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All We Know About Guessing · Stuff You Should Know

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