Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, he wasn't as stuffable your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas Juan
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put you in a scenario here and asked
Speaker 1: to the listeners put themselves in the same scenario. Imagine
Speaker 1: a stranger appears before you call Finn stranger like very
Speaker 1: thin and dressed and say, let's say dark dark robe. Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't sounding so great. Well well wait wait till
Speaker 1: wait to hear this. This fell out because he makes
Speaker 1: an offer this if you would like, and this is
Speaker 1: purely optional, I will tell you to the day, to
Speaker 1: the minute, even when you will die. I have this
Speaker 1: information here in my in my file, and I will
Speaker 1: share this information with you. All you have to do
Speaker 1: is ask would you would you would you like to know?
Speaker 1: Would you would you want this date and this time
Speaker 1: to mark in your calendar? Absolutely not? No, No, I
Speaker 1: mean that's the kind of mystery you want to remain
Speaker 1: a mystery? Right? Do you think I want to obsess
Speaker 1: on that for the rest of my life every single moment?
Speaker 1: Well that's one argument. Yeah, Robert, do you think I
Speaker 1: really want to well, yeah, I mean to know exactly
Speaker 1: when you're gonna die. It would it would be helpful
Speaker 1: in some ways, right, You know, if you've been putting
Speaker 1: on planning, state planning, um, if there are certain projects
Speaker 1: you've been putting off, it might be nice to know
Speaker 1: you actually have time enough to complete them, and or
Speaker 1: if you should should maybe shoot for instead of writing
Speaker 1: the Great American novel, maybe you would just try and
Speaker 1: write the Great American short story or the Great American
Speaker 1: haiku h depending on what the forecast is, or yeah,
Speaker 1: a little fly fiction. Yeah. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you would conceive it would be then be living your
Speaker 1: life in fear, ticking down ever closer to that moment
Speaker 1: when this same individual in the dark robes and the
Speaker 1: deathly thin hands might reappear and come to collect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You might even say that you're so preoccupied with this
Speaker 1: inevitability that now has a date on it, that you
Speaker 1: could do nothing but think about it. So any sort
Speaker 1: of efforts at writing a haiku or anything else would
Speaker 1: be completely hamstrung. Yeah, you would just have that date
Speaker 1: taking in your mind. You just every and even say
Speaker 1: it's say it's did you like two thousand eight. You
Speaker 1: know that's nice, that's nicely far out. Yeah that that
Speaker 1: even then you would hear you'd hear about two thousand
Speaker 1: and would it would it would just mess you up?
Speaker 1: Or even just to hear do you like thirteenth every
Speaker 1: time it comes around? So I can see the value
Speaker 1: and not hearing the thin man out on this particular case. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and this plays into the idea of why we we
Speaker 1: exercise a kind of version of this in the form
Speaker 1: of what's been called the Ostrich effect um. Also, ignorance
Speaker 1: is bliss because there are just some things we don't
Speaker 1: want to face, and its human nature all of us.
Speaker 1: Do us do this even if you think that, like
Speaker 1: you're the most self aware, self actualized person on the earth,
Speaker 1: there is something that you're avoiding, right, I mean, when
Speaker 1: it comes to our awareness of the world, all of
Speaker 1: us live inside of a carefully maintained and constructed worldview.
Speaker 1: And that worldview is not going to in the same
Speaker 1: way that you'll have a video game world that that
Speaker 1: may incorporate some aspects of reality and some aspects of
Speaker 1: actual physics, but ignore other real life rules. You know,
Speaker 1: like the character jumps off a building and he'll still
Speaker 1: die as one would. But but maybe he can run
Speaker 1: exceedingly fast without you know, running out of steam. That
Speaker 1: kind of think all of us create this worldview, maintain
Speaker 1: this worldview that is going to ignore certain risks, incorporate
Speaker 1: some other risks, totally exaggerate other risks, and uh and
Speaker 1: and underplay still other risks to your everyday life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if that means that you could have some really
Speaker 1: crappy outcomes, say to your health as a result. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a bit. But hey, what if
Speaker 1: what if the Finnman could give you that date. I'm
Speaker 1: we've played with that idea of just you know, this
Speaker 1: apparition showing up. But turns out that researchers, scientists have
Speaker 1: actually come up with an idea that is a kind
Speaker 1: of death test. Yeah. Yeah, in this case that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a medieval embodiment of death that would be
Speaker 1: showing up and and offering you the information. It might
Speaker 1: be a little contraction that you wear on your wrist.
Speaker 1: Physicist at the United Kingdoms Lancaster University developed this test,
Speaker 1: which uses painless lasers to analyze endothelial cells. Uh. These
Speaker 1: are the cells that lying blood vessels under the skin
Speaker 1: and are a possible health indicator. So the basically this
Speaker 1: laser analysis would look at the state of these cells
Speaker 1: and would be able to extrapolate what your general health
Speaker 1: is right now and how much time you have. Now.
Speaker 1: This is not a watch you can pick up that
Speaker 1: your local store. This technology is not ready to roll out,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of a road sign um on the
Speaker 1: highway to a possible future in which we see more
Speaker 1: and more of wearable technology, implanted technology which gives us
Speaker 1: some measure of real time information about the state of
Speaker 1: our health. Yeah, here's another example of it, and this
Speaker 1: comes from the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Finland, and
Speaker 1: they would look at the level of a particular biomar
Speaker 1: biomarker which the biomarker could indicate a patient's risk of
Speaker 1: disease or a likely response to treatment. So, for example,
Speaker 1: cholesterol levels are measured to assess the risk of heart disease,
Speaker 1: right that could be a biomarker. So what they did
Speaker 1: is they took blood samples from over seventeen thousand generally
Speaker 1: healthy people, they screen screen them for more than a
Speaker 1: hundred different biomarkers, and then those people were monitored over
Speaker 1: a five year period. So in that time, six hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty four people died of a range of illnesses
Speaker 1: and diseases and put in cancer in cardiovascular disease, and
Speaker 1: the scientists had discovered that those people all had similar
Speaker 1: levels of for biomarkers. So that's where it really becomes
Speaker 1: much more laser focused in terms of what are we
Speaker 1: looking for here and what can predict death in the
Speaker 1: next five years. And that research that they were doing
Speaker 1: that was actually just another subset of research that had
Speaker 1: been ongoing by Estonian researchers. They initially made this link
Speaker 1: with it about I think ten thousand people, but they
Speaker 1: were so skeptical about the results that they went ahead
Speaker 1: and said to the folks of her at the Molecular
Speaker 1: Medicine in Finland, hey, do you want to, you know,
Speaker 1: try this out and see if you get similar results.
Speaker 1: Well they got identical findings, which points to this idea
Speaker 1: that we are getting closer and closer to this idea
Speaker 1: of hey, can you check out my biomarkers and let
Speaker 1: me know what's going to go on in the next
Speaker 1: five years. I like the idea of having even almost
Speaker 1: like I can imagine a future we have all your
Speaker 1: wearable computers that are going on your implants, your little
Speaker 1: handheld device, your little holographic displays that are letting you
Speaker 1: and others know about various stats in your life. And
Speaker 1: I can imagine every morning you call up that sort
Speaker 1: of holographic death embodiment and you just sort of check
Speaker 1: in with death and find out what the forecast is,
Speaker 1: or you think that's how they're going to market it.
Speaker 1: You know what, death watch, Death doesn't have to You
Speaker 1: can choose which form death takes. Death can take out
Speaker 1: like a classic medieval mode. I think that's what I'd
Speaker 1: go for. But death can be uh, you know, an
Speaker 1: attractive man or woman. Death can death avatar petty boop, Yeah,
Speaker 1: hello kitty. I mean, you name it. But but then
Speaker 1: I wonder too. In the same way that you know what,
Speaker 1: if you're like me, you're always realizing for the first
Speaker 1: time that there's something on your phone that is making
Speaker 1: a little pop up like you didn't know that you're
Speaker 1: that this news app isn't is somehow turned itself on
Speaker 1: so that it needs to inform you when there's a
Speaker 1: news update, and then you have to go and turn
Speaker 1: it off in your settings. We end up in that
Speaker 1: scenario with this where you realize, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear from death every day. I don't want
Speaker 1: my normal check up. I would rather just live in
Speaker 1: ignorance of this. I'm going to turn this off, even
Speaker 1: though all the technology here is at my fingertips. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could be like, hey, Siri, what's what's
Speaker 1: my death watching today? Hold on a second while I
Speaker 1: check your bio markers. You know, it's like you could
Speaker 1: you could do that constantly and just drive yourself nuts,
Speaker 1: or you could just be like I, like you said,
Speaker 1: I am just going to toss this uh into the
Speaker 1: trash and not think about it because I don't want
Speaker 1: to know. So this is one of those cases where
Speaker 1: knowledge maybe isn't power or perceived power. Well, knowledge can
Speaker 1: be power in the long run, right, but not knowledge
Speaker 1: in the short run. Like if you tell me I'm
Speaker 1: going to die in five years, uh, that conceivably could
Speaker 1: make the next five years, you know, a little more streamlined,
Speaker 1: but it's going to really crush me right now. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear it, right, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, this is basically like
Speaker 1: knowledge in the short term. In the long term in
Speaker 1: whether or not it just sucks, and nothing could probably
Speaker 1: suck more than hearing hey, guess what you have an STD? Right? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I bring this up because it's related. And we've
Speaker 1: just finished talking a lot about about syphilis. So you know,
Speaker 1: we went into some of the you know, the the
Speaker 1: the shame that is often associated with STDs uh, in
Speaker 1: addition to the varying treatment you know available. But say that,
Speaker 1: say someone wills to tell you, hey, you have syphilis today,
Speaker 1: that is easily treated. The sooner, you know, the better.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, they're still going to come
Speaker 1: with a lot of shame and then social anxiety over oh,
Speaker 1: well I have syphilis. How did I get cipils? Soon?
Speaker 1: Did I get syphilis too? And am I a bad
Speaker 1: person in some sense because I have it? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: but you know, some people might be information averse to that.
Speaker 1: And some people, I mean a group of eighteen to
Speaker 1: twenty four year olds, because this is as we know
Speaker 1: from our research, this is the group that tends to
Speaker 1: get STDs most. And in fact, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the HBO Girls show in which the character Hannah gets
Speaker 1: HPV and so it turns out to be the sort
Speaker 1: of more like a moment where she realizes that all
Speaker 1: adventurous women will have an STD eventually, right, so she
Speaker 1: kind of weaves that into her um her worldview. But
Speaker 1: not everybody does that. Not everybody is like, I need
Speaker 1: a plot point from my show. I'm gonna go see
Speaker 1: the doctor and see if I have an STD. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would rather not know that information.
Speaker 1: And again that's sort of the z and sort of
Speaker 1: the short term thinking when over the long term term thinking.
Speaker 1: Is that basic human failure to value the long term
Speaker 1: view over the short term of view. Yeah, and nothing
Speaker 1: bears this out more than this this neat little study
Speaker 1: about STDs and information aversion. And the study was conducted
Speaker 1: by Josh Tassof, who was an economist at Claremont Graduate University,
Speaker 1: and Anonda Ganghoulian, Associate professor of accounting at Claremont McKenna College. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's basically the same scenario we talked about at
Speaker 1: the top of the screen. You imagine a thin man
Speaker 1: in a row comes up and says, hey, I have
Speaker 1: a file here, except he asked you would you like
Speaker 1: to know if you have her pies? I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the basic scenario there. And indeed, if this individual
Speaker 1: were to come to me and asked me, I feel
Speaker 1: like I would say, yes, let me know, tell tell
Speaker 1: me if I have her pies. That would be some
Speaker 1: good information for me to have at this point. All right,
Speaker 1: So they kind of did that, except for the lap
Speaker 1: coats on right. Yes, and it's and it's framed in
Speaker 1: an actual study. Yeah, And they asked university students whether
Speaker 1: or not they wanted to get tested for her pie
Speaker 1: simplex virus. Now, they talked to them about the two
Speaker 1: different types, the first type being the kind that just
Speaker 1: caused cold stores. I'm sure everybody's familiar with HSV one, yes,
Speaker 1: the second type being the one that causes genital stores.
Speaker 1: Now here's the rup. They sent them along with little
Speaker 1: pictures to identify the genital stores and the cold sores,
Speaker 1: so that they had a very clear under standing of
Speaker 1: the differences. And moreover, I feel like those photos probably
Speaker 1: insided in them a bit of fear. Right, these are
Speaker 1: your these are these are not your This is not
Speaker 1: your herpes medication. Uh, you know, person walking in a field,
Speaker 1: television spot. This is the the full on web md slash,
Speaker 1: Google image search herpes dive. Yeah, that you did not
Speaker 1: really want to see, but you saw. So they were
Speaker 1: then told that a blood test could find out if
Speaker 1: they had either form of a virus and then test
Speaker 1: off and ganglie. They designed the experiment to eliminate any reason,
Speaker 1: sort of extraneous reason that someone might decline to get information.
Speaker 1: So they wanted to make sure that they weren't declining
Speaker 1: the tests because they didn't want to have their blood drawn. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that they said to him, Hey,
Speaker 1: we can have all the students have their blood drawn,
Speaker 1: but if a student chooses not to get tested, that
Speaker 1: they would draw just tendency seeds of their blood and
Speaker 1: in front of them, they would pour it down the sink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's it's not the fear of the needle that's
Speaker 1: playing into this, because you're gonna get stuck with the needle.
Speaker 1: They're gonna draw your blood. But if you say no,
Speaker 1: then all right, we'll just pour your blood down the sink. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The second thing is they made sure to let them
Speaker 1: know that all of this was confidential, so that they
Speaker 1: weren't worried about the results being shared with anyone else. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be announced to the whole group
Speaker 1: it's not going to be published in the study. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a fear of the needle. It's
Speaker 1: not a fear of public shaming. It's just the fear
Speaker 1: of the information that they are wrangling with. And to
Speaker 1: avoid the information, to opt out of the information is
Speaker 1: a ten dollar feet Yeah, that's the third thing. They
Speaker 1: were like, if you don't want to get tested, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to actually pay us ten dollars not
Speaker 1: to test you. Yeah. So it's like the man in
Speaker 1: the robe come up and say, hey, if you give
Speaker 1: me ten dollars, I'll not tell you if you have
Speaker 1: her pies. Again. They they structured it this way because
Speaker 1: they wanted to make sure that it was very clear
Speaker 1: that the people were burying their heads in the sand
Speaker 1: here like an ostrich or. That's always the idea, right,
Speaker 1: And there's a price tag on ignorance here. They have
Speaker 1: to actually purchase the ignorance. It's not the passive ignorance
Speaker 1: of I don't want to know what that credit card
Speaker 1: bill is. I'm just going to ignore that envelope it.
Speaker 1: So it's not the I'm just I don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with that that that the email from my mother
Speaker 1: in law. So I'm just gonna let it set there
Speaker 1: on open. No, you have to actively pay ten dollars
Speaker 1: to avoid the results of the herpes test. I pay
Speaker 1: ten dollars to avoid my mother in laws, you know. Alright.
Speaker 1: So while only five percent avoided the hs V one test,
Speaker 1: three times as many avoided testing for the nastier form
Speaker 1: of herbie. So here here we have very direct conclusions
Speaker 1: that people were saying three times as much, I don't
Speaker 1: want this, I don't want to know, even though this
Speaker 1: could help them in terms of their healthcare down the
Speaker 1: road the long term, right, yeah, and even I mean
Speaker 1: the kind of the immediate short term, like the not
Speaker 1: very long term, like your immediate um, you know, sexual activity.
Speaker 1: Your immediate health is involved in all this. So it's
Speaker 1: it's it's really troubling to to to read the findings
Speaker 1: in this study. Yeah. And when they, when you actually
Speaker 1: asked them, said well, why didn't you why didn't you
Speaker 1: want this? Why did you opt out of this information?
Speaker 1: Why did you pay to remain ignorant? Mostly they would say, well,
Speaker 1: I just I didn't need that added anxiety. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to worry with it with the added stress of
Speaker 1: knowing potentially knowing that I have this this illness, that
Speaker 1: I have her piece. Yeah, I feel like it's kind
Speaker 1: of like that that people are like, I already have
Speaker 1: a ton of existential dread and anxiety. I don't want
Speaker 1: this on top of it. And it might seem to
Speaker 1: to some people like I can't believe they made this decision.
Speaker 1: But again, think in your own life, maybe it wasn't
Speaker 1: an STD test or something else that you were avoiding
Speaker 1: because you felt like it was just the weight of
Speaker 1: that one more piece of knowledge might be the breaking point. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's comfort in and we keep saying ignorance,
Speaker 1: but I want to deframe it a little a little
Speaker 1: more compassionately. There's there's comfort in ambiguity. It's it's almost
Speaker 1: the comfort of a quantum state. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: open that box, you then the cat is simultaneously dead
Speaker 1: and alive, and you can cling to the possibility that
Speaker 1: Shoulder's cat is alive, and so by not by opting out,
Speaker 1: they're keeping their um, their state of herpes infection in
Speaker 1: a quantum state. And you can take comfort in that
Speaker 1: quantum state because if I don't know for sure, then
Speaker 1: there's still this chance, then I'm good and I feel
Speaker 1: like every I love the way you describe. I think
Speaker 1: that's perfect, that quantum state. Everybody has experienced that, whether
Speaker 1: or not it's a test that you just took in school, right,
Speaker 1: and you're you're worried that you didn't pass it or
Speaker 1: you didn't do as well as you think you might
Speaker 1: have been able to. Just being in that uncertain state
Speaker 1: means the possibility of getting a really good grade still exists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another health related option that comes to mind, and I
Speaker 1: think of it because I think I have a dental
Speaker 1: checkup coming up. Sometimes month is like right now, I
Speaker 1: either have a cavity or I don't. You know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have any you know, discomfort or anything. But
Speaker 1: you know, how did you go in and then you
Speaker 1: if you just wait and you're waiting, you're waiting, and
Speaker 1: then they'll tell you, oh, you have a cavity, and
Speaker 1: then you're you're crushed or at least you know, I
Speaker 1: feel crushed and then they have to to deal with it.
Speaker 1: But you either have a cavity or you don't. But
Speaker 1: your fear, you're fearing the absolute judgment that comes down
Speaker 1: and knowing for sure, do you know, I just went
Speaker 1: last week and I have a cavity. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: I'm sattled with the knowledge that I'll be in the chair.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we're going to talk about why this
Speaker 1: sort of scare tactic strategy doesn't work in what we
Speaker 1: can do. All Right, We're back, and I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: my tooth is starting to hurt now. All this time,
Speaker 1: the psychic dread is boring into you. It's it is.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to distract myself from that and say, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: if you were a public health worker and you were
Speaker 1: gonna you have disinformation now that that this sort of
Speaker 1: information over exists in people because it's tapping into their
Speaker 1: existential dread, um, how would you then go about trying
Speaker 1: to get people to access information that might help them
Speaker 1: in the long run. Yeah, that's a big question, and
Speaker 1: that's certainly the question that the study from Claremont Graduate University,
Speaker 1: uh dived into a bit at the at the end
Speaker 1: of the study, because, yeah, doctors don't want that scenario
Speaker 1: where the patient finally shows up after a twenty year
Speaker 1: absence and the problems that they've encountered over time have
Speaker 1: have escalated, you know, because almost always the case, early
Speaker 1: detection is key to to effective treatment. Indeed, so what
Speaker 1: do you do well? One of the things is, and
Speaker 1: maybe this seems a little bit disingenuous, but one of
Speaker 1: the things that that you could do is to try
Speaker 1: to sort of maybe played down the idea of the
Speaker 1: test itself and the results and the fact that you
Speaker 1: might have, you know, in this in this scenario, like
Speaker 1: I just terrible raw case of genal source, right, instead
Speaker 1: of showing everybody these pictures, maybe you just talk more
Speaker 1: about the long term management of this kind of thing
Speaker 1: and and the benefits that you can have in finding
Speaker 1: out the positives and other words, Yeah, and and sometimes
Speaker 1: it goes beyond just like the hardcore like scaring people
Speaker 1: with facts. I mean, the facts alone can be scary,
Speaker 1: and you want people to know, you want people to
Speaker 1: to to have the facts at their disposal. But but
Speaker 1: you also look back at say the old syphilis posters
Speaker 1: that we're talking about in previous episodes, the ones that
Speaker 1: would which would would show women in sort of a
Speaker 1: monstrous light was oftentimes literally with ghastly skull like faces
Speaker 1: and pulling off of demonic mass that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and so like that's sending the message, uh that that hey,
Speaker 1: if you have one of these, then it's probably because
Speaker 1: you've been sleeping with monsters and you yourself are a monster,
Speaker 1: And that's a scary message to send as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a kind of slut shaming, like these old posters.
Speaker 1: So what if you updated him with like the Hannah
Speaker 1: Horvath version from Girls, We're like, hey, every adventurous woman
Speaker 1: has an STD You see her like, you know, taking
Speaker 1: off on a plane. Yeah, I mean, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of like a kid. But you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: there's there's a way to reframe it. Yeah, yeah, framing
Speaker 1: it in a sense like this is just the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that happens. Let's treat it, because treatment makes
Speaker 1: things easier. I mean, it's we're boiling it down here.
Speaker 1: But that's that's basically the strategy that they put forward
Speaker 1: in this study. Now, the other recommendation they make comes
Speaker 1: down to just frequency of tests. Now, the test in
Speaker 1: this study, you know, it's a big deal. You're going
Speaker 1: into this, you're signed up for this study, You're you're
Speaker 1: you're filling out the paperwork, they're you're being shown information
Speaker 1: about herpes, and it's all leading up to this test
Speaker 1: and whether they're going to tell you if you have
Speaker 1: have herpes or not they're actually going to test there,
Speaker 1: or if it's going to be poured down the sink
Speaker 1: um in a way that kind of this big ritual
Speaker 1: ends up playing out before you. The argument here is
Speaker 1: what you do is you make tests like this far
Speaker 1: more routine, and the more routine the test becomes, the
Speaker 1: less of a big deal it is. It's the version
Speaker 1: of it I keep thinking of is alright, imagine you
Speaker 1: know you're looking you check into your bed every night
Speaker 1: to see if there's a monster there, all right, and
Speaker 1: there's never a monster there, and you can feel kind
Speaker 1: of comforting and the fact that based on on on
Speaker 1: on regular studies of the environment, there's not a monster
Speaker 1: under your bed. But if you only check for a
Speaker 1: monster once a year, then that check becomes this this
Speaker 1: more powerful um experience. If you only go to the
Speaker 1: doctor once a year, then you have this just added
Speaker 1: psychic weight associated with the ordeal. Yeah, and now we
Speaker 1: should say that that some of the problem here is
Speaker 1: access to healthcare, and in an obstacle would certainly be
Speaker 1: that if someone did not have a healthcare plan in place,
Speaker 1: or one that was um affordable to them, then it
Speaker 1: would be a little bit more difficult to get that
Speaker 1: checked out all the time. Yeah, because I mean there's
Speaker 1: certainly people with ready easy access to healthcare who avoid
Speaker 1: going to the doctor out of information a version then there,
Speaker 1: but then there are going to be people who have
Speaker 1: the added incentive to avoid going to the doctor because
Speaker 1: of the financial obligation involved there. So you see, I
Speaker 1: think you see a varying scale of the the economic
Speaker 1: and the access um issue influencing and strengthening the information
Speaker 1: aversion or in other cases to even replacing the information
Speaker 1: of version. Maybe it becomes a situation I would love
Speaker 1: to know, but I have zero access to what I need, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is really heartbreaking because those results can can be terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you cannot catch things at certain stages.
Speaker 1: So all right, Um, there's there is a good I
Speaker 1: think based stock of information about how that would affect us,
Speaker 1: particularly our health right and how we make decisions. But um,
Speaker 1: there's an idea that we also carry around with us
Speaker 1: in bigger global themes information version, and there is a
Speaker 1: mathematical physicist and professor of mathematics at the University of
Speaker 1: California Riverside, who goes by the name of A John
Speaker 1: Carlos Bias, and he has a great uh blog post
Speaker 1: about this, talking about how global warming is part and
Speaker 1: parcel of our aversion to say, oh this thing, this
Speaker 1: this blue green rock that we're all sitting on and
Speaker 1: we love and sustains us. Hey, we might be messing
Speaker 1: it up, and how people are just kind of like, nah,
Speaker 1: really really, I don't I don't think so indeed, because
Speaker 1: no one wants to hear, Hey, you've kind of messed
Speaker 1: up your planet here. I mean, it's it's it's bad news.
Speaker 1: It's news that comes with a certain amount of responsive
Speaker 1: billy uh at the individual level, as it certainly as
Speaker 1: well as the corporate and state level. UM. So to
Speaker 1: whatever extent you can just ignore the information or excuse
Speaker 1: it away or blame it on on this set or
Speaker 1: the other, than than all the better for your immediate
Speaker 1: short term um mental health. Yeah. And he points directly
Speaker 1: to information aversion in this sense, and he says, quote,
Speaker 1: let's try extrapolating from this. Global warming is pretty scary.
Speaker 1: What would people do to avoid learning more about it.
Speaker 1: You can't exactly pay scientists to not tell you about it,
Speaker 1: but you can do lots of other things. Not listen
Speaker 1: to them, pay people to contradict what they're saying, and
Speaker 1: so on, and guess what people do all these things.
Speaker 1: So don't expect that scaring people about global warming will
Speaker 1: make them take action. If a problem seems scary and
Speaker 1: hard to solve, many people will just avoid thinking about it,
Speaker 1: and you just readjust your worldview to where you don't
Speaker 1: have to engage with that kind of thinking. Uh. There
Speaker 1: have been recent papers that have come up talk talking
Speaker 1: about the way we use our social media, especially Facebook,
Speaker 1: how we inevitably end up just creating the bubble of comfort, uh,
Speaker 1: regarding what shows up in our news feed and what
Speaker 1: we end up up seeing. So the the troubling information,
Speaker 1: the stuff we don't want to hear, that just gets
Speaker 1: pushed out into the into the dark, and the only
Speaker 1: thing in the light of our little campfire is the
Speaker 1: stuff that is reinforcing our worldview and comforting our worldview.
Speaker 1: Which was contrary to what people thought would happen in
Speaker 1: social media. They thought that people would have more access
Speaker 1: to different opinions and information, but the opposite seems to
Speaker 1: be true in terms of how um information is being
Speaker 1: selected and shared, right, Yeah, I mean, we have access
Speaker 1: to more information than ever before, and at times it
Speaker 1: feels like we're dumber than ever before on the Internet.
Speaker 1: But I think again, it harkens back to that idea
Speaker 1: of if it's if it's terrible news is nobody's like, Ah,
Speaker 1: I am an adverse information monger. Tell me, tell me
Speaker 1: all the things I don't really want to hear. But
Speaker 1: I really know, I mean, who, I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: some people out there who do that, but most people
Speaker 1: tend to shy away from it. But I guess the thing, hopefully,
Speaker 1: maybe the thing here is that enough people will want
Speaker 1: to hear about the other side being wrong because that
Speaker 1: strengthen their worldview and and their agenda, that maybe it
Speaker 1: will keep those things bubbling up to the surface. But
Speaker 1: then we call it into this whole idea of cognitive bias,
Speaker 1: because I was thinking, you know, there's somewhat of a
Speaker 1: byproduct too of cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance and how
Speaker 1: we take all these pieces of information and try to
Speaker 1: fit them into our world views. Um, But I do
Speaker 1: like what bias is saying about the global warming issue,
Speaker 1: in which John Muellum has said too in his book
Speaker 1: Wild Ones, which is keep pushing the idea of the
Speaker 1: polar bear, you know, slipping on ice that is melting
Speaker 1: away underneath it, and it becomes less effective and people
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to see it because it feels like
Speaker 1: there is there's no control over the situation. Um, So
Speaker 1: what do you do? You try to give people information
Speaker 1: and a sense of control over what could be done.
Speaker 1: And to this end, we're actually going to be looking
Speaker 1: into the topic of rewilding, um. So look for that
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks. But we hope to explore
Speaker 1: the issue of global warming through more positive effects of
Speaker 1: what we actually can do. So I'm gonna return once
Speaker 1: more though, to be the idea of of the Reaper.
Speaker 1: What what if we did, in a sense, check in
Speaker 1: with death every day to the point where it became normal.
Speaker 1: What if? What if? What if death wasn't this thing
Speaker 1: that's just lurking mysterious at some unknown point in the future,
Speaker 1: but we actually just lived our lives with a better
Speaker 1: long term understanding of how our life was going to work. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who would say that we need a better relationship with death.
Speaker 1: You know, not that we need to sit around the
Speaker 1: campfire with with the grim Reaper all the time and
Speaker 1: have a beer, but you know that we do need
Speaker 1: to look at it as a natural part of being
Speaker 1: as opposed to something that needs to be vanquished. In
Speaker 1: this NPR piece, they were talking about a community which
Speaker 1: is actually trying to talk about death with their loved
Speaker 1: ones in a real and meaningful way so that the
Speaker 1: end of care um end of life care could be
Speaker 1: put into place and could be most effective and compassionate
Speaker 1: for people who have advanced states of disease or just
Speaker 1: age and what to do with their stuff, and all
Speaker 1: of these things that you know are just become like
Speaker 1: this mental um clap trap of our existence that we
Speaker 1: just put up in our mental addicts and leave up
Speaker 1: there to just get dust all over. Yeah, all that
Speaker 1: stuff in the health on the second floor bedroom that
Speaker 1: we think we're going to be able to use our
Speaker 1: entire life, because that's a whole another area. It's just
Speaker 1: how your living spaces arranged. We tend to not think
Speaker 1: about the long terms of well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: reach the point where I can't climb stairs anymore now,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to roll with that. Yeah. So we
Speaker 1: talked about this a little bit earlier, like we so
Speaker 1: great to have an experiment with a community, hundred year
Speaker 1: long experiment to to just infuse that culture of that
Speaker 1: community with long term instead of short term, because very
Speaker 1: much of our existence, at least our Western existence, is
Speaker 1: concerned with the short term. You know. We we know
Speaker 1: about the long term, but we're really worried more about
Speaker 1: like what's going to happen tomorrow or in the next year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it does make me wonder to what extent we
Speaker 1: can mess with that, like how much of that is culture,
Speaker 1: how much of that is based in our conscious understanding
Speaker 1: the world, and how much of that is just the
Speaker 1: organism itself, Because ultimately, the genetic mission is just to
Speaker 1: reach the age of which you can reproduce, reproduce, spread
Speaker 1: the genes, and then get busy dying because that's what
Speaker 1: the body starts doing at that point. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what our bodies are doing right now. Our bodies are dying.
Speaker 1: That death is a thing that happens to the body
Speaker 1: after it has fulfilled as genetic mission. Well, that all
Speaker 1: seems pretty clear cut, and tell you put on top
Speaker 1: of that configuration consciousness, right, the hard problem, Why are
Speaker 1: we here? Why are we doing this anyway? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: then that's then we're in the same human mess. We're
Speaker 1: always in this, uh, this tug of war between between
Speaker 1: consciousness and the body, between uh the realities of how
Speaker 1: we uh ascended to this point and uh and what
Speaker 1: we want out of it. Indeed, all right, So there
Speaker 1: you have it. So, hey, you want to check out
Speaker 1: more episodes of the podcast, you want to read our
Speaker 1: blog posts, you want to watch videos, than head on
Speaker 1: over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That
Speaker 1: is the mothership. That's where you will find everything, including
Speaker 1: links out to our greatest social media accounts into our
Speaker 1: YouTube account, which is mind Stuff Show. And now that
Speaker 1: you've heard about information and version are does it affect
Speaker 1: your life? Do you now look back and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I see that it permeates my own existence. Let us
Speaker 1: know about that, And you can do that by sending
Speaker 1: us an email at blow the Mind at house to
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