WEBVTT - Echoborg: The Computer Controls You 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:13.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from dot Com. Hey, 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:15.640 wasn't the Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:19.159 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're running a 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.319 rerun here today. We haven't run a repeat episode in 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.960 quite a while, but this is one that came out, 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.520 I think in August of last year. We really enjoyed it. 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:33.160 It's a it's a very engaging, perfect perfectly suitable stuff 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.360 to blow your mind topic, and it mentions fruit trees, 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.440 which is basically the thing I like more than anything else, 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:40.600 fruit trees. Yeah. Well, as long as we get a 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:42.760 fruit tree and there, we're good. So here we go. 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:49.440 Let's enter the world of the echo borg. I want 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:51.800 to take you into the future here for a minute. 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:56.480 I want you to imagine this scenario. You've been contacted 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:00.400 by an artificial intelligence an AI that identifies itself only 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:04.040 as mind your Manners or mim and them as a 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.440 wonderful job opportunity for you. It needs an echo borg 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:11.399 as it attends an industry conference related to the corporation 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.200 it head. In other words, it needs to augment a 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:16.039 human with a non invasive sensory array so as to 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.640 use them as its living avatar. Hold on the second, 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:23.440 This sounds like a creepy job. Now, what exactly does 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:27.320 this job involve? Essentially, NIM is going to speak into 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:29.880 your ears through this sensory array. It's gonna pick up 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:32.960 and everything going around in your surroundings, and you will 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:37.920 repeat or shadow its words and conversation with various unaugmented 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:40.679 humans throughout the week at this conference. So you're gonna 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:44.720 be its mouth, it's face, it's every expression. As NIM 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:49.040 attends several key meetings and networks with industry leaders, you 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:52.440 will be the human mask for all its interactions. Now, 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:55.680 you of course be required to sign a standard nondisclosure agreement, 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.760 and as mims schedule for the conference is fairly rigorous, 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.320 you're gonna be swapping out duties for the week with 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:05.360 a second echo board selected for more casual and interactions. 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.280 But this is a huge opportunity for you. Aies like 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.919 them are known to establish a harem of echo bots, 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:14.600 each suited to a particular culture or setting. This could 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:18.080 be your big break. You could become the pampered meat 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.400 suit of a powerful machine brain. Yes, and it's you know, 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:24.520 a great gig if you can get it, you know. Yeah, 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:26.760 And now I'm sure that this job, while it might 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:30.560 be physically demanding, is it probably doesn't require all that 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:32.960 much skill, right, So you just have to be able 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.959 to repeat words pretty much in real time and give 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.840 some convincing facial expressions and hand gestures. Yeah, you would 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.600 need to bring life to its words to a certain extent. 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:46.680 I mean, that's part of being the mask. Like when 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:48.919 one example that comes to mind, of course, is the 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.440 Arrested development they had the the the surrogate character that 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:58.200 shows up while George sr. Is under house arrests. This 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:00.760 character was just a ball cap the video camera on, 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.480 and he gives a very dead pan version of everything 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:05.480 that George is saying. And in that he would be 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.280 you would be a terrible echo borg or thronoite. As 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:12.960 we're going to discuss. Uh. Ideally, the individual repeating the 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:17.079 computer's words would would make it make the words come alive. Okay, 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.639 So what we're envisioning here is sort of the exact 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.000 opposite of what certain sci fi writers have predicted with 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.160 robot avatars. The idea of a robot avatar, like in 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.160 the movie Avatar, you could probably say, Oh, though I 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.919 don't know if that's a robot, I don't know. It's 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:34.920 in plenty of sci fi. You you hook your brain 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:38.720 up to a computer, and through the computer, you control 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.600 the actions and words and deeds, all of the outward 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.400 motion of some kind of physical embodiment that's not really 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.000 your body. Yeah, Like I've seen it employed as a 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.680 possibility for space exploration. Right, it's too much for us 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.160 to send a human, delicate human body to this other world. 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.520 But you send a robot and then make that robot 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:58.720 the avatar for the human explorer, which is great for 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.680 space exploration as it combines the sort of reactiveness and 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:05.760 ingenuity of the human mind with the hardiness of a 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.480 robot body and the hardiness and expendability, let's be frank, 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.600 of the robot body. Um. So yeah, So what we're 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:17.599 envisioning here is the exact opposite a computer mind controlling 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.159 your body. Yes, I mean a computer using a human 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.480 It's kind of a meat puppet to to give life 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:27.279 to its its voice and its will in human and 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:30.000 our actions. All Right, So you mentioned the terms serra 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.039 noid a minute ago, and I'm gonna assume. Actually I 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:35.719 don't need to assume, because I know that comes from 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:42.839 Serrano to Bergerac. Yes, Serrano back Edmund Roston play. A 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:44.760 lot of people may be familiar with this, of course, 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.640 from the Steve Martin movie Roxanne, which was a retelling 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:51.200 of the same story. My first introduction to Syrra No 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:55.000 was the Wishbone episode when I was a kid peek 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.560 behind the curtain. Robert did not know what wishbone was. 0:04:57.800 --> 0:04:59.360 I had to explain it to him. I I don't 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:01.360 know how I miss us. It sounds delightful. Now, who 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.919 who did the dog play? Which character? I think it 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.200 was Syrano, right, so the dog. If you're not familiar 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:10.640 with this story, Serrano de Bergerac is based on a 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.680 real life character from history, but in the play it's 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:17.960 sort of dramatized, fictionalized made more exciting. And the idea 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:19.839 is that he is a very ugly man with a 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.159 big nose, so he has a hard time wooing women. 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.839 But he's also very clever and brave. He has a 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:30.280 great mind in the wrong kind of body. But if 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:34.640 he teams up with somebody who's very handsome and very stupid, 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:39.120 together they make the perfect package. So all he needs 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.360 to do is get a handsome man to pair it. 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.920 Every single word he tells him, and there you've got 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.200 the perfect suitor. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh, you know, and 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.640 it's often played for for comedy, right, because you have 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.919 especially unarrested development. You end up with with signals getting crossed. Uh. 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.479 You know, the individual who is who is informing the 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.200 surrogate says something uh that's not intended to be transmitted, 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.120 and it ends up transmitted and then all sorts of 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:06.600 hilarity ensues. Yeah. I think it's played for comedy and 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:10.839 the rust and play also, But but it raises some 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:16.240 interesting questions about how we perceive other people and how 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:20.280 we perceive the will behind other people. Yeah. Well, one 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.160 thing that I think is certainly true is that people 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:28.080 are very sensitive to the outwardly visible source of information, 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.719 oftentimes more than they are sensitive to the content of 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.080 the information. Like, if somebody is making an argument to you, 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.400 it's very likely that you're judging the merits of that 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.800 argument more on what the person looks like and what 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:45.760 their voice sounds like than the actual merits of the 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.719 arguments they're making. And indeed, you have just a whole 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.279 communication array that is delivering this information. I mean, it's 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.400 it's the voice it's also often the hands of the 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:59.240 individual to body language, the expressions, the micro expressions, the 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.279 icon tact all of the all of these features that 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.240 add that additional level of engagement to any sort of information. Yeah, 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:10.200 the quality of the tuxedo. And so this connects in 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.240 a strange way with a question that has often come 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:17.120 up in artificial intelligence, which is the idea of the 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.280 touring test. And I think the way it relates is 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:26.000 if you are the tuxedo, if you're the meat tuxedo 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.920 for an artificial intelligence speaking through you, does that in 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.960 any way influence how people receive the messages coming from 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.440 an artificial intelligence. So we should probably explain a little 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:39.440 bit the idea of the touring test for people who 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:43.520 aren't familiar. This is a standard often referred to concept 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.280 in in the progress of artificial intelligence, and it comes 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:51.760 from the computer scientist and sort of a I pioneer 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:57.680 alan touring. And there's no actual one touring tests. You 0:07:57.680 --> 0:07:59.920 can't buy the kit online and bring it, bring it 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:02.560 home and to start im pulling it against every toaster 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:05.960 in your vicinity. Right, It's more of a general concept 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.320 that's been applied in a lot of ways, and the 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:13.360 most basic, stripped down version of the test is, can 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.680 a human chatting through text only tell if the person 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.920 they're chatting with is a real human being or a 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.480 computer program designed to talk like a real human being. 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.760 I mean, it basically comes down to two two turings 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.480 insistence that, uh, the question of whether a machine can 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.600 think is too meaningless to really waste time on, so 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:36.840 you have to instead think, well, am I am I 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:38.880 buying it? Am I am I fooled by it? It 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:43.080 is it is creating the the semblance of intelligence, and 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.640 and it deceives me. Then that's what we need to 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.560 look for, exactly right. And I think I largely agree 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.400 with the point he's making, because how can you tell 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:57.079 that other humans possess real intelligence? I mean, come up 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.920 with a way of explaining how you know other human 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.320 really think? You say, well, I mean, listen to the 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.200 way they talk, look at the way they react to 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:09.120 what I say. It's a very complex kind of reaction. Well, 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.720 what if you could have a computer robot that does 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.280 all of the same things, then would that not be thinking? 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.040 I mean, all we have to go by in science 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:23.680 is externally measurable phenomena. You can't get inside someone else's 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:26.960 sentience and judge whether or not they're thinking by I 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:30.840 don't know, just sort of like your phenomenal intuition. I 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.320 think it's in carry practice The hog Father, where there's 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:37.000 a essentially a thinking machine that's used by the wizards 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.280 there and uh, and and when somebody asks that the 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.360 wizard using the machine if the machine thinks for itself, 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:45.640 and and he says, uh, says don't know. It just 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.000 it just appears makes it has the appearance of thinking 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:50.120 for itself. And yeah, theah, the character says, well, it's 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:53.760 just like everyone else then all right, right, Yeah, if 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.080 you want to be a solop syst, you could say, well, 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.480 I'm actually the only object in the entire universe that thinks, 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.800 and I'm just surrounded by very convincing artificial intelligences. Yeah. 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:06.240 I mean we discussed in our Alien episode that we 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.760 did recently. It's when you start trying to it's it's 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:12.240 hard enough for us to to decide and quantify what 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:15.680 human consciousness is, what intelligence is, and when we start 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.800 looking for artificial versions of it, uh, it becomes difficult. 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:21.520 So you have to have some sort of standard to 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:23.679 say all right, this is this is enough and that's 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:25.640 what the Turing tests that's out to do. Right. It's 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.360 the idea, not can computers think, but can they convincingly 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.840 appear to think? Yeah, and of course this shows up 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:33.640 in a lot of science fiction. I believe it. Uh, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:35.920 it's in Blade Runner. It's been while since I have 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:41.079 seen Blade Runner, but more recently in Exmina. Oh yeah, 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:43.679 I just saw that movie, and maybe we should talk 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:47.600 about that later in this episode, but I'll go ahead 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:50.040 and give my endorsement now. I thought it was pretty awesome. Yeah, 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.760 it's it's a it's a very very engaging film. I 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.760 recommend it to anyone who iss a listener to the show. Okay, 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:59.680 but let's describe a Turing test scenario. Like I said, 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.440 there's no one test, but lots of people try to 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.360 put together some kind of Touring test type scenario to 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:09.400 test their chat bot to see how good it is. 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.440 And the chat bot is just a program that you 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.360 have a conversation with. If you've ever engaged, if you've 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.200 ever been in a website and that little, you know, 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.679 text screen comes up and there's some sort of little uh, 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.440 you know, stock art of an individual you might be 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.200 talking to. One of these chatterpots. Yeah. Yeah, So let's 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:28.840 paint a little picture. Let's say you walk into a 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.800 mostly empty warehouse, and right in the center of the 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.200 warehouse as a card table and a folding chair and 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:37.760 a computer terminal. And you go and you sit down 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:41.000 at the terminal, and there's a little blinking cursor and 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:46.560 you type hello, and it responds hello back, and then 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.199 you type some more things, and it types some more 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:50.840 things back to you, and you get to talk to 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:54.280 it for some length of time it was pre specified. 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:56.079 Maybe you talk to it for five minutes, maybe you 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.600 talk to it for twenty minutes. But at the end 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:02.280 of the session, it's your job to say, now, what 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.640 was I just interacting with? Was that a computer program 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.440 or was that a person sitting at a terminal like 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.920 mine in the warehouse next door. These days, most of 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:15.160 the time, I think it's still going to be pretty 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:17.920 easy to tell, especially if you have a limited amount 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.959 of time to interact, and if the chat bot program 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.640 operates within some kind of I don't know, borderline cheating 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.000 kind of kind of conditions, like some of these bots 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.400 might suggest they have a conversational limitation, like, oh, I'm 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.679 a real person who is a child from another country, 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.840 and I don't natively speak your language. That makes it 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.960 a little easier to be convincing. Or you could say 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:49.360 that you suffer from some kind of condition that makes 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:53.000 you interact socially in a different way than most people would. 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.080 And in any of these cases, you're sort of like 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.559 putting dampeners on our judgment. You're saying, like, Okay, I 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.719 shouldn't be expecting somebody who interacts just like anybody I 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:04.840 would meet, you know, at work or at a party 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.680 or something like that. This person might very well be 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:09.880 a human and still be acting kind of strange. But 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.000 once you say okay, you can talk for four hours 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.560 and this is just you know, a regular person who 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.480 doesn't have any kind of limitations on their conversation you, 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:22.760 you'll pretty much always be able to tell these days, 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:24.520 I would say yeah, and you know, and a lot 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:26.720 of this is gonna, you know, at least start off 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.120 as just small talk, you know, like you were saying, hello, 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:31.400 what's your name? What do you what? What? What do 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.240 you what? The what's your favorite band? You know, that's something, 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.680 and then that the the the AI or the attempted 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.640 an AI, the chatter bought attempts to answer those in 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:42.640 a way to fool you into thinking as a real person. 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.719 In fact, let's go ahead and just roll through a 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.600 short script from a chatter bought conversation. Yeah, so we'll 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.800 reveal the source of this in a bit. But Hi, Robert, 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:59.560 what kind of movies do you like? Um? Historical? I 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:03.440 prefer modern era films. Great, What are your favorites? My 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.880 favorite movie so far is The Imitation Game. It's about 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:11.200 my idol, Alan Turing. What did you like most about it? 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:16.320 I like fruit trees? Were there lots of fruit trees 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:21.360 in the movie. Maybe we can talk about that later. Okay, 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:24.680 shall I continue with gardening or do you want me 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:29.480 to move on? You can move on. So I think 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:34.280 it's pretty obvious who was the chatter bought in that conversation. Yeah, 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:36.920 so I was the chatter bot there. That was coming 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.200 from a chat bot named Rose, which was created by 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:44.040 Bruce Wilcox and documented. That was verbat on a transcript 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.360 of a video produced by some researchers that we're going 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.440 to talk about in a minute. But there's a variation 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.240 on that script we just read because in the video 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.440 that didn't take place at a text terminal all the 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.160 lines that both of us said, we're spoken out loud 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.200 by human beings. Now, how could that be. Well, that's 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.720 going to tie into the concept of echo borgs, which 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.120 we brought up at the beginning. So to get into 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:13.160 echo borgs, we need to talk about a favorite figure 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:17.160 in the weird history of psychological research in the United States, 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.720 and that's Stanley Milgram. Yes, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:28.080 three four, best known for his controversial Obedience experiments, actually 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:32.400 a series of social psychology experiments about nineteen in all, 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:36.320 conducted by Milgram in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, you probably 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:38.760 have heard about these. If you're familiar with Millgram, it's 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.000 probably from the They're often just called the Milgram experiments, 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.080 and they sort of give him a bad name because 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:47.760 they were they were kind of nasty. Yeah, they're they're 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:49.480 generally anytime you see a list of like, you know, 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:54.680 top ten scariest or weirdest or most evil psychological experiments, 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.000 they tend they tend to throw this one in though, uh, 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.160 you know, it's it's really more troubling and what it 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:03.360 reveals about about human human nature. So what was the deal? Well, 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:06.040 it's important to note that the first one of these 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:08.840 took place in nineteen sixty one, just three months after 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.800 the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.680 Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. And so Milgram wanted to see 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:17.720 just how far we'd go in the name of a 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:19.920 bang an authority figure. Of course, of course, because the 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.640 whole argument is are these bad people? Were they just 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.920 simply following orders? Right? It was the idea that the 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.160 Germans are especially evil, where the where the people who 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.400 became the you know, guards at Auschwitz just from birth, 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.760 truly evil people who were susceptible to that kind of behavior, 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:40.120 Or would we behave the same way in the same circumstances. So, yeah, 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:42.320 the experiment revolved around, you know, an individual in a 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.720 room and you hear the sounds of someone being shocked 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.480 in the next room whenever that individual pushes a button, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.080 pulls a lever or whatever on the command of an 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.680 authority figure. So the question is how far will you 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.720 go to when will you stop shocking? Would you ever 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.280 stop shocking that individual in the next room if an 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.320 authority figure is telling you to do it and telling 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.119 you that it's okay. Yeah, And what Millgram claimed to 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.040 find through his experiments is Yeah, even you know, your 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.640 regular people, your next door neighbor Americans, if they've got 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.399 somebody in a white lab coat who's supposedly in charge 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.560 of the experiment saying please continue shocking them, they've agreed 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.440 to this in advance. Lots of people will continue shocking 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.800 even after the supposed victim of the shocking. Now we 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.119 should say that in this experiment, nobody was acting. Nobody 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.240 actually electrocuted in the next rim. Yeah, there were actors 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.280 pretending to be in in immense pain from these shocks. 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.560 That lots of people in the experiment would supposedly continue 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.479 shocking them. Yeah. And if you want to hear more 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.840 about that, that series of experiments and what some of 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.439 the ramifications of it, uh, stuff to bow your mind. 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:48.879 Did an episode earlier in the year titled The Power 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.080 of Polite and I'll make sure to link to that 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:55.240 on the landing page for this episode. But Stanley Milgram 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.040 also and some other experiments going on. Right, he wasn't 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:02.639 just doing the shocking people and Nazi experiments. He was 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:06.200 in other ways to make us feel that troubled about 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.720 our humanity. Where they all creepy did he specialized only 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:12.120 in creepy science, and I think he had some less 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.600 creepy ones, you know, I mean, you know, they involved 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.360 how we I think most of his work revolved around 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.560 how we view ourselves and how we have your bodies, 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.960 et cetera, by effects of puppies and lollipops on our psyche. Yeah, 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:26.560 but you know, not everything was necessarily um, you know, 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.639 people in the next room dying. Sure, But we referred 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.520 to a term at the beginning of this episode which 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:35.280 is serenoid. And this also comes from Stanley Milgram, I 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.840 believe from unpublished results of some experiments he conducted, right right. 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:42.040 He he never published any of these. They ended up, 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.720 you know, putting some work into it, but then going 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:46.800 off in a different direction with his research. Yeah. So, 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:49.480 as we said, the term serenoid comes from Syrano to 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:52.480 bears direct. But what was the deal with Milgram's experiments? 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.000 So Milgram essentially wanted to see, hey, if you're that 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:59.119 the woman that is being wooed bye bye bye by 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.560 in those meat puppet his handsome, his handsome young man. 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:06.159 I think her name was Roxanne. Roxanne Roxane's on the 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:09.680 balcony being wooed by a handsome meat puppet that's being 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:12.480 fed lines by Syra. No. Yeah, if you're Roxanne, would 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:14.760 you be able to detect something was weird? Would you? 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.879 Would you encounter this young man and say, you know, 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:21.000 he seems a little more clever than than he should be, 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.480 or there's a delay in in what he's telling me, 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:25.159 you know, would there be something that would tip you, 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:28.719 tip you off to the deception? You know, with modern technology, 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.960 I'd imagine you could carry out that experiment pretty easily. Yeah, 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:34.840 I mean, even at the time, the technology was good enough. 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.040 So in these unpublished experiments, he had a source speak 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:43.440 into a microphone and a shadower listened through a hidden earpiece. 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.639 Then he or she would repeat whatever they heard, you know, 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.040 basic you know, arrested development surro, good kind of situation. 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:53.479 But here's the thing. He found that with practice, speech 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.720 shadowing becomes easier and easier, Like we really take to 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:59.159 it rather naturally. They say, it's not that hard at all. 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.359 I read in one of the sources we used for 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.119 this episode that sometimes it only takes a few milliseconds 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.240 of delay between the speech being fed in through the 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.800 earpiece and saying it. We're ready, willing and able to 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:15.080 not think for ourselves. And so yeah, he observed that 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.639 he set all this up, put people in motion with 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.199 these with a source and a shadower, and then a 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.680 test subject having to interact with this individual or is 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.800 it is individuals um and then give feedback about what 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:30.399 they thought. And he observed that people couldn't tell the 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.720 difference between a serenoid again that person, uh that that 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.560 that shadower who is informed by another source just repeating 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.000 words that are entering his or her ears, could not 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.600 tell the difference between seranoid and a normal human being 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.560 during interactions. Yeah, so that's what Milgram reported, And I 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:52.400 don't know, that's surprising and creepy. Yeah, I would think 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:54.520 that I would easily be able to tell the difference 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:57.560 between a person speaking of their own free will and 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.920 somebody who's just being fedlines in an ear pie. Yeah. 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:03.800 In one experiment, Milgram's sourced in other words, fed you know, 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:06.679 lines to a pair of eleven and twelve year olds. 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:08.760 So they the eleven and twelve year olds where the 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:12.280 shadows and Milgram himself was speaking correct. Uh, yeah, the 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.560 children were the serenoids, if you will, and a group 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.639 of observing teachers never suspected that they were chatting with 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:22.719 anything other than a normal, though very bright child. Uh 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:25.639 and uh and and it is experiments you found that 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.600 most people could have a lengthy twenty minute conversation with 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:33.879 a serenoid without noticing anything of this. Wow. Yeah, but 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:35.919 I mean again, that's that's hard to believe. I mean, 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:37.880 it just seems like you'd be able to notice that 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:40.400 right off the bat. But well, but just think how 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:44.960 easily we we buy into an actor's presentation. Think of 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:47.240 and think of all the interactions we have in the 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:51.600 course of of our lives where the individual we're talking 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:56.280 to is maybe not completely uh genuine, maybe that you know, 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.280