1
00:00:06,440 --> 00:00:09,200
Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Saturday

2
00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:13,960
Speaker 1: Vault episode Cynicism, Part two, Originally published four seventeen, twenty

3
00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:16,640
Speaker 1: twenty five. This is part two of four Let's dive

4
00:00:16,680 --> 00:00:17,119
Speaker 1: right in.

5
00:00:20,560 --> 00:00:24,600
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

6
00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:33,200
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

7
00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:34,280
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.

8
00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:36,680
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part

9
00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:41,040
Speaker 3: two in our series on cynicism, the tendency to believe

10
00:00:41,440 --> 00:00:46,760
Speaker 3: other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral. In Part one,

11
00:00:47,040 --> 00:00:50,600
Speaker 3: we talked about what cynicism means and its modern usage,

12
00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:55,720
Speaker 3: and we contrasted that with similar but distinct concepts like pessimism,

13
00:00:56,240 --> 00:00:59,640
Speaker 3: and also with cynic philosophy, the latter being a school

14
00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:04,000
Speaker 3: of fullilosophy born in ancient Greece that emphasized moral integrity,

15
00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:08,640
Speaker 3: self sufficiency, and virtue, and achieved in part by shedding

16
00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:12,840
Speaker 3: pretensions like ignoring the pressure to conform and living in

17
00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:16,560
Speaker 3: accordance with our nature. The word cynic comes from the

18
00:01:16,600 --> 00:01:20,320
Speaker 3: Greek word for dog, and so a cynic philosopher in

19
00:01:20,360 --> 00:01:22,800
Speaker 3: the ancient sense might say that we can all learn

20
00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:25,440
Speaker 3: something from watching the honest way that a dog lives

21
00:01:25,440 --> 00:01:28,600
Speaker 3: according to its nature. This, of course, is quite different

22
00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:32,039
Speaker 3: from what we mean by cynicism today in common language,

23
00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:36,800
Speaker 3: which is a disposition of low social trust, the tendency

24
00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:39,240
Speaker 3: to believe, as we put it last time, that people

25
00:01:39,319 --> 00:01:42,680
Speaker 3: are bad, people are selfish, and morals are fake.

26
00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:50,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, ancient philosophic cynics be like a dog. Modern

27
00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:51,760
Speaker 1: cynics dog eat dog.

28
00:01:52,160 --> 00:01:55,559
Speaker 3: Yes. Now. Last time we also talked a bit about

29
00:01:55,560 --> 00:01:59,080
Speaker 3: cynicism in literature, with my observation that really, like the

30
00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:03,520
Speaker 3: most cynical writing I could find anywhere was all in

31
00:02:03,560 --> 00:02:06,040
Speaker 3: the Bible, which I'm not sure exactly what to make

32
00:02:06,080 --> 00:02:11,000
Speaker 3: of that, but that is kind of surprising and counterintuitive perhaps,

33
00:02:11,560 --> 00:02:14,280
Speaker 3: But it's like, especially in the books of the prophets

34
00:02:14,280 --> 00:02:17,880
Speaker 3: in the Hebrew Bible, like Micah and Jeremiah, full of

35
00:02:18,040 --> 00:02:22,760
Speaker 3: just very eloquent, devastating condemnations of human nature. The heart

36
00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:26,440
Speaker 3: is deceitful above all things. There is none that doeth good, No,

37
00:02:26,560 --> 00:02:32,000
Speaker 3: not one, that sort of thing. We also discussed medical, psychological,

38
00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:36,520
Speaker 3: and sociological research on the correlates of cynicism, with the

39
00:02:36,760 --> 00:02:41,520
Speaker 3: overwhelming conclusion being that holding cynical beliefs about human nature

40
00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:45,480
Speaker 3: and low trust in others is quite harmful to us

41
00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:47,960
Speaker 3: in many different ways. It appears to be bad for

42
00:02:48,040 --> 00:02:51,520
Speaker 3: our health, mental and physical health. It is correlated with

43
00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:56,080
Speaker 3: all kinds of undesirable outcomes, including early death. We didn't

44
00:02:56,120 --> 00:02:58,320
Speaker 3: really get into this research last time, but you probably

45
00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:00,520
Speaker 3: won't be surprised to learn it is a sociated with

46
00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:07,079
Speaker 3: low quality social relationships. And despite the archetype of the ruthless,

47
00:03:07,160 --> 00:03:10,880
Speaker 3: cynical striver and achiever, it also tends on average to

48
00:03:10,919 --> 00:03:14,160
Speaker 3: make it harder for us to reach even our material

49
00:03:14,320 --> 00:03:18,280
Speaker 3: goals like making money and attaining positions of leadership, at

50
00:03:18,360 --> 00:03:21,000
Speaker 3: least in part because cynical people waste a lot of

51
00:03:21,040 --> 00:03:24,640
Speaker 3: time and resources trying to avoid being made a sucker

52
00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:28,520
Speaker 3: and miss out on opportunities to cooperate with others for

53
00:03:28,639 --> 00:03:31,760
Speaker 3: mutual benefit. So I think it's safe to say that

54
00:03:32,320 --> 00:03:35,480
Speaker 3: believing everyone is just in it for themselves and cannot

55
00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:39,480
Speaker 3: be trusted is in so many ways bad, bad, bad

56
00:03:39,520 --> 00:03:42,480
Speaker 3: for us. It's bad for our lives. But of course,

57
00:03:42,560 --> 00:03:46,000
Speaker 3: the somewhat heartwarming implied inverse of all this is the

58
00:03:46,400 --> 00:03:49,320
Speaker 3: evidence that it really does us good to cooperate and

59
00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:50,080
Speaker 3: trust people.

60
00:03:50,720 --> 00:03:54,520
Speaker 1: Definite silver lining there to all all of this research

61
00:03:54,520 --> 00:03:55,680
Speaker 1: we've been doing here now.

62
00:03:55,760 --> 00:03:58,000
Speaker 3: In the last episode, we also raised a number of

63
00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:01,280
Speaker 3: questions that we weren't able to answer yet, and we'll

64
00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:03,200
Speaker 3: come back to them throughout the series. I think we'll

65
00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,400
Speaker 3: look at at least one study today that sheds some

66
00:04:06,600 --> 00:04:10,640
Speaker 3: light on this. But these were questions like do more

67
00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:15,200
Speaker 3: cynical or less cynical people actually have a better predictive

68
00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:18,600
Speaker 3: model of the world, Like whose model of how other

69
00:04:18,640 --> 00:04:22,480
Speaker 3: people behave is more accurate? And in any given situation,

70
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:26,640
Speaker 3: how can we know if we're being too trusting, too cynical,

71
00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 3: or if we're striking just the most reasonable balance. And also,

72
00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:34,719
Speaker 3: given that it comes with so many clear downsides, what

73
00:04:35,120 --> 00:04:38,240
Speaker 3: if anything, is the benefit of cynicism.

74
00:04:38,720 --> 00:04:41,119
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure this will actually help us answer

75
00:04:41,200 --> 00:04:44,560
Speaker 1: any of these questions, but then maybe it'll give us

76
00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:47,039
Speaker 1: just a little more elbow room to work with the concept.

77
00:04:49,120 --> 00:04:52,880
Speaker 1: Reading through Anscar Allen's cynicism book m I T that

78
00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:56,920
Speaker 1: I reverenced in the last episode, and he covers several

79
00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:00,640
Speaker 1: subsets of modern cynicism, and here are a few that

80
00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:04,279
Speaker 1: I thought might help us out. So one category is

81
00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:08,479
Speaker 1: insider cynics. So the cynicism of contemporary professionals who believe

82
00:05:08,520 --> 00:05:12,280
Speaker 1: that people are ultimately selfish, and these individuals do their

83
00:05:12,279 --> 00:05:15,719
Speaker 1: best to survive in their organizations by dealing with their

84
00:05:15,760 --> 00:05:18,760
Speaker 1: colleagues on those terms. So we might think of it

85
00:05:18,800 --> 00:05:21,719
Speaker 1: as a you know, I'm not here to make friends approach,

86
00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:24,960
Speaker 1: but you know, only to work or specifically to work,

87
00:05:25,040 --> 00:05:27,280
Speaker 1: with the idea being that maybe outside of that work

88
00:05:27,400 --> 00:05:29,400
Speaker 1: environment they are less cynical.

89
00:05:30,160 --> 00:05:33,919
Speaker 3: Ah okay, well, I would certainly have questions about how

90
00:05:34,040 --> 00:05:38,000
Speaker 3: skilled people are actually are at like turning cynicism on

91
00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:42,560
Speaker 3: and off when switching between contexts. But you can certainly

92
00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:46,120
Speaker 3: see how that would be useful, maybe because you know,

93
00:05:46,120 --> 00:05:50,440
Speaker 3: it's quite reasonable to understand that, like certain professional environments

94
00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:53,560
Speaker 3: require a lot less trust, require you to be more

95
00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:55,800
Speaker 3: doubting of people. Maybe if you are, I don't know,

96
00:05:55,839 --> 00:05:59,280
Speaker 3: investigating murders or something like that, like you really need

97
00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:00,880
Speaker 3: to not just trust people.

98
00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:06,520
Speaker 1: There are so many movies about murder detectives being able

99
00:06:06,560 --> 00:06:11,200
Speaker 1: to neatly separate their work life from their home life.

100
00:06:11,279 --> 00:06:14,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so hopefully if you were in a job

101
00:06:14,520 --> 00:06:16,000
Speaker 3: like that, or if you're in just in kind of

102
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:19,320
Speaker 3: a cutthrow business environment where everybody, you know, everybody's trying

103
00:06:19,320 --> 00:06:21,920
Speaker 3: to edge other people out in deals. You would hope

104
00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:23,800
Speaker 3: to be able to turn that off when you come

105
00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:26,920
Speaker 3: out of that and get into your relationships in life.

106
00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:30,240
Speaker 3: I guess it's questionable to what extent people can do

107
00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:31,080
Speaker 3: that very well.

108
00:06:31,480 --> 00:06:35,440
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. Yes, another classification that he

109
00:06:35,480 --> 00:06:39,600
Speaker 1: singles out or the master cynics, so rich and powerful

110
00:06:39,640 --> 00:06:43,640
Speaker 1: contemporary cynics who hide their own cynicism by adopting the

111
00:06:43,720 --> 00:06:47,159
Speaker 1: values and beliefs of people they hold power over. In

112
00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:50,359
Speaker 1: a weird sense, this is kind of kind of a

113
00:06:50,360 --> 00:06:54,760
Speaker 1: puzzle because a person who's really cynical about politics would

114
00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:58,560
Speaker 1: no doubt assume that every politician is a master cynic,

115
00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:01,520
Speaker 1: that they're just when they're a handing and so forth,

116
00:07:01,680 --> 00:07:05,360
Speaker 1: they're just pretending to take on these values where deep

117
00:07:05,440 --> 00:07:08,640
Speaker 1: down they know the truth, Like I know that people

118
00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:11,440
Speaker 1: are just selfish and they're exploiting everyone as well.

119
00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:13,360
Speaker 3: We're going to have to come back to the question

120
00:07:13,440 --> 00:07:17,040
Speaker 3: of cynicism in politics and political participation because I think

121
00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:19,160
Speaker 3: that raises all sorts of interesting questions.

122
00:07:19,360 --> 00:07:20,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's been a lot of research, a lot

123
00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:24,600
Speaker 1: of writing just on that area alone. Now, the third

124
00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:26,800
Speaker 1: of the categories that I'm going to reference here. There

125
00:07:26,800 --> 00:07:29,040
Speaker 1: are some additional ones that I'm not getting into, but

126
00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:32,280
Speaker 1: the third one I want to reference here is paternalistic cynicism,

127
00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:35,640
Speaker 1: And in this one holds a cynical view of human

128
00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:39,680
Speaker 1: motivations and seeks to capitalize on those motivations, but not

129
00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:43,480
Speaker 1: for personal gain, but for the greater good. And that

130
00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:45,600
Speaker 1: one made me think a little bit more and maybe

131
00:07:45,600 --> 00:07:48,080
Speaker 1: gives us a little more room to play when considering

132
00:07:48,120 --> 00:07:52,640
Speaker 1: the effectiveness or possible effectiveness of cynicism. I was thinking, like,

133
00:07:52,840 --> 00:07:55,160
Speaker 1: let's say you wanted to encourage a certain behavior in

134
00:07:55,160 --> 00:07:58,720
Speaker 1: the general public, and you're presented with two messaging options,

135
00:07:58,760 --> 00:08:02,320
Speaker 1: one that works based on a cynical view of human motivations,

136
00:08:02,400 --> 00:08:05,520
Speaker 1: you know, greed and self interest, while the other appeals

137
00:08:05,520 --> 00:08:08,360
Speaker 1: to the higher angels of their nature. Well, which is

138
00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:11,760
Speaker 1: more likely to work. It's going to depend on the messaging,

139
00:08:11,800 --> 00:08:15,520
Speaker 1: of course, and the exact details of the target audience,

140
00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:18,640
Speaker 1: you know, general audience versus you know, some narrow or audience.

141
00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:23,440
Speaker 1: But yeah, which worldview is a better starting place? I

142
00:08:23,480 --> 00:08:25,400
Speaker 1: feel like this might work as a good sort of

143
00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:28,600
Speaker 1: practical thought experiment because it entails making a choice about

144
00:08:28,640 --> 00:08:31,520
Speaker 1: how you're going to model the motivations of a given population.

145
00:08:32,120 --> 00:08:34,200
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, we kind of come back

146
00:08:34,200 --> 00:08:36,760
Speaker 1: to that sliding scale of cynicism. If one is cynical

147
00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:41,040
Speaker 1: enough about the intended audience, then would any messaging seem

148
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:43,280
Speaker 1: like it would work, Like why are you even bothering?

149
00:08:43,320 --> 00:08:46,000
Speaker 1: If you're just assuming that everyone out there is just selfish,

150
00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:49,040
Speaker 1: you might not be able to get them to stop littering,

151
00:08:49,160 --> 00:08:52,360
Speaker 1: or to recycle, or to I don't know where seat belts.

152
00:08:53,040 --> 00:08:56,959
Speaker 3: But maybe the paternalistic cynicism model is like you, you

153
00:08:57,400 --> 00:08:59,560
Speaker 3: must stop littering, and you must be kind to your

154
00:08:59,559 --> 00:09:02,200
Speaker 3: fellows human being or you will go to hell. Something

155
00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:06,160
Speaker 3: you know, like appealing to your base personal interest in

156
00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:09,080
Speaker 3: order to get you to do something that the messager

157
00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:09,840
Speaker 3: sees as good.

158
00:09:10,120 --> 00:09:12,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, bring it back to fear right. Maybe I'm just

159
00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:16,480
Speaker 1: muddying the waters. But there's so many different areas you

160
00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:19,280
Speaker 1: can get into and discussions of modern cynicism. Rob.

161
00:09:19,400 --> 00:09:21,640
Speaker 3: One thing you said in the last episode that I

162
00:09:21,640 --> 00:09:24,680
Speaker 3: thought was really insightful and I have kept thinking about

163
00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:28,120
Speaker 3: ever since we recorded that is that you said maybe

164
00:09:28,120 --> 00:09:32,040
Speaker 3: one of the appeals of cynicism is that expressions of

165
00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:38,560
Speaker 3: cynicism are cathartic statements like people suck. They when you

166
00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:40,760
Speaker 3: say things like that, or when somebody else says that

167
00:09:40,840 --> 00:09:43,640
Speaker 3: and you get to agree with them, it feels like

168
00:09:43,720 --> 00:09:48,000
Speaker 3: a psychological pressure release valve. By like making a statement

169
00:09:48,040 --> 00:09:52,160
Speaker 3: of that sort, you're sort of blowing off steam. And

170
00:09:52,400 --> 00:09:54,440
Speaker 3: of course this can be true even for people who

171
00:09:54,520 --> 00:09:58,479
Speaker 3: are not especially cynical on average, having these little moments

172
00:09:58,520 --> 00:10:01,840
Speaker 3: of situational cynicism. But I was thinking more about the

173
00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:08,080
Speaker 3: Catharsis element, and I wonder if this association of cynicism

174
00:10:08,080 --> 00:10:11,920
Speaker 3: with cathartic relief also tells us something about how people

175
00:10:11,960 --> 00:10:17,560
Speaker 3: can acquire generalized dispositional cynicism. Like what if the person

176
00:10:17,640 --> 00:10:21,199
Speaker 3: who is very cynical on average gets to be that

177
00:10:21,240 --> 00:10:25,360
Speaker 3: way by creating by like habituating themselves to a desire

178
00:10:25,520 --> 00:10:29,360
Speaker 3: for that momentary catharsis that you get from saying people suck.

179
00:10:29,800 --> 00:10:30,800
Speaker 3: Does that make any sense?

180
00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:33,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you dip your hand into the cynicism cookie

181
00:10:33,679 --> 00:10:37,600
Speaker 1: jar a few times too often and the crumbs begin

182
00:10:37,679 --> 00:10:41,080
Speaker 1: to stick. Yeah. I was thinking about this when I

183
00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:44,640
Speaker 1: was looking at some material related to cynicism in the workplace,

184
00:10:44,679 --> 00:10:48,880
Speaker 1: which is its own huge area of consideration that we're

185
00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:51,800
Speaker 1: not really going to get into in this episode, per se.

186
00:10:51,880 --> 00:10:55,120
Speaker 1: But I was just thinking about, Okay, if one's really

187
00:10:55,160 --> 00:11:01,120
Speaker 1: cynical regarding one's employers, one's corporate overlords, you might excuse

188
00:11:01,240 --> 00:11:04,200
Speaker 1: any amount of inaction or slacking based on the view that, well,

189
00:11:04,240 --> 00:11:07,080
Speaker 1: they don't really care about me, they're not invested in me,

190
00:11:07,960 --> 00:11:11,160
Speaker 1: they're not paying me enough, and so forth, all any

191
00:11:11,200 --> 00:11:15,640
Speaker 1: grievance you might imagine. And maybe, just maybe in small doses,

192
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:18,319
Speaker 1: this gives you space to let things slide in ways

193
00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:21,320
Speaker 1: that ease your work burden or create space for something

194
00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:25,600
Speaker 1: else you want to do. And yeah, maybe it's a

195
00:11:25,600 --> 00:11:27,800
Speaker 1: situation where if you stick your hand into that cookie

196
00:11:27,880 --> 00:11:31,840
Speaker 1: jar too often, it does become your default view at

197
00:11:31,960 --> 00:11:35,000
Speaker 1: least of your work situation. And maybe it bleeds over

198
00:11:35,040 --> 00:11:36,880
Speaker 1: into other areas as well.

199
00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:39,440
Speaker 3: That is an interesting possibility. So you're in a kind

200
00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:44,920
Speaker 3: of a pressure inducing scenario and you, for whatever reason,

201
00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:48,520
Speaker 3: you can get little moments of relief from that pressure

202
00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:53,760
Speaker 3: by resorting to cynical evaluations. And so does that create

203
00:11:53,800 --> 00:11:57,000
Speaker 3: a kind of addiction like you associate the moment of

204
00:11:57,320 --> 00:12:02,520
Speaker 3: cathartic cynicism with real axation of the pain or with

205
00:12:02,640 --> 00:12:05,079
Speaker 3: pleasure or even or something like that and you just

206
00:12:05,160 --> 00:12:08,440
Speaker 3: kind of keep pressing the pleasure button until that's just

207
00:12:08,480 --> 00:12:09,600
Speaker 3: what your personality is.

208
00:12:10,080 --> 00:12:10,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

209
00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:13,800
Speaker 3: I don't have research to like back up that interpretation

210
00:12:13,880 --> 00:12:16,040
Speaker 3: of where cynicism comes from, but I think that is

211
00:12:16,080 --> 00:12:18,600
Speaker 3: an interesting possibility. I wonder if it ever sets in

212
00:12:18,640 --> 00:12:19,000
Speaker 3: that way.

213
00:12:19,720 --> 00:12:22,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I also was thinking, you know, in terms

214
00:12:22,400 --> 00:12:25,679
Speaker 1: of dealing with this a corporation or a company, like

215
00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:30,520
Speaker 1: it's one thing to sort of initially think cynically about

216
00:12:30,760 --> 00:12:35,120
Speaker 1: like this faceless thing, this organization, But of course organizations

217
00:12:35,160 --> 00:12:38,240
Speaker 1: are made up of people, and so I wonder how

218
00:12:38,240 --> 00:12:42,200
Speaker 1: the cynicism might spread where you might generally have cynical

219
00:12:42,240 --> 00:12:44,880
Speaker 1: ideas about a company, but then those cynical ideas end

220
00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:47,760
Speaker 1: up applying to certain heads of that company. But then

221
00:12:47,840 --> 00:12:51,160
Speaker 1: it could potentially trickle down, and then where does it stop,

222
00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:53,520
Speaker 1: Like who stops being the face of the company. I

223
00:12:53,520 --> 00:12:55,240
Speaker 1: guess they have to be cynical enough. They have to

224
00:12:55,280 --> 00:12:57,920
Speaker 1: share your cynicism in order to be like your your

225
00:12:57,960 --> 00:13:01,839
Speaker 1: brothers in arms against against the company, that sort of thing.

226
00:13:02,320 --> 00:13:04,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, actually this sort of gets a

227
00:13:04,960 --> 00:13:07,599
Speaker 3: little bit into something I'm going to talk about in

228
00:13:07,880 --> 00:13:12,080
Speaker 3: the paper. I'm about to explain. But there are different environments.

229
00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:17,200
Speaker 3: There are different sort of environments and contexts that encourage

230
00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:20,280
Speaker 3: and reward different levels of cynicism, and so there can

231
00:13:20,320 --> 00:13:24,480
Speaker 3: be very like cynicism positive organizations, Like if you are

232
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:29,360
Speaker 3: within a company that is very cruel and in which

233
00:13:29,520 --> 00:13:31,920
Speaker 3: you know you don't do very well by placing trust

234
00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:35,000
Speaker 3: in people, it can be quite reasonable to end up

235
00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:39,600
Speaker 3: responding with the generalized cynicism about interactions within that company.

236
00:13:40,679 --> 00:13:45,720
Speaker 3: Organizational culture is a thing. So anyway, so I want

237
00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:50,320
Speaker 3: to turn to a concept in psychological research on cynicism

238
00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:54,640
Speaker 3: that I found really interesting, and that is the so

239
00:13:54,720 --> 00:14:00,440
Speaker 3: called cynical genius illusion. So I was reading about this

240
00:14:00,679 --> 00:14:03,040
Speaker 3: in a paper by a couple of researchers that I

241
00:14:03,080 --> 00:14:06,360
Speaker 3: cited in part one of the series. These scientists are

242
00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:10,240
Speaker 3: Olga Stavrova, a professor of psychology at Tilburg University in

243
00:14:10,280 --> 00:14:14,440
Speaker 3: the Netherlands, and Daniel Illebracht at the University of Cologne

244
00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:17,800
Speaker 3: in Germany. These two published a paper in the year

245
00:14:17,840 --> 00:14:21,480
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,

246
00:14:21,960 --> 00:14:25,920
Speaker 3: and the paper was called the Cynical Genius Illusion, Exploring

247
00:14:25,960 --> 00:14:32,040
Speaker 3: and debunking lay beliefs about cynicism and competence. Now, they

248
00:14:32,080 --> 00:14:34,520
Speaker 3: begin by acknowledging a lot of the things we talked

249
00:14:34,520 --> 00:14:38,520
Speaker 3: about in the last episode. They define cynicism as, you know,

250
00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:42,240
Speaker 3: the main cognitive component of hostility. They're talking about it

251
00:14:42,280 --> 00:14:44,080
Speaker 3: pretty much in the same terms we are, I believe

252
00:14:44,120 --> 00:14:47,440
Speaker 3: that other people, you know, you should be suspicious of

253
00:14:47,440 --> 00:14:50,720
Speaker 3: their motives, that they that they are primarily motivated by

254
00:14:50,720 --> 00:14:53,960
Speaker 3: self interest, that they can't be trusted and will harm you.

255
00:14:54,480 --> 00:14:56,920
Speaker 3: And then they run through the long list of ways

256
00:14:56,920 --> 00:14:59,600
Speaker 3: that cynicism appears to be bad for us, bad for

257
00:14:59,640 --> 00:15:03,120
Speaker 3: our life in health, in relationships and ability to attain

258
00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:08,920
Speaker 3: goals and so forth. However, the authors complicate that picture

259
00:15:09,680 --> 00:15:13,000
Speaker 3: by noting that if you just look at popular culture

260
00:15:13,320 --> 00:15:18,440
Speaker 3: and literature and folk wisdom, cynicism does not seem to

261
00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:22,640
Speaker 3: have and on the whole negative reputation. To read from

262
00:15:22,680 --> 00:15:26,880
Speaker 3: their introduction here quote. Among nineteenth and twentieth century writers

263
00:15:26,880 --> 00:15:30,280
Speaker 3: in popular figures, cynicism has often been seen as a

264
00:15:30,400 --> 00:15:35,160
Speaker 3: sign of intelligence and wit. American writers Ambrose Bierce and

265
00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:39,240
Speaker 3: Lillian Hellman praised cynicism as an art of seeing the

266
00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:43,640
Speaker 3: true nature of things. Bernard Shaw referred to cynicism as

267
00:15:43,760 --> 00:15:48,120
Speaker 3: a quote power of accurate observation, and John Stuart Mill

268
00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:51,520
Speaker 3: noticed that quote it is thought essential to a man

269
00:15:51,560 --> 00:15:54,000
Speaker 3: who has any knowledge of the world to have an

270
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:58,720
Speaker 3: extremely bad opinion of it. And as for the other

271
00:15:58,760 --> 00:16:01,280
Speaker 3: authors they named, I looked up some of the cynical quotes.

272
00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:03,480
Speaker 3: I can't believe I didn't think of Ambrose Beers as

273
00:16:03,520 --> 00:16:06,800
Speaker 3: a good source of literary cynicism in the last episode,

274
00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:10,800
Speaker 3: but in The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce defines a cynic as

275
00:16:11,120 --> 00:16:15,120
Speaker 3: someone quote whose faulty vision sees things as they are,

276
00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:18,880
Speaker 3: not as they ought to be. They also cited Lillian Hellman.

277
00:16:19,400 --> 00:16:23,240
Speaker 3: Her version of this was quote, cynicism is an unpleasant

278
00:16:23,240 --> 00:16:26,520
Speaker 3: way of saying the truth. And I do think there's

279
00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:31,440
Speaker 3: something interesting in Hellman's phrasing here, because of the emphasis

280
00:16:31,480 --> 00:16:35,160
Speaker 3: on tone. It is an unpleasant way of saying what

281
00:16:35,440 --> 00:16:39,080
Speaker 3: is true. So what is the difference between somebody just

282
00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:43,120
Speaker 3: quote being real and somebody being cynical. It might be

283
00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:45,200
Speaker 3: in the substance of what they say and how they think.

284
00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:48,800
Speaker 3: It might be like material substantive differences. But I think

285
00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:51,920
Speaker 3: sometimes we make that distinction based on whether there is

286
00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:56,640
Speaker 3: negative emotion in their expression, like if they are counseling

287
00:16:56,720 --> 00:17:00,960
Speaker 3: us against trust. Did they deliver that count with anger

288
00:17:01,160 --> 00:17:05,760
Speaker 3: or contempt? But anyway, so you've got all this literature

289
00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:10,800
Speaker 3: that equates cynicism with the kind of wisdom and you know,

290
00:17:10,880 --> 00:17:15,040
Speaker 3: like the power to see what is really going on. Also,

291
00:17:15,320 --> 00:17:17,159
Speaker 3: the authors here point out that if you draw up

292
00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:21,320
Speaker 3: a list of like cynical characters in popular culture, they

293
00:17:21,480 --> 00:17:26,280
Speaker 3: don't tend to be pitiable wretches dealing with setbacks imposed

294
00:17:26,320 --> 00:17:30,160
Speaker 3: by their lack of faith in humankind. More often, cynicism

295
00:17:30,560 --> 00:17:36,399
Speaker 3: in fictional characters is presented as gruff hard one realism

296
00:17:36,560 --> 00:17:41,960
Speaker 3: and wisdom. The cynical character has knowledge, insights, and powers

297
00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:46,480
Speaker 3: of deduction not available to their more trusting peers. So

298
00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:50,440
Speaker 3: think of Sherlock Holmes or The authors give the example

299
00:17:50,480 --> 00:17:54,080
Speaker 3: of House from how simd. I'm not a watcher of House,

300
00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:55,359
Speaker 3: but I'm familiar with the character.

301
00:17:56,280 --> 00:17:58,240
Speaker 1: I mean, you could do a full stop after Sherlock,

302
00:17:58,320 --> 00:18:02,760
Speaker 1: because Sherlock, of course, in influences so many different similar

303
00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:08,439
Speaker 1: characters and cast a long shadow across across the English language,

304
00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:11,680
Speaker 1: and and fiction and other languages, but cast a long

305
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:15,080
Speaker 1: shadow across our media. Yeah, yet at this and it

306
00:18:15,160 --> 00:18:17,280
Speaker 1: is interesting to think about Sherlock Holmes in these terms,

307
00:18:17,280 --> 00:18:21,439
Speaker 1: because yes, Sherlock Holmes is presented as being uh, you know,

308
00:18:21,480 --> 00:18:26,240
Speaker 1: somewhat emotionally detached, but not you know, certainly he's fighting

309
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:28,439
Speaker 1: the good fight. He is on the side of the

310
00:18:28,480 --> 00:18:31,080
Speaker 1: good guy and will sometimes even you know, break the

311
00:18:31,160 --> 00:18:34,520
Speaker 1: rules a little bit or bend them in order to

312
00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:38,200
Speaker 1: make sure that justice is served. But on the other hand,

313
00:18:38,240 --> 00:18:40,200
Speaker 1: I think if you if you look closely enough at Sherlock,

314
00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:44,200
Speaker 1: I mean he's also a character who at times admits

315
00:18:44,240 --> 00:18:46,880
Speaker 1: that he's never loved anyone or has certainly never had

316
00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:51,120
Speaker 1: a romantic love in his life. He also struggles horribly

317
00:18:51,160 --> 00:18:54,280
Speaker 1: with addiction at one point. You know, so you know,

318
00:18:54,359 --> 00:18:57,080
Speaker 1: he's he's not an angel. But again, I guess this

319
00:18:57,200 --> 00:19:00,840
Speaker 1: part of his presentation, he's he's hard boiled. It's it's

320
00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,320
Speaker 1: it's hard one cynicism that he uses in order to

321
00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:06,600
Speaker 1: solve the crimes that he's presented with.

322
00:19:06,920 --> 00:19:10,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that is actually generally true.

323
00:19:10,359 --> 00:19:16,000
Speaker 3: Cynical characters are often presented as suffering as a result

324
00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:19,440
Speaker 3: of their own cynicism, but not wrong because of it,

325
00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:22,800
Speaker 3: like that their cynicism is something that hurts them and

326
00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:26,200
Speaker 3: it makes them sad and lonely, but it also gives

327
00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:30,960
Speaker 3: them cognitive superiority. It gives them intelligence and wisdom and

328
00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:36,760
Speaker 3: power to see through the facade and see what's really happening. Yeah,

329
00:19:37,119 --> 00:19:39,960
Speaker 3: but anyway, So, based on this background of the cynical

330
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:44,199
Speaker 3: geniuses in fiction and the sort of cynical wit and

331
00:19:44,280 --> 00:19:47,960
Speaker 3: wisdom from literature, the author is conducted a number of

332
00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:51,640
Speaker 3: different studies. They did four studies to explore common beliefs

333
00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:56,680
Speaker 3: about the link between cynicism and cognitive superiority and competence,

334
00:19:57,280 --> 00:19:59,880
Speaker 3: and then three more studies to look at whether they're

335
00:20:00,040 --> 00:20:04,280
Speaker 3: actually is a link. So do people in general think

336
00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:08,520
Speaker 3: that cynicism is a sign of knowledge, intellect, and competence.

337
00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:13,240
Speaker 3: Do cynics actually seem smarter? And are they actually smarter

338
00:20:13,359 --> 00:20:15,040
Speaker 3: and more competent than the rest of us?

339
00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:18,960
Speaker 1: Well, Sherlock is above reproach, but yeah, I'm curious to

340
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:20,600
Speaker 1: hear how it lights to real people.

341
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:23,919
Speaker 3: So the authors begin by acknowledging some existing research that

342
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:27,080
Speaker 3: touches on these questions. For example, there was a study

343
00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:31,840
Speaker 3: by Evans and Venda Caalceda published in Personality and Social

344
00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:36,679
Speaker 3: Psychology Bulletin in twenty eighteen called the Reputational consequences of

345
00:20:36,800 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 3: generalized trust. And this study looked at what we was

346
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:42,760
Speaker 3: just sort of a survey of what we tend to

347
00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:45,520
Speaker 3: think of people when we know that they are high

348
00:20:45,560 --> 00:20:49,560
Speaker 3: in trust or low in cynicism. The findings were that

349
00:20:50,119 --> 00:20:54,760
Speaker 3: high trust individuals are seen as moral and seen as sociable,

350
00:20:55,080 --> 00:20:58,840
Speaker 3: but also seen as less competent. And this kind of

351
00:20:58,840 --> 00:21:02,119
Speaker 3: makes sense as a as a familiar personality archetype, right, like,

352
00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:06,480
Speaker 3: Johnny is so trusting, he's a good guy, he's friendly,

353
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:10,399
Speaker 3: but he doesn't know what he's doing. So if showing

354
00:21:10,720 --> 00:21:15,520
Speaker 3: generalized trust makes people think we're less competent, does that

355
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:22,960
Speaker 3: imply that showing generalized distrust makes people think we're more competent. Perhaps. However,

356
00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:26,440
Speaker 3: the authors also found here that people see you as

357
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:30,719
Speaker 3: more competent if you display what they call discriminate ability,

358
00:21:31,119 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 3: which is the ability to tell the difference between a

359
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:38,120
Speaker 3: situation in which you should trust and situations in which

360
00:21:38,119 --> 00:21:40,560
Speaker 3: you should not. And this takes us back to the

361
00:21:40,640 --> 00:21:44,440
Speaker 3: question we mentioned in part one. Obviously, nobody either trusts

362
00:21:44,560 --> 00:21:47,959
Speaker 3: or distrusts in every situation, So how do you determine

363
00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:51,600
Speaker 3: how cynical it is reasonable to be in this situation?

364
00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:54,360
Speaker 3: And how do we know if we're off balance?

365
00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:55,160
Speaker 1: Now?

366
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:59,359
Speaker 3: The authors also discuss reasons that people might think it

367
00:21:59,440 --> 00:22:04,280
Speaker 3: is why to be cynical one is pretty familiar better

368
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:08,480
Speaker 3: safe than sorry, reasoning. They write, quote, in many domains,

369
00:22:08,560 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 3: the consequences of false negative errors eg. Believing that someone

370
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:16,280
Speaker 3: is trustworthy when they really are not have often been

371
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:20,840
Speaker 3: more costly than false positive errors, eg. Believing that someone

372
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:26,199
Speaker 3: is untrustworthy when they really are trustworthy. Over human evolutionary history,

373
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 3: making the cognitive system of modern humans biased toward false alarms,

374
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:34,760
Speaker 3: which is hard to argue with, right, Like, Yeah, in

375
00:22:35,040 --> 00:22:37,800
Speaker 3: this series, we are showing lots of evidence that it

376
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:41,879
Speaker 3: is bad for you to be highly chronically cynical. And

377
00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:45,560
Speaker 3: yet it's true that more often if you distrust a

378
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:50,840
Speaker 3: trustworthy person, the immediate consequences are fairly limited, but if

379
00:22:50,880 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 3: you trust an untrustworthy person, the consequences can be disastrous.

380
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about this a little bit in the

381
00:22:57,119 --> 00:22:59,520
Speaker 1: last episode Type one Errors and Cognition. You know, it's

382
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:03,000
Speaker 1: like you've got to make your way across an open field,

383
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:07,840
Speaker 1: and you know there's gonna be a time cost and

384
00:23:07,840 --> 00:23:11,760
Speaker 1: and probably like you know, an anxiety cost to checking

385
00:23:11,800 --> 00:23:13,600
Speaker 1: every bush along the way to make sure there's not

386
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:15,679
Speaker 1: a tiger in there to jump out and get you.

387
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 1: But you know, the way our brains work and the

388
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,720
Speaker 1: way we're hardwired, it's like we know that that's one

389
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,320
Speaker 1: sort of risk I'm gonna lose some time, and I might,

390
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:29,080
Speaker 1: you know, feel horrible the whole way, versus getting eaten

391
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,199
Speaker 1: by a tiger. Yeah, Like one of those is like

392
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:34,680
Speaker 1: a mutt like looms far larger in our short term

393
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:35,760
Speaker 1: threat analysis.

394
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:39,480
Speaker 3: One side of the balance has an infinite cost on it. Yeah,

395
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:42,880
Speaker 3: it's like kind of hard to outbalance that, even though

396
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,560
Speaker 3: like wasting all your time and resources checking every bush

397
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 3: that that really does matter, like over time, that hugely

398
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:49,640
Speaker 3: impacts your quality of life.

399
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:51,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, especially of course, you know when you get

400
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 1: into not only real tigers, but all the paper tigers

401
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:56,000
Speaker 1: in one's life, you know.

402
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,479
Speaker 3: So anyway, they say that a general appreciation for the

403
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 3: merit of the better safe than sorry framework could lead

404
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:06,520
Speaker 3: to the widespread notion that cynics are smarter people. They're

405
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 3: more knowledgeable and more competent. Now, continuing the background review,

406
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:24,120
Speaker 3: the authors also get into existing research on whether there

407
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 3: is an actual link between cynicism and competence so now

408
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 3: we're asking not about how cynics are perceived, but about

409
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:36,159
Speaker 3: what their relative competence level actually is. And this, I

410
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,399
Speaker 3: guess comes back to another question we brought up in

411
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:42,199
Speaker 3: Part one. Do cynics or nonsnics have a better predictive

412
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:46,159
Speaker 3: model of the world? And one very interesting way of

413
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:50,600
Speaker 3: studying this is the so called trust game. So here's

414
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 3: an example of a type of trust game. This was

415
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 3: described in a paper called why so cynical asymmetric feedback

416
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:01,679
Speaker 3: underlies misguided skepticism regarding the trust worthiness of others. This

417
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:04,919
Speaker 3: was by Debt Left, Fetchenhauer and David Dunning in the

418
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 3: journal Psychological Science in twenty ten, and it describes this

419
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 3: what is sometimes called an investing game, but they call

420
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 3: it a trust game, and it goes like this quote.

421
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 3: In the game, the trust is given money that can

422
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:24,160
Speaker 3: be kept or handed to a completely random and anonymous stranger,

423
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:28,280
Speaker 3: the trustee. If the trust hands his or her money over,

424
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 3: the amount of money is quadrupled eg. Five dollars becomes

425
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 3: twenty dollars, and trustees have two options. They can either

426
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 3: split the money evenly between themselves and the truster eg.

427
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 3: Give ten dollars back and keep ten dollars for themselves,

428
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 3: or they can keep all the money for themselves. So

429
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 3: the way the game works is I'm the truster. I'm

430
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,360
Speaker 3: the person who gets to make the first decision. If

431
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:57,920
Speaker 3: I trust you and you are trustworthy, we both benefit

432
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 3: and I double my money. I trust you and you

433
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 3: are not trustworthy, I get nothing. So the authors did

434
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 3: this experiment lots of times, and some interesting patterns came out.

435
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 3: Uh they found that trusters estimate the rate of trustworthiness

436
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 3: of anonymous strangers in the game. They estimate it will

437
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 3: be between forty five and sixty percent. So it seems

438
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 3: that most people think it's a little better than a

439
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,880
Speaker 3: coin flip chance that the other person will honor their

440
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 3: trust and split the money for mutual benefit. In reality,

441
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,400
Speaker 3: the trustees honored the trust and split the money around

442
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 3: eighty to ninety percent of the time. So people in

443
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 3: this game massively underestimated how trustworthy random strangers would be.

444
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 3: At least in the context of this game, anonymous strangers

445
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:53,639
Speaker 3: were something like twenty to fifty percent more trustworthy and

446
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 3: cooperative than people expected them to be. Isn't that interesting?

447
00:26:58,000 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 3: That's crazy?

448
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, eighty ninety percent of the time that's higher than

449
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 1: I would have guessed. But but then again, it's like

450
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 1: I like to think that if someone offered me the

451
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:11,879
Speaker 1: scenario and I was not too cynical and trusted that

452
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: it was not some sort of a scam, I would

453
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: be as trustworthy.

454
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,360
Speaker 3: Can I offer. I think maybe one thing that could

455
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 3: be working in this particular scenario is that it makes

456
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 3: sense to be wary of people who are offering to

457
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:33,120
Speaker 3: double your money in financial transactions. But I think that

458
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 3: makes sense when like people come to you and they say, like, hey,

459
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 3: you know, you give me some money and I'll double it,

460
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 3: you should. I mean, if somebody says that they're not

461
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 3: telling you the truth almost always, so like there's a

462
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 3: good reason to be worried there. This is a different thing,

463
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 3: because the trustee in this game is not somebody who

464
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:55,719
Speaker 3: is coming out of nowhere to offer you money if

465
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 3: you just give them some first. They're a random stranger

466
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 3: who is who has been pulled into this experiment designed

467
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,879
Speaker 3: by somebody else. And so I think what this shows

468
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 3: is most of the time, if given the opportunity to

469
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,639
Speaker 3: be trustworthy and cooperate, most people will, But also it

470
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 3: makes sense to be wary of people who are claiming

471
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 3: they're trying to help you cooperate, you know, for mutual benefit.

472
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,199
Speaker 3: If they're coming out of nowhere with this, you know,

473
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 3: that's often going to be a scam. Does that make sense?

474
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:24,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

475
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 3: But anyway, so yeah, in the trust game, most people

476
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,879
Speaker 3: are very trustworthy and players are on average way too

477
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 3: cynical about their fellow human being. They are missing out

478
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 3: on lots of opportunities to double their money. And this

479
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 3: is consistent with research by Miller in nineteen ninety eight

480
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:44,959
Speaker 3: and ninety nine finding that people just tend to grossly

481
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 3: overestimate the selfishness and underestimate the trustworthiness of strangers. In

482
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 3: this particular paper, the authors note that cynicism might grow

483
00:28:56,440 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 3: from what they call asymmetric feedback, and the way that

484
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 3: works is this, when you trust somebody and you get betrayed,

485
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 3: you get very clear feedback that it was wrong to trust.

486
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 3: The downside of granting your trust is very apparent to you.

487
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 3: They walk away with the money, you get nothing, and

488
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 3: you know it's clear to you what happened. But when

489
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 3: you refrain from trusting people, the downsides are often invisible

490
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 3: to you because you don't actually see the lost opportunity

491
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 3: as a scenario that plays out in front of you.

492
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 3: You have to like imagine it as a counterfactual. It's

493
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 3: not concrete and in your face, like being betrayed is.

494
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 3: So you don't really get conditioned by feedback from instances

495
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 3: where you harmed yourself by withholding trust.

496
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like

497
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,719
Speaker 1: give like, here's a scenario. Let's imagine that you're just

498
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 1: really pedantic when looking at the checks when you go

499
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: out to eat with friends. You know, you're like, all right,

500
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:00,960
Speaker 1: I want to see every his work. I got to

501
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: make one hundred percent sure this is fair. And maybe

502
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 1: it's because at some point someone really did stick you

503
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: over one of these situations, and so it maybe that

504
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,479
Speaker 1: is more apparent, Like you're never going to forget that

505
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: that you were wronged in this way. But if you're

506
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 1: just overly pedantic when it comes to the bills, eventually

507
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: people might stop asking you to join them for dinner,

508
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: and that might be very invisible to you that that's happening.

509
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:31,440
Speaker 3: Yes, you don't realize. Yeah, it's just like things are

510
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 3: not as good now, and I don't know why I'm

511
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 3: feeling lonely yeah, or is a more direct comparison. If

512
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 3: you're not looking at the checks all the time, you

513
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 3: might not notice the times when somebody made a mistake

514
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,479
Speaker 3: in your favor that just passed you never even noticed

515
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 3: that it just goes right by you. That that is

516
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 3: a good comparison. But anyway, what the study found is

517
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 3: that if you give subjects symmetric feedback about the trustworthiness

518
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:02,840
Speaker 3: of others, it tended to deuce the subject's cynicism. So, like,

519
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:06,720
Speaker 3: let's say you play the trust game, symmetric feedback would

520
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 3: be rob whether or not you decide to hand somebody

521
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 3: the five dollars and try to cooperate to quadruple it.

522
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 3: You get to find out what they would have done

523
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 3: either way, so you know, you get to keep playing

524
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 3: the game that way. And it turns out if you

525
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 3: play it that way, where people keep seeing, oh, I

526
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 3: kept the money, but they I saw that they would

527
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 3: have doubled my money if I just trusted them, and

528
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 3: you get to see that happen over and over. That

529
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 3: actually does decrease people's cynicism, which also is interesting and

530
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 3: that it gives you at least a little bit of

531
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 3: an idea where some elements of cynicism could be coming from.

532
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 3: It could be related in part to this asymmetric build

533
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 3: up of information. We get to see where trust fails

534
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 3: very clearly. But the opportunities we lose out on by

535
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 3: not granting trust are often just like, we don't even

536
00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 3: realize what's happened. We don't even realize anything. We don't

537
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 3: even know what we're missing. Yeah, so this research does

538
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 3: not give us a complete picture, but I think some

539
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 3: evidence is starting to accumulate that the cynic does not

540
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 3: have a highly accurate internal model of the world. They

541
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 3: might in some scenarios, but generalized cynicism is not like

542
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 3: as some of these writers were saying, seeing things as

543
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 3: they really are. In fact, cynicism often causes us to

544
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 3: incorrectly predict the behavior of other people, assuming they will

545
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 3: be more selfish and treacherous than they really are. Now,

546
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 3: coming back to the main paper I was talking about,

547
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 3: Bastavrova and Elibracht, they note some other research on the

548
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 3: link between cynicism and competence. Again, contrary to the cynical

549
00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 3: genius archetype, the authors are able to cite a long

550
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 3: list of studies looking at links between cynicism and various

551
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:55,959
Speaker 3: types of cognitive performance and ability, and they find it's

552
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 3: exactly the opposite of what you might guess from the

553
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:04,440
Speaker 3: Sherlock Holmes exam. Higher performance on various types of cognitive, academic,

554
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 3: and IQ tests is negatively correlated with cynicism. It is

555
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 3: instead positively correlated with increased tendency to trust. There are

556
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 3: a few confounding results here. It's not like every single

557
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 3: study has found this, but the vast majority have. Some

558
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 3: of the confounding results are. For example, they cite a

559
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen study that found that higher IQ does not,

560
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 3: on average improve a person's ability to correctly predict who

561
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 3: will be trustworthy and who will not. So like you

562
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:38,920
Speaker 3: do better on cognitive tests, that doesn't mean that if

563
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 3: we pair you up with you know, Johnny and Billy

564
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 3: in the in the trust game experiment, you can predict

565
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 3: whether Johnny or Billy you'll be more likely to help

566
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:50,560
Speaker 3: you out. It just it doesn't help us in that regard.

567
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the compass is already pulling you in

568
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: one direction or another, and however higher IQ is, I mean,

569
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 1: that's just that's just the kind of mental energy that

570
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: ends up being wrapped around the initial impulse.

571
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 3: Another thing to keep in mind here is that, of course,

572
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 3: while like various cognitive and IQ and academic tests can

573
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 3: they can tell you a lot of things about cognitive ability,

574
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 3: they don't tell you everything. So you know, they can

575
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:16,760
Speaker 3: tell you about certain kinds of skills with reasoning, certain

576
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:19,880
Speaker 3: kinds of intelligence. But there are always going to be

577
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 3: elements of intelligence that are not perfectly captured by these

578
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 3: sorts of tests. So the authors begin to develop a

579
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:33,959
Speaker 3: possible hypothetical model to explain what's going on here. They say,

580
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 3: what if intelligence, knowledge, and competence don't really help you

581
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 3: very much in identifying who to trust in a given scenario.

582
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 3: They don't tell you really if Johnny or Billy, both

583
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:49,400
Speaker 3: of whom you've just met, is more trustworthy, But instead

584
00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 3: they help you evaluate the scenario itself to decide whether

585
00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 3: to deploy a more cynical or a more trusting framework

586
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 3: given the environment. In the circumstances the author's right quote,

587
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 3: high levels of competence might allow individuals to correctly identify

588
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 3: the corruptness of their environment and adjust their level of

589
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 3: cynicism to match it. Following this reasoning, high competence individuals

590
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 3: might hold adaptable attitudes and recur to cynicism only when

591
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 3: it seems warranted, while their less competent counterparts might show

592
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 3: more cognitive rigidity and relying on the better safe than

593
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 3: sorry heuristic tend to endorse cynicism indiscriminately. So if this

594
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 3: model is correct, they're saying it can be efficient to

595
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 3: just remain in better safe than sorry mode when you

596
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 3: lack the ability to tell whether you're dealing with a corrupt,

597
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 3: untrustworthy environment or not.

598
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:49,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just makes sense. We can all think of

599
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: examples where the scenario is very clear, like, Okay, even

600
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 1: if someone is out to get me, this is not

601
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: the environment where they can just really take me for

602
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 1: all I'm worth. I'm literally handing somebody a five dollar bill.

603
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:03,759
Speaker 1: What are they going to do? They're going to run

604
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: away into the woods and keep my dollar fifty and

605
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: change that the risks seem low.

606
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:14,839
Speaker 3: So onto Stevrova and Illibrac's actual experiments, and I'll start

607
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 3: with the very short version of their findings. First of all,

608
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:22,720
Speaker 3: they find yes on average across multiple experiments. Regular people

609
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 3: tend to believe that cynicism is a sign of cognitive

610
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 3: superiority in others. If you think people are bad, you

611
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:33,840
Speaker 3: think people are selfish, and morals are fake. On balance,

612
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 3: people will tend to assume you are smarter and more competent,

613
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 3: especially at certain types of cognitive tasks, things involving like

614
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:46,400
Speaker 3: logic and numbers and stuff. They're more likely to assign

615
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 3: you important cognitive tasks like doing mathematical calculations and logical

616
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 3: analysis of documents if they think you're cynical. And on

617
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:57,840
Speaker 3: the other hand, the authors found in their experiments no,

618
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:02,880
Speaker 3: on average, cynicism is not associated with cognitive superiority or

619
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:06,759
Speaker 3: greater competence. They had three studies based on data from

620
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 3: about two hundred thousand subjects across thirty different countries and

621
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:14,960
Speaker 3: showed that, on average, cynicism was negatively correlated with tests

622
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 3: of cognitive ability and tests of academic knowledge and competency.

623
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 3: So this included all kinds of things like reading comprehension,

624
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:28,200
Speaker 3: mathematical skills, scientific literacy, technological literacy, and so forth. And

625
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 3: this negative association between cynicism and cognitive tests was true

626
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 3: even after controlling for confounding variables like age, gender, household income, wealth, test,

627
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 3: language proficiency, and Big Five personality traits. Now one major

628
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:47,880
Speaker 3: distinction here is that they found that people who tested

629
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 3: higher incompetence tended to have attitudes of contingent trust. They

630
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 3: might be trusting by default, but were not rigid in

631
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 3: that regard become more cynical if it was warranted situationally

632
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 3: or based on the environment and cultural context, whereas people

633
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 3: scoring lower incompetence tended to accept an unconditionally cynical worldview.

634
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,839
Speaker 3: In the words of the author is quote suggesting that

635
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 3: at low levels of competence, holding a cynical worldview might

636
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 3: represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs

637
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 3: of falling prey to others cunning. Now, I wanted to

638
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 3: expand on these findings with a few notes. One of

639
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,920
Speaker 3: the things about the early tests of people's perceptions of

640
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 3: cynicism a control they had here, is that the authors

641
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 3: didn't just ask about cognitive competence. They also asked about

642
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:46,080
Speaker 3: social and moral competence, and quite along the lines you

643
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 3: might expect. People tended to think that low trust individuals

644
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 3: would be better at cognitive things like math, logic, and

645
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 3: critical thinking, but they thought that high trust individuals would

646
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 3: be better at social tasks like cheering up a depressed

647
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 3: friend or taking care of a stray animal. So it

648
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:05,440
Speaker 3: wasn't just like across the board we think cynics are great.

649
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:08,360
Speaker 3: We think cynics are better at everything. It's that people

650
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:10,799
Speaker 3: tend to think cynics are better at certain types of

651
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 3: intelligence based skills, things like math and logic and so forth.

652
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: So a lot of this is sounding kind of like

653
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: when you see somebody smoking a cigarette. You know, they

654
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: can look pretty cool, especially in movies, like but we

655
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:28,040
Speaker 1: all we know deep down that like, well, the smoking

656
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: a cigarette doesn't actually make you cool, but we can't

657
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: help it. And likewise you might think, well who you know.

658
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: You might say, okay, doctor smoking a cigarette. I have questions.

659
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:40,320
Speaker 1: Maybe this is not the doctor for me. But private

660
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,960
Speaker 1: detective smoking a cigarette, Well, obviously that's the guy I

661
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: want looking after my interests.

662
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 3: Oh do you mean like the smoking of the cigarette

663
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 3: implies like a rejection of the consensus about the health

664
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 3: effects of it, or just that it I mean, I

665
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 3: guess that often is suggested. It's like, I don't think

666
00:39:57,120 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 3: it's hurting me. I don't care what people say. I

667
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:01,319
Speaker 3: guess there are two ways of going It's like it

668
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 3: would be cynical. I think it's part of a cynical

669
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:05,799
Speaker 3: worldview to say, like, ah, these doctors who say it

670
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 3: causes cancer or heart disease, they don't know what they're

671
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 3: talking about. I can just smoke, it's fine. Or there's

672
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:14,080
Speaker 3: the version that's like I don't care what happens to me,

673
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 3: which I think is a little bit different than cynicism.

674
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 3: Maybe though could go along with cynicism.

675
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:19,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but.

676
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 3: I follow you in general, because yeah, there's like, apart

677
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:26,399
Speaker 3: from thinking that cynical people are smart, there is also

678
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 3: a tendency to think that cynical people are cool. Yeah,

679
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:31,919
Speaker 3: that's uh. In fact, I've got a section where maybe

680
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:33,919
Speaker 3: we'll get more into that in just a minute. Here.

681
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: Scientific analysis of the coolness.

682
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 3: Of another thing here is that they tried different like

683
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 3: wordings and types of questions across multiple replication attempts to

684
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 3: make sure that, like, the cynical genius effect was robust,

685
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:00,759
Speaker 3: And it was robust, but the effects were modulated a

686
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 3: little bit by changes in phrasing, such as whether you

687
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:07,880
Speaker 3: describe the opposite of cynicism as an idealistic versus a

688
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 3: positive view of human nature. Apparently people think being idealistic

689
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 3: about human nature is a little bit dumber than being

690
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:19,240
Speaker 3: positive about human nature. It's always funny how just changing

691
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 3: the swapping a word out can have some effects there.

692
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 3: They also replicated these findings in different samples. So they

693
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 3: did some online surveys, international online surveys, and they did

694
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 3: some in person tests of university students in Germany. They

695
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:36,320
Speaker 3: did some with British adults, and the cynical genius effect

696
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:40,240
Speaker 3: appeared to varying degrees in all the groups tested here. However,

697
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 3: in some of these experiments, respondents got to rate essentially

698
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 3: how cynical they would like a person assigned to a

699
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 3: cognitive task to be, and the breakdown, to be clear,

700
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 3: was not toward a preference for extreme cynicism, but for

701
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 3: higher than average cynicism. So one example here is that

702
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:06,320
Speaker 3: in a group of British adults selecting between hypothetical candidates

703
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 3: to solve intellectual problems, participants quote desired mix of cynical

704
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 3: and non cynical tendencies was fifty six percent cynical to

705
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 3: forty four percent non cynical. So on average, the group

706
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:22,879
Speaker 3: they thought, we need somebody smart, we want somebody who

707
00:42:22,960 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 3: is a little bit more cynical than the media.

708
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: That makes sense, you know, if you were able to

709
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: move the slider on your so like your android doctor,

710
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:34,879
Speaker 1: your android lawyer, or whatever it happens to be. Yeah,

711
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: you want that the right mix of cynicism a little

712
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 1: more than the average person, but not not too much.

713
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: This will be interesting to get into later when we

714
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: start talking about like absolute cynicism and what where, what

715
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: that is and where we stand in relation to it.

716
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as for the actual inverse link between cynicism

717
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 3: and competence, when broken down by test domain, I was

718
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 3: interested to see that the effect was strongest in reading

719
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 3: skills and weakest in information processing speed. So in these tests,

720
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:11,960
Speaker 3: apparently highly cynical people holding up relatively okay with speed

721
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 3: of reasoning, doing a lot worse in like reading comprehension

722
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 3: and finally getting to the element of the paper. Comparing cynicism, competence,

723
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 3: and environment, the authors tested levels of cynicism cross referenced

724
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 3: with these cognitive tests in subjects across thirty different countries,

725
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 3: and they found that in countries that scored low in

726
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 3: corruption and high in rule of law according to an

727
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:41,879
Speaker 3: international database called the World Governance Indicators, the effect we've

728
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 3: been talking about did hold true, but in countries with

729
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 3: high corruption and eroded rule of law, the effect was

730
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 3: greatly diminished. Quote the harsher the social climate, the more

731
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:59,319
Speaker 3: these high competence people embraced a cynical worldview. So kind

732
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 3: of along the line of results we talked about in

733
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 3: the last episode, it hurts you materially to hold cynical

734
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:09,200
Speaker 3: views unless those views are correct in the environment where

735
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 3: you operate. Along these lines, the authors discuss ways that

736
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 3: cynicism might be learned directly from personal experience. Despite the

737
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:21,440
Speaker 3: fact that they tried to control for the influence of

738
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:25,480
Speaker 3: variables like age, gender, and wealth, it's still possible that

739
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 3: quote higher levels of cognitive ability, academic competence, and education

740
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:34,839
Speaker 3: might protect from adverse life experiences, not only as they

741
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:38,759
Speaker 3: allow discovering potential fraud, but also as they increase the

742
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 3: chances of living in a safe and friendly environment, providing

743
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 3: more evidence for a positive than for a negative view

744
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 3: of human nature, and consequently preventing cynicism development. So that's

745
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 3: talking about the idea that like that education and cognitive skills,

746
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 3: they might not just be about how accurately you're seeing

747
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 3: the world around you. They might actually, over time influence

748
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 3: what the world around you. Is like on the other hand,

749
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 3: since cynicism entails generalized distrust, quote cynical versus less cynical,

750
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:15,720
Speaker 3: individuals might be more distrustful of the opinions and knowledge

751
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 3: of others, a behavior that can eventually prevent them from

752
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:21,800
Speaker 3: expanding their knowledge and understanding.

753
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:24,759
Speaker 1: Well, that that seems like it tracks the idea that

754
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: if you're you're cynical about at about potential information sources,

755
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:32,240
Speaker 1: and you're more likely to sort of back your way

756
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 1: into a corner where you have very few informational sources

757
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 1: coming in and they're the only the only ones you're

758
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: going to accept are the ones that back up your

759
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: existing cynicism.

760
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 3: Yes, but they say, of course, there is more work

761
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:49,719
Speaker 3: to do exploring the different possible causal mechanisms here. So

762
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 3: this paper does find good, robust evidence for the cynical

763
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:57,399
Speaker 3: genius illusion, that the illusion is widely present and it

764
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 3: is in fact an illusion, but the questions about why

765
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:05,640
Speaker 3: are still largely open. One thing I wonder about a

766
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 3: lot of the cognitive tasks that subjects said they would

767
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 3: entrust to a cynical person more than a non cynical person.

768
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 3: I was looking through the inventory and a lot of

769
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:21,280
Speaker 3: these tasks involved scrutiny of details, like crunching numbers, following

770
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 3: complex logic, analyzing scientific results, things like that, And I

771
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 3: wonder if the same pattern would hold for cognitive tasks

772
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 3: that people associate less with scrutiny of details and instead

773
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:39,839
Speaker 3: with things like creativity and imagination. And to be clear,

774
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 3: the cynical genius effect would be an illusion even if

775
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 3: it were only applied to scrutinizing cognition. But I wonder

776
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:49,800
Speaker 3: if the illusion is actually more specific to certain kinds

777
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 3: of cognition.

778
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that very much, that Sherlock Holmes scenario.

779
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 3: But also coming back to this question, we've asked several

780
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 3: times now, are there any benefit to generalize cynicism. It

781
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 3: comes with tons of harms for the cynic It hurts

782
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,000
Speaker 3: you to be cynical, But are there any benefits? Well,

783
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:10,719
Speaker 3: first of all, this paper does find if you're in

784
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 3: a really corrupt untrustworthy environment, obviously it does make more

785
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 3: sense to be more cynical. That's just like a correct

786
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 3: understanding of how your environment operates. Number two, even if

787
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 3: you're not in a more corrupt untrustworthy environment, If you

788
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 3: don't understand your environment and you're basically out of your depth.

789
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 3: Cynicism may protect you from catastrophic outcomes. It's like, I

790
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 3: don't really know what's going on here, don't know if

791
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 3: I can trust or not, so by default I'm not

792
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 3: going to trust. That's better safe than sorry. And then third,

793
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 3: I think this is going to be mainly related to

794
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:53,120
Speaker 3: the cynical genius illusion. Having a reputation for cynicism may

795
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 3: have the effect of convincing people around you that you

796
00:47:56,800 --> 00:48:00,760
Speaker 3: are very smart and intellectually savvy, even though on average

797
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:03,680
Speaker 3: the opposite is more likely to be true. So there's

798
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 3: a kind of social premium incentive to appear to be cynical.

799
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:09,879
Speaker 3: It's in a lot of cases it's going to make

800
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:13,000
Speaker 3: people think that you know something they don't, and you're

801
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 3: a wise and world weary and intelligent person.

802
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:20,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cynicism is often kind of a safe gambole at,

803
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: like a cocktail party or a mixer. Right if politics

804
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 1: should come up, which of course is bad manners anyway,

805
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 1: but if it were to come up, you might say

806
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:30,719
Speaker 1: something that is just kind of a you know, a

807
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: blanket statement of cynicism, like Iowa politicians are all the same.

808
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 1: And then what people are gonna have to double down.

809
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 1: They're going to have to come back and try to

810
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:42,479
Speaker 1: convince you. No, no, not all politicians. Some are great,

811
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 1: and they're going to look like the person who's naive

812
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: where you've already you know, mounted your cynicism high horse.

813
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:53,439
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. Yeah, the the like all

814
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 3: politicians are the same as the kind of statement that

815
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:59,800
Speaker 3: I think is just facially untrue, could not be true,

816
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:04,239
Speaker 3: obviously wrong, but you feel foolish trying to argue with it. Yeah,

817
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 3: and I think that goes beyond politics. I mean just generally,

818
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 3: trying to argue with the cynic is so difficult. Statements

819
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 3: of cynicism often come with this a priori texture of factuality.

820
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 3: Just feel self evidently true with it, even when it's

821
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,560
Speaker 3: obviously wrong, when it would be absurd for it to

822
00:49:25,600 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 3: be true. One more thing before I wrap up from

823
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:42,480
Speaker 3: the Stavrovia and Elebrects study here talking about in their discussion,

824
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 3: they talk about why do we tend to assume highly

825
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 3: cynical people are smarter than the rest of us, even

826
00:49:48,080 --> 00:49:51,719
Speaker 3: though this is usually not the case. We touched on

827
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 3: this earlier, but the authors do offer a few ideas

828
00:49:55,760 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 3: based on common cognitive biases. In particular, they call out

829
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:05,960
Speaker 3: negativity bias and loss aversion. Negativity bias is the observation

830
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 3: that we are more psychologically affected by negative things than

831
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 3: we are by positive things of equal intensity, and loss

832
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:16,959
Speaker 3: a version is very similar. It's the finding that we're

833
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 3: more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than we are

834
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:24,719
Speaker 3: to achieve a gain of the same value. So here's

835
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:27,919
Speaker 3: an example. I find a five dollars bill on the sidewalk. Ah,

836
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 3: that's nice, quickly forget about it. Versus I drop a

837
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 3: five dollar bill down a storm drain. Are you know why?

838
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:35,880
Speaker 2: Me?

839
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 1: Ah?

840
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:40,440
Speaker 3: I hate this. You know, It's like the dollar value

841
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:45,480
Speaker 3: is exactly the same, but the loss is more memorable,

842
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:49,640
Speaker 3: it's more salient and will cause a greater emotional reaction.

843
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 3: And I think for those reasons, like we are more

844
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,720
Speaker 3: likely to learn something from it, to try to draw

845
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 3: a general inference that we will take and apply to

846
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:01,399
Speaker 3: the rest of life from these moments of loss than

847
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:03,480
Speaker 3: from gains of the exact same value.

848
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'd go as far as to

849
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: say that at the very least, you're more likely to

850
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: remember dropping that five than finding a ten. Yeah, And yeah,

851
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:16,239
Speaker 1: there's probably been an interesting thought experiment to be had,

852
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: and just trying to determine at which point the find

853
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 1: value would be equal to a much lesser loss value.

854
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:26,239
Speaker 3: I think I think work on that exact question has

855
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:27,879
Speaker 3: been done. I don't have it pulled up in front

856
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 3: of me, but I think we've looked at that before. Yeah,

857
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 3: I'm sure for some reason seeing the exact numbers is

858
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:37,400
Speaker 3: going to be really funny. But anyway, so you apply

859
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 3: this these biases negativity, bias, and loss aversion to the

860
00:51:42,160 --> 00:51:45,600
Speaker 3: domain of trust and cynicism, and they could mean that

861
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:49,680
Speaker 3: the pain of being betrayed is much greater than the

862
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:53,840
Speaker 3: pleasure of having our trust rewarded, even given the exact

863
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 3: same original act of trust. And this is back to

864
00:51:57,520 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 3: the mental cherry picking that you mentioned the last time.

865
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:02,280
Speaker 3: You know, you can always like think of these really

866
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 3: sticky examples of times when you shouldn't have trusted someone

867
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:10,399
Speaker 3: or something. We may trust somebody twenty times, it works

868
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,879
Speaker 3: out great nineteen times, but the one time it did

869
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:17,320
Speaker 3: not work out is shocking and painful and we feel

870
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:20,760
Speaker 3: so hurt. And so from this we form an idea

871
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 3: that people who do not trust easily have learned a

872
00:52:24,160 --> 00:52:28,360
Speaker 3: lot of valuable lessons. Therefore they are generally knowledgeable, wise,

873
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 3: and smart. Another explanation comes back to that study from

874
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 3: the background section that we talked about briefly about the

875
00:52:35,600 --> 00:52:40,760
Speaker 3: the invisibility of consequences in situations where we refrain from

876
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 3: from giving trust to our detriment. So again, you get

877
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 3: to see what happens when you trust and that trust

878
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 3: is betrayed. But when you withhold trust and you just

879
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:55,719
Speaker 3: miss out on an opportunity to gain, you don't really

880
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,480
Speaker 3: get to see that loss made concrete. It's just like

881
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 3: it's another path you could have taken, and you can go.

882
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:02,440
Speaker 3: You can even go without thinking about it.

883
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Unless you're visited by you know, Christmas

884
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:07,239
Speaker 1: spirits or something, you're just not going to have any

885
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 1: alternate views.

886
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 3: That's a really you know what. I think a Christmas

887
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 3: Carol is a great example here. That is something the

888
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 3: ghost of Christmas past has to come and make the

889
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:21,360
Speaker 3: lost opportunities concrete. And then one last point the authors

890
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 3: make that I thought was a very interesting point. They raise,

891
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:28,720
Speaker 3: what if the cynical genius illusion arises in part from

892
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:35,280
Speaker 3: biases of storytelling. We fill our lives with fictional stories

893
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:40,919
Speaker 3: fictional stories need to be entertaining. Stories are usually more

894
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:46,160
Speaker 3: entertaining if danger and conflict are heightened, if villains are

895
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 3: meaner and more dangerous, if the stakes are high, if

896
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 3: no one can be trusted you can. You can hear

897
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:56,760
Speaker 3: all these phrases in the Don la Fontaine movie trailer voice,

898
00:53:56,800 --> 00:53:59,759
Speaker 3: can't you you know? It's like, that's what stories are

899
00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:04,520
Speaker 3: made out of. Fictional storytelling selects four narratives about the

900
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:08,720
Speaker 3: dangers of trust and the risk of betrayal because stories

901
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:11,839
Speaker 3: like that are captivating to our attention and we want

902
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:15,760
Speaker 3: to know what happens next. So hostile and treacherous worlds

903
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:19,440
Speaker 3: may be more entertaining in a narrative. But it's possible

904
00:54:19,480 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 3: that we draw incorrect inferences from those fictional worlds. We

905
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 3: learn too much about how life works from unrealities that

906
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 3: are specifically crafted to hack our attention. And who are

907
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:36,239
Speaker 3: the smart, savvy characters in these worlds. I think very

908
00:54:36,239 --> 00:54:39,040
Speaker 3: often they are cynics who are very reluctant to trust.

909
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: That's right, That's a great point.

910
00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:43,359
Speaker 3: So anyway, that's all I've got in the study for now.

911
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 3: But I think the cynical genius illusion is so interesting

912
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:47,759
Speaker 3: I'm going to be thinking about this a lot in

913
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 3: the days and weeks to come.

914
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:51,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, this will be an interesting one to bring into

915
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:55,280
Speaker 1: our weird house cinema discussions as we inevitably come around

916
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 1: to a film that has a cynic genius in it.

917
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:01,840
Speaker 1: And I'm sure if I was to go back and

918
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:04,320
Speaker 1: look at some of the titles we've covered, we've probably

919
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: encountered the encounter these sorts of characters before, probably played

920
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:11,759
Speaker 1: by someone like Christopher Lee. Yes, all right, Well, on

921
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to go ahead and close up

922
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:15,480
Speaker 1: this episode, but we're going to come back with at

923
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:19,279
Speaker 1: least one more episode on cynicism. Again, this is a

924
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 1: huge topic. In the next episode, I believe we're going

925
00:55:22,239 --> 00:55:26,880
Speaker 1: to get into cynicism, politics, and social media, so that

926
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 1: should be a fun discussion either way, tune in. We're

927
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 1: looking forward to getting into it. In the meantime, I'd

928
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:38,160
Speaker 1: like to remind everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind

929
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 1: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes

930
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:44,240
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a short form episode

931
00:55:44,239 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most serious

932
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 1: concerns to just talk about.

933
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:50,880
Speaker 3: A weird film on Weird House Cinema, Huge Things, As

934
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 3: always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you

935
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

936
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:58,240
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

937
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

938
00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:03,240
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

939
00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:11,239
Speaker 3: dot com.

940
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:14,239
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

941
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

942
00:56:18,239 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 2: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.