 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.320 cynicism appears to be bad for us, bad for our 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.040 lives in health, in relationships, and ability to attain goals 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:52.320 and so forth. However, the authors complicate that picture by 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.960 noting that if you just look at popular culture and 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:00.880 literature and folk wisdom, cynicism does not not seem to 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:05.120 have and on the whole negative reputation. To read from 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:09.320 their introduction here quote, Among nineteenth and twentieth century writers 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.720 in popular figures, cynicism has often been seen as a 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:17.600 sign of intelligence and wit. American writers Ambrose Bierce and 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.680 Lillian Hellman praised cynicism as an art of seeing the 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:26.120 true nature of things. Bernard Shaw referred to cynicism as 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.600 a quote power of accurate observation, and John Stuart Mill 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.960 noticed that quote it is thought essential to a man 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.440 who has any knowledge of the world to have an 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:41.160 extremely bad opinion of it. And as for the other 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:43.720 authors they named, I looked up some of the cynical quotes. 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:45.920 I can't believe I didn't think of Ambrose Bierce as 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.479 a good source of literary cynicism in the last episode. 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:53.160 But in The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce defines a cynic as 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:57.600 someone quote whose faulty vision sees things as they are, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.480 not as they ought to be. They all so cided 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:04.720 Lillian Hellman. Her version of this was, quote, cynicism is 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.600 an unpleasant way of saying the truth. And I do 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:13.120 think there's something interesting in Hellman's phrasing here, because of 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:17.080 the emphasis on tone. It is an unpleasant way of 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.520 saying what is true. So what is the difference between 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:25.160 somebody just quote being real and somebody being cynical. It 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.120 might be in the substance of what they say and 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.280 how they think. It might be like you know, material 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.920 substantive differences. But I think sometimes we make that distinction 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:37.080 based on whether there is negative emotion in their expression, 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.080 Like if they are counseling us against trust, did they 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:46.360 deliver that council with anger or contempt? But anyway, so 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:50.960 you've got all this literature that equates cynicism with the 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:54.440 kind of wisdom and you know, like the power to 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.400 see what is really going on. Also, the authors here 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:00.400 point out that if you draw up a list of 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.879 like cynical characters in popular culture, they don't tend to 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:09.320 be pitiable wretches dealing with setbacks imposed by their lack 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:14.240 of faith in humankind. More often, cynicism in fictional characters 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:20.240 is presented as gruff hard one realism and wisdom. The 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:25.800 cynical character has knowledge, insights, and powers of deduction not 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:30.160 available to their more trusting peers. So think of Sherlock 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.680 Holmes or the authors give the example of House from 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.800 how simd. I'm not a watcher of House, but I'm 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:37.800 familiar with the character. 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:40.680 I mean, you could do a full stop after Sherlock, 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:45.919 because Sherlock, of course influences so many different similar characters 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:50.879 and cast a long shadow across across the English language 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.520 and fiction and other languages, but cast a long shadow 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.520 across our media. Yeah, and yet at this and it 0:17:57.600 --> 0:17:59.640 is interesting to think about Sherlock Holmes in these terms, 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:03.879 because yes, Sherlock Holmes is presented as being, you know, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.720 somewhat emotionally detached, but not you know, certainly he's fighting 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:10.879 the good fight. He is on the side of the 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.520 good guy, and will sometimes even you know, break the 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:16.960 rules a little bit or bend them in order to 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.640 make sure that justice is served. But on the other hand, 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:22.640 I think if you, if you look closely enough at Sherlock, 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:26.639 I mean he's also a character who at times admits 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.320 that he's never loved anyone or has certainly never had 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:33.560 a romantic love in his life. He also struggles horribly 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.760 with addiction at one point. You know, so you know, 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.560 he's he's not an angel. But again, I guess this 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:42.720 part of his presentation, he's he's hard boiled. It's it's 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.600 it's it's hard one cynicism that he uses in order 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.040 to solve the crimes that he's presented with. 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:52.760 Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that is actually generally true. 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:58.440 Cynical characters are often presented as suffering as a result 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.880 of their own cynicism, but not wrong because of it, 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:05.240 Like that their cynicism is something that hurts them and 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.639 it makes them sad and lonely, but it also gives 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:13.399 them cognitive superiority. It gives them intelligence and wisdom and 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:18.000 power to see through the facade and see what's really happening. 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:19.520 Yeah. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.400 But anyway, so based on this background of the cynical 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.679 geniuses in fiction, and the sort of cynical wit and 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:30.399 wisdom from literature. The author is conducted a number of 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.080 different studies. They did four studies to explore common beliefs 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:39.119 about the link between cynicism and cognitive superiority and competence, 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.400 and then three more studies to look at whether there 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:46.720 actually is a link. So, do people in general think 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:50.959 that cynicism is a sign of knowledge, intellect, and competence. 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.679 Do cynics actually seem smarter? And are they actually smarter 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:57.480 and more competent than the rest of us? 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.600 Well Sherlock is above reproach, but I'm curious to hear 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:03.040 how it lights to real people. 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.359 So the authors begin by acknowledging some existing research that 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.520 touches on these questions. For example, there was a study 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:14.320 by Evans and Venda Caalceda published in Personality and Social 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:19.119 Psychology Bulletin in twenty eighteen called the Reputational Consequences of 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.439 Generalized Trust. And this study looked at what we was 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:25.199 just sort of a survey of what we tend to 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:27.960 think of people when we know that they are high 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:32.040 in trust or low in cynicism. The findings were that 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:37.200 high trust, individuals are seen as moral and seen as sociable, 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:41.280 but also seen as less competent. And this kind of 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:45.800 makes sense as a familiar personality archetype, right like, Johnny 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:49.159 is so trusting, he's a good guy, he's friendly, but 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:53.960 he doesn't know what he's doing. So, if showing generalized 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:58.439 trust makes people think we're less competent, does that imply 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:05.400 that showing generalized distrust makes people think we're more competent. Perhaps? However, 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.880 the authors also found here that people see you as 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:13.159 more competent if you display what they call discriminate ability, 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:17.040 which is the ability to tell the difference between a 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.560 situation in which you should trust and situations in which 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.000 you should not. And this takes us back to the 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.880 question we mentioned in part one. Obviously, nobody either trusts 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:30.399 or distrusts in every situation, So how do you determine 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.080 how cynical it is reasonable to be in this situation? 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:36.800 And how do we know if we're off balance? 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:37.600 Now? 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:41.840 The authors also discuss reasons that people might think it 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:46.760 is wise to be cynical. One is pretty familiar better 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:50.960 safe than sorry reasoning. They write, quote in many domains, 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:54.879 the consequences of false negative errors e g. Believing that 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:58.480 someone is trustworthy when they really are not have often 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:02.800 been more costly than false positive errors e g. Believing 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:07.120 that someone is untrustworthy when they really are trustworthy. Over 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:11.520 human evolutionary history, making the cognitive system of modern humans 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:17.119 biased toward false alarms, which is hard to argue with, right, Like, Yeah, 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:20.000 in this series, we are showing lots of evidence that 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.760 it is bad for you to be highly chronically cynical, 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:27.880 and yet it's true that more often if you distrust 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:33.080 a trustworthy person, the immediate consequences are fairly limited, but 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:37.679 if you trust an untrustworthy person, the consequences can be disastrous. 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:39.520 Yeah, we talked about this a little bit in the 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:41.959 last episode. Type one Eras and Cognition. You know, it's 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:45.080 like you've got to make your way across an open field, 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:49.080 and you know there's going to be a time cost 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:54.240 and probably like you know, an anxiety cost to checking 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:56.040 every bush along the way to make sure there's not 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:58.119 a tiger in there to jump out and get you. 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:01.000 But you know, the way our brains work and the 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:05.160 way we're hardwired, it's like we know that that's one 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:07.359 sort of risk I'm going to lose some time, and 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.480 I might you know, feel horrible the whole way versus 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:13.280 getting eaten by a tiger. Yeah, like one of those 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:16.440 is like a mutt like looms far larger in our 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:18.120 short term threat analysis. 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.960 One side of the balance has an infinite cost on it. Yeah, 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:25.320 it's like kind of hard to outbalance that, even though, 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:28.000 like wasting all your time and resources checking every bush 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:31.160 that really does matter, like over time, that hugely impacts 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:32.199 your quality of life. 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:34.360 Yeah, yeah, especially of course, you know when you get 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:37.520 into not only real tigers, but all the paper tigers 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:38.479 in one's life, you know. 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:41.960 So anyway, they say that a general appreciation for the 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:45.520 merits of the better safe than sorry framework could lead 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:48.960 to the widespread notion that cynics are smarter people. They're 0:23:49.000 --> 0:24:02.920 more knowledgeable and more competent. Now, continuing the background review, 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:06.600 the authors also get into existing research on whether there 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:11.480 is an actual link between cynicism and competence. So now 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:14.359 we're asking not about how cynics are perceived, but about 0:24:14.400 --> 0:24:18.600 what their relative competence level actually is. And this, I 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:20.840 guess comes back to another question we brought up in 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:24.639 Part one. Do cynics or nonsnics have a better predictive 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:28.600 model of the world. And one very interesting way of 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:33.040 studying this is the so called trust game. So here's 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:35.720 an example of a type of trust game. This was 0:24:35.760 --> 0:24:39.520 described in a paper called why so cynical asymmetric feedback 0:24:39.640 --> 0:24:44.439 underlies misguided skepticism regarding the trustworthiness of others. This was 0:24:44.520 --> 0:24:47.760 by Debt Left, Fetchenhawer, and David Dunning in the journal 0:24:47.760 --> 0:24:52.480 Psychological Science in twenty ten and it describes this what 0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:55.119 is sometimes called an investing game. They call it a 0:24:55.160 --> 0:24:58.840 trust game, and it goes like this quote. In the game, 0:24:59.240 --> 0:25:03.000 the trust is given money that can be kept or 0:25:03.560 --> 0:25:08.280 handed to a completely random and anonymous stranger, the trustee. 0:25:08.400 --> 0:25:11.200 If the trust hands his or her money over, the 0:25:11.280 --> 0:25:16.120 amount of money is quadrupled eg. Five dollars becomes twenty dollars, 0:25:16.640 --> 0:25:20.879 and trustees have two options. They can either split the 0:25:20.920 --> 0:25:24.920 money evenly between themselves and the truster, eg. Give ten 0:25:25.000 --> 0:25:28.840 dollars back and keep ten dollars for themselves, or they 0:25:28.840 --> 0:25:32.280 can keep all the money for themselves. So the way 0:25:32.320 --> 0:25:34.720 the game works is I'm the truster. I'm the person 0:25:34.760 --> 0:25:37.359 who gets to make the first decision. If I trust 0:25:37.480 --> 0:25:40.719 you and you are trustworthy, we both benefit and I 0:25:40.760 --> 0:25:43.680 double my money. If I trust you and you are 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:47.000 not trustworthy, I get nothing. So the authors did this 0:25:47.080 --> 0:25:50.840 experiment lots of times and some interesting patterns came out. 0:25:51.600 --> 0:25:56.040 They found that trusters estimate the rate of trustworthiness of 0:25:56.080 --> 0:25:59.120 anonymous strangers in the game. They estimate it will be 0:25:59.119 --> 0:26:03.439 between four forty five and sixty percent. So it seems 0:26:03.440 --> 0:26:06.320 that most people think it's a little better than a 0:26:06.359 --> 0:26:09.320 coin flip chance that the other person will honor their 0:26:09.359 --> 0:26:13.080 trust and split the money for mutual benefit. In reality, 0:26:13.440 --> 0:26:16.920 the trustees honored the trust and split the money around 0:26:17.040 --> 0:26:21.399 eighty to ninety percent of the time. So people in 0:26:21.480 --> 0:26:27.480 this game massively underestimated how trustworthy random strangers would be. 0:26:29.000 --> 0:26:31.680 At least in the context of this game, anonymous strangers 0:26:31.680 --> 0:26:36.080 were something like twenty to fifty percent more trustworthy and 0:26:36.160 --> 0:26:40.360 cooperative than people expected them to be. Isn't that interesting? 0:26:40.480 --> 0:26:41.160 That's crazy? 0:26:41.720 --> 0:26:44.920 Yeah, eighty to ninety percent of the time. That's higher 0:26:44.960 --> 0:26:47.840 than I would have guessed. But then again, it's like, 0:26:48.200 --> 0:26:50.280 I'd like to think that if someone offered me the 0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:54.280 scenario and I was not too cynical and trusted that 0:26:54.359 --> 0:26:56.520 it was not some sort of a scam, I would 0:26:56.560 --> 0:26:58.120 be as trustworthy. 0:26:57.880 --> 0:27:00.800 Can I offer. I think maybe one thing that could 0:27:00.840 --> 0:27:05.800 be working in this particular scenario is that it makes 0:27:06.080 --> 0:27:10.760 sense to be wary of people who are offering to 0:27:10.880 --> 0:27:15.560 double your money in financial transactions. But I think that 0:27:15.600 --> 0:27:19.520 makes sense when like people come to you and they 0:27:19.560 --> 0:27:22.080 say like, hey, you know, you give me some money 0:27:22.080 --> 0:27:25.760 and I'll double it, you should. I mean, if somebody 0:27:25.800 --> 0:27:28.040 says that they're not telling you the truth, almost always, 0:27:28.359 --> 0:27:31.480 so like there's a good reason to be wary there. 0:27:31.560 --> 0:27:34.240 This is a different thing because the trustee in this 0:27:34.359 --> 0:27:36.880 game is not somebody who is coming out of nowhere 0:27:36.920 --> 0:27:39.600 to offer you money if you just give them some first. 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:42.879 They're a random stranger who is who has been pulled 0:27:42.880 --> 0:27:46.520 into this experiment designed by somebody else. And so I 0:27:46.520 --> 0:27:48.960 think what this shows is most of the time, if 0:27:49.000 --> 0:27:52.840 given the opportunity to be trustworthy and cooperate, most people will. 0:27:53.359 --> 0:27:56.119 But also it makes sense to be wary of people 0:27:56.160 --> 0:27:59.720 who are claiming they're trying to help you cooperate, you know, 0:27:59.760 --> 0:28:03.160 from mutual benefit. If they're coming out of nowhere with this, 0:28:03.480 --> 0:28:05.920 you know, that's often going to be a scam. Does 0:28:05.920 --> 0:28:06.480 that make sense? 0:28:06.600 --> 0:28:07.399 Yeah? Yeah, I think so. 0:28:08.119 --> 0:28:10.560 But anyway. So yeah, in the trust game, most people 0:28:10.640 --> 0:28:14.400 are very trustworthy and players are on average way too 0:28:14.440 --> 0:28:17.160 cynical about their fellow human being. They are missing out 0:28:17.200 --> 0:28:21.359 on lots of opportunities to double their money. And this 0:28:21.480 --> 0:28:24.280 is consistent with research by Miller in nineteen ninety eight 0:28:24.320 --> 0:28:27.399 and ninety nine finding that people just tend to grossly 0:28:27.560 --> 0:28:33.439 overestimate the selfishness and underestimate the trustworthiness of strangers. In 0:28:33.480 --> 0:28:38.760 this particular paper, the authors note that cynicism might grow 0:28:38.880 --> 0:28:43.280 from what they call asymmetric feedback. And the way that 0:28:43.320 --> 0:28:47.480 works is this, when you trust somebody and you get betrayed, 0:28:48.160 --> 0:28:52.360 you get very clear feedback that it was wrong to trust. 0:28:52.760 --> 0:28:56.360 The downside of granting your trust is very apparent to you. 0:28:56.440 --> 0:28:58.680 They walk away with the money, you get nothing, and 0:28:58.720 --> 0:29:01.800 you know it's clear to you happened. But when you 0:29:02.040 --> 0:29:06.920 refrain from trusting people, the downsides are often invisible to 0:29:06.960 --> 0:29:11.280 you because you don't actually see the lost opportunity as 0:29:11.320 --> 0:29:13.520 a scenario that plays out in front of you. You 0:29:13.600 --> 0:29:17.520 have to like imagine it as a counterfactual. It's not 0:29:17.680 --> 0:29:21.040 concrete and in your face, like being betrayed is, so 0:29:21.280 --> 0:29:25.440 you don't really get conditioned by feedback from instances where 0:29:25.440 --> 0:29:29.120 you harmed yourself by withholding trust. Does that make sense? 0:29:30.080 --> 0:29:33.480 Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of like ive, like, here's a scenario. 0:29:33.920 --> 0:29:37.040 Let's imagine that you're just really pedantic when looking at 0:29:37.080 --> 0:29:39.760 the checks when you go out to eat with friends. 0:29:40.960 --> 0:29:42.280 You know, you're like, all right, I want to see 0:29:42.280 --> 0:29:44.920 everybody's work. I got to make one hundred percent sure 0:29:45.000 --> 0:29:47.640 this is fair. And maybe it's because at some point 0:29:47.680 --> 0:29:51.600 someone really did stick you, yeah, over one of these situations, 0:29:51.960 --> 0:29:54.280 and so it maybe that is more apparent. You like, 0:29:54.280 --> 0:29:57.160 you're never going to forget that that you were wronged 0:29:57.200 --> 0:30:01.000 in this way. But if you're if you're just overly 0:30:01.120 --> 0:30:04.240 pedantic when it comes to the bills, eventually people might 0:30:04.320 --> 0:30:07.840 stop asking you to join them for dinner. Yeah, And 0:30:08.040 --> 0:30:10.920 that might be very invisible to you that that's happening. 0:30:11.080 --> 0:30:13.880 Yes, you don't realize. Yeah, it's just like things are 0:30:13.920 --> 0:30:15.600 not as good now, and I don't know why I'm 0:30:15.600 --> 0:30:19.920 feeling lonely. Yeah, Or is a more direct comparison, If 0:30:19.960 --> 0:30:23.200 you're not looking at the checks all the time, you 0:30:23.320 --> 0:30:27.000 might not notice the times when somebody made a mistake 0:30:27.080 --> 0:30:29.920 in your favor that just passed You never even noticed 0:30:29.960 --> 0:30:32.800 that it just goes right by you. That is a 0:30:32.800 --> 0:30:35.640 good comparison. But anyway, what the study found is that 0:30:35.720 --> 0:30:40.800 if you give subjects symmetric feedback about the trustworthiness of others, 0:30:41.360 --> 0:30:45.760 it tended to reduce the subject's cynicism. So, like, let's 0:30:45.760 --> 0:30:49.240 say you play the trust game, symmetric feedback would be 0:30:49.280 --> 0:30:52.440 rob whether or not you decide to hand somebody the 0:30:52.840 --> 0:30:56.239 five dollars and try to cooperate to quadruple it. You 0:30:56.280 --> 0:30:59.160 get to find out what they would have done either way, 0:31:00.400 --> 0:31:02.760 so you know, you get to keep playing the game 0:31:02.800 --> 0:31:05.040 that way, And it turns out if you play it 0:31:05.080 --> 0:31:07.680 that way, where people keep seeing, oh, I kept the money, 0:31:07.720 --> 0:31:10.160 but they I saw that they would have doubled my 0:31:10.240 --> 0:31:12.200 money if I just trusted them, and you get to 0:31:12.240 --> 0:31:15.360 see that happen over and over. That actually does decrease 0:31:15.400 --> 0:31:19.520 people's cynicism, which also is interesting and that it gives 0:31:19.520 --> 0:31:21.720 you at least a little bit of an idea where 0:31:22.040 --> 0:31:25.440 some elements of cynicism could be coming from. It could 0:31:25.440 --> 0:31:29.480 be related in part to this asymmetric build up of information. 0:31:29.640 --> 0:31:33.440 We get to see where trust fails very clearly, but 0:31:33.880 --> 0:31:37.440 the opportunities we lose out on by not granting trust 0:31:37.560 --> 0:31:40.360 are often just like, we don't even realize what's happened. 0:31:40.360 --> 0:31:42.640 We don't even realize anything. We don't even know what 0:31:42.640 --> 0:31:46.160 we're missing. Yeah, so this research does not give us 0:31:46.200 --> 0:31:48.880 a complete picture. But I think some evidence is starting 0:31:48.880 --> 0:31:53.000 to accumulate that the cynic does not have a highly 0:31:53.160 --> 0:31:56.880 accurate internal model of the world. They might in some scenarios, 0:31:57.320 --> 0:32:01.520 but generalized cynicism is not like as some of these 0:32:01.520 --> 0:32:05.000 writers were saying, seeing things as they really are. In fact, 0:32:05.040 --> 0:32:09.120 cynicism often causes us to incorrectly predict the behavior of 0:32:09.160 --> 0:32:13.040 other people, assuming they will be more selfish and treacherous 0:32:13.080 --> 0:32:17.120 than they really are. Now coming back to the main 0:32:17.160 --> 0:32:20.440 paper I was talking about, but Stavrova and elibract they 0:32:20.480 --> 0:32:24.680 note some other research on the link between cynicism and competence. Again, 0:32:24.880 --> 0:32:28.920 contrary to the cynical genius archetype, the authors are able 0:32:28.920 --> 0:32:31.840 to cite a long list of studies looking at links 0:32:31.880 --> 0:32:36.280 between cynicism and various types of cognitive performance and ability, 0:32:36.320 --> 0:32:40.400 and they find it's exactly the opposite of what you 0:32:40.480 --> 0:32:44.640 might guess from the Sherlock Holmes example. Higher performance on 0:32:44.800 --> 0:32:49.360 various types of cognitive academic and IQ tests is negatively 0:32:49.440 --> 0:32:54.719 correlated with cynicism. It is instead positively correlated with increased 0:32:54.840 --> 0:32:58.720 tendency to trust. There are a few confounding results here. 0:32:58.720 --> 0:33:00.880 It's not like every single study has found this, but 0:33:00.920 --> 0:33:04.440 the vast majority have. Some of the confounding results are 0:33:04.480 --> 0:33:08.120 For example, they cite a twenty thirteen study that found 0:33:08.200 --> 0:33:12.760 that higher IQ does not, on average improve a person's 0:33:12.800 --> 0:33:16.760 ability to correctly predict who will be trustworthy and who 0:33:16.760 --> 0:33:19.840 will not. So like you do better on cognitive tests, 0:33:20.160 --> 0:33:22.440 that doesn't mean that if we pair you up with, 0:33:22.640 --> 0:33:25.760 you know, Johnny and Billy in the in the Trust 0:33:25.760 --> 0:33:28.520 Game experiment, you can predict whether Johnny or Billy you'll 0:33:28.560 --> 0:33:31.600 be more likely to help you out. It just it 0:33:31.640 --> 0:33:33.000 doesn't help us in that regard. 0:33:33.280 --> 0:33:35.240 Yeah, it's like the compass is already pulling you in 0:33:35.240 --> 0:33:38.640 one direction or another, and however higher IQ is, I mean, 0:33:38.680 --> 0:33:40.800 that's just that's just the kind of mental energy that 0:33:40.920 --> 0:33:43.720 ends up being wrapped around the initial impulse. 0:33:44.200 --> 0:33:46.360 Another thing to keep in mind here is that, of course, 0:33:46.400 --> 0:33:50.120 while like various cognitive and IQ and academic tests can 0:33:50.480 --> 0:33:52.160 tell you, they can tell you a lot of things 0:33:52.200 --> 0:33:56.280 about cognitive ability, they don't tell you everything. So you know, 0:33:56.320 --> 0:33:58.280 they can tell you about certain kinds of skills with 0:33:58.360 --> 0:34:02.120 reasoning certain kinds of intelligence, but there are always going 0:34:02.160 --> 0:34:06.320 to be elements of intelligence that are not perfectly captured 0:34:06.360 --> 0:34:10.480 by these sorts of tests. So the authors begin to 0:34:11.320 --> 0:34:15.279 develop a possible hypothetical model to explain what's going on here. 0:34:15.960 --> 0:34:20.920 They say, what if intelligence, knowledge and competence don't really 0:34:21.000 --> 0:34:24.759 help you very much in identifying who to trust in 0:34:24.800 --> 0:34:27.800 a given scenario. They don't tell you really if Johnny 0:34:27.920 --> 0:34:30.640 or Billy, both of whom you've just met, is more trustworthy, 0:34:31.200 --> 0:34:36.040 But instead they help you evaluate the scenario itself to 0:34:36.160 --> 0:34:39.680 decide whether to deploy a more cynical or a more 0:34:39.840 --> 0:34:45.200 trusting framework given the environment and the circumstances. The authors 0:34:45.280 --> 0:34:49.279 rit quote high levels of competence might allow individuals to 0:34:49.360 --> 0:34:54.080 correctly identify the corruptness of their environment and adjust their 0:34:54.160 --> 0:34:57.839 level of cynicism to match it. Following this reasoning, high 0:34:57.840 --> 0:35:02.440 competence individuals might hold adapt attitudes and recur to cynicism 0:35:02.560 --> 0:35:06.640 only when it seems warranted, while they're less competent. Counterparts 0:35:06.719 --> 0:35:11.080 might show more cognitive rigidity and relying on the better 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:16.719 safe than sorry heuristic tend to endorse cynicism indiscriminately. So 0:35:16.840 --> 0:35:19.440 if this model is correct, they're saying it can be 0:35:19.520 --> 0:35:23.640 efficient to just remain in better safe than sorry mode 0:35:24.040 --> 0:35:26.840 when you lack the ability to tell whether you're dealing 0:35:26.920 --> 0:35:29.719 with a corrupt, untrustworthy environment or not. 0:35:30.520 --> 0:35:32.080 Yeah, yeah, this makes sense. We can all think of 0:35:32.120 --> 0:35:36.200 examples where the scenario is very clear, like, Okay, even 0:35:36.239 --> 0:35:38.279 if someone is out to get me, this is not 0:35:38.360 --> 0:35:40.799 the environment where they can just really take me for 0:35:40.840 --> 0:35:44.000 all I'm worth. I'm literally handing somebody a five dollar bill. 0:35:44.239 --> 0:35:46.200 What are they going to do. They're going to run 0:35:46.239 --> 0:35:49.320 away into the woods and keep my dollar fifty and 0:35:49.440 --> 0:35:51.640 change that the risks seem low. 0:35:52.040 --> 0:35:57.279 So onto Stevrova and Illebrect's actual experiments, and I'll start 0:35:57.320 --> 0:36:00.480 with the very short version of their findings. First of all, 0:36:00.480 --> 0:36:05.160 they find yes on average across multiple experiments. Regular people 0:36:05.200 --> 0:36:09.000 tend to believe that cynicism is a sign of cognitive 0:36:09.040 --> 0:36:12.600 superiority in others, if you think people are bad, you 0:36:12.680 --> 0:36:16.280 think people are selfish and morals are fake. On balance, 0:36:16.360 --> 0:36:19.719 people will tend to assume you are smarter and more competent, 0:36:20.480 --> 0:36:26.120 especially at certain types of cognitive tasks. Things involving logic 0:36:26.239 --> 0:36:28.960 and numbers and stuff. They're more likely to assign you 0:36:29.440 --> 0:36:34.799 important cognitive tasks like doing mathematical calculations and logical analysis 0:36:34.840 --> 0:36:37.960 of documents if they think you're cynical. And on the 0:36:38.000 --> 0:36:41.280 other hand, the authors found in their experiments no, on average, 0:36:41.280 --> 0:36:46.360 cynicism is not associated with cognitive superiority or greater competence. 0:36:47.160 --> 0:36:49.600 They had three studies based on data from about two 0:36:49.680 --> 0:36:53.399 hundred thousand subjects across thirty different countries and showed that 0:36:53.440 --> 0:36:58.120 on average, cynicism was negatively correlated with tests of cognitive 0:36:58.120 --> 0:37:01.400 ability and tests of academic nolede and competency. So this 0:37:01.480 --> 0:37:05.920 included all kinds of things like reading, comprehension, mathematical skills, 0:37:06.040 --> 0:37:11.320 scientific literacy, technological literacy, and so forth. And this negative 0:37:11.320 --> 0:37:15.520 association between cynicism and cognitive tests was true even after 0:37:15.560 --> 0:37:21.080 controlling for confounding variables like age, gender, household income, wealth, test, 0:37:21.160 --> 0:37:26.400 language proficiency, and Big five personality traits. Now, one major 0:37:26.440 --> 0:37:30.320 distinction here is that they found that people who tested 0:37:30.400 --> 0:37:36.960 higher incompetence tended to have attitudes of contingent trust. They 0:37:37.040 --> 0:37:41.400 might be trusting by default, but we're not rigid in 0:37:41.480 --> 0:37:44.319 that regard and would become more cynical if it was 0:37:44.400 --> 0:37:49.239 warranted situationally or based on the environment and cultural context, 0:37:49.760 --> 0:37:54.920 whereas people scoring lower incompetence tended to accept an unconditionally 0:37:54.960 --> 0:37:59.040 cynical worldview. In the words of the authors quote suggesting 0:37:59.080 --> 0:38:02.240 that at low leane levels of competence, holding a cynical 0:38:02.239 --> 0:38:06.400 worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the 0:38:06.400 --> 0:38:10.120 potential costs of falling prey to others cunning. Now, I 0:38:10.239 --> 0:38:12.520 wanted to expand on these findings with a few notes. 0:38:13.480 --> 0:38:16.440 One of the things about the early tests of people's 0:38:16.520 --> 0:38:20.799 perceptions of cynicism a control they had here, is that 0:38:20.840 --> 0:38:24.439 the authors didn't just ask about cognitive competence. They also 0:38:24.560 --> 0:38:28.200 asked about social and moral competence, and quite along the 0:38:28.200 --> 0:38:31.120 lines you might expect. People tended to think that low 0:38:31.200 --> 0:38:35.240 trust individuals would be better at cognitive things like math, logic, 0:38:35.320 --> 0:38:38.920 and critical thinking, but they thought that high trust individuals 0:38:38.920 --> 0:38:41.600 would be better at social tasks like cheering up a 0:38:41.640 --> 0:38:44.840 depressed friend or taking care of a stray animal. So 0:38:44.920 --> 0:38:47.480 it wasn't just like across the board we think cynics 0:38:47.480 --> 0:38:50.279 are great. We think cynics are better at everything. It's 0:38:50.360 --> 0:38:52.640 that people tend to think cynics are better at certain 0:38:52.760 --> 0:38:56.880 types of intelligence based skills, things like math and logic 0:38:56.960 --> 0:38:57.600 and so forth. 0:39:00.000 --> 0:39:02.279 This this is sounding kind of like when you see 0:39:02.280 --> 0:39:05.600 somebody smoking a cigarette. You know, they can look pretty cool, 0:39:05.960 --> 0:39:09.040 especially in movies, like but we all we know deep 0:39:09.080 --> 0:39:11.840 down that like, well, the smoking a cigarette doesn't actually 0:39:11.880 --> 0:39:14.800 make you cool, but we can't help it. And likewise 0:39:14.840 --> 0:39:17.480 you might think, well who you know. You might say, okay, 0:39:17.800 --> 0:39:20.960 doctor smoking a cigarette. I have questions. Maybe this is 0:39:21.000 --> 0:39:24.680 not the doctor for me, but private detective smoking a cigarette, Well, 0:39:25.160 --> 0:39:27.960 obviously that's the guy I want looking after my interests. 0:39:28.480 --> 0:39:30.960 Oh do you mean like the smoking of the cigarette 0:39:31.000 --> 0:39:34.399 implies like a rejection of the consensus about the health 0:39:34.440 --> 0:39:36.520 effects of it, or just that it I mean, I 0:39:36.520 --> 0:39:39.560 guess that often is suggested. It's like, I don't think 0:39:39.560 --> 0:39:41.640 it's hurting me. I don't care what people say. I 0:39:41.640 --> 0:39:43.759 guess there are two ways of going It's like it 0:39:43.800 --> 0:39:45.880 would be cynical. I think it's part of a cynical 0:39:45.880 --> 0:39:48.239 worldview to say, like, ah, these doctors who say it 0:39:48.280 --> 0:39:50.399 causes cancer or heart disease, they don't know what they're 0:39:50.440 --> 0:39:54.080 talking about. I can just smoke it's fine. Or there's 0:39:54.120 --> 0:39:56.520 the version that's like I don't care what happens to me, 0:39:56.760 --> 0:39:59.080 which I think is a little bit different than cynicism. 0:39:59.120 --> 0:40:01.120 Maybe though could go along with cynicism. 0:40:01.360 --> 0:40:02.319 Yeah, yeah, but. 0:40:02.320 --> 0:40:05.480 I follow you in general because yeah, there's like, apart 0:40:05.560 --> 0:40:08.839 from thinking that cynical people are smart, there is also 0:40:08.880 --> 0:40:11.240 a tendency to think that cynical people are cool. 0:40:11.600 --> 0:40:12.040 Yeah. 0:40:12.160 --> 0:40:14.520 That's in fact, I've got a section where maybe we'll 0:40:14.560 --> 0:40:16.120 get more into that in just a minute. 0:40:16.120 --> 0:40:16.279 Here. 0:40:16.640 --> 0:40:19.160 Scientific analysis of the coolness. 0:40:18.760 --> 0:40:32.000 Of another thing here is that they tried different like 0:40:32.120 --> 0:40:37.000 wordings and types of questions across multiple replication attempts to 0:40:37.040 --> 0:40:39.800 make sure that like the cynical genius effect was robust, 0:40:39.840 --> 0:40:43.239 And it was robust, but the effects were modulated a 0:40:43.239 --> 0:40:46.000 little bit by changes in phrasing, such as whether you 0:40:46.080 --> 0:40:50.319 describe the opposite of cynicism as an idealistic versus a 0:40:50.440 --> 0:40:54.960 positive view of human nature. Apparently people think being idealistic 0:40:55.040 --> 0:40:57.520 about human nature is a little bit dumber than being 0:40:57.640 --> 0:41:01.680 positive about human nature. It's always funny how just changing 0:41:01.719 --> 0:41:04.480 the swapping a word out can have some effects there. 0:41:05.239 --> 0:41:08.520 They also replicated these findings in different samples, so they 0:41:08.520 --> 0:41:12.040 did some online surveys, international online surveys, and they did 0:41:12.080 --> 0:41:15.440 some in person tests of university students in Germany. They 0:41:15.440 --> 0:41:18.720 did some with British adults, and the cynical genius effect 0:41:18.800 --> 0:41:22.680 appeared to varying degrees in all the groups tested here. However, 0:41:23.280 --> 0:41:27.880 in some of these experiments, respondents got to rate essentially 0:41:28.200 --> 0:41:32.480 how cynical they would like a person assigned to a 0:41:32.520 --> 0:41:35.839 cognitive task to be, and the breakdown, to be clear, 0:41:35.960 --> 0:41:40.279 was not toward a preference for extreme cynicism, but for 0:41:40.680 --> 0:41:44.640 higher than average cynicism. So one example here is that 0:41:44.880 --> 0:41:48.759 in a group of British adults selecting between hypothetical candidates 0:41:48.800 --> 0:41:54.040 to solve intellectual problems, participants quote desired mix of cynical 0:41:54.080 --> 0:41:58.080 and non cynical tendencies was fifty six percent cynical to 0:41:58.200 --> 0:42:02.000 forty four percent non cynical. So on average, the group 0:42:02.200 --> 0:42:05.279 they thought, we need somebody smart. We want somebody who 0:42:05.400 --> 0:42:07.600 is a little bit more cynical than the median. 0:42:08.400 --> 0:42:10.480 That makes sense, you know, if you were able to 0:42:11.160 --> 0:42:14.640 move the slider on your so like your android doctor, 0:42:14.640 --> 0:42:17.319 your android lawyer, or whatever it happens to be. Yeah, 0:42:17.360 --> 0:42:20.080 you want the right mix of cynicism. A little more 0:42:20.120 --> 0:42:23.359 than the average person, but not not too much. This 0:42:23.400 --> 0:42:25.319 will be interesting to get into later when we start 0:42:25.320 --> 0:42:29.680 talking about like absolute cynicism and what what that is 0:42:29.719 --> 0:42:31.600 and where we stand in relation to it. 0:42:31.840 --> 0:42:36.480 Yeah. So, as for the actual inverse link between cynicism 0:42:36.520 --> 0:42:39.920 and competence, when broken down by test domain, I was 0:42:39.960 --> 0:42:44.000 interested to see that the effect was strongest in reading 0:42:44.040 --> 0:42:50.600 skills and weakest in information processing speed. So in these tests, 0:42:50.640 --> 0:42:54.400 apparently highly cynical people holding up relatively okay with speed 0:42:54.440 --> 0:42:58.000 of reasoning, doing a lot worse in like reading comprehension, 0:42:59.280 --> 0:43:03.279 and finally getting to the element of the paper comparing cynicism, competence, 0:43:03.320 --> 0:43:08.480 and environment. The author's tested levels of cynicism cross referenced 0:43:08.480 --> 0:43:12.320 with these cognitive tests in subjects across thirty different countries, 0:43:13.040 --> 0:43:16.680 and they found that in countries that scored low in 0:43:16.800 --> 0:43:20.279 corruption and high in rule of law according to an 0:43:20.320 --> 0:43:24.319 international database called the World Governance Indicators, the effect we've 0:43:24.360 --> 0:43:27.759 been talking about did hold true, but in countries with 0:43:27.960 --> 0:43:32.080 high corruption and eroded rule of law, the effect was 0:43:32.280 --> 0:43:33.400 greatly diminished. 0:43:34.080 --> 0:43:34.440 Quote. 0:43:34.680 --> 0:43:38.480 The harsher the social climate, the more these high competence 0:43:38.520 --> 0:43:42.239 people embraced a cynical worldview. So kind of along the 0:43:42.239 --> 0:43:44.640 lines of results we talked about in the last episode, 0:43:44.800 --> 0:43:49.200 it hurts you materially to hold cynical views unless those 0:43:49.320 --> 0:43:53.280 views are correct in the environment where you operate. Along 0:43:53.360 --> 0:43:57.040 these lines, the authors discuss ways that cynicism might be 0:43:57.160 --> 0:44:01.520 learned directly from personal experience. Despite the fact that they 0:44:01.680 --> 0:44:05.600 tried to control for the influence of variables like age, gender, 0:44:05.640 --> 0:44:09.360 and wealth, it's still possible that quote higher levels of 0:44:09.400 --> 0:44:14.920 cognitive ability, academic competence, and education might protect from adverse 0:44:15.000 --> 0:44:19.240 life experiences, not only as they allow discovering potential fraud, 0:44:19.560 --> 0:44:22.200 but also as they increase the chances of living in 0:44:22.239 --> 0:44:25.560 a safe and friendly environment, providing more evidence for a 0:44:25.600 --> 0:44:28.560 positive than for a negative view of human nature, and 0:44:28.960 --> 0:44:34.000 consequently preventing cynicism development. So that's talking about the idea that, 0:44:34.120 --> 0:44:38.480 like that education and cognitive skills, they might not just 0:44:38.560 --> 0:44:41.799 be about how accurately you're seeing the world around you. 0:44:41.880 --> 0:44:45.440 They might actually, over time, influence what the world around 0:44:45.480 --> 0:44:49.960 you is like. On the other hand, since cynicism entails 0:44:50.120 --> 0:44:55.520 generalized distrust quote cynical versus less cynical, individuals might be 0:44:55.600 --> 0:44:59.120 more distrustful of the opinions and knowledge of others, a 0:44:59.160 --> 0:45:02.840 behavior that can eventually prevent them from expanding their knowledge 0:45:03.160 --> 0:45:04.240 and understanding. 0:45:04.640 --> 0:45:07.200 Well, that that seems like it tracks the idea that 0:45:07.239 --> 0:45:12.839 if you're cynical about about potential information sources, and you're 0:45:12.880 --> 0:45:15.080 more likely to sort of back your way into a 0:45:15.120 --> 0:45:19.680 corner where you have very few informational sources coming in 0:45:19.719 --> 0:45:21.400 and they're the only the only ones you're going to 0:45:21.400 --> 0:45:24.600 accept are the ones that back up your existing cynicism. 0:45:24.920 --> 0:45:27.959 Yes, but they say, of course, there is more work 0:45:28.000 --> 0:45:32.200 to do exploring the different possible causal mechanisms here. So 0:45:32.320 --> 0:45:35.960 this paper does find good robust evidence for the cynical 0:45:36.000 --> 0:45:39.839 genius illusion, that the illusion is widely present, and it 0:45:39.880 --> 0:45:43.640 is in fact an illusion, but the questions about why 0:45:43.719 --> 0:45:48.120 are still largely open. One thing, I wonder about a 0:45:48.120 --> 0:45:51.760 lot of the cognitive tasks that subjects said they would 0:45:51.920 --> 0:45:55.520 entrust to a cynical person more than a non cynical person. 0:45:56.440 --> 0:45:58.200 I was looking through the inventory, and a lot of 0:45:58.200 --> 0:46:03.720 these tasks involved screwy of details, like crunching numbers, following 0:46:03.800 --> 0:46:08.440 complex logic, analyzing scientific results, things like that, And I 0:46:08.680 --> 0:46:13.240 wonder if the same pattern would hold for cognitive tasks 0:46:13.280 --> 0:46:18.440 that people associate less with scrutiny of details and instead 0:46:18.480 --> 0:46:22.359 with things like creativity and imagination. And to be clear, 0:46:22.400 --> 0:46:25.520 the cynical genius effect would be an illusion even if 0:46:25.560 --> 0:46:29.040 it were only applied to scrutinizing cognition. But I wonder 0:46:29.080 --> 0:46:32.240 if the illusion is actually more specific to certain kinds 0:46:32.239 --> 0:46:32.960 of cognition. 0:46:33.600 --> 0:46:37.040 Yeah, yeah, that very much, that Sherlock Holmes scenario. 0:46:37.680 --> 0:46:39.960 But also coming back to this question, we've asked several 0:46:40.000 --> 0:46:44.560 times now, are there any benefits to generalize cynicism. It 0:46:44.840 --> 0:46:47.560 comes with tons of harms for the cynic it hurts 0:46:47.560 --> 0:46:50.479 you to be cynical, But are there any benefits? Well, 0:46:50.560 --> 0:46:53.120 first of all, this paper does find if you're in 0:46:53.239 --> 0:46:58.239 a really corrupt, untrustworthy environment, obviously it does make more 0:46:58.280 --> 0:47:00.520 sense to be more cynical. That's just like a correct 0:47:00.640 --> 0:47:05.400 understanding of how your environment operates. Number Two, even if 0:47:05.440 --> 0:47:10.400 you're not in a more corrupt, untrustworthy environment, if you 0:47:10.520 --> 0:47:15.040 don't understand your environment and you're basically out of your depth, 0:47:15.400 --> 0:47:19.640 cynicism may protect you from catastrophic outcomes. It's like, I 0:47:19.640 --> 0:47:21.640 don't really know what's going on here, don't know if 0:47:21.680 --> 0:47:24.359 I can trust or not, so by default I'm not 0:47:24.560 --> 0:47:28.200 going to trust. That's better safe than sorry. And then third, 0:47:28.239 --> 0:47:30.600 I think this is going to be mainly related to 0:47:30.680 --> 0:47:35.560 the cynical genius illusion. Having a reputation for cynicism may 0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:39.200 have the effect of convincing people around you that you 0:47:39.239 --> 0:47:43.160 are very smart and intellectually savvy, even though on average 0:47:43.239 --> 0:47:46.120 the opposite is more likely to be true. So there's 0:47:46.160 --> 0:47:50.160 a kind of social premium incentive to appear to be cynical. 0:47:50.239 --> 0:47:52.359 It's in a lot of cases it's going to make 0:47:52.440 --> 0:47:55.439 people think that you know something they don't, and you're 0:47:55.480 --> 0:47:58.600 a wise and world weary and intelligent person. 0:47:59.440 --> 0:48:02.840 Yes, is often kind of a safe gambole at, like 0:48:02.880 --> 0:48:07.280 a cocktail party or a mixer. Right if politics should 0:48:07.280 --> 0:48:09.880 come up, which of course is bad manners anyway, but 0:48:09.920 --> 0:48:11.560 if it were to come up, you might say something 0:48:11.600 --> 0:48:13.640 that is just kind of a you know, a blanket 0:48:13.760 --> 0:48:17.120 statement of cynicism, like aoh, well, politicians are all the same. 0:48:17.520 --> 0:48:19.200 And then what people are gonna have to double down. 0:48:19.239 --> 0:48:22.160 They're gonna have to come back and try to convince 0:48:22.200 --> 0:48:25.480 you no, no, not all politicians. Some are great, and 0:48:25.520 --> 0:48:28.600 they're going to look like the person who's naive where 0:48:28.680 --> 0:48:32.520 you've already you know, mounted your cynicism high horse. 0:48:32.719 --> 0:48:35.879 We've talked about this before. Yeah, the the like all 0:48:35.920 --> 0:48:38.000 politicians are the same as the kind of statement that 0:48:38.040 --> 0:48:42.280 I think is just facially untrue. It could not be true, 0:48:42.440 --> 0:48:47.040 obviously wrong, but you feel foolish trying to argue with it. Yeah, 0:48:47.080 --> 0:48:49.440 and I think that goes beyond politics. I mean, just 0:48:49.600 --> 0:48:53.920 generally trying to argue with the cynic is so difficult. 0:48:54.400 --> 0:48:59.919 Statements of cynicism often come with this a priori tech 0:49:00.000 --> 0:49:04.120 mixture of factuality just feels self evidently true with it, 0:49:04.280 --> 0:49:07.600 even when it's obviously wrong, when it would be absurd 0:49:07.640 --> 0:49:07.960 for it. 0:49:07.960 --> 0:49:18.239 To be true. 0:49:18.400 --> 0:49:21.040 One more thing before I wrap up from the Stavrovia 0:49:21.200 --> 0:49:25.080 and Ilbrect study here talking about in their discussion, they 0:49:25.080 --> 0:49:28.400 talk about why do we tend to assume highly cynical 0:49:28.440 --> 0:49:30.759 people are smarter than the rest of us, even though 0:49:30.760 --> 0:49:34.840 this is usually not the case. We touched on this earlier, 0:49:34.880 --> 0:49:38.680 but the authors do offer a few ideas based on 0:49:39.080 --> 0:49:44.080 common cognitive biases. In particular, they call out negativity bias 0:49:44.239 --> 0:49:49.040 and loss aversion. Negativity bias is the observation that we 0:49:49.200 --> 0:49:53.560 are more psychologically affected by negative things than we are 0:49:53.600 --> 0:49:57.480 by positive things of equal intensity and loss a version 0:49:57.520 --> 0:50:00.000 is very similar. It's the finding that we're more strong 0:50:00.280 --> 0:50:03.880 motivated to avoid a loss than we are to achieve 0:50:04.000 --> 0:50:07.720 a gain of the same value. So here's an example. 0:50:07.880 --> 0:50:10.359 I find a five dollar bill on the sidewalk. Oh, 0:50:10.400 --> 0:50:14.520 that's nice, quickly forget about it, Versus I drop a 0:50:14.560 --> 0:50:17.520 five dollar bill down a storm drain or you know 0:50:17.640 --> 0:50:21.640 why me, ah, I hate this. You know, it's like 0:50:21.880 --> 0:50:26.520 the dollar value is exactly the same, but the loss 0:50:26.760 --> 0:50:30.480 is more memorable, it's more salient and will cause a 0:50:30.520 --> 0:50:33.799 greater emotional reaction. And I think for those reasons, like 0:50:34.160 --> 0:50:37.400 we are more likely to learn something from it, to 0:50:37.440 --> 0:50:40.359 try to draw a general inference that we will take 0:50:40.400 --> 0:50:43.000 and apply to the rest of life from these moments 0:50:43.000 --> 0:50:45.960 of loss than from gains of the exact same value. 0:50:46.360 --> 0:50:48.640 Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'd go as far as to 0:50:48.680 --> 0:50:51.560 say that at the very least, you're more likely to 0:50:51.600 --> 0:50:55.280 remember dropping that five than finding a ten. Yeah, and yeah, 0:50:55.560 --> 0:50:58.719 there's probably been an interesting thought experiment to be had, 0:50:58.719 --> 0:51:02.720 and just trying to determine which point the find value 0:51:02.760 --> 0:51:06.279 would be equal to a much lesser loss value, I think. 0:51:06.760 --> 0:51:09.120 I think work on that exact question has been done. 0:51:09.160 --> 0:51:10.520 I don't have it pulled up in front of me, 0:51:10.600 --> 0:51:13.640 but I think we've looked at that before. Yeah, I'm 0:51:13.680 --> 0:51:16.000 sure for some reason seeing the exact numbers is going 0:51:16.040 --> 0:51:20.520 to be really funny. But anyway, so you apply this 0:51:21.000 --> 0:51:25.000 these biases negativity, bias, and loss aversion to the domain 0:51:25.040 --> 0:51:28.439 of trust and cynicism, and they could mean that the 0:51:28.480 --> 0:51:32.640 pain of being betrayed is much greater than the pleasure 0:51:32.800 --> 0:51:36.680 of having our trust rewarded, even given the exact same 0:51:36.719 --> 0:51:40.200 original act of trust. And this is back to the 0:51:40.360 --> 0:51:42.480 mental cherry picking that you mentioned last time. 0:51:42.560 --> 0:51:42.759 Rob. 0:51:42.800 --> 0:51:44.760 You know, you can always like think of these really 0:51:44.920 --> 0:51:48.760 sticky examples of times when you shouldn't have trusted someone 0:51:48.880 --> 0:51:52.880 or something. We may trust somebody twenty times, it works 0:51:52.880 --> 0:51:56.319 out great nineteen times, but the one time it did 0:51:56.320 --> 0:51:59.720 not work out is shocking and painful and we feel 0:51:59.760 --> 0:52:03.240 so hurt. And so from this we form an idea 0:52:03.320 --> 0:52:06.600 that people who do not trust easily have learned a 0:52:06.640 --> 0:52:10.840 lot of valuable lessons. Therefore they are generally knowledgeable, wise, 0:52:10.960 --> 0:52:15.200 and smart. Another explanation comes back to that study from 0:52:15.239 --> 0:52:18.040 the background section that we talked about briefly about the 0:52:18.040 --> 0:52:23.200 the invisibility of consequences in situations where we refrain from 0:52:23.239 --> 0:52:27.399 from giving trust to our detriment. So again you get 0:52:27.440 --> 0:52:31.280 to see what happens when you trust and that trust 0:52:31.360 --> 0:52:34.880 is betrayed. But when you withhold trust and you just 0:52:35.040 --> 0:52:38.200 miss out on an opportunity to gain, you don't really 0:52:38.239 --> 0:52:40.920 get to see that loss made concrete. It's just like 0:52:41.040 --> 0:52:43.680 it's another path you could have taken. You can even 0:52:43.719 --> 0:52:44.880 go without thinking about it. 0:52:45.400 --> 0:52:47.680 Yeah, that's right. Unless you're visited by you know, Christmas 0:52:47.719 --> 0:52:49.680 spirits or something, You're just not going to have any 0:52:49.719 --> 0:52:50.560 alternate views. 0:52:50.840 --> 0:52:52.960 That's a really you know what. I think a Christmas 0:52:53.000 --> 0:52:56.080 Carol is a great example here. That is something the 0:52:56.120 --> 0:52:58.799 ghost of Christmas past has to come and make the 0:52:59.120 --> 0:53:03.800 lost oportunities concrete. And then one last point the authors 0:53:03.840 --> 0:53:06.680 make that I thought was a very interesting point. They raise, 0:53:07.360 --> 0:53:11.200 what if the cynical genius illusion arises in part from 0:53:11.760 --> 0:53:17.719 biases of storytelling. We fill our lives with fictional stories. 0:53:18.200 --> 0:53:23.359 Fictional stories need to be entertaining. Stories are usually more 0:53:23.520 --> 0:53:28.600 entertaining if danger and conflict are heightened, if villains are 0:53:28.760 --> 0:53:33.000 meaner and more dangerous, if the stakes are high, if 0:53:33.160 --> 0:53:35.960 no one can be trusted, you can you can hear 0:53:36.000 --> 0:53:39.200 all these phrases in the Don la Fontaine movie trailer voice, 0:53:39.239 --> 0:53:42.279 can't you you know? It's like that's what stories are 0:53:42.320 --> 0:53:46.960 made out of. Fictional storytelling selects for narratives about the 0:53:47.120 --> 0:53:51.200 dangers of trust and the risk of betrayal because stories 0:53:51.239 --> 0:53:54.279 like that are captivating to our attention and we want 0:53:54.320 --> 0:53:58.200 to know what happens next. So hostile and treacherous worlds 0:53:58.280 --> 0:54:02.040 may be more entertaining and narrative. But it's possible that 0:54:02.080 --> 0:54:06.160 we draw incorrect inferences from those fictional worlds. We learn 0:54:06.280 --> 0:54:11.040 too much about how life works from unrealities that are 0:54:11.080 --> 0:54:15.960 specifically crafted to hack our attention. And who are the smart, 0:54:16.040 --> 0:54:19.160 savvy characters in these worlds. I think very often they 0:54:19.160 --> 0:54:21.480 are cynics who are very reluctant to trust. 0:54:22.080 --> 0:54:23.520 That's right, That's a great point. 0:54:23.880 --> 0:54:25.799 So anyway, that's all I've got in the study for now. 0:54:25.840 --> 0:54:28.680 But I think the cynical genius illusion is so interesting. 0:54:28.680 --> 0:54:30.200 I'm going to be thinking about this a lot in 0:54:30.440 --> 0:54:31.560 the days and weeks to come. 0:54:32.040 --> 0:54:34.360 Yeah, this will be an interesting one to bring into 0:54:34.440 --> 0:54:37.800 our weird house cinema discussions as we inevitably come around 0:54:37.800 --> 0:54:41.719 to a film that has a cynic genius in it, 0:54:42.800 --> 0:54:44.279 and I'm sure if I was to go back and 0:54:44.320 --> 0:54:46.760 look at some of the titles we've covered, we've probably 0:54:46.840 --> 0:54:50.879 encountered these sorts of characters before, probably played by someone 0:54:50.920 --> 0:54:54.600 like Christopher Lee. Yes, all right, well, on that note, 0:54:54.640 --> 0:54:56.680 we're going to go ahead and close out this episode, 0:54:56.680 --> 0:54:58.439 but we're going to come back with at least one 0:54:58.440 --> 0:55:02.480 more episode on cynicism. Again, this is a huge topic. 0:55:03.280 --> 0:55:04.960 In the next episode, I believe we're going to get 0:55:04.960 --> 0:55:09.839 into cynicism, politics, and social media, so that should be 0:55:10.880 --> 0:55:15.680 fun discussion either way. Tune in. We're looking forward to 0:55:15.960 --> 0:55:18.960 getting into it. In the meantime, I'd like to remind 0:55:18.960 --> 0:55:21.520 everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a 0:55:21.600 --> 0:55:25.239 science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 0:55:25.480 --> 0:55:27.520 We have a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on 0:55:27.560 --> 0:55:29.920 Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk 0:55:29.960 --> 0:55:32.040 about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. 0:55:32.600 --> 0:55:36.239 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 0:55:36.320 --> 0:55:37.799 If you would like to get in touch with us 0:55:37.800 --> 0:55:40.240 with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 0:55:40.320 --> 0:55:42.400 a topic for the future, or just to say hello, 0:55:42.680 --> 0:55:45.240 you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow 0:55:45.239 --> 0:56:01.239 Your Mind dot com. 0:55:53.760 --> 0:55:56.719 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. 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