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Mini: (Not) The Definition of Insanity · Why We Do What We Do

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do?
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  Speaker 2: Mini.
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  Speaker 3: I am your host Abraham and I'm Shane.
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  Speaker 2: We are a.
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  Speaker 1: Psychology podcast and on these Mondays we release these short
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  Speaker 1: form episodes that are a quick dive into a topic
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  Speaker 1: that we unpack and then we we end it, and
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  Speaker 1: then we're just done.
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  Speaker 2: For that topic.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, it is a moose boush.
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  Speaker 2: If you will, there you go.
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  Speaker 3: I think no, a R derv or. Yeah, that's one
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  Speaker 3: of the moose bouches.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, order definitely makes a bit more sense.
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  Speaker 1: We release our full length episodes on Wednesdays, and today
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  Speaker 1: we're tackling a topic that is near and dear to
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  Speaker 1: my heart, because it's one of those things that's like
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  Speaker 1: it's like the cut on the roof of your mouth
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  Speaker 1: that won't go away, or the like food that's stuck
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  Speaker 1: in your teeth and you can't quite get it out
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  Speaker 1: of there, and it's so annoying and so frustrating, And
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  Speaker 1: so today I'm going to try and pull this piece
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  Speaker 1: of food out of my teeth and throw it in
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  Speaker 1: the garbage and never think about it ever again, hopefully,
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  Speaker 1: but I won't be able to avoid it because it's
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  Speaker 1: practically unavoidable.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yes, So today we are unpacking the what
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  Speaker 4: is not the definition of insanity because you've we've heard
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  Speaker 4: the phrase, we've heard the saying so many times, and
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  Speaker 4: we are just going to go back and say, you.
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  Speaker 1: Know what, I don't think so, yes, okay, So what
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  Speaker 1: you've heard people say and they sometimes even couch it
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  Speaker 1: more firmly, and I believe that, or I firmly believe that,
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  Speaker 1: or some asinine thing like that. The definition of insanity
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  Speaker 1: is doing the same thing over and over again and
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  Speaker 1: expecting different results. Or the definition of insanity is accepting
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  Speaker 1: that definition as the definition of insanity. This is wrong
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  Speaker 1: and two important and contradictory ways that we're going to
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  Speaker 1: go ahead and get to.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, let's go ahead and do it real quick dive
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  Speaker 4: into the history of this ridiculous turd of an idea.
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  Speaker 4: So this quote is attributed to Albert Einstein, except he
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  Speaker 4: didn't say it because he was a very smart person
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  Speaker 4: and not a very stupid person.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: Actually, the reality is that this quote can be traced
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  Speaker 1: back to a novelist, an author in a mystery novel
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  Speaker 1: by author Rita May Brown, and she wrote that definition
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  Speaker 1: in her nineteen eighty three.
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  Speaker 2: Book Sudden Death.
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  Speaker 1: In the book, a fictional character named Jane Fulton says, quote,
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  Speaker 1: Unfortunately Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said. Insanity
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  Speaker 1: is doing the same thing over and over again, but
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  Speaker 1: expecting different results.
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  Speaker 2: End quote.
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  Speaker 1: So this is a fictional quote from a fictional person
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  Speaker 1: in a fiction book.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, so that's where it came from.
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  Speaker 4: It is not something that is attributed to the man
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  Speaker 4: that was one of the architects of the Manhattan Projects
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  Speaker 4: and discovered the theory of relativity.
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  Speaker 3: Or in all those things, right like, yeses, he would
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  Speaker 3: never say something this ridiculous.
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  Speaker 1: All right, So let's go ahead and dismantle this in
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  Speaker 1: two different ways. One is by proving that this definition
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  Speaker 1: is stupid and wrong, and then by giving you the
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  Speaker 1: actual definition. And let's tar let's start with the first part,
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  Speaker 1: which is showing you why this definition is stupid and wrong. First,
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  Speaker 1: let's just imagine a scenario where I accidentally drop an
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  Speaker 1: egg on the floor and for some reason, the egg
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  Speaker 1: doesn't break.
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  Speaker 2: Just for some reason it doesn't break.
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  Speaker 1: Would it then be insane to imagine that now if
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  Speaker 1: I drop the egg in the floor, it won't break
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  Speaker 1: if I drop it over and over again, I shouldn't
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  Speaker 1: expect it to break because it didn't break that one time, right, No,
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  Speaker 1: you goon, that is not how that works. I think
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  Speaker 1: if it didn't break the first time, there's no reason
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  Speaker 1: to think that it now won't break the second time.
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  Speaker 1: There's actually a pretty good reason to think it should
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  Speaker 1: have broken the first time, and doing it again means
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  Speaker 1: it's likely to break again.
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  Speaker 2: And I kind of thought about this.
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  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the Zelda games, and in the more
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  Speaker 1: one of the recent ones, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom,
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  Speaker 1: you can like lift up these containers and drop them
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  Speaker 1: on the ground, and sometimes when you drop them they
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  Speaker 1: don't break. So you've dropped them a couple of times
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  Speaker 1: and eventually they'll break. And so that had me thinking
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  Speaker 1: about this exact definition.
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, is that insanity?
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  Speaker 1: Because I know from experience that doing this thing repeatedly
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  Speaker 1: will break it. But even if I hadn't, it's like
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  Speaker 1: reasonable to expect that it would break, knowing that that
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  Speaker 1: is a mechanism for breaking these things in here, and
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  Speaker 1: yet I'm doing the same thing over and over again
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  Speaker 1: expecting different results because I'm going to get different results.
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  Speaker 2: All right, I'm clearly worked up. Let's take a quick break.
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  Speaker 1: The definition of taking an ad break is pausing and
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  Speaker 1: taking an ad break.
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  Speaker 4: Yep, love that definition. Another example this is checking the mail. Right, So,
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  Speaker 4: if I check the mailbox and the mail hasn't arrived,
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  Speaker 4: is it then insane to check the mail again in
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  Speaker 4: a few hours or the next day. No, nobody thinks that,
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  Speaker 4: because there are circumstances, and there are variable circumstances that
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  Speaker 4: lead you to conclude that there is a reasonable outcome
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  Speaker 4: or a reasonable change in the expected outcome of your behavior,
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  Speaker 4: Like you are going to eventually do the same thing
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  Speaker 4: and it will produce a different result in that context.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. The idea that insanity is doing the same thing
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  Speaker 1: over and over again drives me insane. It is stupid
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  Speaker 1: and it is wrong, and it has been used way
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  Speaker 1: too much to try and belittle others or ideas or
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  Speaker 1: things that they do just so dumb and like not
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  Speaker 1: only is it, like the misage attribution thing, just annoying,
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  Speaker 1: it's not really a problem, like if it were a
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  Speaker 1: reasonable aphorism to use or something like that, but it's
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  Speaker 1: not because it's patently demonstrably wrong. In multiple ways, and
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  Speaker 1: one of them that I've shown you, and let's take
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  Speaker 1: another example of this is intermittent reinforcement schedules. These are
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  Speaker 1: specifically designed to facilitate repeated behaviors without the favorable outcome
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  Speaker 1: happening every single time. That is, you're doing the same
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  Speaker 1: thing over and over again and expecting that at some
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  Speaker 1: point there will be a different outcome, which is that
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  Speaker 1: that reinforcement eventually comes, and.
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  Speaker 2: It does it does come. That's how intermittent schedules work.
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  Speaker 3: Right, exactly, you are going the outcome will change. Now.
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  Speaker 4: Another way that we're going to dismantle this idea is
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  Speaker 4: considering the real and more appropriate, albeit not its catchy
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  Speaker 4: definition of insanity. Insanity is behaving unable to tell the
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  Speaker 4: difference between right and wrong, and the difference between real
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  Speaker 4: and not real.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, when you look up the actual definition of sanity,
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  Speaker 1: you'll get a lot of circular definitions, things like it's
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  Speaker 1: the state of being insane or its mental illness. But
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  Speaker 1: I think that the way that we think about it
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  Speaker 1: clinically and it's almost isn't very useful.
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  Speaker 2: But the way that we tend to think about it
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  Speaker 2: clinically is more like.
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  Speaker 1: The inability to discern what are hallucinations or other mental
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  Speaker 1: events that are going on from things that are happening
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  Speaker 1: really in the world. It can also include like being
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  Speaker 1: so caught up in your own language that you can't
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  Speaker 1: tell the difference between the things that you're thinking to
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  Speaker 1: yourself and the things that are happening really happening in
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  Speaker 1: the world. And then there's an aspect of this that's
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  Speaker 1: like morally wrapped up in it, like you can't tell
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  Speaker 1: the difference between right and wrong, like is this the.
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  Speaker 2: Thing that I should do and that's okay or I
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  Speaker 2: shouldn't do, et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: That also is sometimes built like wrapped into the definition
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  Speaker 1: of mental illness.
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  Speaker 4: Right, absolutely, So. The question that keeps coming up, though,
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  Speaker 4: is why do people like this? Why do people like
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  Speaker 4: using this phrase?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? Why do they keep turning to it?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? Why do they keep using it?
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  Speaker 4: It's quippi and a lot of people, I mean, you're
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  Speaker 4: gonna find that there are a lot of armchair psychologists
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  Speaker 4: out there that just like using terms that are catch
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  Speaker 4: phrases and mantras and quotes. Right, They've internalized quotes, And
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  Speaker 4: this particular quote has a veneer of logic. It has
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  Speaker 4: a kind of truthy feel to it. Yeah, But if
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  Speaker 4: someone opens their fridge looking for soda and doesn't find one,
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  Speaker 4: and then keeps closing and opening the fridge to see
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  Speaker 4: episoda appears, that would look pretty confounding. But the principle
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  Speaker 4: of doing it over and over is not the problem.
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  Speaker 4: It's a failure to respond to the contextual features of
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  Speaker 4: the situation. That's where the problem is. That people do
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  Speaker 4: not respond to contextual clues. They don't respond to histories
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  Speaker 4: of reinforcement for whatever reason. There's all sorts of things
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  Speaker 4: that happen here. It's not just doing the thing over
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  Speaker 4: and over and over again.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Most of the time that this asinine saying is used,
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  Speaker 1: as you said, like people like these short, quick phrases
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  Speaker 1: that they seem to convey wisdom. They give the appearance
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  Speaker 1: of like an argument or.
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  Speaker 2: A thoughtful thing or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: And it's also because it's so quick to like belittle
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  Speaker 1: someone else's thing. They're like, oh, this person like doing
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  Speaker 1: this thing is insane because the incession, the definition of
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  Speaker 1: insanity is doing that thing.
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  Speaker 2: They keep returning to that.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and it's one not true, two demonstrably false, and
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  Speaker 1: three it's often used in bad faith to make a
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  Speaker 1: poor argument.
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  Speaker 2: It's stupid, it's wrong, stop saying.
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  Speaker 3: It all right, I think I think we have we
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  Speaker 3: have nailed that one.
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  Speaker 2: If you would like to tell me that I'm wrong,
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  Speaker 2: good luck.
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  Speaker 1: I am very open to changing my mind, but I
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  Speaker 1: am so enormously frustrated and over the use of this
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  Speaker 1: definition as it has come to be used.
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  Speaker 2: You've gotten uphill paddle for you. Anyway.
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  Speaker 1: You can email us at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: or on the social media platforms. If you want to
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: come over there and agree with me, you can do
• 9:46
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• 9:48
  Speaker 1: join us on Patreon, leave us a rating, review, like
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and subscribe, or pick up some merch at our merch store.
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  Speaker 1: And I think that is all that I have to
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  Speaker 1: say about this. Thank you so much for listening. Thank
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: you to my team for all the work that they do.
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  Speaker 1: Is there anything that I forgot or that you'd like
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  Speaker 1: to add before we wrap this up today? Shane, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: not today. I'm gonna go ahead and sit back and
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  Speaker 1: let you have your space. The definition of insanity is
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  Speaker 1: not It is not doing the same thing over and
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  Speaker 1: over again and expecting different results.
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  Speaker 2: It's not that, so stop saying it. It's not.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they got that.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, great, thank you.
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  Speaker 1: This is Abraham, This is Shane World.
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  Speaker 3: Bye.
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  Speaker 2: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
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  Speaker 4: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
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  Speaker 4: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
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  Speaker 4: we hope you have an awesome day.