Imitate this! Cristine Legare

Dave 01:08

Oo.

Athena 01:10

Yeah.

Dave 01:11

So who are we talking to today?

Athena 01:12

Today we are talking to Christine Legere who is a psychology professor at UT Austin.

Dave 01:20

Ah.

Athena 01:20

And she studies culture, cultural transmission and kids and how they imitate and all of these things. And she is also just extremely insightful about what all of this means like for us, as humans.

Dave 01:33

Cool. What's your favorite part of the episode?

Athena 01:35

My favorite part of the episode is talking about what, what kids do and how kids imitate because she's seen a lot of it and has studied it in the lab. And, uh, it's just fascinating to me how fundamental it is to our humanity to imitate.

Dave 01:56

Cool.

Athena 01:56

Yeah. So let's hear from this week's fresh brain: Christine Legere!

Dave 02:04

Ah, I messed it up! I messed up the imitation!

Athena 02:06

Yeah. Well, you know what, the imitation doesn't always have perfect fidelity.

Dave 02:09

Oh, good to know!

Athena 02:11

Let's try it again! Let's hear from this week's fresh brain: Christine Legere!

Dave 02:17

Well, let's hear from this week's fresh brain: Christine Legere! [Athena is proud of Dave;

New Speaker 02:18

['Psychological' by Lemi plays]

Athena 02:59

Would you introduce yourself in your own words to all of us?

Christine 03:04

Sure, I'm Christine Legere, and I'm a cognitive scientist who studies how we become human and how our cognitive system allows us to become members of highly diverse cultural groups, to learn any human language, any cultural toolkit, body of knowledge. And that's really at its core what I'm most interested in is our capacity for all the different sorts and forms of culture that exists in human populations.

Athena 03:33

So for you, the ability to use sort of different, different languages, different norms, that ability to be different, is it for you part of what's essential about being human?

Christine 03:47

Absolutely! I think that the, um, the most interesting thing about humans is their cultural nature. Human minds are for culture, um, our cognition is I think most special among animals because of the cultural inheritance and our proclivity for learning cultural information. So rather than cultural variation as, um, or viewing cultural variation is something that obscures human universals. The fact that humans have a cognitive system that's flexible enough to learn, you know, any repertoire of cultural knowledge and practices is unlike any other animals. So human culture and humans varies more between populations than in any other animal species. You know, sure, chimpanzees in some populations use tools a little differently than chimps in other populations and some chimp populations don't use tools at all, but the the orders of magnitude by which our, um, our cultural practices vary is, is extraordinary and requires a tremendously sophisticated cognitive system and a lot of flexibility.

Athena 05:10

So what unites us is our ability to be different. [laughter]

Christine 05:12

It does! And our ability to learn whatever is locally relevant in the population that we're being born into. So when, when I talk to people about parenting and the goal of parenting, a lot of, of um, you know, middle-class Americans will say things like, well, the goal of parenting is to love your children, which is of course true parents love their children. I would argue that's not the goal of parenting though. The goal of parenting is to equip your children to succeed in whatever population you anticipate them living in.

Athena 05:48

Mhm.

Christine 05:48

um, working in, having a family in, the needs of the requirements of populations, um, in terms of the toolkits and aptitudes, they vary enormously. So the type of skills that you need to, um, to excel on a Melanesian Island are pretty different than the types of skills you need to to excel in Austin, Texas. So we're not raising culture-free offspring. We are raising Americans or, um, Fijians. Uh, as that's a case where, and that's, that requires a lot of built-in psychological flexibility.

Athena 06:30

So essentially we have systems in our brain that are specifically set up to pick up on those particulars and then integrate that information in a way that allows us to be better-suited for that particular ecology or social environment or whatever it is that we're in.

Christine 06:49

Yeah, absolutely. And our, uh, you know, our psychology, our brains are shaped by the particular tasks that we're learning as well. So, I mean, there's a huge literature on expertise and how learning musical instruments, um, and learning multiple languages, um, there's bi-directional feedback for these sorts of things. But the, the kinds of mechanisms that I think of as, you know, kind of core cognitive architecture are things like imitation, um, the observational learning. So human children are deeply interested in pretty much everything about other people, particularly interested in, you know, peers and parents and people that are, you know, locally very informative. Um, but children are motivated to acquire the toolkits of those around them.

Athena 07:37

Mhm.

Christine 07:37

the languages you don't have to, children don't require language instruction to learn a language. Right? They don't require any kind of reward to imitate. They're intrinsically motivated to become like those around them in a way that differentiates us from other animals, right?

Athena 07:55

Hm.

Christine 07:55

That social motivation and aptitude for social learning is critical for understanding human cognition and culture.

Athena 08:02

Right? So it sounds like our brains, and on this podcast brains are something that we really like to talk about

Christine 08:11

I love brains.

Athena 08:12

So yes, brains are wonderful. [Cristina laughs] But like our human brains are almost set up to be influenceable by things from the outside and set up almost to be able to be, would you say zombified by

Christine 08:30

I think there's no question that that's true, right? So there are, there's trade-offs and vulnerabilities associated with any strategy, um, or sort of any evolutionary adaptation. So social learning is tremendously powerful in that it allows children, it allows learners of all ages to acquire information that they would not be able to learn through individual exploration. So the vast majority of what we all know, we've learned through observing other people directly by reading the materials other people have produced. We are voracious consumers of the, and not just consumers, we are the inheritors of many, many, many generations of, of previous, um, innovations. So we, uh, we accumulate these, these innovations and, um, have access to that when we're navigating the world around us. So not only are our minds absolutely prepared to acquire information from others to be interested in information from others. Uh, we also have of course, cultural transmission systems like literacy, technology, numeracy that allow us to record

Athena 09:53

Oral traditions

Christine 09:56

Oral traditions I think are a beautiful example of the interaction of cognition and culture. They include a, um, there are a lot of features of, uh, oral narratives that, um, make memory, um, are specifically attuned to the human mind and how human memory works

Athena 10:14

For example

Christine 10:14

Like repetition.

Athena 10:14

For example. There's a lot of repetition. Um, there's a lot of circling back. Humans find narratives to be, uh, especially compelling. We enjoy hearing them. Um, in fact, we, we package things in narratives where in, that emphasize goal directedness and intentionality and all the sorts of ways that human minds process information, even in cases where it may be, it doesn't fit all that well. Mhm.

Christine 10:41

So, for example, in, um, describing like evolutionary theory, uh, we often fall into the trap of presenting it in a narrative format, which of course is engaging to humans who are trying to influence.

Athena 10:53

Mhm.

Christine 10:54

But then also, um

Athena 10:56

And that's what sort of been criticized as like the just so storytelling, right? Yeah.

Christine 11:00

It also, um, included information about, uh, kind of goal directiveness, um, and design. And I mean, humans think about goal directiveness and intentionality and design, and we make artifacts. Uh, we have intentions. You can't understand human psychology without understanding those things.

Athena 11:21

Mhm.

Christine 11:21

Um, but one error that we make is over-generalizing that to systems that are not, um, are not created by human minds [laughter]

Athena 11:28

Right.

Christine 11:30

like, like the evolutionary process. So, um, so our, a lot of our cultural traditions are of course not accidentally, um, very attuned to the way our, the way they were designed to process information in the way human minds reason.

Athena 11:50

Right.

Christine 11:50

So the oral tradition and the repetition, the, uh, kind of the narrative structure, uh, the, they build in, um, from a personal relationships and, uh, all kinds of things that are intriguing to moral lessons to human minds. And that is a tremendously useful way to, uh, increase interest, which is always critical. Right?

Athena 12:15

Mhm.

Christine 12:15

People often I think, don't pay enough attention to what we, what we care about. Um, there's lots of things we can do and that we can reason about, but we're more likely to do them if we care to. Which is like.

Athena 12:29

Right.

Christine 12:29

you think about the, the kind of motivation that a very young child has to imitate others. This, the fact that they are, they have all of this intrinsic motivation to do this means that they're doing it when they're doing it all the time. They're doing it when they're not being rewarded, they're doing it when their parents aren't looking.

Athena 12:50

Mhm.

Christine 12:50

They're doing it in their free time, they're spending a lot of their energy. So there's a lot that you can tell about a species looking at what they care about and how they spend their time, when um, in the case of humans, when no one is watching.

Athena 13:06

Mhm.

Christine 13:06

no one is monitoring.

Athena 13:10

Okay.

Christine 13:10

that sort of thing.

Athena 13:11

And kids spend a lot of time playing and imagining and telling stories and those kinds of things.

Christine 13:17

Absolutely. Yeah. They enjoy the same, many of the same things that.

Athena 13:20

Yeah.

Christine 13:21

adults do. They are small adult, you know, small humans I should say. [laughter]

Athena 13:24

Yeah! Yeah! So my kids at the dinner table now, um, we try to eat all together, but we have to have rules about memes like that memes like the online memes. Because there's, so there's three of them, they're fourteen, twelve, and seven and they will just start repeating the memes, and they will just cycle. And sometimes I'll like activate a meme that's, you know, longer than a few seconds long. And then they'll all be like saying it together, and this can go on indefinitely if we don't intervene. And like say conversation, we have to have a conversation, but their, like, brains are just taking this information and then not only do they take it in, but then they want to repeat it. And then of course when they're repeating it, they're reinforcing it in each other's brains. And so they're just these little, like

Christine 14:15

They're social beings that use language.

Athena 14:18

Yeah.

Christine 14:18

This is, this is hardly unexpected, and this is what their brains are for.

Athena 14:22

Yeah.

Christine 14:22

So they're just, they're merely exercising what their brains are especially well equipped to not only enjoy, but also to be good at it.

Athena 14:32

Yeah! But I can't help but feel like as their parent, as I'm watching this, that they're getting hijacked. Right? [laughter] Like is it really like, you know, I don't know. Maybe, maybe they're getting some information that's important for them for surviving as, you know, young adults in Tempe, Arizona. By, you know, repeating these memes over and over again. But, uh, I don't know.

Christine 14:56

I think they're probably, um, you know, they're, they're building a particular sort of linguistic toolkit by doing this. But I think that the, the possibility of them being hijacked, this is not mutually exclusive, right?

Athena 15:09

Mhm.

Christine 15:10

It's very true that there are, there are entire industries of marketers and advertisers and people and social media influencers just discovered that that's a term an 'influencer.'

Athena 15:21

Yeah. [laughter]

Christine 15:21

There's a science to this, and they create material specifically to be maximally engaging, um, maximally catchy. And that it ... doesn't sound that different from hijacking and that's exactly what I would argue marketers and advertisers want. And we often find our, you know, draw ourselves drawn to purchasing a particular product or, um, developing a particular preference without any recognition that this was not our idea at all. Um, and another thing that we're, um, human children are especially bad at this, but even adults, we're not good at, at source monitoring.

Athena 16:10

By which you mean?

Christine 16:10

Um, by, by that I mean we're not good at keeping track of where we heard particular information. Not always.

Athena 16:20

Uh-huh.

Christine 16:20

And, and obviously some types of information are more salient and the person you heard it from is more relevant. But we, I think this is part of the kind of cumulative nature of our culture and the way our brains process information. It's often not critical or even possible to remember the source of all this insight. Um, and then over time we internalize this as part of our own choice. Um, our own preference, our own idea.

Athena 16:48

Yeah.

Christine 16:50

So imitation allows us to acquire whatever cultural toolkits and skills, (when) our practices are locally relevant. So we imitate what's around us, and what's around us as a species varies as function of the historical period that we're living in, the particular region that we're living in, the political circumstances, the, um, the economic history, the educational institutions we have access to. Um, and thus this universal mechanism for cultural acquisition, which is high fidelity imitation means that we acquire what is locally relevant and that explains how over time our, um, our toolkits become more and more specialized and can vary pretty dramatically between populations. So what children learn to do in, in Tempe is different than what children learn to do to some extent. There's some similarities. They all learned to do kind of basic human things like have social relationships and speak languages and, and prepare food. But what children are learning in Tempe and what they're learning in Port Villa in Ottawa too are, are pretty different.

Athena 18:08

Yeah! So you've done some experiments where you've like looked at differences in learning and how imitation differs in how people think differently about what happens or do you

Christine 18:18

It is true.

Athena 18:18

Would you talk about those a little bit?

Christine 18:20

So we, we've done experiments using a child-friendly tasks, things like making necklaces and we found that children everywhere when they, a particular necklace for example, is modeled, imitate that, that net particular necklace with pretty high fidelity.

Athena 18:36

So somebody like you like have an experiment where someone is making this necklace with these different kids and then the kid has to do that same task where they're -

Christine 18:48

That's right!

Athena 18:48

Yeah.

Christine 18:48

They watch an adult make a

Athena 18:51

Yeah.

Christine 18:51

necklace using particular beads, particular colors, in a particular order, and then they're given the same materials, and they're told it's your turn. So the child can choose to make exactly the same necklace assuming they remember it because they've just recently watched it. They can make a necklace that's a little bit similar, has some of the same colors but is a little different. They can make an entirely different necklace, or could make no necklace at all and do something else with the beads. So they're not directly told to imitate, although most children do, and most children understand the implicit task demands of an adult modeling something in front of them

Athena 19:30

Yeah.

Christine 19:30

with the expectation that there's probably a reason the adult has chosen to do this. So, um, most children everywhere, in fact ever we've ever worked imitate with pretty high fidelity in a context of this sort, so I think imitation is absolutely a human universal. I think acquiring the toolkits characteristic of human populations without imitation would be, would be impossible to do this. Cause imitation allows you to acquire information and knowledge far beyond what you could discover independently through your own exploration, right? It's why imitating a recipe that someone else made a, if I follow each step in that recipe, precisely, I can produce something far more delicious and special than if I went to the kitchen and just started throwing ingredients in a pan. Um, it's quite frightening to imagine what I would come up with! [laughter]

There's some small chance, it would be truly exceptional, but I wouldn't bet money on that! So imitation allows children to participate in activities they otherwise would not have the knowledge to participate in, to acquire practices, and abilities and toolkits they could never learn their own. So it's not a surprise to me that children everywhere imitate with high fidelity. What I think has been really quite surprising in our recent research is how much variation there is between populations in what people think high-fidelity imitation or conformity means about the abilities of different, um, uh, different people. So just for example, um, in, in Manawatu, which is the Melanesian archipelago, when adults watch a young child imitate the behavior of somebody else with very high fidelity, um

Athena 21:25

So they make the necklace,

Christine 21:26

they make the necklace person like

Athena 21:28

Exactly. like the adult did

Christine 21:29

Exactly um, and then watch a child make a quite different necklace after watching the adult make, um, make particular one. They judge the child who made the necklace just like the adult as most intelligent, um, as, as most well behaved. And their justification for this is that this child clearly has an excellent brain and a very, uh, an excellent mind, um, because

Athena 21:59

They're keeping track of everything

Christine 21:59

To remember exactly what that, what that, person had had done and created and that the ability to reproduce that behavior requires an excellent memory and an excellent mind. So they're not giving explanations based on, um, conformity or rural use per se. They're really drawing attention to the, the kind of cognitive psychological power of this child. Whereas in, in the U.S., in particular, your American middle-class parents, um, when they see the same videos, they judge the child that made quite a different necklace, um, as the most intelligent. So in fact, take behavioral variation as a sign of, of low conformity and associate that with creativity, with innovation, with um, with a kind of a cognitive toolkit that allows, that allows a person to think outside the box. So there's this huge, um, in many ways kind of fetishizing individualism even when that individualism is something as trivial as making a necklace just a little different than what was modeled.

Athena 23:08

Mhm.

Christine 23:08

It's amazing how much people, you know, how much information they drive from very simple behavior. Just something as simple as whether the child made a necklace the same or not means different things in different populations. Changes how people think about the intelligence of the child, of the behavior of the child. So just simple behaviors are psychologically consequential in powerful ways.

Athena 23:45

You think that that has anything to do with like in Western, you know, middle-class, Eurocentric kind of world that's where the speed of cultural change is so fast and like that, you know, is there like more of a sort of training of kids to participate in like the changing culture as opposed to places where like maybe traditions are stronger, or there's less cultural change?

Christine 24:17

I think that it's, um, this isn't a product of our, primarily a product of, of Western populations per se. I think it is a product of, uh, competitive child-bearing environments. So in, I mean, so keep in mind in industrialized countries, throughout the world, in East and South Asia for example, uh, you have tremendous technological and cultural change. You have technological and cultural change happening everywhere, but in industrialized countries in this, there's some variation here, right? You think of a country like Finland who has a, um, much less competitive educational system than what you would find in the U.S., or in India for that matter. Uh, parenting in your American middle-class context has become a, and in many industrialized contexts, ranging from Austin, to Shanghai, to Beijing to, um, you know, even places like Delhi and Rio de Janeiro. There are limited edu-ah-economic opportunities and these economic opportunities are highly, highly competitive, and education is a conduit, it's a path, it's a gateway to acquiring an economically-competitive skillset. So this is why parents down the road from, from us in Austin are putting their children in gifted preschools

Athena 25:50

Mhm.

Christine 25:51

and paying to go to private schools to give, uh, paying for private tutoring to give their child every competitive advantage to outcompete other children. Right? Education is set up in many countries to be competitive and thus anything that differentiate, differentiates your child and the toolkit of your, you know, your child has access to from other children, gives them a competitive edge.

Athena 26:18

Hm.

Christine 26:18

So frankly, I think it has much more to do with being in a competitive childbearing environment in a schooling environment, um, which is a product of particular economies and industrialization.

Athena 26:28

Yeah.

Christine 26:30

Then in, in any sort of Western cultural values per se.

Athena 26:34

There's also like a little bit of a chicken and egg problem, right?

Christine 26:37

Sure.

Athena 26:37

Because like in, you know, in the United States for example, where individualism is more valued.

Christine 26:45

Yeah.

Athena 26:45

those things that make you stand out are maybe the things that are going to get you into that top-tier college you want to go to while in some other countries having the top score on the exam because you studied for hours and hours every day is what will get you into the top school. Right? So there might be some

Christine 27:07

Or some combination of both of those things, right?

Athena 27:09

Yeah.

Christine 27:09

So we've heard lots of stories of parents, um, cheating systems.

Athena 27:15

Yeah.

Christine 27:15

to give their children competitive edges and, and there's also ways that children have unfair advantage, you know, quote/unquote 'unfair advantages' in a variety of, of domains. So these are, you know, resources for special tutoring, um, for special summer schools and special programs. And there's lots of examples of parents very predictably doing whatever they have access to whatever they can to give their child an edge in a competitive environment, and we live in very competitive environments, indeed. Uh, something to keep in mind is that these kinds of environments aren't necessarily very, uh, very good at promoting curiosity, discovery, innovation, creativity.

Athena 28:10

Hmm.

Christine 28:10

When you have high stakes testing and you have, uh, this very high expectation that you master a particular body of knowledge in order to perform very well on a test. This is probably a pretty good indication of some types of intelligence, but it's not an indication of other types of intelligence, creative problem-solving for example. You know, flexibility in thought. All these sorts of things that are useful in the long run to educating individuals who will be innovative. A lot of our formal educational system isn't promoting those types of skills.

Athena 28:50

Hmm.

Christine 28:52

And part of that is that I think there's a disconnect between the kinds of skills we want people to have, the kind of cognitive aptitudes we want people to have and the educational bureaucracy, the educational institutions that we've built.

Athena 29:10

Hmm. How can we make institutions better at creating and cultivating people who are truly innovative?

Christine 29:22

High stakes testing is definitely not consistent with that, so we are, we're giving, I think we're giving children mixed messages on that front, giving students mixed messages. So on the one hand, uh, you know, we, we fetishize particular sorts of creativity, innovation, individualism, but then put children in environments where they have to memorize fast, you know, bodies of knowledge and perform well in particular sorts of tasks. I mean it's, it's why, you know, one of the, maybe if not the strongest predictor of academic achievement is, you know, behavioral self-regulation. So why are children that do really well in executive-functioning tasks and behavioral self-regulation tasks so much more likely to succeed academically? Because they can sit in a classroom and have their attention managed by somebody else and inhibit their impulses to do more interesting things for hours and hours and hours a day over the course of many, many, many years.

Athena 30:24

You're saying they're good little zombies ...

Christine 30:26

They're good zombies. [laughter] They are, and this is the, this is one of the problems with a one-size-fits-all educational system.

Athena 30:33

Uh-huh.

Christine 30:33

Because children who perhaps, this is not to suggest that children who can't regulate their attention are all creative geniuses. I do not mean to suggest that, but our educational system definitely rewards particular cognitive aptitudes and doesn't encourage others.

Athena 30:50

Mhm, yeah.

Christine 30:50

Right? So if you give every child 45 minutes a particular content, um, totally independent of what their actual interests are, what they're curious about, what they're working on. Um, there's very little kind of individualization in our educational system and so this means this kind of one-size-fits-all benefits some children more than others.

Athena 31:13

Mhm.

Christine 31:13

So children that can fit that mold are going to do better in terms of, and by better, I mean they're going to perform better on exams, they're going to do better on paper.

Athena 31:23

Yeah.

Christine 31:24

And you know, children who are less able to do this don't excel as much. And all children would be more, um, would be more curious if they had, if the educational system was more responsive to their interests.

Athena 31:42

Yeah, yeah.

Christine 31:42

True of children. True of adults.

Athena 31:45

Yeah. Well, it's interesting to kind of think of this like, you know, tongue-in-cheek like good little zombie, right? Like a kid who can sit there and like learn all of this stuff

Christine 31:52

Sure.

Athena 31:52

and follow what the teacher wants them to attend to and assimilate all of that. Like they're actually

Christine 31:59

Good training for the formal job sector, isn't it?

Athena 32:01

Yeah, but, but they're also like potentially really good at being able to integrate all of this past knowledge that has been accumulated, right? And so they may be in a good position then to build on that further and to innovate, but only if after they have acquired all of this and sat there and been a good zombie for however many years of education they go through, then to be able to turn around and say, okay, well now what are the dimensions in which this can vary without it being catastrophic, and what should I test? And also feeling like it's okay to try it differently, and it's okay to fail without that being a disaster.

Christine 32:45

Right! Yeah, so I mean this is all about match with the toolkit you are, that you need to master. So there was a time, and this is true in, in some parts of the world to this day, where just being literate, gave you a huge competitive advantage over other people. Um, or you know, just having a particular kind of rudimentary skill set that you could acquire through apprenticeship with and learning from more skilled person you could, you could acquire through practice, through, um, in some cases even individual exploration and initiative. In highly industrialized technologically complex economies that are spreading throughout the world, reached nearly every corner of the globe at this point. There's so much specialization, uh, and so much, so much education required to master particular sorts of, of domains of expertise that you need years and years of zombification.

Athena 33:55

Hmm.

Christine 33:55

Years and years of learning and complex bodies of knowledge, memorizing information, processing information that had been, has been accumulated over time. The recent, the sizing it, I mean, most innovation is recombining information and insights in new and creative ways. So there's very little innovation that is truly novel sort of from the bottom up. Um, it's incremental. It's, um, recombination.

Athena 34:25

Mm.

Christine 34:25

And it's, it's this accumulation.

Athena 34:29

Also, why I oftentimes like there will be scientific discoveries that are essentially made by people who don't even interact with each other, right?

Christine 34:37

Absolutely.

Athena 34:37

Because they're just taking the things around. They're putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Christine 34:42

That's right! Right! So often innovation comes from stumbling across uh, you know, sort of insight from an unexpected place or putting, you know, new, putting two ideas together in ways that they've never been, um, kind of considered before or drawing parallels between multicellular collaboration and collaboration groups of humans. [laughter] Right? So those sorts of comparisons and kind of synthesis of, of different bodies of knowledge is where, is why interdisciplinary research is so powerful. Um, it's one of the reasons I do interdisciplinary research myself is you can, you can take insights from another discipline and apply them in ways that are, is generative and really powerful. So there, so there is enormous value in acquiring large, complex bodies of knowledge, mastering them in order to be able to, to have the kind of flexibility and kind of cognitive dexterity to combine them in, in new and interesting ways. Um, and, and so, so, you know, innovation is, is more than just doing something different.

Athena 35:55

Yeah.

Christine 35:55

Anyone can do, any of us can do a million things that are different or novel and entirely useless, um, are not better than what exists already and that no one would've, would want to, to practice or require, um, because they're clearly useless and in some cases much worse [laughter] than what we already have. So it's rare that that anyone, even experts come up with something truly new, truly better and so much newer and better that other people are willing to take on that practice and transmit it to others. That we're, we're pretty selective in what we choose to

Athena 36:38

And that was just the definition

Christine 36:38

transmit.

Athena 36:38

of innovation.

Christine 36:40

Absolutely! Has to be new, has to be better and has to be transmitted to others.

Athena 36:46

Mhm.

Christine 36:46

And there are a lot of, of, of examples of the course of our, kind of, the evolution of human culture of new ideas that were better at one point were transmitted, um, you know, widely and then were replaced by something good. There's all culture is always moving. We're always changing. We're always coming up with, um, with new and better and different solutions, which is not to suggest that culture, cultural, technological complexity, for example, always moves in one direction. It can increase, it can also decrease over time as a function of variety of population size and ecological factors and, and lots of other things.

Athena 37:31

So it's like you need enough brains around to be keeping the information

Christine 37:35

You need a critical brain mass!

Athena 37:35

passing along.

Christine 37:35

Absolutely!

Athena 37:35

Critical brain mass, something like that.

Christine 37:35

And you need a technological repository in order to store all of this insight, which is what, you know, books do for us and computers do for us. And you think about a lot of our technology, it's really about storing information and why do humans love technology so much? Well, one, because it gives us access to information, and it connects us to others. Our two probably favorite things

Athena 38:10

Yeah. [laughter]

Christine 38:10

Information and other humans. [laughter]

Athena 38:14

Yeah, yeah. Well there's this like deep irony that YouTube probably has all the how-to videos that you would need in order to figure out how to survive the zombie apocalypse, but in the zombie apocalypse, like the YouTube servers would be down. So yeah! [laughter]

Christine 38:29

That's interesting. [laughter] I am reading a book by Michael Polen recently about kind of food culture. And he actually writes a lot about innovation in the space of food preparation and cooking. It's really, it's quite fascinating, but he gives this example of, um, some foraging that he was doing. So he was attempting to always for trying to forage for mushrooms and he found himself

Athena 38:55

Very special mushrooms!

Christine 38:55

Very special mushrooms! [laughter] And he found himself in a forest, which was reasonably unfamiliar, forests are pretty unfamiliar to a lot of industrialized populations. And he had a book with him, a guidebook to mushroom foraging and was looking at the picture of an edible mushroom and comparing it to the mushroom he had in his hands. And it looked, you know, they've looked reasonably similar. However, the stakes are pretty high here

Athena 39:27

Yeah.

Christine 39:27

because it also looked kind of similar to a highly toxic mushroom.

Athena 39:30

Yeah.

Christine 39:30

And he sat there comparing and ultimately didn't have the nerve to, to eat the mushroom

Athena 39:38

Yeah.

Christine 39:38

with even with that book.

Athena 39:38

Right.

Christine 39:38

And he only, um, he was only willing to consume the mushroom after he went to a mushroom expert

Athena 39:47

Right.

Christine 39:47

who vouched for that mushroom himself.

Athena 39:50

Yeah.

Christine 39:51

So that's an- and this is another really critical thing to understand about how humans make decisions and who they trust and why they trust. We do care about information in the form of these, you know, cultural transmission systems and you know, books and are one example of that. But we often are only truly persuaded by a person

Athena 40:14

Another person.

Christine 40:15

an actual brain [laughter] and their actual testimony about

Athena 40:19

Yeah.

Christine 40:19

whether something is safe or not. And we see so many different examples of that in the, in everything from, um, you know, sort of the sorts of things that shape, truly shape our opinions, like YouTube. [laughter] The why, why are, why is YouTube so powerful is it's almost always a testimony of, of people. Um, why do we, why are we so swayed by firsthand testimony despite knowing how fallible human memory is? The certainty with which someone gives testimony is very persuasive, more persuasive, unfortunately than large bodies of statistical information, uh, often showing quite different, [laughter] uh, different truths. And yet we're persuaded by other minds, and social media of course, is keenly aware of this, this is why information is presented by quote/unquote 'influencers'. Um, and we're not just downloading graphs of

Athena 41:19

Right.

New Speaker 41:19

you know, empirical studies, I mean, some of us are doing that [Athena laughs heartily] but not as many of us as we would like!

Athena 41:25

Well, so you're- something that you said about interdisciplinary work couple of minutes ago made me think about like, I had this image in my head as we've been talking about like, you know, the body of human knowledge as this like unitary thing that's like growing with like as we learn more about how the world works and all that. But I realized it actually is a bunch of like tangled masses, some of which don't really connect to each other and that a lot of the sort of interdisciplinary innovations are coming because you're like connecting these masses that were not otherwise connected. And I don't know, I just makes me wonder about like how are we, like is there an intentional process at this at like a really high level of us humans about like how do we increase our knowledge about the world? Or are we just all zombified by the institutions that we're in, in the departments that we're in, in the sub communities that we're in where like some, you know, some criterion is considered the criterion of success in that.

And are we like losing sight of well how do we actually take all these brains that are in all these buildings that are processing all this information and connect them together in a way that we can better understand our world?

Christine 42:52

Yeah, I think the human problem is human priority is how do I effectively manage in the local ecology that I'm part of? Um, how do I manage the relationships that I am in? How do I succeed in that context? How do I acquire a cultural repertoire that will make me locally successful? That is our kind of square, it's our home base that's, that's the kind of ground zero.

Athena 43:23

Mhm.

Christine 43:23

That's where we're operating. Uh, we also have the capacity to synthesize large bodies of knowledge and now we have all of these cultural innovations that allow us to learn about other populations, to learn about their ideas, to build upon them and combine them in ways in, in new and exciting ways. We have cultural institutions that organize large groups of, of people, each with individual minds and individual, um, strengths into larger scale cooperation and cooperation that is directed towards solving large scale human problems. So we're part of highly complex cultural institutions that allow for collective problem solving at epic, epic scales, but the, the complexity transcends the abilities of individual minds. It's why you and I can effectively use a smartphone, uh, and as can your, you know, your child, you know, young child. But there's probably not one human on the planet who understands every electronic component of an iPhone or could create one independently from scratch. So our expertise and our knowledge is so widely distributed. It's way beyond the abilities of an individual brain.

Athena 44:52

Yeah.

Christine 44:52

We're becoming more and more and more and more specialized. The, the toolkits that you and I have make us effective at particular sorts of things. But we are, we are so specialized. In fact, I mean there's a trade-off that if you put either one of us on a remote island, um, without any of our, you know, fancy technological cultural tools ... Shouldn't speak for you, but I'm not well versed in agriculture, in home preparation, not really sure how to, uh, weave together palm fronds in order to protect us from the rain. [laughter] I think it's very possible that we would have a lot of difficulty doing even the most basic subsistence tasks. [laughter].

Athena 45:42

Yeah, yeah.

Christine 45:42

So our hyper-specialization of particular highly technical knowledge toolkits is a good match for the environment that we currently are living in. Which by the way is historically recent and globally unrepresentative. So, uh, I mean we had, we lived even a hundred, if we were born a hundred years, 50 years, 20 years previously, we would have really different toolkits. And, and so this is the pace at which economies and, you know, sort of cultural bodies of knowledge are changing far surpasses our ability, I think, to, to, um, wrap our brains, our individual brains around.

Athena 46:24

Yeah.

Christine 46:24

We're struggling to wrap our collective brains [laughter] around it. I think wrapping our individual minds around this is, is a very challenging

Athena 46:32

Yeah.

Christine 46:32

probably impossible thing to do.

Athena 46:35

You know, I think though, if we were dropped on a desert island or a zombie apocalypse happened, like I think we would quickly reevaluate our priorities and reassess how we're like allocating our resources.

Christine 46:49

We would.

Athena 46:49

Like, you know what, maybe that paper doesn't need to get turned in anymore. [laughter]

Christine 46:55

I would only, I would only hope we would have a sense, a sense to adapt. [laughter]

Athena 46:57

How long do you think it would take for academia to like, be like, yeah, we're just, we're not gonna, we're not gonna worry about publishing papers anymore. We're going to try to deal with the zombie apocalypse.

Christine 47:10

I think we would, we would adapt as soon as we realized that we were, uh, on the verge of starvation really quickly.

Athena 47:19

Hmm.

Christine 47:19

So those basic human needs have a way of [laughter] re-recalibrating our priorities, but it would become evident incredibly quickly how much we rely on the labor and the expertise and the services of others.

Athena 47:41

Right.

Christine 47:41

This is why I have, you know, have a conversation with a seven or eight year old in, in Austin who's quite horrified to find out that the chicken strips that she's been eating are made of chicken flesh, are chicken meat.

Athena 47:57

Right.

Christine 47:57

Um, they're not in the shape of a chicken! [laughter] They come in this package

Athena 48:02

Yeah.

Christine 48:02

that you open and pop into a device which magically beams, you know, these heatwaves

Athena 48:09

Yeah.

Christine 48:09

and produce this product. There's so much of the technological environments that we live in are entirely opaque to us.

Athena 48:17

Some of the chicken strips don't have much chicken in them.

Christine 48:20

To be fair that's true. It's very possible they could be some synthetic soy protein, [laughter] but so disconnected from, from so much of basic subsistence.

Athena 48:31

Yeah.

Christine 48:31

And so, and we, we outsource this at the, this makes us more reliant on other brains than ever before in a very, um, in a very literal way.

Athena 48:46

Yeah. It's interesting because in a way we can like almost the way that markets are set up, it's in a way that allows us to ignore, just how dependent on others we are, right? Because you have substitutability, right? Like, okay, if this pencil maker stop making pencils, there would still be another pencil maker I could get a pencil from.

Christine 49:09

Sure.

Athena 49:10

Um, and you know, oh if the, you know, this farm shuts down, there's another farm where I could get food from.

Christine 49:15

Sure, sure.

Athena 49:15

And so it really hides just how interdependent we are.

Christine 49:23

Very true.

Athena 49:23

Because on a moment to moment basis, we feel like, oh, no I'm super independent cause I'd go to the grocery store and buy my groceries. Like I'm not relying on anybody, I'm buying it myself, right? [laughter]

Christine 49:36

Right, but you are in fact deeply reliant on particular trade policies and you know, market supply & demand and the continued employment, you know, your personal employment and all sorts of resources that we have we take for granted until they're, they're no longer there.

Athena 50:00

Yeah. It's almost like we are zombified to feel like we are not actually part of a system that is influencing us. It's like we're zombified to feel not zombified when we actually are.

Christine 50:14

Right, and the most effective zombification feels like our choice.

Athena 50:21

Yeah.

Christine 50:21

So this is a particular sort of evil genius

Athena 50:25

Uh-huh, yeah.

Christine 50:25

at work. Evil, good, both

Athena 50:29

But it's also like, I mean if we as humans are inherently about this social influence, and social transmission, and division of labor, and like ability to do all of then its fundamental to being human, that we are zombifiable and it's not always a bad thing or not necessarily a bad thing.

Christine 50:48

I think it's we are zombified by design that we're zombified from birth. Uh, this is responsible for our technological and cultural prowess, our success as a species in many ways, but also opens us up to exploitation, um, to particulars: to being misled, to being cheated, to being manipulated.

Athena 51:18

Mhm.

Christine 51:18

So it is a double-edged sword.

Athena 51:20

Yeah. Are there like particular kinds of manipulation that are, that we're particularly vulnerable to because of this propensity for cultural learning that's part of our evolutionary makeup?

Christine 51:35

Yeah. I mean we, we have a limited capacity to, to process information. Um, and, and we are currently bombarded with more information than, than any individual mind could possibly comprehend or synthesize and it's also very difficult to evaluate the authenticity, quality of information that we're being presented with.

Athena 52:07

You're talking about like social media.

Christine 52:08

Absolutely!

Athena 52:08

Yeah.

Christine 52:08

All the media we have access to. We are, we are really at the mercy of the institutions, and organizations, and individuals that collect, and synthesize, and present that information. Uh, and the organizations that are presenting this information have a lot of vested interest to shape opinions in particular sorts of ways. A lot of this is not being regulated really at all. So this means that the consumer of information, you know, you and I are vulnerable to

Athena 52:45

So like when you go on social media, you're talking about like the kinds of information that people get when they just go on to the

Christine 52:51

Absolutely! And in, in, in science, at least at its best in the way that it's supposed to operate we have lots of checks on the process by which we produce information. We have things like peer review, we have, um, ethical oversight, we have, you know, institutions that, um, that regulate and check the information that we produce. It's not perfect, but it's

Athena 53:17

And there's like a whole like training and hypothesis testing, right?

Christine 53:20

Absolutely.

Athena 53:21

There's using controls and all that, yeah.

Christine 53:23

There's evaluation. Um, there's of course the scientific method that allows other scientists to, uh, to use the same methods. Um, and to check for reliability, reproducibility, generalizability. So we actually have a lot of mechanisms to control the quality of information, um, and to get better, right? And there's lots of examples in science that are, um, increasing the transparency, the openness, the access to information, the reproducibility of our, our process. You don't see a lot of parallels to that in other spaces of human cultural technologies where information is, um, you know, for example, in journalism.

Athena 54:07

Sure.

Christine 54:07

There it's of course there are some standards in journalistic practice, um, but there's not a lot of oversight and enforcement of those practices. And so from, you know, people often assume that the information that they're being, um, that's being transmitted is checked

Athena 54:25

Is true because it's.

Christine 54:25

is true, is that there's some sort of an evaluative process going on there. But we see lots of examples with, I think increasing frequency of just a complete lack of any sort of regulation, any kind of quality control, any check. And social media. You don't even have to go, go through formal journalistic channels at all anymore. You know, a lot of people will get information from entirely unregulated sources where you and I could both create a YouTube channel and dedicate our energies full time to flat earth theories. By the way, flat earth theory, they're back! Turns out this is a whole movement of people who think the earth is flat and and there are YouTube channels dedicated to this, not suggesting this is a wildly popular idea, but it's still alarming that you could, you could truly introduce any sort of idea and have that platform.

Athena 55:29

The irony of that one though is that it is like based on the idea that you should only use information that you can gather with your own senses.

Christine 55:38

Fascinating! Yes. In many ways I think this is a reaction to the increasing opacity of technological insight.

Athena 55:50

Oh that's really interesting, yeah.

Christine 55:50

So yes, it's so much of what we know about the world we have to take on faith. So things like, you know, the, the intricacies of how vaccines work or any sort of complex technology works. Most individual minds and brains don't have access to those details, they don't have the expertise to evaluate that information.

Athena 56:13

Uh-huh.

Christine 56:13

So we rely on others.

Athena 56:20

Yeah.

Christine 56:20

Other scientists and doctors, and other kinds of cultural experts to translate that information for us. There's a lot of trust associated with that and it's increasingly true that we are, we are, we rely on others for almost everything, for the food that we eat, for the artifacts that we use to prepare food to deliver food to us. Uh, the cars that we drive, um, we purchase from others, we increasingly can't do even the most basic repairs on our cars, our appliances, our

Athena 56:54

But if you look at refrigerators, sometimes you can

Christine 56:57

You might might be able to troubleshoot with YouTube. [laughter]

Athena 56:59

Yeah.

Christine 57:00

You also might do more electronic damage than you started with and have to pay several thousand dollars

Athena 57:05

Yeah.

Christine 57:05

to a technician to come out and to repair!

Athena 57:08

Make sure you turn off the circuit breaker first.

Christine 57:10

Absolutely! [laughter] So just, you know, we are, we are increasingly fully reliant

Athena 57:15

Yeah.

Christine 57:15

on other experts to manage all of our artifacts and all of

Athena 57:22

Yeah.

Christine 57:22

our technological gadgets which are supposed to make life easier, or at least that's what we're, you know, that's what you're sold. But introduce complexities and frustrations beyond anything we've even ever had to deal with.

Athena 57:37

Yeah.

Christine 57:37

Like sitting on the phone with a customer service agent, troubleshooting problems with your ice maker.

Athena 57:44

Yeah.

Christine 57:44

[laughter]

Athena 57:44

For example.

Christine 57:44

Right, just as one simple example.

Athena 57:48

Yeah.

Christine 57:48

We are now, uh, we are beholden to

Athena 57:53

Yeah.

Christine 57:53

all of these fancy technologies and to other people who have expertise we'll never have.

Athena 57:57

Yeah. I think actually like if we apply it to science and some of the kind of anti-science stuff that's happening now

Christine 58:06

Sure, sure.

Athena 58:06

that there is some sort of process that's going on now that's almost like sowing the seeds of mistrust in other people's brains.

Christine 58:15

Sure.

Athena 58:15

Like in, you know, like what, what is the, you know, why they want you to believe this? And this, you know, so it's almost like this idea that oh, maybe you're being manipulated by this information. So it's almost like the, like people are feeling like there is some breakdown of this like generalized trust in other people's brains, right? That like the knowledge and information that's out there is true or it's in your best interest to follow it, and like when there starts to be that, that breakdown of like that trust in other people's brains, then I mean that can actually compromise our ability to even accumulate cultural knowledge, right?

Christine 58:59

Sure.

Athena 59:00

Like if you don't, if people don't trust that the body of knowledge that's there is A) true or B) like, in their best interests. Like if there's some, if they suspect that there's some other intentions behind it.

Christine 59:14

Sure, and there often are, so we we're operating in a highly competitive information marketplace. The idea that there is this highly centralized authority that is shaping human progress to move in particular directions, this is misguided, sure are there some high level initiatives to solve particular sorts of problems that humans face? Yeah, there, I can think of lots of examples of that, but the truth is the information is managed by people who have lots of competing interests. Often those interests aren't, are not yours, so people have every right to be skeptical of who is manipulating and producing information. Zombification is [a] highly competitive process.

Athena 59:56

Mhm.

Christine 59:56

There's a lot of different organizations looking to organizations, and individuals, and corporations, looking to zombify us.

Athena 1:00:03

Yeah.

Christine 1:00:03

So this is highly competitive and uh, that the problem is when that skepticism is taken to a place that is kind of, post-truth, where nothing is knowable, where, um, where expertise loses all value. Uh, where there's, where ex-expertise and um, education and experience are undervalued and sort of lose their, uh, their weightiness from a kind of a knowledge and expertise perspective. That that's the space that worries me because the whole kind of apex of human culture is science is kind of cultural toolkits and um, and technologies that can be used for tremendously positive ends. They can also be used for tremendously negative ends, but to lose all capacity to evaluate the expertise and the quality of information is, is frightening. And this is why you have, you have influencers on YouTube advocating, uh, gluten free diets as cures for autism. I mean, this, you know, no need, no expectation that you have any training.

Athena 1:01:37

Mhm.

Christine 1:01:37

Any expertise, any actual knowledge, any knowledge of science, any medical knowledge whatsoever.

Athena 1:01:43

Mhm.

Christine 1:01:43

And any Joe on the street

Athena 1:01:48

Mhm.

Christine 1:01:48

can have a following. And this is kind of unprecedented in.

Athena 1:01:51

Yeah.

Christine 1:01:51

in social media it gives you unprecedented access to that sort of a platform.

Athena 1:01:56

Yeah. Well and if there's no way to evaluate what knowledge should be built on.

Christine 1:02:03

Yeah.

Athena 1:02:03

Then in a way we kind of lose something really fundamental to being human, right? If our ability to imitate and therefore you know, pass on knowledge to future generations is an important part of what makes us human.

Christine 1:02:18

Absolutely.

Athena 1:02:20

Then we're kind of losing our humanity in the process.

Christine 1:02:23

I think we're outsourcing some of it, so I think our humanity is, is still there it is just being deployed to ends that are different. Some in some ways are the same, so we still have the same sort of interests in that we're interested in artifacts, and people, and particular sorts of information. This, we're still curious about all these sorts of things, but our access and the- accessibility to information has changed pretty dramatically, which I think opens us up to more widespread zombification

Athena 1:03:00

Mhm.

Christine 1:03:00

than ever before. We've, we've always been zombies, there has never been a point in [laughter] which we were not, we're zombies from, you know, utero. There's just larger numbers of human brains and, um, sort of greater access to those brains than ever before. It's really what media has allowed for.

Athena 1:03:21

Yeah.

Christine 1:03:21

is access to brains.

Athena 1:03:23

Right, and you also have like a fewer number of individuals that are having wide, more widespread effects.

Christine 1:03:29

Absolutely, absolutely.

Athena 1:03:29

Right? Individuals and corporations that have access

Christine 1:03:33

Right, have access and, and have, um, are able to influence in ways that people don't recognize, so there's, it's cause it's you, you access information online. It's not clear

Athena 1:03:45

Yeah.

Christine 1:03:45

always who's pulling the strings and who has access to that information and what their intentions are. So there's, there often is very little information about who's controlling information: how to evaluate it, how to prioritize what's valuable and what's not, what's credible and what's not. Um, and as I mentioned, there's, there's only no regulation of that information

Athena 1:04:11

Yeah.

Christine 1:04:11

at all currently.

Athena 1:04:13

Mhm.

Christine 1:04:13

A mismatch between how fast technology is changing, and how slowly our institutions that are designed to regulate it, um, are changing.

Athena 1:04:23

So it seems like a good time to talk about the apocalypse. [laughter]

Christine 1:04:26

Right, so the apocalypse is now. [laughter]

Athena 1:04:29

So, so if we take like this, you know, ability that humans have to imitate others to take cultural information to bring it into their brains, to pass it along to other brains and we just ramp it up, show that it's even more intense. Like where does that leave us? Like where like, you know, what is the zombie apocalypse of human cultural information transmission?

Christine 1:04:56

I think the zombie apocalypse doesn't look like the horror movies that we associate zombies with. I think that zombification is, is something as relatable and as accessible as large numbers of people sitting in the same room. All on little mind control devices, otherwise known as smartphones, so we're all, we already have the technological access. We're already being controlled by institutions that are designed to shape our thoughts, minds, beliefs, opinions, preferences. We already have the technology already exists, we're already interacting with the technology that allows this to happen on mass. So we're already there and are, we are not the product of our own individual, not exclusively the product of our own individual volitions and preferences, that we are a product of our environments. We all are, just by design, by necessity, and we always have been, and this new era just increases the scale, and the coordination of minds over large geographical spaces.

Athena 1:06:16

Oh, so it sounds almost like we are both willingly and unwittingly being zombified by all of these forces. Like we're allowing it to happen to our ourselves

Christine 1:06:31

Absolutely, and we're enjoying it.

Athena 1:06:31

but we also realize that it's happening.

Christine 1:06:34

Yes, absolutely, and the best, the most effective zombification feels like individual choice.

Athena 1:06:41

Hm.

Christine 1:06:41

Um, and, and we're, we're being zombified by, uh, by institutions that present information in ways that we like and we find accessible is tailored to our interests, right? Provides information about others and, and commodities that we want to purchase. So all of this is, is really kind of exquisitely designed with the human mind in mind.

Athena 1:07:07

Hmm. So what do we do about it? Is there anything we can do to prevent the-

Christine 1:07:13

I'm not sure it's all, I'm sure it's all bad. I think that the, that what we can do is get educated about what the, what's happening. So who is presenting information to us, how that information is being used. I think that it's often we are not informed about how our information is being shared, about why the information that we are processing is being presented in particular ways. What the underlying motivations of people who process and disseminate information with those motivations are. Uh, becoming more educated about and more educated consumer of information, uh, and, and also getting more active in supporting regulatory efforts to reduce the transmission of fake news, um, of intentionally inaccurate and misleading information. We need much more regulation on a kind of institutional level, governmental level as well as just greater awareness as consumers of information about how our brains are being zombified and how that information is, is being used. So we can make informed, educated choices about what we want to share, how we want to process information, how to seek out more accurate information.

All of those sorts of things I think will, will make us, um, make us better zombies.

Athena 1:08:43

Or, yeah, make us a more-

Christine 1:08:45

More agentive.

Athena 1:08:46

Yeah. I guess that's the goal, right? It's like we're not gonna become not zombies because being zombifiable is inherent to being human

Christine 1:08:58

Human.

Athena 1:08:58

but we can be a little bit more intentional about the forces that we are [Christine agrees] exposing ourselves to.

Christine 1:09:05

And less open to exploitation by other zombies.

Athena 1:09:09

Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, so for you as an individual, like trying to manage the onslaught of cultural information that we have now, is there any advice that you would give to people, just as you know, users of smartphones and social media and all these wonderful technological innovations that can help us, but also sometimes hijack us?

Christine 1:09:34

I think the more you know about the human mind, the more effectively you can manage it, that the more you understand about the sorts of things that influenced your decision making process and your priorities and the sorts of things that sway opinions. Uh, the more power you have to seek out the kind of information required to make better decisions. Uh, and, and, and also recognizing that the, the kinds of technologies that you have access to are, are interesting to us the way that brownies are delicious to us. We often want information, um, that is kind of socially interesting and informative in, in ways that are interesting to the human mind, but not that helpful. So a lot of the information that we are consuming, this is why we for some reason care about the Kardashians. Um, I don't really care about them, but we certainly know a lot about them, whether we want to or not. Um, the reason this information is out there is that it's useful to particular sorts of people to sell particular sorts of, of products. And the more we know about the information being presented to us and how that information is being used, the more we can opt out of it.

Athena 1:10:51

Mhm.

Christine 1:10:52

Right? So it's about really becoming a better, smarter consumer of information.

Athena 1:10:55

Hmm.

Christine 1:10:55

That's I think the best advice that I can give and recognizing that social media is addictive the way that junk food is addictive.

Athena 1:11:04

Yeah.

Christine 1:11:04

It is absolutely, absolutely addictive and should be managed in the ways that all addictive substances, uh, and information are it when in moderation.

Athena 1:11:16

Mhm.

Christine 1:11:18

And, and recognizing that this information is both, just because it's attractive and interesting doesn't mean that it's valuable, good, or useful.

Athena 1:11:27

Right. It's not necessarily going to help you accomplish your own goals.

Christine 1:11:30

That's exactly right.

Athena 1:11:31

Yeah.

Christine 1:11:31

Just because something is intriguing doesn't mean that it's helpful.

Athena 1:11:33

Yeah.

Christine 1:11:33

And we do have, uh, we're not only zombies, right? We do have the, this extraordinarily powerful, um, flexible cognitive machinery that we have some volitional control over, uh, and can make better decisions with more information we can make that we have that choice

Athena 1:11:55

Yeah.

Christine 1:11:55

To make those decisions. We don't have to choose to be on a smart phone all the time, but we should modify our environments so as to control our desires, and appetites, and addictions accordingly.

Athena 1:12:08

Right, and the more we know about human nature and how our minds work and what our vulnerabilities are, the better we will be able to modulate that sanctification.

Christine 1:12:19

That's exactly right!

Athena 1:12:20

So we're only getting zombified by the things that maybe do have aligned interests with us and not as much by the things that are just trying to exploit us.

Christine 1:12:29

That's right. That's right! I mean, not eat brownies every meal of the day despite how delicious they are and not use smartphones, um, every hour of the day to manage our time and interests. Uh, because these, what these these devices do is they allow other people to manage our, our attention and our interests, and I think part of the path forward is taking some of that power and choice back.

Athena 1:12:53

Yeah. Well Christine, thank you so much for sharing you're awesome brain [Christine is happy to have her brain eaten], with all of us today!

Christine 1:13:01

Thank you!

Song 1:13:01

['Psychological' by Lemi plays] ['Psychological' by Lemi fades out]

Athena 1:14:19

Zombified is a production of Arizona State University and the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance. Thank you to the Department of Psychology, the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, and President's Office at ASU, and also the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. Also special thanks to all the brains that help make this podcast: Tal Rom who does our sound, Neil Smith, who does our illustrations, and Lemi, the creator of our theme song, 'Psychological'. Also special thanks to the Z-team. You can follow us on social media we are Zombified Pod on Twitter and Instagram, and Zombified Podcast on Facebook. You can also find us on our website, zombified.org, can support us on Patreon by becoming a patron. Um, we're an all educational, uh, podcast, we have no ads, so your support is greatly appreciated. Um, you can also buy our merchandise on our website and support us that way. We have t-shirts and stickers available.

I share my brains at the end of each episode, and today I have on offer a little story from my, um, earlier life. So in my twenties, I dated a guy who, uh, believed in what most people would say are conspiracy theories and we, we got along quite well. He was very smart but didn't have much by the way of formal education. And, you know, looking back at it, I think that maybe that combination actually of sort of being really smart and being skeptical, um, but not having had a lot of opportunity for formal education might've made him kind of more vulnerable to getting sucked into, uh, believing things that were not based on scientific evidence. And I realized that we had very, very different underlying beliefs, not just about the world, but also about how you gain knowledge about the world and how you learn about the world. So let me give you a little anecdote to explain. So we were sitting in a bar and having a chat about one of the conspiracy theories that we disagreed about, I don't remember which one now, and at some point he decided to bring into the conversation some of the other folks that were sitting nearby us at the bar.

And over the course of 15 or 20 minutes, he managed to convince them of his view! Uh, and I don't know if that's cause his argument was better or, um, more intuitively appealing, or perhaps he was just a little bit more, um, intimidating in that context being six-foot-four and well-built next to me, you know, five-foot-seven academic. Um, but suffice to say, he, he convinced them and then he turned back to me to argue that he was right on the basis of the fact that he was able to convince these people at the bar that he was right. And that fact of him actually believing that he was right because he was able to convince others. Uh, that is something that has just stuck with me since then. Now suffice to say, it didn't work out with us. Um, it was sort of a turning point for me actually in, in realizing that, um, our, uh, beliefs about, uh, how you gain knowledge about the world were sufficiently different, that we weren't really going to be able to get along. Um, but it, it stuck with me and I think about it sometimes when I look at what is happening in social media and with the spread of, you know, sometimes blatantly false information.

Um, and the, the way that people often take, um, other peoples' beliefs as a, uh, an indication that those beliefs must be right. And, and that worries me because, uh, once if one starts using this criteria and that, you know, information is true [and] other people can be convinced of it, um, then really that makes it so people can argue for anything just on the basis of other people being convincible. And, you know, once we take away any standards of evidence or standards of, you know, how that information fits with the rest of the knowledge that we have about how the world works. Um, it just makes it possible for anybody to put out any information that could potentially, um, you know, work towards their own interests and, uh, against the interest of a broader population or even against the interest of the person who is accepting that information. So, so it worries me, um, but it's also, um, I've found it really helpful to know and to remind myself that not, not everybody has the same, uh, standards of evidence for accepting something as true for, for some people like this ex-boyfriend of mine.

Um, just being able to convince others that your right, um, was sufficient, um, to make him think that he indeed knew the truth.

Thank you for listening to Zombified, 'your source for fresh brains'!

Song 1:20:47

['Psychological' by Lemi plays]