WEBVTT - Odds and Evens, Part 1 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:14.600 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:15.800 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.159 And I am Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:23.840 begin a series of episodes about the psychology of numbers, 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:29.400 specifically the interesting and strange varieties of meaning and emotion 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:34.240 that we attach to the concept of number parody p 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.800 A R I T y number parody meaning whether a 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:42.239 number is odd or even. Now to start to kind 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:44.680 of back up one step and start with the broader question, 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:47.239 I do realize at first it might seem kind of 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:53.800 counterintuitive that anybody would have emotions about or read meaning 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:59.680 into numbers themselves, because a number is almost the text 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:04.200 book example of a neutral, abstract object. You know, it 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:08.360 is a tool for describing reality that is supposed to 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:12.120 have no connotations of its own until it is applied 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:15.240 to a quantity of something. So, you know, when people 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:19.800 are just in conversation trying to speak about something that 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.440 is neutral and without connotations, a number is one of 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:25.280 the most common things people will bring up. 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:27.959 Yeah, in fact, there's all you know, the idea of like, oh, 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:30.679 I'm just a number to you that would mean that, yeah, 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.000 I have no value to you outside of whatever my 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:34.280 numerical value is. 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:36.680 Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the idea that you would be 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:42.280 stripped of all personality, connotation and significance in somebody else's mind. So, 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.520 depending on the context, it does seem totally normal that 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.200 you would have thoughts or feelings about the fact that 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.880 you have twenty three dollars cash in your pocket, or 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.200 the fact that you have six eggs left in the refrigerator. 0:01:57.720 --> 0:01:59.640 They might be kind of simple thoughts like this is 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:01.960 enough for now, or this is not enough for now, 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.320 or something like that. But the question is, why would 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:09.400 anybody have particular thoughts or feelings about the number twenty 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:14.400 three itself or the number six when quantifying nothing in particular. 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:18.120 And yet I do think there's some interesting evidence that 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:23.239 we sometimes read meaning into bare numbers and project feelings 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:27.080 and human characteristics onto them. And this goes beyond the 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.280 practical sense of using those numbers to quantify things that 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.320 are good or bad for us, you know, where we 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.639 would prefer to have more or less of something. And 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:37.920 one example that came to mind when I was thinking 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:42.800 about this is in art, music, storytelling, in the creative domains. 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:43.360 Now. 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.400 We're going to come back and do a deeper discussion 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.840 of visual art in a bit later in this episode, 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.160 but I wanted to start here by saying that I 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.840 think a lot of times when a number or quantity 0:02:56.200 --> 0:03:01.520 is featured in an artwork, you cannot explain any rational 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.320 reason that the number is more appropriate than any other, 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.320 but it just is. It's just the correct number that 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.639 should be there, which means it feels like it means something. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.040 One example that came to mind for me is on 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.320 the Beatles White album from nineteen sixty eight. There is 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.560 a track on there that's kind of famously pretentious in 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.720 some people's minds, mind blowing to others. It is the 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:30.320 avant garde sound collage track Revolution nine or Revolution number nine, 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:33.359 which is made out of a bunch of looping tape 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.440 segments that play over one another, and it creates this 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:42.320 weird sound collage of people reading bits of text, of music, 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.920 of old orchestras playing symphonic music, of the sounds of people, 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.360 you know, yelling or street noise, all different kinds of things, 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.880 and the way that phrases and words are repeated in 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.320 this track has the most It creates the most peculiar, 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.600 incantatory feeling. It's both creepy and sort of thrilling, and 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.520 a major motif in this track is a looping voice 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.360 that just says over and over again, number nine, number nine. 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:12.920 Now I went and looked up some stuff about this 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:15.920 track to see what the significance of the number nine was, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.640 because I never knew. And according to John Lennon, that 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:25.000 segment came from a test tape found at EMI Studios 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:29.320 that featured a sound engineer saying, this is EMI test 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.240 series number nine. Now, of course people have come along, 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:37.440 including the artists themselves, and they would later attach all 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.800 kinds of meaning to that number, like I think this 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:42.800 is part of the track that some people thought was 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.360 like saying Paul is dead when you played it backwards, 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:49.440 so contributed to all kinds of conspiracy theories. But originally 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.919 it was about as close to a totally random number 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:54.880 as you could get. It was just a number found 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.200 on a tape that some engineer was saying. And yet 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.680 I think something about the vague cloud of emotion created 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.400 by that track would be very different if it were 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:10.000 a different EMI tape series number that had been used. 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:13.320 Like I tried to imagine the track but with a 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.279 loop of someone saying number eight or number ten. I 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:19.680 can't be sure, but it seems like that would feel 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:23.359 quite different, even though I can't explain exactly how so, 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.080 even when numbers are not quantities of things that matter 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.520 to our lives but simply numbers read aloud on a 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.679 tape over and over, they can feel like they mean something, 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.520 and by consequence, the meaning would be changed if the 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:37.480 numbers were different. 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.320 Yeah, I mean, of course, it's important to note that 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.520 we're going to get into this obviously, that none of 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:47.599 these numbers have been hermetically sealed away from all other 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:52.960 culture an influence, so they have other associations that we 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:57.000 end up dragging into our reevaluation and reuse of them. 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.000 But that being said, I think they're you can find 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.960 something cool about every number. I think about this a lot, 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.279 because when I'm swimming laps, I have to do something 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:10.440 to make sure that I don't forget which lap I'm on, 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:15.200 especially later on in my set, because if I forget, 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:17.400 I have to back up, and then I can't keep 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.120 doing that because then I'll just be there all day. 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:22.400 So you know, it's like if I'm on lap number four. Well, 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:24.760 a lot of times I will, Well, some of the 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.320 times I'll think about things particularly tied to four, like 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.640 a fourth film and a particular franchise or something. But 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.160 other times I'll just I'll sort of cast about, Okay, 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:32.720 what is it about? 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:32.920 Four? 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:34.919 I can think about, Okay, we've got the you know, 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.120 the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and so forth. Okay, Five, 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.960 what's coming up next? All right? Five Wounds of Christ? Okay, well, 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:42.919 what do we got next? Six? You know, and so forth? 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:47.279 And generally culturally speaking, you know, from from a literary 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.280 standpoint and so forth, musical standpoint, there's going to be 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:51.719 something to latch on for all of them. And it 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.200 depends on what your sort of pyramid of interest and 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:55.000 influences are. 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.440 I guess, yeah, yeah, though I would say I think 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.400 the number of semantic reference points you can use from 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.120 your life or from broader culture or literature or whatever, 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.000 that those are going to be clustered lower on the 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.640 number scale. So like the lower the number is, the 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.720 more easily you will find lots of different significances of that. 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.960 Once you start getting into like the triple digits and stuff, 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:16.800 I bet then you start you do start to get 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:19.480 some numbers where you can't really think of anything for them. 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:21.960 Yeah, it's a long walk between four twenty and six 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.160 sixty six, that's for sure. I never swum that high, 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:25.840 so I don't. 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.040 Have to worry. Yeah, But anyway, So okay, the Beatles 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.320 example I used, that's in the context of art and music, 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.040 where we are primed to think about everything as imbued 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.120 with meaning or causing feeling, you know, even if we 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.560 wouldn't give it a second thought in another context. So 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:45.120 that's a different kind of scenario. But I still think 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.440 that even in everyday life, we sometimes have mysterious tendencies 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:54.560 to feel and think about quantities that are not relevant 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.960 to our personal fortunes. And that's what I wanted to 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:00.720 look at for the rest of the series. Specific again 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:05.760 with respect to number parity, meaning odds and evens. So 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.400 separating numbers into odds and evens is one of the 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:14.160 first principles we learn early in mathematical education, and fortunately 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.320 it's a pretty simple principle to learn and apply. I 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:20.080 think I remember the way I thought about it when 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.440 I was a little kid, was just sort of an 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:26.360 alternating counting principle. You count starting at one and every 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:30.320 other number is even. The more formal way to express 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:32.960 it would be that an even number can be expressed 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.560 as two times in, wherein is any natural number any 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:41.719 positive whole integer, and an odd number can be expressed 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:44.880 as two times in plus one. And when I started 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.480 thinking about this topic for today's episode, it sort of 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.760 occurred to me that when we begin to think about 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.839 a number for any reason, any number, a number comes 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.520 into your mind. I think, at least for me, one 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.600 of the first things I notice about in number that 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:03.600 I think of is whether it is odd or even. 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:08.679 In other words, that parity is a high salience characteristic 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.560 of individual numbers in our brains. And later in my 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.480 reading preparing for this episode, I did find a reference 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:18.000 to a scientific study from the seventies that would seem 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.800 to kind of line up with that intuition that parity 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:25.400 is a high, high salience characteristic of numbers. So there 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:29.440 was a paper called the Internal Representation of Numbers by Shepherd, 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:33.600 Kilpatrick and Cunningham published in the journal Cognitive Psychology in 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.760 nineteen seventy five. And in this study, the authors found 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:40.400 that if you give people random numbers, either as Arabic 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.960 numerals like we used today, or as groups of dots, 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:48.680 or as spoken words, and you ask people to arrange 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.280 these numbers by similarity, group them together with other more 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.640 similar numbers. Apparently, one of the major criteria that people 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.520 seemed to used to group them by similarity was the 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.840 odd even distinction. So that seems to be represented pretty 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:06.760 high in people's minds as a characteristic of numbers. And 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.520 this suggests to me that if we do have strange, 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:16.280 sometimes irrational feelings about numbers, oddness and evenness would likely 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:20.040 play a role in these feelings. So I was casually 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:25.160 reading about this looking for references to people having feelings 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.960 about odd and even numbers, and I came across some 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:32.000 evidence that there are indeed patterns in people's feelings about numbers, 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:34.720 and one of those patterns has to do with number parody. 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.480 So shout out to where I came across some of 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.600 these references. It was in a couple of articles on 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.960 this subject from twenty fourteen by a British writer and 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:48.040 science communicator named Alex Bellows, who apparently writes on mathematics 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.800 somewhat frequently and had written a book concerning some of 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.120 these topics around this time. But anyway, these articles mention 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.439 several different experiments with findings about emotional preferences for odd 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:02.920 and even numbers and so. One example was an experiment 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.880 by a researcher named Mariska Milikowski of the University of 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:12.480 Amsterdam who showed subjects random numbers between one and one 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.960 hundred and then asked people to judge whether these numbers 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:20.440 were good or bad, or also excitable or calm, which 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.199 is sort of an absurd task because why would numbers 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.760 be any of those things? So because of the absurdity 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:29.880 of the task, you might imagine the results would be random, 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.160 but instead she found there was a pattern. On average, 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:36.000 people are more likely to say that even numbers are 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:40.360 good and odd numbers are bad, and also even numbers 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:45.640 were judged as more calm. So good and calm. 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.640 It's so ridiculous, and yet I do feel some of it. 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.760 As we'll get into Bellos mentions another research team, Dan 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:59.280 King of National University of Singapore and Chris Jannieshevitz of 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:04.000 the Univerity of Florida, who again gave people random numbers 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.800 randomly arranged between one and one hundred and asked if 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.520 they liked, disliked, or felt neutral about all these numbers, 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:16.560 And it turns out that people tend to like even 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:21.360 numbers and numbers ending in five better than they like 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.840 the other odd numbers that don't end in five. So 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:29.720 people show more emotional positivity toward numbers that are divisible 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.120 by two or five. Seems like kind of a strange 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.840 pattern again, But as we go on in the series, 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:38.240 we might find some interesting reasons for that kind of 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.400 pattern why people would have preferences of this sort. One 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.719 more thing, there's a kind of practical business implication. Bellos 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:49.760 says that consumer research appears to show, at least in 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.720 some cases, that people have preferences for products with an 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.480 even number in their name as opposed to the same 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.960 product with an odd number. I think the article Minshew 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.560 and a hypothetical cleaning product that was in one of 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.240 these experiments. But you can just imagine, you know, V 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.199 eight juice versus V seven juice. I don't know if 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.040 I'm drinking a V seven. Some seems wrong there. 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.600 I will admit, V seven sounds more like it's supposed 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:17.840 to go in your engine, I guess, and VA could 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:19.280 conceivably go in your body. 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.439 Wait, isn't a vight a type of engine. 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.280 I guess, I guess part part of what's going on 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:26.959 here is that V eight is coded to both engine 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.600 and to made a drink. V seven does not have 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.040 a drink connotation, but he's close enough to the thing 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.680 that is also, you know, something to do with cars. 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.240 So yeah, it's I feel like there's a lot of 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:43.160 this that goes on with any of these, Like there's 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:46.800 there's the reference you're aware of, and then there's like 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:51.400 another sort of like phantom reference in your pyramid of 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.800 interest and influences that is changing the way you think 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:55.480 about a number. 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:59.360 Yeah. Yeah, But anyway, this made me so curious, like 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.400 if these patterns are actually valid in the real world, 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.720 if people do, in many cases show a kind of 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.560 greater liking or emotional preference for even numbers, especially in 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:14.960 certain contexts, or maybe even numbers and numbers numbers that 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.800 are otherwise easily divisible by a common factor like five, 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:24.320 what causes that? And how do similar patterns manifest throughout 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.600 human life and in our cultures and in our art. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.200 Oh and just to throw this in, because it was 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.560 a funny thing that Bellos mentions in one of these 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.440 articles I was talking about, he brings up the fact 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.880 that Douglas Adams is talking about the number forty two 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.640 seems like a mostly unremarkable number, though it does play 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:44.760 a role in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:48.080 spoiler alert, it is discovered to be the Oh what 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:50.160 is the exact phrasing? It is the answer to the 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:52.680 question like what is the meaning of life? The universe 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:57.320 and everything? I apologize if I get that slight, that's correct, okay, yeah, 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.800 and so so the answer is forty two. But Douglas Adams, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.840 speaking of the number forty two apparently said that it 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.200 was quote the sort of number that you could without 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.680 any fear, introduced to your parents that you know that. 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:12.920 That seems kind of right. 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:14.960 Something feels absolutely correct. 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:18.400 Communicates rectitude. Why. I don't know. I don't think it's 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.800 a cultural association with the number. It feels deeper. It 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:25.680 feels like something mathematical about the number forty two kind 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:27.160 of seems like upstanding. 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:30.160 Yeah it should be. There's like a proof for it. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:31.920 it's it's weird to think about it. Like you were 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.880 talking about revolution number nine earlier, and it's like, to me, 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.720 on some level, nine just feels right, nine feels nine's 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.920 kind of a bad boy. You know, it belongs in 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:46.120 a rock song. So somehow, you know, now, I do 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:47.640 want as we get into all this, I do want 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:49.760 to just throw this out there that even when we're 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.120 talking about evens and odds, we do have to be 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.400 aware of the the temptation of the realm of numerology, 0:15:57.240 --> 0:15:59.880 the you know, the belief in a magical, mystical and 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:04.240 infernal or divine relationship between numbers and reality. It's really 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:08.200 easy to get into, uh with with with numbers in general, 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.560 if only even if you're only doing it like surface level, 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.640 you know, just sort of like accidentally believing in various 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.880 superstitions about numbers, and then and then when push comes 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.480 to shove saying well, okay, I'll go with twelve instead 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.080 of thirteen, thank you very much. But then you'll find 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:29.120 some some very strong examples of numerology concerning say, oh, 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.120 I ran across one that said, okay, look to even 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:34.920 numbers in the Bible, because that's that's how God is 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:39.920 speaking to you. God speaks through even numbers. Why you know, 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:41.960 I wasn't gonna I didn't. I didn't go too deep 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.320 on it because I had a feeling the answer was 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:45.320 not going to be fulfilling. 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:47.760 What's wrong with the odd numbers in the Bible? 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:50.880 Well, one thing that through that I instantly thought of 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.000 is like some other bit of I guess, sort of 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.640 you know, vaguely Christian numerology. I mean, maybe this is 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.440 rooted in like more traditional Christian numerology, or maybe it 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.760 was more like you know, recent like nineteen nineties fundamentalism. 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:04.920 I'm not sure, but I remember reading at some point 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.199 in my past that, oh, well seven is the holy 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:12.359 number because it's odd and it can't be divided, but 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:17.240 six six is bad because it can be divided, And I, like, 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.600 I distinctly remember that, and for a while when I 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:22.399 was younger, I was like, yeah, yeah, that that adds 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.480 up right, But no it doesn't. What is what sense 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.040 does that possibly make? And yet on some level I 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:30.560 still hold by it that like, yet, yeah, seven feels 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:34.480 like a holy righteous number and six six falls a 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:36.520 little bit short. Six is going into the inferno. 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:39.400 Well, it's funny you mentioned seven because this also came 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:41.440 up in some of the articles I was reading for today. 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:43.760 I don't remember the exact source, so I'm sorry, but 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:46.440 one of them got into the idea that if you 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.440 ask people to pick a random number between one and ten, 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.720 the most common number people will pick is seven. And 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.360 there's actually a logic there because it's the number between 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:01.639 one and ten that actually feels the most random, Like 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.200 all the even numbers between one and ten. That doesn't 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:07.960 seem right because there's something about even numbers that doesn't 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.720 feel very random to us. That even numbers feel too predictable. 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.720 So you need to pick one of the odd numbers. 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.159 So you shouldn't pick one because that's the beginning of 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.880 the scale. You shouldn't pick nine because that's divisible by three. 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.359 You shouldn't pick three because three times three is nine. 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:25.720 You shouldn't pick five because five times two is ten. 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.359 But seven, that's nothing. You can't do anything with that 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:31.840 in there. No, there's no multiple, there's no way to 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:34.560 divide seven into a whole number. It's prime, and there's 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:36.639 no way to multiply it and still get a number 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.960 within the scale of ten. So it's like the one 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:40.200 that stands out in there. 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.320 Yeah, I think that's kind of the rationale behind some 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:45.560 of the ideas that the seven is holy, that it's 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:48.080 like it is. It is like God, and that it is. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:52.160 It cannot be divided, it's and it can't be doubled 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.520 and still hit something within the one to ten range 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:58.800 and so forth. I don't know, but you know, again, 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:00.960 this is also, at the end of the day, pretty silly. 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.760 The late Emberto Echo rightfully pointed out. He goes into 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.879 this in an extended bit in Fuco's Pendulum, but he 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:11.080 rightfully pointed out that humans have manipulated numbers since ancient 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:15.720 times to create illusions of meaning, and that one can 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.600 ultimately do whatever one wants with numbers. You can torture 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:21.440 the numbers and get what you want. You can do 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.320 all sorts of weird analysis of like, oh, well this 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.080 this person has, you know, so many letters in their 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.480 first name, so many in their last name. You know, 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:32.439 divide by the root of such and such, and we 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:34.280 have the number of the beast and so you can 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.679 do that kind of thing all day and it doesn't 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.359 mean anything other than you can make the numbers do 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:42.280 what you want and so and on top of that, 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.840 number based superstition's number based heuristics. These can be very sticky, 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:49.399 you know, even if you don't really believe in them, 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:52.720 absolutely they're in there in the background of your mind 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.680 when you're dealing with numbers that otherwise don't mean anything, 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.560 and your mind again always wants to make the best 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:02.520 sense of the data it's presented with, even if it 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:04.639 has to depend on things that are not real. So 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:08.919 that's a warning against going too far. But that's not 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.160 what we're for the most part talking about in this series. 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.200 Right Well, I personally take no position on whether odd 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.919 or even numbers are holy or unholy or whatever. But 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:21.960 I am interested in if we have patterns of feelings 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:24.480 about them or ascribe meaning to them, and if so, 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:38.280 why do we have the psychological tendency to do that. Now, 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.360 one of the things that first got me interested in 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:45.040 this subject of preferences for odd and even numbers or 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.679 odd and even quantities of things was an idea that 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.080 actually comes from the world of art, of art theory, 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:56.919 art criticism, and the idea is that there is a 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:02.840 widely held natural preference that people have for the staging 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:07.560 of odd numbers of items within visual art, or the 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:13.960 division of visual art into odd numbers into odd patterns, 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.800 basically odd quantified patterns, and that this applies to painting 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:21.840 and photography and film and so forth, and I found 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:25.119 that so curious, and that does ring very true to me. 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:28.720 But I don't quite know where that preference would come 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:31.120 from or why that is. And if so, is that 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:33.440 I don't know, does that go to something deep within 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.600 our brains or is it just sort of a is 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.160 sort of a cultural preference, a convention that we've established. 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:42.800 What's going on with this idea about odds and visual art? 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.159 Well, the short answer is absolutely yes, definitely know and 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.840 it depends on who you ask, But it is really 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:53.320 fascinating to get into so well, one of the big ones. 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:55.439 There are several different things that are kind of like 0:21:55.520 --> 0:22:00.240 different concepts and laws and rules that are involved. But 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:01.840 the big one, the one that I imagine a lot 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:03.920 of you are thinking of, is, of course, the rule 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:08.000 of thirds. This is a pretty widespread and famous composition rule. 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:12.240 It's pretty standard in photography, cinematography, various forms of visual art, 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:16.560 and it's a standard overlay in various visual editing software 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:20.440 titles and even in like phones and cameras. Most of 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:23.320 you have seen this. It's pretty basic. Though. It's also 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:27.280 interesting that when we're talking about the rule of thirds, 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:32.160 how do we compose it? Well, we use we divide 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:37.560