Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: here's a quick question, Uh, in coming in to do
Speaker 1: these podcasts, do you have any kind of a ritual
Speaker 1: and kind of like do you have any lucky items
Speaker 1: you bring with you? How do you prepare in terms
Speaker 1: of superstition science podcast? Here's something that you never wanted
Speaker 1: to know about. I used to wear lucky underwear, Okay,
Speaker 1: but then I realized how ridiculous that was and I
Speaker 1: quit the practice. Huh. Yeah, not of one wearing underwear,
Speaker 1: but you know, specific pair. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: very easy to attach meaning to something, right, And I
Speaker 1: found myself and I think I'm pretty pragmatic right in
Speaker 1: my thinking. And I found myself. Now you're like, no
Speaker 1: underwear out underwear, out of mind? Um, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you can't help it sometimes make those associations, I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean I can't. I mean I I on the
Speaker 1: clothing front, I don't think I've ever experienced anything like
Speaker 1: that because I tend to think of clothing and like, well,
Speaker 1: this pair of pants is more comfortable than the others.
Speaker 1: Uh So in that respect, like those will be my
Speaker 1: lucky pants and when I feel when I wear them,
Speaker 1: my body feels better and so lucky for you is comfortable. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But but there are other rituals that I do have.
Speaker 1: I mean, not not so much rituals, but I guess
Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of there's something in me that's kind
Speaker 1: of maybe an amulant junkie, like like I would I
Speaker 1: feel like I could adapt really easily to say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like thaie amulet culture um. In fact, I
Speaker 1: carry a ganisha a genisha in my pocket like a
Speaker 1: little figuring the the overcomer of obstacles. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: Hindu god that people may recognize as having kind of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, well very much an elephant look um and
Speaker 1: standing on its vehicle is like a rat. It's not
Speaker 1: that I like rubbed the figurine before each podcast or uh,
Speaker 1: there's something about just I have to put it in
Speaker 1: my pocket when I leave in the morning, and if
Speaker 1: I don't watch myself, I'll accumulate other amulets along the way.
Speaker 1: It'll be like something that just doesn't make a particularly
Speaker 1: large amount of sense. Like when we were like cleaning
Speaker 1: out my uh, some of my father's stuff after he died,
Speaker 1: there was this roll of silver dollars and these weren't
Speaker 1: like dear to him or anything. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen these silver dollars, but I ended up like
Speaker 1: slipping one in my pocket and carried it with me
Speaker 1: a lot for several months. And that makes sense to me, though,
Speaker 1: because that's that's something that you know, it's um maybe
Speaker 1: you're asso sitting it with your father and you wanted
Speaker 1: to keep it close to you or you know, as
Speaker 1: a symbol of it. But they were if I were
Speaker 1: gonna like consciously set out to like, all right, I
Speaker 1: will pick out an amulet that reminds me of my
Speaker 1: father or is you know, I mean he gets into
Speaker 1: the whole thing, the whole power of sympathy uh and
Speaker 1: uh and the way our minds working, we ended up
Speaker 1: attaching meaning to this, to an object that has come
Speaker 1: into contact with somebody. So if I were to like
Speaker 1: consciously say, what's an object that was dear to my
Speaker 1: father that I could carry as an amulet, that would
Speaker 1: not be it. Like, I don't know why that ended
Speaker 1: up in my pocket for so long. Um, or sometimes
Speaker 1: it will be like a particularly good day or a
Speaker 1: good outing or you know, or a good date that
Speaker 1: I've gone on with my wife, and I'll like pick
Speaker 1: up a rock and it'll go in my pocket, and
Speaker 1: not even a pretty rot, not like any kind of
Speaker 1: like a fine quartz kind of thing or something that
Speaker 1: would wind up on a geologist shelf, but I'll end
Speaker 1: up like sticking in my pocket and it will become
Speaker 1: kind of an amulet of that day. And so I
Speaker 1: have to watch that and try and keep it to
Speaker 1: just working tendencies. I don't think know if it's hoarding,
Speaker 1: if they're um, if they're kind of like magical amulets, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And if it keepsakes, if you will, like tiny keepsakes
Speaker 1: that remain on your person, right, that have have some
Speaker 1: sort of power to you in some sense. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: much as we hate to admit, these things do have
Speaker 1: a power over us. And if you guys out there
Speaker 1: haven't guessed it already, we're talking about that the science
Speaker 1: of lucky pants. That's where we're coming back around to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that you know, we can't help but wear those lucky
Speaker 1: pants or pick up that rock something that means a
Speaker 1: lot to us, that makes us feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got some sort of control over the chaos of
Speaker 1: our lives. Yeah, Like, what are some more that you've seen? Like,
Speaker 1: because I like, I have a friend who does this
Speaker 1: thing where if she is speeding through a red light,
Speaker 1: well not really a red light, let's say a an
Speaker 1: orange light, yellow light turning, you're give a nerve break there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she'll do this thing where she hits the roof of
Speaker 1: the car like it's some sort of like a luck
Speaker 1: thing to not get caught by a traffic cop. There's
Speaker 1: the rub right, the luck, this idea that we are
Speaker 1: actually getting some sort of magical luck from the ritual. Real, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing something to influence the outcome. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about the speed skater Chad Hedrick. He collects fortunes
Speaker 1: from fortune cookies because before the two thousands six Games
Speaker 1: in Turn, he got a fortune cookie that said your
Speaker 1: golden opportunity is coming, and he went on to win gold, silver,
Speaker 1: and bronze medals And now he hangs out with fortune
Speaker 1: cookie fortunes in his pocket at any time. He's become
Speaker 1: a fortune cookie junkie. Wow, how does he say in
Speaker 1: shape eating all that all that cookie, you know, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know, he just probably called up his
Speaker 1: local take out and you know, just chops through them
Speaker 1: and doesn't necessarily eat him. I wonder I wonder be
Speaker 1: gets irritated with the with the fortune cookies that don't
Speaker 1: really have fortunes per se, but they're just kind of like,
Speaker 1: here's a little bit of good advice. Um in mangled English. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that on my tea sometimes my my tea package,
Speaker 1: you know, the little tag on it. And it depends
Speaker 1: on I can always tell what sort of mood I'm
Speaker 1: in because either I'm like, oh that's beautiful, or I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh man, just take it somewhere else. Yeah, or it's
Speaker 1: like that's not really cosmic insight. That's how am I gonna?
Speaker 1: That's just good advice. That's just like saying something like
Speaker 1: I don't know, um see, that's how devoid of feel
Speaker 1: good or I end this morning. I can't think of
Speaker 1: a of any kind of crappy little fortune cookie thing,
Speaker 1: but but any rate, um, yeah, people do. It's early
Speaker 1: this morning, it is kind of early. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: so things of this nature, people collecting items, people performing
Speaker 1: rituals people um, sticking to some sort of lucky garment.
Speaker 1: And I do mean sticking to it literally because some
Speaker 1: we know with the sports people that sometimes they don't
Speaker 1: change their lucky socks right right, like baseball, uh baseball
Speaker 1: sports people. How illiterate am I in in the field
Speaker 1: of sports that I can't use the correct terminology, but
Speaker 1: baseball people who won't change their socks, and it's terribly smelly.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about there there was this pro wrestler
Speaker 1: who wrestled by the name of Vader who it was
Speaker 1: based out of Atlanta. I don't know if he lives
Speaker 1: in the area or not. I think he's pretty much
Speaker 1: retired now. But he was like this big, beefy, kind
Speaker 1: of bull looking guy and supposedly there are people that
Speaker 1: really hated wrestling him. Um. And you know this is
Speaker 1: pro wrestling is all scripted violence going on with a
Speaker 1: certain amount of improv But he his his shattering the illusion.
Speaker 1: Sorry oh um, but his his lucky thing was to
Speaker 1: not wash his wrestling outfit, his his his jumper. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it was a pretty horrendous at times. Well,
Speaker 1: and that probably became a ritual that actually did start
Speaker 1: to have some sort of actual effect, right, because yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, you don't want to get too close
Speaker 1: to the guy or have the match go too long, right,
Speaker 1: even if kind of punching in the face. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're under his arm. Um. Okay. So there's a term
Speaker 1: for this, and it's called apophenia, and it's seen patterns
Speaker 1: and meaningless data. And we've talked about this before. Our
Speaker 1: brains despised randomness. We try to organize whenever we can.
Speaker 1: Whenever we see some sort of data in front of us,
Speaker 1: we try to see patterns. We might have a grilled
Speaker 1: cheese sandwich. We might think that it looks like the
Speaker 1: Madonna on it. As I'm sure a lot of people know.
Speaker 1: This was that on eBay. I think it was. I
Speaker 1: think it was at some point, Yeah it was. I
Speaker 1: mean it was at least after item because people thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that looks like the Madonna burned into the grilled cheese sandwich. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Our minds cannot help but make order out of chaos.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's how we survive. It's you need to
Speaker 1: be able to navigate this this world that we live
Speaker 1: in and and put one in two together when in
Speaker 1: ways that can often save a life. That can allow
Speaker 1: us to get to work at all. Uh, you know, um,
Speaker 1: it ends up ends up being little things like you
Speaker 1: you know that that when you when you feel that
Speaker 1: kind of weird wind coming down the train tracks at
Speaker 1: a at a subway or train station, you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the trains about to get here. But then that's a
Speaker 1: very logical one plus two equals three. But then in
Speaker 1: other cases, uh, this ends up becoming what is called
Speaker 1: a type one error where we end up um um
Speaker 1: looking for signs that putting putting signs together that don't
Speaker 1: really add up, but but we just think they do.
Speaker 1: So Yeah. Actually, there's a Scientific American article called patternicity,
Speaker 1: Finding Meaningful Patterns and meaning Less Noise, and Michael Shermer wrote,
Speaker 1: our brains are involved pattern recognition machines that connect the
Speaker 1: dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we
Speaker 1: think we see in nature. Sometimes a really is connected
Speaker 1: to be sometimes it's not. When it is, we have
Speaker 1: learned something valuable about the environment from which we can
Speaker 1: make predictions that aiden survival, survival, and reproduction. Unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: did not evolve a Bologney detection network in the brain
Speaker 1: to distinguish between true and false patterns, and I love that.
Speaker 1: I thought, Yeah, we really do need a Bologney detection
Speaker 1: network at this point. Yeah, I mean, it basically comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that that randomness just doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit well with us. We don't we don't like the
Speaker 1: idea of randomness. And ultimately, as many critics have pointed out,
Speaker 1: like even a really chaotic system, there's there's order going
Speaker 1: on in it, uh, And you can find order in
Speaker 1: that system, but it's not always going to be in
Speaker 1: in a predictive way. And this is called adventitious reinforcing. Again,
Speaker 1: it's that accidental association between an outcome and whatever you're
Speaker 1: doing at the time. Um So again you see that,
Speaker 1: you know, people not change gene their dirty socks because
Speaker 1: the big game is coming, and that's what they did
Speaker 1: last time, and surely if they don't wear those same socks,
Speaker 1: they will lose. Right. I wore dirty socks and my
Speaker 1: team one. Therefore, my dirty socks altered physical reality, broke
Speaker 1: every law of physics, and somehow made that team win. Therefore,
Speaker 1: I need to make sure that I wear the same
Speaker 1: dirty socks next week. But but now in these cases, well,
Speaker 1: why not apply even more scrutiny to it and realize,
Speaker 1: my socks need to be the same level of dirty
Speaker 1: they are now, if they're more dirty, then maybe it'll
Speaker 1: tip the balance. And then he ends up this like complicated. Well,
Speaker 1: that's when it becomes a problem, because that's when you
Speaker 1: can really kind of screw yourself, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: what is first a talisman to kind of help you
Speaker 1: through psychologically, when it becomes an obsession, then becomes obsession,
Speaker 1: and then you could really kind of throw your your game,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Um, I thought it was really interesting
Speaker 1: that behaviors DF Skinner took this this up with pigeons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he put a few half starved pigeons in a
Speaker 1: box and put food pellets down a shoot at random intervals,
Speaker 1: and the pigeons began to think, or at least he
Speaker 1: thought this, because who knows what pigeons think, but he
Speaker 1: assumed that whatever they did when the food arrives somehow
Speaker 1: caused the food to arrive. So this is like they're
Speaker 1: doing like little circles and stuff, right. Yeah. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: said that one bird was conditioned to turn counter clockwise
Speaker 1: about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements
Speaker 1: and another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the
Speaker 1: upper corners of the cage. A third developed a tossing response.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of funny, like I don't like to
Speaker 1: think of of myself as a pigeon, but you know,
Speaker 1: looking at my past behavior and attaching meaning to things
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have a meaning. It is sort of like
Speaker 1: we're all pigeons, you know, in a cage making these
Speaker 1: weird ritualistic turns to try to affect our environments. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's really interesting. This is from a BBC article
Speaker 1: Go figure why we think rituals can influence outcome? They
Speaker 1: say the experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort
Speaker 1: of superstition. The bird behaves as if there was a
Speaker 1: alsal relation between his behavior and the present presentation of food,
Speaker 1: although such a relation is lacking. Huh. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it reminds me a lot of our previous research into
Speaker 1: build sea bows too, and certainly some of the literature
Speaker 1: makes this correlation as well, because like it could be
Speaker 1: something as simple as, uh, I need to be at
Speaker 1: my mental best for this meeting that I have every week, right,
Speaker 1: so I must have a you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: an energy drink to boost me up. And then to
Speaker 1: what extent is that energy drink actually increasing your performance?
Speaker 1: And to what extent is it just a ritual, a
Speaker 1: superstitious ritual that has to take place for you to
Speaker 1: feel confident enough to go into the uh in into
Speaker 1: the meeting, to get into the mindset. And um, and okay,
Speaker 1: you can make an argument that yeah, you're getting a
Speaker 1: caffeine boost, but now replace the energy drink with a
Speaker 1: like a rosary or you know, or or or a
Speaker 1: little amulet or or some sort of magical ceremony you
Speaker 1: perform on the floor in front of the meeting room
Speaker 1: with chalk and candles or something. Yeah, And then I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking that. And then you're on your way to
Speaker 1: O C D and you start tapping three times you
Speaker 1: know which you know again, I'm that's it's just interesting
Speaker 1: to see how you can take this to the nth
Speaker 1: degree and your behavior really begins to splinter a little bit,
Speaker 1: this little spinking of knocking and splinters. There's the whole
Speaker 1: knock on wood thing, right, That's like a classic example.
Speaker 1: I don't think of myself as being particularly superstitious. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll be talking about something and I'll accidentally, you know,
Speaker 1: mention some sort of horrible thing that has not happened yet,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be like, knock on wood, and then
Speaker 1: i have to find wood to knock on, like it
Speaker 1: just makes sense. Likewise, um, the whole salt shaker thinks,
Speaker 1: spill some salt and you have to throw some over
Speaker 1: your shoulders. I'll find myself doing that just because I'll
Speaker 1: have spilt a little salt, and I'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't hurt, right, So I'll take like one grain
Speaker 1: and then ill position myself so that if I throw
Speaker 1: it over my shoulder goes into the sink. So that
Speaker 1: way I'm also not making a mess. I think the
Speaker 1: roots of that are in um shamanism too, right, I
Speaker 1: think that it's like to dispel evil spirits somehow. I
Speaker 1: have that watched and one of one of the knooks there.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm sure that many different cultures have
Speaker 1: many different interpretations for the whole salt trick, but nonetheless
Speaker 1: it's it's a ritual, right right. But but then again
Speaker 1: I would not freak out of idea. Oh. Another one
Speaker 1: is the of course, the stepping on a crack and
Speaker 1: breaking your mother back, which I don't think there's ever
Speaker 1: been a proven cause and effect with that. Like every
Speaker 1: nobody actually believes that. I mean with anyone with a
Speaker 1: with a healthy mind is not believe that they're they're
Speaker 1: they're stepping on a crack will somehow harm the vertebrae
Speaker 1: of their mother. But people do get been out a
Speaker 1: shape about it if they in some cases, so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just if you end up letting it the um
Speaker 1: get ahead of you. Yeah, and you see this too,
Speaker 1: UM in extreme cases where if someone has lost a person,
Speaker 1: they start to see signs everywhere of you know, they
Speaker 1: might have I think I read something about it was, uh,
Speaker 1: one guy who lost his son. His son committed suicide,
Speaker 1: and he began to see signs in everything open clothes,
Speaker 1: pin and uh, you know all these different UM like
Speaker 1: forty five degree angle UM shapes, and he began to
Speaker 1: think that that was pointing to the time that his
Speaker 1: son had committed suicide. And again, this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is us trying to have some sort of mastery
Speaker 1: over what we can't control. Probably helped him a lot
Speaker 1: to think, well, okay, there's there are signs that are
Speaker 1: pointing just to at least tell me some aspect of this,
Speaker 1: you know, the time that my son passed away, or
Speaker 1: to get a better rooted feeling and what had happened. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to see it in that way. You
Speaker 1: can take that situation trying to master something you can't control,
Speaker 1: and if you you transpose it back on some like
Speaker 1: prehistoric setting. You know, some guy drugging through the woods, um,
Speaker 1: and there is a predator out there that because will
Speaker 1: eat him, or a human enemy, and your amount of
Speaker 1: control over what is going to happen depends on your
Speaker 1: ability to pick up signs in the world around you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the sound of footsteps in the dark, the
Speaker 1: the the the silhouette of something against the moonlight, things
Speaker 1: of that nature. Right, And so we're sort of hardwired
Speaker 1: to air on that side, right, which is better for us,
Speaker 1: because that's why we have gotten to the point where
Speaker 1: we have right as a species. Because then it's a
Speaker 1: false alarm and that's when we laugh. Right. According to
Speaker 1: some of the theories about laughter, that laughter is a
Speaker 1: response to say, oh, I'm not really in physical danger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a release, yeah, and in a signal
Speaker 1: to to other humans that oh, we're not really going
Speaker 1: to die. It's all right. That wasn't really a savor
Speaker 1: tooth tiger, but better to be sure are on the
Speaker 1: side of cushion, like you said. That's right, that's I
Speaker 1: mean behind every good joke is a is a false
Speaker 1: savor tooth tiger in a way, right right, because it's
Speaker 1: a benign threat. Trust no one. You heard it here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. When we come back, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Lady Luck and if she actually exists. This podcast
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow
Speaker 1: and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is
Speaker 1: the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot
Speaker 1: com and explore the answers to life's questions. All right,
Speaker 1: and we're back. So Lady Luck LEO are not okay? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: Luck is not a lady tonight. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a nice thought, right, likes a lady. She's
Speaker 1: shining down on you. She has a bugle beat address
Speaker 1: on Thank you for resisting the urge to break into song.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mean, this podcast isn't over yet, okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is an article called Apophania Definitions Analysis by Sandra L.
Speaker 1: Hubsurance really interesting. She talks about the gambler's fallacy and
Speaker 1: holds that in a sequence of random events, past outcomes
Speaker 1: influence future outcomes. The off sided example is a game
Speaker 1: of roulette where black has spun seven times in a row.
Speaker 1: The players around the table begin to all the players right.
Speaker 1: They all begin to feel that their luck is running
Speaker 1: out and that the red is due soon or um,
Speaker 1: that they're having a streak in black will continue to appear,
Speaker 1: when in actuality, the probability of the next spin being
Speaker 1: read or black is the same as ever. And this
Speaker 1: you see this all the time at gambling. Right, there's
Speaker 1: this idea that you know you've got good luck tonight. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of what gets us in trouble. And
Speaker 1: according to psychology today, luck really actually wouldn't exist without
Speaker 1: the following conditions. Okay, rabbit foot, rabbit foot, troll. You
Speaker 1: have to take a chance in order to have a chance,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a thing. It's like if you
Speaker 1: don't play the lottery, you cannot win the lottery exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: But it Studies show that when outcomes are in certain
Speaker 1: pessimistic people tend to avoid these situations and are averse
Speaker 1: to to risk, right, whereas optimistic people don't. So optimism
Speaker 1: is actually necessary to take a chance. So not only
Speaker 1: you have to take a chance, but you kind of
Speaker 1: have to be like, yeah, hey, I'm taking a chance, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So it goes back to that optimism boost we're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: guy walks in to a casino. Guy feels confident enough
Speaker 1: to play roulette because he has uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: statue of in his pocket. Well, and even just map
Speaker 1: back to other times in your life where you felt lucky, Um,
Speaker 1: something happened. The sequence of events. I always think about this,
Speaker 1: always feels like something builds up to something happening, and
Speaker 1: always like, oh, yeah, there's this pattern here. But the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is is that I happened to
Speaker 1: be in the right place at the right time, But
Speaker 1: not only that I was open to the experience and
Speaker 1: had put myself out there or whatever it was. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I think about it. You've got
Speaker 1: the gambler, Yes, who's who. Yeah, they did it. They gambled,
Speaker 1: so therefore you know they got a fifty percent chance
Speaker 1: whether or not they're going to make good on it.
Speaker 1: But that's about the same for anything that you try
Speaker 1: to do in your life. Right, more or less, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess what you're trying to do. Sometimes there's like
Speaker 1: ten percent, sometimes seventy five percent, but still there's there's
Speaker 1: a chance. There's a chance. Yeah. Uh. The second thing
Speaker 1: is unexpected actions come from the subconscious. Your unconscious brain
Speaker 1: may actually see what you need to see before your
Speaker 1: conscious brain knows. This is called preemptive perception, and it's
Speaker 1: thought to be subserved by part of the prietal lobe
Speaker 1: of the brain. Yeah. This reminds me of of priming memory,
Speaker 1: which is one of the types of memory that we've
Speaker 1: talked about in the past, where you're not consciously aware
Speaker 1: of it, but your brain is forming this, uh, this pattern.
Speaker 1: It's associating one thing with the other. Yeah. And it
Speaker 1: actually reminds me too of the free Will podcast that
Speaker 1: we did when we talked about this the eye of ourselves,
Speaker 1: the conscious that we are the last person to actually
Speaker 1: learn what our decision is because all of these other
Speaker 1: things are taking place in our brain that could have
Speaker 1: been culminating there for an hour, year, or even ten years,
Speaker 1: and so there's things going on under the surface that
Speaker 1: are really helping to inform you. So we're like the
Speaker 1: false memory, where we pointed out that some experiments have
Speaker 1: have suggested that our brain knows when even though we
Speaker 1: think a false memory is true, deep down our brain
Speaker 1: knows of that false memory is false. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's somewhere there's a center there in our
Speaker 1: brains that can sniff out the difference. So at conscious level,
Speaker 1: we're not putting one in two together about what's about
Speaker 1: to happen. But below the surface, our brain already knows
Speaker 1: or thinks it knows what's going to happen. And this
Speaker 1: has been observed in studies in m r I, which
Speaker 1: is really fascinating. So the psychology today is basically saying
Speaker 1: when you next sense something that you should actually take
Speaker 1: it seriously before you discard it, because there is some
Speaker 1: sort of basis that instinct coting in right exactly. The
Speaker 1: third is to tap into your empathy. Oh yes, this
Speaker 1: is of course, especially when you're dealing with other people.
Speaker 1: You're playing a game poker or even something like you know,
Speaker 1: scrabble or words with friends or or anything where there
Speaker 1: is a human intellect on the other side. You're in
Speaker 1: a hot water situation to write now that we're advocating
Speaker 1: hot water situations. Yeah, like don't play scrabble in a
Speaker 1: hot tube or be a jewel thief and then get caught.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, but but yeah, there's a there's a it's
Speaker 1: a of cat and mouse and uh, and so you're
Speaker 1: you're inevitably thinking about trying to think, what is the
Speaker 1: other guy or gal? Uh, thinking about let me try
Speaker 1: and put myself in their shoes so I can outsmart them.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is basic. This is a basic h
Speaker 1: principle of our cognitive architecture because so much of our
Speaker 1: of our of our brain activity is devoted to trying
Speaker 1: to determine how, say a prey animal is going to react,
Speaker 1: how an adversary is going to react, how even how friends, enemies,
Speaker 1: loved ones, uh, etcetera, how they're going to react, and
Speaker 1: so so that we can tailor our behavior to reach
Speaker 1: the most desired outcome. That's right. And this is theory
Speaker 1: of mind. And we talked about it and I Don't
Speaker 1: Eat the Panda podcast, which is basically like here, you know,
Speaker 1: the ability to anticipate someone else's actions also necessitates empathy,
Speaker 1: which in that case is why you sometimes feel bad
Speaker 1: about eating an animal. Right, that's the really boiled down
Speaker 1: point there. But when when you're trying to sway your luck,
Speaker 1: you have to be able to, like you say, inhabit
Speaker 1: the other person's mind, and your brain can actually mirror
Speaker 1: the intentions of people automatically. It's able to do this right,
Speaker 1: and we already know this through mirror neurons. Of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then it's going to be i don't know, five ten
Speaker 1: years out before they can really you know, tinker without
Speaker 1: to make it exact. But people who are more empathetic
Speaker 1: may be better at doing this, and doing so may
Speaker 1: accurately read what another person is going to do. And
Speaker 1: again this could come in really handy with poker um.
Speaker 1: On the flip side too, you can actually influence the
Speaker 1: outcome of a situation by not radiating something like nervousness,
Speaker 1: which would tip off the other person that they need
Speaker 1: to observe you closer and they need to search for
Speaker 1: a threat. So if you affect a sense of calm,
Speaker 1: you're essentially faking it until you make it, which might
Speaker 1: feel like luck to you, you know, if the other
Speaker 1: person is buying into it, when in fact it's just
Speaker 1: this complex symphony of functions in your brain that's being
Speaker 1: carried out and you feel like you just got luck now.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to uh, to thinking about our
Speaker 1: brain's ability to perceive connections and make connections between um
Speaker 1: sometimes diverse ideas, I can't help but think of creativity.
Speaker 1: Which so much creativity, especially in the world where everything
Speaker 1: has been done before, A lot of it boils down
Speaker 1: to can I create new patterns? Um? You know, such as, oh, I, well,
Speaker 1: the Exorcist has been done, Madman has been done. But
Speaker 1: what if you combine the two and you have an
Speaker 1: exorcist whose whole job is to remove advertising demons from
Speaker 1: you know something that Draper is the exorcist or the demon?
Speaker 1: Is he Reagan the child or both? I don't know this,
Speaker 1: This idea hasn't been We'll get back to that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to give away the seekers who haven't
Speaker 1: pitched it yet. But but yeah, so, so our creativity
Speaker 1: works on establishing new patterns and new connections. So I
Speaker 1: can't help but make the comparison here between that and
Speaker 1: un luck. Yeah years uh. Peter Bruger as a neurobiologist,
Speaker 1: and he's actually talked about this before and He says that, UM,
Speaker 1: this this ability of creative people to link and associate
Speaker 1: UM and prefer remote over close associations to the heart
Speaker 1: of it really gets to the heart of UM creative thinking,
Speaker 1: but also paranormal and delusional thinking. UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: not that do you have to be delusional in order
Speaker 1: to be creative and make all these patterns, but certainly
Speaker 1: there is a parallel there, right in both instances that
Speaker 1: person is willing to really sort of run with the
Speaker 1: pattern recognition that they see and spin off even more patterns,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, one of the hallmarks of creativity
Speaker 1: is we've have researched before, right, and not just fiction
Speaker 1: based creativity, which is an easy model to turn to,
Speaker 1: but creativity, say in a business setting where one is
Speaker 1: seeing patterns in the in the marketplace and in consumer reactions,
Speaker 1: so that kind of thing. Bruger also found a connect
Speaker 1: and with dopamine actually and levels of dopamine and people.
Speaker 1: He found that people with high levels dopamine are more
Speaker 1: likely to find significance and coincidence and pick out meaning
Speaker 1: and patterns where there are none. In one trial in
Speaker 1: which skeptics and paranormal believers were both given the drug
Speaker 1: el dopa, which increases dopamine. The skeptics began to perform
Speaker 1: much more like the believers in the studies, which I
Speaker 1: think is fascinating. Wow. So huh, that's that's really fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because and I mean I instantly think of like pumping
Speaker 1: this into say a church environment, right, temple or environment
Speaker 1: to just to sort of give people a little extra
Speaker 1: boost to get superstitious about things. It also makes I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of like someone going into see
Speaker 1: a priest and uh and being like, father, um, I'm
Speaker 1: having a crisis of faith, and then the the priest saying,
Speaker 1: we'll hear, take take three of these. The should boost
Speaker 1: dopamine levels and then you'll be good. You know. Wow,
Speaker 1: Can I mean, can it get down to that level? Maybe?
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean not not that you could take
Speaker 1: a pill and it would I think, you know, completely
Speaker 1: change the way you view the world. But what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here does underline some of those connections though
Speaker 1: between between the chemical us. At a chemical level, it
Speaker 1: does inform our perception, right. Yeah, So it's kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1: I did want to make another um mentioned about creativity. Again.
Speaker 1: This is from Sandra Hupture's article. She was talking about
Speaker 1: creative innovation, and she was saying, you know again, it's
Speaker 1: the ability to understand and express novel orderly relationships, and
Speaker 1: that in fact, Leonardo da Vinci advised his students to quote,
Speaker 1: look at walls covered with many stains, with the idea
Speaker 1: of imagining some scene you will see in its similarity
Speaker 1: to landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, broad
Speaker 1: valleys and hills of all kinds, also battles and figures
Speaker 1: with lively gestures and strange faces and costumes, in an
Speaker 1: infinity of things which you can reduce to separate and
Speaker 1: complex forms. Well it This, of course brings to mind constellations.
Speaker 1: The pattern of the stars, of course intensely complicated, as
Speaker 1: we discussed in the Shark episode. You know, NASA has
Speaker 1: has complicated algorithmic programs designed to look at the night
Speaker 1: sky and uh and make sense of it all, But
Speaker 1: constellations very ancient form of looking at the stars and
Speaker 1: making sense of it by at times desperately forming patterns
Speaker 1: amid those stars to create something like a big dipper
Speaker 1: or a guy with a bow and arrow, or or
Speaker 1: you know, or some sort of an animal. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I think you can. You can definitely make the case
Speaker 1: that as out there, some of those connections are those
Speaker 1: connections allowed have allowed us to more easily make sense
Speaker 1: of a very complicated system in the sky up. Well,
Speaker 1: and once you name it, don't you feel some sort
Speaker 1: of level of comfort to mean? Um, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: Again it's that trying to master your environment and feel
Speaker 1: some sort of sense of control. Um. And it's not
Speaker 1: all bad, right, I mean patterns again, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: what's scotten is so far here. Yeah, it's a there's
Speaker 1: we we live in a chaotic system, but one where
Speaker 1: there are patterns. So it's just to the extent that
Speaker 1: we can avoid overcompensating and and just finding um, unreal
Speaker 1: patterns everywhere. Um. Then I think I think of it
Speaker 1: as the continental drift theory. Like this is a good
Speaker 1: example of why patterns are important. People looked at maps
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, wouldn't that piece fit here? I
Speaker 1: bet those two places we're joined together. Yeah. Alfred Wagner,
Speaker 1: who's actually the person who recognized the puzzle piece like
Speaker 1: fit of a continents and came up with this theory
Speaker 1: in part because of this pattern recognition, and of course
Speaker 1: that sat around like thirty years or so before someone
Speaker 1: was able to corroborate it with you know, other information.
Speaker 1: But again, I mean, this is this is stuff that
Speaker 1: can lead to breakthroughs if harnessed right, or it can
Speaker 1: lead to cravy conspiracy theories that seriously damaged ones reputation.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, yeah, it's a it's a power. You just
Speaker 1: have to learn to use it, right. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's see if any of our listeners got lucky and
Speaker 1: I drew their listener mail. Here, let me turn it. Oh,
Speaker 1: here we go. Let me grab this one, all right,
Speaker 1: This one is from Lisa. Lisa says, may I start
Speaker 1: off by saying that I absolutely love this podcast and
Speaker 1: all the others from how Stuff Works. So see that
Speaker 1: one was kind of like, oh, and then she likes
Speaker 1: all of them stuff. I mean, but they're all great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are awesome. Um, I like it would have been
Speaker 1: different if she said, let me say that I absolutely
Speaker 1: love this podcast and all other podcasts, then it feels
Speaker 1: a little less special. But but no, no, yeah, we
Speaker 1: take it and take your complict. I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to make my quarter five minute drive to from work
Speaker 1: every day without it. I recently listened to your podcast
Speaker 1: on miss aphonia, and I was rather surprised this is
Speaker 1: an actual diagnosed problem. I have never been to the doctor,
Speaker 1: nor have I ever seen the need to be checked out,
Speaker 1: because it has never really bothered me, bothered my day
Speaker 1: to day life. But every time I hear someone's fingernails
Speaker 1: scratching a car, I definitely react to it. I do
Speaker 1: not simply cramp like you would if you heard a
Speaker 1: chalkboard being scratched. Instead, it makes me feel like I
Speaker 1: am going to turn inside out. We did a podcast
Speaker 1: on that too, cry having done on a yet uh
Speaker 1: and or gag, I think that's coming up all At
Speaker 1: the same time, my younger brother used to do this
Speaker 1: just a mess with me, and I would suddenly become
Speaker 1: insanely in rage and start screaming for him to stop. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this isn't a normal sound you hear when you were
Speaker 1: around others, so it is never really interfered with my life.
Speaker 1: I have always thought it was just a strong reaction
Speaker 1: to a bad sound, but now I can't help but wonder.
Speaker 1: Obviously I'm not going to try to diagnose myself. I'll
Speaker 1: leave that up to a doctor. Thank you guys for everything. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah. We received a lot of cool comments
Speaker 1: regarding that episode we did, and it was really interesting
Speaker 1: to hear people's take some of the things that really
Speaker 1: bother them. And so many people have discovered that, yeah,
Speaker 1: they could put a name to this, whether or not
Speaker 1: you know it was actually dignified doctor yet or And
Speaker 1: it opened up the door for a lot of listeners
Speaker 1: to write in just tell us about annoying things in
Speaker 1: their life, like my uncle as the worst cough let
Speaker 1: me tell you so specific, like the one about the
Speaker 1: socks in the carpet, And even though I'm like a person,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, that doesn't annoy me at all, But
Speaker 1: it definitely makes sense when you look at the at
Speaker 1: the overall issue in the overall condition. Yeah. Um. We
Speaker 1: also heard from Don. Don writs and says, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you did a podcast on misophonia. My whole life,
Speaker 1: I've been told I have sensitive innards because of my
Speaker 1: aversion to all sorts of sounds. I have always thought
Speaker 1: that my husband was just a loud person. While he
Speaker 1: does suffer from with allergies, of which causes him to
Speaker 1: sometimes chew with his mouth opens a snort and breathe loudly.
Speaker 1: My reaction is to want to run away or punch
Speaker 1: him in the face. I am absolutely guilty of looking
Speaker 1: him right in the eye to mock him with obnoxious
Speaker 1: chewing and slurping noises so embarrassing. Funnily enough, when my
Speaker 1: children were very small, I love the tiny sounds made
Speaker 1: while eating as they ate. However, the sounds are becoming,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, irritating. I also can't
Speaker 1: stand the sound of water running out of a faucet,
Speaker 1: which is probably why I allow my husband to be
Speaker 1: in charge of the issues. It's nice to put a
Speaker 1: name to the weirdness, thank you. Indeed, it is nice
Speaker 1: to be able to put a name to the weirdness.
Speaker 1: And as we discuss, I think that's the first step,
Speaker 1: at least with with sort of normal, uh you know,
Speaker 1: non clinical cases of this. That's the first step to
Speaker 1: being able to control it, to be able to say, well,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is a this is what's
Speaker 1: going on. This is at least some form of misophonia perhaps,
Speaker 1: and this is how my brain is processing It is
Speaker 1: how my brain is processing information. And if we're aware
Speaker 1: of that, then we're in a better position to be like, well,
Speaker 1: let's not let let me not get that, let they
Speaker 1: get out of hand, let me not yell at someone
Speaker 1: right again. You get to name it and then you
Speaker 1: can control it to an extent. So yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to share anything with us, feel free to contact
Speaker 1: is on Facebook or Twitter. We are blow the Mind
Speaker 1: on both of those and we update those feeds regularly
Speaker 1: with all sorts of cool stuff, and you can always
Speaker 1: drop us an email at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
Speaker 1: new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Staff
Speaker 1: Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
Speaker 1: possibilities of tomorrow.