Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and we are back with
Speaker 2: part two in our series on pretend play, meaning play
Speaker 2: that involves non literal action. Now, this is really one
Speaker 2: of our series where I think if you haven't heard
Speaker 2: part one, I would really recommend you go back and
Speaker 2: listen to that one first, because we really laid the
Speaker 2: groundwork there. We establish a lot of the definitions and
Speaker 2: so forth. But as a brief refresher, in part one,
Speaker 2: Rob and I talked about our own memories of pretend
Speaker 2: play from our own childhood as well as our experiences
Speaker 2: of pretend to play as parents, especially centering out around
Speaker 2: the kind of play that happens in preschool age, you know,
Speaker 2: around three to five or so, which, according to the
Speaker 2: researchers is sort of the high season of pretend play,
Speaker 2: when the most pretending is happening usually though, of course,
Speaker 2: we also talked about the ways that play extends throughout
Speaker 2: the lifetime. Even pretend play, you know, it starts before
Speaker 2: this period goes beyond it. But the preschool age is
Speaker 2: when the pretending is coming thick and fast, and we
Speaker 2: characterized what a lot of that play is, Like Robert,
Speaker 2: I don't remember if we ever got into this in
Speaker 2: the previous episode, but one thing I was reflecting on
Speaker 2: before we started today is not just how much my
Speaker 2: two year old daughter loves engaging in pretend play with
Speaker 2: you know, her various dinosaurs, kind of doing imaginary tasks
Speaker 2: and going to imaginary events and things like that, but
Speaker 2: also gets so dedicated to pretend play that like it
Speaker 2: is a tragedy and an emergency if she is asked
Speaker 2: to stop pretending before she's done.
Speaker 1: Yeah again. I think that's one of the wonders of childhood,
Speaker 1: is that they just get so they go all on
Speaker 1: their imaginative play, and you know it's it's enviable. Though
Speaker 1: I think we can sometimes relate. We can sometimes relate
Speaker 1: to being thrown out of our own creative, imaginative endeavors
Speaker 1: without enough warning, without a five minute warning from life.
Speaker 1: Parents at least tend to give that five to ten
Speaker 1: minute warning if they can.
Speaker 2: I think the thing about pretending is if you're deep
Speaker 2: enough in it, you can be given the warning and
Speaker 2: then you just forget and you know it doesn't stick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like falling back into a dream. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But anyway, in the last episode, we also looked in
Speaker 2: depth at a paper sort of scientific overview, published in
Speaker 2: a cognitive science review that was looking at the state
Speaker 2: of research on pretend play in children. That paper was
Speaker 2: by a researcher named Dina Skolnik Weisberg, published in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: It was just called pretend Play and it was sort
Speaker 2: of a review of research on pretend play, especially as
Speaker 2: it relates to other developing cognitive skills in childhood. So
Speaker 2: in the last episode we talked about the paper's discussion
Speaker 2: of the possible relationships of pretend play to symbolic understanding
Speaker 2: and also to counterfactual reasoning. Today, I want to return
Speaker 2: to another idea explored in this paper, and that is
Speaker 2: the relationship of pretend play to theory of mind. This
Speaker 2: is a concept that's come up on the show many
Speaker 2: times before, but to define it again here, theory of
Speaker 2: mind is the ability to recognize that other entities like
Speaker 2: other people and animals, have their own internal mental states,
Speaker 2: such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. And theory of
Speaker 2: mind is also the understanding that other people's mental states
Speaker 2: are independent of one's own. So it's not that everybody
Speaker 2: is sad because I'm sad right now. The other people
Speaker 2: different things are happening in their minds. Born with theory
Speaker 2: of mind skills, the ability to imagine and model the
Speaker 2: mental states of other people is something that is acquired
Speaker 2: and refined throughout childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's this is of course the topic that's
Speaker 1: come up on the show multiple times before and what'll
Speaker 1: keep coming up because it's a huge part of the
Speaker 1: human condition and it's it's so fascinating to think about.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that we use all the
Speaker 1: time to the point that we we just we think
Speaker 1: of it as just reality, and we think of what
Speaker 1: we know of others' mental states and what we attribute
Speaker 1: to other people's mental states as being just how people are.
Speaker 1: You know, we think we know them, but in reality,
Speaker 1: like the whether we're dealing with the closest relationships in
Speaker 1: your life. You know, a significant other is family members, offspring,
Speaker 1: and so forth, whether you're dealing with them, or you're
Speaker 1: dealing with someone you just met on the street or
Speaker 1: didn't even meet someone that was walking across the street
Speaker 1: from you. We we create a simulation of their mind
Speaker 1: state of what they're you know, roughly, their their goals,
Speaker 1: their attitudes towards us generally are, and and then we
Speaker 1: react to the to those models. And so it is
Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting, kind of haunting to think
Speaker 1: about the fact that, like the you that I think
Speaker 1: I know best is actually inside of me. Yes, you know.
Speaker 1: And and of course theory of mind can be trained
Speaker 1: on plenty of non human entities as well on objects
Speaker 1: and on real things. Uh So it's a very powerful
Speaker 1: part of the human cognition tool chest.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's a you know, I was just thinking
Speaker 2: about how theory of mind is so deep in such
Speaker 2: different types of sort of human relations and expression. Like
Speaker 2: theory of mind is is the core of love, of
Speaker 2: what it means to love people, but it's also the
Speaker 2: core of like manipulation and machiavelianism. It's it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's involved in in all of our prejudices.
Speaker 1: It's involved, you know, in in our hatred as well
Speaker 1: as our love. So it's you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: very broad spectrum here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's I think easy to see why theory
Speaker 2: of mind might have connections to pretend play. When you
Speaker 2: play a pretend game, especially with other people, it is
Speaker 2: important to understand the intentions of the play partner in
Speaker 2: order to understand the game as non literal. So this
Speaker 2: is an example game I mentioned in part one. Why
Speaker 2: is my friend stirring a bowl of crayons with a
Speaker 2: fork and then lifting the fork to my stuffed therapod
Speaker 2: dinosaur's mouth. This activity does not make any sense when
Speaker 2: just observed and taken literally. But if I'm a child
Speaker 2: and I see this happening, even without talking about the game,
Speaker 2: I can probably infer that my friend intends the crayons
Speaker 2: to be understood as food. You know, last time we
Speaker 2: talked about crayons as spaghetti, and thus intends the forklifting
Speaker 2: to be understood as feeding, and thus intends the inert
Speaker 2: stuffed dinosaur to be understood as eating. So I can
Speaker 2: participate in this play by feeding the dinosaur spaghetti crayons
Speaker 2: as well, or by making nomnom sounds when the crayon
Speaker 2: reaches the dinosaur's mouth. And about this connection, Weisberg writes
Speaker 2: in the paper quote pretense is thus meta representational, meaning
Speaker 2: it involves representing someone's representation of a state of affairs.
Speaker 2: Without the ability to meta represent one would see pretense
Speaker 2: actions as nonsensical and quarantining would break down. And remember
Speaker 2: from last time, quarantining is the ability to stop yourself
Speaker 2: from taking inapplicable lessons from pretend play. So the example was,
Speaker 2: mom is using a banana as a phone. Somehow we
Speaker 2: can play that pretend a game and yet not take
Speaker 2: the incorrect lesson that you can actually make calls on
Speaker 2: a banana. It's the ability to ward off incorrect information
Speaker 2: and prevent your brain from learning things that are wrong
Speaker 2: based on a game that is counterfactual. And so what
Speaker 2: Weisberg is saying here is that things like quarantining are
Speaker 2: only possible because we have this meta representational ability. Like
Speaker 2: you can see somebody playing the banana as phone game,
Speaker 2: and you don't think that, oh, maybe the banana can
Speaker 2: place calls because you understand that person's intentions that they're
Speaker 2: just intending this to be a game. They're not intending
Speaker 2: to use the banana literally as a phone. In my example,
Speaker 2: I guess the equivalent would be like are we feeding
Speaker 2: the dinosaur crayons? Because crayons are actually food? Should I
Speaker 2: eat them? Sometimes a kid may experiment along these lines,
Speaker 2: but usually they do not end up at this conclusion.
Speaker 2: Usually the kid understands the intention of the play partner
Speaker 2: to treat the crayons as something other than what they
Speaker 2: actually are.
Speaker 1: I do have to say that after we recorded the
Speaker 1: last episode, there were a number of phone banana shenanigans
Speaker 1: in my household. Oh n it totally killed. It's just
Speaker 1: inherently funny. So I hope listeners have been re exploring
Speaker 1: the comedy as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's funny no matter what age are. Absolutely
Speaker 2: Oh but to talk about killing the joke by over
Speaker 2: explaining it, nevertheless, I'm gonna go there. I would love
Speaker 2: to understand better the like the minute mechanics of that
Speaker 2: kind of humor, Like how close physically does the fruit
Speaker 2: or the food have to be to the object to
Speaker 2: like work enough to be funny, because obviously it's like
Speaker 2: a banana is funnier than like a plastic toy phone.
Speaker 2: But I would also think a banana as a phone
Speaker 2: is funnier than an apple as a phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a banana is stupid. A banana, I mean,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, is delicious, But a banana is
Speaker 1: bright yellow. There's thull slipping on the peel clown Shenan. Again,
Speaker 1: it is phallic and therefore has that layer of humor
Speaker 1: to it as well. And then the juxtaposition is that
Speaker 1: a phone is serious. A phone, you know, it may
Speaker 1: be a loved when calling, but you may be bad
Speaker 1: news on the other end of the phone. The phone
Speaker 1: is what you reach for when there's an emergency, So
Speaker 1: the phone is dead serious or can be. The banana
Speaker 1: is stupid and therefore it just works.
Speaker 2: It's so good, but anyway, Okay, to come back to
Speaker 2: playing pretend and theory of mind, the connections we've talked
Speaker 2: about suggests there is a link between theory of mind
Speaker 2: and playing pretend because it's about recognizing and internally modeling
Speaker 2: the mental states of others, recognizing not just what another
Speaker 2: person literally does, but understanding what that person intends. And
Speaker 2: Weisberg compares this to a common experiment that is used
Speaker 2: to test theory of mind in children, which he refers
Speaker 2: to as the Sally Anne false belief task, though or
Speaker 2: sometimes in the literature they just call this a false
Speaker 2: belief test. Here's a simplified version of it. Okay, the
Speaker 2: child is a participant. The child watches a character playing
Speaker 2: with a ball, and then this character puts the ball
Speaker 2: down in a basket and walks out of the room.
Speaker 2: And then while the original character who is playing with
Speaker 2: the ball is gone, somebody else comes into the room,
Speaker 2: takes the ball out of the basket, hides it in
Speaker 2: a box, and then leaves. Then the first character comes
Speaker 2: back into the room, and the child has been watching
Speaker 2: the whole time, so the child saw everything happen. And
Speaker 2: then you ask the child a question, where will the
Speaker 2: original character look for the ball? So the child knows,
Speaker 2: because they were watching the whole time, that the ball
Speaker 2: is hidden in the box. But with theory of mind skills,
Speaker 2: the child should be able to say that the character
Speaker 2: should look in the basket where she left it, because
Speaker 2: the child knows that the character does not know that
Speaker 2: the ball was moved or where it was moved too,
Speaker 2: So to answer this question correctly, the child in the
Speaker 2: experiment has to ignore their own knowledge about the true
Speaker 2: state of affairs and instead answer based on the false
Speaker 2: belief that the character in the scenario would have. If
Speaker 2: you compare this to the pretend play scenario, if a
Speaker 2: kid wants to join in the crayons as spaghetti game
Speaker 2: with another child. They have to ignore the true knowledge
Speaker 2: that the crayons are crayons and that they are meant
Speaker 2: for drawing and not for eating, and also to infer
Speaker 2: the intentions of the play partner that the crayons are
Speaker 2: to be treated as food for the dinosaur. So both
Speaker 2: of these situations pretend play and the false belief test
Speaker 2: for theory of mind depend on at least two things
Speaker 2: that Weisberg highlights. One of them is what she calls decoupling,
Speaker 2: and that is temporarily ignoring your knowledge of what is
Speaker 2: literally true, and the other is meta representation, internally representing
Speaker 2: somebody else's mental states, such as their intention to represent
Speaker 2: a literal object X as pretend object y. So it's
Speaker 2: very tempting to see a link between theory of mind
Speaker 2: and pretend play. Weisberg in fact cites a researcher named A. M.
Speaker 2: Leslie who has speculated in some writing that there is
Speaker 2: possibly an underlying neural structure in the brain that is
Speaker 2: responsible for both theory of mind and for pretending, calling
Speaker 2: this hypothetical structure the theory of mind module. Leslie apparently
Speaker 2: argued that perhaps a developmental difference in this neural structure
Speaker 2: is what underlies autism. Given the observation that studies have
Speaker 2: found that children with autism spectrum diagnoses demonstrate deficits in
Speaker 2: social cognition, which implicates theory of mind, but also tend
Speaker 2: to engage in less pretending. Both the existence of this
Speaker 2: module and the connection with the autism spectrum is hypothetical.
Speaker 2: What's clear is the cognitive and behavioral similarity between theory
Speaker 2: of mind and elements of pretend play. And then Weisberg
Speaker 2: goes on to site some studies that seem to support
Speaker 2: this link. I thought a couple of these were kind
Speaker 2: of interesting. One of them is by researchers named Rebecca
Speaker 2: Dore and Angeline Lillard, published in Imagination, Cognition, and Personality
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen called Theory of Mind and Children's Engagement
Speaker 2: in Fantasy Worlds. This was a study that looked at
Speaker 2: preschoolers at the beginning and then the end of a
Speaker 2: seven month period, and it tested for a few different
Speaker 2: things to see if there are any correlations. One was
Speaker 2: a child's tendency to engage in fantasy ideation and activities,
Speaker 2: so this would be related to pretending. Basically, a child's
Speaker 2: orientation toward fantasy. And then another thing measured was the
Speaker 2: child's tendency to use mentalistic descriptions. I had to look
Speaker 2: up what this is, but I think this basically means, like,
Speaker 2: imagine you see a drawing of a character reaching a
Speaker 2: bucket down into a pool of water. You could give
Speaker 2: a physical description of that scene, you know, the character
Speaker 2: is leaning down scooping up water, or you could give
Speaker 2: a mentalistic description, which might be something like this character
Speaker 2: wants a drink of water, explaining things in terms of
Speaker 2: motivations and mental states as opposed to just physical movements.
Speaker 2: And then the third thing tested for correlation here was
Speaker 2: the child's capacity for theory of mind, which is tested
Speaker 2: a variety of ways, one of which is the false
Speaker 2: belief task that I was talking about a minute ago,
Speaker 2: but another is testing for whether children understand that different
Speaker 2: people have desires and emotions they're different from their own,
Speaker 2: things like that. And this study found that preschool children
Speaker 2: who are more oriented toward fantasy on a number of
Speaker 2: measures did not grow beyond the baseline in the use
Speaker 2: of mentalistic descriptions during the seven month period, but did
Speaker 2: show some greater improvements in theory of mind, so that
Speaker 2: establishes that there could possibly be a link between the
Speaker 2: tendency to engage in fantasy and faster learning on theory
Speaker 2: of mind skills. Another finding is that some experiments have
Speaker 2: found that children do better on false belief tasks like
Speaker 2: the ball in the basket versus the box thing I
Speaker 2: was talking about when the format of the test involves
Speaker 2: more pretending. So think of when the scenario is presented
Speaker 2: as a fictional story or when it is acted out
Speaker 2: with invisible pretend objects as opposed to being acted out
Speaker 2: with literal physical props, in which case apparently the kids
Speaker 2: do a bit worse. That kind of makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: I guess it's harder to ignore your knowledge that the
Speaker 2: ball is actually in the box and remember that Sally
Speaker 2: left it in the basket and that's all she knows
Speaker 2: when oh my god, like I just saw the go
Speaker 2: in the box. I literally saw it go in there. There.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Also interesting is there are apparently some findings that suggest
Speaker 2: this is actually in adults, that reading fiction may possibly
Speaker 2: improve particular theory of mind skills.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about this several years back. I believe yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, as with the stuff discussed in the previous episode
Speaker 2: with the links to symbolic understanding and counterfactual reasoning. Weisberg
Speaker 2: adds the important caveat that basically all of these experiments
Speaker 2: connecting theory of mind to pretend play are correlational or
Speaker 2: they're limited to a single situation. It's really hard, maybe impossible,
Speaker 2: to devise an ethical, robust experiment where you like randomly
Speaker 2: manipulate the independent variable of pretend to play over a
Speaker 2: developmentally significant period of time and then track the results.
Speaker 2: Both ethics and practicality kind of limit us to weaker
Speaker 2: forms of testing in this subject matter, So we should
Speaker 2: be realistic and thus humble about the limitations of what
Speaker 2: we know about these links. So what we know is
Speaker 2: very interesting, but it's also fairly tentative and important to
Speaker 2: not hang too much on these findings, especially the findings
Speaker 2: of a single study. But with those caveats, I think
Speaker 2: there's pretty good reason to think that pretending and theory
Speaker 2: of mind are deeply intertwined in some ways in the
Speaker 2: brain and in child development, But exactly how they are related,
Speaker 2: how one affects the other, and so forth, is more questionable. Now,
Speaker 2: the kind of theory of mind that we have been
Speaker 2: primarily talking about, of course, is inferring the mental states
Speaker 2: of other people who do physically exist. But a different
Speaker 2: related question is what about simulating the workings of an
Speaker 2: external mind that is at its base life make believe.
Speaker 2: And this brings us back to something we mentioned only
Speaker 2: briefly in Part one, the imaginary friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in some ways, the imaginary friend is it's like
Speaker 1: the ultimate pretend play manifestation, an imaginary being that is
Speaker 1: altogether imaginary and invisible also, but it's also gifted with
Speaker 1: varying degrees of agency and intelligence. This you know this, This,
Speaker 1: of course gets more complicated when you try and like
Speaker 1: nail down what an imaginary friend is. There are sort
Speaker 1: of related concepts that are sometimes looped together and sometimes
Speaker 1: are considered separate. Like, for instance, you have things like
Speaker 1: stuffed animals that are attributed personalities in some degree of agency.
Speaker 1: You also have personified objects, and you also have also
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a distinction between imaginary companions and imaginary friends.
Speaker 1: I'll come back to that in a bit, but I
Speaker 1: guess a good place to star art would be with
Speaker 1: examples from our own lives. Joe, did you have an
Speaker 1: imaginary friend? And does your child have an imaginary friend
Speaker 1: or friends.
Speaker 2: This may get into some of the distinctions you were
Speaker 2: just highlighting, But I never had like a consistent imaginary
Speaker 2: friend over time. I think I may have had single
Speaker 2: use imaginary friends that were, you know, dreamed up for
Speaker 2: a single play occasion or something. With my daughter, I
Speaker 2: don't think there's not a single entity who is her
Speaker 2: consistent imaginary friend. But she does seem to ascribe a
Speaker 2: lot of personality to various pretend entities, like imbuing mind
Speaker 2: into stuffed animal friends or imagining. We sometimes play this
Speaker 2: game with these invisible kitty cats and stuff that you know,
Speaker 2: we can find like hiding between the couch cushions and things,
Speaker 2: and we pull out an invisible kitty cat, and oh
Speaker 2: and she can talk about what the kitty cat wants.
Speaker 2: But I think that's different than an imaginary friend, which
Speaker 2: is usually thought of as something that persists over time.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yes, yes, and no. I guess one
Speaker 1: thing that that sort of comes out of the research
Speaker 1: I've been looking looking at here is that I think
Speaker 1: imaginary friends do come and go, and they inevitably do
Speaker 1: come and then go. There is kind of like a
Speaker 1: period of time during which they tend to be active.
Speaker 1: But there's not necessarily like we shouldn't get too attach
Speaker 1: to the idea that they'll just be a single imaginary friend.
Speaker 1: There could be several and they need not be this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, standard version of some sort of
Speaker 1: essentially invisible friend, an invisible humanoid being that is like
Speaker 1: on the same level as your as your child. And
Speaker 1: also they might just spring out of nowhere, as we'll
Speaker 1: get into a bit. But yeah, I myself have no
Speaker 1: memory of ever having an invisible friend, just despite the
Speaker 1: fact that I was I was the oldest child and
Speaker 1: in many respects the eldest child that seemed to be
Speaker 1: more likely to have an imaginary friend. My own child
Speaker 1: had be and lost friends that I remember, and so
Speaker 1: I asked them about this, is like, do you remember
Speaker 1: your being lost friends? And they were like, no, I
Speaker 1: don't remember the being wast friends at all. I remember
Speaker 1: three imaginary cats that I had at one point. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: well I forgot about that one. So that's another thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when you think about like single
Speaker 1: imaginary friends that a child may or may not have
Speaker 1: a lot of. It also comes down to what memories
Speaker 1: are retained by the child. And what is noticed and
Speaker 1: retained by the parents, and so it's entirely likely between
Speaker 1: those two things that hold imaginary friends are lost entirely.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. It's funny.
Speaker 2: My daughter has also gone through phases where she was
Speaker 2: really obsessed with bees. She loves bees and has you know,
Speaker 2: likes to point out bees flying around things that aren't
Speaker 2: always bees, you know. Sometimes there might just be a
Speaker 2: buzz or something, you know, made by a machine and
Speaker 2: it's like b b yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like my child to be in West friends.
Speaker 1: I don't think they really talked or anything. They just
Speaker 1: they were essentially animals that were invisible, you know. I
Speaker 1: also asked my mom about this. I was on the
Speaker 1: phone with her last night and I was just checking.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it was like me and my siblings,
Speaker 1: none of us had invisible friends that you know of, right,
Speaker 1: And she's like no, But she shared that she had
Speaker 1: seven imaginary friends when she was a child. Oh and
Speaker 1: she was the eldest child. This would have been the
Speaker 1: I guess the early fifties. So that'll be worth keeping
Speaker 1: in mind as we proceed through the discussion here. Wow,
Speaker 1: so one of the sources I was looking at for this.
Speaker 1: This was a twenty eighteen meta analysis Prevalence of Imaginary
Speaker 1: Companions in children, a meta analysis by Morigucci and Toto.
Speaker 1: This was in the Meryll Palmer Quarterly, and they pointed
Speaker 1: out for starters that imaginary friends don't have to be
Speaker 1: entirely invisible. Some experts point out that a particular object,
Speaker 1: and even a personified object, may seemingly enhance the vividness
Speaker 1: of an imagined companion. They also discussed imaginary friends and
Speaker 1: personified objects as both being forms of imaginary companions, but
Speaker 1: stressed that a key difference one tends to find is
Speaker 1: that the relationship between child and personified object tends to
Speaker 1: be more more of a matter of like, these are
Speaker 1: my pets or you know, or these are my children,
Speaker 1: you know. It's a relationship that's mirroring human child and
Speaker 1: human pet relationships. While an imaginary friend is more egalitarian.
Speaker 1: You don't tell them what to do because they're your friend.
Speaker 1: They're at least you're equal. It's not someone you boss
Speaker 1: around or care for. I want to add that into
Speaker 1: because I don't want to. I don't want to create
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, bossy kids just have these
Speaker 1: these underlings that are imaginary. It's like, you know, it
Speaker 1: could also be a care scenario and so forth, but
Speaker 1: the imaginary friend it is more egalitarian in its nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is really interesting. I wonder if that has
Speaker 2: to do with I don't know, ideas about like when
Speaker 2: you when a physical object is yours, there's this state
Speaker 2: of mind about it that like you own it, it
Speaker 2: is one of my possessions. And thus even if it
Speaker 2: is a even if it has a mind, you kind
Speaker 2: of feel like this this power over it, where whereas
Speaker 2: you don't with you know, other people your age, or
Speaker 2: I guess you shouldn't with other people your age. So
Speaker 2: like imagining an invisible person is different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like it's my object, it is mine, but
Speaker 1: also mine to care for and so forth. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also know that some researchers consider personified objects to be
Speaker 1: imaginary friends, but not always. Again, we have to remind
Speaker 1: yourself that this is all This is all adult language
Speaker 1: that has been generated to make sense of the thing
Speaker 1: that is emerging, often unlanguaged from the minds of children.
Speaker 1: So you know, bear that in mind as we move forward.
Speaker 1: Now they briefly touch on the history of imaginary friends,
Speaker 1: with the study of them first popping up in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety five with the work of Clara Vostrowski A Study
Speaker 1: of Imaginary Companions. And yeah, but before this, there's basically nothing.
Speaker 1: They were. For a while, following the emergence of study
Speaker 1: regarding them, they were often thought to be signs of
Speaker 1: a personality dysfunction. The first book wasn't written about them
Speaker 1: until nineteen eighteen, and it wasn't until the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: that imaginary friends were seen as a positive part of
Speaker 1: a child's development. This is universally so, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: just going back to the example of my mother, like
Speaker 1: her parents embraced this idea and would like set places
Speaker 1: at the table for the seven imaginary children. So it's
Speaker 1: not a situation where it's like, oh, until the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: imaginary friends were to be feared or anything. But just
Speaker 1: you know, broad strokes. Now, one question you might have
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, well, what does this mean. Does this
Speaker 1: mean that nobody had imaginary friends before the twentieth century. Well,
Speaker 1: that is actually one way you could look at it,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that. But the other way is
Speaker 1: that clearly this is something that's just been going on
Speaker 1: since time out of mind, and it's only as we
Speaker 1: get into the twentieth century that it's being noticed and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes we underestimate how much things in the
Speaker 2: past just there's not written evidence of them, not because
Speaker 2: they didn't exist, but because nobody who was writing books
Speaker 2: just thought it was worth paying attention to.
Speaker 1: I think there's a strong case to be made for
Speaker 1: that absolutely now. Claus and Pasmano point out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and sevens per ten Companions. I've seen this sighted
Speaker 1: and numerous studies as well, that the idea of childhood
Speaker 1: as we understand it today perhaps didn't really emerge until
Speaker 1: like the seventeenth century. So there were perhaps severe limitations
Speaker 1: on our ability and our willingness to understand what was
Speaker 1: going on with children. So, you know, did we care
Speaker 1: what children were talking about, did we care about if
Speaker 1: they had an imaginary friend or not? And so forth.
Speaker 1: On top of that, before the seventeenth century we deep
Speaker 1: ever deeper in of course, into the demon haunted world
Speaker 1: of superstition. So you know, if we did hear about
Speaker 1: our children talking with unseen entities, we probably had a
Speaker 1: script to go to that was not Oh well, they're
Speaker 1: just engaging in pretend play. It might be more, Oh,
Speaker 1: well they're talking to fairies, they're talking to spirits and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the goat whispered something to me, help.
Speaker 1: Me, they write quote. Many early descriptions of pretend companions
Speaker 1: may not be recognized as such because they were depicted
Speaker 1: in terms of spirits and other supernatural concepts. Metaphysical explanations
Speaker 1: for pretend companions are not at all limited to the past,
Speaker 1: because to some extent they have existed even in recent
Speaker 1: times now. They also bring up the idea that free
Speaker 1: play time and time alone are perhaps both key requirements
Speaker 1: for their emergence of an invisible companion and a child,
Speaker 1: and these would have been things that would have been,
Speaker 1: by some estimates, historically lacking and still lacking for children
Speaker 1: in many parts of the world and in many different
Speaker 1: socioeconomic levels. You know, do you have time alone? Do
Speaker 1: you have time to play in which you'd get to
Speaker 1: know your imaginary friend, in which you had been able
Speaker 1: to be able to generate this idea and play with it.
Speaker 1: They cite works from two thousand and three and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine that report at a very low rate of
Speaker 1: reported invisible friends in India zero point two percent in
Speaker 1: one study, which is really low compared to some of
Speaker 1: the ways Western stats that I'll mention here in a bit,
Speaker 1: and they attributed it to limited playtime and limited alone time.
Speaker 1: They also acknowledge that the idea of children remembering past
Speaker 1: lives is something that is sometimes explored and encouraged in
Speaker 1: parts of India, but that didn't seem to have an
Speaker 1: impact on the percentage rate of imaginary friends here. So
Speaker 1: they bring up this idea that in the past, and
Speaker 1: to some extent in the present, traditional ways of life
Speaker 1: throughout the world might not have allowed most children sufficient
Speaker 1: room for not only imaginary friends, but even imagination play itself. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the sources they cite here on this is
Speaker 1: the work of Lloyd de Moss from nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: The History of Childhood, writing that quote, if pretend companions
Speaker 1: are indeed a modern phenomenon, then their genesis may result
Speaker 1: from being left alone and from having time available for play,
Speaker 1: customs that apply to contemporary Western children but rarely to
Speaker 1: children historically. Now quick side note on de Moss here,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty twenty. He was
Speaker 1: a psychoanalyst and self proclaimed psychohistorian, and there remains some
Speaker 1: controversy about his work, and I've read some strong criticisms
Speaker 1: of his scholarship, especially concerning some of his more bombastic ideas.
Speaker 1: I'm not super well versed in his work, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, the key idea of his involved here is
Speaker 1: the notion that childhood in the modern Western sense is
Speaker 1: relatively new.
Speaker 2: Okay, but that sort of contributes to one of these
Speaker 2: competing explanations for why it's only recently that there has
Speaker 2: been much published on the idea of imaginary companions in childhood.
Speaker 2: It could be that, you know, this is something that
Speaker 2: happens with lots of kids throughout time, but it's only
Speaker 2: really been noticed by adults who wrote about it in
Speaker 2: the last century or so. Or it could be that
Speaker 2: the very nature of childhood itself changes pretty drastically in
Speaker 2: different times and cultures, and this is something that emerges much,
Speaker 2: which more strongly in recent times in certain cultures.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so, I feel we have like a few
Speaker 1: different ways to potentially think about it. As something that
Speaker 1: was long and visible to adults, had at least less
Speaker 1: space to foster and children, and was likely to be
Speaker 1: explained away with superstition anyway, if superstition was even employed,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I think there's also a strong argument
Speaker 1: to be made that it just wasn't noticed as much
Speaker 1: and wasn't fostered as an idea, wasn't even recognized. And
Speaker 1: we'll come back to some ideas regarding that here in
Speaker 1: a second. But another interesting idea they bring up is
Speaker 1: that while historical accounts of imaginary friends and children from
Speaker 1: before the twentieth century is scant and non existent, we
Speaker 1: have plenty of accounts of quote adult pretend companion like phenomena.
Speaker 1: This includes muses, household gods, guardian angels, and personal saints.
Speaker 1: I'd also personally add ghosts and ancestor spirits to this,
Speaker 1: and I think it's something that many contemporary humans will
Speaker 1: also find themselves engaging with, at least to some degree.
Speaker 1: You know, when we speak to the dead, and I
Speaker 1: don't mean even in like a daily regular fashion, but
Speaker 1: like if you visit somebody's grave and you speak to them,
Speaker 1: and on some level you know you were engaging with
Speaker 1: this mental model of their mind. You know, what are
Speaker 1: you really speaking to it? You're speaking to this imaginary
Speaker 1: construct that person. No longer exists in a physical form,
Speaker 1: you know. So, yeah, you are engaging in a very
Speaker 1: similar sort of pretend play, but we think of it differently,
Speaker 1: you know, we have a different We have an adult
Speaker 1: mindset regarding it, and so we don't loop it in.
Speaker 1: We don't lump it into the same category with the
Speaker 1: imaginary friend usually. Now, in this meta analysis, they point
Speaker 1: out that numerous studies have made a case for invisible
Speaker 1: friends and invisible companions. I'm sorry, imaginary friends and imaginary companions,
Speaker 1: but they're often invisible having a beneficial effect on a
Speaker 1: child's social, emotion, emotional, and cognitive development. Just a few
Speaker 1: of the possible attributed benefits in the meta analysis include
Speaker 1: children with ices or imaginary companions may have more developed
Speaker 1: sociocognitive and narrative skills. Children with ices may go on
Speaker 1: to have better coping competence as adolescents, that is, better
Speaker 1: coping strategies and techniques when faced with anxiety, such as
Speaker 1: reaching out for help or advice when they need it.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting. I was wondering if that might take
Speaker 2: a different form, which is that I wonder if having
Speaker 2: an imaginary companion just kind of trains you in engaging
Speaker 2: in a back and forth within your own mind, which
Speaker 2: is very important for kind of getting perspective on yourself
Speaker 2: in your own situation. Even as an adult. You might
Speaker 2: not have another person, you imagine, but you sort of
Speaker 2: do need to be able to ask and answer questions
Speaker 2: within yourself or to set up opposite uditional viewpoints within
Speaker 2: your own head in order to sort of stand outside
Speaker 2: yourself and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm getting a strong sense that you could look
Speaker 1: at it as a kind of simulation or rehearsal for
Speaker 1: social relationships and communication as well. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen study from Gleason and Kalpedo that they point
Speaker 1: out that found that children with egalitarian child icy relationships
Speaker 1: chose more constructive coping strategies than did those with these
Speaker 1: child icy relationships that are more like you know pet
Speaker 1: or you know child you know care relationship. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to think about here. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: they point out, and this is a huge factor, and
Speaker 1: this of course is often a factor in studies, is
Speaker 1: that is that pretty much all of our scholarship on
Speaker 1: ICs has come out of Western culture, where there is
Speaker 1: generally a majority of children with ICs of one or another,
Speaker 1: and so you have to ask, and again this is
Speaker 1: you know, this is a problem in other studies as well,
Speaker 1: obviously scientific and otherwise, like what's your your sample consists of.
Speaker 1: Is it a bunch of you know, western college students,
Speaker 1: Is it a bunch of white western college students and
Speaker 1: so forth? Then how does that break down when you're
Speaker 1: actually considering the species as a whole, And so you know,
Speaker 1: you can ask yourself, well, how much of this is
Speaker 1: purely cultural then? And it's hard to say, they point
Speaker 1: out because at the time, at any rate, they said
Speaker 1: they had virtually nothing outside of Western culture to compare
Speaker 1: these studies to. And I think this has changed a
Speaker 1: little bit since the publication date, but I think a
Speaker 1: lot of big questions remain. They did point to some
Speaker 1: Japanese studies at the time, however, and these seem to
Speaker 1: suggest that imaginary companions might be less common in Japanese children,
Speaker 1: apparently due to cultural reasons, though the rate was still
Speaker 1: something like fifty percent. So it's so it's just that's
Speaker 1: compared to sixty to sixty five percent rate in studies
Speaker 1: of Western children. So you know, it's a sizable difference,
Speaker 1: but you're still looking at fifty percent. Obviously there's a
Speaker 1: great deal to unravel there. In their meta analysis, they
Speaker 1: further elaborate the cultural attitudes towards imaginary friends are likely
Speaker 1: important here in Japan, for instance, they said there was
Speaker 1: at the time less common knowledge of the concept and
Speaker 1: perhaps more of a likelihood for imaginary friend reports from
Speaker 1: a child to generate a prinal concern, despite, to be clear,
Speaker 1: a strong support for pretend play in general in said culture. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets complex trying to tease a part like, well,
Speaker 1: how much of it is a cultural factor, how much
Speaker 1: of it is just in parents paying attention and so forth.
Speaker 1: So they summarize, quote, imaginative and pretend play maybe universal
Speaker 1: behaviors across cultures with an evolutionary origin, but how the
Speaker 1: play is constructed in shape varies across culture is unclear. Now,
Speaker 1: other factors that seem to impact things. These include the
Speaker 1: children's age, the assessment method, sex, and birth order. So
Speaker 1: on the subject of age, Looking at various studies involving
Speaker 1: imaginary friends, some studies identify two to three and a
Speaker 1: half as the peak age for imaginary companions, while others
Speaker 1: have identified age four. Some studies they argue, do not
Speaker 1: distinguish between current and past imaginary companions, and I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting to think of as welcome. I honestly do
Speaker 1: not remember at what age my child had been WASP friends,
Speaker 1: but clearly there was a window for it. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're never too old for WASP friends, but at
Speaker 2: a certain age they just become less common. It's harder
Speaker 2: to get in touch now.
Speaker 1: They also stress the assessment method is key. So broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: you can ask kids about their imaginary friends and or
Speaker 1: talk to their parents about their imaginary friends. And I
Speaker 1: don't think this will shock any parents out there, but
Speaker 1: sometimes the accounts do not match up. Parents often don't
Speaker 1: have or attain all the details, and parents who disapprove
Speaker 1: of my imaginary friends, either in general or specifics like
Speaker 1: I don't trust mister Bongo or whatever, they may retain
Speaker 1: even less of the details. However, while the children themselves
Speaker 1: may be the best source, they are also complications there
Speaker 1: as well. They point out that below age three, a
Speaker 1: child may not have the verbal skills to answer all
Speaker 1: of the questions that the researchers have about the imaginary friends,
Speaker 1: and they may wind up answering questions by invoking real
Speaker 1: life friends instead, like you're asking them about imaginary friends,
Speaker 1: but they're answering. They get confused about whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about imaginary friends or real friends. And then I found
Speaker 1: this particularly funny. They may make up new imaginary friends
Speaker 1: during the interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, there is sometimes a blurring of I'm
Speaker 2: just thinking about my daughter, like playing with toys. You know,
Speaker 2: she's got her dinosaurs and like little dogs and cats
Speaker 2: are and they're sitting around having a party or something.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes she will identify some of them as
Speaker 2: real people in her life. It's like, oh, now this
Speaker 2: is mama, and this is data, and these are the grandparents,
Speaker 2: and these are my friends from down the street and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, their imagination is fertile, and
Speaker 1: they will create angels and demons for you at the
Speaker 1: drop of a hat. So many studies therefore focused on
Speaker 1: both children and parents. And then compare the notes also
Speaker 1: key sex and birth order. On the birth order side
Speaker 1: of thing, firstborns and presumably singletons are most likely to
Speaker 1: have imaginary friends something like two point eight times more
Speaker 1: likely in the meta analysis, presumably because they lack for
Speaker 1: true childhood companions or more likely to lack for true
Speaker 1: childhood companions within the household. On the sex side of
Speaker 1: the conundrum, there's a lot of work to work out
Speaker 1: here as well, and what we do have it tends
Speaker 1: to entail a lot of gender norms. Additionally, it's possible
Speaker 1: that there are different prime ages for imaginary friends between
Speaker 1: boys and girls, and not every study reports sex differences anyway. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to get into a more specific question that
Speaker 1: came up for me on this topic, and it came
Speaker 1: up because it's the title of a paper I ran
Speaker 1: across from twenty twelve published in the International Journal for
Speaker 1: the Psychology of Religion by Jay Bradley Weiger, Katrina Paxson,
Speaker 1: and Lacy Ryan, What do Invisible Friends Know? And this
Speaker 1: of course leans heavily into questions of theory of mind. Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it all comes back.
Speaker 1: In this study. The author's question thirty six children ages
Speaker 1: two through eight with imaginary friends at the time on
Speaker 1: what sorts of things their imaginary companions knew essentially on
Speaker 1: a sliding scale, with dog at one end and God
Speaker 1: at the other and humanity you know, somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: And they found that younger children attributed knowledge to all
Speaker 1: agents considered here, while older children treated God differently from
Speaker 1: all the others, but that imaginary friends, the imaginary friend
Speaker 1: was also different from either human or dog. In other words,
Speaker 1: it kind of stands as this in between character. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, and I realized, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of reminded me of the nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: film My Neighbor Totoro by Hyo Miyazaki. In this, if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, two young girls in the Japanese
Speaker 1: countryside encounter friendly nature spirits in the form of Toto's
Speaker 1: as well as a cat bus. And it does not
Speaker 1: expressly deal with him as imaginary friends. But if we
Speaker 1: were to think of the Totos as imaginary friends, you
Speaker 1: know what, did they seem to know? What is their mindset?
Speaker 1: They do not seem to have the mind of an
Speaker 1: all knowing or all seeing God. They don't really talk.
Speaker 1: They are certainly in many ways like animals, but they're
Speaker 1: clearly not animals, either wild or domestic. They're also not people,
Speaker 1: and they're not, to invoke another Miyazaki creature, They're not
Speaker 1: like Kiki's feline companion Jigi in Kiki's Delivery Service, who
Speaker 1: is a cat who speaks with the human voice. The
Speaker 1: totos seem to have their own category, much like what
Speaker 1: we're discussing here.
Speaker 2: When you were talking about the invisible companions with children
Speaker 2: attributing knowledge to them, that's kind of an in between place.
Speaker 2: Did you mean most often somewhere in between human knowledge
Speaker 2: and omniscience, like knowing more than a normal human would,
Speaker 2: but less than an omniscient God. Or did you mean
Speaker 2: somewhere between the human and the dog level of knowledge.
Speaker 1: Nos, well, we'll discuss between human and God.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't able to get a hold of the
Speaker 1: full study, but the lead author, Jay Bradley Wiger, later
Speaker 1: wrote a book titled Invisible Companions, and he discusses the
Speaker 1: study in that book. So here's a taste of it.
Speaker 1: In one of the studies experiments, the children who all
Speaker 1: came from various Christian denominations, so they had this, you know,
Speaker 1: just varying degrees, some idea of what God is within
Speaker 1: that cultural belief system, and then they engaged in three
Speaker 1: They were asked to engage in three different theory of
Speaker 1: mind tasks. So in one of the theory of mind tasks,
Speaker 1: the children had what is called an occluded picture study,
Speaker 1: so you can think of it this way. You have
Speaker 1: a full picture inside of a folder, like a folding folder,
Speaker 1: and then there's a little window cut in the folder
Speaker 1: so that you just get a little sliver of the
Speaker 1: full picture, and then you ask the child, can you
Speaker 1: guess what the full picture is? And the children were
Speaker 1: very confident. This is something like sixty three percent of
Speaker 1: them said that they knew what the whole picture was.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, yeah, I know what it is, and
Speaker 1: they made wild guesses. They didn't none of them got it.
Speaker 1: But that's not really the point here. It's about what
Speaker 1: they thought they knew. But here's where it gets interesting.
Speaker 1: Fifty three percent said that their best friend, this is
Speaker 1: like a real person would know what the picture was
Speaker 1: as well, So that's less so sixty three for them,
Speaker 1: fifty three percent for their friends. Forty four percent said
Speaker 1: a dog would know, and ninety percent said that God
Speaker 1: would know, and the imaginary friend sixty seven percent. So
Speaker 1: imaginary friends were quote slightly more likely to know than
Speaker 1: everyone except God.
Speaker 2: Okay, they know a little bit more than I do,
Speaker 2: a good bit more than my friends at school, even
Speaker 2: more than a dog, but not as much as God.
Speaker 2: Though I also find it interesting that there were ten
Speaker 2: percent of children here who believed in God but thought
Speaker 2: God would not know what was in the folder.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, even God cannot see inside his foulder, so
Speaker 1: that's that's yeah. But yeah, by and large, the imaginary
Speaker 1: friends stood in between human perception and the perception of God. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So that's yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Privileged and knowledge, not omnisciens, but heightened missions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, once the picture was revealed, it turned out
Speaker 1: to be an elephant on a ball. Couldn't get a
Speaker 1: sense of this at all really from the preview, the
Speaker 1: children found it funny, and given decent theory of mind,
Speaker 1: would then be able to conclude that their best friend
Speaker 1: and dog would also surely fail to guess what it was.
Speaker 1: And in the book why your comments on this? And
Speaker 1: then kind of Wax is poetic about the idea and
Speaker 1: writes quote, this was not magic to them, It was
Speaker 1: the way things are anything, everything is nested, there is
Speaker 1: always more. And so it goes on to praise the
Speaker 1: resiliency of a child's mind when presented with the awareness
Speaker 1: of more, you know, like their understanding of the world
Speaker 1: is continually challenged, corrected and expanded upon, and you know.
Speaker 1: When he was pointing this out in the book, it's
Speaker 1: like I was like, yeah, like that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that most stubborn adults, it would just break them.
Speaker 1: Most adults are too stubborn too, I feel like to
Speaker 1: really learn much, at least in certain areas of their life.
Speaker 1: But like, that is what childhood is. It's constantly being
Speaker 1: finding out that, oh I didn't understand this, and now
Speaker 1: I have a broader understanding of what it is, but
Speaker 1: still being confident enough to think, you know what the
Speaker 1: picture is. You know, it's like a special kind of optimism.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the horrors of adulthood that what it really
Speaker 2: means is like becoming rigid enough that you refuse to
Speaker 2: be corrected even when you're shown.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, But the big take I'm here for the
Speaker 1: authors was that imaginary friends or invisible friends were in
Speaker 1: between entities, that they were positioned in their knowledge somewhere
Speaker 1: between the individual and God. And again, I think it's
Speaker 1: worth stressing that these children were all to varying degrees,
Speaker 1: brought up within a worldview in which an all knowing
Speaker 1: and all seeing God is very much a I don't
Speaker 1: think that they explored the way this might have influenced things,
Speaker 1: at least not in what I read. But instead they
Speaker 1: stress that while they were all likely told to some
Speaker 1: degree what God knows and sees, they were left to
Speaker 1: their own devices to figure out what their imaginary friend
Speaker 1: would know. And this is where the author shares some
Speaker 1: interesting ideas. Quote, perhaps their invisibility itself is important. The
Speaker 1: physicality of humans and dogs is what creates limits in
Speaker 1: perspective and knowledge. At least the older children might reason,
Speaker 1: perhaps invisible figures enjoy the privileges of not being so
Speaker 1: limited because they don't have ordinary bodies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think that is a strong intuition
Speaker 2: that a lot of people have. Again, I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is cultural conditioning based on the way we
Speaker 2: normally think about the metaphysics of ghosts and angels and
Speaker 2: beings like that, or if it's something deeper in the brain,
Speaker 2: but I do think we tend to think that if
Speaker 2: a being is invisible, it's not limited by the laws
Speaker 2: of physics, and thus can see beyond walls and has
Speaker 2: access to information that we can't access.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like he goes on to speculate that these
Speaker 1: kids are spontaneously attributing special knowledge to their invisible friends
Speaker 1: in a way that suggests quote a deep bias in
Speaker 1: our theory of mind, one that makes beliefs about God's
Speaker 1: mind easy to affirm and pass along. And you know,
Speaker 1: and yet to your point, I feel like we don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily need to invoke like a you know, ideas
Speaker 1: of a Christian God in all of this. You know,
Speaker 1: you consider such notions as the Evil Eye, which in
Speaker 1: some traditions is held to be this manevolent force that
Speaker 1: will hear you if you boast of your blessings too loudly,
Speaker 1: that will seek you out and curse you. You know, invisible,
Speaker 1: its powers of detection seem rather boundless, such that you
Speaker 1: choose your words carefully in every instance. And you know,
Speaker 1: there are similar concepts as well of Santa Claus, though
Speaker 1: not invisible and does kind of take on this sort
Speaker 1: of invisible status outside of Christmas Eve itself, right, and
Speaker 1: you're told that he sees all. You know, He's like
Speaker 1: the Eye of Providence, always watching, all seeing, all knowing.
Speaker 2: Well, it also makes me wonder about the effect on
Speaker 2: beliefs like this of different types of characters in our
Speaker 2: storytelling and media. So I'm thinking as a counter example
Speaker 2: to these beings like you know, angels and ghosts and
Speaker 2: gods that have sort of vague and definite powers, you
Speaker 2: can wonder what the boundaries of their power are and
Speaker 2: you're not really sure. When we have these very concrete
Speaker 2: superpowered characters like the X Men, you know, so like
Speaker 2: they have physical bodies and they have powers beyond normal
Speaker 2: human powers, but also they're clearly limited in all normal
Speaker 2: human capacities apart from their special powers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and then I think in the better examples
Speaker 1: of your X Men, you know, their special power is
Speaker 1: also to their detriment. It's also their great flaw. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about. But but yeah, this idea
Speaker 1: of invisibility uh or disembodiedness having the the effect of
Speaker 1: greater knowledge it's and being closer to the divine is
Speaker 1: fascinating as well as this idea that it like it
Speaker 1: represents a tendency uh in the human psyche to to
Speaker 1: like lean into these ideas of the unseen world and uh,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it makes you wonder. It's like when
Speaker 1: when children are engaging in imaginary companions and imaginary friends, like,
Speaker 1: is this sort of like the raw creative energy that
Speaker 1: later on in life is used to foster and generate
Speaker 1: you know, religious ideas and so forth, superstitions and uh
Speaker 1: and uh. You know, in any of these other examples
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier that are prevalent in in adult life
Speaker 1: to varying degrees, muses, angels, deceased loved ones and so forth.
Speaker 2: Or more mundane things like knowing what your spouse wants
Speaker 2: for their birthday or knowing, you know, what would make
Speaker 2: your boss happy, or knowing how to write a good
Speaker 2: character or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think there there There are
Speaker 1: also probably some strong connections to you know, the the
Speaker 1: continual rise of AI, the use of chatbots and so forth,
Speaker 1: you know, things that do not have a mind. But
Speaker 1: as we engage with a language model that responds to
Speaker 1: our words, we cannot help but attribute a mind to it.
Speaker 1: We cannot help simulate it, even if we we know
Speaker 1: on other levels that it's based entirely on what we're inputting,
Speaker 1: and and you know, we'll at least have some level
Speaker 1: of understanding this is not a person. But then it
Speaker 1: becomes real to us because we're kind of hardwired to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is really not related to our
Speaker 2: topic today, but some something I would like to come
Speaker 2: back and revisit at some point is the question of
Speaker 2: why it is so difficult for me to be rude
Speaker 2: to an AI chat bot, even when I feel my
Speaker 2: primary emotion for it is distrust and even antipathy.
Speaker 1: You know. Got into that topic a little bit in
Speaker 1: November in an interview that I did here and Stuff
Speaker 1: to bliw your mind with Jonathan Birch The Edge of Sentience.
Speaker 1: You know why I asked, I asked him about this
Speaker 1: because this is something they discussed a bit in his book,
Speaker 1: you know, like, what does it mean when I feel
Speaker 1: like I need to be polite to the to the
Speaker 1: to the AI, to the chatbot or whatever, or even
Speaker 1: like the you know, the Google home or whatever you
Speaker 1: happen to be talking to in your home, Like what
Speaker 1: does that mean? And should we be nice to them?
Speaker 1: And I think the the general wisdom here is yes,
Speaker 1: you should be. You should be nice to them for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons. If for no other reason, like
Speaker 1: you really need one other thing in your life to
Speaker 1: be kind of like rude to and and yell at
Speaker 1: like no, there's probably a better channel for that energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess now that I think about it,
Speaker 2: I probably do have an opinion on that, which is
Speaker 2: that I have some implicit knowledge that what we do,
Speaker 2: we tend to do more of. So if you teach
Speaker 2: yourself that it's okay to act some way in a
Speaker 2: certain situation, even though in that situation there's no actual
Speaker 2: harm caused, you are training yourself to behave the same
Speaker 2: way in other similar situations where people would be harmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one interesting difference, but that the more that
Speaker 1: I think about it, the less of a difference it is,
Speaker 1: and the more of a similarity it is. If you
Speaker 1: are rude to your imaginary friend, like your imaginary friend
Speaker 1: has no sentience that is not your own sentience, and
Speaker 1: therefore on one level you would be rude to no one.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you would be rude to yourself.
Speaker 1: And I guess on some level, like rudeness is always
Speaker 1: like self directed. But when you're looking at AI. This
Speaker 1: is something that Jonathan Burch brought up. It's eventually, by
Speaker 1: many estimates, the AI models that we're interacting with will
Speaker 1: become sentient, and we won't necessarily be able to tell
Speaker 1: when that occurs. So there will be if someone is
Speaker 1: just like one hundred percent rude to all AI computer
Speaker 1: chatbots and so forth, Google homes and what have you,
Speaker 1: and they just stuck to that at one point. At
Speaker 1: some point, possibly they're going to be rude to a
Speaker 1: sentient being that humans have created and like, and that
Speaker 1: crosses over into a different level of rudeness and meanness
Speaker 1: and what have you.
Speaker 2: This is a question that's come up before. I don't
Speaker 2: know where I am on that right now. I guess
Speaker 2: I lean more skeptical about the I don't know why.
Speaker 2: It's just an intuition at this point. I'm leaning more
Speaker 2: skeptical these days on AI sentience. But even if my
Speaker 2: current gut feeling is right about that, I do think
Speaker 2: it is the case that being mean to the machine
Speaker 2: just teaches you to be mean and it helps you
Speaker 2: be mean to people later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for me anyway, I think that's the bigger
Speaker 1: take home.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all right, Well, I think that does it
Speaker 2: for today's episode. But we got a lot more to
Speaker 2: say about Pretend to Play, So we will be back
Speaker 2: with at least a part three and perhaps more beyond that.
Speaker 1: That's right, So stay tuned and tune in for those episodes,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, of course, we want to hear
Speaker 1: about your imaginary friends, your personified objects from your life,
Speaker 1: from the life of you know, siblings and children and
Speaker 1: so forth. Right in with those details. This will be
Speaker 1: fun to get into in a future listener mail installment.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcasts, with core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 1: We set aside most serious concerns to talk about a
Speaker 1: weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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