0:00

Hey, everybody, stuff you should know is

0:02

going on tour. Do do do one

0:06

of the deeds, my friend. Okay, So starting

0:08

August eighth in Toronto, that's

0:11

in Canada. We're gonna be at dan Fourth Music

0:13

Hall. And then Chicago, we're gonna be there

0:15

the next night, August nine, at the Harris Theater

0:17

at Chicago. We want to see your faces.

0:20

Step it up, Step it Up. Vancouver

0:22

or the Vote Theater September. That's

0:25

gonna be a great show, I think, don't you. It's gonna

0:27

be a great one. And then in Minneapolis

0:29

at the Pantageous Theater where we've been before.

0:32

It's lovely September. Yeah,

0:34

and then we're gonna swing down to Austin. It's

0:36

gonna be during Austin City Limits, although

0:38

it has nothing to do with Austin City Limits.

0:41

Will be there October ten, yes, and then we're

0:43

going to Lovely Lawrence, Kansas go Jayhawks

0:46

on October eleven. Then, hey, if you're in Kansas City

0:48

or anywhere in that area, this is your chance. Get

0:51

in your car. Yeah. Uh, if you

0:53

are anywhere near Brooklyn, well, then

0:55

you should go to the Bellhouse October. Will

0:59

be there all three nights and finally we're gonna

1:01

wrap it up here in Atlanta at the Bucket Theater on November

1:04

four for a benefit show where we

1:06

are donating all of the money's to

1:09

Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the

1:11

National Down Syndrome Society. Yep.

1:14

So for all this information again visually

1:16

and for links two tickets, just go to

1:19

s Y s K Live dot

1:21

com. Welcome

1:23

to Stuff you Should Know from

1:25

House Stuff Works dot com.

1:34

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

1:36

I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.

1:38

Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there in the corner.

1:41

Everybody puts Jerry in a corner,

1:44

but you shouldn't, uh, and this is

1:46

stuff you should not. She's the opposite of baby.

1:49

Jerry's back. She was back from the Mall's

1:53

how where she's been? Yeah? I remember

1:55

we we said that she was at the mall.

1:57

She was buying a house. She's doing all sorts of stuff.

2:00

Okay, but she's back

2:02

now and things are normal again. Yeah,

2:04

she was at the beach and she's now eating in

2:07

front of me. What I ate about an

2:09

hour ago? Do you want to throw

2:11

up? Nor do you want more? I don't. It's it's

2:14

this weird in between. I'm

2:16

drawn to the smell, but I'm also full, so

2:18

I'm kind of like, yeah,

2:21

oh man, what a life. I

2:24

know eating? Who

2:26

needs it? Right? Me? I

2:28

do too? I love eating? Love it.

2:31

You know what else? I love? What? Really

2:34

good magic? Like

2:36

illusions? Well

2:40

where does uh?

2:42

What do you mean? Because that could mean two different things.

2:45

Well let me tell you, um, So I went,

2:47

you mean, and I went to New York. Recently we saw

2:49

this show. It's called in and of

2:51

itself. It's a one man

2:54

stage magic I guess you could

2:56

call it that illusionist show

2:59

by a guy named Derek del Guadio. That's

3:01

how you say his last name. I strongly recommend

3:03

anyone go see this show. It's it's um

3:06

I think they extended it through the rest of the year,

3:08

but it's it's

3:11

like a kind of his life story. It

3:13

told like through these different um

3:15

these different acts, and like just

3:18

the the stuff he's doing is not like, oh

3:20

man, that rabbit came out of nowhere, nothing

3:22

like that. It's all much more psychological

3:25

than that. But the the basis

3:27

of it is that this guy must

3:30

be just one of the better guesters

3:32

walking around today. He's just good

3:34

he's also like a card shark. It's just a really neat

3:36

show. It's really original and different. But

3:40

just to see somebody do something to

3:42

where they probably are

3:44

guessing, but they're doing such an

3:46

amazing job at it that it just appears

3:49

to be magic. That's one of my favorite

3:51

things in the world to see, like when

3:53

he talks to people and

3:55

like think of a number, except obviously

3:57

more fun and complex than that. Yes, yeah,

3:59

And I don't want to give any of it away. I don't want to

4:01

give any bit of it away. Like for anybody who's

4:03

going to go see it, everyone should go into it fresh.

4:06

But um but yeah, just just

4:08

after you see it, go back and listen

4:11

to this episode again and you'll

4:13

be like, oh, yeah, totally now. I think

4:15

the deal a lot of times with that situation

4:18

is powers of suggestion, correct.

4:21

I don't know. I don't

4:23

know, man, I don't know if that's

4:25

what this guy's doing or not. No, he's not doing

4:27

like cold readings or something like that like John

4:29

Edwards. No, no, no, nothing like that.

4:32

But powers of suggestion in that if you

4:34

you can lead someone to

4:36

to think of a certain thing that they

4:39

then guess I

4:42

guess, So get it

4:44

didn't even mean that, but that kind of

4:46

dives into what we're talking about,

4:48

which is guessing in general. Um,

4:51

there's this whole like

4:53

what like science really doesn't have any idea

4:56

about how we make guesses. All

4:59

we know is that we are capable

5:01

of making guesses, and that we make

5:03

guesses almost constantly, and

5:05

that like our our brain is basically set

5:07

up two guests, Like our construction

5:09

of reality is a series of guesses,

5:12

most of which pan out to be right, but

5:14

then can also be terribly wrong,

5:17

which is what optical illusions prove, you

5:19

know. Yeah, and uh,

5:21

I found this. I thought it was going to be more

5:23

interesting than it was initially when I picked

5:26

this one out, so I was a little disappointed.

5:29

And then we found like other supplemental stuff

5:31

that kind of helped it. But in the end

5:33

it felt a little unwieldy.

5:36

But I think that's just because of the nature

5:38

of the topic, Like there isn't a

5:40

concise beginning,

5:43

middle, and end to this kind of topic,

5:45

you know, no, because again

5:47

science is pretty well stumped,

5:50

like even and sometimes Chuck, if you'll

5:52

remember, these can be our best episodes,

5:54

like unless the ones where there's just like

5:56

a clear cut completely

5:58

understandable neat explanation are

6:01

great. And then on the other end of the spectrum

6:03

like this one, the ones where science

6:05

is just kind of like maybe this

6:08

is it. I don't know, this could be it, those

6:10

are usually pretty good too, So this could this one

6:12

has has potential. Alright,

6:15

that's my that's my estimation. Well, I

6:17

thought it was interesting that in our very own

6:19

house stof Works article and they started

6:21

talking about um the

6:24

in days of yr with starting

6:27

with took took and you

6:29

know, basically up until the point

6:31

where we could like you

6:33

know, measure things or prove things, like, there

6:35

was a lot of and there's still a lot of guessing going

6:37

on, but like guessing was a daily

6:40

survival tactic. That's

6:43

how that's how we learned. Should I go this way and

6:46

fall off a cliff, you know, I'm gonna take

6:48

a guess? Or should I eat this thing? Will

6:50

it kill me? Or

6:52

like in the case of Lewis and Clark, I remember, um

6:55

Clark estimated, and you

6:57

know, there's guesses and we'll

7:00

it in different types of an estimation is a kind of a

7:02

guess, even if it's informed

7:04

and well reasoned. In

7:06

Clark's case, of course, he estimated.

7:09

I think he's only off about forty miles when

7:11

they got to the Pacific. Uh,

7:14

oh really, I don't remember that. Yeah, he

7:16

he estimated four thousand, one sixty

7:18

two miles off. He's

7:20

off by forty I mean that's remarkable.

7:23

Yeah, but it wasn't a wild guess.

7:26

It was Clark being a very smart dude

7:28

who probably took copious notes. Not probably,

7:30

he definitely took copious notes. Um,

7:34

but I don't know. I just never really thought about guessing back

7:36

in those days. Could you know you could?

7:38

You could end up a bad guest means

7:41

the end of view, Yes, But

7:43

if your friends were standing around watching you

7:45

guess that that um

7:48

lizard over there wasn't poisonous and you

7:50

can just go ahead and eat it raw and then you

7:52

keel over and die, they learned from

7:54

your bad guests. One for the team

7:57

very much. So yeah, that's before

7:59

the universal edibility test. Man,

8:02

you were just have you been going through the

8:04

archives or something? No, but

8:07

I wrote that article back then, So that

8:09

one stuck with me because

8:11

you know, I mean, we're I thought you were too.

8:14

I'm cursed with that new information

8:16

in old information getting squeezed

8:18

out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

8:21

So should we get into this. I guess, So,

8:24

I'm not I don't mean to do this. I'm sorry

8:26

what saying. I guess it's

8:29

pretty commonplace, but it does kind of under

8:32

underscore just how much we do guess

8:34

in our lives, you know. Yeah, here's all

8:36

right, let's go ahead and start it with the brain then, because

8:38

while you're correct in saying that they don't know

8:40

the the pathways necessarily

8:43

of a guess, um,

8:45

all different kinds of all

8:47

different parts of the brain, not all

8:49

the parts, but many different parts of the brain are

8:51

at work, which makes a lot of

8:53

sense when you think about what different

8:57

kinds of guesses can entail, whether you're guessing

8:59

someone's age or guessing

9:02

you know, because that involves like, you

9:04

know, recognition with your eyeballs or

9:07

a memory of someone else

9:09

who was a certain age who looked like that, like you're

9:12

you know, recall, Uh, there's all

9:14

different parts of the brain they're lighting up

9:17

whenever you're guessing something. Yeah, they think

9:19

that it's a global, a

9:22

global phenomenon, right, like brain

9:24

brain ely global, Yes, exactly

9:27

right. So, um, there's like

9:29

some region of your brain that specializes

9:31

in the particular task at hand.

9:33

The thing you're guessing about, whether it's

9:36

say like volume or like you

9:38

said, someone's age. UM,

9:40

that region of the brain that that has to do

9:42

with say numbers, UM would

9:44

light up. I think it's the um

9:47

parietal uh anterior

9:49

gyrus or something like that that lights up when

9:51

you're trying to guess someone's age based on how

9:53

they look. But then that that's

9:55

just one right using the wonder

9:58

machine, right, but that it's

10:00

just one functional

10:03

part of the whole process

10:05

that the brain is going through. They know that it's

10:08

there's a number of different regions

10:10

that are operating at any

10:13

given point in time when you're making

10:15

a guess. But they still can't

10:17

say, well, if somebody's guessing

10:19

this, this is what's going to happen. Here's the here's

10:21

the cascade that's going to go through the brain. We haven't

10:24

reached that point yet. Yeah, they think that,

10:26

um, if you're guessing about a visual object

10:29

or subject, then your frontal lobe and

10:31

occipital lobe or at work

10:35

numerical quantities like how many

10:38

uh jelly beans are in that jar. That's

10:40

kind of the common thing they mentioned that like that still

10:42

happens. Is that still a thing.

10:45

Um, you know, who is a jelly

10:47

bean jar guessing champions. My

10:50

wife is, yes,

10:52

longstanding, her special reasoning

10:54

is is outstanding. Well. Spatial

10:57

reasoning and numerical quantities

11:00

are a big part of trying to guess the

11:02

quantity of something into something right,

11:05

And and so if you, if your brain is

11:07

kind of specialized in

11:09

that manner, um, you are

11:11

probably going to be better at it than somebody

11:14

whose brain is not right. So Umi

11:16

would beat me every time. My spatial reasoning

11:19

is horrific. Right, But um,

11:21

I'm really good at recognizing faces,

11:24

so I'm probably better at

11:26

at guessing the someone's age

11:28

based on their face, um

11:30

or possibly how they're feeling

11:33

based on their facial expression, than she

11:35

might be. That's a whole like

11:38

I didn't even think about that being part of guessing.

11:40

But the emotional thing of

11:42

guessing, uh

11:44

yeah, like someone's feelings, what they're thinking like

11:47

that, that's a whole different thing than guessing

11:49

jelly beans in a jar, which is different than

11:51

guessing someone's age. It's like all lumped

11:54

into guessing. It's really more varied than I ever

11:56

considered, right, And so

11:58

with with um, well, let's talk about

12:00

the different different types of guesses

12:03

you might make that. So I think what you

12:05

just kind of did, Chuck, was you divided um

12:08

guesses into um

12:10

like buckets. The two

12:12

buckets. I'm trying to decide what the buckets

12:14

would be called, though, So one bucket would be UM

12:17

just kind of work, working

12:20

knowledge, and the other would be

12:22

say, like emotional, right, Like, so,

12:24

how many jelly beans are in a jar? Would that

12:26

be in the working knowledge bucket? What somebody's

12:29

feeling based on your guests,

12:31

based on say their facial expression, that's

12:33

that's emotional um or

12:35

or intellectual. Yeah,

12:38

that's right, intellectual or emotional buckets.

12:41

Bam just carved him

12:43

up. But I think those are kind of like the two

12:45

categories you can put guesses into. Even

12:47

though you can break types of guesses down further.

12:50

Yeah, and uh, breaking

12:53

them down further. You have your wild guesses.

12:55

This is when you have no information, no

12:58

outside input whatsoever. And

13:01

you know, you often say, this is just a wild

13:03

guess. If I had to guess, yeah,

13:06

you're saying here, listen to me, I can

13:08

speak, has no basis

13:11

in factor reality or anything like that.

13:13

Then you have your educated guests, which is

13:15

in the middle, and that's when you have a little bit

13:17

of information. Uh. There's a military

13:20

term that I had never heard of called swag,

13:23

which stands for um

13:26

stuff. We all get no scientific

13:30

uh wild ass guessing,

13:34

which is like a guestimate. But it's a military

13:36

term by all accounts. Uh. Most

13:38

people say it started in Vietnam with General Westmoreland.

13:41

Um. And you will hear military people say swag,

13:44

And that's when you know, I've got a little information.

13:46

I'm not just wild guessing here. This

13:49

is a ballpark educated guess,

13:52

right, but it's still

13:54

less than an estimate. That's where we have

13:56

a lot more information. Yeah, not just

13:58

a lot more information it you're you're pretty

14:01

familiar also with the topic

14:03

that you're you're guessing at as well.

14:06

Right, So Lewis and Clark, I

14:08

think both of them, Um,

14:10

we're surveyors, So they would have had

14:12

a lot of training as far as

14:15

you know, judging distance goes. They

14:18

would have had some information to put together. So

14:20

Clark coming up with, you know, with

14:22

an estimate of how why

14:25

the continent is and just being off by forty miles,

14:27

like you said, that's remarkable. But if

14:29

you had had one of us do it, it would

14:31

have been a wild guess. So it

14:33

has to do with the the training, the

14:35

expertise really UM, and

14:38

then the amount of information you have. That's

14:40

that's what an estimate is. Yeah, and you may

14:42

not even know that you have information

14:45

stored away in your brain that you're recalling

14:47

when you're trying to hazard a guess on something.

14:50

You might just be uh,

14:52

you might think it's a wild guess, but

14:55

you're really kind of picking out something that

14:57

happened in your past maybe, right.

15:00

Or another way to look at it

15:02

is that um is intuition, which

15:04

is um. From what I understand,

15:06

intuition is kind of its own category.

15:08

But if it's most closely related

15:10

to any type of those three guess as we

15:12

just mentioned, it would be an estimate. And

15:15

it comes from years and years

15:17

and years of training UM

15:20

or exposure to whatever

15:22

you're guessing at to the point where your

15:25

guesses don't even seem like guesses.

15:28

It just seems like for knowledge of what

15:30

you're about to do. Yeah.

15:32

Like I used to be really really

15:34

bad at guessing crowd sizes,

15:37

but through our live shows, I've

15:41

gotten pretty good at it because when you go

15:43

to these theaters, you know how many people are in there,

15:45

and then you stand in front of that many people, and

15:47

if you do that enough times, I can now

15:50

say, like, you know, when people when I'll

15:52

go to a show or something, they'll be like, how many people you think this

15:54

place holds? I used to be let's see, like

15:56

I have no idea I know, but now you say, you know

15:58

better around eight or nine hundred people, and

16:00

you're probably pretty close within

16:03

forty miles all back. And that's just because of

16:05

exposure and learning, right,

16:07

And that actually brings up a really good point

16:10

that you can actually get better at guessing.

16:12

And we'll get into that right after this break.

16:14

How about that, Chuck, right mm

16:17

hmmmm.

16:38

Alright, So Chuck, you said that, um, that

16:41

you got better at estimating crowd sizes

16:43

by just performing at our live shows. Right,

16:46

So you were terrible at it before,

16:49

but just from from

16:52

exposing yourself to it, going out on

16:54

stage and exposing yourself to crowds

16:56

that you could judge the size of Um,

16:59

and everybody clapped yeah,

17:04

Nelson happointed and laughed.

17:08

Um, you

17:10

you got better at it. And when it comes

17:12

to especially but

17:15

probably both but especially intellectual

17:17

guesses intellectual bucket guesses,

17:20

UM, you can train yourself to get

17:22

better at it. And part of that is

17:24

making a guess, getting um,

17:27

pretty much immediate feedback, and then learning

17:30

from that. Yeah, like you're wrong, this is what

17:32

the answer is. It's like anything else exactly.

17:35

Do that enough if you're gonna get better at it. Yeah.

17:37

Um. And there's this pretty interesting um

17:40

I guess. That was interesting little kind

17:42

of sidetrack that the author of the Guesses

17:45

article, Aliah Hoyt Um,

17:49

and I have to say, no, it's Aliyah,

17:51

it's not Alicia. No, it's Aliyah.

17:53

There's no say not

17:56

only is the c silent, it's not there,

17:59

it's invisible. So

18:01

Aaliyah hoyt my hats off to her because

18:04

doing supplemental research for this, there are

18:06

not a lot of people who

18:08

are coming up with really substantial

18:11

stuff about guesses. It's

18:14

like it's barren. It's probably the

18:17

least amount of research I've ever encountered

18:20

in all of our almost thousand plus episodes.

18:23

So the fact that she put this together, my

18:25

hats off to her. But a sidetrack she takes

18:27

is to teach the reader how

18:29

to um get better at guessing.

18:32

A jar full of jelly beans. Yeah,

18:35

well that was exciting. I

18:37

mean that oh yeah, yeah, because

18:39

always, I mean, my method was always

18:41

to pick out a

18:44

smaller area, like the bottom

18:47

inch of the jar, count

18:50

as many as I could and estimate

18:52

that and then multiply that out. That's

18:55

actually a great technique. Well,

18:59

I don't know, I haven't has jelly beans in a jar

19:01

since I was probably twelve, But

19:03

that was always my method, which has a little there's

19:07

a little bit of method to it, but it's definitely

19:09

not as good as as this one. Okay,

19:12

So so this one it

19:14

sounds a little more complex than than

19:17

it actually is. But if you

19:19

say, if you look at a jar and it's filled

19:21

with jelly beans, you can say, um,

19:24

that jar is the volume

19:27

of that jar is say a court Okay,

19:31

But then you kind of wanted to begin

19:33

with sure, right, But you can

19:35

learn, right, you can just look around, Like here's the point.

19:38

If you want to get good at guessing jelly

19:40

beans, it just takes a little bit of work. Most

19:43

people would walk up, say a million jelly

19:45

beans, and they're off by like nine thousand.

19:48

They're like, well, I'm terrible at guessing jelly beans.

19:50

I'm going to sleep for the rest of my life. But

19:52

if you want to get good at guessing at jelly

19:54

beans. All you have to do is poke around, learn

19:57

a few things, and then you can basically

19:59

apply those every situation. And one of the things

20:01

you would need to learn is how to judge

20:03

the volume of the container to start.

20:06

So that's one part, right yeah, which you know most

20:08

people would do that that by comparing it to like

20:11

a milk jug or a two leader bottle or something

20:13

like that, right, But in this case to get a

20:15

really accurate estimate, you would

20:17

want to know specifically, say

20:19

how many ounces a container held,

20:22

correct um. And then

20:24

another thing you would probably do if you started

20:26

researching guessing jelly beans

20:28

and jar on the internet, um,

20:31

you would you would run across some research

20:34

that found that if you have

20:36

uh, spherical objects

20:39

in a jar, they typically

20:42

take up about if you fill

20:44

the thing up, they take typically take up

20:46

about sixty of

20:48

actual volume of the jar. And

20:50

that's if it's they're just randomly dumped. Right.

20:53

So if you come across a jar and

20:55

you say, um, and it's

20:58

filled with like perfectly round um,

21:02

okay, perfectly around bouncy balls, right,

21:05

um, you can say, well, those

21:07

are spherical and they're taking

21:09

up about six of the jar so

21:11

all I have to do is figure out the

21:14

um the basically the size of

21:16

each of them ball

21:19

right, and then divide it by

21:22

the volume, and then bam,

21:24

you just guessed how many are in

21:26

there, and you're probably pretty close to right. So

21:29

this all sounds mind numbing. I've got a little

21:32

um, a little trickle blood coming out

21:34

of my ear right now. But you

21:37

can the whole point, and you can train yourself

21:40

to make better guesses, to estimate

21:42

better. That's the whole point. Yeah.

21:44

And if it's a non sphericle, by the way, like

21:47

if it's peanuts or something like that,

21:50

or ice cubes, not disgusting

21:53

circus peanuts. Oh man,

21:57

that conjures up so many memories. Did

22:00

you like those? Well? I

22:03

think I might have when I was a kid, but I haven't had

22:05

one in forty years. But I still

22:08

remember the taste you me just had

22:10

something. She says, they still hold up, and

22:12

I'm like, I didn't like him, then I'm not gonna

22:14

like him now. Well, they hold up for you in a bad way,

22:17

right right, Yeah, exactly. So I know, I

22:19

know I'm not supposed to yuck anyone's young, but yuck.

22:23

So uh, if it's circus peanuts.

22:25

Let's say, Um, that would

22:27

be between fifty and of

22:30

the space, not sixty four. Yeah,

22:32

So, uh, what is you me's method? Did you

22:34

ask her? She says she just

22:36

kind of knowsh So she's

22:38

a precock exactly.

22:41

She she shaves her head once a while and lays

22:43

around in a vat of liquid. Wow,

22:46

that would be see, I would that would scare me

22:49

if that would if that was my wife's answer,

22:51

if she just like kind of walked by and said I just

22:53

know, right, yeah, I would be like, well, what

22:55

else do you just know? Yeah?

22:58

She's kind of unstoppable too. You have

23:00

no idea how many calves we've won

23:02

at county fairs in the last year alone.

23:05

Our house is overrun with them.

23:07

Um. All right, So that's

23:09

just guessing volume of a thing and

23:12

a thing that's an it's intellectual

23:14

guessing, right, But you

23:16

can train yourself to guess better. What's really

23:18

up for for questioning is

23:21

whether you can train yourself

23:23

to get better at the other bucket of

23:25

guessing, emotional type

23:27

of guessing. Right where you're walking around

23:30

and you are interacting with other people and

23:33

you're making judgments about how they're feeling.

23:35

Right, then about what they're thinking, right

23:37

then what their motives are. Um, you

23:40

know, how how well they're actually listening to

23:42

you all of these things right, It's

23:45

part of our interaction with other people.

23:47

And there's something

23:49

that UM two researchers called X

23:52

and took great combo that

23:54

back in established this kind

23:56

of field of inquiry in which

23:58

they were trying to it to the bottom of what

24:00

they called empathic accuracy,

24:03

which is how accurately we

24:05

can we can surmise what

24:08

someone actually is feeling or thinking just

24:10

from interacting with them. Some people are

24:13

supposedly good at it, some people are not.

24:15

And from what I saw, there's a big

24:18

kind of push and pull about

24:20

whether it's worth practicing

24:22

or whether you should just not do that at

24:24

all for the sake of your own sanity and

24:27

just say, if you tell me

24:29

that you're in a good mood, I'm going to take

24:31

that at face value. And if you're actually

24:33

not, then you're you're

24:35

covering up your feelings for your own reasons,

24:38

And that's that's fine. If you want to just keep them

24:40

to yourself, that's fine. If you want to share them, I'm here,

24:43

but I'm gonna I'm gonna take what you're saying

24:45

on face value, so Bully, for you,

24:48

that to me is sanity, like

24:50

going, how are you

24:52

really feeling? That's

24:56

uh, one can spend a lot of time

24:58

doing that, So can I share

25:00

a little bit about myself here? I

25:03

know it's weird, it feels gross, but

25:06

um. For a very long time, Chuck,

25:10

I thought that I

25:12

was a born and bread

25:14

and path that like I

25:17

could understand what anyone

25:19

was thinking and feeling, maybe even better

25:21

than they knew how

25:23

they were thinking and feeling. And I finally

25:26

finally came to the

25:28

hard truth that I was wrong

25:31

almost all the time. And

25:33

in figuring this out, like this was really

25:36

jarring, and it took a little while for me to like really

25:38

for this to sink in. But

25:40

once I figured out that I'm actually terrible

25:43

at reading engaging other people's thoughts

25:45

and feelings, it was one of the most liberating

25:47

things that's ever happened to me because I just

25:50

stopped. I stopped,

25:52

and I realized how much of my life I've

25:55

been walking around wasting just

25:57

thinking about you know, what people really

25:59

think in care? You know, do people

26:02

really like me? They probably don't? Or

26:04

do they? Or or what did they mean

26:06

by that look or whatever,

26:09

and just taking people in life on face

26:11

value, UM is so much.

26:13

It's just it occupies so much less

26:15

of your mind on any given moment. It's

26:18

just great. That's my prescription. Stop

26:21

trying to figure out what other people

26:23

are really thinking and feeling. You should have You

26:25

should have just asked me a long time ago. And

26:27

when he told you, I was like, you're terrible at that. Yeah,

26:30

yeah, yeah, I don't know

26:32

if I want to listen. You know, it took it took a little

26:34

while, but to walk through their own doors. You know what

26:36

I'm saying. That is well put man,

26:38

you're you're a stoic sage. So cognitive

26:42

distortion is is a phrase

26:44

you hear pop up a lot when it comes to assessing

26:47

another person's emotions. And

26:50

these are these inaccurate thoughts that you have

26:52

in your brain. Sometimes they leave to negative

26:55

thinking or encourage that. I

26:57

think probably most times that's probably the case.

27:00

UM. And then polarized thinking is another bucket

27:03

I guess since we're bucketting everything today,

27:06

UM, which is you know, everything is great

27:08

or everything is terrible. And the example

27:10

they give in this in this article is

27:13

you know, it's simply I mean it's a little boy reading a girl's

27:16

face that you know she doesn't like me,

27:18

but that that's a kid in elementary school.

27:20

You can apply this to anyone

27:23

walking into a room and basically

27:25

reading either the room or reading

27:27

a person and saying like, you

27:30

know, I don't like the way that that person

27:32

just looked at me. Um,

27:34

that's bad, and so I don't

27:36

think they like me. And those are both of those things

27:39

at work, cognitive distortion and

27:41

polarized thinking, right, which

27:43

which I think polarized thinking is a type of

27:45

cognitive distortion. I think that's the umbrella

27:48

term for that kind of thing, right, Yeah, that makes sense,

27:50

so um yeah, I think this

27:52

is kind of where you get to why a lot of people

27:54

are terrible at guessing or get get

27:57

their guessing wrong, especially when it comes to what

27:59

other people are thinking and feeling. Is that your

28:01

guess is, whether you realize it or not, are

28:03

actually colored and

28:05

come through a lens of your past history.

28:08

Right, So like if if you

28:10

were raised in a house where people

28:13

your family members are really critical of you and

28:15

one another, if you see two people

28:17

in a corner like kind of like having a

28:20

quiet conversation but laughing too,

28:22

you're probably gonna think they're laughing at you, even

28:24

though they may not even be paying the least bit of

28:26

attention to you. But because

28:29

of the history of how you grew

28:31

up, that's what you're gonna guess at, right.

28:33

Whereas if somebody was raised in a house

28:36

where they were instilled with a lot

28:38

of confidence and like a great sense of humor,

28:41

that person might just think, man, they

28:43

must be talking about something hilarious. I wish I knew

28:45

what the joke was, or they might have so much

28:47

confidence in sense of humor they might even walk

28:50

up and engage them and say, what do you guys

28:52

laughing at right? Huh? And if they nothing,

28:55

never mind, then you may be onto something. Right.

28:57

But there was this, um there's this blog

29:00

was a man, I wish I could remember what the site

29:02

was. I apologize sight, but it

29:04

was basically like stop trying to read other people's

29:07

minds was the gist of it. And they actually

29:09

used that example, and they went

29:11

on to say, like, even if the

29:14

person who thinks that that they're laughing

29:17

at them turns out to be right, that's

29:19

not the worst thing that can happen to you.

29:22

Yeah, it's fine, who cares

29:24

you know, like like some people

29:26

aren't gonna like you, some people will. It

29:28

doesn't really matter. Like if somebody

29:30

doesn't like you, you've got to have a little more

29:33

self confidence than the let that just completely derail

29:35

your day. Yeah,

29:37

and you and you have to find it within yourself.

29:40

Yeah. Sure. And some people

29:42

get that through years of therapy. Some people are born

29:44

with it, some people never achieve it. Yeah.

29:47

I think it's you know, even if you are born

29:49

with I think you can lose it from time to time. If

29:51

you're not born with it, you can gain it from time

29:53

to time. But it's not something I think you have every

29:56

moment of every day necessarily. Yeah.

29:58

Boy, people with just much confidence or

30:00

so annoying, they really are because

30:04

everyone wants that, you know. I think that's why it's annoying.

30:06

Sure, just like man, I wish I could be that confident

30:09

about everything. I hate that guy,

30:11

and then you end up in a corner talking

30:13

to somebody else about how much you hate that person. Is

30:15

so much confidence totally lost

30:18

on the other person. So I have another theory

30:20

that's not scientific at all. It's just my personal theory

30:22

that when it comes to guessing things, your own

30:24

not well your past experiences certainly influence

30:27

it, but your own how you are also

30:29

influences, like oh yeah,

30:32

like I think a liar is more apt to think

30:34

people are lying to them precisely.

30:36

Yeah, no, that's absolutely I agree.

30:39

I was gonna say that's absolutely true, but I

30:41

agree with you. Yeah, because who knows. It's just

30:43

a theory, right, but I mean it's it's

30:46

based it's based on some pretty ancient

30:48

folk wisdom, like that whole thing about how

30:50

um you know, when you're pointing a finger at

30:52

somebody three fingers pointing at you, or judge

30:55

not lest you be judged.

30:57

Like when you think about people in

31:00

that way, you think that they're doing the same thing

31:02

to you, even when they're not. It's your own, um

31:05

hilarious little personal hell yeah,

31:07

and it's not always that, Like, you know, I think

31:09

that dude's ripping me off. Maybe

31:11

you've been ripped off before and that's where that's coming

31:13

from. Or maybe you've ripped someone

31:15

off before, but about one of the

31:17

two has happened, I think, though. What more,

31:20

what you're what you're talking about is are like

31:22

core core character traits

31:24

though, like judge, being judgmental

31:27

or being a liar, or um,

31:29

you know, being a b S or something

31:31

like that, like when when you do

31:33

notice that, though, what's great is there's

31:36

so much room for growth when

31:38

you when you realize that that, like, wait a minute, I think

31:40

everybody's judging me because I'm so judgmental.

31:43

I need to work on being judgmental. What's

31:45

what's almost magical is that when

31:47

you when you realize that and

31:49

you work on not being judgmental, you

31:52

stop thinking that other people are judging you,

31:54

and your life is just freer. Well,

31:57

there are these uh psychologists

31:59

um and all over this article that

32:01

uh Aaliyah just rocked

32:03

my world with that wrote,

32:06

and one of them was talking about these interpretations

32:08

without evidence, and her

32:11

advice, which is very simple and it seems

32:13

like a no brainer though, is to like maybe just focus

32:16

on things you know to be true and

32:18

not inventing and surmising, like

32:20

well what if what if they're talking about this and you know

32:22

you're you're just kind of inventing all that. Like

32:25

if you concentrate on what you know to be true,

32:28

then life gets a lot simpler, right, But that

32:30

that same shrink also pointed out that

32:32

one of the big problems with guessing and

32:35

especially guessing incorrectly. Is

32:37

that, Um, we tend

32:39

to forget that we're guessing at stuff. We

32:42

take our own guesses as as fact, and

32:45

since they can be so horribly wrong. Um,

32:49

if you if you're guessing that other people

32:51

are judging you even when they're not, Uh,

32:54

you're gonna basically walk around feeling judged

32:56

all the time because you think that that's absolutely

32:58

accurate when it's when it's not necessarily

33:01

fascinating. All right, you want to take a break. I

33:03

was just gonna say the same thing. All right,

33:05

Well, we'll take a break and we're gonna come back talk

33:07

a little bit about guessing on tests,

33:10

how to win it rock, paper scissors and

33:13

apes and guessing. M

33:15

h all

33:38

right, So we we've talked in esoteric

33:41

terms about guessing so far. But

33:44

I think what everyone really wants to know is

33:47

how do I pass a multiple choice test? Right,

33:51

because that's another kind of guessing. Um, it's

33:53

you know, guessing runs the gamut, uh,

33:56

from emotional to stuff like this. There

33:58

have been different theory over the years, Like

34:01

well, first of all, back in the day and I

34:03

guess until semi recently, for

34:06

like the S A T and A C T and other standardized

34:08

tests. You would be penalized for an incorrect

34:11

guest. I don't remember that, do you. Yeah,

34:15

yeah, well you gets something wrong. It's like a

34:17

quarter point deduction. I think was the deal. Oh

34:20

it sounds familiar. I think I may have blocked it

34:22

out. But they don't do that anymore.

34:24

So now they say guest guest guests if you don't know the

34:26

answer, um, and

34:28

you know they're there. That has run the gamut

34:31

from always guests C because it's in the middle to

34:34

uh, this one person. I don't necessarily

34:36

agree with this one, but they say, just choose

34:38

the same letter every time, like always

34:40

guests B, and you're gonna be right

34:43

one out of every five times if it's

34:45

A B, C, D right. Which makes sense

34:47

though, I mean, because if you jump around, you

34:49

lessen your chances every time, whereas if

34:51

you use the same one, you have the same chances

34:54

of getting it right every time. Um.

34:56

But this guy wrote a he

34:59

actually did a little studying. Um,

35:01

PAULA. Pound Stone. That

35:05

wasn't his name, was it. It was William

35:08

pound Stone, her brother. Yeah,

35:11

and he did actual research

35:13

on He studied tests

35:15

and did a statistical analysis

35:18

of one hundred different tests, ranging from middle

35:21

school, high school, college, professional

35:24

exams, driver's tests, firefighters,

35:26

radio operators. He studied all kinds

35:28

of tests and he has four

35:32

what he calls four ways outsmart to multiple

35:34

choice tests, and a couple of these make a lot of sense

35:36

to me. The first one, he said,

35:39

is to ignore conventional wisdom because

35:42

you kind of always have heard teachers say like avoid

35:45

answers that say never, always or

35:48

none, so like all of the above or none of the above,

35:50

don't choose those, And he found the opposite

35:52

to be true. Yeah, he found that none

35:55

of the above are all of the above are correct of

35:58

the time. Yeah. So if

36:00

that's offered up as an option and you

36:02

have, first of all, we should couch

36:04

this with always try

36:07

and you know, deduce

36:09

the answer with intelligence, well

36:12

yeah, pound Stone says, there's nothing. None

36:14

of this is meant to replace knowledge

36:16

of your subject, and you get knowledge of your subject

36:19

by studying ahead of time. But he's

36:21

saying, if you're facing a question on a multiple

36:23

choice test and you have no

36:25

idea what the answer is, there's

36:28

some techniques you can choose to to to

36:30

increase the likelihood that your guests will be right.

36:33

Right, So all the above or none of the above. If you

36:35

really have no idea about that, I

36:37

would I would say pick that one. Um.

36:39

That's weird though, because later

36:42

on he says he says so first he says, ignore

36:44

conventional wisdom, but then later on the

36:46

one piece of conventional wisdom I've always

36:49

heard, um he says,

36:51

is actually true. That is that you want to

36:53

choose the longest answer on any

36:55

multiple choice test, right, because

36:58

if if you are saying something's

37:01

true, most of the time you have

37:03

to add qualifying language to

37:05

make it absolutely true, because you

37:08

don't want somebody come back and be like, well, that's actually

37:10

not quite true. So when you start adding

37:12

qualifying language into an answer, it

37:14

gets longer than the other ones, and

37:17

the the test writers probably not going to

37:19

go to the trouble of making the wrong

37:21

answers similarly long.

37:24

So the longest answer is very frequently

37:27

the correct answer. Yeah, I thought that one was

37:29

a really good piece of advice. That's the one

37:31

I always heard. That's really the only one

37:33

I've ever known. Did

37:35

you remember scantron sheets? Did

37:38

you ever were you ever so recklessly

37:42

wild that you like made

37:44

a Christmas tree out of a test? Did

37:47

you ever have the gall to do that. Oh,

37:50

I think never did bad because there are

37:52

kids that listen to this. But I had

37:54

to take a test one time that was not for school,

37:56

but it was something I didn't want to do. I

37:59

won't into the details, but I

38:01

made a big snake and

38:06

it was bad and I looked back and I'm ashamed

38:08

of it. I made a mockery of their process.

38:11

Uh. And I wasn't that kind of kid. I don't know

38:13

what happened. I was generally a good kid and a

38:15

good student. I'm surprised to hear this,

38:18

I know, but it sticks. It's I feel

38:20

so bad. It still really stands out in my mind.

38:23

Is what what a jerk move that was on my part.

38:25

I'm not only surprised, though, Chuck, I'm a little

38:27

delighted outed

38:30

myself. Um alright,

38:33

So one of the other pieces

38:35

of advice from Dr pound Stone doctor

38:39

he's no doctor. He did write

38:41

a book, though, It's called Rock Breaks Scissors

38:43

Colon. Why does everything have to have a colon?

38:46

Now makes it smarter? Rock

38:49

Breaks Scissors Colin a practical guide outguessing

38:51

and outwitting almost everybody. One

38:54

of his other ones is to look at the surrounding answers because

38:56

he's found that the correct answer choices

38:59

are rarely repeated consecutively,

39:01

so you rarely get two b's in a row as

39:04

the answer. So if you definitely know

39:06

the answer in front of it and the answer behind it, then

39:09

it's probably not one of those two. So if you you've

39:11

just whittled down your options, yep,

39:15

not good advice. No, not not that at

39:17

all. Um. And

39:20

the last one he's got eliminate the outliers.

39:22

If there's anything that that seems

39:25

like it doesn't really fit with the rest of the

39:27

stuff, you can automatically get rid of

39:29

that. And then conversely, if there's

39:31

anything if there are two answers that seem

39:34

extremely close, they

39:36

probably can be gotten rid of as well,

39:38

because it's the same thing basically. So

39:41

if you have say five, five

39:44

potential answers, and

39:47

one of them doesn't fit with the other four, get rid

39:49

of that. Two of them are similar, get rid of those two. You're

39:51

down to two. You got a chance

39:53

of getting at right. Yeah. I thought the example

39:55

they used in here was pretty fascinating because they didn't

39:57

even use the question or give the

39:59

question shton on This s a

40:02

t practice test they just give the answer for

40:04

A, B, C, d um haphazard,

40:08

uh is two radical, inherent

40:10

is, the controversial, improvises to startling,

40:12

methodical is the revolutionary, derivative

40:15

is to gradual. And if you just look

40:17

at the right hand side, you have radical, controversial,

40:20

startling, revolutionary, and gradual,

40:23

And obviously gradual stands out is

40:25

just being different than those other words. Radical,

40:28

controversial, startling, revolutionary, gradual

40:31

doesn't makes sense, right, So that makes I

40:33

mean, that's really a good piece of advice.

40:35

And then if you look on the left hand side for

40:38

A and C, haphazard and improvised

40:40

are really close. So he says

40:42

you should eliminate those two as well.

40:45

Yea, I wish I would have had this kind of

40:47

advice for the S A T. Well,

40:49

I'll tell you what. That's an actual S A T

40:51

set of answers. So if you ever run

40:54

into haphazard, radical, inherent,

40:56

controversial, improvised, startling, methodical,

40:59

revolutionary, and derivative gradual,

41:02

you want to go with the methodical, revolutionary,

41:05

And we just got you into college, you

41:08

ever wanted to take the S A T again, Like, now, no,

41:13

no, that's funny, I really

41:15

don't. I've never wanted to. I was. I've

41:17

been glad since the moment I finished that test

41:19

that I was done. I only took it twice. I

41:22

took it once and I was like, good enough. Yeah,

41:24

I took it twice. I did not score very

41:27

well the first time, and I scored

41:29

pretty well the second time, and

41:32

I was like, I don't want to know which one is the real me.

41:34

I said, So I'm done. Yeah, I scored

41:36

blandly the first time, and I was like,

41:39

that's fine, that's fine, that's fine. I'll

41:42

get by my my wits and real

41:44

life skills. Look at you. You've done great. I've

41:47

done okay. Um, so

41:49

you want to talk about rock paper scissors a little bit? Yeah,

41:52

I thought this was awesome. Our friends over

41:54

at Motherboard and we can say that because we used

41:56

to have a short lived column

41:59

on Motherboard from vice Um.

42:02

They have a German outfit

42:04

called appropriately Motherboard Germany,

42:07

and they ran a post um called

42:09

win at rock paper Scissors every Time

42:12

with math colon What's

42:14

with the colon's And

42:17

they basically got into how

42:19

using game theory, you can win at

42:22

rock paper scissors basically all the time. Yeah

42:25

they did, uh, or they didn't do the research. But

42:27

they got together with some researchers

42:29

at the University of hang Zoo in

42:31

China, and UM they

42:34

got three hundred and sixty students to

42:38

pair up and play three

42:40

hundred rounds each of Rock

42:42

paper scissors, And

42:44

then they tracked that please

42:47

please let us stop, and they said, no, this

42:50

is communist China. Do it again again.

42:53

Uh. So they charted all those out

42:56

and then summarized it, uh

42:58

with some strategies. I don't know if this would

43:00

you would win every time? No,

43:04

I mean there's always like the what

43:06

they call in Rock paper scissors,

43:08

the October surprise where somebody just

43:10

pulls something out of nowhere. Well,

43:13

so I mean kidite,

43:16

right, yeah, yeah,

43:18

those are off shoots. Remember kids that would do those? Oh

43:22

really yeah, some interesting

43:24

people. Yeah, they would add other other

43:27

weapons basically, well,

43:30

the the UM this the Motherboard

43:33

article talks about. UM. There's

43:35

this other guy who came up with UM a

43:37

whole different variation of it. That's

43:40

like or

43:42

twenty six different different possible

43:44

ones. I would never remember all of them, No,

43:47

how could you? But at least one

43:49

guy does. No one can remember things, right,

43:53

but so so okay, there's a few things

43:55

and this this falls in line with learning

43:58

how to get better at guessing, um,

44:00

how many jelly beans are in a jar. If

44:02

you arm yourself with a little bit of fore knowledge,

44:05

you can better guess at what your

44:07

opponent's gonna come at you with. In a game of rock

44:09

paper scissors. Starting with that,

44:12

men tend to open a game with

44:14

rock. Of course they do. Yeah,

44:16

that's such a man thing, rock smash,

44:19

you know, right, So if you're

44:21

if your opponent as a man, um,

44:25

and there's pretty good chance they're

44:27

gonna come out with rock the first time, go

44:29

paper. Yeah, although they do say

44:31

statistically the opening uh scissors

44:34

is the one that will win you the most games.

44:37

But I guess that's if you're not playing

44:39

a man. They

44:42

kind of counteract themselves or contradict themselves

44:44

statistically. More women play rock paper

44:46

scissors. I guess here's

44:49

one I thought I don't think, so here's one.

44:51

I've been making a lot of this stuff up in

44:54

this episode. Um, here's

44:56

here's one that I thought was kind of funny. Basically,

44:58

this is like the baby ru move, say

45:01

what you're going to pick before

45:04

the game, like I'm gonna pick scissors next,

45:06

and then the persons like, they're not gonna pick scissors,

45:09

but you just psyched them out. And when you throw scissors,

45:11

baby, they're gonna be blown away because

45:13

they threw paper and they thought you were gonna throw

45:15

a rock. It's like that the Princess

45:18

Bride. And what part was that

45:21

with the man sitting at the place talking

45:24

about the poison drink? Oh

45:26

yeah, yeah, remember like trying to get

45:28

the other guy to drink the poison drinksh

45:31

yeah, he was awesome. H inconceivable?

45:37

What is another strategy? Um to counter

45:39

attacks? So if you played scissors and

45:42

your opponent plays rock on the first move,

45:45

uh, and they win, obviously the chance

45:47

that they h they have confidence

45:49

now in that move, so you might be able to

45:51

guess that they will play rock again

45:54

because the chances are pretty high that they will do.

45:56

So then you anticipate that play

45:58

paper. So basically it says play the

46:00

option that wasn't played in the previous round, right,

46:03

And you can also mirror um

46:06

your opponent. Right, So if you just

46:08

want around, play what

46:10

your opponent just played, because they

46:12

probably are thinking that you're going

46:15

to play with the same gesture that you

46:17

won with a second ago. Really throws

46:19

them off. So the idea is they're

46:21

probably going to play the same thing that they just

46:23

won with and if you one don't

46:26

do that, and that will frustrate

46:28

them too. That's the rock paper scissors version

46:30

of why you're hitting yourself. You

46:35

get into that thing when you're you both

46:37

throw rock, and you throw rock again, you both throw a rock

46:39

and you keep That's when the psychological

46:41

warfare starts, like who's gonna

46:43

break first and go with paper and

46:46

then ideally you go with scissors

46:49

and you have thus outsmarted your opponent. Right,

46:52

So interesting, So we

46:55

were talking um, you

46:58

mentioned that we were going to talk about apes, right, Yeah,

47:00

I didn't fully understand this, so

47:03

maybe you can help me. I don't know that, um,

47:06

that science fully understands it,

47:09

but basically so, so let me

47:11

give you an example here. Okay, we were talking about

47:13

how the brain. They're trying to figure out

47:15

what regions of the brain are activated

47:18

to form like this cascade of thought that

47:20

results in a guess. Right. One

47:22

of the things I ran across was one

47:25

theory of how we guess what other

47:27

people are going to do, UM, is

47:31

through mirror neurons, where

47:33

if we see somebody doing something our mirror

47:35

neurons are activated, and it puts

47:37

us in a mind of how we feel when we're

47:40

doing something, and we use that

47:42

past experience and

47:45

that current sensation of like the

47:47

example I ran across with somebody grabbing an

47:49

apple, to guess what the person

47:51

is going to do next. Right, So you

47:53

would say, um, well, I

47:56

know most times when I grab an apple, I take

47:58

a bite out of it because I'm usually hung. Agree when

48:00

I grab an apple, that's after I rub it on my shirt

48:02

to give it a nice shine. Right, Well, that's

48:04

that's just showboating. If you're gonna if you

48:06

guess the person is going to rub it on their shirt first

48:08

before taking a bite, that's showing off. But

48:11

that's so your mirror neurons are the part of

48:13

your brain that's triggered that that um that

48:16

that sets that off, right, that gives you that

48:18

the basis the foundation for making

48:21

a guess of what the person is going to do next. And

48:23

then it gets

48:25

run through again that lens of your

48:28

past experience, your history, everything

48:30

from how you were raised to what you do

48:32

with apples, to what you've seen other people do with apples,

48:35

and you come up with a short list

48:38

of possibilities of what the

48:40

person is going to do with that apple, and it includes

48:43

rubbing out on their shirt, taking a bite,

48:46

putting it away in a cupboard, throwing

48:48

it at a wall. And then you're going

48:50

to pare down based on what you know

48:52

about that person, like is that person a neat

48:55

freak? If so, they're probably

48:57

going to put that apple away in a cupboard, which

48:59

who as that except for neat

49:01

freaks, And you may be right at at

49:04

your guess, right, well, they're definitely not wall

49:06

throwers at least right

49:08

right, because yeah,

49:11

so if and that's that's how

49:13

you that's how Apparently that's one theory for

49:15

how we make guesses, starting from brain based,

49:17

going through personal history and then making the

49:19

guests. And what some research found

49:22

was that ultimately what we're

49:25

doing here is called theory

49:27

of mind, right where we are

49:29

have a capability of bestowing

49:33

the idea that other people have thoughts

49:35

and feelings on other people, right

49:38

that we it's so common to us

49:40

that we take it for granted that we can

49:42

attribute mental states to other people.

49:45

But that's that's a pretty significant thing.

49:48

And for a very long time, researchers thought that

49:50

just humans were capable of of that.

49:53

But they found out that no, actually some

49:55

apes, at the very least just apes

49:58

UM can do the same thing. They can attribute

50:00

mental states like thoughts and feelings and emotions

50:03

to other apes. UM.

50:05

And that's that shows

50:08

like a higher form of reasoning.

50:10

That was basically the gist of it. That

50:12

makes sense, And they found that true in chimpanzees,

50:14

Benobo's and orangutans. H.

50:17

That's pretty neat, it is. And one of

50:19

them, so sa

50:22

Um. Sasha Baron Cohen,

50:25

his cousin, Simon Baron Cohen, is

50:28

one of the leaders in UM in

50:30

theory of mind. Yeah, we've

50:33

talked about him before, I remember, but

50:35

UM. One of the one of the big areas that

50:37

it like influences is autism.

50:40

UM that that people with autism tend

50:43

to have more difficulty attributing

50:45

mental states and theory of mind to

50:48

other people than people who

50:50

don't have autism. Right, And

50:53

but one of the one of the ways that they find this out,

50:55

and I think one of the ways that they detect autism

50:57

and young kids is by attributing also

51:00

beliefs to other people. This is like an early

51:02

part of human development. And apparently apes

51:04

are good at it too. Where you

51:07

are an observer, right, and you're watching

51:09

a scene and there's a little

51:12

boy named Tommy, and Tommy

51:14

comes in the room and he grabs the three Musketeers

51:16

off of the kitchen counter, and he walks

51:19

over to a chest of drawers and

51:21

he puts it in one of the drawers and walks out of the room.

51:24

Well, Sally comes in, and the

51:26

narrator says, Sally is really

51:28

hungry for three musketeers. She knows

51:30

it was last on the table. Where

51:32

is she going to look for the three musketeers?

51:36

And people with um with

51:38

theory of mind, who are able to attribute

51:40

false beliefs to other people, will say, well,

51:43

Sally is gonna go look on the table, even

51:45

though it's not there any longer. Because

51:47

Tommy put it in the drawer. You

51:50

can know that Sally can believe

51:52

something that's no longer correct. If

51:54

you have trouble with theory of mind, and specifically

51:57

if you're testing for autism, UM, that

52:00

child, the child with autism might say, well,

52:02

Sally's gonna go look in the drawer because that's where

52:04

it is. They have trouble attributing false

52:07

beliefs to people. What's true is true

52:09

and everybody would know that. And

52:11

that's one way that they test for autism. And it has

52:14

to do a theory of mine. Interesting, isn't

52:16

it? And it has with

52:19

it all has to do with guessing. Man, you

52:22

got anything else? Well, just that

52:24

Tommy should uh not be so touchy?

52:29

Well? Yeah, and like share the Three Musketeers.

52:31

Yeah, do you know? Do you know why

52:34

three Musketeers are called that? I

52:36

have no idea, my friend. It used

52:39

to be a Neopolitan candy that

52:41

came in three different pieces, chocolate,

52:43

strawberry, and vanilla, and they

52:46

just went with chocolate after a while

52:49

and kept the name because why not. Yeah.

52:52

Interesting, Well,

52:54

let's say it about three Musketeers for today,

52:56

and hey, Chuck, before we go to listener

52:59

mail, I want to give a huge

53:01

congratulations from us to Stephen

53:04

and Jane, our buddies the Bars,

53:06

on the birth of their first born

53:09

child. Yeah, how about that congratulations

53:12

you guys? Good looking baby too? Is

53:14

they're not all good looking? No? No,

53:18

it's true, especially like right after birth.

53:20

And because they're New Yorkers, they walked home

53:22

from the hospital. Like, how

53:24

great is that? They I'm surprised they didn't

53:27

take the subway but that's what you do. It is.

53:29

They are pretty New York. It's awesome, so they congratulations.

53:31

It's one congratulations Bars. Okay,

53:34

well, since we said congratulations Bars, it's

53:37

time for a listener mail. Yeah,

53:41

this one was a little long, but it's about registering

53:43

to vote in Texas. We got an

53:46

email for Monica and her story goes

53:48

as such. Uh, in two thousand

53:50

thirteen, to move from Alabama to Texas at

53:52

a really horrific time, trying to register to vote where

53:54

I went to the county clerk's office. I looked online to check

53:57

what I needed, downloaded the application so

53:59

I could have a filled out in advance. It took

54:01

my Alabama driver's license, my

54:03

lease, my birth certificate, and

54:06

because I am divorced, my divorce decree

54:08

stipulating my legal name change. You'd

54:11

probably think that would be else you needed, right right?

54:14

No. No. Once I got there, I was told that the lease

54:16

was not sufficient prove residency and

54:18

that I would need to bring two pieces of official mail,

54:21

like utility bill, tax bill. So I

54:23

leave after spending the better part of a day waiting in

54:25

line waiting UH for my power

54:28

and gas bill to com in order to add the other documents.

54:30

A couple of weeks later, with all of the documents in

54:32

hand, I took another day off work went back

54:34

to try again. This time, the clerk

54:36

looks over the divorce decree and notices my name

54:39

change wasn't to go back to

54:41

my maiden name. Uh. This was

54:43

a name change that was ordered by a court

54:45

in Alabama and explicitly spelled

54:47

out in a notarized document that

54:49

the clerk was disputing its validity. When

54:52

I asked what the problem was, he said, well, that's

54:54

in Alabama. If you want to that to be

54:56

your official name in Texas, you have to go through

54:58

the courts. Uh, have

55:01

a a draw at

55:03

noon in the center of town with the judge,

55:07

a shootout. What's that called a

55:09

quick draw? Now? He said, you'll have to go through

55:11

the courts and have it declared here in Texas. After

55:14

literally blinking at him silently with my mouth

55:16

agape for a moment, I said, you're telling

55:19

me that the divorce in Alabama is a valid because

55:21

it was judicated in Alabama, that I am

55:23

going to have to go through the whole process of getting a

55:25

divorce again for it to be official in Texas. Is that

55:27

correct? His reply was, well, when you put it

55:30

that way, it sounds silly, but yes, so

55:32

I demanded to speak with a supervisor. The

55:34

clerk got the supervisor, who looked over everything

55:37

and asked why I didn't just go back to my maiden

55:39

name, which I replied, it doesn't

55:41

matter what I changed my name to. You

55:44

have the official document, signed by a judge and

55:46

notarized, and this should be all you need

55:49

because of the Constitution of the United States

55:52

that all judicial rulings and contracts

55:54

that are valid one state are valid in every

55:57

state. At that point, the clerk walked

55:59

off. This supervisor said okay,

56:01

gave my stuff to another clerk who simply

56:04

smiled, entered my application and took my check

56:06

uh, pointing me toward the desk where I could get my picture

56:09

taken. Uh. And then she closes by

56:11

saying, imagine how this would have gone. I would

56:13

have been an hourly worker, had less of an

56:15

understanding boss and not known about

56:18

the ins and outs of the Constitution, or

56:20

didn't have access to all these documents. Chances

56:22

are I would have been disenfranchised driving

56:25

around with an expired license. These laws

56:27

are absolutely created to suppress voter registration

56:30

and participation and they work spectacularly

56:32

well man. And that

56:35

is Monica's story. Thanks

56:37

Monica. Uh and welcome

56:40

to Texas too. By the way. Yeah Um.

56:42

If you want to get in touch with this and

56:45

tell us a real life adventure that has

56:47

something to do with one of our episodes, we want

56:49

to hear about it, you can tweet to us.

56:51

I'm at josh um Clark and at s

56:53

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56:56

can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Brian

56:58

on Facebook or at face book dot com slash

57:00

Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email

57:03

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57:05

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57:08

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57:13

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