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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and we are back with

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Speaker 2: part two in our series on pretend play, meaning play

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Speaker 2: that involves non literal action. Now, this is really one

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Speaker 2: of our series where I think if you haven't heard

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Speaker 2: part one, I would really recommend you go back and

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Speaker 2: listen to that one first, because we really laid the

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Speaker 2: groundwork there. We establish a lot of the definitions and

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Speaker 2: so forth. But as a brief refresher, in part one,

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Speaker 2: Rob and I talked about our own memories of pretend

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Speaker 2: play from our own childhood as well as our experiences

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Speaker 2: of pretend to play as parents, especially centering out around

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Speaker 2: the kind of play that happens in preschool age, you know,

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Speaker 2: around three to five or so, which, according to the

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Speaker 2: researchers is sort of the high season of pretend play,

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Speaker 2: when the most pretending is happening usually though, of course,

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Speaker 2: we also talked about the ways that play extends throughout

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Speaker 2: the lifetime. Even pretend play, you know, it starts before

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Speaker 2: this period goes beyond it. But the preschool age is

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Speaker 2: when the pretending is coming thick and fast, and we

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Speaker 2: characterized what a lot of that play is, Like Robert,

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Speaker 2: I don't remember if we ever got into this in

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Speaker 2: the previous episode, but one thing I was reflecting on

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Speaker 2: before we started today is not just how much my

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Speaker 2: two year old daughter loves engaging in pretend play with

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Speaker 2: you know, her various dinosaurs, kind of doing imaginary tasks

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Speaker 2: and going to imaginary events and things like that, but

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Speaker 2: also gets so dedicated to pretend play that like it

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Speaker 2: is a tragedy and an emergency if she is asked

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Speaker 2: to stop pretending before she's done.

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Speaker 1: Yeah again. I think that's one of the wonders of childhood,

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Speaker 1: is that they just get so they go all on

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Speaker 1: their imaginative play, and you know it's it's enviable. Though

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Speaker 1: I think we can sometimes relate. We can sometimes relate

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Speaker 1: to being thrown out of our own creative, imaginative endeavors

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Speaker 1: without enough warning, without a five minute warning from life.

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Speaker 1: Parents at least tend to give that five to ten

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Speaker 1: minute warning if they can.

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Speaker 2: I think the thing about pretending is if you're deep

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Speaker 2: enough in it, you can be given the warning and

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Speaker 2: then you just forget and you know it doesn't stick.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like falling back into a dream. Yeah yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, in the last episode, we also looked in

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Speaker 2: depth at a paper sort of scientific overview, published in

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Speaker 2: a cognitive science review that was looking at the state

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Speaker 2: of research on pretend play in children. That paper was

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Speaker 2: by a researcher named Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published in twenty fifteen.

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Speaker 2: It was just called pretend Play and it was sort

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Speaker 2: of a review of research on pretend play, especially as

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Speaker 2: it relates to other developing cognitive skills in childhood. So

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Speaker 2: in the last episode we talked about the paper's discussion

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Speaker 2: of the possible relationships of pretend play to symbolic understanding

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Speaker 2: and also to counterfactual reasoning. Today, I want to return

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Speaker 2: to another idea explored in this paper, and that is

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Speaker 2: the relationship of pretend play to theory of mind. This

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Speaker 2: is a concept that's come up on the show many

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Speaker 2: times before, but to define it again here, theory of

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Speaker 2: mind is the ability to recognize that other entities like

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Speaker 2: other people and animals, have their own internal mental states,

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Speaker 2: such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. And theory of

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Speaker 2: mind is also the understanding that other people's mental states

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Speaker 2: are independent of one's own. So it's not that everybody

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Speaker 2: is sad because I'm sad right now. The other people

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Speaker 2: different things are happening in their minds. Born with theory

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Speaker 2: of mind skills, the ability to imagine and model the

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Speaker 2: mental states of other people is something that is acquired

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Speaker 2: and refined throughout childhood.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's this is of course the topic that's

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Speaker 1: come up on the show multiple times before and what'll

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Speaker 1: keep coming up because it's a huge part of the

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Speaker 1: human condition and it's it's so fascinating to think about.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things that we use all the

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Speaker 1: time to the point that we we just we think

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Speaker 1: of it as just reality, and we think of what

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Speaker 1: we know of others' mental states and what we attribute

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Speaker 1: to other people's mental states as being just how people are.

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Speaker 1: You know, we think we know them, but in reality,

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Speaker 1: like the whether we're dealing with the closest relationships in

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Speaker 1: your life. You know, a significant other is family members, offspring,

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Speaker 1: and so forth, whether you're dealing with them, or you're

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Speaker 1: dealing with someone you just met on the street or

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Speaker 1: didn't even meet someone that was walking across the street

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Speaker 1: from you. We we create a simulation of their mind

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Speaker 1: state of what they're you know, roughly, their their goals,

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Speaker 1: their attitudes towards us generally are, and and then we

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Speaker 1: react to the to those models. And so it is

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Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting, kind of haunting to think

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Speaker 1: about the fact that, like the you that I think

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Speaker 1: I know best is actually inside of me. Yes, you know.

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Speaker 1: And and of course theory of mind can be trained

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Speaker 1: on plenty of non human entities as well on objects

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Speaker 1: and on real things. Uh So it's a very powerful

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Speaker 1: part of the human cognition tool chest.

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Speaker 2: That's right, it's a you know, I was just thinking

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Speaker 2: about how theory of mind is so deep in such

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Speaker 2: different types of sort of human relations and expression. Like

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Speaker 2: theory of mind is is the core of love, of

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Speaker 2: what it means to love people, but it's also the

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Speaker 2: core of like manipulation and machiavelianism. It's it's everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's involved in in all of our prejudices.

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Speaker 1: It's involved, you know, in in our hatred as well

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Speaker 1: as our love. So it's you know, it's it's a

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Speaker 1: very broad spectrum here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's I think easy to see why theory

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Speaker 2: of mind might have connections to pretend play. When you

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Speaker 2: play a pretend game, especially with other people, it is

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Speaker 2: important to understand the intentions of the play partner in

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Speaker 2: order to understand the game as non literal. So this

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Speaker 2: is an example game I mentioned in part one. Why

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Speaker 2: is my friend stirring a bowl of crayons with a

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Speaker 2: fork and then lifting the fork to my stuffed therapod

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Speaker 2: dinosaur's mouth. This activity does not make any sense when

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Speaker 2: just observed and taken literally. But if I'm a child

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Speaker 2: and I see this happening, even without talking about the game,

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Speaker 2: I can probably infer that my friend intends the crayons

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Speaker 2: to be understood as food. You know, last time we

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Speaker 2: talked about crayons as spaghetti, and thus intends the forklifting

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Speaker 2: to be understood as feeding, and thus intends the inert

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Speaker 2: stuffed dinosaur to be understood as eating. So I can

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Speaker 2: participate in this play by feeding the dinosaur spaghetti crayons

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Speaker 2: as well, or by making nomnom sounds when the crayon

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Speaker 2: reaches the dinosaur's mouth. And about this connection, Weisberg writes

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Speaker 2: in the paper quote pretense is thus meta representational, meaning

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Speaker 2: it involves representing someone's representation of a state of affairs.

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Speaker 2: Without the ability to meta represent one would see pretense

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Speaker 2: actions as nonsensical and quarantining would break down. And remember

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Speaker 2: from last time, quarantining is the ability to stop yourself

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Speaker 2: from taking inapplicable lessons from pretend play. So the example was,

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Speaker 2: mom is using a banana as a phone. Somehow we

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Speaker 2: can play that pretend a game and yet not take

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Speaker 2: the incorrect lesson that you can actually make calls on

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Speaker 2: a banana. It's the ability to ward off incorrect information

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Speaker 2: and prevent your brain from learning things that are wrong

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Speaker 2: based on a game that is counterfactual. And so what

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Speaker 2: Weisberg is saying here is that things like quarantining are

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Speaker 2: only possible because we have this meta representational ability. Like

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Speaker 2: you can see somebody playing the banana as phone game,

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Speaker 2: and you don't think that, oh, maybe the banana can

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Speaker 2: place calls because you understand that person's intentions that they're

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Speaker 2: just intending this to be a game. They're not intending

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Speaker 2: to use the banana literally as a phone. In my example,

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Speaker 2: I guess the equivalent would be like are we feeding

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Speaker 2: the dinosaur crayons? Because crayons are actually food? Should I

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Speaker 2: eat them? Sometimes a kid may experiment along these lines,

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Speaker 2: but usually they do not end up at this conclusion.

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Speaker 2: Usually the kid understands the intention of the play partner

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Speaker 2: to treat the crayons as something other than what they

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Speaker 2: actually are.

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Speaker 1: I do have to say that after we recorded the

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Speaker 1: last episode, there were a number of phone banana shenanigans

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Speaker 1: in my household. Oh n it totally killed. It's just

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Speaker 1: inherently funny. So I hope listeners have been re exploring

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Speaker 1: the comedy as well.

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Speaker 2: I mean, that's funny no matter what age are. Absolutely

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Speaker 2: Oh but to talk about killing the joke by over

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Speaker 2: explaining it, nevertheless, I'm gonna go there. I would love

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Speaker 2: to understand better the like the minute mechanics of that

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Speaker 2: kind of humor, Like how close physically does the fruit

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Speaker 2: or the food have to be to the object to

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Speaker 2: like work enough to be funny, because obviously it's like

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Speaker 2: a banana is funnier than like a plastic toy phone.

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Speaker 2: But I would also think a banana as a phone

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Speaker 2: is funnier than an apple as a phone.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a banana is stupid. A banana, I mean,

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Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, is delicious, But a banana is

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Speaker 1: bright yellow. There's thull slipping on the peel clown Shenan. Again,

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Speaker 1: it is phallic and therefore has that layer of humor

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Speaker 1: to it as well. And then the juxtaposition is that

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Speaker 1: a phone is serious. A phone, you know, it may

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Speaker 1: be a loved when calling, but you may be bad

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Speaker 1: news on the other end of the phone. The phone

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Speaker 1: is what you reach for when there's an emergency, So

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Speaker 1: the phone is dead serious or can be. The banana

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Speaker 1: is stupid and therefore it just works.

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Speaker 2: It's so good, but anyway, Okay, to come back to

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Speaker 2: playing pretend and theory of mind, the connections we've talked

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Speaker 2: about suggests there is a link between theory of mind

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Speaker 2: and playing pretend because it's about recognizing and internally modeling

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Speaker 2: the mental states of others, recognizing not just what another

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Speaker 2: person literally does, but understanding what that person intends. And

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Speaker 2: Weisberg compares this to a common experiment that is used

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Speaker 2: to test theory of mind in children, which he refers

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Speaker 2: to as the Sally Anne false belief task, though or

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Speaker 2: sometimes in the literature they just call this a false

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Speaker 2: belief test. Here's a simplified version of it. Okay, the

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Speaker 2: child is a participant. The child watches a character playing

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Speaker 2: with a ball, and then this character puts the ball

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Speaker 2: down in a basket and walks out of the room.

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Speaker 2: And then while the original character who is playing with

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Speaker 2: the ball is gone, somebody else comes into the room,

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Speaker 2: takes the ball out of the basket, hides it in

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Speaker 2: a box, and then leaves. Then the first character comes

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Speaker 2: back into the room, and the child has been watching

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Speaker 2: the whole time, so the child saw everything happen. And

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Speaker 2: then you ask the child a question, where will the

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Speaker 2: original character look for the ball? So the child knows,

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Speaker 2: because they were watching the whole time, that the ball

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Speaker 2: is hidden in the box. But with theory of mind skills,

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Speaker 2: the child should be able to say that the character

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Speaker 2: should look in the basket where she left it, because

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Speaker 2: the child knows that the character does not know that

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Speaker 2: the ball was moved or where it was moved too,

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Speaker 2: So to answer this question correctly, the child in the

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Speaker 2: experiment has to ignore their own knowledge about the true

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Speaker 2: state of affairs and instead answer based on the false

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Speaker 2: belief that the character in the scenario would have. If

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Speaker 2: you compare this to the pretend play scenario, if a

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Speaker 2: kid wants to join in the crayons as spaghetti game

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Speaker 2: with another child. They have to ignore the true knowledge

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Speaker 2: that the crayons are crayons and that they are meant

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Speaker 2: for drawing and not for eating, and also to infer

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Speaker 2: the intentions of the play partner that the crayons are

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Speaker 2: to be treated as food for the dinosaur. So both

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Speaker 2: of these situations pretend play and the false belief test

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Speaker 2: for theory of mind depend on at least two things

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Speaker 2: that Weisberg highlights. One of them is what she calls decoupling,

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Speaker 2: and that is temporarily ignoring your knowledge of what is

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Speaker 2: literally true, and the other is meta representation, internally representing

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Speaker 2: somebody else's mental states, such as their intention to represent

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Speaker 2: a literal object X as pretend object y. So it's

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Speaker 2: very tempting to see a link between theory of mind

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Speaker 2: and pretend play. Weisberg in fact cites a researcher named A. M.

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Speaker 2: Leslie who has speculated in some writing that there is

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Speaker 2: possibly an underlying neural structure in the brain that is

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Speaker 2: responsible for both theory of mind and for pretending, calling

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Speaker 2: this hypothetical structure the theory of mind module. Leslie apparently

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Speaker 2: argued that perhaps a developmental difference in this neural structure

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Speaker 2: is what underlies autism. Given the observation that studies have

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Speaker 2: found that children with autism spectrum diagnoses demonstrate deficits in

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Speaker 2: social cognition, which implicates theory of mind, but also tend

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Speaker 2: to engage in less pretending. Both the existence of this

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Speaker 2: module and the connection with the autism spectrum is hypothetical.

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Speaker 2: What's clear is the cognitive and behavioral similarity between theory

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Speaker 2: of mind and elements of pretend play. And then Weisberg

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Speaker 2: goes on to site some studies that seem to support

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Speaker 2: this link. I thought a couple of these were kind

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Speaker 2: of interesting. One of them is by researchers named Rebecca

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Speaker 2: Dore and Angeline Lillard, published in Imagination, Cognition, and Personality

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Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen called Theory of Mind and Children's Engagement

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Speaker 2: in Fantasy Worlds. This was a study that looked at

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Speaker 2: preschoolers at the beginning and then the end of a

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Speaker 2: seven month period, and it tested for a few different

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Speaker 2: things to see if there are any correlations. One was

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Speaker 2: a child's tendency to engage in fantasy ideation and activities,

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Speaker 2: so this would be related to pretending. Basically, a child's

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Speaker 2: orientation toward fantasy. And then another thing measured was the

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Speaker 2: child's tendency to use mentalistic descriptions. I had to look

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Speaker 2: up what this is, but I think this basically means, like,

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Speaker 2: imagine you see a drawing of a character reaching a

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Speaker 2: bucket down into a pool of water. You could give

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Speaker 2: a physical description of that scene, you know, the character

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Speaker 2: is leaning down scooping up water, or you could give

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Speaker 2: a mentalistic description, which might be something like this character

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Speaker 2: wants a drink of water, explaining things in terms of

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Speaker 2: motivations and mental states as opposed to just physical movements.

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Speaker 2: And then the third thing tested for correlation here was

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Speaker 2: the child's capacity for theory of mind, which is tested

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Speaker 2: a variety of ways, one of which is the false

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Speaker 2: belief task that I was talking about a minute ago,

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Speaker 2: but another is testing for whether children understand that different

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Speaker 2: people have desires and emotions they're different from their own,

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Speaker 2: things like that. And this study found that preschool children

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Speaker 2: who are more oriented toward fantasy on a number of

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Speaker 2: measures did not grow beyond the baseline in the use

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Speaker 2: of mentalistic descriptions during the seven month period, but did

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Speaker 2: show some greater improvements in theory of mind, so that

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Speaker 2: establishes that there could possibly be a link between the

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Speaker 2: tendency to engage in fantasy and faster learning on theory

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Speaker 2: of mind skills. Another finding is that some experiments have

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Speaker 2: found that children do better on false belief tasks like

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Speaker 2: the ball in the basket versus the box thing I

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Speaker 2: was talking about when the format of the test involves

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Speaker 2: more pretending. So think of when the scenario is presented

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Speaker 2: as a fictional story or when it is acted out

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Speaker 2: with invisible pretend objects as opposed to being acted out

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Speaker 2: with literal physical props, in which case apparently the kids

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Speaker 2: do a bit worse. That kind of makes sense to me.

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Speaker 2: I guess it's harder to ignore your knowledge that the

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Speaker 2: ball is actually in the box and remember that Sally

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Speaker 2: left it in the basket and that's all she knows

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Speaker 2: when oh my god, like I just saw the go

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Speaker 2: in the box. I literally saw it go in there. There.

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Speaker 1: It is.

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Speaker 2: Also interesting is there are apparently some findings that suggest

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Speaker 2: this is actually in adults, that reading fiction may possibly

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Speaker 2: improve particular theory of mind skills.

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Speaker 1: I remember reading about this several years back. I believe yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now, as with the stuff discussed in the previous episode

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Speaker 2: with the links to symbolic understanding and counterfactual reasoning. Weisberg

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Speaker 2: adds the important caveat that basically all of these experiments

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Speaker 2: connecting theory of mind to pretend play are correlational or

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Speaker 2: they're limited to a single situation. It's really hard, maybe impossible,

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Speaker 2: to devise an ethical, robust experiment where you like randomly

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Speaker 2: manipulate the independent variable of pretend to play over a

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Speaker 2: developmentally significant period of time and then track the results.

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Speaker 2: Both ethics and practicality kind of limit us to weaker

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Speaker 2: forms of testing in this subject matter, So we should

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Speaker 2: be realistic and thus humble about the limitations of what

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Speaker 2: we know about these links. So what we know is

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Speaker 2: very interesting, but it's also fairly tentative and important to

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Speaker 2: not hang too much on these findings, especially the findings

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Speaker 2: of a single study. But with those caveats, I think

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Speaker 2: there's pretty good reason to think that pretending and theory

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Speaker 2: of mind are deeply intertwined in some ways in the

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Speaker 2: brain and in child development, But exactly how they are related,

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Speaker 2: how one affects the other, and so forth, is more questionable. Now,

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Speaker 2: the kind of theory of mind that we have been

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Speaker 2: primarily talking about, of course, is inferring the mental states

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Speaker 2: of other people who do physically exist. But a different

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Speaker 2: related question is what about simulating the workings of an

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Speaker 2: external mind that is at its base life make believe.

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Speaker 2: And this brings us back to something we mentioned only

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Speaker 2: briefly in Part one, the imaginary friend.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, in some ways, the imaginary friend is it's like

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Speaker 1: the ultimate pretend play manifestation, an imaginary being that is

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Speaker 1: altogether imaginary and invisible also, but it's also gifted with

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Speaker 1: varying degrees of agency and intelligence. This you know this, This,

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Speaker 1: of course gets more complicated when you try and like

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Speaker 1: nail down what an imaginary friend is. There are sort

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Speaker 1: of related concepts that are sometimes looped together and sometimes

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Speaker 1: are considered separate. Like, for instance, you have things like

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Speaker 1: stuffed animals that are attributed personalities in some degree of agency.

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Speaker 1: You also have personified objects, and you also have also

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Speaker 1: sometimes there's a distinction between imaginary companions and imaginary friends.

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Speaker 1: I'll come back to that in a bit, but I

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Speaker 1: guess a good place to star art would be with

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Speaker 1: examples from our own lives. Joe, did you have an

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Speaker 1: imaginary friend? And does your child have an imaginary friend

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Speaker 1: or friends.

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Speaker 2: This may get into some of the distinctions you were

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Speaker 2: just highlighting, But I never had like a consistent imaginary

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Speaker 2: friend over time. I think I may have had single

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Speaker 2: use imaginary friends that were, you know, dreamed up for

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Speaker 2: a single play occasion or something. With my daughter, I

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Speaker 2: don't think there's not a single entity who is her

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Speaker 2: consistent imaginary friend. But she does seem to ascribe a

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Speaker 2: lot of personality to various pretend entities, like imbuing mind

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Speaker 2: into stuffed animal friends or imagining. We sometimes play this

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Speaker 2: game with these invisible kitty cats and stuff that you know,

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Speaker 2: we can find like hiding between the couch cushions and things,

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Speaker 2: and we pull out an invisible kitty cat, and oh

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Speaker 2: and she can talk about what the kitty cat wants.

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Speaker 2: But I think that's different than an imaginary friend, which

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Speaker 2: is usually thought of as something that persists over time.

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Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yes, yes, and no. I guess one

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Speaker 1: thing that that sort of comes out of the research

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Speaker 1: I've been looking looking at here is that I think

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Speaker 1: imaginary friends do come and go, and they inevitably do

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Speaker 1: come and then go. There is kind of like a

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Speaker 1: period of time during which they tend to be active.

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Speaker 1: But there's not necessarily like we shouldn't get too attach

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Speaker 1: to the idea that they'll just be a single imaginary friend.

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Speaker 1: There could be several and they need not be this

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Speaker 1: sort of you know, standard version of some sort of

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Speaker 1: essentially invisible friend, an invisible humanoid being that is like

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Speaker 1: on the same level as your as your child. And

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Speaker 1: also they might just spring out of nowhere, as we'll

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Speaker 1: get into a bit. But yeah, I myself have no

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Speaker 1: memory of ever having an invisible friend, just despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that I was I was the oldest child and

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Speaker 1: in many respects the eldest child that seemed to be

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Speaker 1: more likely to have an imaginary friend. My own child

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Speaker 1: had be and lost friends that I remember, and so

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Speaker 1: I asked them about this, is like, do you remember

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Speaker 1: your being lost friends? And they were like, no, I

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Speaker 1: don't remember the being wast friends at all. I remember

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Speaker 1: three imaginary cats that I had at one point. I'm like, okay,

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Speaker 1: well I forgot about that one. So that's another thing

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Speaker 1: to keep in mind when you think about like single

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Speaker 1: imaginary friends that a child may or may not have

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Speaker 1: a lot of. It also comes down to what memories

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Speaker 1: are retained by the child. And what is noticed and

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Speaker 1: retained by the parents, and so it's entirely likely between

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Speaker 1: those two things that hold imaginary friends are lost entirely.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. It's funny.

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Speaker 2: My daughter has also gone through phases where she was

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Speaker 2: really obsessed with bees. She loves bees and has you know,

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Speaker 2: likes to point out bees flying around things that aren't

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Speaker 2: always bees, you know. Sometimes there might just be a

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Speaker 2: buzz or something, you know, made by a machine and

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Speaker 2: it's like b b yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So like my child to be in West friends.

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Speaker 1: I don't think they really talked or anything. They just

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Speaker 1: they were essentially animals that were invisible, you know. I

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Speaker 1: also asked my mom about this. I was on the

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Speaker 1: phone with her last night and I was just checking.

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Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it was like me and my siblings,

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Speaker 1: none of us had invisible friends that you know of, right,

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Speaker 1: And she's like no, But she shared that she had

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Speaker 1: seven imaginary friends when she was a child. Oh and

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Speaker 1: she was the eldest child. This would have been the

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Speaker 1: I guess the early fifties. So that'll be worth keeping

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Speaker 1: in mind as we proceed through the discussion here. Wow,

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Speaker 1: so one of the sources I was looking at for this.

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Speaker 1: This was a twenty eighteen meta analysis Prevalence of Imaginary

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Speaker 1: Companions in children, a meta analysis by Morigucci and Toto.

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Speaker 1: This was in the Meryll Palmer Quarterly, and they pointed

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Speaker 1: out for starters that imaginary friends don't have to be

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Speaker 1: entirely invisible. Some experts point out that a particular object,

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Speaker 1: and even a personified object, may seemingly enhance the vividness

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Speaker 1: of an imagined companion. They also discussed imaginary friends and

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Speaker 1: personified objects as both being forms of imaginary companions, but

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Speaker 1: stressed that a key difference one tends to find is

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Speaker 1: that the relationship between child and personified object tends to

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Speaker 1: be more more of a matter of like, these are

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Speaker 1: my pets or you know, or these are my children,

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Speaker 1: you know. It's a relationship that's mirroring human child and

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Speaker 1: human pet relationships. While an imaginary friend is more egalitarian.

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Speaker 1: You don't tell them what to do because they're your friend.

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Speaker 1: They're at least you're equal. It's not someone you boss

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Speaker 1: around or care for. I want to add that into

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Speaker 1: because I don't want to. I don't want to create

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Speaker 1: this idea that you know, bossy kids just have these

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Speaker 1: these underlings that are imaginary. It's like, you know, it

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Speaker 1: could also be a care scenario and so forth, but

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Speaker 1: the imaginary friend it is more egalitarian in its nature.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that is really interesting. I wonder if that has

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Speaker 2: to do with I don't know, ideas about like when

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Speaker 2: you when a physical object is yours, there's this state

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Speaker 2: of mind about it that like you own it, it

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Speaker 2: is one of my possessions. And thus even if it

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Speaker 2: is a even if it has a mind, you kind

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Speaker 2: of feel like this this power over it, where whereas

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Speaker 2: you don't with you know, other people your age, or

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Speaker 2: I guess you shouldn't with other people your age. So

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Speaker 2: like imagining an invisible person is different.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like it's my object, it is mine, but

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Speaker 1: also mine to care for and so forth. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: also know that some researchers consider personified objects to be

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Speaker 1: imaginary friends, but not always. Again, we have to remind

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Speaker 1: yourself that this is all This is all adult language

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Speaker 1: that has been generated to make sense of the thing

435
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:53,719
Speaker 1: that is emerging, often unlanguaged from the minds of children.

436
00:25:53,800 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: So you know, bear that in mind as we move forward.

437
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:16,400
Speaker 1: Now they briefly touch on the history of imaginary friends,

438
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:19,199
Speaker 1: with the study of them first popping up in eighteen

439
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 1: ninety five with the work of Clara Vostrowski A Study

440
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: of Imaginary Companions. And yeah, but before this, there's basically nothing.

441
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:33,919
Speaker 1: They were. For a while, following the emergence of study

442
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:36,399
Speaker 1: regarding them, they were often thought to be signs of

443
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: a personality dysfunction. The first book wasn't written about them

444
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: until nineteen eighteen, and it wasn't until the nineteen sixties

445
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,159
Speaker 1: that imaginary friends were seen as a positive part of

446
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: a child's development. This is universally so, like, for instance,

447
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: just going back to the example of my mother, like

448
00:26:55,359 --> 00:26:59,919
Speaker 1: her parents embraced this idea and would like set places

449
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: at the table for the seven imaginary children. So it's

450
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: not a situation where it's like, oh, until the nineteen sixties,

451
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: imaginary friends were to be feared or anything. But just

452
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:11,879
Speaker 1: you know, broad strokes. Now, one question you might have

453
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, well, what does this mean. Does this

454
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:20,199
Speaker 1: mean that nobody had imaginary friends before the twentieth century. Well,

455
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: that is actually one way you could look at it,

456
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that. But the other way is

457
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 1: that clearly this is something that's just been going on

458
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,679
Speaker 1: since time out of mind, and it's only as we

459
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:33,959
Speaker 1: get into the twentieth century that it's being noticed and

460
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: so forth.

461
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 2: I think sometimes we underestimate how much things in the

462
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 2: past just there's not written evidence of them, not because

463
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 2: they didn't exist, but because nobody who was writing books

464
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:48,439
Speaker 2: just thought it was worth paying attention to.

465
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:50,639
Speaker 1: I think there's a strong case to be made for

466
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 1: that absolutely now. Claus and Pasmano point out in two

467
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: thousand and sevens per ten Companions. I've seen this sighted

468
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 1: and numerous studies as well, that the idea of childhood

469
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: as we understand it today perhaps didn't really emerge until

470
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: like the seventeenth century. So there were perhaps severe limitations

471
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: on our ability and our willingness to understand what was

472
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,640
Speaker 1: going on with children. So, you know, did we care

473
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:23,199
Speaker 1: what children were talking about, did we care about if

474
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 1: they had an imaginary friend or not? And so forth.

475
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,240
Speaker 1: On top of that, before the seventeenth century we deep

476
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: ever deeper in of course, into the demon haunted world

477
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:36,439
Speaker 1: of superstition. So you know, if we did hear about

478
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: our children talking with unseen entities, we probably had a

479
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: script to go to that was not Oh well, they're

480
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: just engaging in pretend play. It might be more, Oh,

481
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 1: well they're talking to fairies, they're talking to spirits and

482
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: so forth.

483
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, the goat whispered something to me, help.

484
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 1: Me, they write quote. Many early descriptions of pretend companions

485
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: may not be recognized as such because they were depicted

486
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 1: in terms of spirits and other supernatural concepts. Metaphysical explanations

487
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: for pretend companions are not at all limited to the past,

488
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,120
Speaker 1: because to some extent they have existed even in recent

489
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: times now. They also bring up the idea that free

490
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: play time and time alone are perhaps both key requirements

491
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: for their emergence of an invisible companion and a child,

492
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: and these would have been things that would have been,

493
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: by some estimates, historically lacking and still lacking for children

494
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 1: in many parts of the world and in many different

495
00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 1: socioeconomic levels. You know, do you have time alone? Do

496
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 1: you have time to play in which you'd get to

497
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: know your imaginary friend, in which you had been able

498
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: to be able to generate this idea and play with it.

499
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: They cite works from two thousand and three and nineteen

500
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:53,479
Speaker 1: seventy nine that report at a very low rate of

501
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: reported invisible friends in India zero point two percent in

502
00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: one study, which is really low compared to some of

503
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 1: the ways Western stats that I'll mention here in a bit,

504
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: and they attributed it to limited playtime and limited alone time.

505
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: They also acknowledge that the idea of children remembering past

506
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: lives is something that is sometimes explored and encouraged in

507
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:17,479
Speaker 1: parts of India, but that didn't seem to have an

508
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: impact on the percentage rate of imaginary friends here. So

509
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: they bring up this idea that in the past, and

510
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: to some extent in the present, traditional ways of life

511
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 1: throughout the world might not have allowed most children sufficient

512
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: room for not only imaginary friends, but even imagination play itself. Now.

513
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: One of the sources they cite here on this is

514
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: the work of Lloyd de Moss from nineteen seventy four

515
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: The History of Childhood, writing that quote, if pretend companions

516
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: are indeed a modern phenomenon, then their genesis may result

517
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: from being left alone and from having time available for play,

518
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,120
Speaker 1: customs that apply to contemporary Western children but rarely to

519
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: children historically. Now quick side note on de Moss here,

520
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty twenty. He was

521
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:11,239
Speaker 1: a psychoanalyst and self proclaimed psychohistorian, and there remains some

522
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: controversy about his work, and I've read some strong criticisms

523
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: of his scholarship, especially concerning some of his more bombastic ideas.

524
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: I'm not super well versed in his work, but at

525
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: any rate, the key idea of his involved here is

526
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: the notion that childhood in the modern Western sense is

527
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: relatively new.

528
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 2: Okay, but that sort of contributes to one of these

529
00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 2: competing explanations for why it's only recently that there has

530
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 2: been much published on the idea of imaginary companions in childhood.

531
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 2: It could be that, you know, this is something that

532
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 2: happens with lots of kids throughout time, but it's only

533
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 2: really been noticed by adults who wrote about it in

534
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 2: the last century or so. Or it could be that

535
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:56,240
Speaker 2: the very nature of childhood itself changes pretty drastically in

536
00:31:56,280 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 2: different times and cultures, and this is something that emerges much,

537
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 2: which more strongly in recent times in certain cultures.

538
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so, I feel we have like a few

539
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 1: different ways to potentially think about it. As something that

540
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: was long and visible to adults, had at least less

541
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: space to foster and children, and was likely to be

542
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: explained away with superstition anyway, if superstition was even employed,

543
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: Like I said, I think there's also a strong argument

544
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: to be made that it just wasn't noticed as much

545
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: and wasn't fostered as an idea, wasn't even recognized. And

546
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: we'll come back to some ideas regarding that here in

547
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 1: a second. But another interesting idea they bring up is

548
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: that while historical accounts of imaginary friends and children from

549
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:40,200
Speaker 1: before the twentieth century is scant and non existent, we

550
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: have plenty of accounts of quote adult pretend companion like phenomena.

551
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 1: This includes muses, household gods, guardian angels, and personal saints.

552
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: I'd also personally add ghosts and ancestor spirits to this,

553
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: and I think it's something that many contemporary humans will

554
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:02,480
Speaker 1: also find themselves engaging with, at least to some degree.

555
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 1: You know, when we speak to the dead, and I

556
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: don't mean even in like a daily regular fashion, but

557
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 1: like if you visit somebody's grave and you speak to them,

558
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 1: and on some level you know you were engaging with

559
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: this mental model of their mind. You know, what are

560
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 1: you really speaking to it? You're speaking to this imaginary

561
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: construct that person. No longer exists in a physical form,

562
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: you know. So, yeah, you are engaging in a very

563
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 1: similar sort of pretend play, but we think of it differently,

564
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, we have a different We have an adult

565
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: mindset regarding it, and so we don't loop it in.

566
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: We don't lump it into the same category with the

567
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 1: imaginary friend usually. Now, in this meta analysis, they point

568
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: out that numerous studies have made a case for invisible

569
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: friends and invisible companions. I'm sorry, imaginary friends and imaginary companions,

570
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: but they're often invisible having a beneficial effect on a

571
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 1: child's social, emotion, emotional, and cognitive development. Just a few

572
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,880
Speaker 1: of the possible attributed benefits in the meta analysis include

573
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:14,920
Speaker 1: children with ices or imaginary companions may have more developed

574
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: sociocognitive and narrative skills. Children with ices may go on

575
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 1: to have better coping competence as adolescents, that is, better

576
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 1: coping strategies and techniques when faced with anxiety, such as

577
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: reaching out for help or advice when they need it.

578
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting. I was wondering if that might take

579
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 2: a different form, which is that I wonder if having

580
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 2: an imaginary companion just kind of trains you in engaging

581
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 2: in a back and forth within your own mind, which

582
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 2: is very important for kind of getting perspective on yourself

583
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 2: in your own situation. Even as an adult. You might

584
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 2: not have another person, you imagine, but you sort of

585
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 2: do need to be able to ask and answer questions

586
00:34:56,719 --> 00:35:01,320
Speaker 2: within yourself or to set up opposite uditional viewpoints within

587
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:04,800
Speaker 2: your own head in order to sort of stand outside

588
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 2: yourself and see what's going on.

589
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm getting a strong sense that you could look

590
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: at it as a kind of simulation or rehearsal for

591
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 1: social relationships and communication as well. Yeah. Yeah, there's a

592
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen study from Gleason and Kalpedo that they point

593
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:24,480
Speaker 1: out that found that children with egalitarian child icy relationships

594
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 1: chose more constructive coping strategies than did those with these

595
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: child icy relationships that are more like you know pet

596
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 1: or you know child you know care relationship. So yeah,

597
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to think about here. Now, one thing

598
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: they point out, and this is a huge factor, and

599
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: this of course is often a factor in studies, is

600
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: that is that pretty much all of our scholarship on

601
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 1: ICs has come out of Western culture, where there is

602
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:00,760
Speaker 1: generally a majority of children with ICs of one or another,

603
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 1: and so you have to ask, and again this is

604
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: you know, this is a problem in other studies as well,

605
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: obviously scientific and otherwise, like what's your your sample consists of.

606
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 1: Is it a bunch of you know, western college students,

607
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 1: Is it a bunch of white western college students and

608
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: so forth? Then how does that break down when you're

609
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: actually considering the species as a whole, And so you know,

610
00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: you can ask yourself, well, how much of this is

611
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: purely cultural then? And it's hard to say, they point

612
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: out because at the time, at any rate, they said

613
00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: they had virtually nothing outside of Western culture to compare

614
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: these studies to. And I think this has changed a

615
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 1: little bit since the publication date, but I think a

616
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: lot of big questions remain. They did point to some

617
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: Japanese studies at the time, however, and these seem to

618
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: suggest that imaginary companions might be less common in Japanese children,

619
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 1: apparently due to cultural reasons, though the rate was still

620
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:01,879
Speaker 1: something like fifty percent. So it's so it's just that's

621
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 1: compared to sixty to sixty five percent rate in studies

622
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: of Western children. So you know, it's a sizable difference,

623
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: but you're still looking at fifty percent. Obviously there's a

624
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: great deal to unravel there. In their meta analysis, they

625
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:19,919
Speaker 1: further elaborate the cultural attitudes towards imaginary friends are likely

626
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 1: important here in Japan, for instance, they said there was

627
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,319
Speaker 1: at the time less common knowledge of the concept and

628
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: perhaps more of a likelihood for imaginary friend reports from

629
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: a child to generate a prinal concern, despite, to be clear,

630
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: a strong support for pretend play in general in said culture. So, yeah,

631
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,440
Speaker 1: it gets complex trying to tease a part like, well,

632
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: how much of it is a cultural factor, how much

633
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: of it is just in parents paying attention and so forth.

634
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:54,320
Speaker 1: So they summarize, quote, imaginative and pretend play maybe universal

635
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: behaviors across cultures with an evolutionary origin, but how the

636
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 1: play is constructed in shape varies across culture is unclear. Now,

637
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,920
Speaker 1: other factors that seem to impact things. These include the

638
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:10,879
Speaker 1: children's age, the assessment method, sex, and birth order. So

639
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 1: on the subject of age, Looking at various studies involving

640
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: imaginary friends, some studies identify two to three and a

641
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:21,760
Speaker 1: half as the peak age for imaginary companions, while others

642
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: have identified age four. Some studies they argue, do not

643
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:30,480
Speaker 1: distinguish between current and past imaginary companions, and I think

644
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: that's interesting to think of as welcome. I honestly do

645
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: not remember at what age my child had been WASP friends,

646
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 1: but clearly there was a window for it. You know.

647
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're never too old for WASP friends, but at

648
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 2: a certain age they just become less common. It's harder

649
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:46,319
Speaker 2: to get in touch now.

650
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 1: They also stress the assessment method is key. So broadly speaking,

651
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 1: you can ask kids about their imaginary friends and or

652
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 1: talk to their parents about their imaginary friends. And I

653
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 1: don't think this will shock any parents out there, but

654
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: sometimes the accounts do not match up. Parents often don't

655
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: have or attain all the details, and parents who disapprove

656
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 1: of my imaginary friends, either in general or specifics like

657
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: I don't trust mister Bongo or whatever, they may retain

658
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: even less of the details. However, while the children themselves

659
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: may be the best source, they are also complications there

660
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 1: as well. They point out that below age three, a

661
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 1: child may not have the verbal skills to answer all

662
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:29,400
Speaker 1: of the questions that the researchers have about the imaginary friends,

663
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 1: and they may wind up answering questions by invoking real

664
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:37,879
Speaker 1: life friends instead, like you're asking them about imaginary friends,

665
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: but they're answering. They get confused about whether you're talking

666
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:43,479
Speaker 1: about imaginary friends or real friends. And then I found

667
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 1: this particularly funny. They may make up new imaginary friends

668
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:49,239
Speaker 1: during the interview.

669
00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:52,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, there is sometimes a blurring of I'm

670
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:56,600
Speaker 2: just thinking about my daughter, like playing with toys. You know,

671
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 2: she's got her dinosaurs and like little dogs and cats

672
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 2: are and they're sitting around having a party or something.

673
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 2: And then sometimes she will identify some of them as

674
00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 2: real people in her life. It's like, oh, now this

675
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 2: is mama, and this is data, and these are the grandparents,

676
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 2: and these are my friends from down the street and

677
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 2: so forth.

678
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, their imagination is fertile, and

679
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: they will create angels and demons for you at the

680
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 1: drop of a hat. So many studies therefore focused on

681
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: both children and parents. And then compare the notes also

682
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:32,319
Speaker 1: key sex and birth order. On the birth order side

683
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: of thing, firstborns and presumably singletons are most likely to

684
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:39,439
Speaker 1: have imaginary friends something like two point eight times more

685
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:45,040
Speaker 1: likely in the meta analysis, presumably because they lack for

686
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 1: true childhood companions or more likely to lack for true

687
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: childhood companions within the household. On the sex side of

688
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:54,879
Speaker 1: the conundrum, there's a lot of work to work out

689
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:57,719
Speaker 1: here as well, and what we do have it tends

690
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: to entail a lot of gender norms. Additionally, it's possible

691
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: that there are different prime ages for imaginary friends between

692
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: boys and girls, and not every study reports sex differences anyway. Now,

693
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 1: I want to get into a more specific question that

694
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: came up for me on this topic, and it came

695
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 1: up because it's the title of a paper I ran

696
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 1: across from twenty twelve published in the International Journal for

697
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:38,920
Speaker 1: the Psychology of Religion by Jay Bradley Weiger, Katrina Paxson,

698
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:43,840
Speaker 1: and Lacy Ryan, What do Invisible Friends Know? And this

699
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: of course leans heavily into questions of theory of mind. Ah.

700
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it all comes back.

701
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 1: In this study. The author's question thirty six children ages

702
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 1: two through eight with imaginary friends at the time on

703
00:41:56,360 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: what sorts of things their imaginary companions knew essentially on

704
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: a sliding scale, with dog at one end and God

705
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 1: at the other and humanity you know, somewhere in the middle.

706
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: And they found that younger children attributed knowledge to all

707
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 1: agents considered here, while older children treated God differently from

708
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: all the others, but that imaginary friends, the imaginary friend

709
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:23,320
Speaker 1: was also different from either human or dog. In other words,

710
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,480
Speaker 1: it kind of stands as this in between character. And

711
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, and I realized, you know,

712
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:31,719
Speaker 1: it kind of reminded me of the nineteen eighty eight

713
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:36,680
Speaker 1: film My Neighbor Totoro by Hyo Miyazaki. In this, if

714
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:38,800
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, two young girls in the Japanese

715
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 1: countryside encounter friendly nature spirits in the form of Toto's

716
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 1: as well as a cat bus. And it does not

717
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: expressly deal with him as imaginary friends. But if we

718
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: were to think of the Totos as imaginary friends, you

719
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:55,360
Speaker 1: know what, did they seem to know? What is their mindset?

720
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:57,759
Speaker 1: They do not seem to have the mind of an

721
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 1: all knowing or all seeing God. They don't really talk.

722
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 1: They are certainly in many ways like animals, but they're

723
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:08,360
Speaker 1: clearly not animals, either wild or domestic. They're also not people,

724
00:43:09,719 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 1: and they're not, to invoke another Miyazaki creature, They're not

725
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: like Kiki's feline companion Jigi in Kiki's Delivery Service, who

726
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 1: is a cat who speaks with the human voice. The

727
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: totos seem to have their own category, much like what

728
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:24,439
Speaker 1: we're discussing here.

729
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 2: When you were talking about the invisible companions with children

730
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,000
Speaker 2: attributing knowledge to them, that's kind of an in between place.

731
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:36,240
Speaker 2: Did you mean most often somewhere in between human knowledge

732
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 2: and omniscience, like knowing more than a normal human would,

733
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,399
Speaker 2: but less than an omniscient God. Or did you mean

734
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 2: somewhere between the human and the dog level of knowledge.

735
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: Nos, well, we'll discuss between human and God.

736
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:50,280
Speaker 2: Okay.

737
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 1: So I wasn't able to get a hold of the

738
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: full study, but the lead author, Jay Bradley Wiger, later

739
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: wrote a book titled Invisible Companions, and he discusses the

740
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 1: study in that book. So here's a taste of it.

741
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: In one of the studies experiments, the children who all

742
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: came from various Christian denominations, so they had this, you know,

743
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: just varying degrees, some idea of what God is within

744
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,879
Speaker 1: that cultural belief system, and then they engaged in three

745
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:17,920
Speaker 1: They were asked to engage in three different theory of

746
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:21,280
Speaker 1: mind tasks. So in one of the theory of mind tasks,

747
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 1: the children had what is called an occluded picture study,

748
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 1: so you can think of it this way. You have

749
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:30,320
Speaker 1: a full picture inside of a folder, like a folding folder,

750
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 1: and then there's a little window cut in the folder

751
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 1: so that you just get a little sliver of the

752
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: full picture, and then you ask the child, can you

753
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: guess what the full picture is? And the children were

754
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: very confident. This is something like sixty three percent of

755
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: them said that they knew what the whole picture was.

756
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, yeah, I know what it is, and

757
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: they made wild guesses. They didn't none of them got it.

758
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 1: But that's not really the point here. It's about what

759
00:44:57,480 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: they thought they knew. But here's where it gets interesting.

760
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:03,799
Speaker 1: Fifty three percent said that their best friend, this is

761
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: like a real person would know what the picture was

762
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: as well, So that's less so sixty three for them,

763
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 1: fifty three percent for their friends. Forty four percent said

764
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,320
Speaker 1: a dog would know, and ninety percent said that God

765
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 1: would know, and the imaginary friend sixty seven percent. So

766
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:27,359
Speaker 1: imaginary friends were quote slightly more likely to know than

767
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:28,760
Speaker 1: everyone except God.

768
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 2: Okay, they know a little bit more than I do,

769
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:36,359
Speaker 2: a good bit more than my friends at school, even

770
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 2: more than a dog, but not as much as God.

771
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 2: Though I also find it interesting that there were ten

772
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:44,839
Speaker 2: percent of children here who believed in God but thought

773
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 2: God would not know what was in the folder.

774
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, even God cannot see inside his foulder, so

775
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 1: that's that's yeah. But yeah, by and large, the imaginary

776
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: friends stood in between human perception and the perception of God. Interesting,

777
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 1: So that's yeah, that's fascinating.

778
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 2: Privileged and knowledge, not omnisciens, but heightened missions.

779
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, once the picture was revealed, it turned out

780
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: to be an elephant on a ball. Couldn't get a

781
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: sense of this at all really from the preview, the

782
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: children found it funny, and given decent theory of mind,

783
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: would then be able to conclude that their best friend

784
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: and dog would also surely fail to guess what it was.

785
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: And in the book why your comments on this? And

786
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:39,359
Speaker 1: then kind of Wax is poetic about the idea and

787
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 1: writes quote, this was not magic to them, It was

788
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 1: the way things are anything, everything is nested, there is

789
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 1: always more. And so it goes on to praise the

790
00:46:48,200 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: resiliency of a child's mind when presented with the awareness

791
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:54,720
Speaker 1: of more, you know, like their understanding of the world

792
00:46:54,840 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: is continually challenged, corrected and expanded upon, and you know.

793
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: When he was pointing this out in the book, it's

794
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: like I was like, yeah, like that's the kind of

795
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 1: thing that most stubborn adults, it would just break them.

796
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:10,239
Speaker 1: Most adults are too stubborn too, I feel like to

797
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: really learn much, at least in certain areas of their life.

798
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: But like, that is what childhood is. It's constantly being

799
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,719
Speaker 1: finding out that, oh I didn't understand this, and now

800
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: I have a broader understanding of what it is, but

801
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: still being confident enough to think, you know what the

802
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: picture is. You know, it's like a special kind of optimism.

803
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:30,320
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.

804
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 2: And yeah, the horrors of adulthood that what it really

805
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 2: means is like becoming rigid enough that you refuse to

806
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 2: be corrected even when you're shown.

807
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:40,319
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, But the big take I'm here for the

808
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:44,440
Speaker 1: authors was that imaginary friends or invisible friends were in

809
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: between entities, that they were positioned in their knowledge somewhere

810
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: between the individual and God. And again, I think it's

811
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 1: worth stressing that these children were all to varying degrees,

812
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:58,320
Speaker 1: brought up within a worldview in which an all knowing

813
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: and all seeing God is very much a I don't

814
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 1: think that they explored the way this might have influenced things,

815
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: at least not in what I read. But instead they

816
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,279
Speaker 1: stress that while they were all likely told to some

817
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 1: degree what God knows and sees, they were left to

818
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:16,680
Speaker 1: their own devices to figure out what their imaginary friend

819
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:20,279
Speaker 1: would know. And this is where the author shares some

820
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: interesting ideas. Quote, perhaps their invisibility itself is important. The

821
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: physicality of humans and dogs is what creates limits in

822
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 1: perspective and knowledge. At least the older children might reason,

823
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 1: perhaps invisible figures enjoy the privileges of not being so

824
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,400
Speaker 1: limited because they don't have ordinary bodies.

825
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think that is a strong intuition

826
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 2: that a lot of people have. Again, I don't know

827
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 2: if this is cultural conditioning based on the way we

828
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:52,799
Speaker 2: normally think about the metaphysics of ghosts and angels and

829
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 2: beings like that, or if it's something deeper in the brain,

830
00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 2: but I do think we tend to think that if

831
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 2: a being is invisible, it's not limited by the laws

832
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 2: of physics, and thus can see beyond walls and has

833
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 2: access to information that we can't access.

834
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like he goes on to speculate that these

835
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: kids are spontaneously attributing special knowledge to their invisible friends

836
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: in a way that suggests quote a deep bias in

837
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:20,280
Speaker 1: our theory of mind, one that makes beliefs about God's

838
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 1: mind easy to affirm and pass along. And you know,

839
00:49:24,120 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 1: and yet to your point, I feel like we don't

840
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:29,440
Speaker 1: even necessarily need to invoke like a you know, ideas

841
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: of a Christian God in all of this. You know,

842
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 1: you consider such notions as the Evil Eye, which in

843
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: some traditions is held to be this manevolent force that

844
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 1: will hear you if you boast of your blessings too loudly,

845
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: that will seek you out and curse you. You know, invisible,

846
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 1: its powers of detection seem rather boundless, such that you

847
00:49:48,080 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: choose your words carefully in every instance. And you know,

848
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:54,399
Speaker 1: there are similar concepts as well of Santa Claus, though

849
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:58,359
Speaker 1: not invisible and does kind of take on this sort

850
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: of invisible status outside of Christmas Eve itself, right, and

851
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 1: you're told that he sees all. You know, He's like

852
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:10,480
Speaker 1: the Eye of Providence, always watching, all seeing, all knowing.

853
00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:13,719
Speaker 2: Well, it also makes me wonder about the effect on

854
00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:18,200
Speaker 2: beliefs like this of different types of characters in our

855
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:21,960
Speaker 2: storytelling and media. So I'm thinking as a counter example

856
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:25,799
Speaker 2: to these beings like you know, angels and ghosts and

857
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 2: gods that have sort of vague and definite powers, you

858
00:50:28,480 --> 00:50:31,359
Speaker 2: can wonder what the boundaries of their power are and

859
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 2: you're not really sure. When we have these very concrete

860
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:38,319
Speaker 2: superpowered characters like the X Men, you know, so like

861
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 2: they have physical bodies and they have powers beyond normal

862
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 2: human powers, but also they're clearly limited in all normal

863
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,600
Speaker 2: human capacities apart from their special powers.

864
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and then I think in the better examples

865
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 1: of your X Men, you know, their special power is

866
00:50:55,520 --> 00:51:00,839
Speaker 1: also to their detriment. It's also their great flaw. So yeah,

867
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about. But but yeah, this idea

868
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: of invisibility uh or disembodiedness having the the effect of

869
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 1: greater knowledge it's and being closer to the divine is

870
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:19,960
Speaker 1: fascinating as well as this idea that it like it

871
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: represents a tendency uh in the human psyche to to

872
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: like lean into these ideas of the unseen world and uh,

873
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it makes you wonder. It's like when

874
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:34,360
Speaker 1: when children are engaging in imaginary companions and imaginary friends, like,

875
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 1: is this sort of like the raw creative energy that

876
00:51:37,640 --> 00:51:41,880
Speaker 1: later on in life is used to foster and generate

877
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 1: you know, religious ideas and so forth, superstitions and uh

878
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: and uh. You know, in any of these other examples

879
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:52,959
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier that are prevalent in in adult life

880
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:57,279
Speaker 1: to varying degrees, muses, angels, deceased loved ones and so forth.

881
00:51:57,400 --> 00:52:01,160
Speaker 2: Or more mundane things like knowing what your spouse wants

882
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 2: for their birthday or knowing, you know, what would make

883
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 2: your boss happy, or knowing how to write a good

884
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 2: character or anything like that.

885
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think there there There are

886
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: also probably some strong connections to you know, the the

887
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:21,360
Speaker 1: continual rise of AI, the use of chatbots and so forth,

888
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: you know, things that do not have a mind. But

889
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: as we engage with a language model that responds to

890
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: our words, we cannot help but attribute a mind to it.

891
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:35,799
Speaker 1: We cannot help simulate it, even if we we know

892
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 1: on other levels that it's based entirely on what we're inputting,

893
00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:41,560
Speaker 1: and and you know, we'll at least have some level

894
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 1: of understanding this is not a person. But then it

895
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:48,239
Speaker 1: becomes real to us because we're kind of hardwired to

896
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 1: do that.

897
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:52,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is really not related to our

898
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:54,719
Speaker 2: topic today, but some something I would like to come

899
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:56,880
Speaker 2: back and revisit at some point is the question of

900
00:52:56,960 --> 00:53:01,320
Speaker 2: why it is so difficult for me to be rude

901
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 2: to an AI chat bot, even when I feel my

902
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 2: primary emotion for it is distrust and even antipathy.

903
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 1: You know. Got into that topic a little bit in

904
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 1: November in an interview that I did here and Stuff

905
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: to bliw your mind with Jonathan Birch The Edge of Sentience.

906
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: You know why I asked, I asked him about this

907
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:24,319
Speaker 1: because this is something they discussed a bit in his book,

908
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 1: you know, like, what does it mean when I feel

909
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: like I need to be polite to the to the

910
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 1: to the AI, to the chatbot or whatever, or even

911
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 1: like the you know, the Google home or whatever you

912
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:37,440
Speaker 1: happen to be talking to in your home, Like what

913
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:40,280
Speaker 1: does that mean? And should we be nice to them?

914
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:45,000
Speaker 1: And I think the the general wisdom here is yes,

915
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:46,799
Speaker 1: you should be. You should be nice to them for

916
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons. If for no other reason, like

917
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 1: you really need one other thing in your life to

918
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:54,799
Speaker 1: be kind of like rude to and and yell at

919
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:57,920
Speaker 1: like no, there's probably a better channel for that energy.

920
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:00,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess now that I think about it,

921
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 2: I probably do have an opinion on that, which is

922
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:06,360
Speaker 2: that I have some implicit knowledge that what we do,

923
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 2: we tend to do more of. So if you teach

924
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 2: yourself that it's okay to act some way in a

925
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,640
Speaker 2: certain situation, even though in that situation there's no actual

926
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:19,240
Speaker 2: harm caused, you are training yourself to behave the same

927
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:22,520
Speaker 2: way in other similar situations where people would be harmed.

928
00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one interesting difference, but that the more that

929
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 1: I think about it, the less of a difference it is,

930
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 1: and the more of a similarity it is. If you

931
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: are rude to your imaginary friend, like your imaginary friend

932
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:37,279
Speaker 1: has no sentience that is not your own sentience, and

933
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: therefore on one level you would be rude to no one.

934
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:44,600
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you would be rude to yourself.

935
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:48,160
Speaker 1: And I guess on some level, like rudeness is always

936
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:51,840
Speaker 1: like self directed. But when you're looking at AI. This

937
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: is something that Jonathan Burch brought up. It's eventually, by

938
00:54:56,680 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: many estimates, the AI models that we're interacting with will

939
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:03,719
Speaker 1: become sentient, and we won't necessarily be able to tell

940
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 1: when that occurs. So there will be if someone is

941
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:10,640
Speaker 1: just like one hundred percent rude to all AI computer

942
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: chatbots and so forth, Google homes and what have you,

943
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:16,759
Speaker 1: and they just stuck to that at one point. At

944
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:21,040
Speaker 1: some point, possibly they're going to be rude to a

945
00:55:21,080 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: sentient being that humans have created and like, and that

946
00:55:25,600 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: crosses over into a different level of rudeness and meanness

947
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: and what have you.

948
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:31,879
Speaker 2: This is a question that's come up before. I don't

949
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 2: know where I am on that right now. I guess

950
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 2: I lean more skeptical about the I don't know why.

951
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:39,719
Speaker 2: It's just an intuition at this point. I'm leaning more

952
00:55:39,719 --> 00:55:42,840
Speaker 2: skeptical these days on AI sentience. But even if my

953
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 2: current gut feeling is right about that, I do think

954
00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:47,719
Speaker 2: it is the case that being mean to the machine

955
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:49,600
Speaker 2: just teaches you to be mean and it helps you

956
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:50,959
Speaker 2: be mean to people later.

957
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for me anyway, I think that's the bigger

958
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:54,000
Speaker 1: take home.

959
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all right, Well, I think that does it

960
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:58,279
Speaker 2: for today's episode. But we got a lot more to

961
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 2: say about Pretend to Play, So we will be back

962
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 2: with at least a part three and perhaps more beyond that.

963
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: That's right, So stay tuned and tune in for those episodes,

964
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:09,319
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, of course, we want to hear

965
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:15,080
Speaker 1: about your imaginary friends, your personified objects from your life,

966
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,880
Speaker 1: from the life of you know, siblings and children and

967
00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:20,440
Speaker 1: so forth. Right in with those details. This will be

968
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 1: fun to get into in a future listener mail installment.

969
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 1: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

970
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:28,000
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcasts, with core episodes on

971
00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:31,840
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays.

972
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:34,560
Speaker 1: We set aside most serious concerns to talk about a

973
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 1: weird movie on Weird House Cinema.

974
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:40,560
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

975
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:42,399
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

976
00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:44,760
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

977
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:46,799
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

978
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:49,759
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

979
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

980
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 2: product of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

981
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:06,600
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

982
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:20,000
Speaker 2: favorite shows.