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THE BUZZ: Tech & Science News About Being a Human Being · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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  This is the buzz, tech and science news with the one and only professor Joel Pearson, but
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  really Joel talking about all things human, what it means to be human, from the basis
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  of new everything human headlines.
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  Good to see you.
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  Good to see you.
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  So Taylor Swift is obviously a forefront of your mind being a U.S.
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  Swiftie.
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  Uh, I admire her.
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  She's, who wouldn't like it like, did you go to one of the concepts have you been?
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  No, I haven't been.
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  Not going to every single one.
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  Not liking her isn't like not liking kittens, I would say something bad, it would say something
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  bad about me if I didn't like Taylor Swift.
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  Why are you a scientist, neuroscientist, psychologist, bringing me Taylor Swift though?
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  I mean, I saw the media like probably a lot of people that this conspiracy theory thing
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  had kicked off around the Super Bowl.
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  She was there and then I saw a survey saying that it just under one in five Americans believe
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  that her being at the Super Bowl, her boyfriend, such partner, whatever, that them winning
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  was all this psychological ops program as part of the CIA to infiltrate, to get Biden reelected
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  and nominate, like this whole thing that is building momentum, right?
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  And yeah, the idea is 20% of people because she's not,
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  conservative, that she's going to win over people who are watching the Super Bowl to vote
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  for Biden because she's dating some, yeah, she hasn't even come out this time for Biden.
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  I think she did last election.
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  But yeah, my understanding is people, this started sort of resonating and bouncing around
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  from Fox News surprise surprise, first up, and then people started believing it, talking
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  about it.
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  And it just, and does that baffle you as a neuroscientist or do you go, well, obviously,
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  a psychologist?
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  Well, conspiracies are an amazing thing, right?
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  And we saw during COVID that they jumped.
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  And we know that when people anxious, stressed, being bombarded with uncertainty, they're
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  more likely to believe conspiracy theories.
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  And what is a conspiracy theory, though?
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  Because some people listening to this will say a lot of conspiracy theories around COVID
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  turned out to be true.
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  Like it was, it was initially a conspiracy theory that the government was incorrectly advising
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  us not that masks were useless, because they wanted to hoard masks for first responders.
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  Well, that turned out to be true or that initial concerns about, you know, I don't know,
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  heart inflammation and my carditis in certain populations, you know, that actually turned
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  out to be true or that, but then there are locked out overstayed.
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  They're welcome.
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  And that turned out to be true.
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  Bill Gates created COVID and it spread through the 5G network through the cabaret thing
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  through Hollywood.
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  But that's more, some people, I've met people recently who were fully into this.
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  And I was shocked when they started going to the detail of, I won't go into it and say
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  who they were, but I was genuinely shocked, yes, I want to hunt them down.
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  But also, I mean, this is true.
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  The level of coordination between Hollywood, between governments all over the planet, between
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  multinational drug companies all over the planet, between all the select, like it's like
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  open your eyes, sheeple, two people in a government can't even, you know, get the same
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  wavelength.
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  It is interesting.
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  So I guess there's no strict definition of what a, you know, a conspiracy theory is,
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  but normally it's believing things that maybe you don't normally believe that it's normally
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  a complex group of people and normally, you know, a government or a company, a group
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  that is conspiring to do something, you know, bad.
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  Right.
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  Peace to be happening is not actually what's happening.
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  It's being orchestrated by, yeah, by powerful interests.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, it is interesting, but I see, I think we can fall into the trap of dismissing
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  all conspiracy theories as idiotic or misguided because the extremes are, like I often hear
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  people reaching for Bill Gates is putting 5G chips in everyone's brains or the most extreme
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  QAnon things, like, you know, Hillary Clinton is running a pedophile ring out of a pizza
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  parlor, which are, you know, yeah, there was some number of people who believed that,
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  but the vast majority of people who found the traditional narrative around COVID suspicious
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  were not that.
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  They were not that extreme.
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  So they don't want to be tarnished with the same kind of, you know, disdain as you
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  might have full blown tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists.
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  So how do you figure out what's true and what's not otherwise you're just going to believe
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  every single thing that the powers that be tell you is true?
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  Yeah.
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  I don't think we need to do that.
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  And then some people say we'll do your own research.
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  That can also be dangerous when you're talking about psychological things or the way a virus
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  works, right?
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  It's not like people can go and do their research in half an hour and understand how a vaccine
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  works, for example.
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  We should also take note that there is good evidence when people are bombarded with uncertainty
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  and they're stressed, they're emotional, their anxiety goes up, you reach for certainty,
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  you reach for putting things in place that can make sense to make yourself feel better,
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  it gives certainty.
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  So you're more likely to try and form something out of the chaos.
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  So in other words, you're more likely to believe these things.
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  Right.
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  So we should keep that, you know, in our mind.
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  So when you're destabilized, you're more susceptible.
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  I mean, that 9-11 is a clear case of that as well, right?
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  Like, you know, I've met many people, surprisingly large numbers of people who think that there
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  was something fishy about 9-11 that, you know, I made the, you know, they didn't even
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  find any wreckage of the plane and the pentagon and so on.
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  And my general response to that, quite apart from directing them to the excellent popular
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  mechanics article, I think, which came out in the early 2000s, which systematically
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  went through all of the conspiracy theories and, you know, consulted engineers and everything
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  with explanations for that is just to say what you were just saying about how complicated
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  the conspiracy would have to be.
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  Yeah.
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  Like, if the plane didn't actually crash, then all the people who boarded that plane went
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  somewhere, right?
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  I mean, so the families are the families of the victims in on it, the people who boarded
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  the plane.
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  I mean, how many people in government did you need to coordinate this thing and not a
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  single whistleblower came out?
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  Anyone who understands how public policy works and how bad and inefficient institutions
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  are cannot believe that you would have a conspiracy that good.
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  Like, it would be the most impressive thing ever to fake, to do all these things.
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  Like you said, they're just so complicated.
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  Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  So you don't believe that Taylor Swift is on the pay, on the Biden payroll.
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  No, I don't.
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  Okay.
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  Very good.
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  Do you want to talk about the, the state of the American election?
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  Yeah.
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  One more thing.
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  There's a psychological thing called apophonia, which is our, we're like desperate to pick
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  out patterns in noise.
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  Right.
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  So you can show people random numbers and they're like, oh, there's a pattern there, something
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  like it's not really random, right?
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  And it is random.
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  And this, you can apply this to the hot hand effect, which is like in sports, in basketball,
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  people get absolutely convinced that a certain athlete, you know, is hot and they just, they're
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  going to keep scoring over and over again.
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  So we see these patterns.
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  We can't help but see them and sometimes when it comes to these very improbable things,
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  they can make us believe things.
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  And the example, the example I talk about in my recently published book, Josh, the intuition
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  toolkit is Premonitions, Dreaming about playing crashes.
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  And you can run the numbers, the number of people who dream and would remember emotional
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  dreams about planes here in Australia or in America is a lot.
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  And so anytime it's a plane crash, you expect more than one person, many people would
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  have come out, go, hey, I dreamt about that last night.
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  And that is so tantalizing, right?
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  We see that pattern there.
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  We want to believe it's meaningful.
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  It means something for us and the world.
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  And that pool is very powerful.
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  Yeah.
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  And it's similar with the conspiracy things.
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  It's like, for these things to happen, it's a rare thing for it to look like this.
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  It seems improbable.
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  Therefore, I'm going to believe it's happened for a reason and it's the reason I'm giving
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  it.
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  It's a better explanation than just, well, shit happens.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, that point about randomness, not seeming random, is interesting as well.
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  Is it the case, correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that if you show, if
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  you ask someone to write down a string of random numbers, they'll write them down in
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  two random a fashion.
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  Like they'll never put four sevens in a row.
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  It'll all be all over the place.
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  But actually, if you do roll dice, or if you do the rule that over and over and over
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  again, then in a truly random sequence, you'll find four sevens come up.
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  And people will look at that and go, that's not random, you wouldn't get four sevens
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  in a row.
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  That's too unlikely.
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  I might just have to fix that to make it more random.
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  And there's actually order in people's perception of what randomness ought to look like.
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  Yeah, exactly.
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  And this was, I think, crucial part in early, like, a computed detection of fraud.
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  Because when people tried to fake numbers, they would, they would, they would never put,
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  you know, ten things in a row, because it looked, did, did, did, it weird.
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  Right.
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  Yeah, you get, if you flip a coin, you get long sequences of ten, you know, heads,
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  twenty heads in a row, and that happens.
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  If you do enough time, it happens quite often.
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  So you detect the fraud by noticing things that don't seem random, because those are the,
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  I mean, that seem too random for random.
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  They alternate too much, yeah.
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  Yeah, and so, yeah, because humans don't believe that's random.
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  It's interesting, isn't it?
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  Okay, so, and then the whole Taylor Swift, like, that is this teaching us something about
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  the psychology of Americans or of people in modern society that were susceptible to this,
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  is there something peculiar about America at the moment?
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  Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about this, and I was going to ask, I think there is something
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  peculiar about America at the moment.
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  Well, that's not true at all, at all times.
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  But I mean, yeah, so what, I don't know, I lived, you lived in America for a while, for
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  a year, for the majority of my, three years, Nashville, Tennessee, not New York, but,
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  I mean, you lived in the real America, the real, I lived in the international island.
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  And I, you know, I love a lot of things about America, particularly the national parks,
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  but a lot of the, the cultural, the innovation, the tech, there's so much to love about America.
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  But I don't know, just, of late, just, it's, it feels like, being a bystander, watching
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  a car accident happen in super slow motion or something, they just seems to be a slow crumbling.
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  I mean, this election that's coming up, right, the age of the candidates, the fact that
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  it, we could end up with someone running America who will be, I guess, a convicted felon
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  or convicted in, you know, fraud and, and lots of other things.
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  And if you rewind 20 years, that idea, if you pitched that idea to someone in Hollywood,
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  they were laughed and said, it's not possible, right?
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  If you go back to the, the West Wing days, right, the idea of something like that happening
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  in the White House just seemed like it would be too crazy to write in a script, right?
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  It's funny you mentioned the West Wing, because I watched it all again a couple of years ago.
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  Yeah. And the things that happen that they regard as being audacious are so run-of-the-mill.
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  Yeah, no, it's like to what actually happened. It's like, wow, there might be,
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  just one word or something or something.
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  Or there might be like a Middle Eastern country that's trying to, you know, manipulate
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  a US election or something like that.
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  Well, fast forward to the Arab Spring, the whole middle, you know, the Iraq War,
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  the whole middle, 9-11, everything has gone up in flames to such a greater extent than
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  you think they were predicting in the late 90s when that show started.
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  So what's your, I mean, what is your tech? You're probably plugged into the US culturally
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  more than me. What is your tech? Where is America in 10 years? I mean, God, I mean, where
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  are any of us in 10 years? I mean, I don't think that you can extricate that question
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  from the question about algorithms and AI and technology and digital devices.
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  Do you still think America is a democracy at its heart?
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  Yes. Really?
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  Yep.
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  But isn't there data that don't most Americans want to change the gun laws?
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  But people in Congress, anyone who's elected can't do that because they rely on funding.
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  That is dependent on the laws being the way they are and all kinds of other complex things.
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  There are certain points like that where it seems to, well, every democracy has, I mean,
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  democratic components to it, right? There are elections that we can cite here in Australia,
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  like the, I think it was the 2000 election between Kim Beasley and John Howard, where Kim
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  Beasley won the majority of the popular vote, but John Howard won the election because of
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  where the votes were distributed in different electorates. So that could be regarded as
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  undemocratic. There were all kinds of things that people might want, like action on climate
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  change in Australia that doesn't get through because of the vested interests of fossil
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  fuel groups. In America, I think something like gun laws has less to do with the amount
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  of money that gets poured into that issue because it's actually not a huge amount when you
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  look at, I've looked at the numbs on that. It's not massive in comparison to other industries,
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  but it's one of those scenarios where the people who care about it care very much about
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  it and will flip their vote on it. And for everybody else, it's their fifth or sixth
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  top issue. And when you've got that dynamic at play in any democracy on any issue, you
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  can have a small number of people calling the shots because they're the ones who are
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  going to vote people out of office for being on the wrong side of the thing they care
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  about. And the other people just don't care enough. People who want gun safety, regulations
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  still care more about the economy than they go about gun safety.
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  When I go there and go to a university or something, there's a little voice in the back of
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  my head that thinks like university schools, there could be some learned gunman sort of
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  situation happening. And that never causes my mind here in Australia, whether it isn't
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  that.
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  I don't know.
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  Maybe it's from the media where you call that psychological bias where you're just
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  selecting for things that are of the availability bias is not where things that are easy for
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  you to grab onto in your brain that you associate with American universities are the things
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  that your brain goes to. But statistically, on any given day, the number of American
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  universities and schools that get shot up is so very small, but it's not what you're
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  even thinking about.
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  I guess it was, I mean, when I was living there, I went to one of those, probably bass
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  pro stores and one of those outdoor stores where there's just, you know, racks of guns and
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  crossbows and I saw the father, young son situation where they were used by him, his first
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  gun and he was, I don't know, nine or something or 10, I don't know, some very young.
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  And that kind of stuck with me. I was just like, and when you get something I'd never experienced
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  in Australia being going to get a suit and a jacket and then they go to measure you
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  and they say, are you carrying a gun, sir?
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  You say, no, no, no, no, and I was just like, yeah, of course, most people are carrying
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  guns in the shopping center.
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  Well, enough that they have to ask, but it's just, it's those things as well when you're
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  there on the ground, I think that's seep in and to me, that's just a cultural, that's
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  a branching off of two different cultures. That's just a cultural norm. You know, there's
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  a cultural norm of responsible gun ownership in the United States in large swathes of the
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  US that they regard as being completely unrelated to mass shootings and gun crime. They regard
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  those as being mental health issues, like permitting issues and that sort of thing. But I mean,
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  I to make an analogy, it's not a perfect one, but you could imagine someone who lives
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  in an area where it's not the norm that people know how to swim, you know, in the United
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  States. So, you know, they might come from black communities in the deep south where there's
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  a, you know, there's no history of learning to swim. And they might think that it's absolutely
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  bonkers that we would be taking three, four, five-year-old children out into crashing surf
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  in Australia. That's reckless. Or, you know, there might be people who live in big urban
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  centers in other cultures in completely different countries who think that, you know, I don't
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  know, if you've grown up and shamed high, the idea of us going out camping in an environment
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  in which there are snakes and spiders and all that might just seem like, you know, it's
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  bizarre. Why would you do that? You know, I think those are cultural differences.
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  Each their own, yeah. So, you're still a ball on the US. I am sort of wrong for the next
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  10 years. It's not crumbling. Like, it's not... Well, it's the end of the empire. I mean,
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  there is just a fact, isn't it? China is... To hear the rest of this conversation, go to
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