WEBVTT - Sailors on a Dark Sea: Illusion of Explanatory Depth 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:15.360 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.040 My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.239 today we're gonna be looking at understanding a little bit 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:26.800 of the gaps in our knowledge and our metacognition. And 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:28.960 it's going to be the first part of a two 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.520 part episode on the illusion of explanatory depth. So if 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.000 you like this one, you should also definitely come back 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:38.400 for the next episode we released next time, which will 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:40.120 be a follow up to what we're going to talk 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:44.199 about today, illusion of explanatory depth. So to put that 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:48.640 in simpler terms, we're talking about a situation where you 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.279 think you know how something works, you think you have 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:56.360 a working knowledge of the thing, but in reality you don't. Yeah, 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.720 and we've talked about the gaps between the feeling of 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:02.840 no wing and the actual knowing before this came up 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:04.480 in the episode we did about the tip of the 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.600 tongue state. You remember that the sense that you know 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:12.080 something is not necessarily coterminous with actually being able to 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.399 produce that piece of knowledge from memory. There's a gap 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.240 in your mind. So you think you know the name 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.680 of the actor who played Thaiwan Lanister on Game of Thrones. 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:23.920 Do you Robert Oh, no, I can't. He has that 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.839 weird name that I can never know, Thaiwan. Yeah, wait, 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:28.680 which one is Taiwan? No, I'm thinking of Jamie. I 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:31.080 can never remember Jamie's name. What about Thaiwan? Come on, 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:34.400 he's an alien? Three? Okay, Well you got it. You 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.400 didn't You didn't have that gap. Then some people might 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:38.479 there was a gap in there somewhere. I did feel 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.440 a gap. If if you're familiar with Game of Thrones 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:43.880 out there you were, like some of you were probably thinking, oh, 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:46.319 I know that name, what is it? What is it? 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:50.440 It was Charles Dance. Okay. The other possible um gap 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:52.600 there is you hear Taiwan? And then you were is 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.040 a Tyrian? Is it Thaiwan? More names? Well? I picked 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.120 Character actors often fall into this category. The character know 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:02.640 the actors you've seen in tons of movies throughout the years. 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.480 They become that tip of the tongue name where you 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:07.760 know the face. You know some movies they've been in. 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:09.880 You know you know the name, but you don't know 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.280 the name. At the moment. It's this that guy, Oh, 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:14.640 what's that guy's name? Yeah, And so there's this gap, 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.680 there's this feeling of knowing, and there's the gap between 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.200 the feeling of knowing and the actual knowing itself. But 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:23.920 the interesting thing is that this gap can be applied 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.960 to other realms of knowledge. It's not just in trying 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.840 to come up with the name for a thing, for example, 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.000 in a quint essentially how stuff works move I think 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:35.640 we should look at the domain of knowledge that covers 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:42.200 understanding how things happen, or really in really understanding how 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.600 things work in causal relationships, because of course we live 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.320 in a world of systems. The system is always trying 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.040 to get you down. But but there are causal systems 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.920 all around us, machines, the coffee maker in the office, 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.800 the computer you're working on, and ammals, animals or systems 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.520 of causal relationships. There are natural cycles, like you know, 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:09.440 the nitrogen cycle or the water cycle. Those are causal systems. 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:15.520 And then other natural phenomenon uh, tides, rainbows, I don't know, 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:19.760 pooping a all natural phenomenon. Well, these are all things 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:21.560 that I mean too. We have to mention, of course, 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.680 the famous quote other C. Clark, right, that any sufficiently 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.880 advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But you could pretty 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.200 much say that about like any system, Uh that if 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.799 if you if it's if it's it's it's if it's 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.920 advanced enough and complex enough, and and most systems are U. 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:41.760 It can it can seem magical in the fact that 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.400 the sun rises in the morning. Um, there's a magic 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:47.680 to that. We we've we've we've observed it his magic 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:50.080 and felt it is magic since the time. Out of 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.120 mind we sometimes are even though we have the the 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.280 actual scientific explanation for what's happening, you still also have 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:02.680 this magical version of the event, uh pared right beside 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:04.920 it on on the shelf in your mind. Oh totally. 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.120 I mean, we have strong intuitions to give to give 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:12.880 magical or kind of fuzzy causal relationships. And and it's 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.520 funny because one way of interpreting the idea of magic 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:21.160 or the supernatural is it's just causal anddeterminacy, right, Like, 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:23.560 what do you mean when you say something happened by 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:27.040 magic or something happened with the supernatural cause, it just 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.599 means that the cause. Essentially you're saying, well, the cause 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.440 isn't clear. It's just kind of like getting vague about 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:36.800 what it means to be a cause I like this. 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.800 You know, my my son who's almost five. He we 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.119 try to explain how things work to him, as one should, 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.120 but he also has this concept of magic. It's very 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.440 loose concept. So the other day he had a new 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:53.200 helium balloon and it was one of those uh those 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:57.240 fancy shiny ones that that you get. What's the material? 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:00.479 My large, my large? So it was a mile balloons, 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.599 so it last, it was lasting longer. He's used to 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:04.920 getting these cheap balloons and they the helium goes down 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.120 and they're on the floor, but this one was floating 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.320 the next day and he said, hey, that my balloon 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:13.160 is still floating. Is this is it magic helium? Um? 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.920 Which I think was maybe like his definition of magic 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:17.600 is more in line with what you just said. There's 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.400 a there's a mystery there. Uh like he knows that 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.440 this helium is not behaving like like like normal helium. 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.160 That's that he's encountered and he has no other explanation 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.719 for it. Yeah. But yeah, so you don't have to 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:32.600 at that point explain how the magic does what it does. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:34.919 If you did, it would sort of stop being magic. 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.200 But Yeah. So so there are these systems all around us. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.919 We we sort of naturally feel like they're magic, but 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.640 we can come to understand the causal processes that that 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:48.800 that sustained them and that make them work. But as 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:51.800 we've said, understanding and the feeling of understanding are actually 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.479 separate things. And whenever you've got two different binary variables 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:57.279 like this, I think it's interesting to try to make 0:05:57.320 --> 0:05:59.520 that the grid table, you know, where you've got one 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.800 binary area on a column and one binary on a row. 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.080 So you can think of things that we understand and 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.200 that we don't understand, and then you can think of 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:10.960 things that you feel like you understand or that you 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:13.400 don't feel like you understand. So there are things that 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:16.040 we understand and we feel like that we understand them 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.000 like a hammer. Yes, you think you get it, you 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.360 really do get it. Yeah, there's there's some very simple 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.600 physics involved here. There's a there's a there's a definite 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:30.440 causal um process going on. Yeah. Then there's maybe how 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.920 microprocessor engineering works. That's one where you probably don't understand 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:37.720 it and you probably feel like you don't understand it. Right. 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:39.839 This is one of those where you have a problem 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:41.960 with your computer and you just you tell your tech 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.880 tech guy or gal, you say, it's all magic to me. 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:48.200 I don't know how this works. Can you help me 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.600 fix this problem? Right? So, those are the ones where 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.360 are understanding and our feelings are basically in agreement. But 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:55.720 what about the other two boxes? What about things that 0:06:55.760 --> 0:07:00.279 you understand but you don't feel like you understand can 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.560 actually happen sometimes, and I think it's often the starting 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.839 place of a Socratic dialogue or if you ever you know, 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:10.440 the Socratic teaching method is where instead of telling students 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.320 what to believe, you ask them questions and sort of 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:17.160 lead them to understand that they already knew the answer, 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.360 but they just didn't know how to articulate it. And 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.560 so in that case, the child already understands, they just 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.440 didn't know how to put the answer with the question 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.040 in context. But then there's the other box, the things 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:34.160 you feel like you understand but you don't actually understand. 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:36.600 And the research we're going to talk about today is 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.600 addressing how there is tons of stuff in this box. 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:45.000 This box box is filled to the brim. Uh toilets 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.400 are probably in this box for you? What do you? 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.160 What do you think? Unless you're a plumber, or you've 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.600 really done some work on your toilet. I bet toilets 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.760 or in this box. Yeah, I mean they're they're fairly complicated, 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:58.560 a little little mechanisms, despite the fact that they maybe 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.360 haven't buying large advanced as much as they should, because 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.400 it's kind of one of those technologies that we tend 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.000 to think, all right, it's good enough, and we don't 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.119 want to we don't want to put too much extra 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.200 thought into into its design and function. Yeah, here's another one. 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:14.960 How How what about mirrors? Mirrors is a great one, 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.360 and I love this example. I think I've brought it 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.080 up before, but yeah, I think it's a perfect example 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.840 of an everyday object that we take mostly for granted, 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:26.880 but it is ultimately this insane, freaky mystery in our lives. 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:29.240 I mean, really, it's amazing that we don't just run 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:34.200 around constantly smashing them like maniacs. I think you, like me, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.520 love a good creepy mirror story, like a haunted mirror. 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.280 What's the Stephen King won the Representage? The Representage fabrical 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.599 short stories one of his best, in my opinion. Uh, 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:48.200 and there are tons of them, Lovecraft wrote one Clark 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.760 Ashton Smith wrote one, you could probably fill an entire 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:53.920 book with just creepy mirror stories, and then I would 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:56.079 buy said book. But wait a minute. Of course, we 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.720 understand how a mirror works. That's easy. It's just uh, well, 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:04.440 like the light goes in and then it comes back. Right. Well, yeah, 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.560 we think we we have we have it under wraps, right, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:09.959 because we encounter them all the time and we have 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:15.040 this sort of ubiquitous environmental knowledge of them. But when 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.480 we're put to the test the office seems to be 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:21.120 uh the case. We we don't really understand how they work. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.400 And and I think this is why we have all 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:27.000 these fictional tales about weird creepy mirrors, because we need 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:31.240 that that cultural release valve, that psychic release valve for 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.880 our uneasiness about them. But in terms of just proving 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:38.120 this out, there was a two thousand five psychological study 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:40.400 from the University of Liverpool and they looked into this 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.760 and they asked participants in the study to consider a 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:47.079 draped mirror, so it's, you know, like a haunted mirror 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.000 that's been covered up to keep monsters from coming out 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:51.480 of it, and they had to predict at which points 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:53.880 in the room. They would be able to see themselves 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.400 if the mirror in the mirror, if the mirror was uncovered. Okay, 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.120 so if you really had a solid understanding of what 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:02.640 a mirror, how a mirror works, you should be able 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.520 to predict how you can use it. And they weren't 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:08.160 able to to do that. They weren't. They weren't able 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.000 to Another thing they couldn't do is they weren't able 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.760 to grasp the fact that your reflection in the mirror 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:16.559 is always half your size, because the mirror is always 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.000 halfway between the viewer and the viewers reflection. So they'd 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.240 be asked to say, well, they'd be asked how big 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.000 is your your head in that reflection, and they would 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.120 assume that it was the same size as their own head. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.120 So I would have assumed, yeah, I mean I wouldn't. 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.360 I really had to read the that sentence a couple 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.520 of times. Towie, oh, yeah, there is the mirror is 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:40.480 halfway between me and the spectral doppelganger with that that 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:45.120 has his his hair parted on the opposite side. Um 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.680 the But the study basically revealed that we we tend 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.680 to assume the size of the reflection. We tend to 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:54.800 assume that we know exactly how the angles work for 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:59.440 the reflection. Uh, we're terrible determining what will be seen 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.000 in a mirror based on the observer's vantage point. And 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:04.719 a major example of this is the Venus effect that 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.840 we see in so many paintings. Venus. Okay, so you 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.880 have Venus in the painting. Venus is looking at her 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:14.040 face in a mirror, and we're looking at the painting 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.640 and we see Venus's face. But if she's looking at 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.360 her face in the mirror, how does that work. It's 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:22.200 It's like, next time you're watching a TV show or 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:25.240 a movie and there's a scene with a mirror over analysis, 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.600 really think about where's the camera, where's the camera? What 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.839 are they looking at it? It really begins to open 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:34.320 up your eyes to the fact that it said, Wow, 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:38.240 I I was completely hoodwinked by this, and maybe I 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:42.080 don't have the firmest idea of the optical scenario going 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.560 on here. Uh. Slightly related, Also, anytime you're watching a 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.040 movie where there's a mirror on the lid of a 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.480 medicine cabinet and the person opens the medicine cabinet and 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.640 then shuts it be prepared to see another face in 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:57.120 the mirror behind the person when they shut the lid. 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.319 It happens every time. You know. One more, just very 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.520 quick optical example is just site itself. I think we've 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.520 touched on this that the idea that site is something 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.440 that leaves our eyes. Oh yeah, it's like laser vision. Uh. 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:12.480 This is one of those things like I talked about earlier, 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.320 where we have this magical unrealistic idea of how it works. 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.920 And even if you have the the realistic idea of 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:21.360 how it works, the idea of that light is entering 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.760 your eyes, you still you still end up thinking about 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.400 the world in terms of the the fictional scenario. I 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:30.360 think that's sort of a different gap because I think 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.719 most people do know really they know that the light 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:36.160 is entering the eyes, that nothing, nothing's going out. But 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.280 you're talking there about the difference between what what we 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:44.080 know and what we feel, and I think that where 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.800 those two converge, there's room for a lot of confusion. 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.960 I think that's absolutely right. Well, I think so today 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:53.680 we're going to look at the one big original study 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.640 in the illusion of explanatory depth, and then in the 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.600 next episode we're gonna look at some some takeaways and 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.480 some applications from it. But so I guess we should 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.199 get into the study itself, right, Yeah, do you want 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:07.920 to take a quick break before we get into it. 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:10.400 I want to take a quick break, Joe, and then 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:17.880 when we come back, let's get into this study. All right, 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:21.800 we're back, all right. So this landmark study is called 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:26.920 The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science, an Illusion of Explanatory Depth, 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.120 published in Cognitive Science in two thousand two by Frank 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:36.520 Kyle and Leonard Rosenblit. And so they start by discussing 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.920 the idea of folk theories. Have you ever heard this 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.040 concept before, Robert folk theories or folk science. Yeah, this 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.520 is just kind of the It was like folk medicine, right, 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:50.760 It's not necessarily there's not necessarily any science to it. 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:54.800 It's just kind of the the the general understanding of 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:57.280 how something works or how it's supposed to work. Yeah, 0:13:57.280 --> 0:13:59.600 it's what we come up with when our methods are 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.480 not Garris. Essentially, it's what we all do sort of 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.040 intuitively all the time. And so they say, you know, 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.280 sort of a theory can be defined as a system 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:13.480 of ideas that are designed to explain something observed. The 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.800 theory gives an explanation, and theories are a totally common 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:19.600 feature of science and of everyday life. You know, we 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:21.480 we use theories all the time. They might not be 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.360 good or correct theories, but we're constantly having theories about 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.560 the explanation of the workings of objects and systems. A 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.120 great example of this is that blue blood in your veins. 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:35.680 Oh yeah, do you have an explanation for that? Well, 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.120 there's the Well, it's because it's deprived of oxygen, right, 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:41.680 and that why it turns blue. That's not correct, is it. No, 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:43.480 it's not correct, but it's It's one of those that 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.880 is often thrown out there sometimes but very intelligent people. 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.000 It's I you know, I don't mean to to mention 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.040 any of these is an example of intellectual failing, but 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:56.320 they just they pick up esteem. They're passed around, and 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.040 it's easy to go through life thinking that they're true. No, 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.160 and that that can to another thing. We should say. 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:03.760 This episode is going to be all about our cognitive 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:07.640 limitations and failures and overconfidence in what we know. But 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.680 this isn't to say that people are stupid or you know, 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.280 we're not accusing the people featured in the studies or 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.600 people in general of being dumb. It's just good to 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.440 reckon with what the mistakes human brains usually make. Our 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:25.840 human brains make mistakes continually, and uh, I mean, the 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:28.360 best you can do is be aware of the limitations. 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:30.880 But one of the things about these folk theories is 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.400 that they often feel like they explain more than they 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.960 actually do. And take the blue blood in the vein 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.880 that that seems intuitive. What if somebody you believe that, Okay, 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.080 I'm looking at my veins in their blue and it's 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.720 because the blood turns blue. What if somebody asked you 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:51.840 to write down an explanation of how that happens. Then 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.000 you'd start being like, well, wait, so I'm trying to 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.480 write the steps down, so the blood is deprived of 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.840 oxygen and turns blue, how does that happen? Don't You'd 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:04.640 start encountering gaps in your knowledge. And the authors of 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.480 the study right about this, they say, quote, we frequently 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.760 discovered that the theory that seems crystal clear and complete 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:15.080 in our head suddenly develops gaping holes and inconsistencies when 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.120 we try to set it down on paper. Uh, intuitively, 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:20.600 I think that's they're exactly correct about that. I've had 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.600 this experience plenty of times, or not even on paper. 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:25.920 I bet Robert, I bet you've had this experience too. 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:29.680 I know I have. Here in the podcast studio. In 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.800 the middle of a podcast, maybe a tangent comes up 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.480 where you briefly want to explain how something works that's 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.120 not central to your research, and you think you do, 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:40.920 so you just start talking, and you get a sentence 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:43.440 or two in and you wait. You're like, oh, wait 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.080 a minute. I thought I understood that when I started talking, 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.800 But now that I'm saying the words, I don't actually 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.800 know how this works. And you have to stop and 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.520 figure out, Okay, what am I gonna do now? Yeah? Yeah, 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:57.800 you have to make that decision. Do I do I 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.520 own up to the fact that I that I really 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:02.560 don't know what I'm talking about. I'm gonna make everybody 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.480 wait while I read about this for fifteen minutes. Or 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.560 do I just plow ahead and somehow easyl my way 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.480 out of it. Um. I think where I encountered this 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.040 a lot is is in the preparation for a podcast episode. 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:18.200 My wife will ask me what we're recording on this week, 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:20.679 and I'll say, oh, recording on such and side, and 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:22.760 she's like, oh, really, what's what's that about? Give me 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.320 the elevator pitch and and then I'll start to explain it, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:27.760 and then I'll realize, oh, you know, it's you know, 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:32.119 A plus VEH equals C, except I can't adequately describe 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.280 step B in the scenario. It made sense in your 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.440 head until you started trying to use words, and then 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.359 that's where the that's where it became problematic. And what 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.040 it reveals is that, in fact, it didn't actually make 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:46.560 sense in my head. It just felt like it did. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:48.720 And it's useful to it for us because then you know, oh, well, 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:51.600 that's that's what I don't understand. That's what I need. 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.239 That needs to make sense to me truly, because if 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:55.800 it doesn't truly make sense to me, it's not going 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.520 to make sense to the listener. Right. Okay, So folk 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.080 theories in contrast us too scientific theories, where you've got 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.199 scientists trying to constantly hunt down the gaping holes and 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:10.160 inconsistencies in their theories and fix them. With folk theories, uh, 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.240 the explanatory systems are sort of produced in the minds 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.199 of lay people by non rigorous processes. And uh so, 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:19.919 if you're not a telecommunications engineer, you probably have some 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.120 kind of folk theory about how your cell phone works. Right, 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:26.639 You've got some basic skeletal idea of well, there's a 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.639 signal in the phone. Maybe you know, it's electromagnetic radiation 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.560 that goes from the phone from the antenna part maybe 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:36.040 or the antenna is hidden inside now, But it goes 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.600 from part of the phone to a tower. Does it 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:40.520 go to a satellite, I don't know. If it goes 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:42.760 to the cloud, that's a big one. And I and 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.840 I've been guilty of this too, not really stopping to realize, 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:48.960 oh wait, the cloud, Like I know that there's not 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:54.439 an invisible wonder Woman's airplane type computing system floating in 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:59.000 the sky. And yet somehow I fall back on that idea, 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.600 just perhaps just out of like I out of a 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:07.880 lack of desire to understand um the details and our 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:12.040 telecommunication system. But but yeah, I find myself at least 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:14.960 putting it up, putting the non realists, the unrealistic version 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:19.840 up on the shelf with a more realistic expectation of technology. Yeah, 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.879 and yet nevertheless, you sort of think you understand how 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:25.160 a cell phone works right at a basic level, at 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:27.359 a basic level, and and then you start, oh no. 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:30.160 But so the authors of the study, they're they're talking 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:33.520 about the problems with the way people hold them. So 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.920 they say, quote first, they are novice scientists. People people 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:41.359 in general are novice scientists. Their knowledge of most phenomena 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.600 is not very deep. We have shallow understandings. But then 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:49.320 they also say, quote second, their novice epistemologists, meaning people 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:54.399 who study how knowledge is generated, how we know things, uh, continuing, 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.080 their sense of the properties of knowledge itself, including how 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:01.600 it is stored, is poor and potentially misleading. So we 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.520 have both an incomplete understanding of how many things work, 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.359 but we also fail to recognize that we have an 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.240 incomplete understanding, uh, exhibited by the fact that when we 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:13.320 get put on the spot where we're sort of caught 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.080 off guard, we're like, oh, wait, I thought I understood that, 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:19.600 but now I'm realizing maybe I didn't. UM. So their 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:23.800 central thesis in this paper is quote we argue here 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:28.080 that people's limited knowledge and they're misleading. Intuitive epistemology combined 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:32.080 to create an illusion of explanatory depth or io e ed. 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:37.880 Most people feel they understand the world in far greater detail, coherence, 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.520 and depth than they actually do. Um Also, they say 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.960 that we're more overconfident about our understanding of some types 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:50.000 of knowledge than others. Specifically, are our knowledge dealing with 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:53.639 explanations for how things work that that is that is 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.800 to be singled out. So to test these ideas, the 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.720 authors performed a big series of studies. They're actually twelve 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.760 different studies inside this this massive paper, UH, to measure 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:09.600 people's level of confidence in their understanding compared with what 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.920 their actual level of understanding is as measured by their 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:18.120 confidence after they've had some calibration, and then then UH, 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:22.240 comparing that within various different domains of knowledge, meaning just 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.320 different types of knowing things do you know facts about geography, 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:29.120 or do you know the narratives of movie plots, or 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:34.000 do you know how a toilet works. So there have 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.399 been a lot of previous studies about overconfidence, and one 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:39.760