The Reasoning Test Psychologists Still Can't Explain

0:00 I really really want to talk about a task, a test that basically everyone fails.

0:08 I have a hunch that you won't fail this test, Hannah.

0:12 Um

0:13 Not so sure.

0:13 But we'll see.

0:14 We'll see.

0:15 Let me give you some context first, which I shouldn't normally do because

0:20 in in actual experiments where this task is given,

0:23 people are just there to get their 10 bucks and go.

0:26 And I think that if you hype it up and you tell people,

0:29 "Oh, you got to really think about it.

0:30 Oh, it's so difficult.

0:31 Oh, it's such a tricky one." Then people

0:34 will probably spend more time and get it right.

0:36 Okay?

0:37 We can talk about all of that later, but let's just dive right into it.

0:40 This is a reasoning test, a very simple single question that involves four cards

0:47 that was devised in 1966 by Peter Cathcart Wason.

0:51 And it is basically the test when it comes to studying the psychology of reason.

0:58 All right?

0:59 If you look into the history of our scientific study of human reasoning,

1:04 you basically only find this test.

1:06 The test is called the Wason selection task,

1:10 and it was developed in 1966 by Peter Cathcart Wason.

1:15 Now, today it has been called the most

1:18 intensely researched single problem in the history of reasoning.

1:23 And my two favorite philosophers, researchers of reason, Mercier and Sperber,

1:29 they call it what they actually don't know what to call it.

1:32 This is what they say.

1:33 Is this selection task to psychology of reasoning

1:36 what the microscope has been to biology?

1:40 Or is it rather as the Rubik's Cube has been to biology?

1:45 Just [snorts] kind of baffling and fun.

1:49 Hm.

1:50 Not adding anything really of of any merit.

1:52 Hm.

1:53 So in Wason's original test, only 10% of people got it right.

2:00 If you look across all the studies that have replicated that since,

2:04 you get a number closer to 4%.

2:07 And that's that's not super surprising.

2:09 There are difficult questions out there.

2:12 But with some slight changes, we can make everyone get it right.

2:16 And that is what is so strange.

2:19 So let's begin with the original.

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3:36 [music] This isn't the most I'd say the most famous version of it,

3:39 but this is exactly what Wason gave people back in 1966.

3:43 I'm going to show you four cards.

3:45 Just imagine they're like playing cards.

3:47 Now, on each, there is a letter on one side and a number on the other side.

3:53 Two of the cards have their letter side up, and two have their number side up.

3:59 Now, these are the cards that you see.

4:01 You see a card with the letter A as in alpha, G as in giraffe.

4:09 That famous phonetic dictionary, yeah?

4:11 Oh, it's going to get worse, Hannah.

4:13 The third card has a seven as in 724, and the last card has an eight as in 81.

4:23 A G 7 8.

4:25 Okay.

4:26 Now, what I need you to do is indicate for me which of these cards

4:31 you would need to turn over to judge whether the following rule is true.

4:36 If there is an A on one side, there is a seven on the other.

4:43 To recap for those who are listening, you have four cards in front of you,

4:47 letters on one side, numbers on the other.

4:49 Okay?

4:49 That's true.

4:50 But you can only see one side of a card at a time.

4:53 And what you're seeing is A, G, 7, 8.

4:58 Which ones will you need to turn over to judge whether this rule is true?

5:02 If there's an A on one side, there is a seven on the other side.

5:07 Okay.

5:10 [sighs] That is what this episode is about.

5:11 I mean, I think let's just get into it.

5:13 Let's get into it.

5:14 So So take take some time.

5:17 Also, actually, I want to know how familiar you are with this, Hannah.

5:21 Have you seen this before?

5:23 Okay.

5:23 I have seen a version of this test before.

5:28 And what I should tell you is that initially I think I got it wrong.

5:33 Yeah, me too.

5:34 I also vaguely remember the trap that I fell into, but not completely.

5:39 And I haven't seen this version.

5:41 And so I'm going to have to think it through incredibly carefully.

5:45 Okay, think it through.

5:46 Okay.

5:46 So, right.

5:47 You know that these four cards, a letter on one side, a number on the other.

5:52 Sure.

5:53 Okay.

5:54 Which means that there is a number hiding behind

5:55 the A, there's a number hiding behind the G.

5:57 That's right.

5:58 There's also a letter behind the seven, and there's a letter behind the eight.

6:02 The the rule says, "If there is a" This is what I'm trying to test.

6:05 "If there is an A on one side, there is a seven on the other." Right.

6:10 So, turning over the eight doesn't tell me anything.

6:14 I I mean, I don't really care what's on the other side

6:15 of the eight because even if it it's an A, uh Oh, no way.

6:20 That's not true.

6:21 Mhm.

6:23 Oh, hold on.

6:24 I've got it wrong already.

6:25 Yeah.

6:26 What I was immediately thinking was I want to turn over

6:31 the A to see if there's a seven on the other side, right?

6:35 Okay.

6:35 So Immediately, the first thing you want to do is check

6:38 whether there's a seven on the on the reverse of the A.

6:40 Okay.

6:41 All right.

6:41 So, you're going to turn over the A card.

6:44 Any others?

6:45 To see if there's a seven.

6:46 Turning over the G, I don't think tells me anything because

6:51 I don't really care what's on the reverse of the G.

6:54 The rule doesn't involve G's.

6:57 Okay.

6:58 It says, "If there is an A on one side," which there isn't, so I don't care.

7:01 So I can ignore the G card.

7:04 The seven card, I'd be really tempted to turn over to see if there was

7:08 an A on the other side because then that would be another instance of the rule.

7:13 Right.

7:14 But the way the rule is phrased is that it says, "If there is an A on one side,

7:18 there is a seven on the other." It doesn't

7:20 say you can only have sevens where A's exist.

7:25 Correct.

7:25 So actually, you could have a J on the other side of the seven,

7:29 and it wouldn't violate the rule.

7:30 That'd be fine.

7:31 That would be fine.

7:33 So even though my temptation is to say turn over A and seven,

7:36 actually I think you need to turn over A and eight.

7:39 Because if you turn over eight and it's got an A on the other side,

7:44 that would violate the rule, right?

7:46 Correct.

7:47 You aced it, Hannah.

7:48 I mean, I did, but I almost mucked up at the beginning there.

7:51 Let's be honest.

7:52 Well, it it's amazingly tough like that.

7:55 Now, imagine that you weren't a professor of mathematics at Cambridge

8:00 on a podcast called The Puzzle Almost Everyone Gets Wrong.

8:05 Yeah.

8:06 [laughter and gasps] Yeah, and having seen it before.

8:08 And having seen it before.

8:12 [gasps] Yeah.

8:11 Wow.

8:12 You're right.

8:13 So So I want to immediately jump to a different version.

8:17 Okay.

8:17 This is the exact same problem, except this time instead of letters and numbers,

8:23 the cards are about people in a bar.

8:26 Okay.

8:27 Or a pub for those of you across the Atlantic.

8:29 Thank you.

8:30 You're welcome.

8:31 I'm I'm sure you all were going, "Oh, what's he talking about?" A bar?

8:36 [laughter] A bar?

8:37 All right.

8:38 Look, the deal is that in this case, the cards are about people in a bar.

8:42 And on one side of the card, you have the person's age.

8:46 And on the other side, you have what it is they are currently drinking.

8:51 Okay.

8:52 Once again, you have four cards, and you are a police officer,

8:57 and it's your job to make sure that no one is drinking under age.

9:00 On some of these cards, you can only see their age.

9:02 You're going to have to turn them over to see what they're drinking.

9:04 On others, you only see what they're drinking,

9:06 you'll have to turn them over to get their age.

9:07 This is what you see in front of you, these four cards.

9:10 The age 12, Mhm.

9:12 the age 35, the drink soda, and the drink beer.

9:20 Okay.

9:21 Which ones do you need to turn over to determine whether

9:24 or not the rule is being obeyed that you cannot drink under age?

9:28 Okay.

9:28 Well Well, now is immediately obvious to me that the the person who is 30,

9:33 they can drink whatever they like.

9:34 I don't need I don't care what they're drinking.

9:36 Yeah.

9:37 And And likewise, the person who's drinking soda, I mean,

9:40 someone should speak to their parents about them being in a bar.

9:42 But [laughter]

9:44 I don't care I don't care what they're I don't care what their age is.

9:47 It's not It's not relevant.

9:48 Yes.

9:49 So immediately, it's like, well,

9:51 what's the 12-year-old drinking and who's drinking the beer?

9:53 That's That's

9:54 That's it, right?

9:55 I mean, that's it.

9:56 It's It's the exact same answer as the one before, the first and the last card,

9:59 except it's just so much faster to get to the answer.

10:03 Yeah, what like the the original formulation of that is genuinely confusing,

10:09 extremely difficult to logically work your way through,

10:13 and even when you get there, you're I don't know.

10:16 I'm really like double-checking myself, but that other one is instinctive.

10:21 It's It's automatic.

10:22 Yeah, no one needs an explanation for why you

10:25 need to check the 12-year-old and the beer drinker.

10:28 It's It's almost just evident prima facie.

10:30 Like, I get it.

10:32 Whereas, when we replace the ages and the beverage with numbers and letters,

10:37 it becomes very abstract.

10:40 And, of course, we see this reflect in people's performance.

10:45 When it comes to letters and numbers, like I said,

10:48 four, maybe 10% of people get it right,

10:51 but when it comes to the beer and the ages, everyone gets it right.

10:55 I mean, the people who get it wrong are

10:57 the people who are like just trying to be goof-offs.

11:00 I mean, seriously, it's like It's like this not It's not even really a question.

11:04 So, why is it so much more difficult for us

11:09 to solve the problem when it's abstract like this?

11:11 Is that the key to explaining why this is so difficult?

11:15 Well, as you can imagine, for the last, you know,

11:18 gosh, 50, 60 years, 60 years now, actually, this year.

11:23 Happy birthday, Wason selection task.

11:25 Um You are old enough to drink.

11:27 Congratulations.

11:28 to drink, for sure.

11:29 You're not quite old enough to collect social security in America, though.

11:33 No.

11:33 But, when that day comes, uh we will we will be here for you.

11:38 Researchers have spent decades creating slightly different versions,

11:42 uh including the drinking in a bar version.

11:45 The question is, is this revealing something about an individual's abilities,

11:50 or is it revealing something even deeper just about humans in general?

11:54 Because it doesn't necessarily seem to separate

11:58 the smarty-pants people from the dum-dums.

12:01 Even really smart people tend to perform about as badly.

12:05 You can take, you know, a big Harvard graduating class,

12:08 and they'll struggle with it, too.

12:10 The The things that we know help people solve

12:14 it is making the puzzle be about a social rule,

12:19 or phrasing the question in a way that makes it extremely

12:23 clear that they need to be looking for today's magic word, counterexamples.

12:30 Right.

12:31 So, can I can I ask some questions?

12:32 You can.

12:33 The 4% of people who do get it right, who who are they then?

12:37 In the original formulation of the test, or or some some variant of?

12:42 I haven't actually found a lot of good breakdowns on who those people are.

12:47 Like, literally in the literature, they're often called exceptional people.

12:54 [laughter] Oh, to be an exceptional person.

12:55 I'll I'll show you the papers.

12:56 They're like, if you get it right,

12:58 you're either an exceptional person or uh a lucky guesser.

13:02 There was one paper that said like the best The most

13:05 The most um strong correlation is whether you have taken logic classes.

13:10 Okay.

13:11 So, it's sort of mathematically minded people.

13:13 Exactly.

13:14 It's people who go, "Aha, yes,

13:16 I am familiar with modus tollens and denying the antecedent, and here we go."

13:23 Do you want to give us a quick quick run down on [laughter] modus tollens?

13:26 Oh, yeah, for sure.

13:27 Okay.

13:28 So, I mean, look, the Wason selection task presents

13:31 us with what's called a conditional statement, if then.

13:35 We use these all the time.

13:37 Hey, if you don't call me back, then I'm going to punch you in the nose, right?

13:42 If then.

13:43 All right?

13:43 Now, logicians, people who study the rules of reasoning, people who study logic,

13:49 they have all kinds of fancy terminology

13:51 and symbols for the parts of a conditional statement.

13:55 The if part is called the antecedent.

13:59 It comes before the end, which is called the consequent.

14:02 An example would be, "If it rains tomorrow, I will stay indoors." Mhm.

14:09 "If it rains tomorrow" is the antecedent.

14:11 "I will stay inside" is the consequent.

14:14 So, if this thing happens, the consequence will be this.

14:17 If it rains tomorrow, I will stay indoors.

14:19 Okay.

14:19 So, if you can you can take that single state that that that single sentence,

14:23 "If it rains tomorrow, I'll stay indoors," and sort of chop it in two,

14:27 and then it's almost like there's two logical chunks there, right?

14:30 Raining tomorrow, which it can or or it can be or not.

14:34 It's either raining or it's not.

14:35 And then you've also got you staying inside,

14:37 which you could be or you could not be.

14:39 So, you could sort of imagine like a little grid, right?

14:42 So, it's like whether it's raining or not is on one side,

14:45 and whether you're staying in or not is on the other side,

14:48 and you can kind of go through and go true false,

14:49 true false, true false, true false, right?

14:51 For the different combinations.

14:53 Not six times, though, just four.

14:55 Sorry.

14:56 Which is extremely important, though.

14:58 I'm glad

14:59 back around to the beginning.

15:00 You were so excited.

15:01 Yeah, you you're living on that Pac-Man universe again.

15:04 You went around.

15:06 But, yeah, there's only four combinations here,

15:08 and how many cards are there in the Wason selection task?

15:12 There's four.

15:13 Now, we don't need to make this like a full-on,

15:17 let's get into the weeds with logic thing,

15:19 but let's do it anyway, because our viewers are special.

15:21 And I'll give you another little They're that 4%.

15:23 They're the exceptional people.

15:25 They're They're the 4%.

15:26 So, the antecedent, I think maybe we could also just call it P.

15:30 If you read a lot of logic papers, which I think we should.

15:33 I'll I'll send these to the producers.

15:34 We should put the the best papers about this down in the description.

15:37 P, the letter P, is often used to represent the antecedent.

15:40 The first bit, the if bit.

15:42 The if bit.

15:43 If P, and you use a variable because now it can mean anything.

15:46 If it rains tomorrow, or P could also mean,

15:50 "I eat a ham sandwich." If P, if I eat a ham sandwich, then what?

15:54 I will smile, okay?

15:56 The consequent is often uh symbolized with the letter Q.

16:01 Mhm.

16:01 So, now we can start talking about

16:03 like conditional statements like they're math equations,

16:07 if P then Q, if P then not Q,

16:09 blah blah blah blah blah,

16:10 and we can talk about all the different ways we can work with this statement.

16:15 So, there are two valid ways you can use

16:17 that statement to to to what, draw a conclusion?

16:21 Could you though, these cards,

16:22 could you think of these cards then

16:24 to give your example of "If it rains tomorrow, Michael will stay indoors"?

16:28 Instead of this being A G 7 8, could it be Michael's indoors,

16:33 Michael's outdoors, it's raining, it's not raining?

16:36 Exactly.

16:37 That is exactly what each of the cards in this selection task do.

16:41 They've got P, not P, Q, not Q.

16:45 And so, in order to answer this correctly,

16:48 you need to show that you understand or have an innate ability to use

16:53 a conditional statement in the two valid ways that an argument can be formed,

16:57 and that's where we get to modus tollens and modus ponens.

17:00 I'm probably not pronouncing those right,

17:02 but look, this is about logic, not pronunciation.

17:07 [laughter]

17:06 So, modus ponens is the really easy one, where we say, "Here's a rule.

17:10 If it rains tomorrow, Michael will stay indoors.

17:14 It is now tomorrow, and it is raining.

17:15 Where is Michael?" And they go, "Well,

17:17 he's indoors." That's I can conclude that.

17:19 Yes, that's valid.

17:20 The other example would be you're overage

17:23 and you're drinking an alcoholic drink, right?

17:27 That That would be the other It's true, it's true.

17:29 It depends what the rule is about drinking.

17:31 Okay, the rule is everyone over 21 No, everyone drinking must be over 21.

17:38 I think so, yeah.

17:39 If you're drinking, you must be over 21.

17:41 Right.

17:42 Or or 18 or whatever.

17:44 I didn't I didn't give a year, I just said You smartly did that, but I've

17:48 chose 12 and 35, so that [laughter] Look at that.

17:52 I've anchored us to the wrong side of the Atlantic.

17:55 I know, look at that.

17:56 And I did all the work to use the word pub.

18:01 [laughter] I know.

18:02 I really should have repaid you better.

18:03 I apologize.

18:05 Okay.

18:05 So, so the the modus ponens then is if you're drinking, you're over 21,

18:10 so it's the person with the beer, say, who turns out to be the correct age.

18:16 Yeah.

18:17 Yeah.

18:18 You know what?

18:18 I think the the sentence would be, "If a person is drinking alcohol,

18:21 they must be over like 21 or over." Yeah.

18:24 Yeah.

18:24 Therefore, modus ponens would be, "Hey, they're drinking alcohol.

18:28 Therefore, they must be over 21." I understand.

18:30 Yeah.

18:31 So, so modus ponens is about affirming the antecedent.

18:35 We know that the first the if part is true,

18:38 therefore we conclude the consequent, the the Q part.

18:41 Now, it is invalid It is invalid to have

18:46 the antecedent denied and then conclude something about the consequent.

18:50 Okay, you're going to have to do that one again for me.

18:52 What?

18:53 Okay.

18:53 Modus ponens is when you affirm the antecedent.

18:56 You say, "Hey, the if part is true.

18:58 Therefore, the then part must be true." If, however,

19:02 you are able to deny the antecedent,

19:05 for example, in our raining example, you say, "Well,

19:07 hey, it's not raining." You cannot conclude that I'm not indoors,

19:14 because the rule doesn't say anything about

19:16 other reasons I might stay indoors tomorrow.

19:19 Now, let's talk about the consequent.

19:21 A valid way to operate with what you know about

19:24 the state of the consequent is that if it's denied,

19:28 in our original case, Michael is not indoors,

19:31 then you can conclude that it's not raining.

19:35 All right, let's do this with the drinking example,

19:36 cuz this is the one that I that like

19:38 strangely I find most I can understand most instinctively.

19:42 Okay.

19:42 So, so so to make it to make it really easy, let's say that in this bar,

19:46 it is true, the law is being followed, everyone who's drinking beer is over 21.

19:50 If you're drinking alcohol, you are over 21, and that's true.

19:54 If you're drinking alcohol, you are over the the drinking age.

19:58 So, if you get someone who is not over the drinking age,

20:02 then you can conclude that they can't be drinking alcohol.

20:06 Correct.

20:07 That is modus tollens.

20:08 Right.

20:09 However, Uh-huh.

20:11 if you affirm the consequent, you cannot conclude anything validly.

20:16 Meaning, if you run into a person there

20:18 at the bar and they are over the drinking age,

20:21 then you have no idea what they're drinking.

20:23 It doesn't mean anything.

20:24 You cannot conclude that they are drinking alcohol, because they might not be.

20:27 Got you.

20:29 And that So, then So, then what's that?

20:32 That's not modus tollens or modus ponens?

20:34 No, that's called affirming the consequent, and it is invalid.

20:37 Okay.

20:39 if if all of this sounds really confusing or boring,

20:43 just rewind, listen again over and over again.

20:46 We can get some really cool boosts for the algorithm.

20:51 [laughter]

20:51 Just Just remember that you're here to learn, not to be entertained, okay?

20:54 That's right.

20:55 That's right.

20:56 I'm not going to just do a dance for you.

20:58 I'm going to sit here and mispronounce Latin words for an hour.

21:02 This is a very special episode of the podcast,

21:04 where at the end we give you a test,

21:06 and if you are in the 96% who failed, you're not allowed to listen again.

21:11 You're Oh my goodness, I didn't know that rule.

21:13 Speaking of conditional statements, if you don't understand,

21:16 then you will not listen again.

21:17 The point of all of this is to say that the difficulty of the Wason

21:21 selection task is that the human brain must

21:25 just not have an innate modus tollens ability.

21:29 Like, we have since our evolution into modern

21:34 humans developed and discovered all this stuff about logic,

21:37 but we just aren't born with a logical table in our brain.

21:44 But that can't be true, because the because the bar example is so instinctive.

21:49 It's so instinctive.

21:52 Yeah.

21:51 The words that we're using here,

21:53 the language that we're using to describe this, I mean,

21:56 it does sound super duper complicated.

21:58 It sounds extremely mind-boggling,

22:01 even if the original sentence is quite simple.

22:04 But then, as soon as you put it in the bar example, it's like,

22:06 "Well, I don't even have to think about it." And that is so strange.

22:09 That is weird.

22:10 It's And it's got to be significant, right?

22:12 So, in the late '80s, two researchers,

22:15 Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, famously said, "Guys,

22:19 this whole task and the fact that the social ones are so

22:22 much easier is clearly evidence

22:25 that our reasoning ability evolved for social reasons,

22:31 not for truth-finding reasons.

22:35 So, when it comes to creating different versions of of the Wason selection task,

22:40 the versions that involve really abstract

22:42 stuff and facts are called descriptive.

22:45 Okay?

22:46 It's just the way it is.

22:47 If there's an A on one side, there's a seven on the other.

22:50 Now, if it instead involves a rule, an obligation,

22:55 a duty, something that humans made up, it's called deontic.

23:01 Okay?

23:01 This is I love these words,

23:03 because they're they're both like called rules or laws,

23:06 and yet one you you is about can and the other's about may.

23:10 I don't travel at the speed of light,

23:12 not because I'm not allowed to, but because I can't.

23:16 Okay?

23:17 And so, that that kind of a restriction is called a a descriptive restriction.

23:22 But when it comes to are people breaking the rule,

23:25 we need to make sure people are complying with the rules,

23:28 that's called a deontic rule.

23:31 Where did that word come from?

23:32 I don't know.

23:33 I mean, deon- deontic etymology, cuz where What other words use it?

23:39 Uh it means being needed or necessary from ancient Greek,

23:44 pertaining to necessity, duty, or obligation.

23:47 So, Cosmides and Tooby famously are like, "Guys, this is just human nature.

23:53 We evolved to focus on duties and obligations that we invented ourselves,

23:59 and not on universal, timeless laws of impossibility.

24:05 We care more about may I do this than can I do this." I

24:09 also sort of wonder a little bit about that that that point about truth-finding.

24:13 Because the the example of people in a bar,

24:17 it's partly about social rules and social norms.

24:21 But isn't it also a little bit about truth-finding?

24:24 Isn't it also a little bit about who should you be suspicious of?

24:28 Yes.

24:30 Yes, it is.

24:31 But it's just it's a truth that is human-focused.

24:37 It's a truth in the domain of deontic principles, obligations, duties,

24:41 and rules, and obedience, as opposed to one of an abstract wall.

24:49 If it has an A, it must have a seven.

24:50 Yeah, of course.

24:52 Here's the typical responses people give to the selection task.

24:56 46% of people pick A and seven.

25:02 Okay.

25:03 Okay?

25:04 So, almost half of people do that.

25:06 Uh a third, 33%, choose just A.

25:11 Right.

25:13 7% of people choose A, seven, and eight.

25:20 So, almost everybody is picking A.

25:23 Yes.

25:23 Mhm.

25:24 And then, only 4% of people choose the correct cards, A and eight.

25:30 The other 10% of people choose other combinations.

25:33 Some people choose all of them.

25:35 Some I mean, at that point, um I think it's kind of believed

25:40 that they just either didn't understand or didn't care.

25:42 Or just want to want to finish.

25:44 They They're either the anarchists or [laughter]

25:46 or they're like, "Get me out of here."

25:48 Or maybe they understand something we don't.

25:50 I mean, I'm not going to dismiss them.

25:53 Maybe they're the ones with modus tollens in their own heads.

25:56 Yeah.

25:57 The thing that makes me feel a tiny bit uncomfortable about

25:59 this this idea that humans are not innately good at truth-finding,

26:03 even though I'm sure that these researchers have thought

26:04 about this much more extensively than I ever have,

26:06 is that science really is based on the hunt for truth.

26:11 And okay, admittedly, we have come up with really strict methods,

26:17 like hypothesis testing, in order to do that.

26:20 But does that sort of mean that I don't know.

26:24 Science isn't in innate?

26:27 I'm not sure.

26:28 You That's a really good question.

26:30 And and I'm starting to feel like it's not that innate,

26:35 that we from tests like this, we found that we

26:40 are focused more on our own social lives and ourselves,

26:46 and not on what is the best way to test a hypothesis.

26:50 Now, the Wason selection task makes it pretty clear that we're

26:54 bad at finding counterexamples or even being motivated to find them.

27:00 Like, pretty much everyone chooses the first card A.

27:03 They're like, "I need to see if this is an example

27:05 of a thing that follows the rule." But very few people go,

27:08 "But I should also look for a case where

27:10 the the rule is is not true." Is broken.

27:13 Even though you find a counterexample, you're done.

27:18 If the rule is that there's if there's an A, there's a seven on the back,

27:20 and you can find an A that doesn't have a seven on the back, you're done.

27:23 You can walk away and say the rule's not true.

27:25 I've proved it wrong.

27:27 Now, there's a great study.

27:29 I I I was actually cracking up last night reading about this.

27:32 I don't think it's going to seem that funny today when I tell it.

27:35 But there was a study that was done by Johnson-Laird and Wason in 1970,

27:40 where they had two boxes of shapes.

27:43 In one box, all the shapes were painted black,

27:45 and in the other box, they were all painted white.

27:47 And they told people the people couldn't look in the boxes, okay?

27:50 The researcher sat there with these two

27:52 these two uh masked boxes and was like, "Okay,

27:56 here's this rule, and I want you to test whether it's true,

27:58 whether this hypothesis is true.

28:00 All the triangles are white." Now, tell me what to do and I'll do it for you.

28:06 And people would say, "Oh, the first thing almost everyone says is,

28:09 okay, I'd like to see a white shape." So,

28:12 he reaches in there and he pulls out a shape, and it's a white triangle,

28:15 lo and behold, because literally the only

28:16 thing in the white bin are white triangles.

28:19 He pulls it out.

28:20 And people tend to just keep asking

28:21 for white shapes over and over again, all right?

28:24 And they keep getting a white triangle, and they're like, "I don't know,

28:26 it's feeling like it's pretty proven." And then,

28:29 after a while, they start to go,

28:31 "Maybe I should see a black one." Cuz they start to realize, "Oh, shoot,

28:35 all it takes is one black triangle

28:37 to blow the whole thing to smithereens." But basically,

28:40 no one starts with the black shapes.

28:43 That is so fascinating.

28:44 That is so fascinating.

28:46 I think you've you know, you've seen this in science as well, right?

28:48 I just wrote this um I wrote actually this chapter

28:51 of the book that I'm doing at the moment.

28:54 I wrote this whole thing about Popper, about Karl Popper,

28:57 um and about how he said that the the the key point

29:02 about science is essentially trying to find things that break your own theorem.

29:07 You should be hunting for the counterexamples,

29:10 not for the evidence that supports it.

29:12 There's a The thing is is that it's like it

29:16 it was really really hard for people to do this.

29:19 Uh it's not instinctive at all.

29:21 For almost all of scientific history,

29:23 people were just like, "Let's gather more evidence.

29:25 Let's gather more evidence." And actually, Einstein, you know,

29:28 one of the reasons why Einstein is considered so phenomenal,

29:32 is that when he came up with his theory of general relativity,

29:36 uh as part of his theory, he said, "Here is the way you can prove me wrong.

29:41 This is my idea.

29:42 This is what I think it is.

29:44 There's going to be a solar eclipse in a couple of years,

29:47 and if I am right, the light will bend around the sun in this way.

29:52 You'll be able to see the stars that are normally blinded by the sun's glare.

29:57 Off you go.

29:58 Here is how to find the counterexample.

30:00 And that was a really bold, brave, unusual, crazy thing for him to do.

30:07 It's the same as your black shapes, right?

30:08 People do not go hunting for the black shapes,

30:11 but Einstein was was someone who knew that you had to.

30:15 He did.

30:15 And I think, back to your your original question,

30:18 I think that that meant he was a little bit less human than most of us.

30:23 He was willing to look for counterexamples and was not

30:28 just looking for confirmation of the one kind of thing he

30:31 believed in and wanted to find more of, and finding

30:34 more of them would make him feel more and more confident.

30:36 He was willing to say, "Guys, we got to find a counterexample.

30:39 We've got to find something that shows that I'm wrong.

30:41 Here's one way we could do it.

30:42 Here's another way." The creator of the Wason selection task became

30:46 obsessed with our terrible terrible laziness

30:53 when it came to finding counterexamples.

30:55 Hannah, I want to show you an even earlier game

30:59 that Wason came up with that brings us to, I think,

31:02 the same surprising conclusion about humanity.

31:04 Imagine if he was your dad.

31:05 He'd constantly be tricking you, wouldn't he?

31:07 I know, but like dads are always tricky, but this dad is tricking you

31:11 trickiest trick trick for science.

31:14 I got your nose.

31:15 Why do you think I got your nose?

31:17 Have you not developed body permanence yet?

31:20 Dad, leave me alone.

31:22 Yeah.

31:23 [laughter] Yeah.

31:24 Hey, what's that on your shirt?

31:25 Oh, got you.

31:26 What's wrong with your perceptual apparatus?

31:27 Let's try that again.

31:28 And you're like, "Dad, just prank me to embarrass me,

31:31 not to learn." All right, here we go.

31:33 I'm going to give you some numbers.

31:34 Again, because of who you are, Hannah, you might do really well at this.

31:38 But what I'm going to do is on me.

31:39 That puts more pressure on me.

31:40 Go on.

31:41 Uh good.

31:43 Good.

31:43 I want this to be uncomfortable.

31:45 Look, what I'm going to do is I'm going to name uh triples of numbers.

31:49 I'm going to name three numbers Yeah.

31:51 that uh fit my rule.

31:53 It's a secret rule I have up here.

31:54 And then I I'm going to just give you one example,

31:56 and then I want you to start naming triples,

31:57 and I will tell you yes or no whether it fits the rule.

32:00 Eventually, I want you to be able to tell me what you think the rule is.

32:04 Okay, cool.

32:05 Okay.

32:06 So, here is a triple that fits my rule.

32:09 2 4 6.

32:12 Okay.

32:12 All right.

32:12 Now, I want you to start producing triples,

32:14 and I will tell you if they fit the rule or not until you can guess the rule.

32:18 All right.

32:19 6 8 10.

32:21 Correct.

32:22 That fits.

32:22 Okay.

32:23 7 8 10.

32:26 That fits.

32:28 6 6 6.

32:30 Nope.

32:31 6 7 8.

32:32 Yes.

32:34 I think I've got it.

32:35 What do you think it is?

32:36 I think Hang on, let me try the Let me try one.

32:39 Okay.

32:40 7 6 5.

32:42 No.

32:43 It doesn't fit.

32:44 7 7 8 6.

32:47 No.

32:48 Is it just you going up?

32:49 It's just going up.

32:52 Hannah, you're brilliant.

32:53 That's the first time this game was played on me,

32:57 I never I mean, I'm still playing that game, by the way.

32:59 I just walked away.

33:00 And it wasn't until last night when I read about

33:01 the history of Wason that I was like, "Oh, that's it.

33:04 The answer is that they just have to go up." No.

33:06 I To be fair, though, you primed me because I cuz you said find counterexamples.

33:11 I Yeah, I did.

33:13 Okay, shoot.

33:13 Well, how about this?

33:14 Editors edit this around so it looks like that's the very first thing we did.

33:18 The point is, all right, yeah, I'm still I'm still a bit impressed.

33:21 You did a good job of of at least making

33:23 it look like you didn't know exactly what to do.

33:25 The counterexamples you asked for is what unlocks the whole thing.

33:29 Of course.

33:30 They give you there's so much more information contained within

33:32 a counterexample than there is in something that confirms it.

33:35 That's right.

33:36 Whereas, if you play this If you're listening,

33:38 please go try this with your friends and family today.

33:41 They will thank you.

33:41 It's so fun.

33:42 Um but [laughter] you'll find that what they tend to do

33:45 is they People tend to think of what the rule might be,

33:47 and then they think of other things that might fit that rule,

33:49 and they ask them Yeah.

33:51 again and again and again.

33:52 And they rarely go, "I think the rule is this, so let

33:55 me think of something that wouldn't fit that rule and test it." Now,

34:00 why don't we do this so much?

34:02 Obviously, we don't know, right?

34:04 This is It's all very speculative,

34:06 but I think that Comedies is really onto something with this idea

34:11 that reasoning didn't evolve to help us solve mathematical puzzles.

34:19 It originally evolved to help us work together and explain

34:24 ourselves to each other because humans are just too weak.

34:29 We we need each other.

34:30 We need to cooperate,

34:31 and that's the only way we're going to be able to build and collect and hunt.

34:35 So, we have to be able to communicate what's going on in our heads.

34:39 We don't have to do it well.

34:40 We just have to make sure that people

34:42 trust us and feel like we're playing the game.

34:45 Okay?

34:46 So So, on that topic,

34:49 I would highly recommend Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason.

34:54 This goes really deep into their social theory of reasoning,

34:58 which is that, "Look, we we don't use reasons to come to conclusions.

35:03 We use conclusions to come to reasons.

35:05 We just intuitively feel and want to do things,

35:08 and then when we're asked to defend it,

35:10 we confabulate in our own heads all the reasons we had for it,

35:14 and we believe them." I I think I think what I'm

35:17 I like is is calling to mind about this is that actually,

35:20 when there are situations where people do see counterexamples,

35:24 where which puncture their theories,

35:27 it's not like we innately very happily get on board

35:33 and just like go along with it, you know?

35:35 We we look for reasons why the counterexample doesn't exist.

35:40 I mean, I'm thinking here about, I don't know,

35:42 um uh biology in the sort of 17 1800s,

35:46 where they they spent absolutely years like merrily shooting things

35:51 and pinning butterflies to boards and putting birds in sacks and stuff,

35:56 and deciding that um that, you know,

35:58 birds are one branch of the of the tree of life, and mammals are another.

36:03 And they had it all perfectly neatly categorized these rules.

36:07 And then someone comes along with a platypus um platypus body,

36:11 and they have no idea what to do.

36:12 And rather than saying, "Oh, okay, hang on.

36:14 Actually, this is a really clear counterexample of of of the ways

36:17 in which our rule is wrong," they they cut it up looking for stitches.

36:20 They thought it was a fake.

36:22 You know, they spent They spent [laughter] nearly 100 years being like, "Well,

36:25 this is just it can't can't be possible," rather than rather than it

36:28 saying that platypuses are real?

36:30 I thought they were Frankensteined together by some pranksters like jackalope.

36:34 I mean, that's what they thought, too.

36:36 I've never seen one in the wild, have you?

36:38 I've never seen one in the wild.

36:40 Basically, I'm taking someone's word for it.

36:41 So, you know.

36:42 Uh no, that's that's exactly it.

36:44 Um and and when a whole group of people refuse to accept counterexamples,

36:49 that's when things can get pretty dangerous because the the conclusion that I

36:53 think all of this is pointing at, and this is my opinion,

36:55 is that um we we truly reason, that is,

37:00 we give reasons for things and and and we

37:02 extract knowledge from knowledge we already have,

37:04 which is what reasoning is, to get along and be social.

37:08 And I think that that if you really meditate

37:12 on the consequences of that, suddenly a lot of stuff makes sense,

37:16 like confirmation bias, which is what we've been talking about this whole time.

37:20 The the pursuit of finding things that that prove your hypothesis correct

37:24 and and ignoring or avoiding a search for things that might prove it wrong.

37:28 Confirmation bias, I think, works really well when you consider the fact

37:32 that we're supposed to all be working together.

37:35 As a group activity,

37:37 it actually saves time if each of us goes

37:39 off and finds evidence for our own pet theory,

37:42 and then we come and combine them.

37:43 If instead we didn't do that, if we didn't have a confirmation bias,

37:47 and we all went off and we did all the research and found everything and read

37:51 all these different count It'd be too much work for all of us to do.

37:54 Let's each split the task up.

37:57 Many hands make light work.

37:58 All go and find evidence for what I believe,

38:00 you find evidence for what you believe, and then we'll come together.

38:02 And you've already done a bunch of work on topic A, I did topic B,

38:06 and we combine them.

38:07 That seems to explain confirmation bias and so many of our other biases so well.

38:11 It all I also love that it kind of pushes

38:13 us to this conclusion that humans need to work together.

38:17 We need to listen to people even if we really do not agree with them.

38:21 I I'm also um thinking here about, I don't know,

38:24 I have like a few A few years ago,

38:28 I was I was doing quite a lot of work on vaccine skepticism.

38:32 Oh, yeah.

38:32 I'm working with people who were hesitant about the COVID vaccine.

38:37 Now, I have to be a tiny bit careful about what I say

38:39 about this because um what I will say is they are a vocal community.

38:45 [laughter] Mhm.

38:46 They are.

38:47 Not afraid to tell you what what they think.

38:49 Yeah.

38:49 Um [snorts] I'm just going to tread del- delicately and carefully.

38:52 I I also was uh made lots of mistakes

38:55 in the way that that the whole thing was approached.

38:57 But but the thing that I noticed is well, twofold, actually.

39:02 One is that people the only way

39:06 that people make decisions is in an emotional way.

39:11 It may be that you and I, who are scientifically minded,

39:14 believe that we make decisions based on statistics,

39:17 but ultimately, for us, that is still an emotional story.

39:20 We have an emotional relationship to to data

39:23 and mathematics and science in a whole

39:26 story of our lives that kind of builds up to to that moment.

39:29 And it's [snorts] still an emotional decision.

39:31 It's just a slightly different one.

39:33 I think I think people are not persuaded by data and numbers.

39:37 I think it is is always um fundamentally about the social aspect,

39:41 exactly as you described, [snorts] Because if it was about data,

39:44 then you could show somebody the right piece of data.

39:47 You could show somebody the right combination

39:49 of words and it would change their mind.

39:51 And people do not work like that.

39:53 That's not how it works at all.

39:55 works.

39:55 And the second thing that's called to mind here in what you're describing

39:58 is there's something which is called

40:00 the uh deficit model of public communication, Ah, I haven't heard about this.

40:05 Okay, so um when you're working in an academic institution,

40:09 there's a lot of talk about how do you get your how

40:12 do you get the scientific ideas out to the public, right?

40:15 How do you talk to people about this?

40:17 Especially when you look at situations where people are making choices that are

40:22 maybe counter to their health or maybe counter to public health more generally.

40:25 How do we How do we uh get the information

40:29 out there so that that people make better choices,

40:32 make make choices that align more carefully with what's

40:34 right for them and what's what's right you know overall?

40:38 And for a long time, people thought that what you all you needed

40:41 to do was just give them information, you know?

40:43 That if you educated people to the correct level,

40:47 that if you put information out there, then that would be enough.

40:51 But the problem with that idea is

40:52 that it's called the deficit model because it's

40:56 essentially saying that the only problem is

40:58 that the public have a deficit of knowledge, right?

41:02 They just need the facts.

41:03 They just need the facts.

41:04 And it is the most arrogant, insulting way to I think belittle people

41:12 and to basically imagine that the only reason why

41:16 somebody is not making the same decisions as you

41:18 are is nothing to do with their worldview,

41:21 is nothing to do with their own their own version of reasoning,

41:24 the things that are important to them.

41:25 It's just because they don't know as much as you do, right?

41:29 Right.

41:29 And not only is it incredibly insulting, it also demonstratively does not work.

41:36 You cannot argue or maths your way

41:40 into uh changing people's minds or persuading them.

41:44 It just doesn't work.

41:45 And I think that the the way that you've described all of this stuff,

41:49 the way that people's logical brains are not not

41:53 geared for statistics and data and and abstract descriptions,

41:57 and the way that our brains are geared towards

42:00 the social aspect of aligning with other people and collaborating.

42:05 I mean, it just looking at the sort

42:07 of anti-vax movement against that perspective,

42:10 it just really really really resonates with me.

42:13 Yeah.

42:14 You know, it it's it's kind of frustrating,

42:16 but it's almost a relief to realize, "Oh my gosh, you're right.

42:20 It's It's not that with the right facts and reasons,

42:25 we'll all agree on something because that's not what happens.

42:29 My My favorite demonstration of this was something we did on Mind Field where we

42:33 had a magician come in and act like he was doing a study on appearance.

42:38 And he showed people two photographs at a time and said,

42:40 "Which of these two people would you rather work

42:42 with in an office?" And he would put the people

42:45 the the people that were chosen on in one stack

42:48 and the people that were uh not chosen in another stack.

42:50 And he did this over and over again.

42:52 And then he said, "Okay,

42:52 now I want to go through everyone that you chose to work with and I

42:55 want you to tell me why you picked them." But he was a magician.

42:58 So he used slight of hand to actually slip in a bunch of the people

43:02 that they had dismissed as I don't want

43:04 to work with a person who looks like that.

43:06 And he would then show them the cards and they gave reasons.

43:09 And whenever every time, without exception,

43:11 he would show a face that the person had rejected, they'd go, "Oh yeah,

43:15 so I picked this person cuz I really like the way

43:17 their eyes kind of look like they might they might have

43:18 like good inside jokes." Point is that we use reasons

43:21 to explain ourselves and express who we are at a deep level.

43:24 We don't use them because of anything logical and timelessly true.

43:30 It's It It was so awkward to watch people defend

43:34 and explain why they chose a person that did not choose.

43:37 It was embarrassing for them,

43:39 but yet it was it was uh enlightening for our species.

43:43 Yeah.

43:44 Oh, we're all We're just a mess, Michael.

43:46 We're all just a a big sloshy mess with our squirty water computers.

43:51 That is true and the only way to rise above that is for us to stay a big sloshy

43:59 mess because the average of all of us winds

44:03 up being better than one individual's opinion on their own.

44:07 Yeah.

44:08 I mean, this is the wisdom of the crowd stuff, right?

44:10 That's right.

44:11 And this is something that's really important to me.

44:13 I really believe in it.

44:14 I did an episode about lotocracy and how I

44:17 would really love a government run by random people.

44:22 Like rather than electing people, let's literally just be like, "Look,

44:26 there's a lottery every 4 years and uh you'll just get asked

44:30 to come and be a member of Congress or Parliament or whatever,

44:35 the House of Lords, randomly.

44:36 You'll do your term, you'll get paid,

44:38 there's housing for you." And I think that it would

44:43 be amazing what would happen if you like took such

44:47 a variety of views and had them all kind of average

44:50 each other out as opposed to what we have now,

44:53 which is like, "Hey, we're all kind of in this political class.

44:56 Let's be leaders.

44:57 We all kind of already feel the same way.

44:58 Great.

44:59 Great.

44:59 Great.

44:59 Great." Yeah, there's a superiority that comes with that.

45:02 I think I remember reading something about this in Rory Stewart's book.

45:06 Uh Rory Stewart, of course, of Fresh Eyes Politics fame,

45:08 the the lesser known Go Hang a Llama podcast.

45:14 [laughter] But he is extremely keen on the idea of town halls,

45:17 but also of um civilian panels, civilian assemblies.

45:22 Because I mean, Deliberation days.

45:24 Yeah, deliberation Exactly, why not?

45:26 I mean, this is what we do in the judicial system.

45:29 I mean, it's it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,

45:32 but I but I but I also think that it's the best that we've got.

45:35 And and it does exactly what you're describing.

45:38 It stops pretending that reason is some mathematically pure

45:45 thing that we can march towards and instead accepts

45:50 the messiness of human nature and that we are

45:53 social creatures and social beings and we are totally,

45:57 perfectly tuned through an astonishing evolution to really prioritize that.

46:03 Right.

46:03 Yeah, we evolved to be a group and work together.

46:07 And so collectively, like all voting together,

46:09 I just It's hard for me to find a solution that's better than that.

46:14 That's It's better than asking any particular person

46:18 or type of people to make all the decisions.

46:20 We've got to all come in.

46:21 And there are people who are have terrible ideas.

46:25 And And sometimes people have terrible ideas that that are

46:28 opposite of each other and they cancel each other out.

46:30 And that's like our only hope is to hope that things cancel

46:33 out and what we're left with is the wisest way to go.

46:37 What does your What does your t-shirt say today, Michael?

46:39 I sort of feel like somehow rather we've been Oh,

46:42 it's very reflective of kind of the mood that we've created here.

46:47 [laughter] Everything is terrible.

46:49 With an atomic bomb going off in the background.

46:52 It's not actually the I'm not saying that I feel everything is terrible.

46:56 This is a a troop of performers who collect found

47:01 media footage and they do shows where they show it off.

47:05 And they call themselves everything is terrible.

47:07 Uh they're kind of like they really love this like terrible, forgotten media.

47:12 They're a great group.

47:13 I don't actually haven't checked in on them in a while,

47:15 but uh Basically, what we solved human nature today, is that right?

47:19 I think we probably did.

47:21 it.

47:21 We finally cracked it.

47:22 When it comes to things that we do that are social,

47:25 there's there's another really funny example that I

47:28 I've been wanting to do a longer video about.

47:30 And it's the classic situation where you are at a restaurant

47:36 and the waiter brings your food out and says,

47:39 "All right, enjoy your meal." And you go, "Oh, you too." I mean, thank you.

47:45 Or, you know, you're at you're you're you're dropping off

47:47 your bag at the airport and the gate attendant says,

47:50 "All right, have a nice flight." And you go,

47:52 "You too." Oh shoot, no, I mean, thanks.

47:55 Why do we do that?

47:56 Well, there's a name for those kinds of exchanges,

47:59 those kinds of words we say to each other.

48:02 Back in the '30s, a researcher named Bronisław

48:04 Malinowski called these kinds of exchanges phatic communion.

48:11 Okay.

48:12 Like you're you're breaking the bread together.

48:15 That's right.

48:15 It's communion.

48:17 It's breaking bread together.

48:18 It's showing that I'm here.

48:20 I acknowledge you.

48:21 We're both humans.

48:22 But it's communion done through phatic means,

48:25 which means pertaining to language.

48:27 So when we say things to each other like, "Oh hey,

48:30 how's it going?" I'm not literally asking,

48:33 "Tell me how things are going." In fact,

48:36 a common response to, "Hey, what's up?" or "Hey,

48:38 how's it going?" is, "Oh hey, man." You're literally not answering at all.

48:42 You're You're literally ignoring their question.

48:44 An alien would find that really weird,

48:45 but we understand that I wasn't actually asking you,

48:49 "What is up?" or "How's it going?"

48:51 I'm just saying I acknowledge that you're here.

48:54 We're two social beings who can communicate and we

48:56 just need to say hi to each other.

48:58 We just need to give each other a bit of a nod.

48:59 That's it.

49:00 A little bit of communion.

49:01 A little bit of communion.

49:03 And that's what the waiter does when they say, "Hey,

49:05 have a great meal." You are you're are you're automatically

49:08 ready to to to exchange these things without conscious thought.

49:12 And that's why we absentmindedly respond with you, too.

49:16 I um I have heard uh [laughter] from an American who moved to London.

49:21 He found it extremely confusing when when

49:24 he first got here and people were like,

49:25 "You all right?" "You all right?" He was like,

49:27 "What do you mean, am I all right?

49:28 Am I all right?" And was it me that told you that?

49:30 Because this was my one of my biggest struggles when I first moved to the UK.

49:34 Every time I entered a room, people would be like,

49:37 "You're all right?" And I'd be like, "What's wrong?

49:39 Why do you think something's wrong with me?

49:41 Am I acting weird?" Maybe it was you.

49:45 All right.

49:48 [laughter] But for them Just phatic communion.

49:49 phatic.

49:49 It was just It was just a like,

49:51 "Beep beep, I am human, too." acknowledged, right?

49:53 That's all they meant by it.

49:55 Absolutely.

49:55 And you see this between generations because what

49:57 what is and is not phatic changes over time.

50:00 And so for for like younger people,

50:04 um saying things like, "Oh, no problem." is very phatic, right?

50:07 If someone says, "Hey, thanks." and I I'll just say,

50:09 "No problem." But to to people in an older generation,

50:12 they don't realize that it's phatic.

50:14 They take it literally.

50:15 They listen to those words and they go,

50:17 "No problem." Well, I didn't say it was a problem.

50:20 Why would it be a problem?

50:21 Do you think I'm acting like this was a problem?" And so

50:24 I I thoroughly believe that by the time I'm an old man,

50:27 I'll be at the grocery store,

50:29 they'll bag up my groceries, I'll say, "Hey, thanks a lot." and they'll go,

50:32 "Well, don't freak out about it." And I'll be like, "I wasn't.

50:35 I'm so I'm why why can't you just say no problem?" And they'll be like,

50:39 "Well, no, dude, I didn't I didn't say you were freaking out.

50:41 I just said, 'Don't freak out.' and you didn't, so right?" There is one.

50:46 There is one, okay, that young Londoners say to each other.

50:49 What do they do?

50:49 They go, "Say less." Say less.

50:52 Yes.

50:52 Say less.

50:53 It's like, "But I [laughter]

50:55 I can't take my words back?" The first couple of times I heard it,

50:58 I was like, "I don't think I was saying a lot, actually." I know.

51:02 That's a great example of how phatic things are changing.

51:05 Mhm.

51:06 I wonder what they were in really old times, though.

51:09 I wonder what the phatic communication of of sort of 1865 was.

51:13 Just a bunch of belching.

51:17 [laughter] I don't know.

51:17 I don't know how Why did I just say something derogatory of 1860s people?

51:21 They didn't deserve it.

51:22 We know that they were belching all over the place.

51:25 They were just like, "Yo, hey, bro." Did you find anything?

51:29 I did.

51:29 I did.

51:30 I've got a couple.

51:31 Okay, tell me.

51:32 I hope I see you well.

51:34 I hope I see you well.

51:35 Yeah.

51:36 What say you on such day as this?

51:38 Mhm.

51:39 On a day such as this, sorry.

51:41 How does all at home?

51:44 [snorts] That one That one I I wouldn't be too tripped up by.

51:46 I'd be like, "Ah, it's fine." I hope I see you well.

51:48 respond?

51:49 Did they say fine?

51:50 Actually, how do you do?

51:51 How do you do?

51:52 That I feel like I've you know,

51:54 I sort of feel like the memory of that one has lingered.

51:57 Yes.

51:57 Yes.

51:58 I would not be confused.

51:59 If someone said, "How do you do?" I wouldn't go,

52:00 "How do I do what?" The 1600s is

52:04 the exact century when the the passing blessing,

52:07 "God be with ye." was said so rapidly and often as a phatic communion

52:13 that it permanently mashed together into "God

52:16 be with ye." and eventually, "Goodbye." Goodbye.

52:22 [gasps] I like that.

52:22 You said the 1600s?

52:24 Apparently.

52:25 Wow, hello.

52:26 Goodbye.

52:27 Speaking of reasons, um I think it's pretty interesting as I was

52:31 flushing out what I wanted to talk about today,

52:33 I was like, "Wow, there's kind of three types

52:35 of things we've talked about." We've talked about difficult questions.

52:38 I think the Wason selection task is is surprisingly difficult.

52:42 But there are also questions that we don't answer.

52:45 Phatic questions.

52:47 "Hey, what's up?" I don't actually look up and tell you.

52:49 I don't really Well, you can't cuz you've got top shelf vertigo.

52:52 I can't.

52:53 Exactly.

52:54 Uh just like everyone, when I'm asked, "What's up?" I go, "Oh,

52:57 not much." or "I'm doing well." But there are also answers we don't question.

53:01 And I think we've kind of like been talking about this already.

53:04 It's a a lot of the conclusions and things we believe,

53:07 we just kind of don't want to question them.

53:09 We don't feel motivated to find counterexamples and falsify them.

53:15 Are you Are you talking about like social norms, like social rules here?

53:19 That's right.

53:20 I'm talking about social rules and taboos.

53:22 And I know that you are familiar with these because we've both read this book,

53:26 Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind.

53:29 It's so good.

53:30 Which way did it there?

53:31 It's so good.

53:33 It's spicy.

53:34 It's spicy.

53:35 It's spicy.

53:36 It's spicy.

53:37 And we're not going to discuss it today,

53:39 but we are going to put a little worm in your brain.

53:42 You've got to be careful now, then, Michael,

53:44 because if this section that you're If you're going to the very first example,

53:48 if you If this gets clipped up and does the rounds on the internet,

53:52 you could uh your reputation could be really in trouble.

53:57 I know.

53:58 Look, I'm picking I'm picking the safest one.

54:00 I'm picking the the least spicy one.

54:03 And I again, I think that Hannah,

54:05 we should just bring this up and then in a later episode,

54:08 we'll talk about moral reasoning.

54:10 Good idea.

54:11 Which is not much different than

54:13 reasoning about obligations or abstract mathematical things.

54:17 It all kind of points in the same direction,

54:19 but this is one where you really you really wind up

54:23 realizing that you had a conclusion before you had any reasons.

54:27 We should We should say actually just in general

54:29 this book um this book really interrogates in an extremely

54:35 careful and logical way a lot of the the the moral

54:40 rules that we fully accept as a society.

54:43 Think things that we find abhorrent, things that we find disgusting,

54:46 it really tries to understand what is it

54:49 about that that we have decided is unacceptable.

54:52 That's exactly right.

54:53 And it really looks into why we don't agree

54:57 on what is acceptable and disgusting and good or bad.

55:01 How complex our reasons are.

55:04 It's the called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

55:07 That's right.

55:07 And I think it's it's it's a very insightful

55:11 book that's perfect for the way the world is today.

55:14 But here's an example of a a question and I

55:19 want you to I'm just going to read from chapter one.

55:22 I'm just going to read from chapter Great idea.

55:24 Great idea.

55:26 I'm going to tell you a brief story.

55:28 Pause after you read it and decide whether

55:30 the people in the story did anything morally wrong.

55:35 A family's dog was killed by a car in front of their house.

55:39 They had heard that dog meat was delicious.

55:43 So, they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner.

55:48 Nobody saw them do this.

55:53 Okay.

55:53 So, no one saw them do it.

55:55 The father, let's say, was a professional butcher and none of them got sick.

56:01 Yep.

56:01 The dog passed away due to an accident.

56:04 Was already dead?

56:05 Already dead.

56:06 And you know what?

56:07 Afterwards, the family was really glad they did it.

56:09 They felt that it was respectful and it made them feel closer to the dog.

56:13 So, did anyone do anything morally wrong?

56:16 That's our question to you.

56:17 Let us know in the comments below.

56:19 And I don't know when we'll talk about this.

56:22 There's a lot that I want to learn

56:24 and that we both should talk about before we do it.

56:26 We'll look into moral reasoning someday.

56:29 I think that's a really good idea.

56:31 We can read you more examples from that book as long as you promise, audience,

56:34 not to clip it up and share it around

56:37 as though it's things we actually think cuz I mean, yeah, it tests the bounds.

56:41 But that is a really great example.

56:43 A really great example of it definitely feels wrong,

56:47 but it's quite hard to say why.

56:50 Exactly.

56:51 These are Jonathan Haidt's What did What did he call them?

56:54 He called them harmless taboo violations where he

56:58 knows that there's there's a taboo and he believes

57:01 that it's like this almost intuitive thing where we

57:04 believe it and we provide reasons after the fact.

57:07 So, he constructed these questions where all the typical harms

57:12 and reasons people give for the taboo have been canceled.

57:15 They've been clipped.

57:16 That's not not in this case.

57:17 Not in this case.

57:18 What They didn't kill their dog.

57:19 They just ate it after it accidentally died.

57:21 Nope, no one got sick.

57:22 No one saw them do it.

57:23 Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and you're left going,

57:25 "But I still think it's wrong." But he's taken all the reasons away because

57:29 you never needed the reasons in the first place to believe what you believe.

57:33 You were using the reasons in order to justify your instinctive reaction.

57:38 That's right.

57:38 But we're saying too much.

57:39 We're going to leave it there.

57:41 If you guys have any questions for us, any despicable, disgusting,

57:45 perverted moral quandaries,

57:47 email them right over to us at therestiscience@golhanger.com.

57:52 Absolutely.

57:53 And in the meantime, you can check out our newsletter,

57:56 which I really should have learned by now,

57:58 but I think it's therestis.com/science.

58:02 And we will see you on our episode

58:04 Field Notes that's coming up later in the week.

58:07 And yeah, send us in anything you like.

58:09 Put in the comments also whether you actually

58:11 got the puzzle right at the very beginning.

58:13 And all of those of you say that you didn't, I was joking.

58:16 You can carry on listening.

58:19 [snorts and laughter] All right.

58:19 Take care, everybody.

58:20 Bye-bye.