Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you gazed into the mirror recently? Oh? Yes, in fact,
Speaker 1: just a moment ago, I looked into the mirror and
Speaker 1: I confirmed my shirt was indeed put on backwards by
Speaker 1: whom by myself, because I dressed myself. Okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: know how how how weird this was going to get. Well,
Speaker 1: don't believe those rumors. I dressed myself all right now
Speaker 1: like strange people in the night, like sneak in, dress
Speaker 1: you and make sure you have your clothes on the
Speaker 1: slightly wrong. Whatever you've heard it not true. But yes,
Speaker 1: recently I have gazed into the looking glass, because we
Speaker 1: do it all the time, right, We surround ourselves with mirrors,
Speaker 1: and from from a very early age, we encounter them,
Speaker 1: we get used to them, and eventually we die in
Speaker 1: many cases, in a in a room with a mirror,
Speaker 1: or or with a mirror right next door into this
Speaker 1: little a little bathroom in the hotel room where we
Speaker 1: finally pass away, this this portal, into this strange uncanny
Speaker 1: ocular world. Were you just imagining Elvis in the bathroom? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you can. You can look at it that way.
Speaker 1: You can imagine Elvis, um, you know, sadly passing away there.
Speaker 1: But then what if what have the reflected Elvis is
Speaker 1: just standing up watching you know. Well, that's the whole thing, right,
Speaker 1: And that's for an entirely different episode, But right, This
Speaker 1: idea of reflective surfaces in us peering into them has
Speaker 1: been around for a long time. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: look at the myth of Narcissus, you will be met
Speaker 1: with this idea of this beautiful boy who cannot stop
Speaker 1: staring at himself in the mirror, and he chooses to
Speaker 1: die by the side of a reflecting pond rather um,
Speaker 1: instead of leaving his beloved himself behind. That is how
Speaker 1: attached he is to that image staring back at him.
Speaker 1: The obsession with the mirror, obsession with one's own reflection
Speaker 1: in the mirror. Just just as much as we are
Speaker 1: we are at times horrified by reflections or or adverse
Speaker 1: to to looking in the mirror. Um and and and
Speaker 1: I just I think back to some of my earlier
Speaker 1: opportunities to peer into different mirrors, particularly I remember going
Speaker 1: to like sears somewhere with my mom, like way too much,
Speaker 1: because those trips seemed always seem to take for average.
Speaker 1: You know, you're going to buy trainers for you or
Speaker 1: your sisters, and they would have this little, uh, this
Speaker 1: this little area with three mirrors. You know, there's like
Speaker 1: the one in front of you, and there two to
Speaker 1: the sides, ideally so that you can stand in your
Speaker 1: your new outfit or potentially what's going to be your
Speaker 1: new outfit, and twirl around and see what you're wearing
Speaker 1: from different advantage points. But those three mirrors also create
Speaker 1: this kind of mirror world because if you if you
Speaker 1: get close enough, especially as a child and you have
Speaker 1: your board out of your mind because you're surrounded by clothes,
Speaker 1: you get close enough to the mirror and you can
Speaker 1: look in and you see the reflection the other mirror,
Speaker 1: and you see this sort of endless cascade of mirrors,
Speaker 1: just endless use, endless use, or endless sort of half
Speaker 1: glimpse glimpses of you, and you feel like if you
Speaker 1: could just sort of stick your head into the mirror,
Speaker 1: you might be able to see down this hallway of
Speaker 1: mirrors into infinity. So there's always this we're I just
Speaker 1: I remember all these opportunities to look into a mirror
Speaker 1: and getting just a sense of there's something uncanny about it,
Speaker 1: there's something strange about the mirror, and you can't help
Speaker 1: but let your imagination run wild or feel just a
Speaker 1: little odd gazing into one. I like that example because
Speaker 1: so often we think of mirrors just reflecting back reality,
Speaker 1: but in fact, mirrors are really sort of a distorted reality.
Speaker 1: Our perception is distorted, and in some ways mirror adds
Speaker 1: mirrors out of this idea of these delusions that we
Speaker 1: hold about ourselves. Yes, I mean that's the key. Mirrors
Speaker 1: are truth and illusion wound up into one. And I
Speaker 1: think even though on the surface we really fall into
Speaker 1: the the eventual, everyday reality of saying, hey, that's me
Speaker 1: in the mirror. That's me, that's the real that's totally
Speaker 1: the side that I part my hair on, even though
Speaker 1: everyone else is going to see it reverse. But deep
Speaker 1: down there's something in us that knows that that's not right.
Speaker 1: That's that's signaling at least one remaining flashing button on
Speaker 1: the on the cognitive panel is going off saying there's
Speaker 1: something uncanny going here, and I think that's why the
Speaker 1: countless tales of strange creatures in the mirror mirrors that
Speaker 1: tell the future or or reveal of secrets in the past,
Speaker 1: why they resonate so strongly with us. And if you
Speaker 1: go to stuftable your mind dot com, I wrote a
Speaker 1: little list article called twelve Terrifying fictional mirrors that runs
Speaker 1: through a few interesting examples of this. Yeah, so check
Speaker 1: that out. But I think you're right. There's this idea
Speaker 1: that mirrors are capturing this sort of self awareness, this reality.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's that mirror cognition test that many
Speaker 1: scientists will use with animals. In fact, we know that guerillas,
Speaker 1: we know that chimps, Banobo's dolphins, Asian elephants, they all
Speaker 1: passed that self awareness test in a mirror. In other words,
Speaker 1: you can put markings on them and they will examine
Speaker 1: those markets. They will recognize themselves in that mirror, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they will even inspect the inside of their mouth
Speaker 1: as if like do I have something in my teeth,
Speaker 1: The look up their noses, and sometimes they will even
Speaker 1: check out their genitals. Well there you go. Where where
Speaker 1: can I Where can I go from there? From an
Speaker 1: ape looking at its own genitals in the mirror. UM
Speaker 1: A safe place. That's safe place. Well let's let's let's
Speaker 1: flee into the past for a moment. Then just a
Speaker 1: quick rundown on the history of mirrors. UM. Again, we
Speaker 1: have always from a very early age just lost in prehistory.
Speaker 1: You know, humans gazed into the reflective surface of some
Speaker 1: water and we're able to see their own reflection. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just that, just that just happened, and who knows
Speaker 1: when it did. But humans started making simple mirrors probably
Speaker 1: around six BC. Uh. They use polished obsidian as a
Speaker 1: reflective surface. Uh. Later on we started using things like copper, bronze, silver, gold,
Speaker 1: and even lad But of course all of this involves
Speaker 1: very very heavy mirrors, you know, and they have to
Speaker 1: be very small because you're making it out of obsidian
Speaker 1: or a gold or silver. UM. Contemporary mirrors didn't come
Speaker 1: into being into the late Middle Ages. But even then
Speaker 1: there were problems with their manufacture because you're using glass,
Speaker 1: and the sand used for glass making contained all these
Speaker 1: different impurities, and so it was hard to produce a
Speaker 1: really clear glass based mirror. Uh. And and also the
Speaker 1: shock caused by the heat of adding molten metal for
Speaker 1: backing that glass almost always broke the glass. So we
Speaker 1: you know, Middle Ages, we knew how to make a mirror,
Speaker 1: but we didn't quite have all the techniques down. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the Renaissance, when the Florentines admitted a process
Speaker 1: for making low temperature lead backing that modern mirrors really
Speaker 1: hit the scene. Um. And for the longest it was
Speaker 1: all about just looking at yourself. There wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of real, uh, you know, scientific opportunity with
Speaker 1: the mirror. But of course, eventually around the sixteen sixties,
Speaker 1: scientists started realizing we can you utilize and telescopes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the modern mirror, by the way, is made by
Speaker 1: silvering or spraying a thin layer of silver or aluminum
Speaker 1: onto the back of a sheet of glass. And most
Speaker 1: mirrors are made today by heating aluminum in a vacuum,
Speaker 1: which then bonds to the cooler glass. So that's the
Speaker 1: basics how we started making mirrors and how we make
Speaker 1: mirrors today. Yeah, and they became far more portable. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about light interacting with the surface of a mirror.
Speaker 1: When a photon a packet of light hits a mirror,
Speaker 1: it's absorbed by one of the atoms in the mirror,
Speaker 1: and this causes electrons in the atom to vibrate and
Speaker 1: give off an identical photon of light, the one that
Speaker 1: you perceive in your eye yourself right, So your I
Speaker 1: see these reflected photons as a mirror image. The mirror
Speaker 1: image is reversed, which you can easily see if you
Speaker 1: stand in front of a mirror with a shirt with
Speaker 1: words on it. Right. Yes, and again that the parting
Speaker 1: of the hair thing, you know, you always you sort
Speaker 1: of grow to thank you part your hair on one
Speaker 1: side of your your head perhaps, but you're actually doing
Speaker 1: it on the other. Yeah. But in the case of
Speaker 1: the words you have the words on the you're appearing
Speaker 1: backwards in the mirror, and it is not right to left.
Speaker 1: That has been reversed. The image has been reversed from
Speaker 1: front to back. Now, this is a squirrelly concept, right,
Speaker 1: because you're looking in the mirror, you see your right
Speaker 1: hand up. Um, it looks as though it's right to right.
Speaker 1: It just looks like it's been left to right reversed.
Speaker 1: But Richard Kinneman has an interesting idea about this, and
Speaker 1: he says, think about looking into the mirror, putting your
Speaker 1: right hand up and it facing east. Okay, we're on
Speaker 1: this parallel plane with the mirror. If you look at
Speaker 1: yourself in the mirror, your nose, the nose you're touching yourself,
Speaker 1: is pointing north, but the nose that's being reflected back
Speaker 1: to you is pointing south. And he's saying that this
Speaker 1: is that front to back concept. And you and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this earlier and actually um doing some
Speaker 1: yoga in the aisles of our office to try to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this concept. Because the reversal
Speaker 1: situation also comes into play in a yoga class because
Speaker 1: you know, it varies depending on who your yoga teacher
Speaker 1: isn't how they do it, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: time the yoga teacher will be facing you like a mirror,
Speaker 1: like a mirror, and they're going to do the reverse
Speaker 1: of whatever you're doing. So if we're lifting our left
Speaker 1: leg in the class, he or she is going to
Speaker 1: lift their right leg because it's going because the right
Speaker 1: leg is going to lift on the same side. Uh
Speaker 1: as far as the room is concerned, as as our
Speaker 1: other legs. So right there, front to back. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: correcting for the reversal. It's so they're they're front to
Speaker 1: back to you like a mirror. If it were left
Speaker 1: to right, they would turn around right and then you
Speaker 1: would be looking at their backside and they would be
Speaker 1: mirroring you from from from uh left to right in
Speaker 1: that way. So I don't know if it's still kind
Speaker 1: of a squarely concept people. That helps another way I
Speaker 1: was thinking about it, um, a pane of glass with
Speaker 1: writing printed on it, you know, you walk around to
Speaker 1: the other side of it and in it's reverse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they I guess that's a good example, all right. So
Speaker 1: that's some some mirror basics there. Um. As you mentioned,
Speaker 1: mirrors can be curved to focus light, so boom, you've
Speaker 1: got telescopes, You've got all sorts of uses of mirrors.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that mirrors can actually be used
Speaker 1: in therapy as well. Yes, and this is where things
Speaker 1: start getting getting an early trippy to think about, you know.
Speaker 1: And it also gets back into that uncanny world that
Speaker 1: we discussed earlier. You guys, you're looking in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Something's not quite right, and it twists our perception of reality,
Speaker 1: uh in a way that we take for granted, but
Speaker 1: in a way that becomes far more substantial when we're
Speaker 1: dealing with the treatment of phantom limb syndrome. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: mirror therapy has been used in phantom limbs syndrome, also
Speaker 1: chronic pain and post stroke paralysis. And the reason that
Speaker 1: it's used is that reflected images of patients limbs or
Speaker 1: other body parts trick the brain into healing itself. Now,
Speaker 1: think about this. The majority of people who have phantom
Speaker 1: limb um or excuse me, who have a limb ampute,
Speaker 1: hated or the nerve supply removed report experiencing some kind
Speaker 1: of phantom limb and pain, but only some report persistent
Speaker 1: phantom limb pain, which is apparently excruciating pain. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard some accounts of it are kind of kind of
Speaker 1: like they you know, you feel that that missing limb
Speaker 1: as if it's there, but as if it is, say,
Speaker 1: cramped up, like you need a move it, you need
Speaker 1: to reposition it, but it's not actually there, so you can't.
Speaker 1: It's like an itch that can never be scratched because
Speaker 1: the place of the itch only exist in the circuitry
Speaker 1: of your mind at this point. Now, in the New
Speaker 1: England Journal of Medicine, Jack Zow and neurologist at Walter
Speaker 1: Reed Army Medical Center described the phenomenon, and he said
Speaker 1: that researchers randomly assigned twenty two lower limb amputees with
Speaker 1: phantom limb pain to one of three groups. Now, one
Speaker 1: group had mirror movements, and patients watched the reflected image
Speaker 1: of their intact foot in a mirror while they moved
Speaker 1: both feet simultaneously, or so it felt like they were
Speaker 1: moving both of them simultaneously. Right, So, using one of
Speaker 1: these these mirror boxes, you end up with the when
Speaker 1: you call it an illusion even that that you're watching
Speaker 1: yourself move the missing limb. Yeah, and there's a video
Speaker 1: of this. It's it's extraordinary. They just put the mirror
Speaker 1: there and it really does look as though the patient
Speaker 1: has both limbs intact moving it around, and the reporting
Speaker 1: that it feels like it is there. It's it's bolstering
Speaker 1: all of those ideas they have in their head about
Speaker 1: this uniformity. I should add that the mirror box technique
Speaker 1: was invented by vs vs Ramaschandre, who've we've actually mentioned
Speaker 1: at least several times before in the past. This podcast
Speaker 1: does a lot of interesting work, but if you do
Speaker 1: just a quick Google search for for mirror therapy or
Speaker 1: mirror box, etcetera, you'll find his website that has a
Speaker 1: lot of resources about this this particular branch of therapy. Now,
Speaker 1: the second group, they had a covered mirror movement. In
Speaker 1: other words, atients perform the same movements, but the mirror
Speaker 1: was covered so they did not see a moving limb.
Speaker 1: The third group was imagined movements, so they mentally pictured
Speaker 1: moving the phantom foot with their eyes closed. So what happened? Okay?
Speaker 1: They had the patients performed this fifteen minutes a day
Speaker 1: and they recorded the number, duration, and intensity of pain episodes.
Speaker 1: After four weeks, there were two key findings. First, pain
Speaker 1: decreased significantly in all six patients who were doing the
Speaker 1: mirror movements. Second, three out of six patients in the
Speaker 1: covered mirror movements group and four out of six patients
Speaker 1: in the imagined movements group got worse and not better.
Speaker 1: And some of this, Zal says, is that, um, it
Speaker 1: could be that these movements when you see them in
Speaker 1: the mirror, could be calming down the nerve signals in
Speaker 1: the phantom limb, or it could be replacing what he
Speaker 1: calls the bad memories of that limb, and in a nutshell,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the visual component of this is
Speaker 1: helping to modulate that pain. Yeah, I was reading that
Speaker 1: in many cases, what you're dealing with is a situation
Speaker 1: where before the limb was amputated, there was a period
Speaker 1: of paralysis. So in a sense, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: it's the echo of the final sensations from that limb
Speaker 1: and uh and then like you say, creating a new
Speaker 1: memory for that limb, one of movement instead of one
Speaker 1: of of paralysis. Yeah. And there's there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: things going on here. So there's there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: mirror therapy really does help. There needs to be more studies,
Speaker 1: but there's an idea that mirror neurons are a part
Speaker 1: of this. There's also an idea that your brain is
Speaker 1: conflicted because what it feels and what it sees are
Speaker 1: completely different and it doesn't really know how to process
Speaker 1: that information. Um, But as I said, mirror therapy seems
Speaker 1: to be helpful in these situations. All Right, we'll hold on.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss more about the mirror and the
Speaker 1: person in the mirror watching. All right, we are back
Speaker 1: the next scenario we are going to paint for you.
Speaker 1: I think it's so interesting to me because again, it's
Speaker 1: one of those simple subconscious things going on. You hang
Speaker 1: a mirror in a room, You ask people to do things,
Speaker 1: you observe them, and does just the act of this
Speaker 1: mirror hanging in the room reflecting back their image change
Speaker 1: how they behave Okay, it's an interesting concept. First, I
Speaker 1: think we should get one thing out of the way
Speaker 1: for the paranoid listeners who might be wondering, is this
Speaker 1: a two way mirror behind which there's a cabal of
Speaker 1: secret observers watching our every movement? Uh? No, are you sure?
Speaker 1: I'm sure, because well, this is a little trick. If
Speaker 1: you're ever in a room and you're thinking, I want
Speaker 1: you're thinking to yourself, I wonder if there's a secret
Speaker 1: cabal of observers on the other side of that mirror.
Speaker 1: Turn the light off in the room if possible, or
Speaker 1: you know, break some light bulbs, whatever it takes, because
Speaker 1: if you darken the room you're in, then you will
Speaker 1: be able to see through the two way mirror into
Speaker 1: the observer's room. Because that's how the whole situation works
Speaker 1: with two way mirrors, Yeah, to a mirrors that they
Speaker 1: don't have a coat of paint on the back of them.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they manipulate light. So in
Speaker 1: the room in which you are being observed, the lights
Speaker 1: are are really really high, and so more of that
Speaker 1: light is reflecting onto the person who's being observed. If
Speaker 1: you're in the dark room and you're the detective, well
Speaker 1: of course the lights are down low. But if you
Speaker 1: turn the lights down low in the other room ha ha,
Speaker 1: you can see through to the evil cabal on the
Speaker 1: other side. Yeah, and break the Panopticon in that sense.
Speaker 1: But what we're talking about here is just a normal
Speaker 1: mirror on the wall, and it actually is kind of
Speaker 1: akin to the Panopticon situation, where uh, in the Panopicon situation,
Speaker 1: it's the fear that someone is watching us, the belief
Speaker 1: that someone might be watching what we're doing, and therefore
Speaker 1: we have to perform, uh, we have to perform better,
Speaker 1: We have to perform with more honesty less to someone
Speaker 1: find a stout. But we've talked about this before. When
Speaker 1: people are made self aware, they sort of change their
Speaker 1: behavior if they think that they're uh consciously entering into
Speaker 1: some sort of contract or I guess in this case
Speaker 1: it's more subconsciously. But let's get to the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts here. We are talking about the Journal of Personality
Speaker 1: and Social Social Psychology and uh Neil McCrae, Gallen V. Bodenhausen,
Speaker 1: and Alan B. Milnai. They found that people in a
Speaker 1: room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge
Speaker 1: others based on social stereotypes about for example, sex, race,
Speaker 1: or religion. And Bowden Housen said, when people are made
Speaker 1: to be self aware, they are likelier to stop and
Speaker 1: think about what they're doing. A byproduct of that awareness
Speaker 1: may be a shift away from acting on autopilot towards
Speaker 1: more desirable ways of behaving. So it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: It's this this physical self reflection encouraging philosophical self reflection.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this before. In terms of empathy
Speaker 1: with another person, you are less likely to judge that
Speaker 1: other person if you feel a connection, If you are
Speaker 1: projecting the image of yourself or having some sort of
Speaker 1: self reflection, it makes you dwell a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the person that you're considering because there I am
Speaker 1: in the mirror, and there are the other people conceivably
Speaker 1: in the mirror as well. I am maybe seeing myself
Speaker 1: from from this third person vantage point to a certain
Speaker 1: extent here, I am just another person amid all these people.
Speaker 1: And also, just to get back down to the existential
Speaker 1: none of it all there, I am who is that
Speaker 1: guy there is? And uh, yeah, you can see where
Speaker 1: that would just really throw your brain for for a
Speaker 1: loop there. Philosophically speaking, Yeah, you can't know yourself until
Speaker 1: you know others. Right, I'm looking at the man in
Speaker 1: the mirror. I'm hoping that he'll change his way. Do
Speaker 1: you see a man in the mirror? Um looking? That's right,
Speaker 1: it does. It does bring up an interesting observation, though.
Speaker 1: We have no mirrors in our office place, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if that is by design, because clearly our our
Speaker 1: office is impeccably designed, but with the open floor plan
Speaker 1: and all you know, you know, I say that, but
Speaker 1: I now that I remember. I believe we used to
Speaker 1: have a coworker who kept a mirror on their desk
Speaker 1: so they could keep an eye on people moving behind them,
Speaker 1: standing behind them. That sounds more like a how stuff
Speaker 1: works in in thing, Yeah, which is which is interesting
Speaker 1: kind of almost a magical use of mirrors, using the
Speaker 1: mirror as a protective uh instrument, And you see that
Speaker 1: a lot in the in folklore mythology, the idea that
Speaker 1: the that the mirror just is. There are plenty of
Speaker 1: stories about mirrors that are magical and cursed and awful
Speaker 1: and gay ways to other realms. There's also the idea
Speaker 1: that there's something pure about the mirror, that it reveals
Speaker 1: the soul, the truth. Yeah, it can help you spot
Speaker 1: or spot the absence that that that lets you perceive
Speaker 1: vampires and then all that sort of stuff. I think
Speaker 1: this idea of a coworker having a mirror to look
Speaker 1: at others is interesting because it kind of loops into
Speaker 1: this idea of the Venus effect, because you could if
Speaker 1: you're just passing by, I think that person was looking
Speaker 1: at themselves. And this placed directly into this idea of
Speaker 1: the famous paintings of the goddess Venus looking into a
Speaker 1: small mirror. And if you were to look at these paintings,
Speaker 1: you would have seem assume that Venus is admiring her
Speaker 1: own face because you see her face in the mirror.
Speaker 1: But that's your viewpoint, which is different from hers. If
Speaker 1: you can see her in the mirror, then she would
Speaker 1: see you in the mirror. Right. This is interesting. You
Speaker 1: can really go down the rabbit hole looking up images,
Speaker 1: I mean looking at paintings of people looking in mirrors,
Speaker 1: because in some cases you get you have a situation
Speaker 1: like with these various Venus images, where again they're looking
Speaker 1: in a mirror, but the reflection that you see is
Speaker 1: looking right at you, which means that she, he or
Speaker 1: she is not looking at themselves. They are looking at
Speaker 1: the painter, at the viewer of the painting. However, you
Speaker 1: want to get into that gray area of observer versus art.
Speaker 1: But but then you look at other works and and
Speaker 1: you'll find the that they'll actually have it right. I
Speaker 1: was looking at a number of works by Norman Rockwell,
Speaker 1: who I tend to take for granted as an artist
Speaker 1: because Norman Rockwell is not really my thing, and and
Speaker 1: it's he's you know, he's been so mainstream, such a
Speaker 1: slice of pie Americana, you kind of forget that, Hey,
Speaker 1: this guy really was a talented artist, and he has
Speaker 1: a number of images that involved mirrors, including that that
Speaker 1: the famous self portrait where he is looking there. It's
Speaker 1: just like a triple self portrait, because you see he
Speaker 1: has his back turn to you and he's looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror at himself as he paints an image of himself. Sadly,
Speaker 1: he's wearing glasses that obscure his eyes, so he can't
Speaker 1: really tell if the venus effect is in play. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is why, because he wanted to
Speaker 1: avoid that conundrum of where should he where where is
Speaker 1: he looking in this this strange triple self portrait or
Speaker 1: he's just painting us that way, right, But anyway, you
Speaker 1: see plenty of him and he I think he has
Speaker 1: another one of a of a little girl looking into
Speaker 1: the mirror, and in this one she's definitely looking at
Speaker 1: her own reflection, and you really get into the venus effect.
Speaker 1: It's well in movies because what happens when you point
Speaker 1: a camera at an actor looking in a mirror, Well,
Speaker 1: you have to be careful to avoid having the camera
Speaker 1: in the mirror that the actor is looking into. You want,
Speaker 1: uh the the film to show an actor looking at
Speaker 1: his or her own face, So you get into all
Speaker 1: sorts of weird angles that potentially don't match up with
Speaker 1: optical reality. Well, an optical reality is the thing here,
Speaker 1: and that's what the venus effect points to, is this
Speaker 1: idea that we really cannot fuss out ourselves that well
Speaker 1: in the mirror in terms of actual dimensions. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why the venus effect, or or any kind of like
Speaker 1: filmmaking shenanigans does. It tends not to throw us out
Speaker 1: of the experience because we ultimately, by and large don't
Speaker 1: have a good grasp on the ocular reality. We don't
Speaker 1: really understand how mirrors work. We just kind of gloss
Speaker 1: over their uncanny nature. Yeah, And to exemplify this, Marco
Speaker 1: Bertamini of the University of Liverpool and his colleagues have
Speaker 1: talked to scores of people about their perception in the mirror,
Speaker 1: and they've conducted a number of studies and what they
Speaker 1: found is that people think, like if if you ask
Speaker 1: them the question, imagine you're standing in front of a
Speaker 1: bathroom mirror, how big do you think the image of
Speaker 1: your face is on the surface? And or if you
Speaker 1: ask them the question, um, what would happen to the
Speaker 1: size of that image if you were to step backward
Speaker 1: away from the class. So think about those for a second, Like,
Speaker 1: the the answer seems to be obvious, right, how big
Speaker 1: is my face in the mirror. It's the size of
Speaker 1: my face because it's my reflection, right, Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: pretty much what people answered. And then as for the
Speaker 1: second question about moving away from the mirror, they say, well,
Speaker 1: of course, the size of my image will shrink with
Speaker 1: each step. Not so, this is not true. If you
Speaker 1: outline your face on a mirror, it will be exactly
Speaker 1: half the size of your real face, and if you
Speaker 1: step back, the size of the outline won't change. It
Speaker 1: will remain half the size of your image. And people
Speaker 1: fail to understand that the image on the surface of
Speaker 1: the mirror is half the size of the observer because
Speaker 1: a mirror is always halfway between the observer and the
Speaker 1: image that appears inside the mirror. Exactly like if you
Speaker 1: think back to the old Mark's Brother gag and duck Suit,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you haven't seen duck Suit. I'm
Speaker 1: sure most of you have not. You still know the
Speaker 1: gag because it's it keeps repeating itself in countless pieces
Speaker 1: of media where someone thinks they're looking into a mirror
Speaker 1: but they're not. It's just an empty frame and there's
Speaker 1: someone pretending to be them on the other side, matching
Speaker 1: their movements precisely, and generally the ruse will last for
Speaker 1: just a few seconds until one of the the reflective
Speaker 1: people out maneuvers the other one does an unexpected movement.
Speaker 1: The mimic can't mimic. And that's exactly what happened this
Speaker 1: morning in my about from you for the person who
Speaker 1: dressed me. You need to get real mirrors instead of
Speaker 1: just empty frames. But anyway, if there's someone standing on
Speaker 1: the other side of that fake mirror impersonating you, they're
Speaker 1: going to be as far away from the mirror as
Speaker 1: you are, so they're gonna be half your size. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some actual processing errors in people who have
Speaker 1: mirror or agnosia. Now, this is a condition where people
Speaker 1: lose their sense of reflection, and you sometimes see this
Speaker 1: in stroke patients who have had damage to their brains.
Speaker 1: They might have right parietal lesions, and these cases the
Speaker 1: patient still have um intact the knowledge about mirrors right. Um,
Speaker 1: they can describe what they do and how they work,
Speaker 1: but they can't seem to put it into practice or
Speaker 1: to really figure out their bodies in in in time
Speaker 1: and space. For example, if you have a patient stand
Speaker 1: in front of a mirror and the researcher holds a
Speaker 1: pen over the patient's left shoulder and ask him or
Speaker 1: her to reach for it. Well, most people would just
Speaker 1: reach backwards, right, You just put your hand up and
Speaker 1: reach backwards and get it. But people with mirror agnosia,
Speaker 1: they will reach forwards and actually bang their hand into
Speaker 1: the glass because they don't the depth and the perception
Speaker 1: is all off. Well, I know, there's also something known
Speaker 1: as mirrord self misidentification and clinical psychology. A two thousand
Speaker 1: one study from the Choir Center for Cognitive Science looked
Speaker 1: at two dementia patients. The two individuals could no longer
Speaker 1: recognize their own faces in the mirror, but they had
Speaker 1: no problem recognized that the faces of others in reflection.
Speaker 1: It turns out both individuals suffered from right side brain lesions,
Speaker 1: the portion of the brain particularly associated with self facial
Speaker 1: recognition and even the use of self describing adjectives. So
Speaker 1: a couple of ways that there can be uh, something
Speaker 1: a little off in uh the architecture of the brain
Speaker 1: that affects the way that we interact with that uncanny reflection. Now,
Speaker 1: so that's all about distortion um and all the ways
Speaker 1: in which we might get these images wrong. But I
Speaker 1: thought it would be interesting just to flip this around
Speaker 1: the mirror image and think back to Vermeer, because it's
Speaker 1: this great documentary that's actually already out called Tim's Vermeer,
Speaker 1: and this inventor set out to try to figure out
Speaker 1: how Vermier could create such photo realistic depictions with his
Speaker 1: paintbrush in an era that was two hundred years before
Speaker 1: the camera was invented. And it comes down to mirrors,
Speaker 1: which is and I won't go deeply into this, but
Speaker 1: here you have someone who has created this machine with
Speaker 1: two mirrors two make this painting. This image has photo
Speaker 1: realistic because what we see with our you know, three
Speaker 1: D rich world around us always getting flattened by you know,
Speaker 1: two D on our retinas. Um. So, a little interesting
Speaker 1: documentary if you want to check it out. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's directed by Teller of Penn and Teller and
Speaker 1: uh and I've heard about it a few months back
Speaker 1: and sort of made a mental note to check it out,
Speaker 1: and then somehow lost that that mental note. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks. It looks musty because it's it appears to
Speaker 1: examine not only the question of how does this, How
Speaker 1: did this great artist create this work? But also just
Speaker 1: sort of the nature of art and Nate and how
Speaker 1: we we protect our ideas of how art is created.
Speaker 1: And also personal obsession, like because it seems like the
Speaker 1: the the the Texan individual who really set out to
Speaker 1: try and replicate the process of creating these these these
Speaker 1: works of art. He has a very obsessive mind. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you really want to examine it for the length
Speaker 1: of the documentary. Oh yeah, I mean he I think
Speaker 1: he worked ten years on this. He even recreated the room.
Speaker 1: But um that Vermier used he used the same kind
Speaker 1: of paints. Yeah, paints that would have existed back in
Speaker 1: the day. He's traveling to see of Amir's work in person. Yes,
Speaker 1: that he gets the Queen to show him that exact
Speaker 1: painting up close, so he can really get Hugh right
Speaker 1: when it comes to the color. And he's asking kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous questions at least as far as the artistic
Speaker 1: community is concerned, because a lot of people don't want
Speaker 1: the you know, to to to face the possibility that
Speaker 1: someone like Vermier would have used the best available technology
Speaker 1: of the time to help create it, because on some
Speaker 1: level it's kind of like saying, oh, well, this artist,
Speaker 1: we thought they were a great painter, but they really
Speaker 1: were a great painter who also use photoshop. Like there's
Speaker 1: something poisonous about that idea to us, even though it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily make sense. Yeah, actually, because people think of
Speaker 1: it as painting by numbers, that you just get this
Speaker 1: guy right and and he makes the same machine and
Speaker 1: um and using the same technique. A guy who is
Speaker 1: an unskilled artist is able to replicate a masterpiece by
Speaker 1: using this technique. And we actually could probably do a
Speaker 1: whole episode on this, because there are some people who
Speaker 1: are weighing in and saying, well, that's not a big deal,
Speaker 1: because there are some trained artists that don't use the gimmick,
Speaker 1: that don't use the machine, and they can make pretty
Speaker 1: much exact replicas of Vermeer's work just with with their
Speaker 1: naked eye. And it seems to me ultimately the situation though,
Speaker 1: is that it's it's it's always about the artist at
Speaker 1: the center, no matter what kind of technology they're using.
Speaker 1: But you see the same argument in various me dams.
Speaker 1: For instance, in music, like I've seen threads where people
Speaker 1: were talking about electronic music and they're saying, well, the
Speaker 1: you know, the genius that say, you know, an early
Speaker 1: X twin album is not not going to be replicators
Speaker 1: or an APEX twin album doesn't mean the same thing
Speaker 1: anymore because supposedly anybody can create that because the technology
Speaker 1: is there. But that doesn't really hold up because it's
Speaker 1: ultimately it's not about the tools. It's about the artist. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that artist is replicated in the mirror right many
Speaker 1: many times over and over again in different ways, smaller,
Speaker 1: bigger dimensions. All right, Before we go to listener mail,
Speaker 1: I just want to read just a quick excerpt from
Speaker 1: the poem of Mirrors by your Hey Lewis Borges. He says,
Speaker 1: I see them as infinite elemental executioners of an ancient
Speaker 1: pact to multiply the world, like the act of the
Speaker 1: getting Sleepless bringing doom. They prolong this hollow, unstable world
Speaker 1: in their dizzy spider's web. Sometimes in the afternoon they
Speaker 1: are blurred by the breath of a man who is
Speaker 1: not dead. So there you go. There's more to that poem,
Speaker 1: and I recommend you go check it out and do
Speaker 1: a Google search for Mirrors by your Hey Lewis borees. Alright,
Speaker 1: let's read a couple of emails here. We have one
Speaker 1: from Amber and it's about outsourcing memory that we just covered,
Speaker 1: and she says, hey, guys, I loved this topic. I
Speaker 1: listened to you guys at work while I complete all
Speaker 1: my tasks via data entry in some shape and form. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I found this so fascinating because I thought of all
Speaker 1: the things I used to rely on for outsourcing my memory.
Speaker 1: Everywhere I go, I always have my phone. It's actually
Speaker 1: funny because when someone in my group of friends asked
Speaker 1: a questions, no one seems to look it up. I
Speaker 1: am a Google fiend and always have to find an
Speaker 1: answer right then and there. It's strange how if we
Speaker 1: think the information will be stored, we don't memorize it.
Speaker 1: For instance, I use an app for my workout routines,
Speaker 1: and if I didn't have it, I'd be lost, Whereas
Speaker 1: my husband goes and just does whatever, remembers his own
Speaker 1: routines and talk about blast from the past. Lately, there's
Speaker 1: been a craze and I've joined it via an app
Speaker 1: called time Hop. This app will go back one to
Speaker 1: three four years on your Facebook and say what you
Speaker 1: posted on that day. So of course I don't remember
Speaker 1: how I felt last year today, but now I can
Speaker 1: just pull it up and see what was going on
Speaker 1: in my life at that time. Anyway, I think he's
Speaker 1: always putting out such a great information and keeping my
Speaker 1: mind sharp throughout my daily grind. Sincerely, Amber, Huh. Now
Speaker 1: that that was interesting because we talked about this idea
Speaker 1: of revisiting yourself in your states throughout the history of you. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you go back on your timeline four years ago,
Speaker 1: that's just sort of the beginnings of how you can
Speaker 1: begin to construct that memory. Yeah, because there are all
Speaker 1: these slightly different views that spread all the way back
Speaker 1: through time. I've been thinking about this a lot, probably
Speaker 1: more than I should, in response to this craze on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen it where they're all these which
Speaker 1: X Man character are you? Which soda are you? And
Speaker 1: now even which how stuff podcaster are you? Have you
Speaker 1: taken this yet? Yeah? Yeah, who'd you get me? It
Speaker 1: was weird like that, but but it made me because
Speaker 1: I took it, and I you know, when I answered truthfully,
Speaker 1: I got myself. And even when I just kind of
Speaker 1: answered semi truthfully, I ended up getting myself for some reason.
Speaker 1: But ultimately it's such a hollow question, like because you
Speaker 1: have to ask yourself which you are you. There's no
Speaker 1: unified you. They are all these different yews, and the
Speaker 1: idea that there's a centralized self is just a complete illusion.
Speaker 1: So the mirrors of you, I mean, because you are
Speaker 1: somewhat like some other people in the office taste wise, right,
Speaker 1: so you would have that reflected back. I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to stout for the whole mirror thing. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a a few bits of listener mail here
Speaker 1: to run through a quick all right, This one comes
Speaker 1: to us from Fernando. Fernando says, hello, Julian Robert. I
Speaker 1: was listening to your podcast episode A Musical time Machine
Speaker 1: for the Brain, and it got me thinking, what if
Speaker 1: time and space is like a music record, and everything
Speaker 1: that has happened is happening and will ever happen exists
Speaker 1: on the same plane. Our human perception would be the
Speaker 1: needle that is only able to process the data, uh literally,
Speaker 1: giving us the illusion of the beginning and an end.
Speaker 1: I can't recall if I've heard this idea before, but
Speaker 1: I know it helped me understand the concept of nonlinear time.
Speaker 1: Love the show and keep up the great work. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: that idea, um that I've heard that almost exact um
Speaker 1: analogy before, particularly with a DVD. The idea that time
Speaker 1: that our our existence, our life is a movie on
Speaker 1: a DVD in time space is the DVD the physical
Speaker 1: DVD itself. There's no beginning or end. Everything has always happened,
Speaker 1: but our perception of it happening is the enigma. I
Speaker 1: love the DVD idea because it's all there waiting for
Speaker 1: you to dip into it. Max tech Mark, I believe
Speaker 1: was the individual we can at least partially attribute that to.
Speaker 1: But yeah, essentially that's what's happening alright. One more bit
Speaker 1: of listener mail, um Eric write, since it says Julie
Speaker 1: talked about going to sleep with basil in her mouth,
Speaker 1: this is a very bad idea due to choking has
Speaker 1: so please don't do it. We like Julie on the
Speaker 1: podcast and we would be sad if you couldn't do
Speaker 1: it for some reason like being dead. Julie, explain yourself.
Speaker 1: Thank you, um Eric. I don't remember that the what
Speaker 1: we were talking about specifically, but something about I don't know. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about having some self yes, lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming yes. And we were talking about the ability to
Speaker 1: to lose a dream taste, and I said, maybe if
Speaker 1: I put basil under my tongue or something that that
Speaker 1: would trigger that. But you don't do this. I did.
Speaker 1: The person who dresses me plucked it out just in time.
Speaker 1: So um, I'm fine, Eric, Thank you for writing in though.
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, so hey, you wanna get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, you wanna wrap with us about mirrors. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Your experience is looking
Speaker 1: to mirrors and in the mirrors, you're any uncanny uh
Speaker 1: ideas that have come to you about mirrors, about the
Speaker 1: nature of mirrors, your favorite weird mirrors from from folk tales,
Speaker 1: horror movies and what have you. Let us know about
Speaker 1: all those. You can find us as all ways at
Speaker 1: the mother Ship Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Also,
Speaker 1: you gotta check this out, guys. Robert has an awesome
Speaker 1: new series coming out Monsters Monster Science, I think is
Speaker 1: what we're calling it, and you can find that on
Speaker 1: Mind Stuff Show on YouTube exactly. And I'm not going
Speaker 1: to give a whole lot here away, but I do
Speaker 1: want to just add here that Robert is wearing a
Speaker 1: fine turtle neck in this Yes, yes, we we purchased
Speaker 1: a turtleneck especially for this production, so hopefully it'll be
Speaker 1: a hit. Um, you know, monsters the Science of Monsters.
Speaker 1: If you like my blog series Monster of the Week,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of that in video form with some
Speaker 1: tunanigan thrown and so yes, so check it out. Check
Speaker 1: that out. We'll have all we'll have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a teaser. It'll go up this week. So yeah,
Speaker 1: check that out. Check out our various social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: Google Plus. You'll find all those links at stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your mind dot com and as always, you can
Speaker 1: reach us via email. Yeah, so, if you have some
Speaker 1: thoughts that you would like send to us, please do
Speaker 1: send them to blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, stick
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com.