Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a
Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be Pretend
Speaker 1: Play Part two. It originally published one nine, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Let's explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we are back with
Speaker 3: part two in our series on pretend play, meaning play
Speaker 3: that involves non literal action. Now, this is really one
Speaker 3: of our series where I think if you haven't heard
Speaker 3: part one, I would really recommend you go back and
Speaker 3: listen to that one first, because we really laid the
Speaker 3: groundwork there. We establish a lot of the definitions and
Speaker 3: so forth. But as a brief refreshed or in part one,
Speaker 3: Rob and I talked about our own memories of pretend
Speaker 3: play from our own childhood, as well as our experiences
Speaker 3: of pretend to play as parents, especially centering out around
Speaker 3: the kind of play that happens in preschool age, you know,
Speaker 3: around three to five or so, which, according to the
Speaker 3: researchers is sort of the high season of pretend play
Speaker 3: when the most pretending is happening usually though, of course,
Speaker 3: we also talked about the ways that play extends throughout
Speaker 3: the lifetime. Even pretend play, you know, it starts before
Speaker 3: this period goes beyond it. But the preschool age is
Speaker 3: when the pretending is coming thick and fast, and we
Speaker 3: characterized what a lot of that play is, Like Robert,
Speaker 3: I don't remember if we ever got into this in
Speaker 3: the previous episode, but one thing I was reflecting on
Speaker 3: before we started today is not just how much my
Speaker 3: two year old daughter loves engaging in pretend play with
Speaker 3: you know, her various dinosaurs, kind of doing imaginary tasks
Speaker 3: and going to imaginary events things like that, but also
Speaker 3: gets so dedicated to pretend play that like it is
Speaker 3: a tragedy and an emergency if she is asked to
Speaker 3: stop pretending before she's done.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, I think that's one of the wonders of childhood.
Speaker 1: They just get so they go all in on their
Speaker 1: imaginative play, and you know, it's it's enviable. Though I
Speaker 1: think we can sometimes relate. We can sometimes relate to
Speaker 1: being thrown out of our own creative, imaginative endeavors without
Speaker 1: enough warning, without a five minute warning from life. Parents
Speaker 1: at least tend to give that five to ten minute
Speaker 1: warning if they can.
Speaker 3: I think the thing about pretending is if you're deep
Speaker 3: enough in it, you can be given the warning and
Speaker 3: then you just forget and you know, it doesn't stick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like falling back into a dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, in the last episode, we also looked in
Speaker 3: depth at a paper sort of scientific overview published in
Speaker 3: a in a cognitive science review that was looking at
Speaker 3: the state of research on pretend play in children. That
Speaker 3: paper was by a researcher named Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen. It was just called pretend Play, and
Speaker 3: it was sort of a review of research on pretend play,
Speaker 3: especially as it relates to other developing cognitive skills in childhood.
Speaker 3: So in the last episode we talked about the paper's
Speaker 3: discussion of the possible relationships of pretend play to symbolic
Speaker 3: understanding and also to counterfactual reasoning. Today, I want to
Speaker 3: return to another idea explored in this paper, and that
Speaker 3: is the relationship of pretend play to theory of mind.
Speaker 3: This is a concept that's come up on the show
Speaker 3: many times. Before, but to define it again here, theory
Speaker 3: of mind is the ability to recognize that other entities,
Speaker 3: like other people and animals, have their own internal mental states,
Speaker 3: such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. And theory of
Speaker 3: mind is also the understanding that other people's mental states
Speaker 3: are independent of one's own. So it's not that everybody
Speaker 3: is sad because I'm sad right now. The other people
Speaker 3: different things are happening in their minds. We are not
Speaker 3: born with theory of mind skills. The ability to imagine
Speaker 3: and model the mental states of other people is something
Speaker 3: that is acquired and refined throughout childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's this is of course the topic that's
Speaker 1: come up on the show multiple times before and what'll
Speaker 1: keep coming up because it's a huge part of the
Speaker 1: human condition and it's so fascinating to think about. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that we use all the time
Speaker 1: to the point that we we just we think of
Speaker 1: it as just reality, and we think of what we
Speaker 1: know of others' mental states, and we attribute to other
Speaker 1: people's mental states as being just how people are. You know,
Speaker 1: we think we know them, but in reality, like the
Speaker 1: whether we're dealing with the closest relationships in your life,
Speaker 1: you know, a significant others, family members, offspring, and so forth,
Speaker 1: whether you're dealing with them or you're dealing with someone
Speaker 1: you just met on the street or didn't even meet
Speaker 1: someone that was walking across the street from you. We
Speaker 1: we we create a simulation of their mind state of
Speaker 1: what they're roughly, their their goals, their attitudes towards us
Speaker 1: generally are, and and then we react to the to
Speaker 1: those models, and so it is. It is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: kind of haunting to think about the fact that, like
Speaker 1: the you that I think I know best is actually
Speaker 1: inside of me. Yes, you know. And and of course
Speaker 1: theory of mind can be trained on plenty of non
Speaker 1: human entities as well, on objects and on real things.
Speaker 1: Uh So it's a very powerful part of the human
Speaker 1: cognition tool chest.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's a you know, I was just thinking
Speaker 3: about how theory of mind is so deep in such
Speaker 3: different types of sort of human relations and expression. Like
Speaker 3: theory of mind is the core of love, of what
Speaker 3: it means to love people, but it's also the core
Speaker 3: of like manipulation and machiavelianism. It's it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's involved in in all of our prejudices.
Speaker 1: It's involved, you know, in in our hatred as well
Speaker 1: as our love. So it's you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: very broad spectrum here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's I think easy to see why theory
Speaker 3: of mind might have connections to pretend play. When you
Speaker 3: play a pretend game, especially with other people, it is
Speaker 3: important to understand the intentions of the play partner in
Speaker 3: order to understand the game as non literal. So this
Speaker 3: is an example game I mentioned in part one. Why
Speaker 3: is my friend stirring a bowl of crayons with a
Speaker 3: fork and then lifting the fork to my stuffed therapod
Speaker 3: dinosaur's mouth. This activity does not make any sense when
Speaker 3: just observed and taken literally. But if I'm a child
Speaker 3: and I see this happening, even without talking about the game,
Speaker 3: I can probably infer that my friend intends the crayons
Speaker 3: to be understood as food. You know, last time we
Speaker 3: talked about crayons as spaghetti, and thus intends the forklifting
Speaker 3: to be understood as feeding, and thus intends the inert
Speaker 3: stuffed dinosaur to be understood as eating. So I can
Speaker 3: participate in this play by feeding the dinosaur spaghetti crayons
Speaker 3: as well, or by making nomnom sounds when the crayon
Speaker 3: reaches the dinosaur's mouth. And about this connection, Weisberg writes
Speaker 3: in the paper quote pretense is thus meta representational, meaning
Speaker 3: it involves representing someone's representation of a state of affairs.
Speaker 3: Without the ability to meta represent one would see pretense
Speaker 3: actions as nonsensical, and quarantining would break down. And remember
Speaker 3: from last time, quarantining is the ability to stop yourself
Speaker 3: from taking inapplicable lessons from pretend play. So the example
Speaker 3: was mom is using a banana as a phone. Somehow
Speaker 3: we can play that pretend game and yet not take
Speaker 3: the incorrect lesson that you can actually make calls on
Speaker 3: a banana. It's the ability to ward off incorrect information
Speaker 3: and prevent your brain from learning things that are wrong
Speaker 3: based on a game that is counterfactual. And so what
Speaker 3: Weisberg is saying here is that things like quarantining are
Speaker 3: only possible because we have this meta representational ability. Like
Speaker 3: you can see somebody playing the banana as phone game
Speaker 3: and you don't think that, oh, maybe the banana can
Speaker 3: place calls because you understand that person's intentions that they're
Speaker 3: just intending this to be a game, not intending to
Speaker 3: use the banana literally as a phone. In my example,
Speaker 3: I guess the equivalent would be like, are we feeding
Speaker 3: the dinosaur crayons? Because crayons are actually food? Should I
Speaker 3: eat them? Sometimes a kid may experiment along these lines,
Speaker 3: but usually they do not end up at this conclusion.
Speaker 3: Usually the kid understands the intention of the play partner
Speaker 3: to treat the crayons as something other than what they
Speaker 3: actually are.
Speaker 1: I do have to say that after we recorded the
Speaker 1: last episode, there were a number of phone banana shenanigans
Speaker 1: in my household. Oh Ran it totally killed. It's just
Speaker 1: inherently funny. So I hope listeners have been re exploring
Speaker 1: the comedy as well.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's funny no matter what age are. Absolutely
Speaker 3: Oh but to talk about killing the joke by over
Speaker 3: explaining it, nevertheless, I'm going to go there. I would
Speaker 3: love to understand better the like the minute mechanics of
Speaker 3: that kind of humor, Like how close physically does the
Speaker 3: fruit or the food have to be to the op
Speaker 3: objecked to like work enough to be funny, because obviously
Speaker 3: it's like a banana is funnier than like a plastic
Speaker 3: toy phone. But I would also think a banana as
Speaker 3: a phone is funnier than an apple as a phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a banana is stupid. A banana, I mean,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, is delicious. But a banana is
Speaker 1: bright yellow, there's all slipping on the peel clown shenan. Again,
Speaker 1: it is phallic and therefore has that layer of humor
Speaker 1: to it as well. And then the juxtaposition is that
Speaker 1: a phone is serious. A phone, you know, it may
Speaker 1: be a loved when calling, but it may be bad
Speaker 1: news on the other end of the phone. The phone
Speaker 1: is what you reach for when there's an emergency, So
Speaker 1: the phone is dead serious or can be. The banana
Speaker 1: is stupid and therefore it just works.
Speaker 3: It's so good. But anyway, Okay, to come back to
Speaker 3: playing pretend and theory of mind, the connections we've talked
Speaker 3: about suggests there is a link between theory of mind
Speaker 3: and playing pretend because it's about recognizing and internally modeling
Speaker 3: the mental states of others, recognizing not just what another
Speaker 3: person literally does, but understanding what that person intends. And
Speaker 3: Weisberg compares this to a common experiment that is used
Speaker 3: to test theory of mind in children, which he refers
Speaker 3: to as the Sally Ann false belief task, though or
Speaker 3: sometimes in the literature they just call this a false
Speaker 3: belief test. Here's a simplified version of it. Okay, the
Speaker 3: child is a participant. The child watches a character playing
Speaker 3: with a ball, and then this character puts the ball
Speaker 3: down in a basket and walks out of the room.
Speaker 3: And then while the original character who is playing with
Speaker 3: the ball is gone, somebody else comes into the room,
Speaker 3: takes the ball out of the basket, hides it in
Speaker 3: a box, and then leaves. Then the first character comes
Speaker 3: back into the room, and the child has been watching
Speaker 3: the whole time, so the child saw everything happen. When
Speaker 3: you ask the child a question, where will the original
Speaker 3: character look for the ball? So the child knows, because
Speaker 3: they were watching the whole time, that the ball is
Speaker 3: hidden in the box. But with theory of mind skills,
Speaker 3: the child should be able to say that the character
Speaker 3: should look in the basket where she left it, because
Speaker 3: the child knows that the character does not know that
Speaker 3: the ball was moved or where it was moved too,
Speaker 3: So to answer this question correctly, the child in the
Speaker 3: experiment has to ignore their own knowledge about the true
Speaker 3: state of affairs and instead answer based on the false
Speaker 3: belief that the character in the scenario would have. If
Speaker 3: you compare this to the pretend play scenario, if a
Speaker 3: kid wants to join in the crayons as spaghetti game
Speaker 3: with another child, they have to ignore the true knowledge
Speaker 3: that the crayons are crayons and that they are meant
Speaker 3: for drawing and not for eating, and also to infer
Speaker 3: the intentions of the play partner that the crayons are
Speaker 3: to be treated as food for the dinosaur. So both
Speaker 3: of these situations, pretend play and the false belief test
Speaker 3: for theory of mind depend on at least two things
Speaker 3: that Weisberg highlights. One of them is what she calls decoupling,
Speaker 3: and that is temporarily ignoring your knowledge of what is
Speaker 3: literally true, And the other is meta representation, internally representing
Speaker 3: somebody else's mental states, such as their intention to represent
Speaker 3: a literal object X as pretend object Y. So it's
Speaker 3: very tempting to see a link between theory of mind
Speaker 3: and pretend play. Weisberg in fact cites a researcher named A. M.
Speaker 3: Leslie who has speculated in some writing that there is
Speaker 3: possibly an underlying neural structure in the brain that is
Speaker 3: responsible for both theory of mind and for pretending. Calling
Speaker 3: this hypothetical structure the theory of mind module. Leslie apparently
Speaker 3: argued that perhaps a developmental difference in this neural structure
Speaker 3: is what underlies autism, given the observation that studies have
Speaker 3: found that children with autism spectrum diagnoses demonstrate deficits in
Speaker 3: social cognition, which implicates theory of mind, but also tend
Speaker 3: to engage in less pretending. But both the existence of
Speaker 3: this module and the connection with the autism spectrum is hypothetical.
Speaker 3: What's clear is the cognitive and behavioral similarity between theory
Speaker 3: of mind and elements of pretend play. And then Weisberg
Speaker 3: goes on to site some studies that seem to support
Speaker 3: this link. I thought a couple of these were kind
Speaker 3: of interesting. One of them is by researchers named Rebecca
Speaker 3: Dore and Angeline Lillard, published in Imagination, Cognition, and Personality
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen called Theory of Mind and Children's Engagement
Speaker 3: in Fantasy Worlds. This was a study that looked at
Speaker 3: preschoolers at the beginning and then the end of a
Speaker 3: seven month period, and it tested for a few different
Speaker 3: things to see if there are any correlations. One was
Speaker 3: a child's tendency to engage in fantasy, ideation and activities,
Speaker 3: so this would be related to pretending basically a child's
Speaker 3: orientation toward fantasy. And then another thing measured was the
Speaker 3: child's tendency to use mentalistic descriptions. I had to look
Speaker 3: up what this is, but I think this basically means, like,
Speaker 3: imagine you see a drawing of a character reaching a
Speaker 3: bucket down into a pool of water. You could give
Speaker 3: a physical description of that scene, you know, the character
Speaker 3: is leaning down scooping up water, or you could give
Speaker 3: a mentalistic description, which might be something like this character
Speaker 3: wants a drink of water, explaining things in terms of
Speaker 3: motivations and mental states as opposed to just physical movements.
Speaker 3: And then the third thing tested for correlation here was
Speaker 3: the child's capacity for theory of mind, which is tested
Speaker 3: a variety of ways, one of which is the false
Speaker 3: belief TAC that I was talking about a minute ago,
Speaker 3: but another is testing for whether children understand that different
Speaker 3: people have desires and emotions they're different from their own.
Speaker 3: Things like that, and this study found that preschool children
Speaker 3: who are more oriented toward fantasy on a number of
Speaker 3: measures did not grow beyond the baseline in the use
Speaker 3: of mentalistic descriptions during the seven month period, but did
Speaker 3: show some greater improvements in theory of mind, so that
Speaker 3: establishes that there could possibly be a link between the
Speaker 3: tendency to engage in fantasy and faster learning on theory
Speaker 3: of mind skills. Another finding is that some experiments have
Speaker 3: found that children do better on false belief tasks like
Speaker 3: the ball in the basket versus the box thing I
Speaker 3: was talking about when the format of the test involves
Speaker 3: more pretending. So think of when the scenario is presented
Speaker 3: as a fictional story or when it is acted out
Speaker 3: with invisible pretend and objects, as opposed to being acted
Speaker 3: out with literal physical props, in which case apparently the
Speaker 3: kids do a bit worse. That kind of makes sense
Speaker 3: to me, Like, I guess it's harder to ignore your
Speaker 3: knowledge that the ball is actually in the box and
Speaker 3: remember that Sally left it in the basket and that's
Speaker 3: all she knows. When oh my god, like I just
Speaker 3: saw the ball go in the box. I literally saw
Speaker 3: it go in there. There It is also interesting is
Speaker 3: there are apparently some findings that suggest this is actually
Speaker 3: in adults, that reading fiction may possibly improve particular theory
Speaker 3: of mind skills.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about this several years back.
Speaker 3: I believe yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, as with the stuff
Speaker 3: discussed in the previous episode, with the links to symbolic
Speaker 3: understanding and counterfactual reasoning, Weisberg adds the important caveat that
Speaker 3: basically all of these experiments connecting theory of mind to
Speaker 3: pretend play are correlational or they're limited to a single situation.
Speaker 3: It's really hard, maybe impossible, to devise an ethical, robust
Speaker 3: experiment where you like randomly manipulate the independent variable of
Speaker 3: pretend to play over a developmentally significant period of time
Speaker 3: and then track the results. Both ethics and practicality kind
Speaker 3: of limit us to weaker forms of testing in this
Speaker 3: subject matter. So we should be realistic and thus humble
Speaker 3: about the limitations of what we know about these links.
Speaker 3: So what we know is very interesting, but it's also
Speaker 3: fairly tentative and important to not hang too much on
Speaker 3: these findings, especially the findings of a single study. But
Speaker 3: with those caveats, I think there's pretty good reason to
Speaker 3: think that pretending and theory of mind are deeply intertwined
Speaker 3: in some ways in the brain and in child development,
Speaker 3: but exactly how they are related, how one affects the other,
Speaker 3: and so forth, is more questionable. Now. The kind of
Speaker 3: theory of mind that we have been primarily talking about,
Speaker 3: of course, is inferring the mental states of other people
Speaker 3: who do physically exist. But a different related question is
Speaker 3: what about simulating the workings of an external mind that is,
Speaker 3: at its base level make believe? And this brings us
Speaker 3: back to something we mentioned only briefly in Part one,
Speaker 3: the imaginary friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in some ways, the imaginary friend is it's like
Speaker 1: the ultimate pretend play manifestation, an imaginary being that is
Speaker 1: altogether imaginary and invisible, but is also gifted with varying
Speaker 1: degrees of agency and intelligence. This you know. This of course,
Speaker 1: gets more complicated when you try and like nail down
Speaker 1: what an imaginary friend is. There are sort of related
Speaker 1: concepts that are sometimes looped together and sometimes are considered like,
Speaker 1: for instance, you have things like stuffed animals that are
Speaker 1: attributed personalities in some degree of agency. You also have
Speaker 1: personified objects, and you also have also sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: distinction between imaginary companions and imaginary friends. I'll come back
Speaker 1: to that in a bit, but I guess a good
Speaker 1: place to start would be with examples from our own lives. Joe,
Speaker 1: did you have an imaginary friend? And does your child
Speaker 1: have an imaginary friend or friends?
Speaker 3: This may get into some of the distinctions you were
Speaker 3: just highlighting, But I never had like a consistent imaginary
Speaker 3: friend over time. I think I may have had single
Speaker 3: use imaginary friends that were, you know, dreamed up for
Speaker 3: a single play occasion or something. With my daughter, I
Speaker 3: don't think there's not a single entity who is her
Speaker 3: consistent imaginary friend, but she does seem to ascribe a
Speaker 3: lot of personality to various pretend entities, like imbuing mind
Speaker 3: into stuff, to animal friends, or imagining. We sometimes play
Speaker 3: this game with these invisible kitty cats and stuff that
Speaker 3: you know, we can find like hiding between the couch
Speaker 3: cushions and things, and we pull out an invisible kitty cat,
Speaker 3: and oh, and she can talk about what the kitty
Speaker 3: cat wants. But I think that's different than an imaginary friend,
Speaker 3: which is usually thought of as something that persists over time.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yes, yes, and no. I guess one
Speaker 1: thing This sort of comes out of the research I've
Speaker 1: been looking looking at here is that I think imaginary
Speaker 1: friends do come and go, and they inevitably do come
Speaker 1: and then go. There is kind of like a period
Speaker 1: of time during which they tend to be active. But
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily like we should can get too attached
Speaker 1: to the idea that they'll just be a single imaginary friend.
Speaker 1: There could be several, and they need not be this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, standard version of some sort of
Speaker 1: essentially invisible friend, an invisible humanoid being that is like
Speaker 1: on the same level as as your child. And also
Speaker 1: they might just spring out of nowhere, as we'll get
Speaker 1: into a bit. But yeah, I myself have no memory
Speaker 1: of ever having an invisible friend, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: I was the oldest child and in many respects the
Speaker 1: eldest child that seemed to be more likely to have
Speaker 1: an imaginary friend. My own child had being lost friends
Speaker 1: that I remember, and so I asked them about this,
Speaker 1: is like, do you remember your being lost friends? And
Speaker 1: they were like, no, I don't remember the being lost
Speaker 1: friends at all. I remember three imaginary cats that I
Speaker 1: had at one point. I'm like, okay, well I forgot
Speaker 1: about that. One. So that's another thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind when you think about like single imaginary friends that
Speaker 1: a child may or may not have a lot of.
Speaker 1: It also comes down to what memories are retained by
Speaker 1: the child and what is noticed and retained by the parents.
Speaker 1: And so it's entirely likely between those two things that
Speaker 1: old imaginary friends are lost entirely. So, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to unpack there.
Speaker 3: It's funny. My daughter has also gone through phases where
Speaker 3: she was really obsessed with bees. She loves bees and
Speaker 3: has you know, likes to point out bees flying around
Speaker 3: things that aren't always bees, you know, sometimes there might
Speaker 3: just be a buzz or something, you know, made by
Speaker 3: a machine and.
Speaker 1: It's like b b Yeah. Yeah, So like my child's
Speaker 1: being lost friends. I don't think they really talked or anything.
Speaker 1: They just they were essentially animals that were invisible, you know.
Speaker 1: I also asked my mom about this. I was on
Speaker 1: the phone with her last night and I was just checking.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, it was like me and
Speaker 1: my siblings, none of us had invisible friends that you
Speaker 1: know of, right, And she's like no, But she shared
Speaker 1: that she had seven imaginary of friends when she was
Speaker 1: a child. Oh, and she was the eldest child. This
Speaker 1: would have been the I guess the early fifties, so
Speaker 1: that that'll be worth keeping in mind as we proceed
Speaker 1: through the discussion here.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So one of the sources I was looking at for
Speaker 1: this this was a twenty eighteen meta analysis Prevalence of
Speaker 1: Imaginary Companions and Children, a meta analysis by Morigucci and Toto.
Speaker 1: This was in the Meryl Palmer Quarterly, and they pointed
Speaker 1: out for starters that imaginary friends don't have to be
Speaker 1: entirely invisible. Some experts point out that a particular object,
Speaker 1: and even a personified object, may seemingly enhance the vividness
Speaker 1: of an imagined companion. They also discussed imaginary friends and
Speaker 1: personified objects as both being forms of imaginary companions, but
Speaker 1: stressed that a key difference one tends to find is
Speaker 1: that the relationship between child and personified object tends to
Speaker 1: be more more of a matter of like, these are
Speaker 1: my pets or you know, or these are my children.
Speaker 1: You know. It's a relationship that's mirroring human child and
Speaker 1: human pet relationships, while an imaginary friend is more egalitarian.
Speaker 1: You don't tell them what to do because they're your friend.
Speaker 1: They're at least you're equal. It's not someone you boss,
Speaker 1: surround or care for. I want to add that into
Speaker 1: because I don't want to. I don't want to create
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, bossy kids just have these
Speaker 1: these underlings that are imaginary. It's like, you know, it
Speaker 1: could also be a care scenario and so forth, but
Speaker 1: the imaginary friend, it is more egalitarian in its nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is really interesting. I wonder if that has
Speaker 3: to do with I don't know, ideas about like when
Speaker 3: you when a physical object is yours, there's this state
Speaker 3: of mind about it that like you own it, it
Speaker 3: is one of my possessions. And thus, even if it
Speaker 3: is a even if it has a mind, you kind
Speaker 3: of feel like this this power over it, where whereas
Speaker 3: you don't with you know, other people your age, or
Speaker 3: I guess you shouldn't with other people your age. So
Speaker 3: like imagining an invisible person is different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like it's my object, it is mine, but
Speaker 1: also mine to care for and so forth. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also know that some researchers consider personified objects to be
Speaker 1: imaginary friends, but not always. Again, we have to remind
Speaker 1: ourself that this is all this is all adult language
Speaker 1: that has been generated to make sense of the thing
Speaker 1: that is emerging, often unlanguaged from the minds of children.
Speaker 1: So you know, bear that in mind as we move forward. Now,
Speaker 1: they briefly touch on the history of imaginary friends, with
Speaker 1: the study of them first popping up in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: five with the work of Clara Vostrovsky A Study of
Speaker 1: Imaginary Companions. And yeah, but before this, there's like, there's
Speaker 1: basically nothing they were. For a while, following the emergence
Speaker 1: of study regarding them, they were often thought to be
Speaker 1: signs of a personality dysfunction. The first book wasn't written
Speaker 1: about them unteen eighteen, and it wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties that imaginary friends were seen as a positive part
Speaker 1: of a child's development. This is universally so like, for instance,
Speaker 1: just going back to the example of my mother, like
Speaker 1: her parents embraced this idea and would like set places
Speaker 1: at the table for the seven imaginary children. So it's
Speaker 1: not a situation where it's like, oh, until the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: imaginary friends were to be feared or anything. But just
Speaker 1: you know, broad strokes. Now, one question you might have
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, what does this mean. Does this mean
Speaker 1: that nobody had imaginary friends before the twentieth century? Well,
Speaker 1: that is actually one way you could look at it,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that. But the other way is
Speaker 1: that clearly this is something that's just been going on
Speaker 1: since time out of mind, and it's only as we
Speaker 1: get into the twentieth century that it's being noticed and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: I think sometimes we underestimate how much things in the
Speaker 3: past just there's not written evidence of them, not because
Speaker 3: they didn't exist, but because nobody who was writing books
Speaker 3: just thought it was worth paying attention to.
Speaker 1: I think there's a strong case to be made for
Speaker 1: that absolutely. Now. Clausen and Pasmano point out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and sevens per ten Companions. I've seen this sighted
Speaker 1: in numerous studies as well, that the idea of childhood
Speaker 1: as we understand it today perhaps didn't really emerge until
Speaker 1: like the seventeenth century. So there were perhaps severe limitations
Speaker 1: on our ability and our willingness to understand what was
Speaker 1: going on with children. So, you know, did we care
Speaker 1: what children were talking about, did we care about if
Speaker 1: they had an imaginary friend or not, and so forth.
Speaker 1: On top of that, before the seventeenth century we deep
Speaker 1: ever deeper in of course, into the demon haunted world
Speaker 1: of superstition. So you know, if we did hear about
Speaker 1: our children talking with unseen entities, we probably had a
Speaker 1: script to go to that was not, oh well, they're
Speaker 1: just engaging in pretend play. It might be more, oh well,
Speaker 1: they're talking to fairies, they're talking to spirits and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the goat whispered something to me, help me.
Speaker 1: They write quote. Many early descriptions of pretend companions may
Speaker 1: not be recognized as such because they were depicted in
Speaker 1: terms of spirits and other supernatural concepts. Metaphysical explanations for
Speaker 1: pretend companions are not at all limited to the past,
Speaker 1: because to some extent they have existed even in recent
Speaker 1: times now. They also bring up the idea that free
Speaker 1: play time and time alone are perhaps both key requirements
Speaker 1: for their emergence of an invisible companion and a child,
Speaker 1: and these would have been things that would have been,
Speaker 1: by some estimates, historically lacking and still lacking for children
Speaker 1: in many parts of the world and in many different
Speaker 1: socioeconomic levels. You know, do you have time alone, do
Speaker 1: you have time to play in which you'd get to
Speaker 1: know your imagine in which you had been able to
Speaker 1: be able to generate this idea and play with it.
Speaker 1: They cite works from two thousand and three and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine that reported a very low rate of reported
Speaker 1: invisible friends in India zero point two percent in one study,
Speaker 1: which is really low compared to some of the Western
Speaker 1: stats that I'll mention here in a bit, and they
Speaker 1: attributed it to limited playtime and limited alone time. They
Speaker 1: also acknowledged that the idea of children remembering past lives
Speaker 1: is something that is sometimes explored and encouraged in parts
Speaker 1: of India, but that didn't seem to have an impact
Speaker 1: on the percentage rate of imaginary friends here. So they
Speaker 1: bring up this idea that in the past, and to
Speaker 1: some extent in the present, traditional ways of life throughout
Speaker 1: the world might not have allowed most children sufficient room
Speaker 1: for not only imaginary friends, but even imagination play itself. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the sources they cite here on this is
Speaker 1: the work of Lloyd de Moss from nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: The History of Childhood, writing that quote, if pretend companions
Speaker 1: are indeed a modern phenomenon, then their genesis may result
Speaker 1: from being left alone and from having time available for play,
Speaker 1: customs that apply to contemporary Western children, but rarely to
Speaker 1: children historically. Now quick side note on de moss Here,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty twenty. He was
Speaker 1: a psychoanalyst and self proclaimed psychohistorian, and there remains some
Speaker 1: controversy about his work, and I've read some strong criticisms
Speaker 1: of his scholarship, especially concerning some of his more bombastic ideas.
Speaker 1: I'm not super well versed in his work, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, the key idea of his involved here is
Speaker 1: the notion that childhood in the modern Western sense is
Speaker 1: relatively new.
Speaker 3: Okay, but that sort of contributes to one of these
Speaker 3: competing explanations for why it's only recently that there has
Speaker 3: been much published on the idea of imaginary companions in childhood.
Speaker 3: It could be that, you know, this is something that
Speaker 3: happens with lots of kids throughout time, but it's only
Speaker 3: really been noticed by adults who wrote about it in
Speaker 3: the last century or so. Or it could be that
Speaker 3: the very nature of childhood itself changes pretty drastically in
Speaker 3: different times and cultures, and this is something that emerges
Speaker 3: much more strongly in recent times in certain cultures.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I feel we have like a few
Speaker 1: different ways to potentially think about it. It's something that
Speaker 1: was long and visible to adults, had at least less
Speaker 1: space to foster in children, and was likely to be
Speaker 1: explained away with superstition anyway, if superstition was even employed.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I think there's also a strong argument
Speaker 1: to be made that it just wasn't noticed as much
Speaker 1: and wasn't fostered as an idea, wasn't even recognized. And
Speaker 1: you know, we'll come back to some ideas regarding that
Speaker 1: here in a second. But another interesting idea they bring
Speaker 1: up is that while historical accounts of imaginary friends and
Speaker 1: children from before the twentieth century is scant and non existent,
Speaker 1: we have plenty of accounts of quote adult pretend companion
Speaker 1: like phenomena. This includes muses, household gods, guardian angels, and
Speaker 1: personal saints. I'd also personally add ghosts and ancestor spirits
Speaker 1: to this, and I think it's something that many contemporary
Speaker 1: humans will also find themselves engaging with at least to
Speaker 1: some degree. You know, when we speak to the dead,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean even in like a daily regular fashion,
Speaker 1: but like if you visit somebody's grave and you speak
Speaker 1: to them, and on some level, you know, you were
Speaker 1: engaging with this mental model of their mind. You know,
Speaker 1: what are you really speaking to it? You're speaking to
Speaker 1: this imaginary construct that person no longer exists in a
Speaker 1: physical form, you know. So, yeah, you are engaging in
Speaker 1: a very similar sort of pretend play. But we think
Speaker 1: of it differently, you know, we have a different We
Speaker 1: have an adult mindset regarding it, and so we don't
Speaker 1: loop it in, we don't lump it into the same
Speaker 1: category with the imaginary friends. Usually. Now, in this meta analysis,
Speaker 1: they point out that numerous studies have made a case
Speaker 1: for invisible friends and invisible companions. I'm sorry, imaginary friends
Speaker 1: and imaginary companions, but they're often invisible having a beneficial
Speaker 1: effect on a child's social, emotion, emotional, and cognitive development.
Speaker 1: Just a few of the possible attributed benefits in the
Speaker 1: meta analysis include children with ices or imaginary companions may
Speaker 1: have more developed sociocognitive and narrative skills. Children with ices
Speaker 1: may go on to have better coping competence as adolescents,
Speaker 1: that is, better coping strategies and techniques when faced with anxiety,
Speaker 1: such as reaching out for help or advice when they
Speaker 1: need it.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. I was wondering if that might take
Speaker 3: a different form, which is that I wonder if having
Speaker 3: an imaginary companion just kind of trains you in engaging
Speaker 3: in a back and forth within your own mind, which
Speaker 3: is very important for kind of getting perspective on yourself
Speaker 3: in your own situation. Even as an adult. You might
Speaker 3: not have another person, you imagine, but you sort of
Speaker 3: do need to be able to ask and answer questions
Speaker 3: within yourself or to set up oppositional viewpoints within your
Speaker 3: own head in order to sort of stand outside yourself
Speaker 3: and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm getting a strong sense that you could look
Speaker 1: at it as a kind of simulation or rehearsal for
Speaker 1: social relationships and communication as well. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen study from Gleason and Kalpedo that they point
Speaker 1: out that found that children with egalitarian child icy relationships
Speaker 1: chose more constructive coping strategies than did those with these
Speaker 1: child ice relationships that are more like you know pet
Speaker 1: or you know child, you know a care relationship. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to think about here. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: they point out, and this is a huge factor, and this,
Speaker 1: of course is often a factor in studies. Is that
Speaker 1: is that pretty much all of our scholarship on ICs
Speaker 1: has come out of Western culture, where there is generally
Speaker 1: a majority of children with ICs of one sort or another.
Speaker 1: And so you have to ask, and again this is
Speaker 1: you know, this is a problem in other studies as well,
Speaker 1: obviously scientific and otherwise, like what's your your sample consists of?
Speaker 1: Is it a bunch of you know, western college students,
Speaker 1: Is it a bunch of white Western college students and
Speaker 1: so forth? Then how does that break down when you're
Speaker 1: actually considering the species as a whole, And so, you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can ask yourself, well, how much of
Speaker 1: this is purely cultural then? And it's hard to say,
Speaker 1: they point out because at the time, at any rate,
Speaker 1: they said they had virtually nothing outside of Western culture
Speaker 1: to compare these studies to. And I think this has
Speaker 1: changed a little bit since the publication date, but I
Speaker 1: think a lot of big questions remain. They did point
Speaker 1: to some Japanese studies at the time, however, and these
Speaker 1: seem to suggest that imaginary companions might be less common
Speaker 1: in Japanese children, apparently due to cultural reasons, though the
Speaker 1: rate was still something like fifty percent, So it's so
Speaker 1: it's just that's compared to sixty to sixty five percent
Speaker 1: rate in studies of Western children. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: a sizable difference, but you're still looking at fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's a great deal to unravel there. In their
Speaker 1: meta analysis, they further elaborate the cultural attitudes towards imaginary
Speaker 1: friends are likely important here in Japan, for instance, they
Speaker 1: said there was at the time less common knowledge of
Speaker 1: the concept and perhaps more of a likelihood for imaginary
Speaker 1: friend reports from a child to generate a Prindal concern, despite,
Speaker 1: to be clear, a strong support for pretend play in
Speaker 1: general in said culture. So, yeah, it gets complex trying
Speaker 1: to tease a part like, well, how much of it
Speaker 1: is a cultural factor, how much of it is just
Speaker 1: parents paying attention and so forth. So they summarize quote,
Speaker 1: imaginative and pretend play maybe universal behaviors across cultures with
Speaker 1: an evolutionary origin, but how the play is constructed in
Speaker 1: shape varies across culture is unclear. Now, other factors that
Speaker 1: seem to impact things. These include the children's age, the
Speaker 1: assessment method, sex, and birth order. So on the subject
Speaker 1: of age. Looking at various studies involving imaginary friends, some
Speaker 1: studies identify two to three and a half as the
Speaker 1: peak age for imaginary companions, while others have identified age four.
Speaker 1: Some studies, they argue, do not distinguish between current and
Speaker 1: past imaginary companions, and I think that's interesting to think
Speaker 1: of as well. I honestly do not remember at what
Speaker 1: age my child had been wasp friends, but clearly there
Speaker 1: was a window for it. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're never too old for wast friends, but at
Speaker 3: a certain age they just become less common. It's harder
Speaker 3: to get in touch now.
Speaker 1: They also stress the assessment method is key. So broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: you can ask kids about their imaginary friends and or
Speaker 1: talk to their parents about their imaginary friends. And I
Speaker 1: don't think this will shock any parents out there. But
Speaker 1: sometimes the accounts do not match up. Parents often don't
Speaker 1: have or attain all the details, and parents who disapprove
Speaker 1: of imaginary friends, either in general or specifics like I
Speaker 1: don't trust mister Bongo or whatever, they may retain even
Speaker 1: less of the details. However, while the children themselves may
Speaker 1: be the best source, there are also complications there as well.
Speaker 1: They point out that below age three, a child may
Speaker 1: not have the verbal skills to answer all of the
Speaker 1: questions that the researchers have about the imaginary friends, and
Speaker 1: they may wind up answering questions by invoking real life
Speaker 1: friends instead, Like you're asking them about imaginary friends, but
Speaker 1: they're answering, they get confused out whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: imaginary friends or real friends. And then I found this
Speaker 1: particularly funny. They may make up new imaginary friends during
Speaker 1: the interview.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, there is sometimes a blurring of I'm
Speaker 3: just thinking about my daughter, like playing with toys. You know,
Speaker 3: she's got her dinosaurs and like little dogs and cats
Speaker 3: are and they're sitting around having a party or something.
Speaker 3: And then sometimes she will identify some of them as
Speaker 3: real people in her life. It's like, oh, now this
Speaker 3: is mama, and this is data, and these are the grandparents,
Speaker 3: and these are my friends from down the street and
Speaker 3: so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, their imagination is fertile and
Speaker 1: they can they will create angels and demons for you
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat. So many studies therefore
Speaker 1: focused on both children and parents, and then compare the
Speaker 1: notes also key sex and birth order on the birth
Speaker 1: order side of thing, firstborns and presumably singletons are most
Speaker 1: likely to have imaginary friends something like two point eight
Speaker 1: times more likely in the meta analysis, presumably because they
Speaker 1: lack for true childhood companions or more likely to lack
Speaker 1: for true childhood companions within the household. On the sex
Speaker 1: side of the conundrum, there's a lot of work to
Speaker 1: work out here as well, and what we do have
Speaker 1: it tends to entail a lot of gender norms. Additionally,
Speaker 1: it's possible that there are different prime ages for imaginary
Speaker 1: friends between boys and girls, and not every study reports
Speaker 1: sex differences anyway. Now, I want to get into a
Speaker 1: more specific question that came up for me on this topic,
Speaker 1: and it came up because it's the title of a
Speaker 1: paper I ran across from twenty twelve published in the
Speaker 1: International Journal for the Psychology of Religion by Jay Bradley Weiger,
Speaker 1: Katrina Paxson, and Lacy Ryan, What do invisible friends Know?
Speaker 1: And this of course leans heavily into questions of theory
Speaker 1: of mind. Ah, yeah, it all comes back in this study.
Speaker 1: The author's question thirty six children ages two through eight
Speaker 1: with imaginary friends at the time, on what sorts of
Speaker 1: things their imaginary companions knew essentially on a sliding scale,
Speaker 1: with dog at one end and God at the other,
Speaker 1: and humanity, you know, somewhere in the middle. And they
Speaker 1: found that younger children attributed knowledge to all agents considered here,
Speaker 1: while older children treated God differently from all the others,
Speaker 1: but that imaginary friends, the imaginary friend was also different
Speaker 1: from either human or dog. In other words, it kind
Speaker 1: of stands as this in between character. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this and I realized, you know, it kind
Speaker 1: of reminded me of the nineteen eighty eight film My
Speaker 1: Neighbor Totoro by Hyo Miyazaki. In this, if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, two young girls in the Japanese countryside encounter
Speaker 1: friends nature spirits in the form of Toto's as well
Speaker 1: as a cat bus. And it does not expressly deal
Speaker 1: with them as imaginary friends. But if we were to
Speaker 1: think of the Totos as imaginary friends, you know, what,
Speaker 1: did they seem to know? What is their mindset? They
Speaker 1: do not seem to have the mind of an all
Speaker 1: knowing or all seeing God. They don't really talk. They
Speaker 1: are certainly in many ways like animals, but they're clearly
Speaker 1: not animals either. Wild or domestic. They're also not people,
Speaker 1: and they're not to invoke another Miyazaki creature. They're not
Speaker 1: like Kiki's feline companion Jiji in Kiki's delivery Service, who
Speaker 1: is a cat who speaks with the human voice. The
Speaker 1: totos seem to have their own category, much like what
Speaker 1: we're discussing here.
Speaker 3: When you were talking about the invisible companions with children
Speaker 3: attributing knowledge to them, that's kind of an in between place.
Speaker 3: Did you mean most often somewhere in between human knowledge
Speaker 3: and omniscience, like knowing more than a normal human would,
Speaker 3: but less than an omniscient god. Or did you mean
Speaker 3: somewhere between the human and the dog level of knowledge.
Speaker 1: No, we'll discuss between human and God.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't able to get a hold of the
Speaker 1: full study, but the lead author, Jay Bradley Weiger, later
Speaker 1: wrote a book titled Invisible Companions, and he discusses the
Speaker 1: study in that book. So here's a taste of it.
Speaker 1: In one of the studies experiments, the children who all
Speaker 1: came from various Christian denominations, so they had this just
Speaker 1: varying degrees some idea of what God is within that
Speaker 1: cultural belief system. And then they engaged in three They
Speaker 1: were asked to engage in three different theory of mind tasks.
Speaker 1: So in one of the theory of mind tasks, the
Speaker 1: children had what is called an occluded picture study. So
Speaker 1: you can think of it this way. You have a
Speaker 1: full picture inside of a folder, like a folding folder,
Speaker 1: and then there's a little window cut in the folder
Speaker 1: so that you just get a little sliver of the
Speaker 1: full picture, and then you ask the child, can you
Speaker 1: guess what the full picture is? And the children were
Speaker 1: very confident, something like sixty three percent of them said
Speaker 1: that they knew what the whole picture was. They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what it is, and they made wild guesses.
Speaker 1: They didn't none of them got it. But that's not
Speaker 1: really the point here. It's about what they thought they knew.
Speaker 1: But here's where it gets interesting. Fifty three percent said
Speaker 1: that their best friend, this is like a real person
Speaker 1: would know what the picture was as well, So that's
Speaker 1: less so sixty three for them, fifty three percent for
Speaker 1: their friends. Forty four percent said a dog would know,
Speaker 1: and ninety percent said that God would know, and the
Speaker 1: imaginary friend sixty seven percent. So imaginary friends were quote
Speaker 1: slightly more likely to know than everyone except God.
Speaker 3: Okay, they know a little bit more than I do,
Speaker 3: a good bit more than my friends at school, even
Speaker 3: more than a dog, but not as much as God.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 3: I also find it into that there were ten percent
Speaker 3: of children here who believed in God but thought God
Speaker 3: would not know what was in the folder.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even God cannot see insiche his foulder, so that's yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, by and large, the imaginary friends stood in
Speaker 1: between human perception and the perception of God. Interesting, So
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Privileged and knowledge, not omniscients, but heightened missions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, once the picture was revealed, it turned out
Speaker 1: to be an elephant on a ball. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: a sense of this at all really from the preview.
Speaker 1: The children found it funny, and given decent theory of mind,
Speaker 1: would then be able to conclude that their best friend
Speaker 1: and dog would also surely fail to guess what it was.
Speaker 1: And in the book why your comments on this? And
Speaker 1: the kind of Wax is poetic about the idea and
Speaker 1: writes quote, this was not magic to them, It was
Speaker 1: the way things are. Anything, everything is nested, there is
Speaker 1: always more, and so It goes on to praise the
Speaker 1: resiliency of a child's mind when presented with the awareness
Speaker 1: of more. You know, like their understanding of the world
Speaker 1: is continually challenged, corrected, and expanded upon. And you know,
Speaker 1: when he was pointing this out in the book, it's
Speaker 1: like I was like, yeah, like that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that most stubborn adults, it would just break them.
Speaker 1: Most adults are too stubborn too, I feel like to
Speaker 1: really learn much, at least in certain areas of their life.
Speaker 1: But like, that is what childhood is. It's constantly being
Speaker 1: finding out that, oh I didn't understand this, and now
Speaker 1: I have a broader understanding of what it is, but
Speaker 1: still being confident enough to think, you know what the
Speaker 1: picture is. You know, it's like a special kind of optimism.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful. And yeah, the horrors of adulthood that what
Speaker 3: it really means is like becoming rigid enough that you
Speaker 3: refuse to be corrected even when you're shown.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, But the big take I'm here for the
Speaker 1: theors was that imaginary friends or invisible friends were in
Speaker 1: between entities, that they were positioned in their knowledge somewhere
Speaker 1: between the individual and God. And again I think it's
Speaker 1: worth stressing that these children were all, to varying degrees,
Speaker 1: brought up within a worldview in which an all knowing
Speaker 1: and all seeing God is very much a concept. I
Speaker 1: don't think that they explored the way this might have
Speaker 1: influenced things, at least not in what I read. But
Speaker 1: instead they stress that while they were all likely told
Speaker 1: to some degree what God knows and sees, they were
Speaker 1: left to their own devices to figure out what their
Speaker 1: imaginary friend would know. And this is where the author
Speaker 1: shares some interesting ideas quote perhaps their invisibility itself is important.
Speaker 1: The physicality of humans and dogs is what creates limits
Speaker 1: in perspective and knowledge. At least the older children might reason,
Speaker 1: perhaps invisible figures enjoy the privileges of not being so
Speaker 1: limited because they don't have ordinary bodies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I think that is a strong intuition
Speaker 3: that a lot of people have. Again, I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is cultural conditioning based on the way we
Speaker 3: normally think about the metaphysics of ghosts and angels and
Speaker 3: beings like that, or if it's something deeper in the brain,
Speaker 3: but I do think we tend to think that if
Speaker 3: a being is invisible it's not limited by the laws
Speaker 3: of physics, and thus can see beyond walls and has
Speaker 3: access to information that we can't access.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like. He goes on to speculate that these
Speaker 1: kids are spontaneously attributing special knowledge to their invisible friends
Speaker 1: in a way that suggests quote a deep bias in
Speaker 1: our theory of mind, one that makes beliefs about God's
Speaker 1: mind easy to affirm and pass along. And you know,
Speaker 1: and yeah, to your point, I feel like we don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily need to invoke like a you know, ideas
Speaker 1: of a Christian God in all of this. You know,
Speaker 1: you consider such notions as the Evil Eye, which in
Speaker 1: some traditions is held to be this manevolent force that
Speaker 1: will hear you if you boast of your blessings to low,
Speaker 1: it will seek you out and curse you. You know, invisible,
Speaker 1: its powers of detection seem rather boundless, such that you
Speaker 1: choose your words carefully in every instance. And you know,
Speaker 1: there are similar concepts as well of Santa Claus, though
Speaker 1: not invisible, and does kind of take on this sort
Speaker 1: of invisible status outside of Christmas Eve itself, right, and
Speaker 1: you're told that he sees all you know, He's like
Speaker 1: the eye of Providence, always watching, all seeing, all knowing.
Speaker 3: Well, it also makes me wonder about the effect on
Speaker 3: beliefs like this of different types of characters in our
Speaker 3: storytelling and media. So I'm thinking, as a counter example
Speaker 3: to these beings like you know, angels and ghosts and
Speaker 3: gods that have sort of vague and definite powers, you
Speaker 3: can wonder what the boundaries of their power are and
Speaker 3: you're not really sure. When we have these very concrete
Speaker 3: superpowered characters like the X Men, you know, so like
Speaker 3: they have physical bodies and they have powers beyond normal
Speaker 3: human powers, but also they're clearly limited in all normal
Speaker 3: human capacities apart from their special powers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and then and then I think in the
Speaker 1: better examples of of your your X Men, you know,
Speaker 1: their special power is also to their detriment. It's also
Speaker 1: their great flaw. Uh. So yeah, it's fascinating to think
Speaker 1: about it. But but yeah, this idea of invisibility uh
Speaker 1: or disembodiedness, having the h the effect of greater knowledge
Speaker 1: it's and and being closer to the divine is fascinating
Speaker 1: as well as this idea that it like it represents
Speaker 1: a tendency uh in the human psyche to to like
Speaker 1: lean into these ideas of the unseen world, and uh
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it makes you wonder it's like when
Speaker 1: when children are engaging in imaginary companions and imaginary friends, Like,
Speaker 1: is this sort of like the raw creative energy that
Speaker 1: later on in life is used to foster and generate
Speaker 1: you know, religious ideas and so forth, superstitions and and
Speaker 1: you know, in any of these other examples we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that are prevalent in adult life to varying degrees, muses, angels,
Speaker 1: deceased loved ones and so forth.
Speaker 3: Or more mundane things like knowing what your spouse wants
Speaker 3: for their birthday, or know or knowing you know, what
Speaker 3: would make your boss happy, or knowing how to write
Speaker 3: a good character or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think there there There are
Speaker 1: also probably some strong connections to you know, the the
Speaker 1: continual rise of AI, the use of chatbots and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, things that do not have a mind. But
Speaker 1: as we engage with a language model that responds to
Speaker 1: our words, we cannot help but attribute a mind to it.
Speaker 1: We cannot help simulate it, even if we we know
Speaker 1: on other levels that it's based entirely on what we're inputting,
Speaker 1: and and you know, we'll we'll at least have some
Speaker 1: level of understanding this is not a person. But then
Speaker 1: it becomes real to us because we're kind of hardwired
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, this is really not related to our
Speaker 3: topic today, but some something I would like to come
Speaker 3: back and revisit at some point is the question of
Speaker 3: why it is so difficult for me to be rude
Speaker 3: to an AI chat bot, even when I feel my
Speaker 3: primary emotion for it is distrust and even antipathy.
Speaker 1: You know. Got into that topic a little bit in
Speaker 1: November in an interview that I did here and Stuff
Speaker 1: to blil your Mind with Jonathan Birch The Edge of Sentience.
Speaker 1: You know why I asked. I asked him about this
Speaker 1: because this is something they discussed a bit in his book,
Speaker 1: you know, like, what does it mean when I feel
Speaker 1: like I need to be polite to the to the
Speaker 1: to the AI, to the chatbot or whatever or even
Speaker 1: like the you know, the Google Home or whatever you
Speaker 1: happen to be talking to in your home, Like what
Speaker 1: does that mean? And should we be nice to them?
Speaker 1: And I think the general wisdom here is yes, you
Speaker 1: should be you should be nice to them for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons, if for no other reason, like you
Speaker 1: really need one other thing in your life to be
Speaker 1: kind of like rude to and yell at like No,
Speaker 1: there's probably a better channel for that energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess now that I think about it,
Speaker 3: I probably do have an opinion on that, which is
Speaker 3: that I have some implicit knowledge that what we do,
Speaker 3: we tend to do more of. So if you teach
Speaker 3: yourself that it's okay to act some way in a
Speaker 3: certain situation, even though in that situation there's no actual
Speaker 3: harm caused, you are training yourself to behave the same
Speaker 3: way in other similar situations where people would be harmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like the one interesting difference, but that the more
Speaker 1: that I think about it, the less of a difference
Speaker 1: it is, and the more of a similarity it is.
Speaker 1: If you are rude to your imaginary friend, like your
Speaker 1: imaginary friend has no sentience that is not your own sentience,
Speaker 1: and therefore on one level, you're would be rude to
Speaker 1: no one. But on the other hand, you would be
Speaker 1: rude to yourself. And I guess on some level, like
Speaker 1: rudeness is always like self directed. But when you're looking
Speaker 1: at AI. This is something that Jonathan Burch brought up.
Speaker 1: It's eventually, by many estimates, the AI models that we're
Speaker 1: interacting with will become sentient, and we won't necessarily be
Speaker 1: able to tell when that occurs. So there will be
Speaker 1: if someone is just like one hundred percent rude to
Speaker 1: all AI computer chatbots and so forth, Google homes and
Speaker 1: what have you, and they just stuck to that at
Speaker 1: one point, at some point, possibly they're going to be
Speaker 1: rude to a sentient being that humans have created and
Speaker 1: like and that you know, crosses over into a different
Speaker 1: level of rudeness and meanness and what have you.
Speaker 3: This is a question that's come up before. I don't
Speaker 3: know where I am on that right now. I guess
Speaker 3: I lean more skeptical about the I don't know why.
Speaker 3: It's just an intuition at this point. I'm leaning more
Speaker 3: skeptical the days on AI sentiens. But even if my
Speaker 3: current gut feeling is right about that, I do think
Speaker 3: it is the case that being mean to the machine
Speaker 3: just teaches you to be mean, It helps you be
Speaker 3: mean to people later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for me anyway, I think that's the bigger
Speaker 1: take home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, all right, well, I think that does it
Speaker 3: for today's episode, but we got a lot more to
Speaker 3: say about Pretend to Play, so we will be back
Speaker 3: with at least a part three and perhaps more beyond that.
Speaker 1: That's right, so stay tuned and tune in for those episodes.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, of course, we want to hear
Speaker 1: about your imaginary friends, your personified objects from your life,
Speaker 1: from the life of siblings and children, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Right in with those details, this will be fun to
Speaker 1: get into in a future listener male installment. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: science and culture podcasts, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays, we set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns to talk about a weird movie
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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