Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Selects: All We Know About Guessing

Transcript

SYSK Selects: All We Know About Guessing · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's your pal Josh. And for this week's
0:03
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Guessing Works.
0:06
Speaker 1: It was one of those great ideas for a topic
0:08
Speaker 1: that didn't pan out to have much information on it actually,
0:12
Speaker 1: so we just talked a lot about subjective stuff instead,
0:15
Speaker 1: and it turned out well, I think in the end.
0:18
Speaker 1: If I may say so, I hope you enjoy Welcome
0:25
Speaker 1: to Stuff you should know, a production of my Heart
0:27
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
0:38
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over
0:41
Speaker 1: there in the corner. Everybody puts Jerry in a corner,
0:46
Speaker 1: but you shouldn't, uh, and this is stuff you should not.
0:49
Speaker 1: She's the opposite of baby. Jerry's back. She was back
0:52
Speaker 1: from the mall. That's how where she's been. Yeah, I
0:56
Speaker 1: remember we we said that she was at the mall.
0:59
Speaker 1: She was buying a how she's doing all sorts of stuff.
1:02
Speaker 1: But she's back now and things are normal again. Yeah,
1:05
Speaker 1: she was at the beach and she's now eating in
1:09
Speaker 1: front of me. What I ate about an hour ago?
1:12
Speaker 1: Do you want to throw up? Or do you want more?
1:14
Speaker 1: I don't it's it's this weird in between. I'm drawn
1:18
Speaker 1: to the smell, but I'm also full, so I'm kind
1:20
Speaker 1: of like boo, yeah, oh man, what a life? I know?
1:26
Speaker 1: Eating Who needs it? Right? Me? I do too? I
1:30
Speaker 1: love eating, love it? You know what else? I love? What?
1:35
Speaker 1: Really good? Magic? Like illusions? Well where does uh? What
1:44
Speaker 1: do you mean? Because that could mean two different things. Well,
1:47
Speaker 1: let me tell you, um, so I went you mean,
1:49
Speaker 1: and I went to New York recently we saw this show.
1:52
Speaker 1: It's called in and of itself. It's a one man
1:56
Speaker 1: stage magic I guess you could call it that illusion
2:00
Speaker 1: show by a guy named Derek del Guadio. That's how
2:03
Speaker 1: you say his last name. I strongly recommend anyone go
2:06
Speaker 1: see this show. It's it's um I think they extended
2:08
Speaker 1: it through the rest of the year, but it's it's
2:12
Speaker 1: like kind of his life story. It told like through
2:16
Speaker 1: these different um these different acts, and like just the
2:20
Speaker 1: the stuff he's doing is not like, oh man, that
2:22
Speaker 1: rabbit came out of nowhere, nothing like that. It's all
2:25
Speaker 1: much more psychological than that. But the basis of it
2:29
Speaker 1: is that this guy must be just one of the
2:33
Speaker 1: better guesters walking around today. He's just good. He's also
2:36
Speaker 1: like a card shark. It's just a really neat show.
2:38
Speaker 1: It's really original and different. But just to see somebody
2:42
Speaker 1: do something to where they probably are guessing, but they're
2:47
Speaker 1: doing such an amazing job at it that it just
2:50
Speaker 1: appears to be magic. That's one of my favorite things
2:52
Speaker 1: in the world to see, Like when he talks to
2:55
Speaker 1: people and like think of a number except obviously more
2:59
Speaker 1: fun and complex and that. Yes, yeah, and I don't
3:01
Speaker 1: want to give any of it away. I don't want
3:03
Speaker 1: to give it any bit of it away. Like for
3:04
Speaker 1: anybody who's gonna go see it, everyone should go into
3:07
Speaker 1: it fresh. But um, but yeah, just just after you
3:10
Speaker 1: see it, go back and listen to this episode again
3:14
Speaker 1: and you'll be like, oh, yeah, totally now. I think
3:16
Speaker 1: the deal a lot of times with that situation is
3:20
Speaker 1: powers of suggestion, correct. I don't know. I don't know, man,
3:26
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what this guy's doing or not. No,
3:28
Speaker 1: he's not doing like cold readings or something like that
3:30
Speaker 1: like John Edwards. No, no, no, nothing like that. But
3:33
Speaker 1: powers of suggestion in that if you you can lead
3:36
Speaker 1: someone to to think of a certain thing that they
3:40
Speaker 1: then guess I guess, so get it didn't even mean that,
3:47
Speaker 1: but that kind of dives into what we're talking about,
3:50
Speaker 1: which is guessing in general. Um, there's this whole like
3:55
Speaker 1: like science really doesn't have any idea about how we
3:58
Speaker 1: make guesses. All we know is that we are capable
4:02
Speaker 1: of making guesses, and that we make guesses almost constantly,
4:07
Speaker 1: and that like our our brain is basically set up
4:09
Speaker 1: to guests, Like our construction of reality is a series
4:13
Speaker 1: of guesses, most of which pan out to be right,
4:16
Speaker 1: but then can also be terribly wrong, which is what
4:19
Speaker 1: optical illusions prove, you know. Yeah, and uh, I found this.
4:24
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be more interesting than
4:25
Speaker 1: it was initially when I picked this one out, so
4:29
Speaker 1: I was a little disappointed. And then we found like
4:31
Speaker 1: other supplemental stuff that kind of helped it. But in
4:34
Speaker 1: the end it felt a little unwieldy. But I think
4:38
Speaker 1: that's just because of the nature of the topic, Like
4:41
Speaker 1: there isn't a concise beginning, middle, and end to this
4:45
Speaker 1: kind of topic, you know, no, because again science is
4:49
Speaker 1: pretty well stumped, like even and sometimes Chuck, if you'll remember,
4:54
Speaker 1: these can be our best episodes, like unless the ones
4:57
Speaker 1: where there's just like a clear cut, complete, understandable, neat
5:01
Speaker 1: explanation ones are great, and then on the other end
5:04
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, like this one, were the ones where
5:06
Speaker 1: science is just kind of like maybe this is it.
5:09
Speaker 1: I don't know, this could be it. Those are usually
5:12
Speaker 1: pretty good too, So this could this one has has potential. Alright,
5:16
Speaker 1: that's my that's my estimation. Well, I thought it was
5:19
Speaker 1: interesting that in our very own house Stuff Works article
5:22
Speaker 1: and they started talking about um the in days of
5:26
Speaker 1: yore with starting with took took and you know, basically
5:31
Speaker 1: up until the point where we could like you know,
5:35
Speaker 1: measure things or prove things, like, there was a lot
5:37
Speaker 1: of and there's still a lot of guessing going on,
5:39
Speaker 1: but like guessing was a daily survival tactic, right, Like
5:44
Speaker 1: that's how that's how we learned. Should I go this
5:46
Speaker 1: way and fall off a cliff? You know, I'm going
5:49
Speaker 1: to take a guess? Or should I eat this thing?
5:51
Speaker 1: Will it kill me? Or like in the case of
5:54
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark, I remember, um, Clark estimated and you
5:59
Speaker 1: know they're guesses, and we'll get into different types of
6:02
Speaker 1: an estimation is a kind of a guess, even if
6:04
Speaker 1: it's informed and well reasoned. In Clark's case, of course,
6:09
Speaker 1: he estimated. I think he's only off about forty miles
6:12
Speaker 1: when they got to the Pacific. Uh. Oh really, I
6:16
Speaker 1: don't remember that. Yeah, he he estimated four thousand, one
6:19
Speaker 1: sixty two miles when he's off by forty I mean
6:23
Speaker 1: that's remarkable. Yeah, but it wasn't a wild guess. It
6:27
Speaker 1: was Clark being a very smart dude who probably took
6:31
Speaker 1: copious notes. Not probably, he definitely took copious notes. Um,
6:35
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I just never really thought about
6:37
Speaker 1: guessing back in those days. Could you know you could?
6:40
Speaker 1: You could end up a bad guest means the end
6:42
Speaker 1: of view, Yes, But if your friends were standing around
6:46
Speaker 1: watching you guess that that um lizard over there wasn't poisonous,
6:51
Speaker 1: you can just go ahead and eat it raw and
6:53
Speaker 1: then you keel over and die, they learned from your
6:56
Speaker 1: bad guests taking one for the team very much. So yeah,
7:00
Speaker 1: that's before the universal edibility test. Man, you were just
7:05
Speaker 1: have you been going through the archives or something? No,
7:08
Speaker 1: but I wrote that article back then, so that one
7:11
Speaker 1: stuck with me because you know, I mean, we're I
7:14
Speaker 1: thought you were too. I'm cursed with that new information
7:17
Speaker 1: in old information getting squeezed out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
7:23
Speaker 1: should we get into this I guess, So, I'm not
7:26
Speaker 1: I don't mean to do this. I'm sorry what saying
7:28
Speaker 1: I guess? Yeah, it's pretty commonplace, but it does kind
7:33
Speaker 1: of under underscore just how much we do guess in
7:35
Speaker 1: our lives. You know. Yeah, here's all right, let's go
7:38
Speaker 1: ahead and start it with the brain then, because while
7:40
Speaker 1: you're correct in saying that they don't know the the
7:43
Speaker 1: pathways necessarily of a guess, um, all different kinds of
7:49
Speaker 1: all different parts of the brain, not all the parts,
7:51
Speaker 1: but many different parts of the brain are at work,
7:54
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense when you think about
7:57
Speaker 1: what different kinds of guesses can al, whether you're guessing
8:00
Speaker 1: someone's age or guessing you know, because that involves like,
8:05
Speaker 1: you know, recognition with your eyeballs or a memory of
8:10
Speaker 1: someone else who was a certain age who looked like
8:12
Speaker 1: that like you're you know, recall, Uh, there's all different
8:16
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that are lighting up whenever you're
8:19
Speaker 1: guessing something. Yeah, they they think that it's a global,
8:23
Speaker 1: a global phenomenon, right, like brain brain a lely global Yes,
8:27
Speaker 1: exactly right. So, um, there's like some region of your
8:31
Speaker 1: brain that specializes in the particular task at hand. The
8:36
Speaker 1: thing you're guessing about, whether it's say, like volume or
8:39
Speaker 1: like you said, someone's age. UM, that region of the
8:42
Speaker 1: brain that that has to do with say numbers, UM
8:45
Speaker 1: would light up. I think it's the um parietal uh
8:49
Speaker 1: anterior gyrus or something like that that lights up when
8:52
Speaker 1: you're trying to guess someone's age based on how they look.
8:56
Speaker 1: But then that that's just one I think right using
8:59
Speaker 1: the Wonder Machine night. But that's just one functional part
9:05
Speaker 1: of the whole process that the brain is going through.
9:08
Speaker 1: They know that it's there's a number of different regions
9:11
Speaker 1: that are operating at any given point in time when
9:16
Speaker 1: you're making a guess, But they still can't say, well,
9:20
Speaker 1: if somebody's guessing this, this is what's going to happen.
9:22
Speaker 1: Here's the here's the cascade that's going to go through
9:24
Speaker 1: the brain. We haven't reached that point yet. Yeah, they
9:27
Speaker 1: think that, um, if you're guessing about a visual object
9:30
Speaker 1: or subject, then your frontal lobe and occipital lobe are
9:35
Speaker 1: at work. Numerical quantities like how many uh jelly beans
9:40
Speaker 1: are in that jar. That's kind of the common thing
9:42
Speaker 1: they mentioned that like that still happens. Is that sort
9:45
Speaker 1: of thing? Um, you know, who is a jelly bean
9:49
Speaker 1: jar guessing champions? My wife really is, yes, longstanding, her
9:55
Speaker 1: special reasoning is is outstanding well. Spatial reasoning and new
10:00
Speaker 1: miracle quantities are a big part of trying to guess
10:03
Speaker 1: the quantity of something into something right And and so
10:07
Speaker 1: if you, if your brain is kind of specialized in
10:10
Speaker 1: that manner, um, you are probably going to be better
10:14
Speaker 1: at it than somebody whose brain is not right. So
10:17
Speaker 1: Umi would beat me every time. My spatial reasoning is horrific. Right,
10:21
Speaker 1: But um, I'm really good at recognizing faces, so I'm
10:26
Speaker 1: probably better at at guessing the someone's age based on
10:30
Speaker 1: their face um or possibly how they're feeling based on
10:35
Speaker 1: their facial expression than she might be. That's a whole
10:39
Speaker 1: like I didn't even think about that being part of guessing.
10:41
Speaker 1: But the emotional thing of guessing, uh yeah, like someone's feelings,
10:47
Speaker 1: what they're thinking like that, that's a whole different thing
10:50
Speaker 1: than guessing jelly beans in a jar, which is different
10:53
Speaker 1: than guessing someone's age. It's like all lumped into guessing.
10:56
Speaker 1: It's really more varied than I ever considered, right, And
11:00
Speaker 1: so with with UM, well, let's talk about the different
11:02
Speaker 1: different types of guesses you might make. That. So, I
11:06
Speaker 1: think what you just kind of did, Chuck, was you
11:07
Speaker 1: divided UM guesses into UM like buckets, the two buckets.
11:14
Speaker 1: I'm trying to decide what the buckets would be called though.
11:17
Speaker 1: So one bucket would be UM just kind of work,
11:21
Speaker 1: working knowledge, and the other would be say, like emotional, right, Like, so,
11:25
Speaker 1: how many jelly beans are in a jar? Would that
11:28
Speaker 1: be in the working knowledge bucket? What somebody's feeling based
11:31
Speaker 1: on your guests, based on say their facial expression, that's
11:35
Speaker 1: that's emotional um or or intellectual. Yeah, that's why intellectual
11:41
Speaker 1: or emotional buckets. BAM just carved them up. But I
11:45
Speaker 1: think those are kind of like the two categories you
11:47
Speaker 1: can put guesses into. Even though you can break types
11:50
Speaker 1: of guesses down further. Yeah, and uh, breaking them down further,
11:55
Speaker 1: you have your wild guesses. This is when you have
11:57
Speaker 1: no information, no outside input whatsoever. And you know, you
12:03
Speaker 1: often say, this is just a wild guess if I
12:05
Speaker 1: had to guess, Yeah, something like that. You're saying here,
12:09
Speaker 1: listen to me, I can speak has no basis in
12:12
Speaker 1: factor reality or anything like that. Then you have your
12:15
Speaker 1: educated guests, which is in the middle, and that's when
12:18
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of information. Uh. There's a
12:21
Speaker 1: military term that I had never heard of called swag,
12:24
Speaker 1: which stands for um stuff we all get no scientific uh,
12:32
Speaker 1: wild ass guessing okay, which is like a guestimate. But
12:37
Speaker 1: it's a military term by all accounts. Uh. Most people
12:40
Speaker 1: say it started in Vietnam with General Westmoreland. Um. And
12:43
Speaker 1: you will hear military people say swag, and that's when
12:46
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a little information. I'm not just
12:48
Speaker 1: wild guessing here. This is a ballpark educated guess, right,
12:54
Speaker 1: but it's not still less than an estimate. That's when
12:57
Speaker 1: we have a lot more information. Yeah, just a lot
13:00
Speaker 1: more information. But you're you're pretty familiar also with the
13:04
Speaker 1: topic that you're you're guessing at as well. Right. So
13:08
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark, I think both of them, Um, we're surveyors.
13:13
Speaker 1: So they would have had a lot of training as
13:16
Speaker 1: far as you know, judging distance goes. They would have
13:19
Speaker 1: had some information to put together. So Clark coming up with,
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, with an estimate of how why the continent
13:27
Speaker 1: is and just being off by forty miles, like you said,
13:29
Speaker 1: that's remarkable, But if you had had one of us
13:32
Speaker 1: do it, it would have been a wild guess. So
13:35
Speaker 1: it has to do with the training, the expertise really UM,
13:39
Speaker 1: and then the amount of information you have. That's that's
13:42
Speaker 1: what an estimate is. Yeah, And you may not even
13:44
Speaker 1: know that you have information stored away in your brain
13:47
Speaker 1: that you're recalling when you're trying to hazard a guess
13:50
Speaker 1: on something. You might just be uh, you might think
13:54
Speaker 1: it's a wild guess, but you're really kind of picking
13:57
Speaker 1: out something that happened in your past maybe, right. Or
14:02
Speaker 1: another way to look at it is that UM is intuition,
14:05
Speaker 1: which is um. From what I understand, intuition is kind
14:08
Speaker 1: of its own category. But if it's most closely related
14:12
Speaker 1: to any type of those three guests, as we just mentioned,
14:15
Speaker 1: it would be an estimate. And it comes from years
14:18
Speaker 1: and years and years of training UM or exposure to
14:23
Speaker 1: whatever you're guessing at to the point where your guesses
14:28
Speaker 1: don't even seem like guesses. It just seems like for
14:30
Speaker 1: knowledge of what you're about to do. Yeah, Like I
14:34
Speaker 1: used to be really really bad at guessing crowd sizes,
14:39
Speaker 1: but through our live shows, I've gotten pretty good at
14:43
Speaker 1: it because when you go to these theaters, you know
14:45
Speaker 1: how many people are in there, and then you stand
14:47
Speaker 1: in front of that many people. And if you do
14:49
Speaker 1: that enough times, I can now say, like, you know,
14:52
Speaker 1: when people when I'll go to a show or something,
14:54
Speaker 1: they'll be like, how many people you think this place holds?
14:56
Speaker 1: I used to let's say like, I have no idea
14:58
Speaker 1: I know, but now you say, you know better eight
15:00
Speaker 1: or nine people. Yeah, and you're probably pretty close within
15:04
Speaker 1: forty miles. All bad. And that's just because of exposure
15:07
Speaker 1: and learning, right, And that actually brings up a really
15:10
Speaker 1: good point that you can actually get better at guessing.
15:14
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that right after this break. How
15:16
Speaker 1: about that, Chuck, right? Mm hmmm. Alright, So Chuck, you
15:41
Speaker 1: said that, um, that you got better at estimating crowd
15:44
Speaker 1: sizes by just performing at Our Lives shows. Right, So
15:48
Speaker 1: you were terrible at it before, very bad, but just
15:51
Speaker 1: from from exposing yourself to it, going out on stage
15:56
Speaker 1: and exposing yourself to crowds that you could judge the
15:59
Speaker 1: size of Um, and everybody clapped that guy, yeah, Nelson
16:07
Speaker 1: pointed in laughs Portland, Um, you you got better at it.
16:13
Speaker 1: And when it comes to especially but probably both, but
16:17
Speaker 1: especially intellectual guesses intellectual bucket guesses. Um, you can train
16:22
Speaker 1: yourself to get better at it, and part of that
16:25
Speaker 1: is making a guess, getting um, pretty much immediate feedback,
16:30
Speaker 1: and then learning from that. Yeah, like you're wrong, this
16:33
Speaker 1: is what the answer is. It's like anything else exactly.
16:36
Speaker 1: Do that enough, you're gonna get better at it. Yeah. Um.
16:39
Speaker 1: And there's this pretty interesting UM, I guess. That was
16:42
Speaker 1: interesting little kind of sidetrack that the author of the
16:46
Speaker 1: guesses article, Alea hoyt Um, took, and I have to say, no,
16:52
Speaker 1: it is Aliyah. It's not Alicia. No, it's Aliyah. There's
16:55
Speaker 1: no saying Alicia for not only is the C silent,
16:59
Speaker 1: it's not the it's invisible. So Aaliyah hoyt my hats
17:04
Speaker 1: off to her because doing supplemental research for this, there
17:07
Speaker 1: are not a lot of people who are coming up
17:11
Speaker 1: with really substantial stuff about guesses. It's like it's barren.
17:17
Speaker 1: It's probably the least amount of research I've ever encountered
17:21
Speaker 1: in all of our almost thousand plus episodes. So the
17:24
Speaker 1: fact that she put this together, my hats off to her.
17:27
Speaker 1: But a sidetrack she takes is to teach the reader,
17:30
Speaker 1: how to um get better at guessing a jar full
17:35
Speaker 1: of jelly beans? Yeah, well that was exciting, I mean that,
17:39
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, because always, I mean my method was
17:42
Speaker 1: always to pick out a smaller area, like the bottom
17:48
Speaker 1: inch of the jar, count as many as I could,
17:53
Speaker 1: and estimate that and then multiply that out. That's actually
17:57
Speaker 1: a great techniquead. Well, I don't know, I haven't guessed
18:01
Speaker 1: jelly beans in a jar since I was probably twelve, right,
18:05
Speaker 1: But that was always my method, which has a little
18:08
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of method to it, but it's
18:10
Speaker 1: definitely not as good as as this one. Okay, so
18:13
Speaker 1: so this one it sounds a little more complex than
18:18
Speaker 1: than it actually is. But if you say, if you
18:21
Speaker 1: look at a jar and it's filled with jelly beans,
18:24
Speaker 1: you can say, um, that jar is the volume of
18:28
Speaker 1: that jar is say a court Okay, but then you
18:33
Speaker 1: kind of want to begin with sure, right, But you
18:36
Speaker 1: can learn, right, you can just look around, Like here's
18:38
Speaker 1: the point. If you want to get good at guessing
18:41
Speaker 1: jelly beans. It just takes a little bit of work.
18:44
Speaker 1: Most people would walk up, say a million jelly beans,
18:47
Speaker 1: and they're off by like nine thousand. They're like well,
18:50
Speaker 1: I'm terrible at guessing jelly beans. I'm going to sleep
18:52
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. But if you want
18:54
Speaker 1: to get good at guessing at jelly beans, all you
18:56
Speaker 1: have to do is poke around, learn a few things,
18:59
Speaker 1: and then you can basically apply those to every situation.
19:02
Speaker 1: And one of the things you would need to learn
19:04
Speaker 1: is how to judge the volume of the container to
19:06
Speaker 1: start correct. So that's one part, right, yeah, which you
19:09
Speaker 1: know most people would do that that by comparing it
19:12
Speaker 1: to like a milk jug or a two leader bottle
19:14
Speaker 1: or something like that, right, But in this case, to
19:16
Speaker 1: get a really accurate estimate, you would want to know specifically,
19:20
Speaker 1: say how many ounces a container held correct. Um. And
19:25
Speaker 1: then another thing you would probably do if you started
19:28
Speaker 1: researching guessing jelly beans and jar on the internet, um,
19:32
Speaker 1: you would you would run across some research that found
19:36
Speaker 1: that if you have uh, spherical objects in a jar,
19:42
Speaker 1: they typically take up about if you fill the thing up,
19:46
Speaker 1: they take typically take up about sixty four of the
19:50
Speaker 1: actual volume of the jar. And that's if it's they're
19:53
Speaker 1: just randomly dumped. Right. So if you come across a
19:56
Speaker 1: jar and you say, um, and it's filled with like
20:00
Speaker 1: perfectly round. Um, okay, perfectly round bouncy balls, right, Um,
20:07
Speaker 1: you can say, well, those are spherical and they're taking
20:11
Speaker 1: up about six of the jar. So all I have
20:13
Speaker 1: to do is figure out the um the basically the
20:17
Speaker 1: size of each of the ball, right, and then divide
20:22
Speaker 1: it by the volume, and then bam, you just guessed
20:26
Speaker 1: how many are in there, and you're probably pretty close
20:29
Speaker 1: to right. Sure, So this all sounds mind numbing. I've
20:33
Speaker 1: got a little, um, a little trickle blood coming out
20:35
Speaker 1: of my ear right now. But you can the whole point,
20:40
Speaker 1: and you can train yourself to make better guesses, to
20:43
Speaker 1: estimate better. That's the whole point. Yeah. And if it's
20:46
Speaker 1: a non spherical by the way, like if it's peanuts
20:50
Speaker 1: or something like that, or ice cubes, not disgusting circus peanuts.
20:56
Speaker 1: Oh man, the that conjures up so many memories. Did
21:01
Speaker 1: you like those? Well? I think I might have when
21:05
Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I haven't had one in
21:08
Speaker 1: forty years. But I still remember the taste you me
21:11
Speaker 1: just had something. She says, they still hold up, and
21:13
Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't like him, then I'm not gonna
21:15
Speaker 1: like him now. Well, they hold up for you in
21:17
Speaker 1: a bad way, right right, yeah, exactly, So I know,
21:20
Speaker 1: I know I'm not supposed to yuck. Anyone's young, but yuck.
21:24
Speaker 1: So uh, if it's circus peanuts, let's say, um, that
21:29
Speaker 1: would be between fifty and of the space, not sixty four. Yeah, so, uh,
21:34
Speaker 1: what is you mean's method? Did you ask her? She
21:37
Speaker 1: says she just kind of knowsh So she's a precock exactly.
21:43
Speaker 1: She she shaves her head once a while and lays
21:45
Speaker 1: around in a vat of liquid. Wow, that would be see,
21:48
Speaker 1: I would that would scare me if that would if
21:51
Speaker 1: that was my wife's answer, if she just like kind
21:53
Speaker 1: of walked by and said I just know, right, yeah,
21:56
Speaker 1: I would be like, well, what else do you just know? Yeah?
22:00
Speaker 1: She's kind of unstoppable too. You have no idea how
22:03
Speaker 1: many calves we've won at county fairs in the last
22:05
Speaker 1: year alone. Our house is overrun with them. Um. All right,
22:11
Speaker 1: So that's just guessing volume of a thing and a thing.
22:14
Speaker 1: That's an it's intellectual guessing. Yeah, right, But you can
22:18
Speaker 1: train yourself to guess better. What's really up for for
22:21
Speaker 1: questioning is whether you can train yourself to get better
22:26
Speaker 1: at the other bucket of guessing emotional type of guessing
22:30
Speaker 1: right where you're walking around and you are interacting with
22:33
Speaker 1: other people and you're making judgments about how they're feeling
22:36
Speaker 1: right then, about what they're thinking, right then, what their
22:39
Speaker 1: motives are. Um, you know, how how well they're actually
22:43
Speaker 1: listening to you all of these things right? It's part
22:46
Speaker 1: of our interaction with other people. And there's something that
22:51
Speaker 1: UM two researchers called X and took great combo that
22:56
Speaker 1: back established this kind of field of inquiry in which
23:00
Speaker 1: they were trying to get to the bottom of what
23:02
Speaker 1: they called empathic accuracy, which is how accurately we can
23:07
Speaker 1: we can surmise what someone actually is feeling or thinking
23:11
Speaker 1: just from interacting with them. Some people are supposedly good
23:15
Speaker 1: at it, some people are not. And from what I saw,
23:18
Speaker 1: there's a big kind of push and pull about whether
23:22
Speaker 1: it's worth practicing or whether you should just not do
23:26
Speaker 1: that at all for the sake of your own sanity
23:28
Speaker 1: and just say, if you tell me that you're in
23:31
Speaker 1: a good mood, I'm going to take that at face value.
23:34
Speaker 1: And if you're actually not, then you're you're covering up
23:37
Speaker 1: your feelings for your own reason, and that's that's fine.
23:41
Speaker 1: If you want to just keep them to yourself, that's fine.
23:43
Speaker 1: If you want to share them, I'm here, but I'm
23:45
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna take what you're saying on face value,
23:48
Speaker 1: so Bully for you, that to me is sanity. He's
23:51
Speaker 1: like going, how are you really feeling that you can? Uh,
23:59
Speaker 1: one can spend a lot of time doing that, so
24:01
Speaker 1: so can I share a little bit about myself here?
24:04
Speaker 1: I know it's weird, feels gross, but um. For a
24:09
Speaker 1: very long time, Chuck, I thought that I was a
24:14
Speaker 1: born and bread and path that like I could understand
24:19
Speaker 1: what anyone was thinking and feeling, maybe even better than
24:23
Speaker 1: they knew how they were thinking and feeling. And I
24:27
Speaker 1: finally finally came to the hard truth that I was
24:32
Speaker 1: wrong almost all the time. And in figuring this out,
24:36
Speaker 1: like this was really jarring, and it took a little
24:38
Speaker 1: while for me to like really for this to sink in.
24:42
Speaker 1: But once I figured out that I'm actually terrible at
24:45
Speaker 1: reading engaging other people's thoughts and feelings, it was one
24:48
Speaker 1: of the most liberating things that's ever happened to me
24:50
Speaker 1: because I just stopped. I stopped, and I realized how
24:55
Speaker 1: much of my life I've been walking around wasting just
24:59
Speaker 1: thinking about know what people really think or you know,
25:02
Speaker 1: do people really like me? They probably don't, or do they?
25:06
Speaker 1: Or what do they mean by that look or whatever?
25:10
Speaker 1: And just taking people in life on face value. UM
25:13
Speaker 1: is so much. It's just it occupies so much less
25:17
Speaker 1: of your mind on any given moment. It's just great.
25:20
Speaker 1: That's my prescription. Stop trying to figure out what other
25:24
Speaker 1: people are really thinking and feeling. You should have You
25:26
Speaker 1: should have just asked me a long time ago. And
25:29
Speaker 1: when he told you, I was like, you're terrible at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
25:33
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to listen. You know,
25:35
Speaker 1: it took it took a little while, but to walk
25:37
Speaker 1: through their own doors. You know what I'm saying? That
25:39
Speaker 1: is well put man, You're you're a stoic sage. So
25:42
Speaker 1: cognitive distortion is is a phrase you hear pop up
25:46
Speaker 1: a lot when it comes to assessing another person's emotions.
25:51
Speaker 1: And these are these inaccurate thoughts that you have in
25:54
Speaker 1: your brain. Sometimes they leave to negative thinking or encourage
25:58
Speaker 1: that I think probably most times is probably the case. UM.
26:01
Speaker 1: And then polarized thinking is another bucket, I guess since
26:05
Speaker 1: we're bucketing everything today. UM, which is you know, everything
26:09
Speaker 1: is great or everything is terrible. And the example they
26:12
Speaker 1: give in this in this article is, you know, it's
26:15
Speaker 1: simply I mean, it's a little boy reading a girl's
26:17
Speaker 1: face that you know she doesn't like me, but that
26:20
Speaker 1: that's a kid in the elementary school. You can apply
26:22
Speaker 1: this to anyone walking into a room and basically reading
26:27
Speaker 1: either the room or reading a person and saying like,
26:31
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like the way that that person
26:33
Speaker 1: just looked at me. Um, that's bad, and so I
26:38
Speaker 1: don't think they like me. And those are both of
26:40
Speaker 1: those things at work, cognitive distortion and polarized thinking, right,
26:44
Speaker 1: which which I think polar is thinking is a type
26:47
Speaker 1: of cognitive distortion. I think that's the umbrella term for
26:49
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Right, Yeah, that makes sense, So
26:52
Speaker 1: um yeah, I think this is kind of where you
26:55
Speaker 1: get to why a lot of people are terrible at
26:57
Speaker 1: guessing or get get their guessing wrong, especially when it
26:59
Speaker 1: comes saying what other people are thinking and feeling. Is
27:02
Speaker 1: that your guess is, whether you realize it or not,
27:05
Speaker 1: are actually colored and come through a lens of your
27:08
Speaker 1: past history. Right, So, like if if you were raised
27:12
Speaker 1: in a house where people your family members are really
27:15
Speaker 1: critical of you and one another. If you see two
27:18
Speaker 1: people in a corner like kind of like having a
27:21
Speaker 1: quiet conversation but laughing too, you're probably gonna think they're
27:24
Speaker 1: laughing at you, even though they may not even be
27:27
Speaker 1: paying the least bit of attention to you. But because
27:30
Speaker 1: of the history of how you grew up, that's what
27:34
Speaker 1: you're gonna guess at, right. Whereas if somebody was raised
27:37
Speaker 1: in a house where they were instilled with a lot
27:40
Speaker 1: of confidence and like a great sense of humor, that
27:43
Speaker 1: person might just think, man, they must be talking about
27:45
Speaker 1: something hilarious. I wish I knew what the joke was,
27:48
Speaker 1: or they might have so much confidence in sense of
27:50
Speaker 1: humor they might even walk up and engage them and say,
27:53
Speaker 1: what do you guys laughing at? Right? Huh? And if no, no, nothing,
27:56
Speaker 1: never mind, then you may be onto something. Right. But
27:59
Speaker 1: there was the some there's this blog post and man,
28:02
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember what the site was. I
28:04
Speaker 1: apologize sight, but it was basically like stopped trying to
28:07
Speaker 1: read other people's minds was the gist of it. And
28:10
Speaker 1: they actually used that example, and they went on to say, like,
28:14
Speaker 1: even if the person who thinks that that they're laughing
28:18
Speaker 1: at them turns out to be right. That's not the
28:21
Speaker 1: worst thing that can happen to you. Yeah, it's fine.
28:24
Speaker 1: Who cares, you know, Like, like some people aren't gonna
28:28
Speaker 1: like you, some people will. It doesn't really matter. Like
28:31
Speaker 1: if somebody doesn't like you, You've got to have a
28:34
Speaker 1: little more self confidence than the let that just completely
28:36
Speaker 1: derail your day. Yeah, and you and you have to
28:40
Speaker 1: find it within yourself, Yeah, for sure. And some people
28:43
Speaker 1: get that through years of therapy. Some people are born
28:45
Speaker 1: with it. Some people never achieve it. Yeah, I think
28:49
Speaker 1: it's you know, even if you are born with I
28:51
Speaker 1: think you can lose it from time to time. If
28:53
Speaker 1: you're not born with it, you can gain it from
28:54
Speaker 1: time to time. But it's not something I think you
28:56
Speaker 1: have every moment of every day necessarily. Yeah. Boy, people
29:00
Speaker 1: with just too much confidence are so annoying. They really
29:03
Speaker 1: are because everyone wants that, you know. I think that's
29:07
Speaker 1: why it's annoying. Sure, just like, man, I wish I
29:09
Speaker 1: could be that confident about everything. I hate that guy,
29:13
Speaker 1: and then you end up in a corner talking to
29:15
Speaker 1: somebody else about how much you hate that person with
29:17
Speaker 1: so much confidence totally lost on the other person. So
29:20
Speaker 1: I have another theory that's not scientific at all. It's
29:22
Speaker 1: just my personal theory that when it comes to guessing things,
29:25
Speaker 1: your own not well, your past experiences certainly influence it,
29:28
Speaker 1: but your own how you are also influences like oh yeah,
29:33
Speaker 1: like I think a liar is more apt to think
29:35
Speaker 1: people are lying to them precisely. Yeah, no, that's absolutely
29:39
Speaker 1: I agree. I was gonna say it's absolutely true, but
29:42
Speaker 1: I agree with you. Yeah, because who knows. It's just
29:45
Speaker 1: a theory, right, but I mean it's it's based it's
29:48
Speaker 1: based on some pretty ancient folk wisdom, like that whole
29:51
Speaker 1: thing about how um you know, when you're pointing a
29:53
Speaker 1: finger at somebody three fingers pointing at you or judge
29:56
Speaker 1: not lest you be judged. Like when you think about
30:00
Speaker 1: people in that way, you think that they're doing the
30:03
Speaker 1: same thing to you, even when they're not. It's your own,
30:06
Speaker 1: um hilarious little personal hell yeah, and it's not always that, Like,
30:09
Speaker 1: you know, I think that dude's ripping me off. Maybe
30:12
Speaker 1: you've been ripped off before and that's where that's coming from.
30:15
Speaker 1: Or maybe you've ripped someone off before. But about one
30:19
Speaker 1: of the two has happened, I think though, What more,
30:21
Speaker 1: what you're what you're talking about is are like core
30:24
Speaker 1: core character traits though, like judge, being judgmental, or being
30:29
Speaker 1: a liar or um, you know, being a b s
30:32
Speaker 1: or something like that. Like when when you do notice that, though,
30:36
Speaker 1: What's great is there's so much room for growth when
30:39
Speaker 1: you when you realize that that, like, wait a minute,
30:41
Speaker 1: I think everybody's judging me because I'm so judgmental. I
30:44
Speaker 1: need to work on being judgmental. What's what's almost magical
30:48
Speaker 1: is that when you when you realize that and you
30:51
Speaker 1: work on not being judgmental, you stop thinking that other
30:54
Speaker 1: people are judging you, and your life is just freer. Well,
30:58
Speaker 1: there are these uh so I cologists um and all
31:01
Speaker 1: over this article that uh Aaliyah just rocked my world
31:05
Speaker 1: with that wrote, and one of them was talking about
31:09
Speaker 1: these interpretations without evidence. And her advice, which is very
31:14
Speaker 1: simple and it seems like a no brainer though, is
31:16
Speaker 1: to like maybe just focus on things you know to
31:18
Speaker 1: be true and not inventing and surmising, like well what
31:22
Speaker 1: if what if they're talking about this and you know
31:24
Speaker 1: you're you're just kind of inventing all that? Like if
31:26
Speaker 1: you concentrate on what you know to be true, then
31:29
Speaker 1: life gets a lot simpler, right, But that's that same
31:32
Speaker 1: shrink also pointed out that one of the big problems
31:35
Speaker 1: with guessing, and especially guessing incorrectly, is that, um, we
31:40
Speaker 1: tend to forget that we're guessing at stuff. We take
31:43
Speaker 1: our own guesses as as fact, and since they can
31:47
Speaker 1: be so horribly wrong. Um, if you if you're guessing
31:51
Speaker 1: that other people are judging you even when they're not, Uh,
31:55
Speaker 1: you're gonna basically walk around feeling judged all the time
31:58
Speaker 1: because you think that that's absolutely accurate when it's when
32:01
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily fascinating. All right, you want to take
32:03
Speaker 1: a break. I was just gonna say the same thing.
32:06
Speaker 1: All right, Well we'll take a break and we are
32:08
Speaker 1: going to come back talk a little bit about guessing
32:10
Speaker 1: on tests, how to win it rock paper scissors and
32:14
Speaker 1: apes and guessing. M h. All right, So we we've
32:41
Speaker 1: talked in esoteric terms about guessing so far. But I
32:46
Speaker 1: think what everyone really wants to know is how do
32:49
Speaker 1: I pass a multiple choice test? Right? Because that's another
32:53
Speaker 1: kind of guessing. Um, it's you know, guessing runs the
32:56
Speaker 1: gamut uh, from emotional to stuff like this. There or
33:00
Speaker 1: have been different theories over the years, like well, first
33:03
Speaker 1: of all, back in the day and I guess until
33:06
Speaker 1: semi recently, for like the S A T and A
33:09
Speaker 1: C T and other standardized tests, you would be penalized
33:11
Speaker 1: for an incorrect guess. I don't remember that, do you. Yeah, yeah,
33:17
Speaker 1: if you guess something wrong, it's like a quarter point deduction.
33:20
Speaker 1: I think was the deal. Oh, it sounds familiar. I
33:22
Speaker 1: think I may have blocked it out. But they don't
33:25
Speaker 1: do that anymore. So now they say guest guest guests
33:27
Speaker 1: if you don't know the answer, um, and you know
33:30
Speaker 1: they're there. That has run the gamut from always guests
33:33
Speaker 1: C because it's in the middle to uh, this one person.
33:36
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily agree with this one. But they say,
33:39
Speaker 1: just choose the same letter every time, like always guess B,
33:43
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be right one out of every five
33:46
Speaker 1: times if it's A B, C, D right. Which makes
33:48
Speaker 1: sense though, I mean, because if you jump around, you
33:51
Speaker 1: lessen your chances every time, whereas if you use the
33:53
Speaker 1: same one you have the same chances of getting it
33:56
Speaker 1: right every time. Yeah. Um, but this guy wrote a
34:00
Speaker 1: he actually did a little studying um, Paula pound Stone.
34:07
Speaker 1: That wasn't his name, was it. It was William pound Stone,
34:10
Speaker 1: her brother. Yeah, and he did actual research on He
34:16
Speaker 1: studied tests and did a statistical analysis of one hundred
34:20
Speaker 1: different tests ranging from middle school, high school, college, professional exams,
34:25
Speaker 1: driver's tests, firefighters, radio operators. He studied all kinds of
34:30
Speaker 1: tests and he has four what he calls four ways
34:35
Speaker 1: to outsmart to multiple choice tests, and a couple of
34:37
Speaker 1: these make a lot of sense to me. The first one,
34:40
Speaker 1: he said, is to ignore conventional wisdom because you kind
34:43
Speaker 1: of always have heard teachers say like avoid answers that
34:48
Speaker 1: say never, always or none, So like all of the
34:50
Speaker 1: above or none of the above, don't choose those, And
34:53
Speaker 1: he found the opposite to be true. Yeah, he found
34:56
Speaker 1: that none of the above or all of the above
34:58
Speaker 1: are correct of the time. Him. Yeah, So if that's
35:01
Speaker 1: offered up as an option, and you have, first of all,
35:04
Speaker 1: we should couch this with always try and you know,
35:10
Speaker 1: deduce the answer with intelligence, well yeah, pound Stone says,
35:14
Speaker 1: there's nothing None of this is meant to replace knowledge
35:18
Speaker 1: of your subject, and you get knowledge of your subject
35:20
Speaker 1: by studying ahead of time. But he's saying, if you're
35:23
Speaker 1: facing a question on a multiple choice test and you
35:26
Speaker 1: have no idea what the answer is you there's some
35:30
Speaker 1: techniques you can choose to to to increase the likelihood
35:33
Speaker 1: that your guests will be right. Right, So all the
35:35
Speaker 1: above or none of the above, if you really have
35:37
Speaker 1: no idea about that, I would I would say pick
35:40
Speaker 1: that one. Um. That's weird though, because later on he
35:43
Speaker 1: says he says so first he says, ignore conventional wisdom,
35:47
Speaker 1: but then later on the one piece of conventional wisdom
35:49
Speaker 1: I've always heard, um he says, is actually true. That
35:54
Speaker 1: is that you want to choose the longest answer on
35:57
Speaker 1: any multiple choice test, right, Because if if you are
36:01
Speaker 1: saying something's true, most of the time you have to
36:04
Speaker 1: add qualifying language to make it absolutely true, because you
36:09
Speaker 1: don't want somebody come back and be like, well, that's
36:11
Speaker 1: actually not quite true. So when you start adding qualifying
36:14
Speaker 1: language into an answer, it gets longer than the other ones,
36:18
Speaker 1: and the the test writers probably not going to go
36:20
Speaker 1: to the trouble of making the wrong answers similarly long.
36:26
Speaker 1: So the longest answer is very frequently the correct answer. Yeah,
36:29
Speaker 1: I thought that one was a really good piece of advice.
36:32
Speaker 1: That's the one I always heard. That's really the only
36:34
Speaker 1: one I've ever known. Really, did you remember scantron sheets? Yeah?
36:40
Speaker 1: Did you ever? Were you ever so recklessly wild that
36:44
Speaker 1: you like, made a Christmas tree out of a test?
36:48
Speaker 1: Did you ever have the gall to do that? Oh?
36:51
Speaker 1: I think never did bad because there are kids that
36:54
Speaker 1: listen to this. But I had to take a test
36:56
Speaker 1: one time that was not for school, but it was
36:58
Speaker 1: something I didn't want to do. I won't get into
37:01
Speaker 1: the details, but I made a big snake and it
37:07
Speaker 1: was bad. And I looked back and I'm ashamed of it.
37:10
Speaker 1: I made a mockery of their process. Uh. And I
37:13
Speaker 1: wasn't that kind of kid. I don't know what happened.
37:15
Speaker 1: I was generally a good kid and a good student.
37:18
Speaker 1: I'm surprised to hear this, I know, but it sticks.
37:20
Speaker 1: It's I feel so bad. It's still really stands out
37:23
Speaker 1: in my mind. Is what a jerk move that was
37:26
Speaker 1: on my part. I'm not only surprised, though, Chuck, I'm
37:28
Speaker 1: a little delighted. Good a outed myself. Um alright, So
37:35
Speaker 1: one of the other pieces of advice from Dr pound Stone, Doctor,
37:38
Speaker 1: I don't think he's no doctor. He did write a book, though,
37:42
Speaker 1: it's called Rock Breaks Scissors colon. Why does everything you
37:46
Speaker 1: have to have a colon? Now it makes it smarter?
37:50
Speaker 1: Rock Breaks Scissors Colin a practical guide outguessing and outwitting
37:53
Speaker 1: almost everybody. One of his other ones is to look
37:56
Speaker 1: at the surrounding answers because he's found the correct answer.
38:00
Speaker 1: Choices are rarely repeated consecutively, so you rarely get two
38:04
Speaker 1: b s in a row as the answer. So if
38:06
Speaker 1: you definitely know the answer in front of it and
38:09
Speaker 1: the answer behind it, then it's probably not one of
38:11
Speaker 1: those two. So if you've you've just whittled down your
38:14
Speaker 1: options yep. Advice No, not not bad at all. What else? Um?
38:20
Speaker 1: And the last one he's got eliminate the outliers. If
38:24
Speaker 1: there's anything that that seems like it doesn't really fit
38:28
Speaker 1: with the rest of the stuff, you can automatically get
38:30
Speaker 1: rid of that. And then conversely, if there's anything if
38:34
Speaker 1: there are two answers that seem extremely close, they probably
38:38
Speaker 1: can be gotten rid of as well, because it's the
38:40
Speaker 1: same thing basically, So if you have say five, five
38:46
Speaker 1: potential answers, and one of them doesn't fit with the
38:49
Speaker 1: other four, get rid of that. Two of them are similar.
38:51
Speaker 1: Get rid of those two. You're down to two. You
38:53
Speaker 1: got a chance of getting at right. Yeah, I thought
38:56
Speaker 1: the example they used in here was pretty fascinating because
38:58
Speaker 1: they didn't even use the question sen or give the
39:01
Speaker 1: question on this s a T practice test. They just
39:04
Speaker 1: give the answer for A, B, C, D haphazard, uh
39:10
Speaker 1: is too radical, inherent is to controversial, improvises to startling,
39:14
Speaker 1: methodical is the revolutionary derivative is to gradual. And if
39:18
Speaker 1: you just look at the right hand side, you have radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary,
39:23
Speaker 1: and gradual, and obviously gradual stands out is just being
39:27
Speaker 1: different than those other words. Right, radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary,
39:31
Speaker 1: gradual doesn't makes sense, right, So that makes I mean,
39:34
Speaker 1: that's really a good piece of advice. And then if
39:37
Speaker 1: you look on the left hand side for A and C,
39:40
Speaker 1: haphazard and improvised are really close. So he says you
39:44
Speaker 1: should eliminate those two as well. Yea, I wish I
39:47
Speaker 1: would have had this kind of advice for the S
39:49
Speaker 1: A T. Well, I'll tell you what. That's an actual
39:52
Speaker 1: s A T set of answers. So if you ever
39:54
Speaker 1: run into haphazard, radical, inherent, controversial, improvised, startling, methodical revolutionary
40:01
Speaker 1: and derivative gradual. You want to go with the methodical revolutionary,
40:06
Speaker 1: and we just got you into college. You ever wanted
40:10
Speaker 1: to take the s A T again? Like? Now, no, no,
40:15
Speaker 1: that's funny. I really don't. I've never wanted to. I was.
40:18
Speaker 1: I've been glad since the moment I finished that test
40:21
Speaker 1: that I was done. I only took it twice. I
40:23
Speaker 1: took it once and I was like, good enough. Yeah,
40:26
Speaker 1: I took it twice. I did not score very well
40:28
Speaker 1: the first time, and I scored pretty well the second time,
40:33
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't want to know which
40:34
Speaker 1: one is the real me, I said, So I'm done. Yeah,
40:37
Speaker 1: I scored blandly the first time, and I was like,
40:40
Speaker 1: that's fine, that's fine, that's fine. I'll get by on
40:44
Speaker 1: my my wits and real life skills. Look at you.
40:47
Speaker 1: You've done great. I've done okay. Um, so you want
40:51
Speaker 1: to talk about rock paper scissors a little bit? Yeah?
40:53
Speaker 1: I thought this was awesome. Our friends over at motherboard
40:57
Speaker 1: and we can say that because we used to have
40:58
Speaker 1: a short lived call him on motherboard from vice yep um.
41:03
Speaker 1: They have a German outfit called appropriately Motherboard Germany. And
41:08
Speaker 1: they ran a post um called win at Rock paper
41:11
Speaker 1: Scissors every Time with math colon what's with the colon's
41:18
Speaker 1: And they basically got into how using game theory, you
41:23
Speaker 1: can win at rock paper scissors basically all the time. Yeah,
41:26
Speaker 1: they did, uh, or they didn't do the research, but
41:28
Speaker 1: they got together with some researchers at the University of
41:32
Speaker 1: hang Zoo in China, and um, they got three hundred
41:36
Speaker 1: and sixties students to pair up and play three hundred
41:42
Speaker 1: rounds each of rock paper scissors. Uh. And then they
41:46
Speaker 1: tracked that please please let us stop, and they said, no,
41:51
Speaker 1: this is communist China. Do it again again. Uh. So
41:55
Speaker 1: they charted all those out and then summarized it with
42:00
Speaker 1: some strategies. I don't know if this would you would
42:02
Speaker 1: win every time? No, I mean there's always like the
42:07
Speaker 1: what they call in rock paper says, there's the October
42:10
Speaker 1: surprise where somebody just pulls something out of nowhere. Well,
42:14
Speaker 1: so I mean a kid dynamite, right, Yeah, those are
42:20
Speaker 1: off shoots. Remember kids that would do those? Oh really yeah,
42:25
Speaker 1: some interesting people. Yeah, they would add other other weapons. Basically, well,
42:31
Speaker 1: the the um this the Motherboard article talks about UM,
42:36
Speaker 1: there's this other guy who came up with, um, a
42:39
Speaker 1: whole different variation of it. That's like five or twenty
42:44
Speaker 1: six different different possible ones. I would never remember all
42:47
Speaker 1: of them, No, how could you? But at least one
42:50
Speaker 1: guy does. No one can remember things, yeah right, but
42:54
Speaker 1: so so okay, there's a few things. And this this
42:57
Speaker 1: falls in line with learning how to get better at guessing, um,
43:01
Speaker 1: how many jelly beans are in a jar. If you
43:04
Speaker 1: arm yourself with a little bit of fore knowledge, you
43:06
Speaker 1: can better guess at what your opponent's gonna come at you.
43:10
Speaker 1: Within a game of rock paper scissors. Starting with that,
43:13
Speaker 1: men tend to open a game with rock. Of course
43:16
Speaker 1: they do. Yeah, that's such a man thing, rock smash,
43:21
Speaker 1: you know, right, So if you're if your opponent as
43:24
Speaker 1: a man, um and there's a pretty good chance they're
43:28
Speaker 1: going to come out with rock the first time, go paper. Yeah,
43:32
Speaker 1: although they do say statistically the opening uh scissors is
43:36
Speaker 1: the one that will win you the most games. But
43:39
Speaker 1: I guess that's if you're not playing a man. I
43:43
Speaker 1: guess they kind of counteract themselves or contradict themselves statistically.
43:46
Speaker 1: More women play rock paper scissors, I guess is that true.
43:50
Speaker 1: Here's what I thought. I don't think. So here's one.
43:53
Speaker 1: I've been making a lot of this stuff up in
43:55
Speaker 1: this episode. Um, here's here's one that I thought was
43:59
Speaker 1: kind of funny. Basically, this is like the Babe Ruth move,
44:02
Speaker 1: say what you're going to pick before the game, Like,
44:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick scissors next, and then the persons like,
44:09
Speaker 1: they're not gonna pick scissors, but you just psyched them out.
44:11
Speaker 1: And when you throw scissors, baby, they're gonna be blown
44:14
Speaker 1: away because they threw paper and they thought you were
44:16
Speaker 1: gonna throw rocky. It's like that the Princess Bride. And
44:21
Speaker 1: what part was that with the man sitting at the
44:24
Speaker 1: place talking about the poison drink? Oh yeah, yeah, remember
44:28
Speaker 1: like trying to get the other guy to drink the
44:30
Speaker 1: poison drink? I wish Yeah, he was awesome. Uh inconceivable?
44:38
Speaker 1: What is another strategy? Um to counter attacks? So if
44:41
Speaker 1: you played scissors and your opponent plays rock on the
44:45
Speaker 1: first move, uh, and they win, obviously the chance that
44:49
Speaker 1: they h they have confidence now in that move, so
44:52
Speaker 1: you might be able to guess that they will play
44:54
Speaker 1: rock again because the chances are pretty high that they
44:57
Speaker 1: will do. So, then you anticipate that play paper. So
45:00
Speaker 1: basically it says, play the option that wasn't played in
45:03
Speaker 1: the previous round. Right, And you can also mirror um
45:07
Speaker 1: your opponent. Right, So if you just one around, play
45:11
Speaker 1: what your opponent just played, because they probably are thinking
45:15
Speaker 1: that you're going to play with the same gesture that
45:18
Speaker 1: you won with a second ago, really throws them off.
45:21
Speaker 1: So the idea is they're probably going to play the
45:24
Speaker 1: same thing that they just won with and if you
45:26
Speaker 1: one don't do that, and that'll frustrate them to that's
45:30
Speaker 1: the rock paper scissors version of why you're hitting yourself.
45:36
Speaker 1: If you get into that thing when you're you both
45:38
Speaker 1: throw rock, and you throw rock again, you both throw
45:40
Speaker 1: a rock and you keep that's when the psychological warfare starts,
45:44
Speaker 1: like who's gonna break first and go with paper and
45:48
Speaker 1: then ideally you go with scissors and you have thus
45:51
Speaker 1: outsmarted your opponent. Right. So interesting, So we were talking, Um,
45:59
Speaker 1: you mentioned that we were going to talk about apes, right, Yeah,
46:02
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand this, so maybe you can help me.
46:05
Speaker 1: I don't know that um that science fully understands it.
46:10
Speaker 1: But basically so so let me give you an example here. Okay,
46:14
Speaker 1: we were talking about how the brain. They're trying to
46:16
Speaker 1: figure out what regions of the brain are activated to
46:19
Speaker 1: form like this cascade of thought that results in a guess. Right.
46:24
Speaker 1: One of the things I ran across was one theory
46:27
Speaker 1: of how we guess what other people are going to
46:30
Speaker 1: do UM is through mirror neurons, where if we see
46:35
Speaker 1: somebody doing something, our mirror neurons are activated and it
46:39
Speaker 1: puts us in a mind of how we feel when
46:41
Speaker 1: we're doing something, and we use that past experience and
46:46
Speaker 1: that current sensation of Like the example I ran across
46:50
Speaker 1: with somebody grabbing an apple to guess what the person
46:53
Speaker 1: is going to do next. Right, So you would say, um, well,
46:57
Speaker 1: I know most times when I grab an apple, I
46:59
Speaker 1: take a bye it out of it because I'm usually hungry.
47:01
Speaker 1: When I grab an apple, that's after I rub it
47:03
Speaker 1: on my shirt to give it a nice shine. Right. Well,
47:05
Speaker 1: that's that's just showboating. If you're gonna if you guess
47:08
Speaker 1: the person is going to rub it on their shirt
47:10
Speaker 1: first before taking a bite, that's showing off. But that's
47:13
Speaker 1: so your mirror neurons are the part of your brain
47:15
Speaker 1: that's triggered that that um that that sets that off right.
47:19
Speaker 1: That gives you that the basis the foundation for making
47:22
Speaker 1: a guess of what the person is going to do next.
47:24
Speaker 1: And then it gets run through again that lens of
47:29
Speaker 1: your past experience, your history, everything from how you were
47:32
Speaker 1: raised to what you do with apples, to what you've
47:35
Speaker 1: seen other people do with apples, and you come up
47:37
Speaker 1: with a short list of possibilities of what the person
47:42
Speaker 1: is going to do with that apple, and it includes
47:44
Speaker 1: rubbating out on their shirt, taking a bite, putting it
47:48
Speaker 1: away in a cupboard, throwing it at a wall. And
47:51
Speaker 1: then you're going to pare down based on what you
47:54
Speaker 1: know about that person, like is that person neat freak?
47:56
Speaker 1: If so, they're probably going to put that apple away
48:00
Speaker 1: in a cupboard, which who does that except for neat freaks?
48:03
Speaker 1: And you may be right at at your guess, right, well,
48:07
Speaker 1: they're definitely not wall throwers at least right right, because
48:12
Speaker 1: yeah so if and that's that's how you that's how
48:15
Speaker 1: Apparently that's one theory for how we make guesses, starting
48:18
Speaker 1: from brain based, going through personal history and then making
48:21
Speaker 1: the guests. And what some research found was that the
48:25
Speaker 1: ultimately what we're doing here is called theory of mind
48:29
Speaker 1: right where we are have a capability of bestowing the
48:34
Speaker 1: idea that other people have thoughts and feelings on other people,
48:39
Speaker 1: right that we it's so common to us that we
48:42
Speaker 1: take it for granted that we can attribute mental states
48:45
Speaker 1: to other people. But that's that's a pretty significant thing.
48:49
Speaker 1: And for a very long time researchers thought that just
48:52
Speaker 1: humans were capable of of that. But they found out
48:55
Speaker 1: that no, actually some apes at the very least just
48:58
Speaker 1: apes um and do the same thing. They can attribute
49:02
Speaker 1: mental states like thoughts and feelings and emotions to other
49:05
Speaker 1: apes UM. And that's that shows like a higher form
49:11
Speaker 1: of reasoning. That was basically the gist of it. That
49:13
Speaker 1: makes sense, And they found that true in chimpanzees, bonobo's
49:16
Speaker 1: and orangutangs. H. That's pretty neat, it is, and one
49:21
Speaker 1: of them so sa UM. Sasha Barren Cohen, his cousin
49:27
Speaker 1: Simon Barren Cohen is one of the leaders in UM
49:32
Speaker 1: in theory of mind. Yeah, we've talked about him before,
49:35
Speaker 1: I remember, but UM. One of the one of the
49:38
Speaker 1: big areas that it like influences is autism. UM that
49:42
Speaker 1: that people with autism tend to have more difficulty attributing
49:47
Speaker 1: mental states and theory of mind to other people than
49:51
Speaker 1: people who don't have autism. Right, And but one of
49:55
Speaker 1: the one of the ways that they find this out,
49:57
Speaker 1: and I think one of the ways that they detect
49:58
Speaker 1: autism and young kids is by attributing false beliefs to
50:02
Speaker 1: other people. This is like an early part of human development.
50:05
Speaker 1: And apparently apes are good at it too. Where you
50:08
Speaker 1: are an observer, right, and you're watching a scene and
50:12
Speaker 1: there's a little boy named Tommy, and Tommy comes in
50:16
Speaker 1: the room and he grabs the three Musketeers off of
50:18
Speaker 1: the kitchen counter, and he walks over to a chest
50:21
Speaker 1: of drawers and he puts it in one of the
50:23
Speaker 1: drawers and walks out of the room. Well, Sally comes in,
50:27
Speaker 1: and the narrator says, Sally is really hungry for three musketeers.
50:31
Speaker 1: She knows it was last on the table. Where is
50:34
Speaker 1: she going to look for the three Musketeers? And people
50:38
Speaker 1: with um with theory of mine, who are able to
50:41
Speaker 1: attribute false beliefs to other people will say, well, Sally
50:44
Speaker 1: is gonna go look on the table even though it's
50:47
Speaker 1: not there any longer, because Tommy put it in the drawer.
50:51
Speaker 1: You can know that Sally can believe something that's no
50:55
Speaker 1: longer correct if you have trouble with theory of mind,
50:58
Speaker 1: and specifically if you're testing for autism, um that child,
51:02
Speaker 1: a child with autism might say, well, Sally's gonna go
51:04
Speaker 1: look in the drawer, because that's where it is. They
51:07
Speaker 1: have trouble attributing false beliefs to people. What's true is
51:10
Speaker 1: true and everybody would know that. And that's one way
51:13
Speaker 1: that they test for autism. And it has to do
51:15
Speaker 1: a theory of mine. Interesting, isn't it. And it has
51:19
Speaker 1: to do with guessing. It all has to do with guessing. Man,
51:23
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Well, just that Tommy should uh
51:26
Speaker 1: not be so uh touchy? Well, yeah, and like share
51:31
Speaker 1: the three Musketeers, Yeah, you go around. Do you know
51:35
Speaker 1: why three Musketeers are called that? I have no idea,
51:39
Speaker 1: my friend. It used to be a Neopolitan candy that
51:42
Speaker 1: came in three different pieces, chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, and
51:47
Speaker 1: they just went with chocolate after a while and kept
51:50
Speaker 1: the name because why not. Yeah. Interesting, Well, that's it
51:56
Speaker 1: about three Musketeers for today. And hey, Chuck, before we
51:59
Speaker 1: go to listener mail, I want to give a huge
52:02
Speaker 1: congratulations from us to Stephen and Jane, our buddies, the Bars,
52:08
Speaker 1: on the birth of their firstborn child. Yeah, how about that.
52:12
Speaker 1: Congratulations you guys. Good looking baby too. Yeah? Is they're
52:16
Speaker 1: not all good looking? No, No, it's true, especially like
52:21
Speaker 1: right after birth. And because they're New Yorkers, they walked
52:23
Speaker 1: home from the hospital. Like, how great is that they
52:27
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they didn't take the subway, but what you do?
52:30
Speaker 1: It is they are pretty New York. It's awesome. But congratulations.
52:33
Speaker 1: It's one congratulations Bars. Okay, well, since we said congratulations Bars,
52:38
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this one was a
52:42
Speaker 1: little long, but it's about registering to vote in Texas.
52:47
Speaker 1: You got an email for Monica and her story goes
52:49
Speaker 1: as such, Uh, two thousand thirteen to move from Alabama
52:53
Speaker 1: to Texas. Had a really horrific time trying to register
52:55
Speaker 1: to vote where I went to the county clerk's office.
52:57
Speaker 1: I looked online to check what I needed, downloaded the
53:00
Speaker 1: application so I could have filled out in advance. It
53:02
Speaker 1: took my Alabama driver's license, my lease, my birth certificate,
53:07
Speaker 1: and because I'm divorced, my divorce decree stipulating my legal
53:11
Speaker 1: name change. You'd probably think that would be else you needed,
53:14
Speaker 1: right right, no. No. Once I got there, I was
53:17
Speaker 1: told that the lease was not sufficient to prove residency
53:20
Speaker 1: and that I would need to bring two pieces of
53:21
Speaker 1: official mail, like utility bill, tax bill. So I leave
53:25
Speaker 1: after spending the better part of a day waiting in
53:27
Speaker 1: line waiting UH for my power and gas bill to
53:30
Speaker 1: come in order to add the other documents. A couple
53:32
Speaker 1: of weeks later, with all of the documents in hand,
53:34
Speaker 1: I took another day off work went back to try again.
53:36
Speaker 1: This time, the clerk looks over the divorce decree and
53:39
Speaker 1: notices my name change wasn't to go back to my
53:42
Speaker 1: maiden name. This was a name change that was ordered
53:46
Speaker 1: by a court in Alabama and explicitly spelled out in
53:49
Speaker 1: a notarized document that the clerk was disputing its validity.
53:53
Speaker 1: When I asked what the problem was, he said, well,
53:55
Speaker 1: that's in Alabama. If you want to that to be
53:58
Speaker 1: your official name in Texas, you have to go through
54:00
Speaker 1: the courts. UH, have a a draw at noon in
54:05
Speaker 1: the center of town with a judge, a shootout. What's
54:09
Speaker 1: that called a shot? A quick draw? Now, he said,
54:12
Speaker 1: you'll have to go through the courts and have it
54:14
Speaker 1: declared here in Texas. After literally blinking at him silently
54:17
Speaker 1: with my mouth agape for a moment, I said, you're
54:20
Speaker 1: telling me that the divorce in Alabama is a valid
54:22
Speaker 1: because it was judicated in Alabama, that I am going
54:24
Speaker 1: to have to go through the whole process of getting
54:27
Speaker 1: a divorce again for it to be official in Texas.
54:29
Speaker 1: That correct. His reply was, well, when you put it
54:31
Speaker 1: that way, it sounds silly, but yes, though. I demanded
54:34
Speaker 1: to speak with a supervisor. Clark got the supervisor, who
54:37
Speaker 1: looked over everything and asked why I didn't just go
54:39
Speaker 1: back to my maiden name, which I replied, it doesn't
54:43
Speaker 1: matter what I changed my name to. You have the
54:45
Speaker 1: official document, signed by a judge and notarized, and this
54:48
Speaker 1: should be all you need because of the Constitution of
54:52
Speaker 1: the United States that all judicial rulings and contracts that
54:56
Speaker 1: are valid one state are valid in every state. At
54:59
Speaker 1: that point, the clerk walked off. The supervisor said, okay,
55:03
Speaker 1: gave my stuff to another clerk who simply smiled to
55:05
Speaker 1: enter my application and took my check, uh, pointing me
55:09
Speaker 1: toward the desk where I could get my picture taken. Uh.
55:11
Speaker 1: And then she closes by saying, imagine how this would
55:14
Speaker 1: have gone. I would have been an hourly worker, had
55:16
Speaker 1: less of an understanding boss and not known about the
55:19
Speaker 1: ins and outs of the constitution, or didn't have access
55:22
Speaker 1: to all these documents. Chances are I would have been
55:24
Speaker 1: disenfranchised driving around with an expired license. These laws are
55:28
Speaker 1: absolutely created to suppress voter registration and participation, and they
55:32
Speaker 1: work spectacularly well man, And that is Monica's story. Thanks Monica,
55:40
Speaker 1: uh and welcome to Texas too. By the way, Yeah Um.
55:44
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this and
55:46
Speaker 1: tell us a real life adventure that has something to
55:49
Speaker 1: do with one of our episodes, we want to hear
55:51
Speaker 1: about it, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh
55:54
Speaker 1: Um Clark and at s y s K podcast on Twitter.
55:57
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
56:00
Speaker 1: Ran on Facebook or at Facebook dot com slash Stuff
56:02
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email the
56:04
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
56:07
Speaker 1: always joined us at at home on the web. Stuff
56:09
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is
56:14
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
56:17
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio, app,
56:19
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
56:25
Speaker 1: H