WEBVTT - From the Vault: Cynicism, Part 2 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:09.200 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Saturday 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:13.960 Vault episode Cynicism, Part two, Originally published four seventeen, twenty 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.640 twenty five. This is part two of four Let's dive 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:17.119 right in. 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.600 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.200 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:34.280 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.680 And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:41.040 two in our series on cynicism, the tendency to believe 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:46.760 other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral. In Part one, 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:50.600 we talked about what cynicism means and its modern usage, 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:55.720 and we contrasted that with similar but distinct concepts like pessimism, 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.640 and also with cynic philosophy, the latter being a school 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:04.000 of fullilosophy born in ancient Greece that emphasized moral integrity, 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:08.640 self sufficiency, and virtue, and achieved in part by shedding 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.840 pretensions like ignoring the pressure to conform and living in 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.560 accordance with our nature. The word cynic comes from the 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.320 Greek word for dog, and so a cynic philosopher in 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.800 the ancient sense might say that we can all learn 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.440 something from watching the honest way that a dog lives 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:28.600 according to its nature. This, of course, is quite different 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.039 from what we mean by cynicism today in common language, 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:36.800 which is a disposition of low social trust, the tendency 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:39.240 to believe, as we put it last time, that people 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:42.680 are bad, people are selfish, and morals are fake. 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:50.120 Yeah. Yeah, ancient philosophic cynics be like a dog. Modern 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:51.760 cynics dog eat dog. 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.559 Yes. Now. Last time we also talked a bit about 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.080 cynicism in literature, with my observation that really, like the 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.520 most cynical writing I could find anywhere was all in 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.040 the Bible, which I'm not sure exactly what to make 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:11.000 of that, but that is kind of surprising and counterintuitive perhaps, 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.280 But it's like, especially in the books of the prophets 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.880 in the Hebrew Bible, like Micah and Jeremiah, full of 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:22.760 just very eloquent, devastating condemnations of human nature. The heart 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:26.440 is deceitful above all things. There is none that doeth good, No, 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:32.000 not one, that sort of thing. We also discussed medical, psychological, 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.520 and sociological research on the correlates of cynicism, with the 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:41.520 overwhelming conclusion being that holding cynical beliefs about human nature 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:45.480 and low trust in others is quite harmful to us 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:47.960 in many different ways. It appears to be bad for 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.520 our health, mental and physical health. It is correlated with 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:56.080 all kinds of undesirable outcomes, including early death. We didn't 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:58.320 really get into this research last time, but you probably 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:00.520 won't be surprised to learn it is a sociated with 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:07.079 low quality social relationships. And despite the archetype of the ruthless, 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.880 cynical striver and achiever, it also tends on average to 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.160 make it harder for us to reach even our material 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:18.280 goals like making money and attaining positions of leadership, at 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.000 least in part because cynical people waste a lot of 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:24.640 time and resources trying to avoid being made a sucker 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.520 and miss out on opportunities to cooperate with others for 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.760 mutual benefit. So I think it's safe to say that 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.480 believing everyone is just in it for themselves and cannot 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.480 be trusted is in so many ways bad, bad, bad 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.480 for us. It's bad for our lives. But of course, 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:46.000 the somewhat heartwarming implied inverse of all this is the 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.320 evidence that it really does us good to cooperate and 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:50.080 trust people. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.520 Definite silver lining there to all all of this research 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:55.680 we've been doing here now. 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.000 In the last episode, we also raised a number of 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.280 questions that we weren't able to answer yet, and we'll 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.200 come back to them throughout the series. I think we'll 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.400 look at at least one study today that sheds some 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.640 light on this. But these were questions like do more 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:15.200 cynical or less cynical people actually have a better predictive 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:18.600 model of the world, Like whose model of how other 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.480 people behave is more accurate? And in any given situation, 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:26.640 how can we know if we're being too trusting, too cynical, 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.080 or if we're striking just the most reasonable balance. And also, 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.719 given that it comes with so many clear downsides, what 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.240 if anything, is the benefit of cynicism. 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.119 Well, I'm not sure this will actually help us answer 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:44.560 any of these questions, but then maybe it'll give us 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.039 just a little more elbow room to work with the concept. 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.880 Reading through Anscar Allen's cynicism book m I T that 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.920 I reverenced in the last episode, and he covers several 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.640 subsets of modern cynicism, and here are a few that 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.279 I thought might help us out. So one category is 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:08.479 insider cynics. So the cynicism of contemporary professionals who believe 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.280 that people are ultimately selfish, and these individuals do their 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:15.719 best to survive in their organizations by dealing with their 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.760 colleagues on those terms. So we might think of it 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.719 as a you know, I'm not here to make friends approach, 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.960 but you know, only to work or specifically to work, 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.280 with the idea being that maybe outside of that work 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.400 environment they are less cynical. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:33.919 Ah okay, well, I would certainly have questions about how 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.000 skilled people are actually are at like turning cynicism on 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:42.560 and off when switching between contexts. But you can certainly 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.120 see how that would be useful, maybe because you know, 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:50.440 it's quite reasonable to understand that, like certain professional environments 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:53.560 require a lot less trust, require you to be more 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.800 doubting of people. Maybe if you are, I don't know, 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:59.280 investigating murders or something like that, like you really need 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:00.880 to not just trust people. 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.520 There are so many movies about murder detectives being able 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:11.200 to neatly separate their work life from their home life. 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.440 Yeah, but so hopefully if you were in a job 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:16.000 like that, or if you're in just in kind of 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.320 a cutthrow business environment where everybody, you know, everybody's trying 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:21.920 to edge other people out in deals. You would hope 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:23.800 to be able to turn that off when you come 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:26.920 out of that and get into your relationships in life. 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:30.240 I guess it's questionable to what extent people can do 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:31.080 that very well. 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.440 I would agree with that. Yes, another classification that he 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:39.600 singles out or the master cynics, so rich and powerful 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.640 contemporary cynics who hide their own cynicism by adopting the 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.159 values and beliefs of people they hold power over. In 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.359 a weird sense, this is kind of kind of a 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:54.760 puzzle because a person who's really cynical about politics would 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.560 no doubt assume that every politician is a master cynic, 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:01.520 that they're just when they're a handing and so forth, 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:05.360 they're just pretending to take on these values where deep 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.640 down they know the truth, Like I know that people 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.440 are just selfish and they're exploiting everyone as well. 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:13.360 We're going to have to come back to the question 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:17.040 of cynicism in politics and political participation because I think 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:19.160 that raises all sorts of interesting questions. 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:20.920 Yeah, and there's been a lot of research, a lot 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.600 of writing just on that area alone. Now, the third 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:26.800 of the categories that I'm going to reference here. There 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.040 are some additional ones that I'm not getting into, but 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.280 the third one I want to reference here is paternalistic cynicism, 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.640 And in this one holds a cynical view of human 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.680 motivations and seeks to capitalize on those motivations, but not 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.480 for personal gain, but for the greater good. And that 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:45.600 one made me think a little bit more and maybe 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.080 gives us a little more room to play when considering 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.640 the effectiveness or possible effectiveness of cynicism. I was thinking, like, 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:55.160 let's say you wanted to encourage a certain behavior in 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.720 the general public, and you're presented with two messaging options, 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.320 one that works based on a cynical view of human motivations, 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.520 you know, greed and self interest, while the other appeals 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.360 to the higher angels of their nature. Well, which is 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.760 more likely to work. It's going to depend on the messaging, 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.520 of course, and the exact details of the target audience, 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.640 you know, general audience versus you know, some narrow or audience. 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:23.440 But yeah, which worldview is a better starting place? I 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:25.400 feel like this might work as a good sort of 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.600 practical thought experiment because it entails making a choice about 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:31.520 how you're going to model the motivations of a given population. 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:34.200 But on the other hand, we kind of come back 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:36.760 to that sliding scale of cynicism. If one is cynical 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:41.040 enough about the intended audience, then would any messaging seem 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:43.280 like it would work, Like why are you even bothering? 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.000 If you're just assuming that everyone out there is just selfish, 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.040 you might not be able to get them to stop littering, 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.360 or to recycle, or to I don't know where seat belts. 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.959 But maybe the paternalistic cynicism model is like you, you 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.560 must stop littering, and you must be kind to your 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.200 fellows human being or you will go to hell. Something 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:06.160 you know, like appealing to your base personal interest in 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.080 order to get you to do something that the messager 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:09.840 sees as good. 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:12.760 Yeah, bring it back to fear right. Maybe I'm just 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:16.480 muddying the waters. But there's so many different areas you 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.280 can get into and discussions of modern cynicism. Rob. 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.640 One thing you said in the last episode that I 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.680 thought was really insightful and I have kept thinking about 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.120 ever since we recorded that is that you said maybe 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.040 one of the appeals of cynicism is that expressions of 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:38.560 cynicism are cathartic statements like people suck. They when you 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:40.760 say things like that, or when somebody else says that 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.640 and you get to agree with them, it feels like 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:48.000 a psychological pressure release valve. By like making a statement 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:52.160 of that sort, you're sort of blowing off steam. And 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:54.440 of course this can be true even for people who 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:58.479 are not especially cynical on average, having these little moments 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.840 of situational cynicism. But I was thinking more about the 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:08.080 Catharsis element, and I wonder if this association of cynicism 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:11.920 with cathartic relief also tells us something about how people 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:17.560 can acquire generalized dispositional cynicism. Like what if the person 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.199 who is very cynical on average gets to be that 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:25.360 way by creating by like habituating themselves to a desire 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.360 for that momentary catharsis that you get from saying people suck. 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:30.800 Does that make any sense? 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.600 Yeah, Like you dip your hand into the cynicism cookie 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:37.600 jar a few times too often and the crumbs begin 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.080 to stick. Yeah. I was thinking about this when I 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.640 was looking at some material related to cynicism in the workplace, 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:48.880 which is its own huge area of consideration that we're 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.800 not really going to get into in this episode, per se. 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.120 But I was just thinking about, Okay, if one's really 0:10:55.160 --> 0:11:01.120 cynical regarding one's employers, one's corporate overlords, you might excuse 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:04.200 any amount of inaction or slacking based on the view that, well, 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.080 they don't really care about me, they're not invested in me, 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.160 they're not paying me enough, and so forth, all any 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:15.640 grievance you might imagine. And maybe, just maybe in small doses, 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.319 this gives you space to let things slide in ways 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.320 that ease your work burden or create space for something 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.600 else you want to do. And yeah, maybe it's a 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.800 situation where if you stick your hand into that cookie 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.840 jar too often, it does become your default view at 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.000 least of your work situation. And maybe it bleeds over 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:36.880 into other areas as well. 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.440 That is an interesting possibility. So you're in a kind 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:44.920 of a pressure inducing scenario and you, for whatever reason, 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.520 you can get little moments of relief from that pressure 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:53.760 by resorting to cynical evaluations. And so does that create 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.000 a kind of addiction like you associate the moment of 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:02.520 cathartic cynicism with real axation of the pain or with 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.079 pleasure or even or something like that and you just 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.440 kind of keep pressing the pleasure button until that's just 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:09.600 what your personality is. 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:10.760 Yeah. 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.800 I don't have research to like back up that interpretation 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.040 of where cynicism comes from, but I think that is 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:18.600 an interesting possibility. I wonder if it ever sets in 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:19.000 that way. 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.400 Yeah. Yeah, I also was thinking, you know, in terms 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.679 of dealing with this a corporation or a company, like 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:30.520 it's one thing to sort of initially think cynically about 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:35.120 like this faceless thing, this organization, But of course organizations 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:38.240 are made up of people, and so I wonder how 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.200 the cynicism might spread where you might generally have cynical 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:44.880 ideas about a company, but then those cynical ideas end 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.760 up applying to certain heads of that company. But then 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:51.160 it could potentially trickle down, and then where does it stop, 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.520 Like who stops being the face of the company. I 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:55.240 guess they have to be cynical enough. They have to 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:57.920 share your cynicism in order to be like your your 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:01.839 brothers in arms against against the company, that sort of thing. 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:04.920 Yeah, yeah, you know, actually this sort of gets a 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.599 little bit into something I'm going to talk about in 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:12.080 the paper. I'm about to explain. But there are different environments. 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:17.200 There are different sort of environments and contexts that encourage 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.280 and reward different levels of cynicism, and so there can 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:24.480 be very like cynicism positive organizations, Like if you are 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:29.360 within a company that is very cruel and in which 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:31.920 you know you don't do very well by placing trust 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:35.000 in people, it can be quite reasonable to end up 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.600 responding with the generalized cynicism about interactions within that company. 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:45.720 Organizational culture is a thing. So anyway, so I want 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:50.320 to turn to a concept in psychological research on cynicism 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:54.640 that I found really interesting, and that is the so 0:13:54.720 --> 0:14:00.440 called cynical genius illusion. So I was reading about this 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.040 in a paper by a couple of researchers that I 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.360 cited in part one of the series. These scientists are 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:10.240 Olga Stavrova, a professor of psychology at Tilburg University in 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.440 the Netherlands, and Daniel Illebracht at the University of Cologne 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.800 in Germany. These two published a paper in the year 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.480 twenty eighteen in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:25.920 and the paper was called the Cynical Genius Illusion, Exploring 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:32.040 and debunking lay beliefs about cynicism and competence. Now, they 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:34.520 begin by acknowledging a lot of the things we talked 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.520 about in the last episode. They define cynicism as, you know, 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:42.240 the main cognitive component of hostility. They're talking about it 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:44.080 pretty much in the same terms we are, I believe 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:47.440 that other people, you know, you should be suspicious of 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.720 their motives, that they that they are primarily motivated by 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.960 self interest, that they can't be trusted and will harm you. 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:56.920 And then they run through the long list of ways 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.600 that cynicism appears to be bad for us, bad for 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.120 our life in health, in relationships and ability to attain 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:08.920 goals and so forth. However, the authors complicate that picture 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:13.000 by noting that if you just look at popular culture 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:18.440 and literature and folk wisdom, cynicism does not seem to 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:22.640 have and on the whole negative reputation. To read from 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.880 their introduction here quote. Among nineteenth and twentieth century writers 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.280 in popular figures, cynicism has often been seen as a 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:35.160 sign of intelligence and wit. American writers Ambrose Bierce and 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:39.240 Lillian Hellman praised cynicism as an art of seeing the 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.640 true nature of things. Bernard Shaw referred to cynicism as 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:48.120 a quote power of accurate observation, and John Stuart Mill 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.520 noticed that quote it is thought essential to a man 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:54.000 who has any knowledge of the world to have an 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:58.720 extremely bad opinion of it. And as for the other 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.280 authors they named, I looked up some of the cynical quotes. 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:03.480 I can't believe I didn't think of Ambrose Beers as 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.800 a good source of literary cynicism in the last episode, 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.800 but in The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce defines a cynic as 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:15.120 someone quote whose faulty vision sees things as they are, 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.880 not as they ought to be. They also cited Lillian Hellman. 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:23.240 Her version of this was quote, cynicism is an unpleasant 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.520 way of saying the truth. And I do think there's 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:31.440 something interesting in Hellman's phrasing here, because of the emphasis 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:35.160 on tone. It is an unpleasant way of saying what 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:39.080 is true. So what is the difference between somebody just 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:43.120 quote being real and somebody being cynical. It might be 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:45.200 in the substance of what they say and how they think. 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.800 It might be like material substantive differences. But I think 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:51.920 sometimes we make that distinction based on whether there is 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:56.640 negative emotion in their expression, like if they are counseling 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:00.960 us against trust. Did they deliver that count with anger 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:05.760 or contempt? But anyway, so you've got all this literature 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:10.800 that equates cynicism with the kind of wisdom and you know, 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:15.040 like the power to see what is really going on. Also, 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:17.159 the authors here point out that if you draw up 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:21.320 a list of like cynical characters in popular culture, they 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:26.280 don't tend to be pitiable wretches dealing with setbacks imposed 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:30.160 by their lack of faith in humankind. More often, cynicism 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:36.399 in fictional characters is presented as gruff hard one realism 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:41.960 and wisdom. The cynical character has knowledge, insights, and powers 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:46.480 of deduction not available to their more trusting peers. So 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.440 think of Sherlock Holmes or The authors give the example 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:54.080 of House from how simd. I'm not a watcher of House, 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:55.359 but I'm familiar with the character. 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:58.240 I mean, you could do a full stop after Sherlock, 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:02.760 because Sherlock, of course, in influences so many different similar 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:08.439 characters and cast a long shadow across across the English language, 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:11.680 and and fiction and other languages, but cast a long 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.080 shadow across our media. Yeah, yet at this and it 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.280 is interesting to think about Sherlock Holmes in these terms, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.439 because yes, Sherlock Holmes is presented as being uh, you know, 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:26.240 somewhat emotionally detached, but not you know, certainly he's fighting 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:28.439 the good fight. He is on the side of the 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.080 good guy and will sometimes even you know, break the 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.520 rules a little bit or bend them in order to 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:38.200 make sure that justice is served. But on the other hand, 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.200 I think if you if you look closely enough at Sherlock, 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:44.200 I mean he's also a character who at times admits 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.880 that he's never loved anyone or has certainly never had 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:51.120 a romantic love in his life. He also struggles horribly 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.280 with addiction at one point. You know, so you know, 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.080 he's he's not an angel. But again, I guess this 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.840 part of his presentation, he's he's hard boiled. It's it's 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.320 it's hard one cynicism that he uses in order to 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:06.600 solve the crimes that he's presented with. 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.320 Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that is actually generally true. 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:16.000 Cynical characters are often presented as suffering as a result 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:19.440 of their own cynicism, but not wrong because of it, 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.800 like that their cynicism is something that hurts them and 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.200 it makes them sad and lonely, but it also gives 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:30.960 them cognitive superiority. It gives them intelligence and wisdom and 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:36.760 power to see through the facade and see what's really happening. Yeah, 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:39.960 but anyway, So, based on this background of the cynical 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:44.199 geniuses in fiction and the sort of cynical wit and 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.960 wisdom from literature, the author is conducted a number of 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.640 different studies. They did four studies to explore common beliefs 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:56.680 about the link between cynicism and cognitive superiority and competence, 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:59.880 and then three more studies to look at whether they're 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:04.280 actually is a link. So do people in general think 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:08.520 that cynicism is a sign of knowledge, intellect, and competence. 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:13.240 Do cynics actually seem smarter? And are they actually smarter 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.040 and more competent than the rest of us? 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:18.960 Well, Sherlock is above reproach, but yeah, I'm curious to 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:20.600 hear how it lights to real people. 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:23.919 So the authors begin by acknowledging some existing research that 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.080 touches on these questions. For example, there was a study 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.840 by Evans and Venda Caalceda published in Personality and Social 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:36.679 Psychology Bulletin in twenty eighteen called the Reputational consequences of 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:41.000 generalized trust. And this study looked at what we was 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:42.760 just sort of a survey of what we tend to 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.520 think of people when we know that they are high 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.560 in trust or low in cynicism. The findings were that 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:54.760 high trust individuals are seen as moral and seen as sociable, 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:58.840 but also seen as less competent. And this kind of 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.119 makes sense as a as a familiar personality archetype, right, like, 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.480 Johnny is so trusting, he's a good guy, he's friendly, 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:10.399 but he doesn't know what he's doing. So if showing 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:15.520 generalized trust makes people think we're less competent, does that 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:22.960 imply that showing generalized distrust makes people think we're more competent. Perhaps. However, 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.440 the authors also found here that people see you as 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:30.719 more competent if you display what they call discriminate ability, 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.600 which is the ability to tell the difference between a 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:38.120 situation in which you should trust and situations in which 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:40.560 you should not. And this takes us back to the 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.440 question we mentioned in part one. Obviously, nobody either trusts 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:47.959 or distrusts in every situation, So how do you determine 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:51.600 how cynical it is reasonable to be in this situation? 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:54.360 And how do we know if we're off balance? 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:55.160 Now? 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:59.359 The authors also discuss reasons that people might think it 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:04.280 is why to be cynical one is pretty familiar better 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:08.480 safe than sorry, reasoning. They write, quote, in many domains, 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:12.800 the consequences of false negative errors eg. Believing that someone 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:16.280 is trustworthy when they really are not have often been 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:20.840 more costly than false positive errors, eg. Believing that someone 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:26.199 is untrustworthy when they really are trustworthy. Over human evolutionary history, 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:31.800 making the cognitive system of modern humans biased toward false alarms, 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:34.760 which is hard to argue with, right, Like, Yeah, in 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:37.800 this series, we are showing lots of evidence that it 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.879 is bad for you to be highly chronically cynical. And 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.560 yet it's true that more often if you distrust a 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:50.840 trustworthy person, the immediate consequences are fairly limited, but if 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:55.240 you trust an untrustworthy person, the consequences can be disastrous. 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:57.080 Yeah, we talked about this a little bit in the 0:22:57.119 --> 0:22:59.520 last episode Type one Errors and Cognition. You know, it's 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:03.000 like you've got to make your way across an open field, 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:07.840 and you know there's gonna be a time cost and 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:11.760 and probably like you know, an anxiety cost to checking 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:13.600 every bush along the way to make sure there's not 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:15.679 a tiger in there to jump out and get you. 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:18.560 But you know, the way our brains work and the 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:22.720 way we're hardwired, it's like we know that that's one 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:25.320 sort of risk I'm gonna lose some time, and I might, 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:29.080 you know, feel horrible the whole way, versus getting eaten 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:31.199 by a tiger. Yeah, Like one of those is like 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:34.680 a mutt like looms far larger in our short term 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:35.760 threat analysis. 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:39.480 One side of the balance has an infinite cost on it. Yeah, 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:42.880 it's like kind of hard to outbalance that, even though 0:23:42.920 --> 0:23:45.560 like wasting all your time and resources checking every bush 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:48.240 that that really does matter, like over time, that hugely 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:49.640 impacts your quality of life. 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:51.879 Yeah, yeah, especially of course, you know when you get 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:55.080 into not only real tigers, but all the paper tigers 0:23:55.119 --> 0:23:56.000 in one's life, you know. 0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:59.479 So anyway, they say that a general appreciation for the 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:03.040 merit of the better safe than sorry framework could lead 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:06.520 to the widespread notion that cynics are smarter people. They're 0:24:06.560 --> 0:24:20.480 more knowledgeable and more competent. Now, continuing the background review, 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:24.120 the authors also get into existing research on whether there 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:29.040 is an actual link between cynicism and competence so now 0:24:29.040 --> 0:24:31.919 we're asking not about how cynics are perceived, but about 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:36.159 what their relative competence level actually is. And this, I 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:38.399 guess comes back to another question we brought up in 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:42.199 Part one. Do cynics or nonsnics have a better predictive 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:46.159 model of the world? And one very interesting way of 0:24:46.160 --> 0:24:50.600 studying this is the so called trust game. So here's 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:53.280 an example of a type of trust game. This was 0:24:53.320 --> 0:24:57.080 described in a paper called why so cynical asymmetric feedback 0:24:57.200 --> 0:25:01.679 underlies misguided skepticism regarding the trust worthiness of others. This 0:25:01.920 --> 0:25:04.919 was by Debt Left, Fetchenhauer and David Dunning in the 0:25:05.000 --> 0:25:08.800 journal Psychological Science in twenty ten, and it describes this 0:25:09.960 --> 0:25:12.480 what is sometimes called an investing game, but they call 0:25:12.480 --> 0:25:15.480 it a trust game, and it goes like this quote. 0:25:15.800 --> 0:25:19.359 In the game, the trust is given money that can 0:25:19.400 --> 0:25:24.160 be kept or handed to a completely random and anonymous stranger, 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:28.280 the trustee. If the trust hands his or her money over, 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:32.760 the amount of money is quadrupled eg. Five dollars becomes 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:37.480 twenty dollars, and trustees have two options. They can either 0:25:37.880 --> 0:25:41.840 split the money evenly between themselves and the truster eg. 0:25:42.040 --> 0:25:45.280 Give ten dollars back and keep ten dollars for themselves, 0:25:45.960 --> 0:25:49.399 or they can keep all the money for themselves. So 0:25:49.560 --> 0:25:51.960 the way the game works is I'm the truster. I'm 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:54.360 the person who gets to make the first decision. If 0:25:54.400 --> 0:25:57.920 I trust you and you are trustworthy, we both benefit 0:25:58.000 --> 0:26:00.960 and I double my money. I trust you and you 0:26:01.040 --> 0:26:04.480 are not trustworthy, I get nothing. So the authors did 0:26:04.480 --> 0:26:08.320 this experiment lots of times, and some interesting patterns came out. 0:26:08.920 --> 0:26:13.520 Uh they found that trusters estimate the rate of trustworthiness 0:26:13.520 --> 0:26:16.480 of anonymous strangers in the game. They estimate it will 0:26:16.480 --> 0:26:21.000 be between forty five and sixty percent. So it seems 0:26:21.000 --> 0:26:23.879 that most people think it's a little better than a 0:26:23.920 --> 0:26:26.880 coin flip chance that the other person will honor their 0:26:26.920 --> 0:26:30.639 trust and split the money for mutual benefit. In reality, 0:26:31.000 --> 0:26:34.400 the trustees honored the trust and split the money around 0:26:34.600 --> 0:26:38.960 eighty to ninety percent of the time. So people in 0:26:39.040 --> 0:26:45.040 this game massively underestimated how trustworthy random strangers would be. 0:26:46.560 --> 0:26:49.240 At least in the context of this game, anonymous strangers 0:26:49.240 --> 0:26:53.639 were something like twenty to fifty percent more trustworthy and 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:57.920 cooperative than people expected them to be. Isn't that interesting? 0:26:58.000 --> 0:26:58.720 That's crazy? 0:26:59.280 --> 0:27:02.680 Yeah, eighty ninety percent of the time that's higher than 0:27:02.760 --> 0:27:05.399 I would have guessed. But but then again, it's like 0:27:05.480 --> 0:27:07.800 I like to think that if someone offered me the 0:27:07.880 --> 0:27:11.879 scenario and I was not too cynical and trusted that 0:27:11.880 --> 0:27:14.040 it was not some sort of a scam, I would 0:27:14.119 --> 0:27:15.600 be as trustworthy. 0:27:15.440 --> 0:27:18.360 Can I offer. I think maybe one thing that could 0:27:18.400 --> 0:27:23.359 be working in this particular scenario is that it makes 0:27:23.640 --> 0:27:28.320 sense to be wary of people who are offering to 0:27:28.440 --> 0:27:33.120 double your money in financial transactions. But I think that 0:27:33.160 --> 0:27:37.960 makes sense when like people come to you and they say, like, hey, 0:27:38.119 --> 0:27:40.480 you know, you give me some money and I'll double it, 0:27:41.560 --> 0:27:44.000 you should. I mean, if somebody says that they're not 0:27:44.040 --> 0:27:47.600 telling you the truth almost always, so like there's a 0:27:47.760 --> 0:27:50.040 good reason to be worried there. This is a different thing, 0:27:50.080 --> 0:27:53.040 because the trustee in this game is not somebody who 0:27:53.119 --> 0:27:55.719 is coming out of nowhere to offer you money if 0:27:55.720 --> 0:27:58.800 you just give them some first. They're a random stranger 0:27:58.920 --> 0:28:02.080 who is who has been pulled into this experiment designed 0:28:02.119 --> 0:28:04.879 by somebody else. And so I think what this shows 0:28:04.920 --> 0:28:08.040 is most of the time, if given the opportunity to 0:28:08.080 --> 0:28:11.639 be trustworthy and cooperate, most people will, But also it 0:28:11.720 --> 0:28:14.720 makes sense to be wary of people who are claiming 0:28:14.840 --> 0:28:18.480 they're trying to help you cooperate, you know, for mutual benefit. 0:28:18.720 --> 0:28:21.199 If they're coming out of nowhere with this, you know, 0:28:21.280 --> 0:28:24.040 that's often going to be a scam. Does that make sense? 0:28:24.160 --> 0:28:24.960 Yeah, yeah, I think so. 0:28:25.680 --> 0:28:28.160 But anyway, so yeah, in the trust game, most people 0:28:28.160 --> 0:28:31.879 are very trustworthy and players are on average way too 0:28:32.000 --> 0:28:34.720 cynical about their fellow human being. They are missing out 0:28:34.720 --> 0:28:38.920 on lots of opportunities to double their money. And this 0:28:39.040 --> 0:28:41.840 is consistent with research by Miller in nineteen ninety eight 0:28:41.880 --> 0:28:44.959 and ninety nine finding that people just tend to grossly 0:28:45.120 --> 0:28:51.000 overestimate the selfishness and underestimate the trustworthiness of strangers. In 0:28:51.040 --> 0:28:56.280 this particular paper, the authors note that cynicism might grow 0:28:56.440 --> 0:29:00.840 from what they call asymmetric feedback, and the way that 0:29:00.880 --> 0:29:05.040 works is this, when you trust somebody and you get betrayed, 0:29:05.720 --> 0:29:09.920 you get very clear feedback that it was wrong to trust. 0:29:10.320 --> 0:29:13.920 The downside of granting your trust is very apparent to you. 0:29:14.000 --> 0:29:16.200 They walk away with the money, you get nothing, and 0:29:16.280 --> 0:29:19.160 you know it's clear to you what happened. But when 0:29:19.200 --> 0:29:24.360 you refrain from trusting people, the downsides are often invisible 0:29:24.360 --> 0:29:28.200 to you because you don't actually see the lost opportunity 0:29:28.680 --> 0:29:30.960 as a scenario that plays out in front of you. 0:29:30.960 --> 0:29:34.960 You have to like imagine it as a counterfactual. It's 0:29:35.000 --> 0:29:37.960 not concrete and in your face, like being betrayed is. 0:29:38.480 --> 0:29:42.720 So you don't really get conditioned by feedback from instances 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:45.680 where you harmed yourself by withholding trust. 0:29:45.880 --> 0:29:49.240 Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like 0:29:49.440 --> 0:29:52.719 give like, here's a scenario. Let's imagine that you're just 0:29:52.920 --> 0:29:55.520 really pedantic when looking at the checks when you go 0:29:55.600 --> 0:29:59.360 out to eat with friends. You know, you're like, all right, 0:29:59.360 --> 0:30:00.960 I want to see every his work. I got to 0:30:00.960 --> 0:30:03.920 make one hundred percent sure this is fair. And maybe 0:30:03.920 --> 0:30:06.600 it's because at some point someone really did stick you 0:30:07.880 --> 0:30:10.880 over one of these situations, and so it maybe that 0:30:11.000 --> 0:30:13.479 is more apparent, Like you're never going to forget that 0:30:13.480 --> 0:30:17.600 that you were wronged in this way. But if you're 0:30:17.640 --> 0:30:21.120 just overly pedantic when it comes to the bills, eventually 0:30:21.120 --> 0:30:24.160 people might stop asking you to join them for dinner, 0:30:25.240 --> 0:30:28.480 and that might be very invisible to you that that's happening. 0:30:28.640 --> 0:30:31.440 Yes, you don't realize. Yeah, it's just like things are 0:30:31.440 --> 0:30:33.160 not as good now, and I don't know why I'm 0:30:33.160 --> 0:30:37.440 feeling lonely yeah, or is a more direct comparison. If 0:30:37.520 --> 0:30:40.760 you're not looking at the checks all the time, you 0:30:40.880 --> 0:30:44.560 might not notice the times when somebody made a mistake 0:30:44.640 --> 0:30:47.479 in your favor that just passed you never even noticed 0:30:47.520 --> 0:30:50.240 that it just goes right by you. That that is 0:30:50.240 --> 0:30:53.080 a good comparison. But anyway, what the study found is 0:30:53.080 --> 0:30:57.880 that if you give subjects symmetric feedback about the trustworthiness 0:30:57.880 --> 0:31:02.840 of others, it tended to deuce the subject's cynicism. So, like, 0:31:03.120 --> 0:31:06.720 let's say you play the trust game, symmetric feedback would 0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:09.800 be rob whether or not you decide to hand somebody 0:31:09.960 --> 0:31:13.320 the five dollars and try to cooperate to quadruple it. 0:31:13.680 --> 0:31:16.000 You get to find out what they would have done 0:31:16.160 --> 0:31:19.920 either way, so you know, you get to keep playing 0:31:19.960 --> 0:31:22.200 the game that way. And it turns out if you 0:31:22.240 --> 0:31:24.400 play it that way, where people keep seeing, oh, I 0:31:24.480 --> 0:31:27.000 kept the money, but they I saw that they would 0:31:27.080 --> 0:31:29.400 have doubled my money if I just trusted them, and 0:31:29.440 --> 0:31:31.560 you get to see that happen over and over. That 0:31:31.600 --> 0:31:36.600 actually does decrease people's cynicism, which also is interesting and 0:31:36.640 --> 0:31:38.440 that it gives you at least a little bit of 0:31:38.440 --> 0:31:42.080 an idea where some elements of cynicism could be coming from. 0:31:42.240 --> 0:31:46.200 It could be related in part to this asymmetric build 0:31:46.240 --> 0:31:49.320 up of information. We get to see where trust fails 0:31:49.480 --> 0:31:53.800 very clearly. But the opportunities we lose out on by 0:31:53.840 --> 0:31:56.920 not granting trust are often just like, we don't even 0:31:56.960 --> 0:31:59.680 realize what's happened. We don't even realize anything. We don't 0:31:59.680 --> 0:32:03.200 even know what we're missing. Yeah, so this research does 0:32:03.240 --> 0:32:05.280 not give us a complete picture, but I think some 0:32:05.480 --> 0:32:09.000 evidence is starting to accumulate that the cynic does not 0:32:09.440 --> 0:32:12.920 have a highly accurate internal model of the world. They 0:32:12.960 --> 0:32:17.400 might in some scenarios, but generalized cynicism is not like 0:32:18.280 --> 0:32:20.920 as some of these writers were saying, seeing things as 0:32:20.960 --> 0:32:24.360 they really are. In fact, cynicism often causes us to 0:32:24.560 --> 0:32:28.640 incorrectly predict the behavior of other people, assuming they will 0:32:28.680 --> 0:32:33.240 be more selfish and treacherous than they really are. Now, 0:32:33.240 --> 0:32:35.560 coming back to the main paper I was talking about, 0:32:35.560 --> 0:32:39.320 Bastavrova and Elibracht, they note some other research on the 0:32:39.360 --> 0:32:43.760 link between cynicism and competence. Again, contrary to the cynical 0:32:43.760 --> 0:32:47.320 genius archetype, the authors are able to cite a long 0:32:47.440 --> 0:32:51.800 list of studies looking at links between cynicism and various 0:32:51.840 --> 0:32:55.959 types of cognitive performance and ability, and they find it's 0:32:56.040 --> 0:32:58.880 exactly the opposite of what you might guess from the 0:32:58.920 --> 0:33:04.440 Sherlock Holmes exam. Higher performance on various types of cognitive, academic, 0:33:04.520 --> 0:33:09.120 and IQ tests is negatively correlated with cynicism. It is 0:33:09.200 --> 0:33:14.880 instead positively correlated with increased tendency to trust. There are 0:33:14.880 --> 0:33:17.480 a few confounding results here. It's not like every single 0:33:17.520 --> 0:33:20.440 study has found this, but the vast majority have. Some 0:33:20.520 --> 0:33:24.000 of the confounding results are. For example, they cite a 0:33:24.040 --> 0:33:27.640 twenty thirteen study that found that higher IQ does not, 0:33:27.840 --> 0:33:32.840 on average improve a person's ability to correctly predict who 0:33:32.880 --> 0:33:35.760 will be trustworthy and who will not. So like you 0:33:35.800 --> 0:33:38.920 do better on cognitive tests, that doesn't mean that if 0:33:38.960 --> 0:33:42.120 we pair you up with you know, Johnny and Billy 0:33:42.160 --> 0:33:44.800 in the in the trust game experiment, you can predict 0:33:44.840 --> 0:33:48.240 whether Johnny or Billy you'll be more likely to help 0:33:48.280 --> 0:33:50.560 you out. It just it doesn't help us in that regard. 0:33:50.840 --> 0:33:52.800 Yeah, it's like the compass is already pulling you in 0:33:52.800 --> 0:33:56.200 one direction or another, and however higher IQ is, I mean, 0:33:56.200 --> 0:33:58.360 that's just that's just the kind of mental energy that 0:33:58.480 --> 0:34:01.280 ends up being wrapped around the initial impulse. 0:34:01.760 --> 0:34:03.920 Another thing to keep in mind here is that, of course, 0:34:03.960 --> 0:34:07.760 while like various cognitive and IQ and academic tests can 0:34:08.440 --> 0:34:11.040 they can tell you a lot of things about cognitive ability, 0:34:11.040 --> 0:34:14.120 they don't tell you everything. So you know, they can 0:34:14.160 --> 0:34:16.760 tell you about certain kinds of skills with reasoning, certain 0:34:16.840 --> 0:34:19.880 kinds of intelligence. But there are always going to be 0:34:20.440 --> 0:34:24.200 elements of intelligence that are not perfectly captured by these 0:34:24.239 --> 0:34:29.600 sorts of tests. So the authors begin to develop a 0:34:29.680 --> 0:34:33.959 possible hypothetical model to explain what's going on here. They say, 0:34:34.080 --> 0:34:38.920 what if intelligence, knowledge, and competence don't really help you 0:34:39.080 --> 0:34:43.200 very much in identifying who to trust in a given scenario. 0:34:43.239 --> 0:34:46.120 They don't tell you really if Johnny or Billy, both 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:49.400 of whom you've just met, is more trustworthy, But instead 0:34:49.560 --> 0:34:54.600 they help you evaluate the scenario itself to decide whether 0:34:54.719 --> 0:34:58.480 to deploy a more cynical or a more trusting framework 0:34:58.760 --> 0:35:03.480 given the environment. In the circumstances the author's right quote, 0:35:04.000 --> 0:35:08.160 high levels of competence might allow individuals to correctly identify 0:35:08.200 --> 0:35:12.040 the corruptness of their environment and adjust their level of 0:35:12.080 --> 0:35:16.560 cynicism to match it. Following this reasoning, high competence individuals 0:35:16.640 --> 0:35:20.719 might hold adaptable attitudes and recur to cynicism only when 0:35:20.760 --> 0:35:24.719 it seems warranted, while their less competent counterparts might show 0:35:24.800 --> 0:35:29.160 more cognitive rigidity and relying on the better safe than 0:35:29.280 --> 0:35:34.680 sorry heuristic tend to endorse cynicism indiscriminately. So if this 0:35:34.880 --> 0:35:38.040 model is correct, they're saying it can be efficient to 0:35:38.320 --> 0:35:41.920 just remain in better safe than sorry mode when you 0:35:42.040 --> 0:35:45.160 lack the ability to tell whether you're dealing with a corrupt, 0:35:45.360 --> 0:35:47.279 untrustworthy environment or not. 0:35:48.080 --> 0:35:49.600 Yeah, yeah, just makes sense. We can all think of 0:35:49.640 --> 0:35:53.759 examples where the scenario is very clear, like, Okay, even 0:35:53.800 --> 0:35:55.840 if someone is out to get me, this is not 0:35:55.920 --> 0:35:58.360 the environment where they can just really take me for 0:35:58.400 --> 0:36:01.560 all I'm worth. I'm literally handing somebody a five dollar bill. 0:36:01.800 --> 0:36:03.759 What are they going to do? They're going to run 0:36:03.800 --> 0:36:06.880 away into the woods and keep my dollar fifty and 0:36:07.000 --> 0:36:09.160 change that the risks seem low. 0:36:09.600 --> 0:36:14.839 So onto Stevrova and Illibrac's actual experiments, and I'll start 0:36:14.880 --> 0:36:18.000 with the very short version of their findings. First of all, 0:36:18.000 --> 0:36:22.720 they find yes on average across multiple experiments. Regular people 0:36:22.760 --> 0:36:26.560 tend to believe that cynicism is a sign of cognitive 0:36:26.600 --> 0:36:30.160 superiority in others. If you think people are bad, you 0:36:30.239 --> 0:36:33.840 think people are selfish, and morals are fake. On balance, 0:36:33.920 --> 0:36:37.280 people will tend to assume you are smarter and more competent, 0:36:38.040 --> 0:36:42.200 especially at certain types of cognitive tasks, things involving like 0:36:43.200 --> 0:36:46.400 logic and numbers and stuff. They're more likely to assign 0:36:46.440 --> 0:36:51.719 you important cognitive tasks like doing mathematical calculations and logical 0:36:51.719 --> 0:36:55.400 analysis of documents if they think you're cynical. And on 0:36:55.440 --> 0:36:57.840 the other hand, the authors found in their experiments no, 0:36:58.239 --> 0:37:02.880 on average, cynicism is not associated with cognitive superiority or 0:37:02.920 --> 0:37:06.759 greater competence. They had three studies based on data from 0:37:06.760 --> 0:37:10.400 about two hundred thousand subjects across thirty different countries and 0:37:10.480 --> 0:37:14.960 showed that, on average, cynicism was negatively correlated with tests 0:37:15.000 --> 0:37:18.520 of cognitive ability and tests of academic knowledge and competency. 0:37:18.680 --> 0:37:22.120 So this included all kinds of things like reading comprehension, 0:37:22.239 --> 0:37:28.200 mathematical skills, scientific literacy, technological literacy, and so forth. And 0:37:28.280 --> 0:37:32.440 this negative association between cynicism and cognitive tests was true 0:37:32.480 --> 0:37:38.640 even after controlling for confounding variables like age, gender, household income, wealth, test, 0:37:38.719 --> 0:37:43.960 language proficiency, and Big Five personality traits. Now one major 0:37:44.000 --> 0:37:47.880 distinction here is that they found that people who tested 0:37:47.960 --> 0:37:54.520 higher incompetence tended to have attitudes of contingent trust. They 0:37:54.600 --> 0:37:58.960 might be trusting by default, but were not rigid in 0:37:59.000 --> 0:38:03.680 that regard become more cynical if it was warranted situationally 0:38:03.920 --> 0:38:07.960 or based on the environment and cultural context, whereas people 0:38:08.000 --> 0:38:13.719 scoring lower incompetence tended to accept an unconditionally cynical worldview. 0:38:14.480 --> 0:38:16.839 In the words of the author is quote suggesting that 0:38:16.920 --> 0:38:20.560 at low levels of competence, holding a cynical worldview might 0:38:20.640 --> 0:38:25.000 represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs 0:38:25.000 --> 0:38:28.160 of falling prey to others cunning. Now, I wanted to 0:38:28.200 --> 0:38:31.319 expand on these findings with a few notes. One of 0:38:31.320 --> 0:38:34.920 the things about the early tests of people's perceptions of 0:38:34.960 --> 0:38:38.840 cynicism a control they had here, is that the authors 0:38:38.880 --> 0:38:42.680 didn't just ask about cognitive competence. They also asked about 0:38:42.760 --> 0:38:46.080 social and moral competence, and quite along the lines you 0:38:46.160 --> 0:38:49.759 might expect. People tended to think that low trust individuals 0:38:49.800 --> 0:38:52.920 would be better at cognitive things like math, logic, and 0:38:52.960 --> 0:38:56.680 critical thinking, but they thought that high trust individuals would 0:38:56.680 --> 0:38:59.680 be better at social tasks like cheering up a depressed 0:38:59.719 --> 0:39:02.600 friend or taking care of a stray animal. So it 0:39:02.640 --> 0:39:05.440 wasn't just like across the board we think cynics are great. 0:39:05.480 --> 0:39:08.360 We think cynics are better at everything. It's that people 0:39:08.400 --> 0:39:10.799 tend to think cynics are better at certain types of 0:39:10.880 --> 0:39:15.160 intelligence based skills, things like math and logic and so forth. 0:39:17.000 --> 0:39:18.759 So a lot of this is sounding kind of like 0:39:19.400 --> 0:39:22.160 when you see somebody smoking a cigarette. You know, they 0:39:22.160 --> 0:39:25.680 can look pretty cool, especially in movies, like but we 0:39:25.719 --> 0:39:28.040 all we know deep down that like, well, the smoking 0:39:28.040 --> 0:39:31.000 a cigarette doesn't actually make you cool, but we can't 0:39:31.000 --> 0:39:34.120 help it. And likewise you might think, well who you know. 0:39:34.160 --> 0:39:37.880 You might say, okay, doctor smoking a cigarette. I have questions. 0:39:37.960 --> 0:39:40.320 Maybe this is not the doctor for me. But private 0:39:40.360 --> 0:39:43.960 detective smoking a cigarette, Well, obviously that's the guy I 0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:45.480 want looking after my interests. 0:39:46.040 --> 0:39:48.520 Oh do you mean like the smoking of the cigarette 0:39:48.560 --> 0:39:51.960 implies like a rejection of the consensus about the health 0:39:52.000 --> 0:39:54.080 effects of it, or just that it I mean, I 0:39:54.080 --> 0:39:57.120 guess that often is suggested. It's like, I don't think 0:39:57.120 --> 0:39:59.200 it's hurting me. I don't care what people say. I 0:39:59.200 --> 0:40:01.319 guess there are two ways of going It's like it 0:40:01.320 --> 0:40:03.440 would be cynical. I think it's part of a cynical 0:40:03.440 --> 0:40:05.799 worldview to say, like, ah, these doctors who say it 0:40:05.840 --> 0:40:07.960 causes cancer or heart disease, they don't know what they're 0:40:08.000 --> 0:40:11.640 talking about. I can just smoke, it's fine. Or there's 0:40:11.680 --> 0:40:14.080 the version that's like I don't care what happens to me, 0:40:14.320 --> 0:40:16.640 which I think is a little bit different than cynicism. 0:40:16.680 --> 0:40:18.680 Maybe though could go along with cynicism. 0:40:18.920 --> 0:40:19.879 Yeah, yeah, but. 0:40:19.880 --> 0:40:23.040 I follow you in general, because yeah, there's like, apart 0:40:23.120 --> 0:40:26.399 from thinking that cynical people are smart, there is also 0:40:26.440 --> 0:40:29.560 a tendency to think that cynical people are cool. Yeah, 0:40:29.719 --> 0:40:31.919 that's uh. In fact, I've got a section where maybe 0:40:31.920 --> 0:40:33.919 we'll get more into that in just a minute. Here. 0:40:34.200 --> 0:40:36.640 Scientific analysis of the coolness. 0:40:36.320 --> 0:40:49.560 Of another thing here is that they tried different like 0:40:49.680 --> 0:40:54.560 wordings and types of questions across multiple replication attempts to 0:40:54.600 --> 0:40:57.360 make sure that, like, the cynical genius effect was robust, 0:40:57.400 --> 0:41:00.759 And it was robust, but the effects were modulated a 0:41:00.800 --> 0:41:03.560 little bit by changes in phrasing, such as whether you 0:41:03.640 --> 0:41:07.880 describe the opposite of cynicism as an idealistic versus a 0:41:08.000 --> 0:41:12.520 positive view of human nature. Apparently people think being idealistic 0:41:12.600 --> 0:41:15.080 about human nature is a little bit dumber than being 0:41:15.200 --> 0:41:19.240 positive about human nature. It's always funny how just changing 0:41:19.280 --> 0:41:22.040 the swapping a word out can have some effects there. 0:41:22.800 --> 0:41:26.040 They also replicated these findings in different samples. So they 0:41:26.080 --> 0:41:29.600 did some online surveys, international online surveys, and they did 0:41:29.640 --> 0:41:33.000 some in person tests of university students in Germany. They 0:41:33.000 --> 0:41:36.320 did some with British adults, and the cynical genius effect 0:41:36.360 --> 0:41:40.240 appeared to varying degrees in all the groups tested here. However, 0:41:40.840 --> 0:41:45.440 in some of these experiments, respondents got to rate essentially 0:41:45.760 --> 0:41:50.040 how cynical they would like a person assigned to a 0:41:50.080 --> 0:41:53.400 cognitive task to be, and the breakdown, to be clear, 0:41:53.520 --> 0:41:57.840 was not toward a preference for extreme cynicism, but for 0:41:58.239 --> 0:42:02.160 higher than average cynicism. So one example here is that 0:42:02.440 --> 0:42:06.320 in a group of British adults selecting between hypothetical candidates 0:42:06.360 --> 0:42:11.600 to solve intellectual problems, participants quote desired mix of cynical 0:42:11.640 --> 0:42:15.640 and non cynical tendencies was fifty six percent cynical to 0:42:15.760 --> 0:42:19.560 forty four percent non cynical. So on average, the group 0:42:19.760 --> 0:42:22.879 they thought, we need somebody smart, we want somebody who 0:42:22.960 --> 0:42:25.120 is a little bit more cynical than the media. 0:42:25.920 --> 0:42:28.080 That makes sense, you know, if you were able to 0:42:28.719 --> 0:42:32.200 move the slider on your so like your android doctor, 0:42:32.200 --> 0:42:34.879 your android lawyer, or whatever it happens to be. Yeah, 0:42:34.920 --> 0:42:37.400 you want that the right mix of cynicism a little 0:42:37.440 --> 0:42:39.960 more than the average person, but not not too much. 0:42:40.800 --> 0:42:42.600 This will be interesting to get into later when we 0:42:42.640 --> 0:42:46.719 start talking about like absolute cynicism and what where, what 0:42:46.760 --> 0:42:49.160 that is and where we stand in relation to it. 0:42:49.400 --> 0:42:54.040 Yeah. So, as for the actual inverse link between cynicism 0:42:54.080 --> 0:42:57.480 and competence, when broken down by test domain, I was 0:42:57.520 --> 0:43:01.560 interested to see that the effect was strongest in reading 0:43:01.600 --> 0:43:08.160 skills and weakest in information processing speed. So in these tests, 0:43:08.200 --> 0:43:11.960 apparently highly cynical people holding up relatively okay with speed 0:43:12.000 --> 0:43:15.520 of reasoning, doing a lot worse in like reading comprehension 0:43:16.840 --> 0:43:20.839 and finally getting to the element of the paper. Comparing cynicism, competence, 0:43:20.880 --> 0:43:26.040 and environment, the authors tested levels of cynicism cross referenced 0:43:26.040 --> 0:43:29.880 with these cognitive tests in subjects across thirty different countries, 0:43:30.600 --> 0:43:34.239 and they found that in countries that scored low in 0:43:34.320 --> 0:43:37.799 corruption and high in rule of law according to an 0:43:37.840 --> 0:43:41.879 international database called the World Governance Indicators, the effect we've 0:43:41.920 --> 0:43:45.319 been talking about did hold true, but in countries with 0:43:45.480 --> 0:43:49.640 high corruption and eroded rule of law, the effect was 0:43:49.840 --> 0:43:54.880 greatly diminished. Quote the harsher the social climate, the more 0:43:55.000 --> 0:43:59.319 these high competence people embraced a cynical worldview. So kind 0:43:59.320 --> 0:44:01.160 of along the line of results we talked about in 0:44:01.200 --> 0:44:05.000 the last episode, it hurts you materially to hold cynical 0:44:05.080 --> 0:44:09.200 views unless those views are correct in the environment where 0:44:09.200 --> 0:44:13.440 you operate. Along these lines, the authors discuss ways that 0:44:13.480 --> 0:44:18.520 cynicism might be learned directly from personal experience. Despite the 0:44:18.520 --> 0:44:21.440 fact that they tried to control for the influence of 0:44:21.520 --> 0:44:25.480 variables like age, gender, and wealth, it's still possible that 0:44:25.600 --> 0:44:30.080 quote higher levels of cognitive ability, academic competence, and education 0:44:30.560 --> 0:44:34.839 might protect from adverse life experiences, not only as they 0:44:34.880 --> 0:44:38.759 allow discovering potential fraud, but also as they increase the 0:44:38.840 --> 0:44:42.080 chances of living in a safe and friendly environment, providing 0:44:42.120 --> 0:44:44.839 more evidence for a positive than for a negative view 0:44:44.840 --> 0:44:50.520 of human nature, and consequently preventing cynicism development. So that's 0:44:50.520 --> 0:44:55.040 talking about the idea that like that education and cognitive skills, 0:44:55.280 --> 0:44:58.520 they might not just be about how accurately you're seeing 0:44:58.560 --> 0:45:01.920 the world around you. They might actually, over time influence 0:45:02.000 --> 0:45:05.520 what the world around you. Is like on the other hand, 0:45:05.680 --> 0:45:11.960 since cynicism entails generalized distrust, quote cynical versus less cynical, 0:45:12.000 --> 0:45:15.720 individuals might be more distrustful of the opinions and knowledge 0:45:15.760 --> 0:45:19.120 of others, a behavior that can eventually prevent them from 0:45:19.120 --> 0:45:21.800 expanding their knowledge and understanding. 0:45:22.200 --> 0:45:24.759 Well, that that seems like it tracks the idea that 0:45:24.800 --> 0:45:30.000 if you're you're cynical about at about potential information sources, 0:45:30.080 --> 0:45:32.240 and you're more likely to sort of back your way 0:45:32.280 --> 0:45:36.880 into a corner where you have very few informational sources 0:45:36.920 --> 0:45:38.719 coming in and they're the only the only ones you're 0:45:38.719 --> 0:45:41.120 going to accept are the ones that back up your 0:45:41.120 --> 0:45:42.160 existing cynicism. 0:45:42.480 --> 0:45:45.520 Yes, but they say, of course, there is more work 0:45:45.560 --> 0:45:49.719 to do exploring the different possible causal mechanisms here. So 0:45:49.880 --> 0:45:53.520 this paper does find good, robust evidence for the cynical 0:45:53.560 --> 0:45:57.399 genius illusion, that the illusion is widely present and it 0:45:57.440 --> 0:46:01.200 is in fact an illusion, but the questions about why 0:46:01.280 --> 0:46:05.640 are still largely open. One thing I wonder about a 0:46:05.680 --> 0:46:09.239 lot of the cognitive tasks that subjects said they would 0:46:09.480 --> 0:46:13.080 entrust to a cynical person more than a non cynical person. 0:46:13.960 --> 0:46:15.759 I was looking through the inventory and a lot of 0:46:15.760 --> 0:46:21.280 these tasks involved scrutiny of details, like crunching numbers, following 0:46:21.320 --> 0:46:26.000 complex logic, analyzing scientific results, things like that, And I 0:46:26.200 --> 0:46:30.800 wonder if the same pattern would hold for cognitive tasks 0:46:30.840 --> 0:46:35.960 that people associate less with scrutiny of details and instead 0:46:36.040 --> 0:46:39.839 with things like creativity and imagination. And to be clear, 0:46:39.960 --> 0:46:43.080 the cynical genius effect would be an illusion even if 0:46:43.120 --> 0:46:46.560 it were only applied to scrutinizing cognition. But I wonder 0:46:46.640 --> 0:46:49.800 if the illusion is actually more specific to certain kinds 0:46:49.800 --> 0:46:50.520 of cognition. 0:46:51.120 --> 0:46:54.600 Yeah, yeah, that very much, that Sherlock Holmes scenario. 0:46:55.239 --> 0:46:57.520 But also coming back to this question, we've asked several 0:46:57.560 --> 0:47:02.400 times now, are there any benefit to generalize cynicism. It 0:47:02.400 --> 0:47:05.080 comes with tons of harms for the cynic It hurts 0:47:05.120 --> 0:47:08.000 you to be cynical, But are there any benefits? Well, 0:47:08.120 --> 0:47:10.719 first of all, this paper does find if you're in 0:47:10.760 --> 0:47:15.799 a really corrupt untrustworthy environment, obviously it does make more 0:47:15.840 --> 0:47:18.080 sense to be more cynical. That's just like a correct 0:47:18.160 --> 0:47:22.960 understanding of how your environment operates. Number two, even if 0:47:22.960 --> 0:47:27.920 you're not in a more corrupt untrustworthy environment, If you 0:47:28.080 --> 0:47:32.560 don't understand your environment and you're basically out of your depth. 0:47:32.960 --> 0:47:37.160 Cynicism may protect you from catastrophic outcomes. It's like, I 0:47:37.200 --> 0:47:39.200 don't really know what's going on here, don't know if 0:47:39.239 --> 0:47:41.960 I can trust or not, so by default I'm not 0:47:42.080 --> 0:47:45.760 going to trust. That's better safe than sorry. And then third, 0:47:45.800 --> 0:47:48.160 I think this is going to be mainly related to 0:47:48.239 --> 0:47:53.120 the cynical genius illusion. Having a reputation for cynicism may 0:47:53.200 --> 0:47:56.759 have the effect of convincing people around you that you 0:47:56.800 --> 0:48:00.760 are very smart and intellectually savvy, even though on average 0:48:00.800 --> 0:48:03.680 the opposite is more likely to be true. So there's 0:48:03.680 --> 0:48:07.680 a kind of social premium incentive to appear to be cynical. 0:48:07.800 --> 0:48:09.879 It's in a lot of cases it's going to make 0:48:10.000 --> 0:48:13.000 people think that you know something they don't, and you're 0:48:13.040 --> 0:48:16.160 a wise and world weary and intelligent person. 0:48:17.000 --> 0:48:20.279 Yeah, Cynicism is often kind of a safe gambole at, 0:48:20.320 --> 0:48:24.520 like a cocktail party or a mixer. Right if politics 0:48:24.520 --> 0:48:26.880 should come up, which of course is bad manners anyway, 0:48:27.360 --> 0:48:28.839 but if it were to come up, you might say 0:48:28.840 --> 0:48:30.719 something that is just kind of a you know, a 0:48:30.719 --> 0:48:34.680 blanket statement of cynicism, like Iowa politicians are all the same. 0:48:35.040 --> 0:48:36.799 And then what people are gonna have to double down. 0:48:36.800 --> 0:48:39.319 They're going to have to come back and try to 0:48:39.360 --> 0:48:42.479 convince you. No, no, not all politicians. Some are great, 0:48:42.880 --> 0:48:45.440 and they're going to look like the person who's naive 0:48:45.920 --> 0:48:50.080 where you've already you know, mounted your cynicism high horse. 0:48:50.280 --> 0:48:53.439 We've talked about this before. Yeah, the the like all 0:48:53.480 --> 0:48:55.560 politicians are the same as the kind of statement that 0:48:55.600 --> 0:48:59.800 I think is just facially untrue, could not be true, 0:49:00.080 --> 0:49:04.239 obviously wrong, but you feel foolish trying to argue with it. Yeah, 0:49:04.840 --> 0:49:07.680 and I think that goes beyond politics. I mean just generally, 0:49:08.320 --> 0:49:12.560 trying to argue with the cynic is so difficult. Statements 0:49:12.680 --> 0:49:18.880 of cynicism often come with this a priori texture of factuality. 0:49:19.040 --> 0:49:22.640 Just feel self evidently true with it, even when it's 0:49:22.680 --> 0:49:25.560 obviously wrong, when it would be absurd for it to 0:49:25.600 --> 0:49:37.440 be true. One more thing before I wrap up from 0:49:37.480 --> 0:49:42.480 the Stavrovia and Elebrects study here talking about in their discussion, 0:49:42.520 --> 0:49:45.520 they talk about why do we tend to assume highly 0:49:45.560 --> 0:49:48.040 cynical people are smarter than the rest of us, even 0:49:48.080 --> 0:49:51.719 though this is usually not the case. We touched on 0:49:51.760 --> 0:49:55.239 this earlier, but the authors do offer a few ideas 0:49:55.760 --> 0:50:00.319 based on common cognitive biases. In particular, they call out 0:50:00.480 --> 0:50:05.960 negativity bias and loss aversion. Negativity bias is the observation 0:50:06.120 --> 0:50:10.759 that we are more psychologically affected by negative things than 0:50:10.800 --> 0:50:14.600 we are by positive things of equal intensity, and loss 0:50:14.600 --> 0:50:16.959 a version is very similar. It's the finding that we're 0:50:17.000 --> 0:50:20.520 more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than we are 0:50:20.640 --> 0:50:24.719 to achieve a gain of the same value. So here's 0:50:24.719 --> 0:50:27.919 an example. I find a five dollars bill on the sidewalk. Ah, 0:50:27.960 --> 0:50:32.080 that's nice, quickly forget about it. Versus I drop a 0:50:32.120 --> 0:50:35.640 five dollar bill down a storm drain. Are you know why? 0:50:35.800 --> 0:50:35.880 Me? 0:50:36.280 --> 0:50:36.560 Ah? 0:50:36.640 --> 0:50:40.440 I hate this. You know, It's like the dollar value 0:50:41.400 --> 0:50:45.480 is exactly the same, but the loss is more memorable, 0:50:45.600 --> 0:50:49.640 it's more salient and will cause a greater emotional reaction. 0:50:49.800 --> 0:50:52.200 And I think for those reasons, like we are more 0:50:52.320 --> 0:50:55.720 likely to learn something from it, to try to draw 0:50:55.800 --> 0:50:58.560 a general inference that we will take and apply to 0:50:58.600 --> 0:51:01.399 the rest of life from these moments of loss than 0:51:01.440 --> 0:51:03.480 from gains of the exact same value. 0:51:03.920 --> 0:51:06.200 Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'd go as far as to 0:51:06.239 --> 0:51:09.120 say that at the very least, you're more likely to 0:51:09.160 --> 0:51:12.640 remember dropping that five than finding a ten. Yeah, And yeah, 0:51:13.080 --> 0:51:16.239 there's probably been an interesting thought experiment to be had, 0:51:16.280 --> 0:51:19.600 and just trying to determine at which point the find 0:51:19.880 --> 0:51:23.440 value would be equal to a much lesser loss value. 0:51:23.520 --> 0:51:26.239 I think I think work on that exact question has 0:51:26.239 --> 0:51:27.879 been done. I don't have it pulled up in front 0:51:27.920 --> 0:51:30.560 of me, but I think we've looked at that before. Yeah, 0:51:31.000 --> 0:51:33.440 I'm sure for some reason seeing the exact numbers is 0:51:33.480 --> 0:51:37.400 going to be really funny. But anyway, so you apply 0:51:37.880 --> 0:51:42.080 this these biases negativity, bias, and loss aversion to the 0:51:42.160 --> 0:51:45.600 domain of trust and cynicism, and they could mean that 0:51:45.760 --> 0:51:49.680 the pain of being betrayed is much greater than the 0:51:49.719 --> 0:51:53.840 pleasure of having our trust rewarded, even given the exact 0:51:53.960 --> 0:51:57.480 same original act of trust. And this is back to 0:51:57.520 --> 0:52:00.000 the mental cherry picking that you mentioned the last time. 0:52:00.360 --> 0:52:02.280 You know, you can always like think of these really 0:52:02.480 --> 0:52:06.280 sticky examples of times when you shouldn't have trusted someone 0:52:06.440 --> 0:52:10.399 or something. We may trust somebody twenty times, it works 0:52:10.440 --> 0:52:13.879 out great nineteen times, but the one time it did 0:52:13.880 --> 0:52:17.320 not work out is shocking and painful and we feel 0:52:17.360 --> 0:52:20.760 so hurt. And so from this we form an idea 0:52:20.840 --> 0:52:24.160 that people who do not trust easily have learned a 0:52:24.160 --> 0:52:28.360 lot of valuable lessons. Therefore they are generally knowledgeable, wise, 0:52:28.520 --> 0:52:32.759 and smart. Another explanation comes back to that study from 0:52:32.760 --> 0:52:35.600 the background section that we talked about briefly about the 0:52:35.600 --> 0:52:40.760 the invisibility of consequences in situations where we refrain from 0:52:40.800 --> 0:52:44.960 from giving trust to our detriment. So again, you get 0:52:45.000 --> 0:52:48.840 to see what happens when you trust and that trust 0:52:48.920 --> 0:52:52.440 is betrayed. But when you withhold trust and you just 0:52:52.600 --> 0:52:55.719 miss out on an opportunity to gain, you don't really 0:52:55.800 --> 0:52:58.480 get to see that loss made concrete. It's just like 0:52:58.600 --> 0:53:00.640 it's another path you could have taken, and you can go. 0:53:00.760 --> 0:53:02.440 You can even go without thinking about it. 0:53:02.960 --> 0:53:05.280 Yeah, that's right. Unless you're visited by you know, Christmas 0:53:05.280 --> 0:53:07.239 spirits or something, you're just not going to have any 0:53:07.280 --> 0:53:08.120 alternate views. 0:53:08.400 --> 0:53:10.560 That's a really you know what. I think a Christmas 0:53:10.560 --> 0:53:13.640 Carol is a great example here. That is something the 0:53:13.680 --> 0:53:16.360 ghost of Christmas past has to come and make the 0:53:16.680 --> 0:53:21.360 lost opportunities concrete. And then one last point the authors 0:53:21.400 --> 0:53:24.200 make that I thought was a very interesting point. They raise, 0:53:24.920 --> 0:53:28.720 what if the cynical genius illusion arises in part from 0:53:29.320 --> 0:53:35.280 biases of storytelling. We fill our lives with fictional stories 0:53:35.760 --> 0:53:40.919 fictional stories need to be entertaining. Stories are usually more 0:53:41.080 --> 0:53:46.160 entertaining if danger and conflict are heightened, if villains are 0:53:46.320 --> 0:53:50.520 meaner and more dangerous, if the stakes are high, if 0:53:50.680 --> 0:53:53.520 no one can be trusted you can. You can hear 0:53:53.560 --> 0:53:56.760 all these phrases in the Don la Fontaine movie trailer voice, 0:53:56.800 --> 0:53:59.759 can't you you know? It's like, that's what stories are 0:53:59.800 --> 0:54:04.520 made out of. Fictional storytelling selects four narratives about the 0:54:04.640 --> 0:54:08.720 dangers of trust and the risk of betrayal because stories 0:54:08.760 --> 0:54:11.839 like that are captivating to our attention and we want 0:54:11.880 --> 0:54:15.760 to know what happens next. So hostile and treacherous worlds 0:54:15.840 --> 0:54:19.440 may be more entertaining in a narrative. But it's possible 0:54:19.480 --> 0:54:23.400 that we draw incorrect inferences from those fictional worlds. We 0:54:23.520 --> 0:54:28.319 learn too much about how life works from unrealities that 0:54:28.400 --> 0:54:33.000 are specifically crafted to hack our attention. And who are 0:54:33.040 --> 0:54:36.239 the smart, savvy characters in these worlds. I think very 0:54:36.239 --> 0:54:39.040 often they are cynics who are very reluctant to trust. 0:54:39.640 --> 0:54:41.080 That's right, That's a great point. 0:54:41.440 --> 0:54:43.359 So anyway, that's all I've got in the study for now. 0:54:43.360 --> 0:54:46.200 But I think the cynical genius illusion is so interesting 0:54:46.239 --> 0:54:47.759 I'm going to be thinking about this a lot in 0:54:48.000 --> 0:54:49.080 the days and weeks to come. 0:54:49.600 --> 0:54:51.920 Yeah, this will be an interesting one to bring into 0:54:51.960 --> 0:54:55.280 our weird house cinema discussions as we inevitably come around 0:54:55.360 --> 0:54:59.239 to a film that has a cynic genius in it. 0:55:00.360 --> 0:55:01.840 And I'm sure if I was to go back and 0:55:01.880 --> 0:55:04.320 look at some of the titles we've covered, we've probably 0:55:04.400 --> 0:55:08.000 encountered the encounter these sorts of characters before, probably played 0:55:08.040 --> 0:55:11.759 by someone like Christopher Lee. Yes, all right, Well, on 0:55:11.840 --> 0:55:13.600 that note, we're going to go ahead and close up 0:55:13.640 --> 0:55:15.480 this episode, but we're going to come back with at 0:55:15.560 --> 0:55:19.279 least one more episode on cynicism. Again, this is a 0:55:19.360 --> 0:55:22.200 huge topic. In the next episode, I believe we're going 0:55:22.239 --> 0:55:26.880 to get into cynicism, politics, and social media, so that 0:55:27.000 --> 0:55:32.560 should be a fun discussion either way, tune in. We're 0:55:32.560 --> 0:55:36.000 looking forward to getting into it. In the meantime, I'd 0:55:36.040 --> 0:55:38.160 like to remind everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind 0:55:38.239 --> 0:55:41.560 is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes 0:55:41.560 --> 0:55:44.240 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a short form episode 0:55:44.239 --> 0:55:46.640 on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most serious 0:55:46.680 --> 0:55:47.920 concerns to just talk about. 0:55:47.760 --> 0:55:50.880 A weird film on Weird House Cinema, Huge Things, As 0:55:50.920 --> 0:55:54.080 always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you 0:55:54.080 --> 0:55:56.000 would like to get in touch with us with feedback 0:55:56.040 --> 0:55:58.240 on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic 0:55:58.280 --> 0:56:00.520 for the future, or just to say hello, you can 0:56:00.560 --> 0:56:03.240 email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind 0:56:03.320 --> 0:56:11.239 dot com. 0:56:11.320 --> 0:56:14.239 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 0:56:14.360 --> 0:56:18.160 more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:56:18.239 --> 0:56:33.600 or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.