Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick. And today we are returning
Speaker 1: with Part three in our series on cynicism, the tendency
Speaker 1: to believe that other people are selfish, untrustworthy, and immoral.
Speaker 1: In part one of the series, we defined cynicism in
Speaker 1: its modern usage along the lines I just said, and
Speaker 1: we distinguished it from other concepts like pessimism, and from
Speaker 1: the cynic school of philosophy founded in ancient Greece, which
Speaker 1: was not defined by thinking about other people as morally
Speaker 1: bad and undeserving of trust, but instead by the idea
Speaker 1: that people should strive for self sufficiency and moral integrity
Speaker 1: based on living according to our nature, sort of throwing
Speaker 1: off the hypocrisies that are mandated culture. And I think
Speaker 1: this goal of exposing hypocrisy is one of the few
Speaker 1: threads you might find between modern cynicism and ancient cynic philosophy,
Speaker 1: though it's still with some differences. It's not quite this simple.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking the other day about it. I
Speaker 1: think you could say cynic philosophy was like hypocrisy is
Speaker 1: bad and I'm going to try to get rid of it,
Speaker 1: whereas modern cynicism is more like everybody's a hypocrite, you
Speaker 1: can't trust them, so a decay from what was once
Speaker 1: a positive mission for truth into a kind of surrender
Speaker 1: to the idea that we're all living a lie. In
Speaker 1: Part one, we also talked about research into the correlates
Speaker 1: of modern cynicism, So like, if I am highly cynical,
Speaker 1: what are the effects of that on my life? It
Speaker 1: turns out there's a lot of research on this question,
Speaker 1: and the answer is the effects are overwhelmingly negative. Cynicism
Speaker 1: appears to be bad for health outcomes, leading to things
Speaker 1: like cardiovascular disease, depression, substance abuse, and early death. It
Speaker 1: is correlated with lower quality relationships, a decreased tendency to
Speaker 1: pursue certain types of goals, and even contrary to the
Speaker 1: very familiar image of the cynical Machiavelian elite power player,
Speaker 1: and of course we can think of individual examples of
Speaker 1: this from the real world, on average, cynicism actually makes
Speaker 1: it harder for regular people to achieve even cynically coded
Speaker 1: material goals like money and positions of power. Probably because
Speaker 1: in part, cynicism makes people less likely to cooperate with
Speaker 1: others and thus less likely to benefit from relationships of
Speaker 1: mutual trust. In Part two, we followed up on a
Speaker 1: number of tangents from the first episode, and we also
Speaker 1: took a detailed look at a paper on the so
Speaker 1: called cynical genius illusion. The short version of this is
Speaker 1: that while people don't necessarily like cynics, we do tend
Speaker 1: to believe, on average that cinics are more intelligent and
Speaker 1: more cognitively competent the non cynics. For example, people are
Speaker 1: more likely to assign a cynical person jobs like doing
Speaker 1: mathematical calculations or reviewing charts of scientific results, and this
Speaker 1: is in line with the long running archetype and fiction
Speaker 1: of the cynical genius, like Sherlock Holmes, someone who withholds
Speaker 1: trust and has a very low opinion of human nature,
Speaker 1: but also has superior knowledge, memory, and powers of reasoning.
Speaker 2: One thing that I neglected to bring up when we
Speaker 2: were talking about the Sherlock Holmes trope is that you know,
Speaker 2: there is a distinction to be made between skepticism and cynicism. Yes, now,
Speaker 2: you can imagine where the line begins to blur at
Speaker 2: some points, and certainly, as we've been discussing, you know,
Speaker 2: your cynicism level may not be constant throughout your life.
Speaker 2: You may drift back and forth, and so you can
Speaker 2: imagine a scenario where one is essentially a skeptic, but
Speaker 2: then that may sort of stray into cynical territory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I was thinking about the distinction there also.
Speaker 1: I was in fact talking about this with Rachel and
Speaker 1: I guess we never got into this in the previous parts,
Speaker 1: but I think there is a big difference between how
Speaker 1: I use the word cynicism and skepticism. For me, skepticism
Speaker 1: is an attempt to dole out your trust according to
Speaker 1: how trustworthy something is based on the evidence. It's essentially
Speaker 1: trying to overcome your natural biases to be more trusting
Speaker 1: or less trusting than the situation actually deserves. It's just
Speaker 1: trying to be as rational as you can. What reasons
Speaker 1: do I have to trust or distrust? Whereas cynicism is
Speaker 1: just a bias toward distrust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting things, though, is that someone who
Speaker 2: is truly cynical about a given topic may self label
Speaker 2: as skeptical, and that can lead to a fair amount
Speaker 2: of confusion.
Speaker 1: Right well, of course, if skepticism is defined as being
Speaker 1: as reasonable as you can with trust, the cynic always
Speaker 1: thinks they're being reasonable, or usually probably thinks they're being reasonable.
Speaker 1: They just think it is reasonable to have very low
Speaker 1: trust and think everyone's going to stab them in the back,
Speaker 1: And in fact, that brings us back, coming back to
Speaker 1: the recap of the cynical genius illusion, The question is
Speaker 1: are they correct in thinking that is the cynic in
Speaker 1: fact being reasonable and having correct insights that non cynics lack.
Speaker 1: The other half of the finding in that paper was
Speaker 1: that the cynical genius illusion is actually an illusion. Highly
Speaker 1: cynical people are not smarter or more knowledgeable on average.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the majority of scenarios tested, the association
Speaker 1: runs the other way, with education and intelligence being correlated
Speaker 1: with a greater tendency to trust. The big caveat here,
Speaker 1: of course, is that cynicism is warranted in some situations,
Speaker 1: in particularly corrupt situations and scenarios. So it seems like
Speaker 1: a common pattern the researchers found is that knowledgeable and
Speaker 1: intelligent people might be might be more trusting by default,
Speaker 1: but shift into cynical mode when they recognize that they
Speaker 1: are dealing with a corrupt and untrustworthy situation or environment.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that would sort of line up with
Speaker 1: how I just defined skepticism, right. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: detecting reliable signals from your environment, essentially paying attention to
Speaker 1: evidence of how trustworthy the situation you're in is. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this study and some studies cited by it helped us
Speaker 1: answer some questions we raised in Part one. First of all,
Speaker 1: do cynics or nonsnics have a more accurate model of
Speaker 1: the world. Of course, it's hard to answer that question
Speaker 1: in a way that averages out all environments in all situations.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to say, like who's more correct overall,
Speaker 1: but at least in a bunch of experimental scenarios like
Speaker 1: random strangers are much more trustworthy than we tend to
Speaker 1: give them credit. For example of this was that trust
Speaker 1: based investing game we talked about where researchers give you
Speaker 1: an initial reward of money. So they give you five dollars,
Speaker 1: and then you have the option to either just keep
Speaker 1: the five or hand that money to a stranger, which
Speaker 1: quadruples the initial sum, turning five dollars into twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: And then the stranger has the option to either keep
Speaker 1: all the money or give you back half of the
Speaker 1: total sum, doubling your initial investment. So you started with five,
Speaker 1: you end up with ten if the stranger gives you
Speaker 1: the money back. And in these types of experiments, strangers
Speaker 1: tended to be cooperative and trustworthy. In the overwhelming number
Speaker 1: of cases people doubted them way too often. So again,
Speaker 1: that doesn't tell you about every situation in life, but
Speaker 1: it is a piece of evidence that people on average
Speaker 1: tend to overestimate other people's selfishness, and thus the highly
Speaker 1: cynical person is probably going to miss out on lots
Speaker 1: of opportunities to trust and to benefit from cooperation. But
Speaker 1: the other question that's study shed some light on for
Speaker 1: us was, since generalized cynicism has so many horrible downsides,
Speaker 1: it's like, really bad for you in so many ways,
Speaker 1: not just for the people around the cynic, but for
Speaker 1: the cynic themselves, what are its upsides if any? And
Speaker 1: there were a few answers here. If you are not
Speaker 1: good at being able to recognize the difference between a
Speaker 1: corrupt situation and a trustworthy one. Generalized cynicism may help
Speaker 1: you avoid catastrophic outcomes from misplacing your trust, but again
Speaker 1: this comes at great cost. It's sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: we have to destroy the town in order to save it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or you can imagine, like a biological analogy would
Speaker 2: be some sort of an organism that has had to
Speaker 2: extend a great deal of energy into evolving some sort
Speaker 2: of like highly protective shell that also slows it down
Speaker 2: and restricts it restricts its range or something to that
Speaker 2: effect exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great analogy. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing being that cynicism may have, according to the cynical
Speaker 1: genius effect, the socially desirable effect of making you appear
Speaker 1: smarter and more competent to others. Again, this comes at
Speaker 1: great cost. Like Sherlock Holmes is cool, you might want
Speaker 1: to seem smart like Sherlock Holmes, but given all the downsides,
Speaker 1: the Sherlock gambit is probably not worth it, at least
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Anyway, we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in this episode we're going to get a
Speaker 2: little bit into social media and politics, which shouldn't come
Speaker 2: as a surprise, right, Cynicism, social media, politics, these are
Speaker 2: all I think expected waters.
Speaker 1: Wait, did you mean to sound cynical when you were
Speaker 1: saying that? Was that the joke?
Speaker 2: Probably? Probably? Yeah, I mean it's easy to feel cynical
Speaker 2: about all of this sort of thing, right, So just
Speaker 2: looking considering just say, cynicism and social media like this
Speaker 2: alone is a really big area to get into, and likewise,
Speaker 2: political cynicism is another huge topic. Both of these have
Speaker 2: been topics of discussion and analysis for years and years
Speaker 2: and years.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I would say, of course the relationship between
Speaker 1: cynicism and politics is especially important to understand within democracies,
Speaker 1: you know, within places of popular political participation, and like
Speaker 1: civil liberties and freedoms. You know, whether you are cynical
Speaker 1: about the political structures you live under matters a lot
Speaker 1: less if you are like a peasant in medieval France
Speaker 1: than it does if you are somebody who is free
Speaker 1: to act within a democracy, free to vote and run
Speaker 1: for office yourself and engage in political rhetoric.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because it means coming to believe that the
Speaker 2: thing that you can do that matters doesn't matter. And
Speaker 2: then it's like the old saying by doing nothing. You know,
Speaker 2: all problems are solved. So one of the books that
Speaker 2: I referenced in the first episode is the MIT Press
Speaker 2: book on Cynicism by Anscar Allen and Alan digs into
Speaker 2: this topic a lot, and I won't attempt to cover
Speaker 2: every point that he makes and every point that he
Speaker 2: brings up on the matter, but there's some really good
Speaker 2: nuggets of wisdom and observation in here related to the
Speaker 2: level of high energy, negative and critical rhetoric that you
Speaker 2: tend to find on the Internet and on social media,
Speaker 2: very much encouraged for profit by service providers and social
Speaker 2: media companies, as we've discussed in the past. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: I've long been a fan of the LA based artist
Speaker 2: collective known as Everything Is Terrible, Joe. I know you're
Speaker 2: familiar with them as well. Oh yeah. Their slogan is
Speaker 2: if everything is terrible, then nothing.
Speaker 1: Is that's great. I think that statement is meant with
Speaker 1: a dash of irony, but yeah, everything is terrible is great.
Speaker 1: You know, you may have seen videos of theirs, even
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with the name of like super
Speaker 1: cuts of weird moments from old found media. One of
Speaker 1: my favorites of all times. I think everything is terrible.
Speaker 1: Did the video of it? Was just moments from a
Speaker 1: video cassette that accompanied a Star Trek board game where
Speaker 1: there's a like a kling on guy who keeps like
Speaker 1: screaming at you to punish you. It was one of
Speaker 1: the one of those things where they were trying to
Speaker 1: do like mixed media board games I think in the
Speaker 1: late eighties or early nineties, where like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you'd put the tape in and then you'd have to
Speaker 1: roll stuff and anyway, this guy keeps Suddenly there's a
Speaker 1: klingon popping on the TV saying, like you the one
Speaker 1: who is moving now punishment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. They several different individuals involved with that over
Speaker 2: the years, and you know, the resurrect different bits of
Speaker 2: old media, and it often super cut them into some
Speaker 2: sort of a presentation. If you ever get to get
Speaker 2: the chance to see them live, it's it's well worth it.
Speaker 2: So if everything is terrible, then nothing is. Alan brings
Speaker 2: up this exact point amid contemplations on the possible death
Speaker 2: of philosophy in modern times, citing German philosopher and social
Speaker 2: critic Peter Slaughterdyke, who frequently cites ancient cynic Diogenes is
Speaker 2: pooping in public in his evaluation of modern cynicism as well,
Speaker 2: So Alan now I should clarify though, Alan, in discussing
Speaker 2: Slaughterdyke's ideas, he sees them as an overstatement. But Slaughterodyke
Speaker 2: says that quote, because everything has become problematic, everything is
Speaker 2: also now a matter of indifference.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure I understand the context of that, right.
Speaker 1: But the way I guess i'd interpret that at face
Speaker 1: value is like, because of our increasing sort of critical
Speaker 1: consciousness and awareness of the world, you can sort of
Speaker 1: find that there are flaws in literally everything, and thus
Speaker 1: if there are flaws in literally everything, nothing matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and especially if you are just hyper aware
Speaker 2: of all of the negative stories, you know, and this
Speaker 2: has been this has been the case for a while.
Speaker 2: I mean it comes back to some of the you know,
Speaker 2: the very ancient ideas of how do you survive in
Speaker 2: the world by maybe focusing a little more on the
Speaker 2: dangers certainly, you know, if it bleeds, it leads, and
Speaker 2: so forth. But the social media age, as we've discussed
Speaker 2: on the show before, you know, various social media algorithms
Speaker 2: have long favorite engagement over everything else, and engagement can
Speaker 2: certainly mean things like love and excitement like look a
Speaker 2: cute cat or look there's a new John Carpenter blu ray,
Speaker 2: but it can also just mean hate, anger, and disgust.
Speaker 1: Yes, where your emotions become a tech company's business model
Speaker 1: because your emotions are correlated to behavior on the app
Speaker 1: and your susceptibility. You know how long you stay on
Speaker 1: the app, how long you scroll, you know whether you're
Speaker 1: likely to click on ads and things like that. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that certain emotions, I think positive and
Speaker 1: negative emotions, when manipulated in certain ways, have been found
Speaker 1: to increase people's engagement. But the negative emotions, it seems
Speaker 1: like those are really easy. That's an easy button to push.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you know, it can often feel like
Speaker 2: you're just being bombarded by all of this. And I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a strong case to be made that this is
Speaker 2: weaponized to a certain extent by various players. Right, if
Speaker 2: there's just enough bad news coming at you, if there's
Speaker 2: enough controversy, then you know, what are you going to
Speaker 2: respond to? You can't possibly respond to all of it,
Speaker 2: and maybe you end up responding to nothing at all.
Speaker 1: But you have to keep scrolling because what if there's
Speaker 1: something you don't know about yet.
Speaker 2: Now, Alan cites that all of this is an overstatement because,
Speaker 2: according to him, for individuals to truly feel this way,
Speaker 2: their cynicism would have to be complete. And this reminds
Speaker 2: me a bit in theme of something that's come up
Speaker 2: on the show before. The author R. Scott Baker had
Speaker 2: this idea of something he called the somatic apocalypse, in
Speaker 2: which quote, all the shoulds of a meaningful life are
Speaker 2: either individual or subcultural. As a result, the only universal
Speaker 2: imperatives that remain are those arising out of our shared
Speaker 2: biology are fears and hungers. So everything else just kind
Speaker 2: of shuts down, descends into chaos or entropy. So absolute
Speaker 2: widespread cynicism would, to paraphrase the words of Slaughterdyke, be
Speaker 2: a situation where everything is poop in the street and
Speaker 2: people are nauseated all the time. Okay, sounds bad, Yeah
Speaker 2: yeah my understanding, as we would be talking about a
Speaker 2: world in which cynicism concerning the human experience at large
Speaker 2: becomes more absolute. But basically we withdraw into individual and
Speaker 2: localized efforts. But Allan's counter argument here is that most
Speaker 2: people are not so absolutely cynical he contends, quote modern
Speaker 2: cynicism is driven not by generalized apathy, but by incomplete disenchantment.
Speaker 2: In other words, his argument here is that modern cynics
Speaker 2: have not entirely so admitted themselves to cynicism. They never
Speaker 2: hit rock bottom, the point at which they might be
Speaker 2: forced to confront their own cynicism. And so he mentions, how,
Speaker 2: you know, coming back to the idea of diogenies, you know, again,
Speaker 2: living in the streets among dogs, and you know, and
Speaker 2: rags and shrouds, pooping in the streets. He brings up
Speaker 2: this public defecation as a shock tactic that's meant to
Speaker 2: make a point quote how funny is it that you
Speaker 2: find this upsetting? And the modern cynic is just not
Speaker 2: nauseated enough by the reality they're faced with to the
Speaker 2: point where they make that big sea cynic shift toward
Speaker 2: the pursuit of virtue. M okay, So almost as if
Speaker 2: we're forever weightless in our cynicism, free falling toward a
Speaker 2: point a forced self recognition and revelation we never quite reach,
Speaker 2: Like an imagined space vessel, inching ever closer to the
Speaker 2: speed of light, but unable to actually touch it. Or
Speaker 2: to quote Allan again, he refers to it as quote
Speaker 2: unembedded but is yet underdeveloped negativity interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, so am I interpreting this right? Then? Essentially
Speaker 1: that Allan is suggesting that maybe if cynicism were more
Speaker 1: intense and more total, that would actually lead to a
Speaker 1: kind of horseshoe boomerang into seeing value and virtue.
Speaker 2: Again exactly, Yeah, that is exactly the point I believe
Speaker 2: he's making is that, Yeah, we're just with this incomplete
Speaker 2: disenchantment with the world, like we think things were bad.
Speaker 2: We've lost trust and establishments, but we haven't completely bottomed out,
Speaker 2: like to the point where we actually like look up
Speaker 2: and potentially begin scaling back up this ladder of virtue.
Speaker 1: Hmm, I wonder I wonder about that. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it really works that way, but I'm interested in
Speaker 1: the idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's an interesting concept. And the idea here
Speaker 2: is that social media would be part of that equation,
Speaker 2: and writes that quote, the visceral discomfort of a live
Speaker 2: audience gathered before the defecating cynic that's a capital cynic,
Speaker 2: as in the philosopher, has been replaced by a virtual
Speaker 2: audience that turns indignation into profit. So an Internet ecosystem
Speaker 2: that thrives on bad sentiments and becomes characterized by just
Speaker 2: non stop righteous indignation.
Speaker 1: But one that is discouraged from actually going anywhere positive rights,
Speaker 1: just kind of festering negative emotion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now this made me think about past discussions of
Speaker 2: the ideas of Jaron Lanier, And I don't know that
Speaker 2: he ever directly invoked cynicism in any of his works,
Speaker 2: or not the ones I'm familiar with, but one of
Speaker 2: his basic observations was that social media companies reduce us
Speaker 2: to data and to a product that's sold to advertisers,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's an inherent modern cynicism to that
Speaker 2: view of people, like the people are the product and
Speaker 2: people are while at the same time realizing this can
Speaker 2: fuel individual cynicism towards the entire social media endeavor to
Speaker 2: the point that it's really hard to trust even you know,
Speaker 2: alternate decentralized social media alternatives, or at least that's how
Speaker 2: it seems to me. Now, there have been a number
Speaker 2: of papers about this over the years. Have been some studies.
Speaker 2: A recent study published in the International Journal of Press
Speaker 2: Politics by Hassel at All digs into this a little bit,
Speaker 2: and also there have been some past papers by the
Speaker 2: lead author here, Ariel Hassel. The basic idea that I
Speaker 2: was reading about from this author is that in political
Speaker 2: is that political cynicism is on the rise in democracies
Speaker 2: around the world, as people increasingly use social media to
Speaker 2: access their news as well as additional political information, much
Speaker 2: of which is hostile and lacking in civility. This should
Speaker 2: come as no surprise you. If you are not aware
Speaker 2: of this phenomena, then God bless you because you have
Speaker 2: stayed out of the mud of all of this over
Speaker 2: the past decade.
Speaker 1: I think this is broadly what's found by research in general,
Speaker 1: but Rob, maybe you can let me know what you've
Speaker 1: come across here. At least in myself, I've noticed that
Speaker 1: if I there is a huge difference in how I
Speaker 1: feel about the same news in when I'm getting it
Speaker 1: from like reading articles in a newspaper or online newspaper
Speaker 1: versus seeing it by scrolling social media. Gigantic difference in
Speaker 1: how I process that, you know, even very bad and
Speaker 1: distressing news. When I'm reading about it in you know,
Speaker 1: in news articles, I feel like my response to it
Speaker 1: is more measured and productive my mind tends to go
Speaker 1: to what would be things that could be done to
Speaker 1: fix this situation, well, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Whereas when I consume basically the same news events by
Speaker 1: like say, scrolling on a social media I tend to
Speaker 1: not do this these days, but you know I can
Speaker 1: remember from other times, and I have done it a
Speaker 1: few times recently. Profoundly different emotional experience, one that is
Speaker 1: much more distressing, and it just creates a feeling of
Speaker 1: despair and helplessness. Like I do not have a productive
Speaker 1: response to it, like thinking about things that could be
Speaker 1: done to make the situation better. It's more just like
Speaker 1: I want to surrender and curl up in a ball.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's much more disempowering and horrifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's not an uncommon experience. Now,
Speaker 2: coming back to this study from the International Journal of
Speaker 2: Press Politics, this is basically what they found out based
Speaker 2: on a panel survey of eighteen hundred American American adults
Speaker 2: during the twenty twenty election. They found that the more
Speaker 2: a person was exposed to political attacks on social media,
Speaker 2: the more politically cynical they became.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, exposure led.
Speaker 2: To anger with increased political cynicism. Thus it became this
Speaker 2: kind of like rodent wheel of exposure, anger, rising cynicism,
Speaker 2: then more exposure, more anger, more rising cynicism. And to
Speaker 2: be clear, they characterize this not as a kind of
Speaker 2: healthy cynicism in response to corruption or failure, which they acknowledge.
Speaker 2: You know, if you know, when when the system is corrupt,
Speaker 2: when they are failures, it's right to have like some
Speaker 2: response of cynicism. But this is the sort of cynicism
Speaker 2: that is much more dangerous, and it can ultimately lead
Speaker 2: to the delegitimization of democratic process.
Speaker 1: I might make the distinction we talked about earlier between
Speaker 1: skepticism and cynicism, like that it can be very health
Speaker 1: healthy to be skeptical of politics, to not just take
Speaker 1: politician's word for it, you know, to look for evidence
Speaker 1: of claims and things like that, versus cynicism where you
Speaker 1: just have a bias toward negative emotion and low opinions
Speaker 1: of moral character.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And what's interesting here too is that it
Speaker 2: ultimately goes beyond the sort of like you could frame
Speaker 2: it as positive political fear mongering or you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of anxiety fueling messaging that does get people to
Speaker 2: the polls. That does inspire some sort of action, but
Speaker 2: instead we're getting to like the level where it can
Speaker 2: result in cynical inaction, where it's not like, well, I'm
Speaker 2: revved up, I'm going to go do something about it.
Speaker 2: I'm revved up, but I can do nothing about it
Speaker 2: because thus is the world now. To go back to
Speaker 2: that discussion of cynical poop in the streets again, it's
Speaker 2: not that you're fed up with all the poop and
Speaker 2: wants to do something about it or in response to it. Rather,
Speaker 2: you're just generally nauseated by all the poop you see,
Speaker 2: and you just engage from seeing it all together.
Speaker 1: So that is one type of response to political cynicism.
Speaker 1: I came across the paper talking talking about it a
Speaker 1: little bit differently that I think has some interesting insights here.
Speaker 1: So I was looking for research that studied the particular
Speaker 1: characteristics of how cynicism is expressed in political behavior, and
Speaker 1: it turns out there's a decent amount of research on
Speaker 1: this going back many years. Actually, there's a long running
Speaker 1: link in the literature between high cynicism and a preference
Speaker 1: for authoritarian rhetoric and governance. Authoritarianism being the concentration of
Speaker 1: power under a central authority, under a figure or structure,
Speaker 1: often a single person, and the repression of individual freedoms,
Speaker 1: especially the forceful suppression of dissent. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: look at one pretty highly cited paper on the subject
Speaker 1: of cynicism and politics, and this was published in the
Speaker 1: year twenty twelve in the European Journal of Personality by
Speaker 1: Svin Patten, Elaine van Heil, Christoff Daunt and Emma Onrit
Speaker 1: and it's called Stripping the Political cynic A psychological exploration
Speaker 1: of the concept of political cynicism. Now, this was a
Speaker 1: study of how cynicism manifests in politics in multiple samples,
Speaker 1: specifically from Western Europe, and the authors note multiple times
Speaker 1: that some of these results could be culture specific, and
Speaker 1: so cynicism could manifest differently in one culture than it
Speaker 1: does in another, or differently in one type of political
Speaker 1: system than it does in another. But at least looking
Speaker 1: at these samples in Belgium and the Netherlands, they found
Speaker 1: some interesting results. And now I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: able to get into everything the study found, but a
Speaker 1: few bullets that stood out to me. The authors were
Speaker 1: able to detect political cynicism as its own variable, which
Speaker 1: was distinct from just generalized social cynicism, which we've been
Speaker 1: talking about throughout this series, and from a somewhat distinct
Speaker 1: from what they call political distrust. Now, what would be
Speaker 1: the difference there. Political cynicism is cynicism applied specifically to
Speaker 1: politics and politicians. So if general cynicism is the belief
Speaker 1: that people are bad, people are selfish, and morals are fake,
Speaker 1: political cynicism is the belief that politics and politicians are bad,
Speaker 1: they're motivated by self interest and are unbound by professed morals.
Speaker 1: Political cynicism is also differentiated here from simple distrust of
Speaker 1: politicians and of politics. And I think a simple way
Speaker 1: of explaining this slight difference is, if I have political distrust,
Speaker 1: I am cautious about believing politicians and what they say.
Speaker 1: I think that politicians and political institutions may in some
Speaker 1: cases have incentives to lie or to make promises they
Speaker 1: can't keep, So I am skeptical of what they say
Speaker 1: and I try, You know, I am withholding some trust.
Speaker 1: So there is this withholding trust element. But if I
Speaker 1: have high political cynicism, I not only treat their claims
Speaker 1: skeptically and withhold trust. But I also think politicians and
Speaker 1: political institutions are bad, corrupt, and in it exclusively for themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's like more of a negative emotional and moral
Speaker 1: judgment against politics, not just caution or skepticism about the
Speaker 1: claims emanating from it. Does that distinction makes sense? Yes,
Speaker 1: So in this study, the authors found evidence that political
Speaker 1: cynicism was its own thing, and while related to general
Speaker 1: social cynicism and political distrust, it had its own distinct
Speaker 1: predictive characteristics separate from those other two categories. Political cynicism,
Speaker 1: in particular, was a predictor of a bunch of other
Speaker 1: variables in a person. It tended to be related to
Speaker 1: feelings of political powerlessness and political normlessness, so kind of
Speaker 1: there's nothing I can do, and also there is no
Speaker 1: right or wrong in politics, just power. The authors also
Speaker 1: find that people high in political cynicism do not always
Speaker 1: just sit out of politics. And we've talked about, or
Speaker 1: we mentioned at least in previous parts some other studies
Speaker 1: finding that people high in general cynicism were less likely
Speaker 1: to vote, less likely to be involved in the political process,
Speaker 1: But in this study they did not find that political
Speaker 1: cynics were always sitting things out. At least within the
Speaker 1: context of the samples from Belgium and the Netherlands, the
Speaker 1: rate of voting among political cynics is not very different
Speaker 1: from that of less cynical people, but people high in
Speaker 1: political cynicism tended to view their vote more as a
Speaker 1: protest or as a rebuke of the political system, rather
Speaker 1: than a means of advancing a specific policy agenda. Quote.
Speaker 1: Political cynics boost parties not for their ideological program per se,
Speaker 1: but rather because of their supposed integrity. So it's like,
Speaker 1: it's not so much about the policies that the party
Speaker 1: they're supporting is proposing, but more often about like, this
Speaker 1: is the only party that really tells it like it is.
Speaker 1: The authors say political cynicism can be found all across
Speaker 1: the political spectrum, but in this context, in these Western
Speaker 1: European democracies, it tended to manifest most in support of
Speaker 1: extreme right wing protest parties that use anti establishment rhetoric,
Speaker 1: and the author say it's possible that this link is
Speaker 1: specific to Belgium and the Netherlands at this time the
Speaker 1: study was from twenty twelve, and it's possible that in
Speaker 1: a different political environment, cynicism could be more left wing
Speaker 1: coded or maybe even centrist. More research would be needed
Speaker 1: on that. However, another dimension is that the authors here
Speaker 1: also found a link between high political cynicism, racial prejudice,
Speaker 1: and intolerance. This is in line with previous findings in
Speaker 1: political psychology, and the research was only able to establish
Speaker 1: a correlation, not to determine if there was a causal
Speaker 1: effect between these variables, and so it invites the question,
Speaker 1: if there is an effect, which way does the effect goes.
Speaker 1: Racial prejudice tend to cause people to become politically cynical,
Speaker 1: or does political cynicism tend to cause people to become
Speaker 1: more racist. It could be thought, of course, that political
Speaker 1: cynicism serves to support racist assumptions if the racist believes
Speaker 1: the political system is working to the benefit of racial
Speaker 1: groups they dislike. But it also could be that racial
Speaker 1: prejudice itself is maybe a particular variety or expression of
Speaker 1: underlying cynicism. So ultimately, political cynicism, it seems, is certainly
Speaker 1: a thing that is distinct in itself. It's related to,
Speaker 1: but distinct from, general social cynicism, and its expression is
Speaker 1: a very important factor in understanding how democracies work. So
Speaker 1: if you're involved in political science or political psychology, and
Speaker 1: you want to understand and be able to model and
Speaker 1: predict democracies, you need to understand political cynicism. It is
Speaker 1: a factor. But another way I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: expression of political cynicism is actually really to what we
Speaker 1: talked about last time, to the cynical genius illusion. The
Speaker 1: cynical genius illusion study found that while people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: love cynics or think that they are the best at everything, remember,
Speaker 1: people were less likely to trust cynics with, say a
Speaker 1: social task like cheering up a depressed friend or taking
Speaker 1: care of a stray animal or something like that. It
Speaker 1: found that, you know, so we don't love cynics for everything,
Speaker 1: we do tend on average to assume highly cynical people
Speaker 1: are smarter and more cognitively competent, and you know who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be seen as smart. So specifically, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about how this applies to conversations about politics,
Speaker 1: where I've had this thought for a while that I
Speaker 1: think people often selectively deploy cynical rhetoric in political conversations,
Speaker 1: whether or not they really believe it all that strongly,
Speaker 1: in order to look like they know what they're talking
Speaker 1: about without having to get in to specifics, so like
Speaker 1: broad sweeping statements of political cynicism. I think last time
Speaker 1: we mentioned the example in all politicians they're all the same,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just they're all liars, they're all the same.
Speaker 1: It allows you to sound like you know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about and sit up on a high horse about
Speaker 1: the subject without having to know anything, or read anything
Speaker 1: or follow the news. You can loftily condemn others without
Speaker 1: having to do any homework.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. I think we've seen some very
Speaker 2: strong examples of this over the past ten years, and
Speaker 2: sometimes sadly you see it puppeted in say comedy, in
Speaker 2: mainstream rhetoric. One of the main examples being in any
Speaker 2: case where someone is just talking about a given election
Speaker 2: and saying it's just a choice between two bad choices.
Speaker 2: You know, it was like both of the choices are
Speaker 2: just as bad. I mean, that's just like, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a great example of lowercase the cynicism, where it's
Speaker 2: like it doesn't matter, everything's just as bad. It doesn't
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if I vote for one or the other.
Speaker 2: But it also means you don't have to get into
Speaker 2: actually comparing the two its assume they're all just as bad,
Speaker 2: which I mean, is there ever a case where two
Speaker 2: bad choices are exactly as bad? Yeah? I mean, if
Speaker 2: you're you're given a choice between two different toxic mushrooms,
Speaker 2: there are going to be different symptoms, there are different
Speaker 2: dosages and so forth, Like, they're not exactly the same.
Speaker 2: Even if yes, in this one cherry picked example, the
Speaker 2: end result is the same for you, the consumer of
Speaker 2: the toxic mushroom.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great analogy, and it's not to
Speaker 1: say it is illegitimate to say in a you know,
Speaker 1: in a two party democracy, to dislike both major parties
Speaker 1: or dates, and you know that's fair, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the statements like they're all the same, Like if you
Speaker 1: if you really meant that, that would be absurd. It
Speaker 1: couldn't be all exactly the same. Maybe neither as to
Speaker 1: your liking. But but if you phrased it that way,
Speaker 1: that might invite people to ask follow up questions like
Speaker 1: well in what way you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like what's your scoring method and is it
Speaker 2: a scoring method where yeah, you reach an absolute zero,
Speaker 2: but you can't get underneath the zero, so you can
Speaker 2: just have have them bottomed out an equal I I guess,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't sound like a great scoring mechanism.
Speaker 1: And you know what I want to say also that
Speaker 1: I think there is a more innoxious version of this
Speaker 1: exact thing. I mean, I've been framing it in a
Speaker 1: kind of like I'm framing this hypothetical person in a
Speaker 1: kind of unfriendly way, like they're trying to seem smart
Speaker 1: without doing any homework. But there's also a more common,
Speaker 1: you know, you might say, at least seemingly benign version
Speaker 1: of it, where you're just trying to like sort of
Speaker 1: get through a tense moment in a conversation, or like
Speaker 1: get through something quickly I don't know, with a relative
Speaker 1: or something like that, just by making a kind of
Speaker 1: quick sweep it all under the rug conversation, you know,
Speaker 1: statement about politics, just to like avoid having a difficult conversation.
Speaker 1: Go on, do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, just as an escape hatch for an unpleasant conversation,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I think people do that sort of thing all the time,
Speaker 1: even if they're not like trying to look like a
Speaker 1: cynical genius. And to an extent, that functions the same
Speaker 1: kind of way. It's just like it's a defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: It's a way of using cynicism to avoid uncomfortable specifics,
Speaker 1: whether that's like revealing that you don't have as much
Speaker 1: knowledge as you would like to appear to have, or
Speaker 1: revealing sort of uncomfortable tensions and differences between people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think also we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 2: this sort of cynicism can arise and certainly in response
Speaker 2: to the very sort of social media bombardment so we've
Speaker 2: been talking about, but also as a direct result of
Speaker 2: manipulation and disinformation that can force you into this mode.
Speaker 2: So I want to be not to completely forgive cynicism
Speaker 2: as it nanifests, but we have to acknowledge like the
Speaker 2: complexity of its manifestation in a given person as a
Speaker 2: response to streams of information and their overall media, political,
Speaker 2: social environment.
Speaker 1: So in this series, I think at several points it's
Speaker 1: clear I'm coming down somewhat normatively against cynicism in a
Speaker 1: lot of scenarios. But I also think it's very important
Speaker 1: to understand and be sympathetic to the pressures that give
Speaker 1: rise to cynicism and to understand how we're all susceptible
Speaker 1: to it. Even people who are not high in cynicism,
Speaker 1: like you've talked about, we have cynical moments, and we
Speaker 1: might well become more cynical over time if we sort
Speaker 1: of water those little cynical instincts and let them grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, coming back to that idea raised of trying
Speaker 1: to leverage expressions of cynicism to make yourself look better
Speaker 1: or to come off more favorably in conversation. I did
Speaker 1: find a study on this, so it wasn't just a hunch.
Speaker 1: There's a study in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four by Hillary K's style called Impression Management
Speaker 1: and Expectations of Political Cynicism, and this found that cynicism,
Speaker 1: specifically with reference to politics, was a means that people
Speaker 1: use to try to control how others perceive them to
Speaker 1: read from the abstract quote. In three studies, I demonstrate
Speaker 1: that people report they are cynical in order to avoid
Speaker 1: giving the impression they do not know much about politics.
Speaker 1: Political cynicism is not a socially desirable characteristic. People do
Speaker 1: not believe cynicism is normatively good. At the same time,
Speaker 1: many see value to cynicism in politics, a finding which
Speaker 1: carries broad implications for the relationship between cynicism and perceived
Speaker 1: knowledge in political discourse. And so I think that's important too,
Speaker 1: like recognizing that you might not be overall a highly
Speaker 1: cynical person, and yet you might still deploy cynicism specifically
Speaker 1: with reference to politics, maybe because of a response to
Speaker 1: how you perceive politics. You know, maybe you think you're
Speaker 1: just rationally responding to politics being very corrupt and something
Speaker 1: that is not worthy of trust, or investing the time
Speaker 1: and energy to figure out who is worth trusting within politics,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're trying to manage the impressions you make
Speaker 1: on other people, which, again, despite the kind of unfriendly
Speaker 1: way I was phrasing it earlier, I mean that's something
Speaker 1: we're all always trying to do. I mean, let's be real,
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody's always to some extent, even if you're
Speaker 1: a very authentic person or you think you are, you're
Speaker 1: somewhat trying to control how other people think about you.
Speaker 1: And it seems that people often think cynicism is one
Speaker 1: way of avoiding coming off as dumb or not knowing
Speaker 1: anything about politics.
Speaker 2: Right right, and perhaps a way to express neutrality, but
Speaker 2: kind of like a hard edge neutrality that keeps people
Speaker 2: from poking at you. Because if you're just like, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know yet, I'm just kind of in a
Speaker 2: fact finding area right now, then the people might want
Speaker 2: to understandably help you with your fact finding. But if
Speaker 2: you're like, no, I've already figured it all out and
Speaker 2: everything is horrible, then that kind of pushes people away
Speaker 2: and they'll be like, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1: But though, another thing that is interesting, going back to
Speaker 1: the previous study is you might assume at first glance
Speaker 1: that if you express generalized political cynicism that is politically neutral,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that is not the case. In fact,
Speaker 1: people who express generalized political cynicism were often fans of
Speaker 1: extreme parties. There actually were supporters of people within the
Speaker 1: political system, very often what are considered by most people
Speaker 1: the extreme wings of the political spectrum, especially at least
Speaker 1: within the Western European sample here the extreme right wing
Speaker 1: anti establishment parties. But also coming back to the idea
Speaker 1: of impression management and these little moments in conversation where
Speaker 1: we might use cynicism to paper over something or try
Speaker 1: to come off a certain way to kind of get
Speaker 1: through a tough spot. But I had to wonder to
Speaker 1: what extent these little acts of performative political cynicism, which
Speaker 1: again may seem harmless enough because you're just trying to
Speaker 1: get through a conversation without you know, revealing you don't
Speaker 1: know much, or trying to get through some tension, to
Speaker 1: what extent these actually contribute over time to genuine generalized
Speaker 1: political cynicism, which is sometimes linked to these toxic attitudes
Speaker 1: like racism and intolerance, which can erode the legitimacy of democracies,
Speaker 1: can lead people toward authoritarianism or make them submit to
Speaker 1: it more easily, even if they don't love it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think most people listening will probably agree these are
Speaker 1: like bad outcomes. And I don't have a way of
Speaker 1: proving that these little, more harmless seeming moments contribute to
Speaker 1: that snowball effect overall, but I have to suspect that
Speaker 1: they do. And it makes me think that I, at
Speaker 1: least personally want to be more careful about having these
Speaker 1: little harmless seeming moments of cynicism, even even in passing,
Speaker 1: because I think they do kind of add up when
Speaker 1: you hear things like that over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I feel like on a personal level, you're just, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're just kind of going into that cynical mindset more
Speaker 2: and potentially going into at the very least that area
Speaker 2: of no hope and no action. But then perhaps in
Speaker 2: our social interactions you're kind of like greasing the shoot
Speaker 2: of cynicism for everyone else. Like everyone if someone has
Speaker 2: like a cynical trajectory going on in the way they're
Speaker 2: viewing the world and interacting with others, if they come,
Speaker 2: if they interact with you, and you're just kind of like,
Speaker 2: carry on, let me actually speed you up a little
Speaker 2: bit as you head down that hut, Like, obviously that's
Speaker 2: that's not helping anyone, and we don't want to find
Speaker 2: it out. What is it the end of that shoot? Yeah, Now,
Speaker 2: at this point I wanted to turn our attention not
Speaker 2: completely away from this topic because it's actually rather related
Speaker 2: to it, and that is to the interactions between cynicism
Speaker 2: and conspiracy theories and conspiracy thought.
Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, I think this is going to be some
Speaker 1: fertile ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We of course, we've talked about conspiracy theories quite
Speaker 2: a bit on the show before, generally and often discussing
Speaker 2: the dangers of following their siren song to easy wonder,
Speaker 2: to prejudice, endorsement, and more harmful worldviews. And studies have
Speaker 2: indeed linked belief in conspiracy theories to not only distrust
Speaker 2: of authority, but also general political cynicism and just general
Speaker 2: cynicism as well. One paper I was looking at on
Speaker 2: this topic is from twenty thirteen by Einstein and Glick
Speaker 2: titled Scandals, Conspiracies, and the Vicious Cycle of Cynicism, and
Speaker 2: this is from the annual meeting of the American Political
Speaker 2: Science Association, and the authors here describe a cycle of
Speaker 2: cynicism that goes as follows, quote political scandals, dominion is
Speaker 2: trust in government. This lower confidence, in turn, spurs higher
Speaker 2: levels of conspiracy belief, even in claims unrelated to ongoing scandals.
Speaker 2: So the idea of being you know, I think we
Speaker 2: can all sort of imagine the scenario here. There's some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, sex scandal here that you're hearing about,
Speaker 2: some sort of you know, money scandal here with other politicians,
Speaker 2: and it kind of like, in your viewpoint, like muddies,
Speaker 2: the water makes them for a cynical political environment, and
Speaker 2: in that cynical political environment, it seems more likely that
Speaker 2: they're perhaps covering up UFOs or what have you.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about this and about how this
Speaker 1: type of thinking I think benefits from what to use
Speaker 1: mathematical terms, might be sort of like the transitive property
Speaker 1: of distrust, where it's like if if one politician or
Speaker 1: political institution, government, or whatever has done something to earn
Speaker 1: your distrust, that therefore is evidence against all of them
Speaker 1: or all objects of that class. So it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: a politician A lied, therefore we know politician B is lying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And my own tendency here is also to
Speaker 2: think about, you know, the desire for we've talked about
Speaker 2: the desire for for there to be aliens, for there
Speaker 2: to be UFO visitations, and you know, and this this
Speaker 2: is a pretty you know, rich area as well. You know,
Speaker 2: in some levels, perhaps it's most pure form. There is
Speaker 2: the idea of like, I want aliens to be real
Speaker 2: because I want them to come here and solve our problems.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, or you know, or it's somehow you drop
Speaker 2: aliens into all of this and everything makes sense. It's
Speaker 2: it's going to be a way to understand a confusing world,
Speaker 2: a confusing and troubling world. But if you want to
Speaker 2: believe strongly enough, and the scientific world is saying there's
Speaker 2: no evidence for this, and the government or various government
Speaker 2: agencies and different governments are saying there's no evidence for this,
Speaker 2: then one was response, One way to keep the dream
Speaker 2: alive is to just assume that all of these voices
Speaker 2: that are telling you no are doing so because they
Speaker 2: are covering something up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they must all be evil, otherwise why would they lie. Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, this is not to say that a government
Speaker 2: or some sort of governmental body wouldn't have reason to
Speaker 2: keep the discovery of alien technology or alien existence secret exactly.
Speaker 1: But you know, hypothetical incentive to lie is not evidence
Speaker 1: for the underlying premise. It's like how I could say,
Speaker 1: if my wife had actually been replaced by the thing
Speaker 1: from John Carpenter's The Thing, it would make sense for
Speaker 1: her to lie and say she was not the thing
Speaker 1: and was in fact still a human. But that is
Speaker 1: not evidence that she has in fact been cloned by
Speaker 1: an alien.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. That's a good point. So I
Speaker 2: was looking around for some additional thoughts in all of this,
Speaker 2: and I found a twenty twenty four article for Proceedings
Speaker 2: of the International Astronomical Union from philosoph for Tony Milligan.
Speaker 2: And this is interesting because Milligan argues that belief in
Speaker 2: UFO visitation may well at this point constitute a true
Speaker 2: societal problem. And while he contends that certainly low level
Speaker 2: belief and stuff like this and fringe belief and enthusiasm
Speaker 2: for stuff like this is nothing to get bent out
Speaker 2: of shape about, his point is that as it edges
Speaker 2: closer to like mainstream belief, three major problems emerge, one
Speaker 2: of which is central to our discussion here, and the
Speaker 2: other two I think are also interesting in their own right.
Speaker 2: One of them is that UFO narratives can sometimes infringe
Speaker 2: upon and even overwrite indigenous storytelling. I found this interesting because,
Speaker 2: of course, we see examples of this in popular conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: where they link indigenous beliefs and stories to UFOs and
Speaker 2: cryptids and so forth, reinterpreting those traditional stories as a
Speaker 2: kind of proof and potentially corrupting those stories in the process.
Speaker 1: And not letting those stories just be what they actually are, right.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's you know, you can note that
Speaker 2: we do see this with all aspects of history, myth,
Speaker 2: and religion. But I think the kicker here is the
Speaker 2: power imbalance and the appropriation involved. Milligan also says that
Speaker 2: it all generates noise that distracts from genuine science quote
Speaker 2: background noise which impedes science communication. So you know, we've
Speaker 2: talked about this before, like putting scientists on the defensive
Speaker 2: regarding something like the UFOs and so forth, instead of
Speaker 2: you know, actually highlighting legitimate scientific efforts that can improve
Speaker 2: our world.
Speaker 1: Well, right, because the kind of UFO conspiracy ideation we're
Speaker 1: talking about is always engaging in motivated reasoning. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can you can hypothetically imagine a you know, just
Speaker 1: a sort of a maximally unbiased, skeptical UFO researcher who's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to look into these claims and see
Speaker 1: what I find. But there are people like that, and
Speaker 1: in my experience, they always find that, like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no good reason to believe any of these stories, right
Speaker 1: and so and so, what you're left with among the
Speaker 1: UFO believers is people who are highly for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, motivated to believe already that yes, UFOs are real,
Speaker 1: yes they're being hidden. And thus the fact that you
Speaker 1: do not agree with me is evidence that you are
Speaker 1: at best, you know, woefully naive, and at worst you're
Speaker 1: part of the conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the number one point that Milligan makes is
Speaker 2: that it can lead to erosion of trust in governments
Speaker 2: and institutions, because again, if you want to believe, if
Speaker 2: this is your like core belief, then you just assume
Speaker 2: that everyone else is covering the aliens up. So of
Speaker 2: course you're not going to trust governments, you're not going
Speaker 2: to trust institutions, you're not going to trust experts, and
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, if you're a true believer. It seems
Speaker 2: to me one of the problems here is you'd never
Speaker 2: be able to one hundred percent show off the cynicism.
Speaker 2: You know, like if the government or institution said tomorrow, okay,
Speaker 2: you got this alien life exists, but they say, here's
Speaker 2: the kicker though it's only microbial or it, you know,
Speaker 2: or even if they were just to go even further
Speaker 2: than that and say, all right, here's the deal. Gray
Speaker 2: aliens absolutely real, but like Nordic aliens, green aliens and
Speaker 2: reptilians are totally not real. Would that that would not
Speaker 2: please everyone. There's no way you could please everyone, Like
Speaker 2: there's i'm you know, I'm certainly willing to admit that
Speaker 2: it's possible that some of what's out there in the
Speaker 2: ufology world is real, but is all of it one
Speaker 2: absolutely not, There's no way it could be. So you're
Speaker 2: always going to have like some level of conspiracy thinking
Speaker 2: and no matter what could conceivably be revealed.
Speaker 1: I think this is actually a good point that in
Speaker 1: some cases could get through to people who are fond
Speaker 1: of this type of conspiracy ideation, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people in that situation and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be sympathetic to people with whom I disagree about a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but I think a lot of them
Speaker 1: would recognize if you bring it up that there really
Speaker 1: isn't a plausible scenario. They could imagine where they would
Speaker 1: be satisfied, right, Well, Like, what, okay, imagine you know
Speaker 1: to them that actually we had not been visited by aliens.
Speaker 1: I no, that's not what you think. But imagine it
Speaker 1: turns out you're wrong and that is the case. What
Speaker 1: what would satisfy you of that fact? What piece of evidence?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Like? How would you be like, Okay, I'm convinced now, Well.
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's like it's it is it becomes
Speaker 2: a worldview, right, I mean, and the conspiracy is part
Speaker 2: of the worldview, so you would have to like, it
Speaker 2: would completely turn everything on its head if you were
Speaker 2: able to do that. So instead, it just seems like
Speaker 2: it would be a case where you would have this revelation,
Speaker 2: but it wouldn't please everyone, and so everyone would just
Speaker 2: assume some greater revelation is possible and that some cover
Speaker 2: up is still in place, like, Okay, they told us
Speaker 2: about the grace, Why are they not telling us about
Speaker 2: the Greens?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And coming back to your point about the erosion
Speaker 1: of trust, I mean, one problem with this sort of
Speaker 1: the fondness for conspiracy narratives is really it makes trust impossible.
Speaker 1: No matter how trustworthy you know, an institution has a
Speaker 1: track record of being, institutions are actually of variable trustworthiness.
Speaker 1: Some lie more than others, some I think of, you know,
Speaker 1: overall or quite trustworthy institutions, others are not very trustworthy.
Speaker 1: And so like a skeptical person as opposed to a
Speaker 1: cynical person, would try to evaluate the track record of
Speaker 1: an institution or of an individual spokesperson and say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, what, do we have reason to trust them
Speaker 1: or not? But if you take a sort of a
Speaker 1: conspiracy cover up as a starting point, and you start
Speaker 1: with that conclusion, you will always have evidence that anybody
Speaker 1: who doesn't agree with you has already violated your trust,
Speaker 1: they've already lied to you. So you're taking instead of
Speaker 1: the thing we talked about earlier with the kind of
Speaker 1: applying a you know, a distrust inducing incident from one
Speaker 1: politician to another. What in that example, we use something
Speaker 1: that really happened, like so and so politician lied about something,
Speaker 1: you know, assuming that lie was real. Now I can't
Speaker 1: trust politician B because politician A lied. What if the
Speaker 1: initial thing was not even actually a lie. It's just
Speaker 1: something where you're assuming they're not telling you the truth
Speaker 1: because they don't agree with you, that we're hiding an
Speaker 1: alien spacecraft somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this like imagined original sin that prevents any
Speaker 2: kind of legitimate trust to ever take place. Another thing
Speaker 2: I was thinking about in all of this. You know,
Speaker 2: we've talked a good bit in over the past year
Speaker 2: or so about low res ambiguous data. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: it could be visual, it could be some other kind
Speaker 2: of information, and certainly we can get even get out
Speaker 2: of the realm of recorded information and into just sightings
Speaker 2: and observations. You know, cases where you can make a
Speaker 2: case for it. It's blurry, it could be a UFO
Speaker 2: it's blurry, or you know, or we don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what we're looking at. It could be an antennae on
Speaker 2: the bottom of the ocean floor. And this is interesting
Speaker 2: because I was looking back and there were various headlines
Speaker 2: several years ago talking about an end of UFO ology
Speaker 2: that arguing that, Okay, we're getting in this information age
Speaker 2: full of ubiquitous visual data gathering. You know, we're just
Speaker 2: we're just going to see this stuff dry up and
Speaker 2: go away. But don't I don't see that happening, Like
Speaker 2: there's always going to be low res ambiguous data.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's right. I mean one thing you might
Speaker 1: have assumed that as like everybody's got a camera in
Speaker 1: their pocket, and the cameras have become sharper and they
Speaker 1: get clearer images and stuff, You're not going to see
Speaker 1: all these like blurry kind of like what is that
Speaker 1: in the sky. No, it turns out like as the
Speaker 1: resolution gets better and these images, in fact, they'll just
Speaker 1: capture things that are further away or they're like still ambiguous,
Speaker 1: just like what's that dot? And you know, in some
Speaker 1: cases people actually can figure out like oh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a star, you know, or that is a mylar
Speaker 1: balloon or something like that. In other cases, like you
Speaker 1: can't figure it out. There's just a dot on your
Speaker 1: image of the sky and you don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: And it's in those situations where it's low resolution and
Speaker 1: there's not enough image, there's not enough information to really
Speaker 1: reach a solid conclusion, where this kind of these thoughts
Speaker 1: can always bloom. There's always still the possibility you don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, so why isn't it aliens?
Speaker 2: Or it's just the information is complex and you don't
Speaker 2: have the background to understand it, or you don't have
Speaker 2: the additional insight and layers to understand it. And therefore
Speaker 2: it allows you to apply the script of the parent
Speaker 2: normal to it in order to interpret it, the script
Speaker 2: that is very malleable that can be shifted and applied
Speaker 2: to any ambiguous data to produce the desired result.
Speaker 1: But it's funny even in this area of vieufology, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is something I read about sometimes. I mean, cynicism
Speaker 1: plays in here too, because often people will be able
Speaker 1: to come in and say, oh, you know this image
Speaker 1: that you were very excited about of like a thing
Speaker 1: moving in the sky, I was able to calculate that
Speaker 1: this is actually an artifact created by the camera system used,
Speaker 1: and I can show you how Like, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of times people just be like, you know, why
Speaker 1: would I believe you. You've been part of the UFO
Speaker 1: cover up for years, You've been posting articles like that,
Speaker 1: and so like, there is a kind of cynicism that
Speaker 1: just prevents you from accepting what looks to me like
Speaker 1: a pretty good explanation of a weird looking image. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what this is really getting into, I think is that
Speaker 1: we've just sort of, for a few minutes now been
Speaker 1: dancing around this. But I think another big thing about
Speaker 1: cynicism is that it functions as an excuse. Cynicism functions
Speaker 1: as an excuse to excuse bad behavior on your own part.
Speaker 1: For one thing, we've been mentioning this less but I
Speaker 1: think this is absolutely true that if you get caught
Speaker 1: doing something wrong that you really know is wrong, you
Speaker 1: can't really make a defense of what you did. What
Speaker 1: do people say? They say, everybody does it? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: cynicism is just like projecting cynicism onto others excuses your
Speaker 1: undeniable bad behavior because it's just what everybody does. Everybody's
Speaker 1: like this. This of course in the realm of politics,
Speaker 1: this happens all the time. When somebody's favorite politician, it's
Speaker 1: really undeniable. You know, they get caught on camera doing
Speaker 1: something really bad. If they can't deny it. What people say,
Speaker 1: everybody does it. They're all, you're so naive, you think
Speaker 1: the other ones are better than this, So it excuses
Speaker 1: bad behavior. But then the other way it's an excuse
Speaker 1: is that it excuses poor epistemic practices. When you don't
Speaker 1: have you want to believe something and you don't have
Speaker 1: good reasons too, and in fact people are giving you
Speaker 1: very good reasons not to believe the thing you believe,
Speaker 1: you can resort to cynicism so that you don't have
Speaker 1: to pay attention to that. It's like, well, you're just
Speaker 1: all part of it. You're all just all lying. Why
Speaker 1: should I believe anything you say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it lowers the horizon of like the
Speaker 2: moral universe around us, to the level of the of
Speaker 2: whatever fallen star we're looking at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we have gotten into a lot of dark
Speaker 1: territory today, but next time we do want to focus
Speaker 1: on the topic of how to avoid in combat cynicism.
Speaker 1: So I think coming a little bit back into the light.
Speaker 2: All right, so join us on Thursday for that. Just
Speaker 2: a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on
Speaker 2: Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 2: to just talk about a weird film on weird House.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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