Latest / Ebbs of History / When Your Brain Gets Hacked: A Crash Course in Thinking for Yourself
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to the Ebbs of History, the show where we dive into the strangest, wildest, and sometimes downright creepiest stories the past has to offer. From dancing plagues to pirate queens, you'll laugh, you'll gasp, you'll even groan at my impeccable dad jokes. But, most importantly, you'll learn how history is way cooler than your textbook ever told you. speaker-2: We are history loving hosts, Zoe G speaker-0: And I'm Jason, and in every episode the three of us will take a quick trip through time and see what lessons we can still learn today. This is the Ebbs of History. speaker-1: Today is going speaker-0: Going to be different children. We're throwing out the regular format and going rogue. There is no single story, no single villain, no single event in today's episode. One of the speaker-1: What is one of the speaker-0: main themes of our podcast. speaker-2: Critical thinking. speaker-0: Critical thinking, okay. Gavin, anything? speaker-2: history. speaker-0: Be skeptical. Look into things. speaker-1: question but how does one speaker-0: And B skeptical. And the answer is speaker-2: Critical thinking. speaker-0: Critical thinking, that's correct. speaker-1: Question mark. speaker-2: Can we say that together where I'm not questioning myself? speaker-0: today we'll run speaker-1: Today we will run. speaker-0: a full crash course in the most useful superpower you will ever own. Thinking for yourself. We will learn how arguments get rigged, How your own brain quietly fools you, how to check whether a thing is actually true, and why the phone in your pocket can be so dangerous. Buckle up, cause this one is a big one. speaker-2: I'm really excited. Yeah. Meet speaker-0: So module one of our crash course is what thinking speaker-1: What critical speaker-0: actually is. And now here's a question for the both of you. speaker-1: Is critical. speaker-0: Thinking the same as being negative, as in an old relative is being critical of your life choices. speaker-2: Mm-mm. No, but in the in the case you gave us, yes. But in speaker-1: But exactly. speaker-2: No. No. Because being critical of something and critical thinking are two different things. Right. speaker-0: C speaker-2: It just uses the same thing. speaker-0: So critical thinking constantly. Here speaker-1: The word critical and c***ing fools people. Critical c***ing speaker-0: in critical thinking old critical word speaker-1: comes from an old Greek word. speaker-0: criticos, which means able to judge or decide. speaker-1: So critical thinking is not about. speaker-0: being a grump who hates everything. It's about being a good judge. And a good judge does not decide who wins before the trial starts. A good judge listens to the evidence, checks whether it holds up, considers the other side, and only then makes a call. Today, speaker-1: That's the whole game. speaker-0: we are training the judge who lives inside of your head, because right now, for a lot of people, That judge is asleep at the desk while the courtroom is running wild. speaker-2: Is so banes? Like a metaphor of biobanes. Okay. Just double checking. Critical think. speaker-0: Now entire course, and I want you both to hear speaker-1: Rule number one of this is to really speaker-0: this one. Being smart does not protect you. It's the speaker-1: Sometimes speaker-0: exact opposite. speaker-1: because people are extremely speaker-0: extremely good at inventing clever reasons to believe whatever they already wanted to believe. So the most carefully speaker-1: person you have to watch today. speaker-0: is not the scammer or the stranger online. It's you yourself. speaker-1: your s- speaker-2: Deep stuff. speaker-0: Deep stuff. Let me prove it to a man who is liter world famous speaker-1: with the main really world speaker-0: for logic. speaker-1: Do you guys know who speaker-0: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is speaker-2: Nope. speaker-1: He wrote speaker-0: Sherlock Holmes. speaker-2: I should've known that. speaker-1: He invented great reasoning to speaker-0: Him, the great detective in all of fiction, a character who could at speaker-1: The Glancing speaker-0: your sleeve and tell you where you had lunch, all based on logic. Well, in nineteen cousins speaker-1: 2017 two young speaker-0: in the English village of Cottingley, Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths borrowed a camera and produced photographs of themselves with real fairies. T fairies dancing in the grass. Gavin fairies speaker-1: What do you think those fair speaker-0: actually were. speaker-2: Like birds or like flies. Okay. Like speaker-0: Do you speaker-2: some sort of animal that's not fairies. Right. speaker-0: You don't think there are fairies. Don't speaker-1: There it you know speaker-0: think there are actual real fairies. Zoe any idea? speaker-2: Maybe like it was like a trick of the camera. It was a glint. A little bit of like sparkle or like rain like water left off speaker-1: Okay? speaker-2: on grass. speaker-1: Here's the picture. speaker-2: Wow, that looks so photo. speaker-0: From nineteen seventeen, so it definitely was not photoshopped. speaker-2: It you know it looks like it looks like the stalin Photoshop that he would like take people out of, but instead of taking them out it was like adding them in. At least with that one. Two boys, right? Two speaker-0: It was two girls. speaker-2: people. see the second one. The other one's taking speaker-1: There's other... speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: You're not focusing on the correct. speaker-0: Focusing on the it exactly right. You're not focusing on the right berries speaker-1: I guess. speaker-0: in this photo. Alright, speaker-1: So there's the speaker-2: They were dolls. speaker-0: now, after seeing the photo, what do you think they were? speaker-2: I think they manipulated the f photo. Okay. Like 'cause it it was probably physical. Mm-hmm. So they probably like did something. Like painted them on. speaker-1: They were paid. speaker-0: The girls drew fairies, colored them in, propped them up with speaker-1: color speaker-0: hat pins, and took a picture. Arts speaker-1: It was our speaker-0: and crafts. And Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor most logical detective, photos and declared them genuine proof of the fairy world. He got speaker-1: He wrote an entire book about speaker-0: outsmarted by two kids and some cardboard. speaker-2: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: did not admit that it was a hoax until the nineteen eighties, more than sixty years later. And the reason that fell for it is speaker-1: That Doyle speaker-0: simple. He desperately wanted the fairies to be real. So his gigantic brain went looking for reasons to say, yes, this is real. Module two The Logical Fallacies Love fallacies. Zoe, what is a fallacy? speaker-2: It's basically an argument based on like a lie, right? speaker-0: Okay. speaker-2: Not an argument based on a lie, but like you're you you're you have an argument and it's just so weak. And it's almost you have nothing else to back up your argument. So you just start basically lying. speaker-0: So you use fallacies to prop up your argument. speaker-1: A fallacy is a move speaker-0: in an argument that feels convincing is secretly broken. It's a magic trick. It looks like reasoning and logic, but there is nothing there to back it up. Once you learn to spot them, you cannot unsee them. And I promise you you will start catching them everywhere, including in the things that I say. Let me speaker-1: be watching speaker-0: do the greatest hits. And there are a lot of them because people have been bad speaker-1: I'm inventing speaker-0: arguments for a very long time. Number one, the ad hominem attack. Latin f to the person. speaker-1: for her speaker-0: That's what ad hominem means. To the person. of attacking someone's argument, you attack the person making it. speaker-2: Huh. Okay. That's interesting. speaker-0: You cannot trust her opinion about the environment. Look at her ugly haircut. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: The hair nothing speaker-1: has no speaker-0: to do with whether she is right. Zoe, if Gavin tells you the stove is hot and you fire back well, your feet smell. Congratulations, that is textbook ad hominem attack. speaker-2: See, I feel like I'm gonna see a lot of stuff correlating to our debates in language arts this year, 'cause already this is something that you wanna avoid. Yes. Like speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-2: this would be like a shameworthy Shame. Like personally attacking the opponent is like a found upon. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. speaker-1: So speaker-2: You did try to avoid the foul. speaker-1: want to be speaker-0: So all these are gonna be like that. speaker-2: Mm, yeah. speaker-1: all of you. speaker-2: Especially in like higher like skill. Yes. speaker-1: Number two. speaker-0: Two, the straw man. You argument into a silly version speaker-1: twist someone's arm in a weaker, slimmer version. speaker-0: that is easy to knock over, like building a scarecrow out of straw and then bragging that you want to fight against it. speaker-1: I think we should have a speaker-0: Bedtime. speaker-1: so you want to control every second of my life? Never. speaker-0: and never let me have any fun ever? Well, nobody said that. You built a straw man and beat it up instead of dealing with the real point of having to have a bedtime. speaker-2: So just like exaggeration, pretty much. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah blue. speaker-1: blowing something taking something speaker-0: very small and blowing it into out speaker-2: Proportion. speaker-1: into out of proportion so that you can not. speaker-0: of proportion knock down the outer proportion part because it's easy to knock it down. Number speaker-1: three. speaker-0: the false dilemma. also called the either or trap. So pretends there are only speaker-1: Someone for speaker-0: two options when there are actually many. For example, either we cancel or we let everyone around speaker-1: the entire field trip we let one runner speaker-0: with no rules at all. speaker-1: There is a speaker-0: Giant middle ground there, and the false dilemma is trying to hide it from you so you feel forced into one side. speaker-1: Number. speaker-0: four, the slippery slope. If we let you all night and then you'll start skipping speaker-1: you stay up 30 minutes late, next you will want to stay up for hours before you to and before you know it, you're living in a van down by the speaker-0: The room. speaker-1: river. speaker-2: I get that. We watched it in history class. What what is it? It's an SNL skit. Right? speaker-0: Yeah. Each step is treated like it automatically drags you to the next one. When in real life usually does not. speaker-1: life. Sometimes staying up late is just staying speaker-0: Up late. speaker-2: Put one exaggerated step to another. speaker-0: Number five, the bandwagon or appeal to popularity. speaker-1: Everyone's doing it, so it must be- This one deserves- speaker-0: You're right. Deserves a history detour because I have proof that everybody believes it means nothing at all. In the eighteen nineties, when bicycles first got popular, actual doctors warned that bikes speaker-1: Women who wrote speaker-0: would develop a permanent medical condition called bicycle face. Face would supposedly f speaker-1: your face freezes. speaker-0: forever into a tense, bug-eyed, exhausted expression. Positions said it out loud. it was total nonsense. There is no such thing as a bicycle face, but it was popular and it came from people in white coats, which sets up the next one perfectly. speaker-2: The bandwagon I would like to add is also a propaganda tool as well. Yeah. Like that when we learn speaker-0: Big tactic are speaker-2: Yeah. But like that one I feel like it's more exaggerated. I don't know. Like the I I learned about it specifically not as a fallacy, but I learned it as a propaganda tool first. You know? Like they go hand in hand. speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-2: Back to language arts in sixth grade, But it w speaker-1: Okay, why don't speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. Buying it why don't you speaker-2: Also giving the just your friend jumped off a bridge, so would you kind of thing. Yeah. Like it kind of gives that parental speaker-0: Like, speaker-2: argument. Mm-hmm. That's why I love so much, because they're so like multifaceted. speaker-0: yes. speaker-1: You will see that speaker-0: them everywhere. Yeah. No speaker-1: Number six. speaker-0: the appeal to authority. speaker-1: Be careful, because this one's speaker-0: Slippery. Slippery. speaker-2: Very slow. speaker-1: Ha ha ha! It is smart to speaker-0: listen to real experts, right? If a heart doctor who studied hearts for thirty years tells you about hearts, you should probably listen. Yeah. The fallacy is when someone follows the costume of authority instead of the actual knowledge. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-1: select speaker-0: Celebrity in a lab coat in a commercial is not a scientist. Bicycle face was doctors talking speaker-1: Far outside. speaker-0: anything they had actually studied. Always ask, Is this speaker-1: Is this? speaker-0: person an expert in this exact thing? And do they have any reason to tell me something false? hoc, which is short for a Latin phrase meaning after this, therefore because of this. Now I know that's confusing. It's between speaker-1: the mix up it speaker-0: two things happening in a row and one thing actually causing the other. A big that speaker-1: confusing but this is the one speaker-0: Zoe and I say to each other all the time. speaker-1: Literally. speaker-0: Twice today we said it to each other. speaker-1: Correlation speaker-0: Is not causation. speaker-1: I wore my lucky socks and we so socks. If a rooster crows. speaker-0: won the game. So the won the game. If the every morning, right before the sun comes up, did the rooster make the sunrise? speaker-1: right? speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: No. Happening speaker-1: Two things. speaker-0: together or one right after the other does not prove one speaker-1: One speaker-0: caused the other. This is the granddaddy of a thousand bad health claims online. eight The Red Herring This is a distraction, tossing up something irrelevant and shiny to pull attention away from the real question. It speaker-1: The name supposedly speaker-0: comes from dragging a strong smelling smoked fish across a trail to throw hunting dogs off the scent. speaker-1: Did you finish your homework? Well, did you know that the school cafeteria is wasting so much food? We should... speaker-0: Should really talk about that. Nice try. That's a fish, not an answer. speaker-1: Politicians use red herrings all the time speaker-2: The examples that Dad is is giving are very b obviously spotted ones. Yeah. But if you use it in daily life, it's a little harder to spot, you know? Yeah. speaker-1: I just give it speaker-0: I'm trying to make it so you understand the concept of it. Number nine, what about ism? speaker-1: which is red herrings. speaker-0: Sneaky cousin. Answerings for something, you point at something else. speaker-1: You broke the lamp. speaker-0: Well speaker-1: What about last week when Gavin broke a plate? Gavin's- speaker-0: Plate does not unbreak your lamp. Politicians so speaker-1: Love this one speaker-0: much they practically run on it. speaker-2: So it's kinda like when I like you tell me I do the dishes but and I'm like but I washed your car today. Like that's like a perfect speaker-0: Yeah, that's exactly speaker-1: today speaker-2: day by the way. but yeah, the I didn't even realize I was doing it either. speaker-0: There you go. What about it? Well what about blah blah blah? Well no, what about blah blah blah? It has to do with the actual issue. I don't care that you washed my car earlier today. speaker-2: Fallacy jar. Whenever we use fallacy. speaker-1: I like that idea. that sounds fun. speaker-0: Heck yeah. Number ten. speaker-1: Circular reason This is when proof speaker-0: Your proof is just a claim wearing a disguise, going in a little circle. This speaker-1: this is because it is the greatest cereal ever made you didn't really give a speaker-0: This the best made. Reason. You just said the same thing twice in a fancier voice, right? Round and round it goes. A speaker-1: I use this one. speaker-0: lot when making jokes. Well, I'm awesome because I'm awesome, obviously. speaker-2: for this I put no reason, just different wording a cadence, you know? Yeah, pretty much. Just what it is. Yeah. It's a very speaker-1: saying what it is to prove what it is that makes no sense speaker-0: That's exactly what it is. speaker-1: You're up on these pretty easily, speaker-2: Yeah. I feel like they're like hard to understand but when you you're like explaining them really well. But yeah, like I feel like we use that all the time, like Zoe was saying. I literally do that joke so much. speaker-1: But we use it. speaker-0: We don't use it as actual trying to prove our points of speaker-2: I feel like we're just able to like detect that easily. Right. You know, it's just like Yeah. speaker-1: It is one of speaker-0: The easier ones to detect, for sure. speaker-2: It's like what's your argument then? But it speaker-1: Ick, speaker-0: can become nuanced though. Yeah. You know everything nuanced. and they can be, absolutely. speaker-2: One of these is very can be us. speaker-0: Number eleven, the hasty realization. speaker-1: generally speaker-0: Jumping to a big conclusion from a tiny scrap of evidence. So speaker-1: I'm at two. speaker-0: everyone from that city is rude. speaker-1: Two people. speaker-0: is not a city. speaker-2: This kinda relates a lot to sports, I feel, you know? speaker-1: You know what dude, don't about that but speaker-0: I didn't even think but you are one hundred percent right. speaker-2: I cache like! speaker-1: because you and I do it only speaker-0: Most on a daily basis. speaker-2: I feel like we give like Don France a really bad rap. But like Eliza might be like some of the best human beings you'll ever meet. speaker-0: We know a lot of Dodger fans, but I lump them all into one big bucket and I know for a fact that they're all not like that. speaker-2: Yeah. It it's not a great thing to do, but it's just it's all you guys it's so easy to do. speaker-1: put on the speaker-0: Flip side about Cubs fans, I feel they're all great and awesome. And you know, it's the exact same thing. speaker-1: The hasty generalization. speaker-0: Like, but the opposite, that's right. speaker-2: Yeah, it that's what that's like it should be a separate jar. speaker-1: Just a hasty generalization. This was the engine behind a speaker-0: huge amount of unfairness in this world, so it's worth watching out for. So when you think about it, hazy generalizations are well, all cri all immigrants are criminals. speaker-2: Yeah, it could lead to a lot of racism. And just all the speaker-1: Yes. speaker-0: Yep. speaker-2: It's just such yes. It's a slippery slope. speaker-0: It's just racism speaker-1: justification for speaker-0: is what it it it is what it ends up being. And so there's a lot of unfairness in this world based on hasty generalizations. speaker-2: Like I feel like with hasty generalization there's a lot of like extremes, you know? Like there's no gray area. It's all black and white. Yeah. speaker-1: That's a hasty generalization. And finally, number 12, Peele. speaker-0: The appeal to nature speaker-1: which is. speaker-0: everywhere online right now. The something is natural, it's speaker-1: Claim that if some is natural speaker-0: our speaker-2: Organic. speaker-0: that it must be good. Exactly, Zoe. And it must be bad. Here's speaker-1: If it's chemical, it might... speaker-0: a reality check. Poison ivy is all natural. So is a lightning strike. speaker-1: is a chemical made in a lab. speaker-0: Natural does not mean safe, and man-made does not mean dangerous. Everything speaker-1: Every single day. speaker-0: in the universe, including you, is made of chemicals. speaker-2: Mm-hmm. It's like the non GMO, but everything at this point is GMO. speaker-1: You have an apple in your speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: That's a GMO Apple. It's just a buzzword. That is not how speaker-0: How apples come in real life? speaker-2: This is like the whole pharmaceutical business. Is it's like it has this natural, this natural, this natural, no chemicals, blah blah dah, GMO, blah blah blah. You see it. internet a lot. a lot of people will say like, like this product has this one ingredient that's in gasoline, but speaker-0: In Yoga Mats was the big one. Yes, speaker-2: really? speaker-0: because it they said that something that was in yoga mats was also in Subway sandwiches, their their bread or something like that. speaker-2: Yeah, i but then it's just no correlation is not causation. Right. But it's just like they pinpoint one bad thing. They cherry pick. They yeah, cherry pick and speaker-1: picking. speaker-0: I didn't have it on here. speaker-1: Yes. speaker-2: it's more it's one of the more obvious ones. Yeah. It's just like it has this one ingredient that's in gasoline, so it's the worst product ever. Right. But then so then they use that as a anchor to sell their all natural supplements. Right. Like we won't speaker-1: which are completely speaker-0: Completely unregulated. speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah. And like n not FDA approved. speaker-0: Right, there could be crazy stuff in there. speaker-2: These ones with the gasoline products are FDA approved. Right. I've also seen the one where it's like if you can't pronounce the ingredients on the back of the label, you should b eat it, buy it, whatever. But it's like these are chemical compounds that have been tested and trialed in a lab. Right. Like they're to help you. They're to be like It's just organic chemistry. If you stepped into any chemistry classroom you would be able to pronounce speaker-0: Any sophomore chemistry classroom? Yep. speaker-1: Yeah speaker-0: All right, module three cognitive biases. If fallacies speaker-1: it fell asleep speaker-0: are traps inside of an argument, biases are traps that are inside your head. here's the scary part. They're running in the background of your brain, whether you notice them or not, all day long. speaker-1: Does that make sense? speaker-0: if fallacies are the you know, the tools that debaters speaker-1: There's speaker-0: use in their arguments. Cognitive speaker-1: How many speaker-0: biases are inside your head. Yeah. And the the biases that you have against things and How you grew up speaker-1: of speaker-0: forms a lot of these cognitive biases. speaker-2: Yeah. based off the name I can already think of an example. school, kinda just it's like that hasty genera generalization. It's you don't like a few of the subjects, so you don't like all of school but you love history, you know? speaker-0: Right. speaker-2: I feel like that's kinda like a weaker example. it's speaker-0: First bias that I have here. And it'll it'll fall into what you just said. So it's kinda perfect you said that. speaker-1: King of all... speaker-0: Cognitive biases is called confirmation bias. Your speaker-1: This is your. speaker-0: brain's habit of noticing, believing, and remembering anything that agrees with what you already think. And quietly shrugging off anything that it does not. Remember speaker-1: Conan Doyle speaker-0: and the fairies? That was confirmation bias He wanted fairies to be real. So the evidence for them looked enormous and the evidence against them looked like nothing at all in his head. speaker-2: Hmm. speaker-0: Have you ever decided you did not like a movie before it even started? And then every little thing in it annoys you, while your friend, who was excited to see it, loved the exact same movie. Same movie, two brains, collecting speaker-1: Each one. speaker-0: evidence for the answer it had already picked before the movie even started. speaker-2: Yeah. What I wrote was you want to believe in X to be real, So you focus on Y and ignore Z. speaker-1: Kinda. I like the path you're going down. But if it's kinda like it's. speaker-0: In those terms speaker-1: You believe in X. So you're only looking at evidence. speaker-0: That supports X. speaker-2: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Not looking at evidence that supports Y. speaker-2: Yeah. Or more in this case you're looking for evidence that speaker-1: to bolster your speaker-0: Opinion. speaker-2: But I've definitely done that when I'm mid movie. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: when I'm mid movie and then I realize something I don't like and then my brain just goes so negative. It's just like when it's almost like when you surround yourself with negative people, you are you're you're looking for more negativity, speaker-1: kinda goes into bandwag. Yeah. But yeah. speaker-0: They do. All these speaker-2: Kinda go hand. speaker-0: go hand in hand. speaker-2: I feel like it does happen often in movies, like when something's hyped up, I'll look for the good parts and not really the bad parts. But a movie that has more negative reviews, I'll look for the negative part. speaker-1: You're looking for speaker-0: Confirmation that it's negative or that it's positive 'cause you like you know 'cause everybody else said that they like speaker-2: At the same time you ignore the positive or negative. speaker-1: Zoe can you think of anything else in your speaker-0: Life that you have a confirmation bias against. I have one very specific thing in mind. speaker-2: like hunger games. I was thinking that too, but it's not really a confirmation bias. It's a speaker-1: No, it is. It is. You really like the movie and so you're not speaker-0: gonna look for things that are negative against it. Yeah. Right? No. What I'm thinking about is Gracie worms. speaker-2: my god, yes. I speaker-1: You have this irrational hatred speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: for Gracie Abram. You speaker-2: It's like a vendetta against her. speaker-1: have one reason. They'll get me wrong. But you find and look for. speaker-0: things to hate on her about. speaker-2: I just don't like her or her music or that the reason she's a Nepo baby. speaker-1: That's the one reason speaker-0: Is the Neppo baby part, which I completely understand is and is completely valid. You can't deny that the girl knows how to sing. speaker-2: I can. speaker-1: see that and your confirmation in action. speaker-2: She just like speaker-1: Okay, I don't need that speaker-0: I don't need examples of how she sings on the podcast. speaker-2: That's just how I hear it. god. speaker-1: So everyone on earth has speaker-0: Confirmation bias and you cannot delete speaker-1: The goal? speaker-0: Is to catch it and go hunting for the other side on purpose. Next, the availability speaker-1: Bill speaker-0: shortcut. Your brain guesses how common something is based speaker-1: Peace. speaker-0: on how easily it can remember an example. speaker-1: So if you watch three speaker-0: dramatic shark videos in a row, your brain quietly decides sharks are everywhere and the ocean is basically a soup made of teeth. In reality, you're far more likely to be hurt by a bending machine tipping over than by a shark. But vending machines do not get scary music and slow-motion replays. speaker-1: Whatever is loud and memorable, feel like speaker-0: Memorable feels common when it is genuinely rare. Cable speaker-1: is basically how speaker-0: cable network news works nowadays. Can you guys think of any examples besides the shark in this? speaker-1: Tested water. speaker-2: It's me with my appendix. god, it's kind of me my appendix or just my irrational fear that something's gonna happen because it's happened to mom or it's happened to grandma or it's happened to something just 'cause it happened to somebody else and I my brain can pull the evidence of this happened to them and I'm having the exact same thing that they did, even though we're completely different age groups. speaker-0: Right. speaker-2: like there's just something going off like speaker-0: Wouldn't you say speaker-1: you speaker-0: that's more confirmation by US though than availability shortcut? That yeah. Yeah. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: It it's both. 'Cause that's the thing with these speaker-2: But that's how my brain works. It pulls like, this is happening to me, so that's happening that. speaker-0: Right. speaker-2: I know. Instead of thinking logically and being, my stomach just hurts. This one's kinda hard to wrap my head around, you know? speaker-0: It is. speaker-1: We don't watch t- speaker-0: Too much local news. speaker-1: but you'll always a tease speaker-0: For something that they're going to talk about later on in the in the in the news. Mm-hmm. And it's some scary short speaker-1: be reported. speaker-0: that came out and some scary new medical thing. Yeah. And you know, like are all our kids on speaker-1: all our kids doing speaker-0: this? And you know, like those are availability shorts. speaker-1: Shortcuts speaker-2: Yeah. It's like one kid does it and then so now every other kid. speaker-1: One kid eats a tiger's and all of sudden all the speaker-0: Tide Pod Kids in America are eating Tide Pods. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Not only slippery speaker-1: Only is that s- speaker-0: slope, the fallacy, it's an availability shortcut. speaker-2: feel like this is very common in schools with group punishments, you know? It was like one kid has his phone so now every kid has has their phone. speaker-0: You were very upset about not being able to wear your Apple Watch to school. Yep. Yep. And that yep. Mhm. speaker-2: Like what are you gonna do on it? Book up answers. speaker-0: Alright, next the anchoring trap. The first number you hear sticks in your brain like an anchor and drags every later guest t towards it. A jacket marked was two hundred dollars, now only sixty. It feels like a steal because your brain anchored on the two hundred dollar part. Maybe that jacket was never worth two hundred dollars in its life. The stores know this. That crossed out price is not information. It's a bait to get you to buy something. speaker-2: You know what it sounds like? It sounds like the at Hobby Lobby, there's always for furniture, it's thirty percent off. But on the sign it says always thirty percent off. I we I was telling I speaker-0: Thirty percent off then? No. speaker-2: was talking with this to Gavin, like we were walking and I saw the sign and I was like it's speaker-0: So it's speaker-2: not. It's just the price that's telling you. Even though it's technically thirty percent off, it never is. speaker-0: It's thirty percent off an arbitrary number that Hobby Lobby chose. speaker-2: of the actual price that they want it to sell at is the sale, is like the the price. speaker-0: That's exactly right. And s but your brain is telling you, I got I got a good deal. I got thirty percent off on this. Yeah. Yep. Yep, that's anchoring. speaker-2: I feel like it it's not really applicable in a lot of situations, but when it is, it's very prominent. Yes. speaker-0: Well, you'll see it a lot more now. And you're a ton in store. That's there speaker-2: Bader Meinhof. speaker-0: you go. That's what marketing is. Is basically the anchoring trap. Yeah. That's all marketing is and a lot of you know clothes in stores, Target, Walmart, whatever. Mm-hmm. When when Target or when Walmart says it's on rollback That's just them, it's always on that price. That's just them telling you that you should think that this is on sale. That's the regular price. They never have sale prices. They have roll back prices to make you think that you're getting a d a deal that is is very, very short lived. And it's not. speaker-2: It's that's basically like Black Friday. Kind of. Not really. But it's just like limited time, only now, today. You have to get it now and then you look at the price and it's like, it really is that much less. speaker-0: Nothing changed, yes. There's a tool that you can watch Amazon prices and you click on an item and it'll tell you what the price has been in the past year and it never changes. What would what they will do and I've seen this because I have this tool is that they will jack the price up right before Prime Day or Black Friday. And so when they bring it back down to regular price to normal price that it's been the entire year, you'd think you're getting a deal. speaker-2: Yeah. I've fallen for this a lot of times I think. Absolutely. Well probably. At least on Amazon 'cause I'll get a lot of stuff. I'll be like, like these shoes and this shoe is like this shoe is more expensive and this one's the same price but it's on sale but it's always on sale, so it's the cheaper. speaker-0: Now I do want to point out on this one that I d I and I just thought this, not all the time when things are on sale is it the anchoring effect. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Because for prime example, video games come out and they're, you know, forty-nine, fifty-nine, or sixty-nine dollars. You know that price in the beginning. And what do I do? speaker-2: You wait till. speaker-0: I wait until it's fifteen dollars. And I know that I'm getting a sale price because I know the original price that it was being sold for. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not all the time. Yes. There are actual sales. speaker-2: It definitely varies for each industry. Mhm. Like stores like Target, Walmart, they'll do that way more than things like buying video games, like you just said, and grocery stores. They'll have sales but it won't be anchor. speaker-0: And you know, and the you bring up an interesting point about the grocery stores and I always buy chicken from the butcher they're at in in the grocery store, right? Because it's cheaper. And it they always have a sale price on it, but it's always the same price. It never changes. speaker-2: Every single thing in that butcher is sale, sale, sale, sale on every single tag. Yeah. But it's probably the same price as just the stuff in them. But speaker-0: The Halo effect. When someone is good looking or famous or confident, we assume they are also smart, kind, and honest. Even though those things have nothing to do with each other. This is exactly why companies pay attractive celebrities to sell you things they know nothing about. The glow from one good quality spills over and makes you trust the rest. It's why influencers on social media are millionaires. But more about that later. speaker-2: Kinda this is kinda different, there was like a tactic where you say, like an example was Jack Black, like you say he's like your poster man. Like a lot of companies will have like one big celebrity as like your poster person, you know? Yeah like John Cena. speaker-0: Millions of dollars. speaker-2: The rock or I don't know, I'm just naming wrestleys. But yeah, that's like a marketing tactic. speaker-0: All these are marketing tactics. They marketing companies use your cognitive biases against you. Yeah. And that's exactly what this is all about. We have to think for ourselves and that's why I'm doing this episode with you guys. The sunk cost trap. This is when we keep doing something we hate just because we already put time or money into it. You're 40 minutes into a terrible movie, so you feel like you have to finish it. Yeah. Even though finishing it just costs you more of your precious life, right? Mm-hmm. The time you already spent is gone either way. Smart move is to ask, is this good from right now forward? Not, but I already started it. Mom and I do this all the time with books. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten 30, 40% into a book and I don't like it at all, but I trudge through it anyway because I've invested so much time into it. Not to mention money. if I didn't get it from the library, but I will continue reading it and finish it and I hate it throughout the entire thing. speaker-2: I feel like this is kinda more like a useful one, you know? So you don't like waste something. speaker-0: Right, but y you're you're wasting something. You're wasting your time. You get you know, you get halfway through a movie and you hate it. Why finish it? Yeah. For the principal? speaker-2: Yeah. Because your mom's forcing to finish it. Like This would be like less common, at least in like th when you buy something you have to use it. It will be less common in rich people, you know? 'Cause they have the funds to buy like a different version or like example like this is like kinda like a extreme but like you get a car, you don't like it, so they have the funds to get a new car that you will like. speaker-0: Or instead of One of your pitchers goes on the I L and instead of, you know, just waiting for them to get better and coming back, you just get a Tarek Scoobyl. speaker-2: Cough, cough, cough. speaker-0: Here's some more confirmation bias for ya. speaker-2: Hold on, I'm I'm hasty generalization. speaker-0: Casey generalization is right. And the sneakiest one of them all, the overconfidence trap. l Here's the weird truth. When you know very little about a subject, it often feels easy because you cannot yet see all the things that you're missing. It's like standing at the bottom of a mountain that's covered in fog. It looks like it's a gentle little hill until you actually start climbing. The real experts are frequently the ones saying, well, it's complicated. So, a lifelong tip: when a person is 100% certain about something enormously complicated, with zero doubt in their voice, that is not always a sign that they know the most. Sometimes it's a sign that they know the least and have not yet climbed high enough to see through the fog. So what does that mean? speaker-2: You kinda just look at things at face value. speaker-0: Someone's coming up to you and saying, I know the earth is flat and they are one hundred percent confident about it. They don't know how much they don't know. They're not experts. They just have this opinion and they think they know. They didn't go to school and study geology or astronomy or science at all. But they claim and they, you know, and they're they're one hundred percent confident about it. When but when you ask, you know, this is a bad example, but if you were to ask a sci ask a scientist, they would say, Well, it's complicated. You know? Are we a circle? Well, it's complicated. Why is it complicated? Well, because, you know, the thermodynamics of this and and you know the the gravity on this part and the and because of the moon, like and there's a bunch of information behind why they say it's complicated, that's way harder than the person that knows for a fact that our f that our earth is flat. Is it? speaker-2: Yes. I saw wait, sorry, yeah, no. Yes, no, maybe so. I saw a video yes the like the other day that kinda correlates to the well it's complicated. Like yeah, Earth isn't flat, but it's not perfectly spherical either. Like it speaker-0: That's the speaker-2: kinda bumps in like hills and just like kinda it's not perfect circle, but it's not flat. So that's why it is complicated. speaker-0: Exactly. And that's just a a a big example. It gets when it starts getting nuanced on things that, you know, are actually complicated, but you've got people online trying to sell you something, they make it seem uncomplicated. Mm-hmm. You know, like Yeah. It's a slippery slope. Alright, one more one more fallacy. Because it matters so much online The Barnum effect. This is why horoscopes and personality quizzes feel spooky accurate. They give you a description so vague that it fits absolutely everybody, and your brain fills in the rest for you. I'm gonna say something here. You're sometimes outgoing, but you also value your alone time. You have big dreams, but occasionally you doubt yourself. Gavin, who does that sound like? speaker-2: Everyone in the world. speaker-0: Does it sound like you? Does it sound like Zoe? Does it sound like me? Uh-huh. Exactly. speaker-2: He speaker-0: It describes every human who has ever lived. It's named after the showman P. T. Barnum, who is coming back later in this episode with the giant stone man. Module four, how to check a source. Alright, you know the rigged arguments and the brain and the brain glitches now. Now the practical skill, the one you'll actually use every day. How do you tell if a claim is true? Here's a five-step checklist for for the rest of your life. And then I'm going to unleash it on some of the greatest hoaxes in history. Step one. You ask yourself, who is telling me this and how could they possibly know? A random account posting scientist confirmed chocolate makes you taller is not a scientist. Where is the actual study? Who did this? speaker-2: I feel like that first one's like really prominent on the internet because so much fake news is spread but by the person that's telling you this, like the kinda the overconfidence effect. speaker-0: Yep. speaker-2: but yeah, it's just like so prominent today. Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Step two. Do they gain something if I believe it? Are they selling a product, chasing clicks, or trying to make me angry so that I share it? Follow the motive. Money and attention are behind a shocking amount of nonsense online. speaker-2: That's Rage Bay. speaker-0: Yeah. Step three. Leave the page. This is called lateral reading. And it's literally the trick professional fact checkers use. Instead of staring at a fancy looking website trying to decide if it seems trustworthy or not, you open up a new tab and ask the rest of the internet, hey, is this source legit? And what do other people say about this claim? A con artist can make one single page look extremely official. What they cannot control is what the entire rest of the internet says about them. speaker-2: I feel like a good example is in school. Don't use Wikipedia. Like that's what they always tell you. yeah, that's a really good one. That's what you gonna say. But they always tell you, like, when making an essay to use multiple sources or check your sources. Yeah. You know? speaker-0: You can't use one source because that is speaker-2: Use reliable sources. speaker-0: you know, that one is biased. You may not know how it's biased, but it's biased. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: So if you get multiple sources that are confirming the same information is much better than using one source. speaker-2: Like that one website that with all the different like political documents where it shows if it's more right leaning or left leaning so you can really understand where the writer is coming from and if they are biased like that. Right. I don't remember what the website's called, but speaker-0: It's called ground news. speaker-2: yeah, I was just about to say that. you do? speaker-0: I have ground them. speaker-2: Yeah, I was just about to bring that up and I thought you were talking about something else. But yeah, I I've been seeing like a couple of videos I watch, they'll have sponsorships and some of them are ground news and Yeah. Like it Yeah. speaker-0: Why I like ground news, speaker-1: Thanks. speaker-0: and for the you know, this whole step three of leaving the page, is that it doesn't tell you how to think about this article. It gives you the facts behind it on who wrote it, who is sharing it, it gives you the background on that, not the actual background of the facts that are in the article itself. That's why I like it. So it helps you inform your decision. You know, like it it came from this site Which is, you know, known to lean hard left. Okay, so I I know that there's gonna be some biases in there that I need to watch for. speaker-2: This is like really like prominent in like political arguments. Like there'll be some news articles where they're like more like democratic or republican. speaker-0: That's what ground news is. It tells you what is what. speaker-2: Yeah. I thought it was giving you articles that are non biased. No, it just tells you speaker-0: It tells you if the article you're reading is non-biased or not. speaker-2: Mm okay. And if it's biased, which way is it biased toward? speaker-0: Exactly. speaker-2: Which mostly at this point everything is biased, so it's just making sure that you are aware. speaker-0: There is some stuff out there that is not biased. And what I like to do specifically is read American news from the BBC. Yeah. They are from not America. It's not speaker-2: Fire's perspective. speaker-0: they have no stake in our politics. I mean they do obviously, but like you know, they're writing from afar. They're a third party writing about what we're doing. So I feel it's less biased than a lot of the other ones. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Mom does the same thing. speaker-1: Alright, step four. speaker-0: Find the original. Many speaker-1: so many speaker-0: false stories are a real quote yanked way out of context. Photo speaker-1: A real fo- speaker-0: from a totally different event, like we did the episode about the silent night and the picture of them playing soccer on the on the field wasn't even from Yeah, speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: France. It wasn't even from the front lines, it was from a different year in Greece. Yeah. Right. or a headline that says the exact opposite of the article underneath it. Track it back to where it actually started. speaker-2: Basically, like find the context because so many videos online specifically are just pulled out of context. Yes. So you get an opinion on this person. But speaker-0: Cherry picking. speaker-2: specifically with podcast clips, they'll pull out like podcast clips that say something controversial in, and then they'll just post that to the reels. And then that's all you get of your opinion of that person when you should really see it in context. Yes. Reminds me of the Timothy Chalamet ballet thing. In context, it's not what he's saying. It's pulling it out of context and making him say that opera and ballet are not like okay or an they're not actual forms of art. But I saw I saw the original video and in context that's not what he's saying. But speaker-0: The internet. He's saying that it's not an art that is very popular anymore. Yeah. And but but that's not the story that came out. No. Exactly. speaker-2: I see this a lot with kinda just my algorithm. It's like theories from like cartoons or like shows. And it's like they'll take one like small clip out of context, but they won't show the full thing. So there's more explanation doing the full thing, but they only show the small clip that supports their argument. But like the fairy from earlier like the fairy picture, like you wanna find the original without the cardboard cutouts, you know? Like that's hard to do. But speaker-0: original without the cardboard cutoff stuff. That is the original photo. So absurd. And speaker-2: I guess. Hm. speaker-1: But it's speaker-0: that's why it was confirmation bias, cause Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted it to be true. So he, you know, he cherry picked the evidence and, you know? speaker-2: But like I feel like it's in this age, like it's so easy to like photoshop a picture. speaker-0: We're gonna go into that in a little bit. speaker-2: At the same time, it's so easier to find the original. speaker-0: Yes. Five. speaker-1: Step speaker-0: Check the date. One of the most common tricks is a completely true old story reposted as if it just happened. Real photo, real event, wrong decade. It happens more than you expect. Now, watch this checklist go to work. Which step cracks each case. First, the Great Moon hoax of eighteen thirty five. speaker-2: This is the moon bat. speaker-0: You speaker-1: You guys know this one. speaker-0: but a quick refresher. A New York newspaper called The Sun ran a series of articles announcing that a famous real astronomer had built a giant telescope and discovered life on the Moon. The Moon, they reported, had blue unicorn goats, beavers that walked upright carrying their babies, and of course, flying bat people. Or manbats. speaker-1: So speaker-0: Basically ask yourself this. who wrote this and why are they writing it? You don't know that answer. speaker-2: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Right? So you start looking into it. speaker-2: Uh-huh. speaker-1: and speaker-0: I just did some quick research when I wrote that episode and it was a guy who was trying to prove that people will believe anything. speaker-2: then it's number one. speaker-0: Day well yeah, it's number one, but that's the step that you take. You gotta think about who's writing it and why they're writing it. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: They attached real respected scientists names who happen to be at an observatory thousands of miles away in South Africa, and had absolutely no idea his name was being used to sell bat people. So they borrowed a trusted name and nobody double checks. The paper never even printed a real apology. It just let the story quietly fade away. So they used The the famous scientist's name, right? speaker-2: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: So what fallacy is that or what cognitive bias is that? speaker-2: it's halo effect. speaker-0: Yep. speaker-1: Also, speaker-2: w up yeah, that that's what it was. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: Second, the Loch Ness Monster's most famous photo. In nineteen thirty four a British newspaper published the Surgeon's Photograph, a picture of a long necked creature poking out of the Scottish Lake. It was called the stur the Surgeon's Photograph on purpose, because it came from a respectable doctor named Robert Kenneth Wilson, and who was and and who's gonna doubt a surgeon? Zoe. Which fallacy trap is that? speaker-2: Well that's the one we were just talking about, right? That is appeal to authority. speaker-0: That's right, appeal to authority, borrowing the doctor's respectability, so people skip the checking. They don't check to see if it's real, because a doctor said it, so they they they trust it. The truth came out sixty years later in nineteen ninety-four, when a man involved confessed that the monster was a toy submarine with a fake head made of wood putty, floated in the lake and photographed up real close so that it looked huge. A bath toy fooled the world for sixty years. Third, The Piltdown Man. In nineteen twelve in England, a man announced he had dug up the missing link, the fossil that bridged apes and humans. It had a human like skull and an ape-like jaw. Exactly what scientists at the time were hoping to find. And here's the kicker. It fooled the actual scientific establishment for forty-one years. That is confirmation bias. It was displayed in a museum, written up in textbooks, and taught to students. It was finally exposed in 1953 using new chemical dating, and the truth was almost funny. Someone had taken a medieval human skull, jammed it together with a 500-year-old orangutan jaw, f<unk>ed on speaker-1: Vile Da- speaker-0: the teeth so that they look like human teeth, and stained the whole thing with chemicals to make it look ancient. speaker-1: Why? speaker-0: Did brilliant scientists fall for a file down orangutan jaw for four decades? Confirmation bias plus a bit of national pride. Yeah. Had speaker-1: Other countries speaker-0: found amazing early human fossils, and Britain badly wanted a first Britain of its own. They wanted it to be true, so for 41 years it was. The lesson is not that the scientists are dumb, the lesson is that the scientific process eventually caught it. Because someone kept checking. Checking is the hero of this entire episode. And fourth. As promised, speaker-1: . speaker-0: the Cardiff Giant. The payoff to the P. T. Barnum teaser from earlier with the stone man. In eighteen sixty nine, workers digging a well on a farm in Cardiff, New York, hit something enormous underground. A ten foot tall stone man. A petrified giant. Crowds came from everywhere and happily paid to gawk at it. It was, of course, completely fake. A statue carved out of gypsum, buried on purpose a year earlier by a man named George Hull speaker-1: who wanted to see how many speaker-0: he could fool. But here's the best part. The famous showman, P. T. Barnum, tried to buy the giant, but he was told no, you can't buy it. So he simply built his own copy and put it on display as the real one. Say that speaker-1: Let me say. speaker-0: again. Barnum made a fake of a fake and crowds paid to see that too. speaker-2: Wow, that's crazy. speaker-0: So when you spot a scam online that is clearly just a copy of another scam, relax. That is tradition older than your great great grandparents. speaker-2: I feel like the entire web website of Timu just applies to this. speaker-0: Yeah. Just remember guys, advertising and marketing is full of logical fallacies and cognitive bias. It's real bad. speaker-2: God, it's terrible. speaker-1: Hi, my name speaker-0: Five, the social media machine. And I think now that you guys learn have learned all this stuff in the first four modules, this is the most important for you guys to take away with you because you're in a generation that is growing up with social media. And Zoe, how long did it take for us to give you social media? speaker-2: January. Like speaker-0: This year this year. And why? Because of the What did we make you do before we let you even think about having it? speaker-2: I had to write like I had to write almost like a that wasn't an essay, I just had to write why it would be beneficial towards me and I how I would stay safe. speaker-0: That's right. Social media is such a scourge on society right now that this needs to be talked about, especially with kids your age. And I hope that anybody listening has this part and that their kids listen to it too. speaker-1: So speaker-0: This part matters the most because this trick is not a dusty history book. It's running on you today, right now, on the device in your pocket, and it never sleeps. Here's the single most important sentence in this whole course. So I want you both to really sit with it. The app is not trying to show you what is true. It is not even trying to show you what is good for you. It is trying to show you whatever keeps you looking. That is the entire job of what we call the algorithm, and Gavin, you've already brought it up. The invisible recommendation engine choosing what appears on your feed. It is a machine that has learned from billions and billions of taps and swipes exactly which kinds of posts keep people scrolling, and it serves you more of those forever. speaker-2: we s watched a C G P gray video, Vecommend channel by the way. Yes. it's about the algorithm and like how it works. Or it like kinda like a I remember that video. It was a really good video. Yeah. But like it's just like really interesting to think about, you know? Yeah. speaker-1: So, what? speaker-0: What kind of post do you think stops people from scrolling the hardest? speaker-2: When you're getting bored when you're just like I was scrolling, you're like nothing's grabbing my attention. Might as well just go spend my time doing something. speaker-0: What speaker-1: So materials are those. Of speaker-0: type of or what type of speaker-1: course, they're those. speaker-0: calm, careful, hear the boring facts with all the context post? Yeah. speaker-2: Well not for me, but speaker-1: What sucks? speaker-0: Something that makes you gasp or laugh or get absolutely furious, right? speaker-1: So those are the two types. speaker-0: What do you think the algorithm is gonna show you? speaker-2: Rage Bay. speaker-0: The rage bait, exactly. speaker-2: They're trying to cause you to release as much like dopamine as possible to keep you engaged and scrolling. speaker-0: Shock and outrage always win, every single time. Scientists have measured this. A major study out of MIT looked at millions of posts and found that false stories spread significantly faster and reached far more people than the true ones. In their data, false news was around seventy percent more likely to be shared than the truth. And the truth took about six times longer to reach the same number of people. And but here's the gut punch. It was not mostly robots or bots doing the spreading. It was regular humans like us sharing the exciting fake thing because it was more surprising and more emotional than the boring true thing. The truth is stuck with reality. A lie can be as thrilling as the inventor wants because it's not stuck with anything. Put those two facts together and you get the whole trap. The machine rewards whatever is most emotional. And the most emotional stuff is very often the least true. So your feed is not a window onto the world. It's a fun house mirror, bent and polished, to crank up your feelings because your feelings are what keep you scrolling. And your scrolling is what makes the company money. You are not really the customer here. Your attention is the product being sold. speaker-2: I feel like this is why there is so much like sound effects and background music. Like the same video that has background music and doesn't, the one that has background music will have so much more viewers and likes and shares and comments than speaker-0: Up promotion. speaker-2: the one with none, you know? And same things with the sound effects, you know, they add emotion. They can add like comedy, you know? speaker-1: Alright, alright let me times. speaker-2: Rage B speaker-1: Hey! speaker-0: There is RageBait. Post designed speaker-1: Just do speaker-0: on purpose to make you angry enough to comment, because an angry comment is still engagement. Yeah. And engagement feeds this machine. speaker-2: No publicity is bad publicity. speaker-0: Right. Okay. There's engagement bait. The like if you love your mom, keep scrolling if you want bad luck. Nonsense. Pure emotional arm twisting. There's the echo chamber, also called a filter bubble. Because the algorithm keeps feeding you more of what you already agree with, you slowly get sealed into a room where every voice sounds just like yours, and it starts to feel like the whole world thinks the way that you do. There are bots and fake accounts designed to make a tiny fringe opinion look like a huge popular movement. Which is our old friend the bandwagon fallacy. But now it's automated. Then there's the influencers selling supplements and miracle products. Which fallacy is that? Halo. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: That's that's part of it, yep. What else? speaker-1: pure speaker-0: Nope. Appeal to authority. And the halo effect. Holding hands. Yeah. They're famous and attractive and confident. So your brain assumes that they know what they are talking about when they really were just paid to read a script. Be careful of those. They are everywhere. Especially on the social media that you're on. speaker-2: mostly they don't disclose the ads, which is one illegal, two, it it makes you fall into the trap of, they really like this product. Maybe I should go get it. But it really is just you're being paid to say it. speaker-0: Yep. Then there's the newest and strangest danger of all. speaker-2: AI. speaker-0: we now live in the age of deep fakes, images and videos and even voices generated by AI that look and sound completely real. speaker-2: That's why now you only need to pay the influencer if you can make it look convincing enough. You can have anyone promoting speaker-0: That's right. speaker-2: your object. speaker-0: In twenty twenty three, a picture flew around the entire internet showing the Pope strolling in a giant white puffer jacket, looking like the coolest grandpa on the planet. Millions of people believed it. It was 100% fake. Cooked up in an AI image tool by a guy who was, by his own account, basically just messing around. Nobody got hurt by the Pope's imaginary jacket, but the exact same tools can fake a world leader saying something they never said. Fake a photo of a disaster that never happened, or fake a voice on the phone that sounds exactly like someone you love. Yeah. So a new rule for your generation, one my generation never had to learn. A photo or a video is no longer proof all by itself. It's just a claim now, and claims get checked. three tools to survive all of this social media machine. Tool one, the pause. Now you know what before I start this actually, Zoe, I want you to really listen to these because the other day you sent me a video and my response. speaker-2: There's a lot of preposterous claims made in this speaker-0: I said there are some dubious claims in this video. That is my exact speaker-2: I kinda remember like like the weird words you used in speaker-1: So think about that, about what... speaker-0: the process that you took before you sent that to me, okay? While I'm going through these. It'll k kind of help you, you know, wrap your head around. speaker-2: I sent it to you not that I was saying it was hundred percent true. I was saying it I know I was saying like I even thought to myself, like these are crazy claims, but the i the base message is this and I wanted to share with you the base message, not the extreme things. speaker-0: That's fine. I want you to still think of the video and the process before while I'm going through these three tools to survive. Tool one, the pause. The single most powerful anti-misinformation weapon ever invented is just waiting ten seconds before you share anything. If a post is engineered to make you instantly furious or instantly amazed, that jolt is exactly the thing being used to switch off your inner judge. Feel that jolt, then stop and ask. Who wants me to feel this? And what do they get if I do? Tool two, seeing is no longer believing. When an image or a clip is shocking, reverse search it. Look for the same story from a source that has a reputation to protect. And remember that the more perfectly the post confirms what you already believed, the harder you should check it, because that is your confirmation bias lighting up. And tool three, pop your own bubble. Go follow a thoughtful person who sees the world differently than you do. Not to argue with them, just so that your inner judge gets to hear more than one witness before banging the gavel. And now the twist I've been saving. The one that ties this entire course into a nice bow. You've almost certainly heard of the famous story in nineteen thirty eight. A radio drama called The War of the Worlds convinced America that Martians were really invading, then that millions of terrified people ran screaming into the streets in a giant nationwide panic. It's one of the speaker-1: most. speaker-0: repeated stories about human gullibility ever told. speaker-1: Do you guys know anything about that? speaker-2: No not really. I just found out that it was about motions. speaker-0: Right. It was just a radio drama it was Orson Wells, the man who wrote and directed and starred in Citizen Kane, mm-hmm, one of the best movies ever made, if not the best movie ever made. he did a radio show and he did it as a newscast. Like it was really happening. Mm-hmm. And it was really the first time that anybody had done a storytelling like this. Completely fake. But it was presented as if it were true. And this was in nineteen thirty eight. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Everybody flipped out. The entire country. They they say the stories that we know entire country flipped out. People were running for their lives, crashing into each other in their cars. Some people killed themselves because they were so scared. That's the story. Mm-hmm. But here's the thing. That story is mostly false. Historians who actually dug into it found that the panic was actually very tiny. Relatively few people were even tuned in, and most who were tuned in knew perfectly well that it was a show. So where did the legend of the giant panic come from? Newspapers. Newspapers at the time were losing advertising money to this new invention called the radio. And they did not like it one bit. So they took a handful of confused listeners blew them up into a coast to coast hysteria to make radio look dangerous and irresponsible. In other words, the most famous story about people being fooled by fake news was itself, at least partly, fake news, spread by an older kind of media that felt threatened by the newer one. And it fooled everybody for nearly a hundred years. Jason: Lessons we've learned today. speaker-0: Lots of lessons today. speaker-2: yeah. speaker-0: But the most important lessons I want you to take away today are first, the person most likely to fool you is who? speaker-2: Your speaker-0: Yourself. Through confirmation bias. So go find the other side on purpose, especially when the story feels too perfect. Second, be the judge, not the speaker-1: The fan. speaker-0: not the hater, and wait for the evidence before you make your decision. And third, pause before you share every time. And lastly, stay humble. Because being brilliant did not save Arthur Conan Doyle from cardboard fairies or an entire field of scientists from a filed down orangutan jaw. Critical thinking is not something you are, it is something you do over and over, especially on the days you are absolutely certain that you're right. Jason: Time for the Fun Fact Challenge! speaker-0: Instead of the fun fact challenge, today we're going to play spallacy. speaker-1: What the speaker-2: Does this include cognitive biases as well? Or is it just fallacies? god. speaker-0: But I couldn't call it spot the fallacy and cognitive advice. speaker-2: I just wanted to know to look at the section which of my notes. speaker-0: You have to name the fallacy or the cognitive bias in the scenarios I'm about to give you. Warm up question to get you used to the new format. There are two separate fallacies stacked together in the following sentences. I want both of you to name one of them. So there's no need to lock in on this one. Alright, here it is. A post says nine out of ten kids already have this app. Don't be the only loser who doesn't. speaker-2: Banwagen. speaker-0: Bandwagon. Everybody's doing it, so you should too. What's the second one? The the second one speaker-1: No, a little bit tougher. speaker-0: but you can get it. Don't be the only loser who speaker-2: That's the part I'm trying to don't be the only loser. Is it kind of confirmation bias a little bit? 'Cause is it ad hominem? speaker-0: It's ad hominem. It's a sneaky one, but it's there. Yeah. Calling you a loser aims straight at your feelings instead of giving you an actual reason to buy the app. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Good. speaker-0: Mm, that's a tricky one. speaker-1: Alright. speaker-0: now the real questions. the question one. A video with dramatic music claims Ever since they built the new cell tower, three people in town got sick. Poisoning us. speaker-1: The towers po- speaker-0: Zoe. speaker-2: post hoc. Correlation without causation. speaker-0: Correlation is not causation, exactly. Two things happened in a row. So people assume one caused the other when it could be pure coincidence. Question two. What cognitive bias is this? Your friends say that documentary must be true. It was so well made and the narrator had a great voice. Zoe. speaker-2: Locked in. Overconfidence trap? speaker-0: Nope. Evan, you got a you got a guess? speaker-2: confirmation bias The Halo effect. speaker-1: The halo effect! speaker-0: A polished professional feel makes us assume the content is also accurate. But slick production and true facts are two completely different things. Question three. There are two answers to this, but I will take either one. Name the fallacy. And add brags. Our tea is one hundred percent all natural, so it's completely safe, unlike those chemical medicines. Well then. Zoe. Appeal to nature. There's another one in there, bud. Can you think can you name the other one? Tough one, but there's a second one. speaker-2: shit, what chas it? That herring? speaker-0: Nope. What's your what's your guess on this? No. speaker-2: Second one ad hominem. But not to a person, but to speaker-0: Nope. Ad hominem literally means to the person. speaker-2: Or is it hasty generalization? speaker-0: Nope. False dilemma. Because they're telling you you either drink our natural tea or you drink chemicals. Yeah. There's no middle ground there, right? speaker-1: So there speaker-0: The crash course. Balancies are rigged arguments. Biases are your brain's built-in blind spots. Sources have to be checked away from the page. And social media is a feelings machine, not a truth machine. Every trick we learn today has one thing in common. It only works in the dark, and you just spent the whole episode turning the lights on. That's it for this episode. Thanks for traveling through time with us on the Ebbs of History. If you like today's story, share it with a teacher, a friend, or your family on Instagram at Ebbs of History. If you have any show ideas, corrections, or questions, you can contact us at questions at ebbsofistory dot com. speaker-2: off, this has been Kiros Gavin. speaker-0: Zoe and me, Jason, reminding you that history is not just about the dates and battles. It's about the people, curiosity, and the weird, wonderful choices that shaped our world. Until next time speaker-2: Keep wondering? Keep laughing. speaker-0: and keep learning through the speaker-1: of history. speaker-2: That was a really long one. speaker-0: It was long.