Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. And my name is Robert Gooley Lamb.
Speaker 1: I forgot we were doing the voices. Let's see, I
Speaker 1: am what's my name? Also, I'm Corrosive Joseph McCormick exactly.
Speaker 1: And we're here with our excellent audio producer Death Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: It is Halloween. It is Halloween itself, I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so we are presenting Anthology of Horror Volume three.
Speaker 1: So this will be a sequel to our two previous
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror episodes, where we look at old episodes
Speaker 1: of horror anthology TV shows and figure out how they
Speaker 1: might often be deeper than they seem. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and also sometimes they're not very deep, but we we
Speaker 1: have a knack for finding some hidden depth in horror
Speaker 1: and science fiction. Now, in the last episode, which should
Speaker 1: have been just a couple of days ago, we talk
Speaker 1: about an episode of the Twilight Zone concerning how you
Speaker 1: can know whether or not you are in a dream
Speaker 1: or whether you are someone else's dream. And we talked
Speaker 1: about an episode of the old horror anthology Monsters that
Speaker 1: featured a story about ghoules called down Below and related
Speaker 1: to that to cities dealing with rat problems. Uh So,
Speaker 1: today I think we were going to start by looking
Speaker 1: at an episode of The Outer Limits, right, yes, the
Speaker 1: sixth Finger. This is the fifth episode of the first
Speaker 1: season of ABC sci fi anthology series legendary sci fi
Speaker 1: anthology series The Outer Limits, which originally ran from nine
Speaker 1: through nine. It was created by Leslie Stevens, and unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of these shows, he didn't have a true
Speaker 1: horror or sci fi host. It didn't have like a
Speaker 1: puppet or an actor that spoke to you and introduced everything.
Speaker 1: But it did have the control voice, which in and
Speaker 1: of itself is pretty classic. Explain the control voice. So
Speaker 1: we will control the vertical, we will control the horizontal.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like this, this disembodied voice that is
Speaker 1: taking over your television set and presenting you with some
Speaker 1: sort of cosmic transmission from the Outer Limits. I see,
Speaker 1: Is this the one that's there's no need to adjust
Speaker 1: your television exactly? Okay? I think I for some reason
Speaker 1: confused that I thought that was like an alternate opening
Speaker 1: to the Twilight Zone. Uh no, no, no, that Twilight
Speaker 1: zone is always like Rod Serling being like you were
Speaker 1: entering another dimension, yeah, etcetera. Um, Yeah, The Outer Limits
Speaker 1: was definitely more in the in the science fiction domain.
Speaker 1: It was in many ways kind of like the sci
Speaker 1: fi side of the coin to the Twilight Zones horror.
Speaker 1: But it also got a little spooky, a little scary
Speaker 1: at times. Uh, and certainly falls under the domain of
Speaker 1: our our mission statement here. Now wait a second, sorry,
Speaker 1: I just realized that the Outer Limits introduction you're doing here,
Speaker 1: that this might be the first sort of hint or
Speaker 1: attempt at doing a kind of found footage thing. Right,
Speaker 1: it's saying like you are receiving a TRANSMISSI shin. It's
Speaker 1: like implying that you're part of the narrative because your
Speaker 1: TV set is is something's being beamed from another place
Speaker 1: to Yeah, to a limited extent. I mean, once the
Speaker 1: episode starts, it's pretty clear you're still safely in television land,
Speaker 1: but you're also in in a place that still feels
Speaker 1: a little less safe. But this ain't I Love Lucy exactly.
Speaker 1: So The Outer Limits went two seasons and produced forty
Speaker 1: nine episodes. Again, it's just always amazing just how robust
Speaker 1: these some of these older seasons television were not all
Speaker 1: of the episodes are classics, but some stand out amid
Speaker 1: the all time greatest achievements in science fiction television even
Speaker 1: today in this sort of golden age of television and
Speaker 1: television options. Some of the most famous episodes include, uh,
Speaker 1: for instance, Demon with a Glass Hand, which was scripted
Speaker 1: by Harlan Ellison. But The Sixth Finger is also rather iconic.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the episodes, it features some alien
Speaker 1: makeup effects that that are pretty astounding. A lot of
Speaker 1: the alien designs on the Outer Limits uh kind of
Speaker 1: you know, leaned into old school ideas of what an
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial might look like. You know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of oversized heads and long ears and whatnot, like the
Speaker 1: brain mutant from the Silent Earth. Yeah. Yeah, so some
Speaker 1: of them are a little bit dated, but but they
Speaker 1: were still pulled off exceptionally well, shot in black and
Speaker 1: white and and and you know, sometimes with an almost
Speaker 1: avant garde kind of style. That being said, there are
Speaker 1: some effects that they pulled off on that show that
Speaker 1: stand up I think really well today. Um, The Galaxy Being,
Speaker 1: I think is an exception where we had like this
Speaker 1: kind of sharp contrast of black and white where it
Speaker 1: seems to be just radiating on the screen. But The
Speaker 1: six Finger was directed by James Goldstone, who also directed
Speaker 1: the pilot for a little show called Star Trek Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's before Kirk is the Captain, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was written by Ellis St. Joseph, who did
Speaker 1: a lot of TV work in his career, and it
Speaker 1: also started British American actor David McCallum, who starred opposite
Speaker 1: Robert Vaughan in The Man from Uncle. So McCollum stars
Speaker 1: in this episode as the character Griffiths, a Welsh miner
Speaker 1: who agrees to let a rogue scientist named Professor Mathers
Speaker 1: experiment on him, which is of course always a solid
Speaker 1: life choice. Mathers played a role, we're told, in the
Speaker 1: development of atomic weaponry, and he wants to aid humanity instead,
Speaker 1: and so he has invented of means of speeding up
Speaker 1: evolutionary development and he wants to try it out on
Speaker 1: a human being. Now I can say, in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties this would actually be not that far fetched
Speaker 1: of a scenario. I mean, I think there were a
Speaker 1: number of scientists who were known at the time to
Speaker 1: have worked on the creation of atomic weaponry who were
Speaker 1: deeply publicly regretful of their work even Oh yeah, absolutely, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean to typified for the most part by the
Speaker 1: heavily quoted a bit from from Oppenheimer now and become death,
Speaker 1: where he himself is of course to quoting Vedic scriptures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because certainly the atomic bomb is this uh, you know,
Speaker 1: continues to loom over us as this uh, the symbol
Speaker 1: of of of of great human achievements that are put
Speaker 1: to work in in the name of like our worst
Speaker 1: impulses as as a species, as a civilization. Totally and
Speaker 1: uh and yes, so the idea of someone involved with
Speaker 1: that wanting to do something that that you know, that
Speaker 1: it saves us, that changes us, that does you know,
Speaker 1: that puts us in a different direction. I think that
Speaker 1: that makes perfect sense. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people would would agree that. You know, this, this period
Speaker 1: of of of nuclear power, you know, is something we
Speaker 1: hope it's it's kind of a bottleneck, right, It's like
Speaker 1: it's a period of extreme danger to the species that
Speaker 1: we hope to move past, we hope to evolve through.
Speaker 1: And and certainly, you know, we tend to think of
Speaker 1: that evolution as more or less biological and more cultural,
Speaker 1: more political. But in a science fiction story, you know,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to go with the more literal interpretation
Speaker 1: of that, Like, human beings need to evolve beyond this
Speaker 1: point of extreme danger. So I'm going to put a
Speaker 1: human being inside of a crazy sci fi contraption and
Speaker 1: see what kind of you know, peaceful being comes out
Speaker 1: the other side. Right as you increase our ability to
Speaker 1: destroy ourselves in one another, it seems like every year
Speaker 1: that goes by, we're just sort of like barely eking.
Speaker 1: You know, we're just making it if we don't use
Speaker 1: that power unless you change us somehow, that it would
Speaker 1: be inconceivable to us to use it right now. To
Speaker 1: be clear, evolution, as we've discussed plenty of times on
Speaker 1: the show, is a process of mutation and natural selection
Speaker 1: that takes place across the vast periods of time due
Speaker 1: to various environmental stressors. Would you agree with that You're
Speaker 1: more Darwin's bulldog on this show than I am. I mean,
Speaker 1: our modern picture of evolution I think has become a
Speaker 1: little bit more nuanced, and that we we learn more
Speaker 1: and more things that uh that affected like epigenetic factors
Speaker 1: possibly and things like that. But yeah, basically, I mean
Speaker 1: the standard model is that there is variation and then
Speaker 1: there is selection by the environment. And yeah, the big thing,
Speaker 1: of course, the way this happens in nature is it
Speaker 1: happens over many generations. The way evolution is often conceived
Speaker 1: of in stories like this is it basically just means
Speaker 1: like changing somebody, like changing an individual's body in their lifetime,
Speaker 1: which would be different from biological evolution that would be
Speaker 1: more like that I don't know, bioengineering of the body. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also I mean the other thing too, is
Speaker 1: this this model in this science fiction story it has
Speaker 1: this it kind of implies that there's an exact map
Speaker 1: of our evolution inside of our bodies, inside of our genes.
Speaker 1: You know. Is if like we're a Pokemon and you
Speaker 1: can look at a chart saying like how it advances
Speaker 1: to its final form if I have my Pokemon reference
Speaker 1: is correct, I don't know my Pokemon all that well.
Speaker 1: But but still yet it implies that there's like a
Speaker 1: certain path that an organism should take and it's all
Speaker 1: written in the genes, as opposed to being this process,
Speaker 1: uh you know, being you know, driven by this process
Speaker 1: of natural selection that depends so heavily upon environment. So
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's a tad silly to think that
Speaker 1: some manner of mad science process could simply speed up
Speaker 1: human evolution. But again they're trying to make a statement here,
Speaker 1: so we'll roll with it. Okay. So as Griffith evolves
Speaker 1: and there there, this is a this is a real
Speaker 1: talky by the way, as far as um you know,
Speaker 1: anthology shows Go and Outer Limits tended to be I
Speaker 1: think a little more cerebral than the many of the
Speaker 1: other anthology and you know shows that would come in
Speaker 1: its wake. There's a lot of discussing what this means
Speaker 1: and discussing, uh, you know, how we might apply it
Speaker 1: to our understanding of the world. And so Griffith's you know,
Speaker 1: he goes through these problems like a I guess, a
Speaker 1: treatment of evolution. Then he comes back out and he's changed,
Speaker 1: and he talks about it, and he goes back in,
Speaker 1: he gets another treatment, he comes back he's even different.
Speaker 1: But basically these are the changes biological and mental that
Speaker 1: take place. Okay, First of all, he gets an extremely
Speaker 1: over developed cortex like a giant alien melon head, which
Speaker 1: again is very impressive makeup effects, but at the same
Speaker 1: time it's kind of a dated look for our idea
Speaker 1: of like a far future being Okay, So just to clarify,
Speaker 1: basically is the idea that this is naturally how humans
Speaker 1: would evolve if we were allowed to just you know,
Speaker 1: keep living for thousands of years. But the scientist has
Speaker 1: figured out a way to get us there down the
Speaker 1: already mapped path ahead of time, right. I think that's
Speaker 1: what the model is here. We just have to sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, take their word for it on the sci
Speaker 1: fi process that's getting it to us. Sure, so huge
Speaker 1: yet great now, as the title implies, one of the
Speaker 1: other major changes is that there is a sixth finger
Speaker 1: on each hand, so a total of twelve digits on
Speaker 1: the hands. Now better to press nuclear launch buttons with
Speaker 1: yeah uh. In addition, long L fears, which you know
Speaker 1: isn't I don't really have a good discussion lined up
Speaker 1: for that, but there are L fears mental powers such
Speaker 1: as telekinesis, vastly enhanced intelligence and ultimately enhanced empathy and understanding,
Speaker 1: And in the original script, he also eventually develops a
Speaker 1: means of photosynthitus and lives on pure light and kind
Speaker 1: of transcends into a being of light. In the show, however,
Speaker 1: he attempts to push himself even further in evolution, but
Speaker 1: his wife betrays him out of love and turns him
Speaker 1: back into his original self, you know, turns back the
Speaker 1: dial on the evolution machine to try and get the
Speaker 1: you know, the man that she loves back in the room,
Speaker 1: but the process ends up killing him. It's just too
Speaker 1: much for him. So it all makes for a great
Speaker 1: mad science tale and one that I think works well thematically.
Speaker 1: Plus McCallum has that kind of like old school Leslie
Speaker 1: Howard Delivery you know which show, which I really love
Speaker 1: because if you're watching a show like The Outer Limits
Speaker 1: of the Twilight Zone, you do have to you find
Speaker 1: a reason to love some of the more you know,
Speaker 1: by today's standards antiquated uh aspects of say acting or
Speaker 1: pacing or even the effects. And Joe, I have a
Speaker 1: picture of of the being here for you and it
Speaker 1: certainly anybody wants to see this. Just look up The
Speaker 1: Outer Limits the Sixth Finger. You can also find it
Speaker 1: on like Hulu or Netflix, streaming pretty much everywhere, but
Speaker 1: you can also find lots of images of this. It's
Speaker 1: very iconic cost him. Okay, so first of all, I
Speaker 1: see the giant melon head and that look that looks
Speaker 1: great because you get so much brain in there. I
Speaker 1: am immediately imagining some problems having to do with birth,
Speaker 1: like the size of the human birth canal, which you
Speaker 1: would have to assume it would also evolve to be
Speaker 1: much bigger to allow a birth of that kind of creature.
Speaker 1: Though I believe it's it's widely thought that we're already
Speaker 1: pretty much it's sort of the limits of what our
Speaker 1: bodies will allow in terms of cranial size, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: the the other thing that comes to mind is our
Speaker 1: discussions in our episode on brain soup and liquefied brains. Uh,
Speaker 1: the actual size of the brain would not be as
Speaker 1: important as the number of neurons within it. So I
Speaker 1: think by our modern understanding, it was kind of it
Speaker 1: was very much in vogue at the time to to see,
Speaker 1: like you know, outside craniums as being a sign of
Speaker 1: super intelligence and your fictional creatures. But I think nowadays
Speaker 1: we realize that that would not be necessary. But I mean,
Speaker 1: like I already mentioned, this island Earth. It shows up
Speaker 1: in a lot of sci fi from the mid century
Speaker 1: that you've got aliens with huge old heads. I guess
Speaker 1: because they're very smart. But also I like how he's
Speaker 1: got extremely defined facial bone structure, Like this guy has
Speaker 1: cheekbones to die for. He does, yes. And then of
Speaker 1: course there are the lf ears, which again we don't
Speaker 1: really have anything to say about them. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what point of ears would really accomplish evolutionarily. Oh man,
Speaker 1: this seems like something that has to have been explored
Speaker 1: in a kind of speculative paper, like somebody who's an
Speaker 1: expert on the morphology of the ears and how they
Speaker 1: help you here, how would you hear differently if you
Speaker 1: had l f ears. I don't know. We should come
Speaker 1: I bet we should come back to that, because there
Speaker 1: is a good answer for it. Uh. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a whole world of of elve and ear structure that
Speaker 1: we could discuss in the future. But what I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is that extra finger. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will get into the the five digit rule invertebrate evolution
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss the possibility of a sixth finger coming
Speaker 1: into play. Than all right, we're back. So we've been
Speaker 1: talking about the classic Outer Limits episode The sixth Finger,
Speaker 1: about a man who speeds up his own evolution within
Speaker 1: his own lifetime, and he gets a gigantic melon head,
Speaker 1: he gets really defined facial bones, beautiful cheekbones, he gets
Speaker 1: elf ears, but he also grows a sixth finger. And so, Robert,
Speaker 1: you looked into what it would mean to grow a
Speaker 1: six finger? Is that kind of thing possible? Why or
Speaker 1: why would not we? Why wouldn't we see that in
Speaker 1: human evolution or primate evolution? Yeah, it's really it's really
Speaker 1: fascinating because, first of all, the five digit rule does
Speaker 1: run pretty deep invertebrate evolution. According to Michael Coates, Associate
Speaker 1: professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago and co editor of Evolution and
Speaker 1: Development fighting for Scientific American, the condition of having no
Speaker 1: more than five fingers and toes probably goes back before
Speaker 1: the evolutionary divergence of amphibians and amniots, birds, mammals, reptiles.
Speaker 1: We were talking three hundred and forty million years ago,
Speaker 1: go back three hundred sixty million years ago, and there's
Speaker 1: evidence of tetrapods with six, seven, eight, digits. Uh, the
Speaker 1: the decrease to five or fewer came about alongside the
Speaker 1: development of sophisticated wrist and ankle joints. So basically, the
Speaker 1: creatures with more digits had simpler skeletons and simpler limb mobility,
Speaker 1: and they were generally, you know, something along the line
Speaker 1: of flippers, because we're talking about creatures of the water here.
Speaker 1: But as these limbs evolved to allow certain organisms to
Speaker 1: stand or to push off with those limbs essentially, or
Speaker 1: you know, as they moved towards being land creatures, we
Speaker 1: see the reduction of digits, and indeed we tend to
Speaker 1: see you know, the further reduct of digits because the
Speaker 1: rule of evolutionary thumb here is that it's easier to
Speaker 1: lose something than it is to gain something. Absolutely. I
Speaker 1: mean you can see that with many tetrapod mammals today.
Speaker 1: For example, look at a dog's paw. I mean, they
Speaker 1: have a sort of vestigial other thumb type thing up
Speaker 1: there on the on the leg, but basically they got
Speaker 1: four toes that go go down on the ground. It's
Speaker 1: the what the do claw? Yeah yeah, up there, or
Speaker 1: I mean even look at the feet of ungulates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, horses are a great place to look because
Speaker 1: we see how far it's reduced now. But you know,
Speaker 1: various prehistoric courses had three or four toes. And when
Speaker 1: animals actually do gain digits, well, uh Coats points out
Speaker 1: that the lack of true six toed or six fingered
Speaker 1: creatures in today's fauna quote highlights some sort of constraint.
Speaker 1: For instance, one of the rare cases we see of
Speaker 1: you know, a creature gaining digits is the marine reptile
Speaker 1: uh Ethosaurus. This is the these sixty years ago. We
Speaker 1: talked about about them on the show before. They essentially
Speaker 1: are dolphin like creatures, they have that same sort of shape,
Speaker 1: but they they are reptiles um and as a result
Speaker 1: of returning to the sea, they eventually developed paddles that
Speaker 1: sometimes had you know, quite a number of digits in there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the atheosaurs, like the marine mammals of today, in
Speaker 1: their evolutionary history, went to land and then went back
Speaker 1: to water, right. Yeah, So, which again lines up nicely
Speaker 1: with this idea of of as long as you're a
Speaker 1: sea creature, you can have multiple digits within that paddle,
Speaker 1: but when you start using that paddle increasingly again over
Speaker 1: you know, generation after generation after generation. If it's used
Speaker 1: to push off, if it's new used even to hold
Speaker 1: up your weight, it becomes increasingly um more beneficial to
Speaker 1: have fewer digits in that at the end of that limb. However,
Speaker 1: we do see creatures like the mole and the panda,
Speaker 1: both of which benefit from remodeled wrist bones that essentially
Speaker 1: serve as a sixth finger, but which are not true fingers.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't seen a picture of this, I
Speaker 1: encourage everyone to look up pictures of panda's paw or
Speaker 1: the the claws of a mole, and you will, you know,
Speaker 1: if you start doing some counting, you'll be like, okay,
Speaker 1: one to three, four, five, and oh, kind of six
Speaker 1: again not a true thumb. But for the panda, for instance,
Speaker 1: it serves as a thumb. It has like the roll
Speaker 1: of a thumb in helping them handle food. The panda,
Speaker 1: of course, is the herbivore of the bare world, and
Speaker 1: and the end it has to eat constantly, and therefore
Speaker 1: it has eventually used the point where it needs a
Speaker 1: little extra thumblike appendage to get the job done. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: for moles, uh, this extra little thumblike appendage. It helps
Speaker 1: them tunnel through the earth, so being almost more like
Speaker 1: a flipper, Yeah, help it swim through the earth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These are, in Coats's words quote, rather baroque solutions to
Speaker 1: the apparently straightforward task of growing an extra finger. So,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're going to think back to our
Speaker 1: outer limits example here, it would be far more likely
Speaker 1: that one would grow some sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: you know, a paddle of a pseudo finger, as opposed
Speaker 1: to growing a full finger, no matter how many keyboards
Speaker 1: you're having to use, no matter you know, how many
Speaker 1: you know, you know, mad science gadgets you're having to
Speaker 1: manipulate with your far future digits. But I want to
Speaker 1: talk about another even more amazing example from real world biology,
Speaker 1: and for this we have to turn to the world
Speaker 1: of the Lemur. As recently reported in Smithsonian, the I
Speaker 1: I Lemur known for its weird looks and its elongated
Speaker 1: middle finger, which it uses to fish grubs out of trees.
Speaker 1: You may have seen this in various documentaries before. It
Speaker 1: looks like a tree goblin and it's I think it
Speaker 1: has unfortunately suffered from like superstitious killings in the past,
Speaker 1: but it has this. It's nocturnal and has this fabulous
Speaker 1: super elongated in some people's eyes and man think it's
Speaker 1: creepy middle finger which it uses. You have to fish
Speaker 1: out a grub and uh and then it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's this highly specialized digit. And once it gets the
Speaker 1: grub out. I was reading that it will also like
Speaker 1: pluck the top of the grub off and like suck
Speaker 1: the inside of the grub out, like it is just
Speaker 1: a highly evolved grub eater. But in addition to this,
Speaker 1: it also boasts an extra tiny thumb or pseudo thumb,
Speaker 1: complete with a fingerprint. This according to Adam Hearthstone Rose,
Speaker 1: Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University,
Speaker 1: It's a pseudo thumb made of bone and cartilage, but
Speaker 1: it can be moved in three directions, much like a
Speaker 1: human thumb. Now you might wonder, why, why why is
Speaker 1: this creature so greedy for crazy digits? It already has
Speaker 1: this super elongated specialized digit. What does it need an
Speaker 1: extra digit for? You know what? I realized the II
Speaker 1: hand reminds me of I just looked it up to
Speaker 1: see it again. It reminds me of the of klaus
Speaker 1: Kinsky's hands in Werner Song's nose fur aw too, he's
Speaker 1: got the long nails and the creepy fingers. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: It does seem like a true creature of the night,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. But yeah, basically it seems to have developed
Speaker 1: this this additional pseudo thumb because the other fingers are
Speaker 1: elongated and specialized. Like essentially it's lost that middle finger
Speaker 1: to specialized usage, and so it has had to develop
Speaker 1: a pseudo thumb to make up for that special specialization.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, you'll you'll sometimes find a six
Speaker 1: finger occurring on a human as a as a birth
Speaker 1: to fact, and in fact, since we're celebrating Halloween, it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that Hannibal Lecter in the books um has
Speaker 1: an extra digit on his left hand like that that occurs,
Speaker 1: but it is not, you know, it's not a naturally
Speaker 1: you know, evolved feature. So you're probably wondering where does
Speaker 1: this leave our six fingered man in the outer limits.
Speaker 1: So Griffith kind of essentially dodges the question when at
Speaker 1: one point a scientists actually asked him about the six finger, like,
Speaker 1: what's what's up with that extra finger? And he just
Speaker 1: kind of starts talking about something else. But but it's implied,
Speaker 1: especially given the prior scene in which he plays a piano,
Speaker 1: that it enables the better manipulation of interface tools like
Speaker 1: the keys of a piano or the keys of a computer, etcetera. Now,
Speaker 1: if again, this is suggesting this would be selected for
Speaker 1: an evolution, that would imply that at some point people
Speaker 1: are like dying or not reproducing as much because they
Speaker 1: can't type as fast. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's where we
Speaker 1: get into some some problems with this this model if
Speaker 1: you look at it too closely. Um. I also had
Speaker 1: to realize as I was typing up notes for this,
Speaker 1: I was hyper conscious of how little I actually use
Speaker 1: my pinky fingers while typing. Now, ultimately I'm probably using
Speaker 1: some sort of weird hybrid of of actual typing with
Speaker 1: a little hunt and peck thrown in there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I use my pinkies all that much,
Speaker 1: if at all, unless I'm doing some sort of weird
Speaker 1: hot key. I definitely is mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's semicolon, you know, for sentences. No, yeah, I wait,
Speaker 1: I've gotta think of it. Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: do it, okay, all right to each Sorry, I'm not bragging.
Speaker 1: I mean no, no, I mean I thought just because
Speaker 1: my pinky fingers are way better than yours, well you
Speaker 1: know they're not. They're not holding me back. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that, Like, you know, when I catch myself typing,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I don't think the pinkies are really
Speaker 1: carrying their weight here. So um, it's kind of silly
Speaker 1: to imagine a scenario in which being able to type
Speaker 1: extra hard and be able to hit like crazier hot
Speaker 1: keys on a keyboard would would have this kind of
Speaker 1: impact on human evolution. At the same time, maybe it's
Speaker 1: for the next level of PC gaming. Yeah, that's but
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it is true that habitual
Speaker 1: tool use has led to the evolved state of the
Speaker 1: modern human hand, including thumb length. So tool use has
Speaker 1: shaped our bodies, it has shaped our hand in the past,
Speaker 1: so it's not ridiculous to say that the future human
Speaker 1: evolution would continue to reshape the human hand. Sure, but
Speaker 1: there you would be contending with the fact that I
Speaker 1: think there's you know, in the environments that we mostly
Speaker 1: live in today, not being able to use a tool
Speaker 1: as well doesn't usually mean that you're going to, you know,
Speaker 1: on average, have fewer children than the people next door.
Speaker 1: That that seems like a thing that would be more
Speaker 1: the case in like a hunter gatherers survival scenario. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And ultimately we have to remember that you were no
Speaker 1: longer subject to purely natural selection at this stage of
Speaker 1: the human experience. You know, it's it's more of an
Speaker 1: unnatural selection. We also have to consider the potential of
Speaker 1: directed evolution that we will, in the future continue to
Speaker 1: figure out ways to manipulate our own genes, which brings
Speaker 1: up the possibility that perhaps our far future selves have
Speaker 1: simply added on an extra finger. Rightly, it's not a
Speaker 1: situation where we evolved when but we realized, hey, having
Speaker 1: two pinkies on each hand would be nice, let's wit
Speaker 1: and then we just we just do it. We just
Speaker 1: check it off on the menu of g manipulation, which
Speaker 1: which reminds me of Less Grossman's The Magicians and the
Speaker 1: sci fi uh TV series that's based on it. There's
Speaker 1: a there's a dark wizard in the show called the Beast,
Speaker 1: and he has an extra finger on each hand because
Speaker 1: in the in The Magicians, casting spells involves a lot
Speaker 1: of like fine manipulation of your digits, like sort of
Speaker 1: like the the use of mood ras and whatnot. Uh So,
Speaker 1: if you had an extra digit on each hand, you'd
Speaker 1: be able to cast improve variations of spells. You'd be
Speaker 1: able to cast spells that a normal individual with five
Speaker 1: digits would be incapable of. Well, that makes me wonder
Speaker 1: who invented those spells then, I mean, I guess they're
Speaker 1: of his own creation. Well, yes, and of course there
Speaker 1: are a lot of inhuman being entities in this world
Speaker 1: as well. He could be going to them for such spells. However, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, discussing this idea of like, you know, growing
Speaker 1: extra fingers to manipulate technology, It's said, as Peter Ward
Speaker 1: pointed out in his Scientific American article The Future of Man,
Speaker 1: how will evolution change humans? We also have to consider,
Speaker 1: you know, not only like computer interfaces like keyboards, but
Speaker 1: more drastic interfaces, some of the sort of futuristic mind
Speaker 1: computer interfaces that we've discussed in the show before. Um.
Speaker 1: He points to a quote from George Dyson in his
Speaker 1: nine book Darwin among the Machines. Quote, everything that human
Speaker 1: beings are doing to make it easier to operate computer
Speaker 1: networks is at the same time, but for different reasons,
Speaker 1: making it easier from computer networks to operate human being
Speaker 1: Darwinian evolution, in one of those paradoxes with which life abounds,
Speaker 1: may be a victim of his own success, unable to
Speaker 1: keep up with non Darwinian processes that it has spawned.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot to that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would say, I mean, this is in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: before you could anticipate a lot of the stuff that's
Speaker 1: going on now with say social media, in the many
Speaker 1: ways that our our technology is influencing us. But just
Speaker 1: one thing I would say here is that this person
Speaker 1: probably lived through the transition from command line computers to
Speaker 1: graphical user interfaces, and so obviously having a graphical user
Speaker 1: interface makes it way easier for people who don't know
Speaker 1: much about how the computer works or understanding directories and
Speaker 1: commands and all that stuff to use it because it's intuitive.
Speaker 1: It's easy. You just look at the thing, you recognize
Speaker 1: that you click on it. All that, but also those
Speaker 1: graphical user interfaces I think led to all of the
Speaker 1: ways that computers are now just completely attention monopolizing devices.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so Ward basically concludes that we'll have to go
Speaker 1: one of three different ways as humans continuitive to evolve. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's these There's the stasis direction, where we mainly just
Speaker 1: stay the same but with minor tweaks, and also a
Speaker 1: kind of merging of races. There's also a speciation in
Speaker 1: which we break off into different species. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and hopefully none of them are are more locks. Because
Speaker 1: ultimately a speciation is the maw that H. G. Wells
Speaker 1: explores in the Time Machine, and then he also talks
Speaker 1: about the board grout, which is symbiosis with machines. I
Speaker 1: find it kind of hard to believe that there could
Speaker 1: be human speciation unless you're talking about space colonization, like
Speaker 1: fully separating human populations from one another so that they
Speaker 1: cannot physically come together at all for you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of hundreds of years. Even if you sent some of
Speaker 1: them below ground to man all the machines and keep
Speaker 1: the surface world running. Well, I guess it would depend
Speaker 1: on whether you could go back and forth between I mean,
Speaker 1: I think as long as humans stay in physical contact
Speaker 1: with each other, I find it hard to believe that
Speaker 1: there will be actual human speciation. But then, yeah, space
Speaker 1: colonization does seem like that creates a kind of like
Speaker 1: a certain hard divide. It is it is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of having a species wind up on an island and
Speaker 1: uh and and coeval. So Ward doesn't specifically chime in
Speaker 1: on the six finger thing, It doesn't refto that, but
Speaker 1: he does dismiss the idea of giant brained, futurized humans
Speaker 1: like we see in the sixth Finger. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: the big brain vision has no real scientific basis. The
Speaker 1: fossil record of skull sizes over the past several thousand
Speaker 1: generations shows that our days of rapid increase in brain
Speaker 1: size are long over. Yeah. In fact, we we already peaked, right,
Speaker 1: We're we're Our average brain sizes in the modern world
Speaker 1: are smaller than they used to be. Yeah. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: this episode of Outer Limits is not just about biological evolution.
Speaker 1: Is about the evolution of of what it means to
Speaker 1: be human. You know, can is there a potential for
Speaker 1: us to change in a more meaningful way? Can we become,
Speaker 1: for instance, more empathetic? Can we become more present as
Speaker 1: a species kinder? Uh? This is the idea that the
Speaker 1: episode is playing with and hoping for and and ultimately,
Speaker 1: like that's where it gets to. At the end with this,
Speaker 1: he the character, while he's still more human, is you know,
Speaker 1: possessed by this this quest for vengeance against the people
Speaker 1: who operate the MO and in which he works. And
Speaker 1: by the end of it, he has evolved beyond these
Speaker 1: feelings of vengeance. Like there's a period in the in
Speaker 1: the episode where he wants to use his crazy uh
Speaker 1: you know, future brain powers to go you know, wreak
Speaker 1: havoc on them, but by the end of it he realizes, no,
Speaker 1: that is not the way. Well, I would say, I
Speaker 1: think it certainly is possible for us to become more empathetic,
Speaker 1: um uh you know, less vengeful and violent and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But I don't think you necessarily
Speaker 1: need biological changes for that to happen. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we've seen massive changes in the levels of like
Speaker 1: violence and vengefulness you see in the average person across
Speaker 1: different societies through time, and the main changes are through
Speaker 1: like culture, like like social norms, how children are educated,
Speaker 1: what's acceptable socially within your friend groups, and the culture. Right,
Speaker 1: so changes in the software as opposed to the hardware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then of course we have to we have to
Speaker 1: consider like the rate which software can change, at the
Speaker 1: rate of which it may evolve. Uh, you know how
Speaker 1: no matter how pleasant uh human civilization's current software, maybe
Speaker 1: how much has to happen to it to make it
Speaker 1: well to to use a naughty word on this show,
Speaker 1: devolve into some lesser state. Well, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that's the danger. I mean, yeah, cultural changes can
Speaker 1: can be undone, maybe as quickly as they can be done,
Speaker 1: or even quicker. By the way, I was reading about
Speaker 1: the original script and the production of this episode of
Speaker 1: The Outer Limits, and according to the Outer Limits companion
Speaker 1: by David J. Scoe, Uh, Dorothy Brown, the ABC sensor
Speaker 1: at the time, had objected to the Darwinism and promotion
Speaker 1: of evolution inherent in the sixth finger so one. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the early deletions from the script was a
Speaker 1: speech on the topic of evolution. Well that's funny, I
Speaker 1: mean again, like to really explore the what's happening to
Speaker 1: the character in the episode is not actually Darwinian evolution.
Speaker 1: But but that's funny. Yeah, I mean, I guess it
Speaker 1: does rely on the idea that there's like a roadmap
Speaker 1: for our species generally, which also is not part of
Speaker 1: Darwinian evolution. So it's not like they're not really hitting
Speaker 1: the viewer over the head with you know, a hardcore
Speaker 1: speech on evolution. But I think just the mere fact
Speaker 1: that they were citing evolution and speaking speaking of evolution um,
Speaker 1: and the works of Darwin as being you know, something
Speaker 1: that we can actually you know, hang our scientific hat
Speaker 1: on um. They were afraid it was going to offend people.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean I I grew up surrounded by
Speaker 1: that kind of opposition and and sensitivity to ideas about evolution.
Speaker 1: But I I don't know, despite that, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: surprised that it made ABC censorship priorities, especially in a
Speaker 1: show like this, which you know, ultimately is you know,
Speaker 1: kind of high minded and stuffy. Well, I guess also
Speaker 1: trading and science fiction, which would have had a you
Speaker 1: know a certain amount of appeal to younger audiences as well.
Speaker 1: But still say, this is a pretty solid episode of
Speaker 1: The Outer Limits. I think it stands up really well today.
Speaker 1: Uh you have to go into it knowing you're not
Speaker 1: going to get an action packed, um you know episode here.
Speaker 1: This is this is a very talky episode, but it's
Speaker 1: it's really solid, well shot, well acted, um worth checking out.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the best anthology sci fi
Speaker 1: and horror episodes are not actually action packed. Uh. They
Speaker 1: often tend to be rather subdued, just dealing with a
Speaker 1: strange idea as discussed by a handful of characters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes you do see this kind of
Speaker 1: unevenness to perceived budget of a show, Like you know
Speaker 1: that some of those anthology episodes maybe they had a
Speaker 1: had a few more bucks to spend on the cast,
Speaker 1: on the locations, and some are essentially kind of bottle
Speaker 1: episodes where there's just like one set or it's it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of a stage piece, but there's you know
Speaker 1: when it when it's really well done, you know, that
Speaker 1: will certainly get you there to serve man, is an
Speaker 1: action packed either is? Yeah, it's just And that's the
Speaker 1: one that we talked about last year. Right, Speaking of Joe,
Speaker 1: what is your selection your final selection for this year's
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror Episodes? Well, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: my favorite all time Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episode, Citizen Kang.
Speaker 1: This is from Simpson's tree House of Horror seven. It
Speaker 1: originally aired October n and I think this is this
Speaker 1: is not only one of my favorite uh Simpson's bits, ever,
Speaker 1: I think it is some of the best political satire
Speaker 1: in American media history. Yeah. This this is just a
Speaker 1: great tree House episode period. I rewatched it the other
Speaker 1: night with the family, and I must have seen it
Speaker 1: a dozen times in the in the past, because, in
Speaker 1: addition to Citizen Kang, it also contains the genesis tub.
Speaker 1: This is where Lise's tooth grows the civil of civilization
Speaker 1: after it gets a little static shock from Bart, which
Speaker 1: is very similar to a tale by George R. Martin
Speaker 1: that was adapted by the ninety nineties revival of The
Speaker 1: Outer Limits more or less along the same time. And
Speaker 1: then this episode also has The Thing and I, which
Speaker 1: is a great more of sort of a straight up
Speaker 1: horror piece, which contains a twist ending that I have
Speaker 1: to say is nearly identical to the twist ending of
Speaker 1: a certain top twenty nineteen horror film. Okay, well, let's
Speaker 1: not say any more than that. I think you know
Speaker 1: the one, right, I know exactly what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to spoil it for anybody else.
Speaker 1: All Right, we need to take a quick commercial break,
Speaker 1: but we will be right back. Okay. So this Simpson's
Speaker 1: Tree House of Horror again. It aired at the end
Speaker 1: of October nineteen and at the time it actually aired,
Speaker 1: the United States was right in the final days of
Speaker 1: a presidential election that was pitting incumbent Democratic President Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton against Republican Senator Bob Dole from Kansas. And in
Speaker 1: this Tree House of Horror segment, alien invaders Kang and Kodos,
Speaker 1: who are from a certain ringed planet who they prefer
Speaker 1: not to mention um. They plot to take of the
Speaker 1: world by body snatching both Clinton and Dole and taking
Speaker 1: their places in the election as lookalikes, and the idea
Speaker 1: is stated pretty directly by Kang. In the Guys of
Speaker 1: Bob Dole, a reporter asks the Kang Dole Senator Dole,
Speaker 1: why should people vote for you instead of President Clinton?
Speaker 1: And Kang Dole responds, it makes no difference which one
Speaker 1: of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed.
Speaker 1: Doomed replacing both. That's a good idea, right, Yeah, then
Speaker 1: there's no risk, right either way, they're gonna win. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in this uh, in this little plot, Homer becomes
Speaker 1: aware of the alien takeover plot because he happened to
Speaker 1: be on the alien ship when Clinton and Dole were replicated.
Speaker 1: So he decides he's got to reveal Kang and Kodos
Speaker 1: for what they are, So he runs on stage at
Speaker 1: an event I think at the Capitol Building where both
Speaker 1: candidates are speaking, and he rips off their disguises, revealing
Speaker 1: them both as hideous space reptiles. But Kangan Kodos seem
Speaker 1: unfair as to declaring, It's true we are aliens, but
Speaker 1: what are you going to do about it? It's a
Speaker 1: two party system. You have to vote for one of us.
Speaker 1: And then somebody in the crowd suggests voting for a
Speaker 1: third party candidate, and Kodo says, go ahead, throw your
Speaker 1: vote away. So the Americans, of course, end up electing Kang,
Speaker 1: who immediately enslaves all humans and he puts them to
Speaker 1: work constructing a giant laser to aim at some third,
Speaker 1: unspecify unspecified planet. And then Marge laments the state of
Speaker 1: affairs that they're they're suffering under right now, and Homer
Speaker 1: smugly declares, don't blame me. I voted for Kodos. I
Speaker 1: think this this might be the best nine minutes of
Speaker 1: political science, satire, and American pop culture history. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to be misunderstood there based on some
Speaker 1: of the themes in the episode, because, of course, a
Speaker 1: major theme here is the pointlessness and futility of some
Speaker 1: parts of the democratic process. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: mistake and for saying I think it makes no difference
Speaker 1: who you vote for for president, or that all politicians
Speaker 1: are the same. You know, I think that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that it's like easy to say and feel
Speaker 1: superior about saying when you don't want to put in
Speaker 1: the work to learn what's going on and what's at stake. Right.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of statement I would have found
Speaker 1: very attractive when I was like a first year college student,
Speaker 1: kind of intellectually lazy but wanting to stake ammorl claim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are wanting to to differentiate yourself from you know, the
Speaker 1: politics that you might have been born into. It's easier
Speaker 1: instead of saying, actually, I disagree with you completely and
Speaker 1: I go to this side, you can just say, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I don't sorry, I don't go for any
Speaker 1: of it, right, Yeah, you know I can remember being
Speaker 1: like that. I wanted to have a strong opinion without
Speaker 1: having to do the work to earn an opinion. So
Speaker 1: I don't think that way anymore. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: while I don't generally feel the field that's always true
Speaker 1: about elections, I think there is some real cutting wisdom
Speaker 1: in that satire, because even though it's not the case
Speaker 1: that all politicians are the same in elections don't matter,
Speaker 1: people often overestimate how much their democratic choice will make
Speaker 1: a difference to particular issues they really care about. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many big problems that you thought
Speaker 1: electing the right person might solve, and then that person
Speaker 1: was elected and the problem stayed the same or got worse.
Speaker 1: But even more than that, I think this episode is
Speaker 1: brilliant at highlighting the absurd and nonsensical conclusions often reached
Speaker 1: by group choice algorithms that we follow in our politics.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of what I wanted to look at
Speaker 1: here in relation to this episode. In that vein, I
Speaker 1: want to explore the question of whether or not the
Speaker 1: election of Kang is an example of the Abilene paradox. Robert,
Speaker 1: had you ever come across this concept before? I don't
Speaker 1: believe I had. Yeah, I I think this is very
Speaker 1: useful to have in your tool kit of of concepts
Speaker 1: to apply to the world, because it's absolutely something that
Speaker 1: explains many unfortunate group behaviors in politics, in business, even
Speaker 1: in like family vacations and and hang outs with your friends.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this paradox was explained in a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four paper by the George Washington University scholar Jerry B. Harvey,
Speaker 1: which was published in the journal Organizational Dynamics. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to give a kind of updated scenario here for
Speaker 1: you to consider. So imagine the following scenario. You are
Speaker 1: hanging out with your friends p J, Nancy, and Jamie Lee.
Speaker 1: It's October, You're all just finished babysitting. You're at Nancy's
Speaker 1: house carving a pumpkin, and you're watching an old Howard
Speaker 1: Hawks movie on TV, The Thing from Another World. You're
Speaker 1: hanging out, You're having an okay time. But then suddenly
Speaker 1: Nancy says, hey, does anybody want to go out and
Speaker 1: see a movie? And PJ says, yeah, that could be cool.
Speaker 1: Let's see what's playing. So you look up show times
Speaker 1: at the local theater and the only show left tonight
Speaker 1: is a midnight showing of The Purge seventeen as the
Speaker 1: World purges. Uh. So, PJ says, yeah, we could see
Speaker 1: that if you guys want, and Nancy says, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I could be down to go to the urge and
Speaker 1: Jamie Lee says, sure, if you two want to see it,
Speaker 1: I'm in. So since all of your friends agreed, you
Speaker 1: resign yourself. You say, okay, let's see it. Tickets are
Speaker 1: fourteen dollars a piece. Uh. The movie stars Fred Durst
Speaker 1: and Tim Allen. It's three and a half hours long.
Speaker 1: At multiple moments, you consider leaving the theater, but you
Speaker 1: don't want to go out alone and leave your friends behind.
Speaker 1: So you sit through this whole terrible movie, and when
Speaker 1: the credits finally roll, you leave the theater with a
Speaker 1: throbbing headache, and you immediately ask why did we do
Speaker 1: that to ourselves? And Jamie Lee says, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It sounded pretty bad to me, but I thought the
Speaker 1: rest of you wanted to see it, and Nancy says, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to see it. I just thought the
Speaker 1: rest of you did, and p J says, well, don't
Speaker 1: look at me. I just said I was okay with
Speaker 1: it if you guys wanted to go. Weren't you the
Speaker 1: one who suggested it? And Nancy, the one who did
Speaker 1: suggest going to a movie, finally says, well, I just
Speaker 1: thought you guys might be bored hanging out at the house.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that none of the four of
Speaker 1: you actually wanted to see this movie, and yet somehow
Speaker 1: you collectively decided it would be the best thing to
Speaker 1: do with your time together. Everybody agreed on a course
Speaker 1: of action that nobody individually wanted. Robert, Can I assume
Speaker 1: this experience is somewhat familiar to you? Yeah? Maybe from
Speaker 1: I think probably the best example I can think of
Speaker 1: is like when as a family when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: sometimes we would agree on what to watch, and you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's something that one of us had a definite
Speaker 1: steak in, but other times it it kind of felt
Speaker 1: like this, where we ended up agreeing to watch a
Speaker 1: movie just because it was it was a major film
Speaker 1: that came out, and we're like, okay, I guess we're
Speaker 1: watching Oh uh God. I can't even think of a
Speaker 1: good example of just something, you know, whatever the big
Speaker 1: mainstream family film was that had hit theaters and was
Speaker 1: now on VHS. Christmas with the Cranks well, maybe not
Speaker 1: that bad, but but stuff stuff like that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So this would be a prime example of what Harvey
Speaker 1: calls the Abeleean paradox, and the Abilene paradox comes from
Speaker 1: the story Jerry Harvey tells to open his paper. It's
Speaker 1: similar to the story I told, but it's about a
Speaker 1: family in Texas making a long drive to Abilene in
Speaker 1: a non air conditioned car in hot weather. It's a
Speaker 1: completely miserable experience, as you would expect, and it turns
Speaker 1: out nobody actually wanted to go to Abilene in the
Speaker 1: first place. Every member of the family just thought the
Speaker 1: other family members wanted to go and then failed to
Speaker 1: communicate their actual preferences. And as Harvey puts it in
Speaker 1: his article, the Abilene paradox is the fact that quote
Speaker 1: organizations frequently take actions in contradiction to what they really
Speaker 1: want to do and therefore defeat the very purposes they're
Speaker 1: trying to achieve. And any characterizes the Abilene paradox, says,
Speaker 1: not a failure to manage disagreement, but a failure to
Speaker 1: manage agreement. Uh So, when I first read about this
Speaker 1: at some point in the past couple of years, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, my God, this kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: recognize so much of this in the world. How have
Speaker 1: I gone this long without a name for it? It
Speaker 1: seems to me to be a problem for group choice
Speaker 1: at all kinds of levels. Again, you mentioned you know
Speaker 1: a family trying to decide what movie to see, but
Speaker 1: you know a group of friends trying to decide what
Speaker 1: to do how to spend their Sunday, or a democratic
Speaker 1: society trying to elect their leaders. Many kinds of group
Speaker 1: choice problems I think arise, of course, from the inability
Speaker 1: to manage conflict. But this is the opposite. Har Harvey
Speaker 1: argues that even more group choice problems arise from the
Speaker 1: inability to manage agreement. And another real world example that
Speaker 1: Harvey gives in his paper is the Watergate scandal. He
Speaker 1: he quotes a number of people who involved in Nixon's
Speaker 1: came the Nixon campaign's dirty Tricks team, who all claimed
Speaker 1: privately that they had doubts not only about the morality
Speaker 1: about but about the practical wisdom of their scheme that
Speaker 1: to each of them privately, seemed like the payoffs were
Speaker 1: not really worth the risks, But they each assumed they
Speaker 1: were the only one with such doubts and thus acted
Speaker 1: along with the rest of the group in a way
Speaker 1: that hurt all of them, even though they privately, most
Speaker 1: or all thought it was a bad idea. So it's
Speaker 1: like Nixon wants to purge, Lily wants to purge. So
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, I don't really want to purge,
Speaker 1: But if everybody's in the mood to purge, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm in right and Uh. In a lot of his paper,
Speaker 1: Harvey just analyzes what he sees, or like the he
Speaker 1: he thinks the common organizational symptoms of the Abilene paradox.
Speaker 1: For example, he talks about the idea of action anxiety. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He explains this by quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet. He says, action
Speaker 1: anxiety is that which quote makes us rather bear those
Speaker 1: ills we have than fly to others we know not,
Speaker 1: of which, of course, is what you know. Hamlet talks
Speaker 1: about the idea of going on through pain rather than
Speaker 1: like ending it and going on to see what undiscovered
Speaker 1: country lies beyond the grave. Um. But it's a fear
Speaker 1: of acting on your actual preferences an environment that makes
Speaker 1: pursuing the path that you don't want seem like the
Speaker 1: less scary option. Than asking for the path that you
Speaker 1: do want. Well, that's also touched on a little bit
Speaker 1: in Macbeth, right, the idea about it having waited so
Speaker 1: far through the blood that it's better to just go
Speaker 1: on through to the other side of this this blood
Speaker 1: lake than to turn back around, even if turning back
Speaker 1: around is what you really want to do. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he and Harvey roots a lot of this actually and
Speaker 1: appeals to human psychology, says, you know, some of our
Speaker 1: greatest fears are expressed as negative fantasies about fear, about
Speaker 1: fears of separation and ostracization. You know, it's like terrifying
Speaker 1: to be the one to step out and say I'm
Speaker 1: going to challenge the momentum of this group that you know, that, like,
Speaker 1: whether it's even in simple things like going out to
Speaker 1: a movie, Like you're going out to a movie with friends.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you're comfortable enough with the friends to
Speaker 1: say no, actually, I don't want to do this. But
Speaker 1: like a lot of times, especially if you don't know
Speaker 1: people as well, you'd rather just not be thought of
Speaker 1: as the jerk who who said let's not do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're engaging and you're you're kind of engaging in
Speaker 1: this group. Think you know, I think it's something as
Speaker 1: simple as say, like a group of friends getting together
Speaker 1: to to play Dungeons and Dragons. You know you're not,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not a dirty tricks UH counsel or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know you're not. All you're doing is just trying
Speaker 1: to hang out and play a game. But you know,
Speaker 1: still don't want to shake the boat if somebody wants
Speaker 1: to get fried pickles, you know, um, even if you
Speaker 1: really don't care for fried pickles all that much, right,
Speaker 1: But maybe the person who suggested it doesn't either, and
Speaker 1: they're just saying because they thought somebody else did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you reach a point where every week you
Speaker 1: order fried pickles, even though nobody's really crazy about fried pickles,
Speaker 1: and everybody probably feels a little bad about eating them
Speaker 1: every week. Yeah. So in the end, Harvey comes up
Speaker 1: with a couple of recommendations for diagnosing and dealing with
Speaker 1: UH with abilene paradox is in a business context. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's no special magic trick. Basically, he says he thinks
Speaker 1: the best way to deal with it is for an
Speaker 1: authority figure who detects they sit uation like this to
Speaker 1: call a meeting, frankly articulate their doubts in a group
Speaker 1: setting and then ask others to share their honest thoughts.
Speaker 1: If you're an authority figure, you have you know, it's
Speaker 1: safer for you to go out on a limb and
Speaker 1: question the direction that you're going in, all right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's why they make the big bucks, right this,
Speaker 1: this is the this is the moment when they can
Speaker 1: really earn that higher pay that the higher pay grade,
Speaker 1: right right, be the authority figure that comes in and
Speaker 1: shuts down, uh, you know, things that nobody really wants
Speaker 1: to do, or that there's no real advantage to doing
Speaker 1: from a business standpoint. Yeah. Now, in the political context,
Speaker 1: I think the Kang in Kodos situation kind of highlights
Speaker 1: a satirical absurd version of this, with the idea that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously humans would all recognize like, okay, we
Speaker 1: we are all in agreement. We're in agreement. We don't
Speaker 1: want either Kang or Kodos. That's the position shared by
Speaker 1: everybody voting at this point. But they're able to cause
Speaker 1: this action anxiety about organizing any kind of third option
Speaker 1: and the idea of throwing your vote away on any
Speaker 1: kind of third party candidate. When you've got kang in Kodos,
Speaker 1: there is going out on a limb. You fear ostracization,
Speaker 1: you fear being separated, you fear being different, And so
Speaker 1: eventually they just kind of decide, well, which one will
Speaker 1: I take? Kanger Kodos, And despite everybody agreeing that neither
Speaker 1: option is wanted, but it keeps everybody together. I mean,
Speaker 1: humanity is united at the end in their enslavement to
Speaker 1: these uh, these terrible alien overlords. No they're not. They're
Speaker 1: still bickering. Don't blame me. That's genius of it is there.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're essentially unified, but they still have the
Speaker 1: mindset of division. Uh uh yeah. And so I think
Speaker 1: the way around that, of course, would be that it
Speaker 1: requires some kind of uh risk of leadership for somebody
Speaker 1: to say, hey, wait a minute, can we try to
Speaker 1: organize some way to get around this too? You know,
Speaker 1: the two options we've got here that we all agree
Speaker 1: we don't want it sounds like a really wicked problem
Speaker 1: to deal with. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: point the writers are making there is that we're just
Speaker 1: not good at organizing that kind of agreement effectively. Now
Speaker 1: what do we do about the fact that we're often
Speaker 1: not good at managing agreement and this leads to repeated
Speaker 1: absurdities like the kang and like the election of kang
Speaker 1: Um Well he actually, Harvey ends his paper with a
Speaker 1: strangely philosophical note for an organizational dynamics paper. Uh. He
Speaker 1: says that, you know, sometimes these situations simply cannot be resolved,
Speaker 1: and he calls to mind the myth of Sysyphus, the
Speaker 1: character from Greek mythology who was condemned to forever repeat
Speaker 1: the task of pushing a boulder up a hill, only
Speaker 1: for it to fall back down to the bottom again,
Speaker 1: making a mockery of his efforts, says not only painful
Speaker 1: but pointless. Uh. And in Albert Camus version of the myth,
Speaker 1: he adds a detail that sometimes, in his endless loop
Speaker 1: of absurd toil, Sisyphus would get near the top of
Speaker 1: the hill, but then release the boulder of his own accord,
Speaker 1: letting it roll back down to the bottom on purpose
Speaker 1: and her he says, in this act he could transcend
Speaker 1: the absurdity of his struggle. Uh. And I think this
Speaker 1: is sort of the bull's eye of existential philosophy. Right,
Speaker 1: life is absurd, and you transcend that absurdity by recognizing
Speaker 1: your radical freedom and acting authentically, which means basically without
Speaker 1: lying to yourself about the absurdity of life. Like this
Speaker 1: is when you write in a third candidate. Now, I
Speaker 1: think actually, in this case it might be more like
Speaker 1: voting for Kang or not voting or something while while
Speaker 1: recognizing the absurdity and unwinnable nous of the scenario. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the best thing to do
Speaker 1: in the alien election. I would say, actually try to
Speaker 1: organize the third party. But I think the uh, this
Speaker 1: whole discussion actually does bring us back to real questions
Speaker 1: about the field of astro politics. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something I think we could devote whole episodes to in
Speaker 1: the future. There's actually a field of study and people
Speaker 1: have written about like what would happen if aliens arrived
Speaker 1: on Earth, Like what would be the political response to that?
Speaker 1: How would different world economic and military powers behave? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, would we all band together, would we put
Speaker 1: aside our differences and our self interest and say we
Speaker 1: need to organize an act together as Earth? Or would
Speaker 1: aliens be able to exploit our petty grievances and our
Speaker 1: differences and turn us against one another. And I think, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think there are some pretty good signs pointing towards
Speaker 1: the ladder. Yeah, I mean, our only model for intelligent
Speaker 1: life in the cosmos is is our model of intelligent
Speaker 1: life of of a technologically advanced civilization. And when we
Speaker 1: look at the way that uh, you know, certainly the
Speaker 1: way civilizations have interacted with each other, and I certainly
Speaker 1: look at the way that you know, Western colonization, how
Speaker 1: that transpired, and we see time and time again of
Speaker 1: basically the Kyan Kodos model manipulate their their leaders and
Speaker 1: their leadership, corrupt their uh, their their rule, and work
Speaker 1: one side against the other, ultimately overpower and bring enslavement
Speaker 1: and death. I mean, that's that is the story of
Speaker 1: of human history, sadly. And so when we look to
Speaker 1: the stars, you know, there are plenty of people have said, well,
Speaker 1: that's basically what we can expect based on our models,
Speaker 1: based on our knowledge of our self, knowledge of how
Speaker 1: we work, that is what we can expect from a
Speaker 1: superior technological force. Like we want to imagine the independence
Speaker 1: day scenario where we all come together and join forces,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I don't want to be overly optimistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, unless we look to our optimism
Speaker 1: in the sixth finger. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have, I mean a lot of certainly the various
Speaker 1: um New Age religions that have popped up around the
Speaker 1: idea of aliens, you know, that they look to aliens
Speaker 1: as a possibly we're all we're all messed up in
Speaker 1: this world and we're you know, we we have just
Speaker 1: committed crime after crime, and we're shackled to the terror
Speaker 1: of history. Maybe something will come down from above that
Speaker 1: has evolved beyond the state and that can guide us,
Speaker 1: that can help us find this new uh, you know,
Speaker 1: shape of being uh. And you know, maybe that's the case.
Speaker 1: But again, if we're looking at our own example of
Speaker 1: intelligent life, I'm not sure that that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put hope in aliens being being a good
Speaker 1: influence on us. I wouldn't put hope in us biologically
Speaker 1: evolving beyond our our petty grievances and all that. I
Speaker 1: think the hope lies in culture, unfortunately, and thus it
Speaker 1: is up to people like writers and political leaders and
Speaker 1: those kinds of figures to help shape human culture in
Speaker 1: a way that that allows us to to act collectively
Speaker 1: in our own best interest. I know that's not the
Speaker 1: easiest thing to put hope in, but I think that
Speaker 1: might be the only hope personally. Yeah. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the hard answer, that's the difficult answer.
Speaker 1: But it's that's that's the one that requires us to work.
Speaker 1: That's the one that requires us to do the heavy
Speaker 1: lifting here. Yeah, we've got to fix our own problems
Speaker 1: mostly using word Yeah, alright, I'm sure we'll come back
Speaker 1: to this topic in the future because oh, I definitely
Speaker 1: I think we could do some stuff on astro politics absolutely, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be down for that, absolutely. But there you
Speaker 1: have it. This is gonna be our third installment of
Speaker 1: the Anthology of Horror uh Kangan kodos Willing we will
Speaker 1: return next October with at least one at least a
Speaker 1: volume four, if not a volume four and five, And
Speaker 1: of course, ironically that'll be pretty much just uh you know,
Speaker 1: right before the like the peak moment of American politics
Speaker 1: heading into the next presidential election. Probably won't do politics
Speaker 1: when then probably not all right, in the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find them. You
Speaker 1: can also find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: But again, this was how our Anthology of Horror Volume three,
Speaker 1: Volume two came out Tuesday, and we reran volume one
Speaker 1: for the weekend. Also, if you want to check out
Speaker 1: our other show, Invention, you can find that at invention
Speaker 1: pod dot com and that's available everywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Oh and also the fiction podcast the Second oil Age
Speaker 1: launched as well. The first three episodes of that are
Speaker 1: live wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, congratulations man, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Alright, uh so that's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Certainly we have not seen all of the
Speaker 1: Horror Anthology episodes out there. Uh, we are not familiar
Speaker 1: with all the shows. So from now until next October,
Speaker 1: if you have specific episodes of various anthology shows you
Speaker 1: would like us to consider for next time, let us know.
Speaker 1: If they're just whole shows, whole buckets of content that
Speaker 1: we're not aware of, please enlighten us. One of the
Speaker 1: cool places you can find us for that, uh is
Speaker 1: our our Facebook discussion group. That is the stuff Doable
Speaker 1: your Mind discussion module. Go check that out huge. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: No wait, death, Nicholas Johnson. That's right. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us directly with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.