Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and Julia Douglas. Julie, here's
Speaker 1: here's a question for you, just to lead into today's episode.
Speaker 1: Do we live in a user it's all world? Sure? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean have you seen those universal symbols of men
Speaker 1: and women on bathroom doors? And we all just kind
Speaker 1: of look like that, Like I constantly have a skirt
Speaker 1: on with my hands outstretched and yours are always by
Speaker 1: your side, the pants on. Yeah, you go to a
Speaker 1: you go to the restaurant, certainly in the States, do
Speaker 1: you order your meal comes on a giant plate? Right,
Speaker 1: that's the amount of food that feeds the the the
Speaker 1: average person, and so you're supposed to eat it, all right,
Speaker 1: everybody wants that giant plate of food. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: at a restaurant not too long ago and there was
Speaker 1: a British woman next to me, and she started just
Speaker 1: talking about how terrible it is United Stay. It's like
Speaker 1: the giant portions. And I had never really thought about
Speaker 1: it because I'm so used to that restaurant dining, and
Speaker 1: I thought she's right, Yeah, bring you out of a
Speaker 1: bowl of something and it's it's it should be in
Speaker 1: the middle of a table with a family of four
Speaker 1: or five dining on it, but no, instead it's your
Speaker 1: your personal trough of food. Yeah, it's United States one's
Speaker 1: size fits all meal, just for you. And that's where
Speaker 1: it gets into this idea of of um, this kind
Speaker 1: of like what is average? This question is there really
Speaker 1: an average? And this bell curve that we have all
Speaker 1: been introduced to in primary school, elementary school and onward
Speaker 1: tends to kind of rule our lives even after we've
Speaker 1: left school, right, and we're gonna look at We're gonna
Speaker 1: look into this idea today. This this myth of average. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to imagine the bell curve here, um,
Speaker 1: And certainly we're gonna have varying degrees of familiarity with this,
Speaker 1: but it's basically looks like a bell. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a line, and then the line is
Speaker 1: going sort of flat, and then it curves up and
Speaker 1: then it curves back down again. And the idea here
Speaker 1: is that is that on a performance standpoint, as far
Speaker 1: as the statistics of performance, the idea is that you
Speaker 1: have a very small group that is underperforming, that's at
Speaker 1: the very bottom. And then you have a small group
Speaker 1: that is just really performing at a high level and
Speaker 1: they're at the top. And then you have this larger
Speaker 1: group in the middle and they that is the realm
Speaker 1: of the average. Yes, bell curves are normal probability distributions,
Speaker 1: and that's what I think it's interesting about this probability
Speaker 1: because we take this kind of distribution and we use
Speaker 1: them in real world scenarios, which we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: a second. But what you just just described is this
Speaker 1: idea that we have an equivalent number of people above
Speaker 1: and below average, and that there's a very small number
Speaker 1: of people who are two standard deviations above and below
Speaker 1: the average. So if you're thinking about that plotted out
Speaker 1: on that line, that Bell curve, then those those outliers
Speaker 1: would be the people who are super high achievers and
Speaker 1: people who are at the very low ends of achievement. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like from a from a corporate standpoint, most of
Speaker 1: your company is going to be in the middle. That's
Speaker 1: where most of your money and resources are going, just
Speaker 1: because that's where the most people are. But that small
Speaker 1: percentage of the top, those are the ones that are
Speaker 1: that there, there's really a lot of potential for those
Speaker 1: are the ones that are really bring innovative ideas and
Speaker 1: high performance to the table. And then that the bottom,
Speaker 1: the outliers, outliers at the very bottom. Uh, those are
Speaker 1: the ones that you're going to want to cut uh
Speaker 1: and and regularly cut those. That's the slack that you
Speaker 1: want to get rid of to tighten up the rope. Yeah. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and we use this again, this is just a probability
Speaker 1: distribution in these real world scenarios to decide how well
Speaker 1: children are learning, which dictates how and what they learned.
Speaker 1: We use it to assess workplace performance and don't racist.
Speaker 1: And that's where it becomes sort of like, let's let's
Speaker 1: look at this model a little bit closer, because we
Speaker 1: have now reverse engineered a budget based on the Bell curve,
Speaker 1: and it could be that the Bell curve is quite off.
Speaker 1: In fact, research conducted in two thousand and eleven and
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve by Ernest oh Boyle Jr. And
Speaker 1: Herman Agwynas examined the performance of more than six hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty thousand people involved in four areas of human performance.
Speaker 1: Academics writing so writing papers athletes at the professional and
Speaker 1: collegiate levels, politicians, and entertainers. And they found that performance
Speaker 1: and of these groups did not follow a normal distribution,
Speaker 1: did not follow the Bell curve. Rather, those groups fell
Speaker 1: into what is called a power law distribution. And according
Speaker 1: to a Forbes magazine article the Myth of the Bell Curve,
Speaker 1: this power law to attribution is also known as a
Speaker 1: long tale because we're looking at a picture of it
Speaker 1: right now. If you think about um a rectangle and
Speaker 1: one side of that rectangle being a sort of tale,
Speaker 1: that's more of the distribution. They say that is in
Speaker 1: keeping with what is really going on, that's reflecting reality.
Speaker 1: And they say that most people fall below the mean,
Speaker 1: and roughly ten to of the population are above the
Speaker 1: average and often far above the average, and a large
Speaker 1: population are slightly below average, in a small group are
Speaker 1: far below average. So they say that this idea of
Speaker 1: average is actually pretty meaningless when you think about what's
Speaker 1: happening in real time. Yeah, and I mean it's even
Speaker 1: it's even worse than meaningless when you start looking at
Speaker 1: the idea that, rather than describing how we perform and
Speaker 1: and really being a telling model of human behavior and
Speaker 1: human potential, the Bell curve might actually be constraining our performance.
Speaker 1: They work creating that we're taking the statistical model of
Speaker 1: human behavior and trying to shoehorn our actual behavior into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because think about a company or a classroom,
Speaker 1: and let's say that the company classrooms, Um, they're full
Speaker 1: of hyper performers. Okay, Let's say nineteen out of the
Speaker 1: twenty kids like they're performing at crazy rates. Okay, they
Speaker 1: are still going to be graded on the Bell curve.
Speaker 1: Let's say that nineteen of the twenty employees at a
Speaker 1: workplace are hyper performers. They're still gonna their raises. Their
Speaker 1: performance are still gonna be doled out based on the
Speaker 1: Bell curve because again, that budget has been reverse engineered,
Speaker 1: so there's only a certain amount of money and percentages
Speaker 1: that are going to be distributed across that performance. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people lose out in the scenarios. And
Speaker 1: basically it's saying, here is a model for what performance
Speaker 1: should look like. If you don't recognize that model in
Speaker 1: the group that you're judging, then you must be making
Speaker 1: a mistake. So even in that group of high performers
Speaker 1: at a company, you in end up having to rate
Speaker 1: some high performers as average, and and some average of
Speaker 1: performers as as low performers. And you're and that's just
Speaker 1: gonna end up hurting morale and and driving away talented individuals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is not to say that the idea of universal design,
Speaker 1: which is basically we're talking about here when we talk
Speaker 1: about Bell curve model, isn't helpful, because it is right.
Speaker 1: We can talk about universal design in the ways that
Speaker 1: our streets are laid out right or even um like
Speaker 1: catching utensils that are made for any size hand, not
Speaker 1: just a giant hand or a small hand. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's not so great when you actually talk about the
Speaker 1: individual him or herself, and you have companies, institutions, education, um,
Speaker 1: trying to mandate a sort of universal paradigm to place
Speaker 1: over it. And so this brings us to a new idea,
Speaker 1: to a new movement kind of revolutionary approach, and that
Speaker 1: is to to ban the to to throw the idea
Speaker 1: of the average out, to say, hey, this institutional model
Speaker 1: should not is false and should not dictate how we
Speaker 1: organize our lives and our industries and our educational system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the biggest proponent of this idea, of this man.
Speaker 1: The average is Todd Rose, who's a faculty member at
Speaker 1: Harvard Graduate School of Education. He talked about how in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two the U. S. Air Force had a problem.
Speaker 1: They had really good pilots flying better planes, all this
Speaker 1: money that they had sunk into better planes, but they
Speaker 1: were getting worse results and they didn't know why. And
Speaker 1: finally they figured out that it had to deal with
Speaker 1: the design of the cockpit, which was designed based on
Speaker 1: the average man. And they had an Air Force researcher
Speaker 1: by the name of Gilbert Daniels who conducted a study
Speaker 1: and found that none as zero of the four thousand
Speaker 1: pilots were average on all of the ten dimensions of
Speaker 1: size that he measured on them. We're talking about height, shoulders, chest,
Speaker 1: waste its legs, uh, their reach, right torso, neck, and thighs.
Speaker 1: And he proved that there was no such thing as
Speaker 1: an average pilot, but that they have a jagged size profile,
Speaker 1: so no one is the same one every single dimension.
Speaker 1: And just because let's say you might be the average height,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that you're the average weight or you
Speaker 1: have the average torso length. And so the Air Force
Speaker 1: took that information and they decided to ban the average
Speaker 1: and they refused to buy fighter jets where the cockpit
Speaker 1: was made for the average pilot, and instead they wanted
Speaker 1: them to design to what they called the edges of
Speaker 1: dimensions of size, so saying basically, hey, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: tall pilots, we're gonna have short pilots. We need you
Speaker 1: to design with these extremes in mind, instead of just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the average person. One size fits all, which
Speaker 1: is not the kind of mandate that that that anyone
Speaker 1: wants to hear in the manu factoring industry, because one
Speaker 1: size fits all is a good system if you are
Speaker 1: making a screw driver, if you're making you know, to
Speaker 1: your point, you know, just some sort of ikea part
Speaker 1: or or or standard furniture product to go in your
Speaker 1: house exactly. I mean, that's the whole manufacturing business is
Speaker 1: based on that. But here you have like this really
Speaker 1: expensive equipment. You want it to be interacted with in
Speaker 1: the correct way, and then all has to do with dimensions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you have high performers who need to
Speaker 1: use a high performance aircraft and you need to you
Speaker 1: need these two need to meet. It reminds me a
Speaker 1: lot of our relationship with computers, and not just computers,
Speaker 1: like even just like desk equipment in general, but everything
Speaker 1: everything that surrounds computing. The idea that that the computing
Speaker 1: experience should be made as human as possible, so that
Speaker 1: humans can use the machine, can use the software, can
Speaker 1: use the chair and the table, everything involved in the
Speaker 1: office environment. That they should be able to use it
Speaker 1: without wearing themselves to the level of the machine. The
Speaker 1: machine should meet that the human user, not the other
Speaker 1: way around. And so here we see the same idea
Speaker 1: with with with with institutions, with with with design in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what Todd Rose says. He says that just
Speaker 1: like size, each student, every single one of them, has
Speaker 1: a jagged learning profile, meaning they have strengths through average
Speaker 1: at some things, and they have weaknesses. He says, we
Speaker 1: all do, even geniuses have weaknesses. And he says, if
Speaker 1: you design those learning environments on average, odds are you've
Speaker 1: designed them for nobody. He says, so, no, wonder we
Speaker 1: have a problem. We've created learning environments that, because they
Speaker 1: are designed on average, cannot possibly do what we expected
Speaker 1: them to do, which is nurture individual potential. And he
Speaker 1: talks about how we are in a very unique situation
Speaker 1: right now technologically because we can serve the individual We
Speaker 1: can serve the individual student and the way that they
Speaker 1: learn and follow those jagged profiles by giving them an iPad,
Speaker 1: in giving them different programs to bolster learning in the
Speaker 1: areas that they're a week or if they were really
Speaker 1: really high performers been challenging them with supplementation also provided
Speaker 1: by technology. And he's spot on about this, I think,
Speaker 1: because what he's saying is that schools, they spent an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of money on iPads. I think he said
Speaker 1: that they're like the second largest customer of um or
Speaker 1: consumer of iPads, and at least in the United States.
Speaker 1: So if you have the technology at your disposal, if
Speaker 1: you are spending the money, why not begin to work
Speaker 1: with the possibilities of what those programs can offer on
Speaker 1: an individual level. Because we had talked about in our
Speaker 1: podcast about Finland and why they're turning out such incredibly
Speaker 1: well rounded, smart kids who only have one test, one
Speaker 1: mandatory test at age of sixteen. It's because they're serving
Speaker 1: those kids at the individual level, and they're spending less
Speaker 1: than the United States is on education per child to
Speaker 1: do that. You know, I can't help but think back
Speaker 1: to the wire when we're talking about this, mainly because
Speaker 1: creator David Simon has often stated that that that in
Speaker 1: that show, you essentially have a Greek tragedy, but instead
Speaker 1: of gods, you have institutions, because institutions are the gods
Speaker 1: of modern society. And so in in this topic, we
Speaker 1: we kind of have to ask the question what kind
Speaker 1: of god suits, uh, the denizen of the modern world better.
Speaker 1: One is the personal god that is is involved in
Speaker 1: your life and uh and and wants to mold you.
Speaker 1: And the other is this abstract, distant god. And to
Speaker 1: reach that god, you have to change yourself. You have
Speaker 1: to jump through the hoops of of religious ritual to
Speaker 1: possibly interact with it. Oh my gosh. And as we
Speaker 1: always say, it goes back to the Platonic ideal and
Speaker 1: Plato and this idea that we're all just, you know,
Speaker 1: these cheap copies of perfection. But you know, we've decided
Speaker 1: that we're cheap copies on the on the bell curve
Speaker 1: instead of you know, on the jagged edge of dimensions.
Speaker 1: And this even relates to healthcare. If you think about
Speaker 1: health insurance, which sanctions, treatments, and the myth of average
Speaker 1: can really put people at a disadvantage. Here Rose says
Speaker 1: that if you look at the area of cancer, you
Speaker 1: see an exponential increase in effective research and treatment when
Speaker 1: the individual with all of his or her genetic predispositions,
Speaker 1: diet and environment is considered as opposed to just hey,
Speaker 1: here's this, here's how we approach cancer, this in this
Speaker 1: very universal way. And he said that's it's really only
Speaker 1: when you get down to the individual level that you're
Speaker 1: making progress. And if you think about it, um even
Speaker 1: a drug therapies, and this is from the case for
Speaker 1: Impersonalized Medicine the third edition. It says many patients do
Speaker 1: not benefit from the first drug they are offered in treatment.
Speaker 1: For example, of depression patients, arthritis patients, asthma patients, and
Speaker 1: of diabetic patients will not respond to initial treatment. And
Speaker 1: we know initial treatment is something that is offered because
Speaker 1: based on the average that they have, that is the
Speaker 1: thing that they think will work the best. Right, and
Speaker 1: it sounds good on paper, right, treat the average patient
Speaker 1: and then adjust accordingly based on the feedback. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: as as it seems as mounting evidence would seem to
Speaker 1: show us this average is indeed a myth. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little more about this topic
Speaker 1: and even read a few listener mails. Hey we're back,
Speaker 1: and we're of course talking about the myth of average.
Speaker 1: We're talking about what happens when you have these have
Speaker 1: an institutional model of human performance, and then you start
Speaker 1: trying to live your life and and have the whole
Speaker 1: culture work around those models, and the and the the
Speaker 1: growing revelation that this average person that everything is centered
Speaker 1: around doesn't really exist. Yeah. And the thing too is
Speaker 1: that this system is just completely permeated culture. Right, it's systemic.
Speaker 1: There is there to stay it with. Seems so Todd
Speaker 1: Rose one of one of the things that he really
Speaker 1: wants to do is to try to take this apart
Speaker 1: a bit and look more towards the individual talent method.
Speaker 1: And he has something called the Variability Project, and his
Speaker 1: idea is that you have this, you know, this system
Speaker 1: in place for a hundred and fifty years based on
Speaker 1: averages trying to understand individuals, and you have to now
Speaker 1: take this information about the myth of average and try
Speaker 1: to rework it. And so he says, there are three
Speaker 1: broad challenges data, models, and the nature of science to
Speaker 1: address the science of the individual reaching its full potential
Speaker 1: in all different fields. So what he's doing may seem
Speaker 1: a little bit pine in the sky right now because
Speaker 1: it's it's UH. I say that only because again it's
Speaker 1: very systemaic. This this UM, this average idea and Bell
Speaker 1: curve that's in place. So that's there's so many different
Speaker 1: fields that he has to try to get into and influence.
Speaker 1: That being said, he and his organization are starting to
Speaker 1: provide papers on the topic and really trying to educate people, UM,
Speaker 1: why why this is sort of erroneous thinking, and how
Speaker 1: you can get to students, to workers, UM, to health
Speaker 1: care treatments in a much more effective way, you know.
Speaker 1: And just just to go back to A. Gwynas for
Speaker 1: a second. One of the authors on that two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve study UM he described the Bell curve as
Speaker 1: as possibly being accurate in describing human performance in the
Speaker 1: presence of an external constraint UH, such as an assembly line.
Speaker 1: You have simply line their parts moving by, and you
Speaker 1: have skilled workers doing their bit to UH to contribute
Speaker 1: to the finished air conditioning unit at the end of
Speaker 1: the line, right, but you're gonna have talented individuals on
Speaker 1: there who are not who could work faster if not
Speaker 1: held back by the pace of the line, by the
Speaker 1: the the outside constraint that is applied to them by
Speaker 1: the institution. Yeah, and it's really the institution is key here.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think about this because you're thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is about manufacturing, right, could this possibly apply to
Speaker 1: sort of like the Krendl crem of higher education? Could
Speaker 1: IVY Leagues be a kind of assembly line. Well, there's
Speaker 1: an excellent article on this by David Brooks that published
Speaker 1: online in The Atlantic. Of course it's The Atlantic, so
Speaker 1: it's it's really long but very thorough breakdown of the
Speaker 1: state of higher education, especially as as it relates to
Speaker 1: IVY Lee For instance. He argues that, uh, that that
Speaker 1: right now, we kind of have the convergence of two models.
Speaker 1: There's the older model where to get into an IVY
Speaker 1: League school you had to be somebody a very you know,
Speaker 1: class based model and to have the clout to get in.
Speaker 1: And then you have the newer model to to get
Speaker 1: into an IVY League school. To get into it, to
Speaker 1: be a high achiever in society. You had to be
Speaker 1: an overachiever. You had to just work and work and
Speaker 1: work the right person, Yeah, you had to be the
Speaker 1: right person as opposed to the being from the right class.
Speaker 1: So they end up in this environment where they're just
Speaker 1: they're just performing at a high level all the time.
Speaker 1: They're expected and expecting themselves to just knock get out
Speaker 1: of the park, assignment after assignment, project after project. Uh,
Speaker 1: just domino after domino. Right. And as as as Brooks
Speaker 1: says in the PC says quote, learning is supposed to
Speaker 1: be about falling down and getting up again until you
Speaker 1: do it right. But in an academic culture that demands
Speaker 1: constant achievement, failures seem so perilous that the best and
Speaker 1: brightest often spend their young years in terrariums of excellence. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is what author William Dershowitz, who's a former
Speaker 1: professor of English at Yale, terms a violent aversion to risk.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine where you were an institution like
Speaker 1: this would produce an individual that could go on to
Speaker 1: achieve great things within a similar institution, you know, the
Speaker 1: right kind of uh, financial firm, etcetera, where there again,
Speaker 1: are are these dominoes to knock down one after the other.
Speaker 1: But that kind of individual, of that kind of thinking
Speaker 1: that's been in a sense institutionalized by the the Ivy
Speaker 1: League system is not going to perform well in other
Speaker 1: areas of society. Yeah, Derschwitz, he has a book called
Speaker 1: Excellent Sheep, and he says that the Ivy League is
Speaker 1: churning out students who are super people, alien species. I
Speaker 1: think that one's fair. Uh, and bionic hamsters. I mean this,
Speaker 1: this is rough stuff here, But again I think bion
Speaker 1: a canster matches up with some people I've met that
Speaker 1: would fit that moment camps up. It's kind of awesome
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, I'm gonna put that on my resume.
Speaker 1: I'm not there. You go, and he says, as you said,
Speaker 1: that system manufactured students who are smart and talented and driven,
Speaker 1: but they're also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual
Speaker 1: curiosity and stunted sense of purpose, trapped in a bubble
Speaker 1: of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction. Great at
Speaker 1: what they're doing, but no idea why they're doing it.
Speaker 1: And so I think it kind of goes back down
Speaker 1: to that whole individual versus universal level, because at the
Speaker 1: individual level, as Brooks has said, there is failure. You
Speaker 1: must fail, you must fail and get up and do
Speaker 1: it again in order to learn and find purpose. But
Speaker 1: at the universal level and at the university level, there
Speaker 1: is only success. That is what the big push is right,
Speaker 1: just to succeed and not to individualize the content that
Speaker 1: you are are taking in. So you could even say
Speaker 1: that it's just all about regurgitation as opposed to percolating
Speaker 1: on something, permeating your worldview and figuring it out for yourself.
Speaker 1: What doesn't matter to you as a person. So again
Speaker 1: I can't help but come back to that to David
Speaker 1: Simon's about institutions as God's and this, uh, this idea
Speaker 1: that we don't want that distant God that requires us
Speaker 1: to jump through hoops and jump through ritual We we
Speaker 1: want this institutional God that that sees us as an individual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I find actually a lot of comfort in this
Speaker 1: idea of the myth of the average, because you know,
Speaker 1: too often I think we we hear the statistic of
Speaker 1: you fall into this category in that category, and we're
Speaker 1: so completely categorized and labeled that we don't necessarily follow
Speaker 1: the individual path for ourselves. And I think this is
Speaker 1: a very subconscious thing. In fact, I think all of us,
Speaker 1: if you, if you thought yourself for a moment, do
Speaker 1: I subconsciously seed myself to a kind of average out
Speaker 1: there or an idea of what is average? Um? I
Speaker 1: think all of us would probably say, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: certain sort of standard. But I hold myself to and
Speaker 1: the you know, I guess the idea is that that
Speaker 1: standard is built of myths, right, So it's very interesting
Speaker 1: to look at it that way. And I even think
Speaker 1: about some of the science reporting that we do sometimes,
Speaker 1: because you know, we're creating these narratives and these stories
Speaker 1: about what's happening and how we move through the world
Speaker 1: and why we do what we do. But you can't
Speaker 1: even just take one study or you know, one certain
Speaker 1: aspect of it and say that this is a universal truth.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of coloring the perception of of a
Speaker 1: greater narrative of what's going on. And I think sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just it's so easy for us to want to
Speaker 1: take that easy, simple structure that Bell curve and apply
Speaker 1: it to our life and get that answer. Now. Indeed, indeed,
Speaker 1: there's a certain comfort in that I mean, whoot. Have
Speaker 1: you ever met someone who said, I would like to
Speaker 1: be a statistic, I would like to be representative of
Speaker 1: a statistic. I feel like I have heard people make
Speaker 1: that that plea, uh, when it's beneficial to be a statistic.
Speaker 1: That is true, Yeah, that is true. But you know,
Speaker 1: most of us don't want to be treated like a
Speaker 1: statistic right now. Like I said, I think most people
Speaker 1: want that that. They don't want the impersonal institutional God,
Speaker 1: they want the personal one. And that ultimately is the
Speaker 1: model that makes the most sense in terms of meeting
Speaker 1: the individual, in terms of getting the most out of
Speaker 1: the individual, you know, as far as performance goes, and
Speaker 1: just how we work as human beings. Indeed, and especially
Speaker 1: when you look at it these in larger constructs like
Speaker 1: education or healthcare or corporations, it really does begin to
Speaker 1: matter to again the individual. Alright. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: I'm going to call over the robot here and we're
Speaker 1: gonna gonna do a couple of quick list their mails.
Speaker 1: All right. This one comes to us from Peter Kron,
Speaker 1: who is a long time listener to the show. UH
Speaker 1: and UH runs the Elecord record label King de Luxe. UH.
Speaker 1: So he has some stuff here to add in about happiness. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned the record labl stuff because it kind
Speaker 1: of plays into what he's talking about here. He says,
Speaker 1: I just listened to the Happiness podcast, uh, the Mathematics
Speaker 1: of happiness uh, and couldn't stop thinking about this dichotomy
Speaker 1: between short term and long term happy. So now I
Speaker 1: thought i'd come in a bit. What you were saying
Speaker 1: about luring expectations and yet shooting for the moon both
Speaker 1: makes sense, but they're at odds with each other. I
Speaker 1: think you guys nailed it on the head with being
Speaker 1: realistic about things, although maybe there's two layers, one super
Speaker 1: super ambitious layer of expectations in another base level. I
Speaker 1: think though they tie together. What long term satisfaction is
Speaker 1: often based upon. With for example, big art projects is
Speaker 1: peer review. You can try to create something truly grand
Speaker 1: and in the back or front of your mind, expect
Speaker 1: people the wow over it the second it's released to
Speaker 1: the public, but then in execution it gets watered down
Speaker 1: over and over until it barely resembles what one set
Speaker 1: out to make, or it just evolved. You no longer
Speaker 1: expect the same reaction. In fact, sometimes artists end up
Speaker 1: hating it at the point of release, in part because
Speaker 1: of overexposure, but also because they felt like they swung
Speaker 1: and missed. But then the reaction far surpasses the new
Speaker 1: expectations and the artist starts feeling great about their work
Speaker 1: and build warm memories about the overall experience. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's complicated. Well, and it just reminded me of of
Speaker 1: when we've talked about memory and the role of memory
Speaker 1: and taking that memory out and reframing that memory. And
Speaker 1: so when you talk about the long term, you are
Speaker 1: talking about long term memory and that sort of hindsight.
Speaker 1: So happiness becomes even more complicated in that sense. Indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean as we as we we really you know,
Speaker 1: try to drive home in that that episode and in
Speaker 1: other episodes we've talked about happiness and finding, you know,
Speaker 1: some level of nmity in your life. It's it's difficult
Speaker 1: because it's our life is not one constant state. It's
Speaker 1: one state after the other. It's this up and down.
Speaker 1: That's our t shirt happiness period. It's difficulty, Alright. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Brian Brian Writeson and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I just listen to your podcast over breakfast as is
Speaker 1: my custom. When I was thinking about adult lullabies and
Speaker 1: how we seem to prefer ones that feature morbidity, I
Speaker 1: was instantly reminded of the podcast Welcome to night Vale,
Speaker 1: in which the silky voice Cecil Southey explains the bizarre
Speaker 1: and often horrifying news that occurs in the fictional town
Speaker 1: of night Vale. While I myself don't listen to it
Speaker 1: while following asleep for fear of missing anything in the story,
Speaker 1: I know that a great many of my friends do.
Speaker 1: They claim it helps them greatly. Anyway, if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with Welcome to night Vale, I highly suggest you
Speaker 1: check it out. I suspect Robert in particular it would
Speaker 1: be fond of it. Keep up the great work. I
Speaker 1: love that because that analogy is perfect to lullabies because
Speaker 1: the night Vale they really, I mean he Cecil is
Speaker 1: talking about these horrific events, which again are told in
Speaker 1: this just lullaby hushing voice, and it really sort of
Speaker 1: ramps up the creepiness. But also there you go. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the same thing that lullabies are doing when we
Speaker 1: sing this into a little infant's ears right about, you know,
Speaker 1: their their cradle rocking over in them spilling out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have I have checked out night Vale before. It
Speaker 1: is it isn't a very interesting and unique podcast. Um,
Speaker 1: I haven't had the chance to really dive into it,
Speaker 1: but I had a solo drive several months back, and
Speaker 1: I loaded up on podcasts and I ended up spending
Speaker 1: a long period driving through the dark, through the cold
Speaker 1: rain and listening to like the first four episodes, and
Speaker 1: I was, I was, I was really impressed. It's one
Speaker 1: of those works that I feel like, Oh man, I
Speaker 1: wish I had come up with that. I wish I could.
Speaker 1: It's such a it's such a great concept and great execution. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So indeed, you know, listen to us in the morning
Speaker 1: over breakfast as Brian does, and then at the night
Speaker 1: at night, maybe consider listening to night Vale. All right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Um, Hey, you want to
Speaker 1: check out more episodes, You want to check out that
Speaker 1: the cergical wings thing we just mentioned here, Head on
Speaker 1: over the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Click
Speaker 1: on that podcast tab and you'll find all the podcast
Speaker 1: episodes we've ever done, going back to the very beginning,
Speaker 1: all streaming there. Many of the more recent ones also
Speaker 1: include art and links out to relate content on our
Speaker 1: side and elsewhere. You can also find UM links out
Speaker 1: to our social media accounts there as well as videos
Speaker 1: as well as blog posts and hey, be sure to
Speaker 1: check us out on YouTube where we are mind Stuff Show.
Speaker 1: And on the topic of myth of averages, do you
Speaker 1: feel like any of that rings true to you in
Speaker 1: terms of the classroom or at work or any other
Speaker 1: institution that you've been involved with? UM? Is that kind
Speaker 1: of one of those things that, once you become aware of,
Speaker 1: you begin to see your experience filtered through this kind
Speaker 1: of mythical average. Let us know your thoughts on that,
Speaker 1: and you can do that by sending us an email
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: hastaff works dot com.