Episode 179: Talking Shit

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist David Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:35] I'm a very good man, good man, thought and with no more brains than you have. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave President Trump was officially impeached yesterday.

[00:01:33] As the official political pundit of the Very Bad Wizards podcast, how do you think this will affect his reelection chances? I deleted the Twitter app on my phone. I will have you know, I never toot my horn because why.

[00:01:58] I was quoted about the Trump campaign and the Christian Science Monitor the other day and I thought it would be you might get a kick out of it specifically to know how little I care about politics but yet I'm being quoted about the Trump campaign.

[00:02:12] I don't even know what I'm talking about. Little did the reporter know. Wait, Donald Trump is president? Is that what you're telling me? So today we're going to do a couple of things. In the first segment we're going to talk about Mr. Robot.

[00:02:29] We are now just a few days before the finale which is going to be a two part finale this coming Sunday and then of course this episode will come out the following Tuesday.

[00:02:41] So any predictions that we make, you will either know that we were wrong and full of shit or somehow right or who knows? I feel like this is brave of us. This takes a lot of courage what we're about to do.

[00:03:02] In the second segment we are going to talk about two articles that you recommended on the topic of trash talking. The very interesting topic of trash talking. So we're gonna- Something that I have to put up with for seven years just on this podcast alone so

[00:03:22] I thought you might- I don't know, you seem to give as good as you get. But yeah, I think my prediction is we might get into our first real fight in a while.

[00:03:34] And I'll tell you why in that fight I'm gonna bitch slap your ass back to yesterday. You're gonna eat your children. Praise Allah. So skip ahead if you're not caught up at least through episode 11 of the fourth season or if you just don't give a shit.

[00:03:57] But if you do, let's talk. So the last time we talked I think was after episode 7 where it was revealed that his father had molested him when he was a child. A lot has happened since then. Yeah.

[00:04:16] I'm- because I'm gonna be so negative about the two articles that are in the second segment I want to be a little more positive about Mr. Robot than maybe I originally intended. I still say that my general impression of the season is that it's a very good season.

[00:04:37] I thought the ninth episode was one of the best Mr. Robot episodes ever. This was when- Which one was the ninth again? That's the one where they break the dead deist group, they bring them down and

[00:04:51] Phillip Price shit talks white rose knowing that he's gonna die and that was just- That was really good. The filmmaking has been great all season. My concerns have come with the last two episodes.

[00:05:10] In the next episode it was just about Dom and Darlene and it was that one I thought was pretty brutal to watch because they've just never given us much of a reason to care about Dom and Darlene and his relationship.

[00:05:29] Yeah, like we care about them like I care about Darlene, I care to some extent about Dom. That's really it. Dom, I agree that we care to some extent about her but to the extent that we did

[00:05:41] I wanted her to be able to free her family from the clutches of the dark army and she did that. That's it. I don't need closure for Dom anymore and certainly not their relationship and yet at a time where

[00:05:57] the countdown is there's like a few episodes left of the whole series to devote a whole episode to that was rough. It struck me as a little bit of fanservice in the sense that like a lot of fans, I

[00:06:11] know that this is maybe I'm on the subreddit a bit too much, a lot of people really wanted to see this be a love story. Dom, which is fine. Yeah, Dom, which is fine but make it a love story then don't make it a you know, like

[00:06:25] and then the last episode, episode 11, which we really haven't talked about. It was one of these episodes where I've only seen it once and maybe I'll go see it again. Me too. But there's been a few episodes of Black Mirror that have been like this too recently.

[00:06:45] It makes me wonder not just like did I like that episode, but was this show ever as good as I thought it was? You know, like that if you're going to be this positive for Mr. Robo, please, please, we should just not record about that.

[00:07:03] I want to take like I want to just say that that was my reaction afterwards. What like not just I didn't really like that episode, but like was I fooled in some way into thinking this was a good show?

[00:07:15] I do. I think the answer to that is no, and maybe even that the episode is better than I thought. But to the extent that I've ever been just not on board. OK. That let me give some context to my reaction and in part context

[00:07:31] to why we're talking about it in the opening segment, at least from my perspective. So a lot of the Mr. Robot allure to me has been the complexity of the plot and the hint of something deeper going on in, you know, we've talked almost ad nauseam

[00:07:50] about the potential sci fi elements. So White Rose was presumably building a machine that either could time travel or could take people to parallel universes. Dangle, this is a hope for Angela before killing her seems to believe it herself.

[00:08:11] And this episode finally seemed to tackle that now over the course of the four seasons. I think I've come to agree with many of the people who have commented on Mr. Robot, which is if you're going to bring in explicit sci fi at this point,

[00:08:30] this late in the series, then it doesn't feel right. It's always seemed as if the more plausible account of what's going on is that White Rose just believes in the sci fi premise. But but it doesn't really matter for the show or that she's using the sci

[00:08:47] fi or that she's using for some other aim. Yeah, which it seemed like she was doing with Angela. Right. And we you know, we didn't know if she was just trying to deceive Angela and she did the same thing with Elliot.

[00:09:01] So we get this episode where Elliot has this final task of ticking on, you know, like the big bad Elliot versus White Rose. And we he goes to the power plant where presumably she's been building this machine

[00:09:17] and they have like a dialogue with each other that I think is at the heart of what bothers me, which is not that. Right. This the dialogue was, I think as you said, though, the only things

[00:09:31] we said to each other is we agreed that that was two on the nose like White Rose sort of lays it all out there about her motivations and and it's preachy in a way that it's been sometimes but hadn't been lately.

[00:09:44] And then you get this all of a sudden we think that the power plant is about to explode the nuclear reactor where the machine is being built is about to explode screen goes to red and we get apparently an alternate version of Elliot and his life.

[00:10:01] Yeah. And in this in this alternate life, Elliot is appears to be very happy. He has a job as the CEO of All Safe, the company that he was working for at the very beginning. He dresses well. He has a nice story like rich person's apartment.

[00:10:20] Although I think it might be the same apartment just done. It might be just done up. Yeah. He has a this is a tell that you'll like this. He has an iMac instead of his regular PC, like in the corner.

[00:10:37] And he is we find out engaged to be married to Angela, who is also very happy. And in this world, he's about to close a deal with F Corp rather than E Corp. So this is the F Corp parallel world.

[00:10:50] Yes. Where Tyrell is actually the CEO of F Corp and he's about to close a big deal with Elliot on All Safe. And he's kind of grubby like he's like the he's a schlub. He's dressed in like he always wanted to wear hoodies and not care

[00:11:06] how people thought about him. You know, that's that's that conversation they had. And another great episode this season, the ones where they get lost in the woods. And it seems like in this reality, that's what Tyrell is. He's what he kind of idealistically imagines Elliot to be

[00:11:27] in the reality that that that we saw. Also, Angela says to him, you're such an only child at one point. It's revealed, A, that Darlene doesn't seem to exist in this reality. And also that both their parents are still alive.

[00:11:47] And yeah, and importantly, I guess that that Elliot's father, Edward Alderson, the Christian Slater character is is actually a really good father, a great guy. It's like, you know, Corny overboard Corny on purpose where they everybody just gets along and, you know, even the lighting is bright

[00:12:08] and their outfits are clean and right. So let me just see if you think that this is one way of thinking about. So either. Sorry, shut up, Charlie. Charlie doesn't have a little puppy, pussy bark. That is Dave's dog for for fans.

[00:12:28] That's the first time we've heard Pizarro's dog on the podcast. As I see it, there are a few possibilities. One. There really is a like the sci-fi thing was real. White Rose has a machine. The machine actually sent off. Oh, White Rose commits suicide.

[00:12:49] Did we say that? No. Yeah. Before you lay out the possibilities, I just want to like underscore one thing that you said that scene between Elliot and White Rose where there it's kind of a showdown. And I thought it was awful, like just awful.

[00:13:09] Like how on the nose it is. I was just listening to a podcast with Sam Esmail where he was with these two other guys listing their top 10 shows of the decade. And Sam Esmail is a big David Lynch fan. And for him far and away, the best TV

[00:13:29] series of the decade was just the third season of Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks, the return. He thought it was like the best that may be the best thing that's happened to the world in like they really should watch it.

[00:13:43] Yeah. And he was really outraged that it wasn't getting even as celebrated as it was still not getting the attention it deserved. But like what David Lynch doesn't do and what part of what makes him so great

[00:13:55] is he doesn't just have these scenes where the two main characters are pedantically articulating every single philosophical, emotional and like moral theme of the show out loud like that. And that's what was so disappointing. It was like, what happened to show? Don't tell.

[00:14:12] Like we knew all that stuff. I was about to say, yeah. We knew that Elliot has has made this kind of emotional progress. And we knew that White Rose had this kind of nihilistic streak that Elliot has a part like they don't need to say it over.

[00:14:26] And that is where I think the show goes wrong maybe too often. And it's really in the writing. It's certainly not in the filmmaking. No, it's the right. It's not in the music. It's not. It's just it's that aspect of it that I've found really disappointing

[00:14:39] and I've found disappointing during the episodes that I haven't liked. I agree. It takes me completely out of it. And and it's something that I don't think that that he S mail has to do or should do. You know, I'm obviously, you know, armchair quarterbacking this.

[00:14:56] But but I know that Sam S. Mail is capable of making his actors. Show and not tell and the scenes in which they're like in that scene where they were talking to each other, like in the subtitle might as well have read like

[00:15:17] BD Wong acting like I'm acting. I'm acting and I'm acting like it's and BD Wong is amazing. I love him. And and I think Rami Malek is amazing too. But but they are their subtlety has been what has has, I think made made them great.

[00:15:36] And I just get the the corny chills when it's that when it's that in your face. And you don't have to be like I don't think that we're being too sophisticated or hipster. My daughter was like, this is lame while it was happening.

[00:15:55] You know, just it's a paradigmatic example of something that didn't need to be said because we're feeling it. We're feeling it already. Let us feel it. Let us come to these conclusions. Don't tell us exactly where every character is at.

[00:16:11] Even even the the text game that he's playing on the Apple computer was too on the nose for me where it's like, leave your friend. Yes or no. It's like, like, you know, this is the dramatic point in which I'm going to have Elliot make a decision.

[00:16:27] And the way that I'm going to do it is to literally have him type out a decision that that I've explicitly asked of the character. All right, let's get to the possibilities. So one of the things that I will say that I like about that episode.

[00:16:41] And I really, you know, now that I've said what I the kind of nadir of it, I kind of, even though I agree in theory that you shouldn't introduce any sci-fi element this late into the series. I kind of like that he is just swinging for the fences

[00:17:00] and doing this right now in a way that we have no fucking idea what's going on, you know, like that there is something kind of impressive and ambitious about that, that all of a sudden, like you really didn't know when the nuclear plant is melting down.

[00:17:21] You didn't know what was going to happen. And I certainly didn't predict that what was going to happen would be that all of a sudden it's this Elliot adds the CEO of All Safe trying to land a contract just like in the first season with

[00:17:39] E-core, except it's now called F-core. Like that's and Elliot is as you described very well who he is right now. That was great. And the way it was kind of the episode was almost over.

[00:17:49] So you didn't think there was enough time to do something like that, you know? Yeah. And and it was so I 100 percent agree with you. I think this is why I'm optimistic about the way that the show resolves the potential for the show to resolve.

[00:18:06] Because I think that in that last bit where we're in this who knows parallel world, it's it's so jarring to see the characters acting this way to begin with. So I think that it's it's a good way to unsettle the viewer.

[00:18:23] But it also I mean, as Mel knows his audience very well, so it's giving us one more week of like, wait, is it real? No, it can't be, can it? And and I will say this, that there is if there's anything as male

[00:18:38] has been brilliant at is is keeping us guessing. Sometimes, you know, more suspense than at other times. It's almost as if he's a schizophrenic magnet when you read the Reddit posts about him where the people analyze every little, you know, shadow in each and every cut.

[00:18:55] And and that's for a reason because he actually leaves so much for the viewer to find it really rewards careful viewing. And I have faith, like you were saying in our special episode of Dark, which Patreon listeners just received,

[00:19:11] you were saying that that you had faith in the show runner. Yeah, I have faith in S mail, but not not from the text itself, not just because the four seasons have been good, because they've been in some cases hit or miss.

[00:19:27] I think this season, like you has been strong. But the reason I have faith is because he claims that he knew the end from the beginning. And if if that's the case, then I think that he has worked out something pretty good in his mind.

[00:19:43] I have faith, but weirdly, I don't think I have as much faith in him as I do in the Dark creator. I don't understand why is that because you're a German and anti-Muslim. I can't imagine it's because I'm pro-German, or anti-Muslim.

[00:20:04] I don't know just that like sometimes that even his twists are hit or miss, but I agree. I like even the wet that my positive reaction to if you had told me, oh, you're going to see this alternate world that might be White Rose's

[00:20:19] simulation or not, like I would have thought, oh, God, that's that's going to be lame. And I actually think it was it's like I'm glad it's happening. So I'm pretty optimistic and I'm pretty and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the two part finale.

[00:20:35] Right. Let's go through the possibilities. Yeah, to get to the possibilities, which is possibility one real alternate universe, right? This is in fact, the sci fi suspicions have been there along White Rose commits suicide because she knows that she's going to exist in this parallel world somehow.

[00:20:55] And that's a real parallel world. I don't think she does, by the way, I don't know if you mentioned it in your recap, but she is just the philanthropist. Right. Right. She's existing in this. Yeah. Yeah. The White Rose Foundation is like, you know, made made a huge

[00:21:11] difference in this world. Everything's honk, everything's rosy. Yeah. Freaked. So the other possibility is somehow this is a creation of Elliot's mind as in the same sense that the multiple personalities is a creation of his mind. So through some form of break, psychotic break,

[00:21:35] Elliot is imagining this world. And this is what he imagines when he imagines an alternate reality when he's happy. Oh, by the way, one of the things that happens in this world is Elliot's having migraines and there's like weird shit, right?

[00:21:48] So he's it's almost as if he knows that this is fake. Well, he sees like ecore kind of molds into blips into F-core. It seems like the world is kind of cracking a little bit. And there's some bleed from the previous world. So yeah.

[00:22:06] So one alternative is that it's in Elliot's head and that he's creating it or Mr. Robot is creating it. Sort of like how he did in the first season in that wild dream in episode four, where he was going to that like it just

[00:22:24] seemed like he was going to this heroin den or whatever it was. Right. And all of that was just taking place in his hotel room. And the and he was interestingly proposing to Angela in that crazy dream where who is now marrying in this

[00:22:40] reality and he was then there was that fish, you know, the fish, Quirty, who was also in that scene with the bad scene with White Rose. So there is a lot to suggest that, you know, some of or all of this could be in Elliot's head. Well, yeah.

[00:23:00] So that's you bringing up the fish is is one of the reasons why this gets complicated because that would it would probably mean that Elliot's creating this world. Is happens before the nuclear meltdown. Right. So so that for a while he's been creating this world.

[00:23:24] And if that's the case, then finding a plausible instance in which Elliot started to be in his own mind would be, I think, difficult. And if you say the whole thing was in his mind, like that that his his character, Elliot, the hacker was always in his

[00:23:44] mind, then you're getting into like it was all a dream territory. And yeah, and I don't I don't like that. It was pretty dream like when he goes to Washington Township, there was that billboard which you can't think is a real billboard.

[00:23:59] Right in the car on the way like well, he sees bodies. Yeah, he sees the bodies, but he doesn't seem to react to them. I so there was a lot of dreaminess, the photos of these famous physicists, Schrodinger and Brian Green even.

[00:24:16] And I guess they were blacked out. I didn't know who the photos were. Oh, I didn't know. Saw this. I read this somewhere. So I don't know if this is true. But there were definitely these pictures of faces and they're all blacked out in different colors.

[00:24:29] And it was interesting. Yeah. So there is a lot of dreamy. I want to add one other possibility which is that the the reality that we get at the end is the real reality. And what we've been seeing all along is the alternate reality.

[00:24:50] And well, that's I mean, that's not different from I think from that it's all been in Elliot's head. Right. Except that which Elliot are we talking about? So yeah, yeah, yeah. The in my in this version, it's all in the

[00:25:06] year that Elliot from that we see at the in the last 15 minutes of this episode's head. And so in other words, this would be like if if as male is a fan of Mulholland Drive. And this is one of the more popular interpretations

[00:25:21] of Mulholland Drive, that it's the last little bit that's reality that's closer to reality. And it's the first part that's the dream. It could be that I suppose, although that would be that would piss people off. I think a lot of people would be furious about.

[00:25:40] Yeah, it would it would be weird and it wouldn't explain why he's glitching. He appears to be glitching in that. So that brings me to then a potential fourth possibility, which is as some have proposed, that Elliot is in a simulation that White

[00:25:54] Rose has created or somebody has created. So that rather than it being a reality generated by Elliot due to mental illness, for instance, it's actually a reality generated by someone else. And and these events have just been part of a simulation.

[00:26:13] Now, it's still hard for me to try to explain what happens when the screen goes to red between the power plant melting down and Elliot in Elliot being, you know, F Elliot or some to when with that simulation start. Well, that's what I don't know.

[00:26:31] Yeah. And and as you say, the dreaminess of the beginning of the township scene would indicate that somewhere between when he says goodbye to Darlene and he gets to Washington Township. You know, there is you mentioned the similarity to Lynch. I haven't seen anybody talk about this,

[00:26:49] but there is a fairly famous story in comic, at least for comics by Alan Moore, the writer of Watchman that's a one off Superman story called For The Man Who Has Everything. And it basically involves Superman being there's an alien controlling his brain.

[00:27:07] But what he's controlling in his brain is what he's doing is he's making Superman's ideal life. And so Superman is on Krypton. He's married. He's with his family and everything's perfect. But he starts noticing things that are slightly off. And there are earthquakes that he can't explain.

[00:27:28] And there are glitches and Superman finally realizes that he's actually in some sort of dream and wakes himself up. It was super close to the way that Elliot is acting. Yeah, yeah. In totally because there was like this earthquake in New York City, which that doesn't really happen.

[00:27:44] Right. And Angela is we never see her. We see like a Skype, a shaky Skype image of her. That strikes me as plausible. Did you see this Reddit theory called Endgame? It was on it was a Reddit post. I just looked at it.

[00:28:03] I don't have it up, but it was sort of interesting. The idea is that this is all a loop, a cycle. Oh, yeah, I did. So that was and that it's going to end in a way that you can start the first scene.

[00:28:18] So the new reality is taking place on the day that the first season, the pilot episode took place on there. They're trying to get they're trying to land this big account at all safe with now F court used to be E core. And as I understand that theory,

[00:28:40] the the new Elliot who we see at the very end of this episode, which we haven't mentioned that he goes into his apartment and right there is old Elliot in the hoodie. It's just Elliot staring at Elliot.

[00:28:56] And so the theory was that the the Elliot that we know, the hoodie Elliot sees this Elliot and can decide does he want to stay in this world and be that guy, the guy that likes his routine and likes his job

[00:29:12] and is about to marry Angela and has a father that's loving and Angela's mom is still alive. And and if he does want to stay in that reality, then he has to send this other Elliot somehow back to where he was at the beginning of the show.

[00:29:30] And so that this keeps happening. So it started out as a core, then it was B core, then it was C core, then it was D core. What we saw was the Elliot getting kicked back from the nice reality to the kind of dirty morphine addicted reality.

[00:29:48] And that's why he doesn't know that Darlene is his sister, is because he doesn't have he didn't have a sister. Yeah, I think that's yeah. I like I like that. There's nothing kind of cool about that. And it just keeps happening until this Elliot decides, no,

[00:30:02] I don't want this dreamy kind of everything's peachy reality. I want real life with all its scars and with all its suffering and pain, I still take it. So this is what people have referred to as the Alderson loop. Yeah.

[00:30:19] So that he's he's continuously, you know, talking about recurring cycles in in in dark, that this is a loop that he's in. But I still don't I in fact read a comment that that was to that effect right during our little dog induced break

[00:30:38] that it would be great if you if actually I mentioned this about one of my favorite albums, Donuts, that that when it ends, it seamlessly goes into the beginning song. So you can actually play it. It would be pretty fucking amazing if that's

[00:30:53] if it ends in a way that the very first scene transition transitions to the very first scene. But but answer me this then. So I'm not sure I understand this fully because so Elliot at the beginning of the series doesn't know that

[00:31:07] Darlene's his sister, he's just completed a hack. And he then goes on this big adventure. So that's the that's real reality. I don't know if anything is exactly real. So I think the idea there's a couple of things that don't make sense to me about the theory,

[00:31:26] which number one being the Elliot that we meet at the beginning of the series doesn't show signs of being like he does seem confused and he does seem like he is. He's been reset. He seems like he's been. Yeah, it seems like he's been reset.

[00:31:42] But the idea is that if Hoodie Elliot kicks douchey Elliot back to this beginning. But what does douchey Elliot who now becomes Hoodie Elliot? Like what does he know? What doesn't he know? He seems to have some sort.

[00:31:58] He knows that he works at all safe, although he's not CEO anymore. Do you think douchey Elliot is the third or the fourth? I had that thought. Yeah, I think it's possible. I do think there is. I know this would piss people off, but there might be like

[00:32:17] think about it thematically for the show. Douchey Elliot is a very successful hacker who now becomes a CEO of this company that keeps people safe from hacking, which is a good solid thing for a person with those skills to do. And yet he's nagged by the thought that

[00:32:39] there's something wrong with the world that he should try to fix and has these hacker fantasies of like bringing down the man, bringing down the capitalist monsters that are out there and those fantasies play out in what we've seen as the whole show.

[00:32:59] But the reality there is something I think thematically interesting about the reality is that he's just going to go and do his routine and marry Angela. And, you know, right. Douchey Elliot says that he seems stuck in this loop. So Tyrell, we haven't talked about too much.

[00:33:17] Tyrell poses a question like what what is the worst? You know, what what makes you unhappy in this life? And he says, well, like sort of just doing the same thing. Right. Like the the recurrence of going to work every day,

[00:33:32] which is a hint of a cycle again. What is Ty? Like, who is Tyrell? Like, what the hell? I'm confused. Yeah. And how does Tyrell then take this new identity himself? Oh, one other thing that I want to mention is that it's significant

[00:33:55] that Darlene doesn't exist and that in that boardroom meeting of the family of young Elliot, the mom and Mr. Robot, they said Darlene was the only person who could wake up the third Elliot. And so it does kind of seem like it's setting the stage for a Darlene

[00:34:16] to come maybe and wake this Douchey Elliot up. Yeah. Huh. So what I was going to say is that however this is resolved, I can't I can't think of how to make this all fit. And for that reason alone, I kind of got to thank Esmael because right.

[00:34:43] What however he resolves this, I think it's going to be in a creative way that like it can't be just a dream, right? So it can't be that the past four seasons were a dream. That would be bullshit. And and it would negate, you know, whatever emotional transformation

[00:34:57] he made when he realized whatever his emotional growth was, when he realizes that had abused him. And and I don't think that Esmael would do that. Not to mention the transformation of other characters like of other characters.

[00:35:11] I don't think that it is a true sci-fi parallel world that White Rose has created. I think it's something to do with Elliott's psychological state. I do too. But I don't I can't I can't make the pieces fit. And and that, you know,

[00:35:29] if the final show never aired, I think this would go down as a pretty brilliant piece of art for the four seasons with ups and downs, but but still pretty good. Right. What if it did just end where we saw it just then?

[00:35:46] You know, with maybe some other capstone scene of Elliott. I don't know, something that that that marked more of a final ending, but without telling us anything more than we know already about the alternate world and its reality or not.

[00:36:04] Like, I don't know if the show is quite like, I think I think I want to know a lot more than I currently know. But I don't need to know everything. And I don't even think I said this earlier.

[00:36:17] I don't even think I need to know for sure whether it's a real alternate, you know, like simulation or a quantum world or whatever. Or it's in Elliott's head. But if I don't know that, then I want a good theme. The narrative has. Yeah.

[00:36:35] Then exactly the narrative has to be resolved and Esmail, you know, with his insistence on on focusing on characters and their development has to, I think, end it in a way that's satisfying for us understanding the journey the characters have gone through.

[00:36:48] And that would require plot elements to be resolved because he's not a. I don't at least I don't see Esmail as the Lindelof Lynch leave leave it completely unresolved. Just for the reason that he has

[00:37:06] for the mysteries he has given us, like him being in prison or him being abused, he has wrapped it up fairly neatly for us. So if he doesn't wrap wrap it up in a way that that takes care of all these elements that are currently mysterious,

[00:37:22] it would surprise me. Can I give you a couple reasons to just be cautious or at least be cautiously optimistic, right? Fully optimistic. So Twin Peaks and The Leftovers were two of his five favorite shows of the decade. And he said at one point, plot doesn't matter.

[00:37:43] Yeah, I know he said that, but the emotional journey does matter. It does. And you and the way that he has to wrap up the emotional journey will have to involve at least. So I mean, I think I'm agreeing with you in that

[00:37:55] if I don't know whether it's a simulation or a parallel universe, but somehow within the story, we get a resolution that, oh, yeah, Elliot has been in this loop or oh, he's popped out of it or,

[00:38:06] you know, there were four altars and this is how it explains what's gone on, at least in Elliot's mind. I'd be OK with that. But, you know, if it's. The Leftovers gave you a wrap up that was ambiguous, but it wrapped up. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:26] And I think I think I would hope that that's what's going to happen here. I worry, though, that if we just get the so-called emotional resolution it will be told to us like explicitly in ways that in such an obvious.

[00:38:45] Like I almost like I want to think that he's doing that on purpose for some higher goal, but you're very optimistic. Yeah, because from the beginning, the one thing that almost turned me off

[00:38:59] to the show was I'm I think this is one of the things I texted you that that that speech about about society, it was two on the nose. And I think maybe a male's art is next level except for this aspect. I agree.

[00:39:19] You know, this I just want to put this on on wax, as they say, there is a number eleven sixteen that keeps popping up. Yeah. And I randomly just looked up eleven sixteen in the Koran and I want to read it just in case this.

[00:39:37] And it says, these are they for whom there is nothing but fire in the hereafter. And what they rot in it shall go for nothing. And vain is what they do, which I think is pretty awesome. Yeah.

[00:39:49] The futility of anything that you do might be a nice, a nice theme. And very also tied to Ecclesiastes. Exactly. That's interesting, because that is eleven sixteen is a thing that they are calling attention to all season. Yeah.

[00:40:08] And we don't know why, but we know it has some sort of importance. And I think I appreciate about Esmael that he like that he knows the conversation that's going on. And I don't know that he's cognizant of that.

[00:40:25] And I hope that because he's cognizant of that, it doesn't make him do fan service like the New Star Wars or something like that. But it does make him realize that he owes something to a very devoted fan base. And we are devoted to in spite of our

[00:40:45] carping about certain aspects of it, it is one of the best shows of the last ten years. I don't know if it's one of the best ten, but it's one of the best. And we have a lot of talking about it.

[00:40:55] Yeah. Here's I think here's the way I feel about it. If if I were to write down the things that I like about this show, that list would rival the any other list. But if you then made me write down the things that I don't

[00:41:08] like about the show, if you did the math, right, it might not work. But that's a good way. But I like has more of that than the other shows that I love. Yeah. Like I think the something like the leftovers in its in the.

[00:41:24] Did you finish that, by the way? No, we got sidetracked by a faussy verden in my family. I won't be really anything, but I think that that Lindelof has sort of mastered the show, don't tell with the way that the characters experience emotion. It's way more understated.

[00:41:42] They never ever give a speech. Speechifying is just non-existent. I for the first like six episodes or something in which we've seen, that's very evident and I like it. I love I really like that about it. OK, should we wrap this up? Yeah, let's wrap this up.

[00:41:59] But but we're excited. I hope we don't sound too critical because now like I am pretty excited to see how it turns out. And it's been a it's been a great achievement. And so yeah, yeah, I'm I'm I'm bullish on it no matter what.

[00:42:13] Unless unless the word unless not. Yeah, unless he does something terrible. There'll just be every character telling you exactly the emotional journey that they've experienced over the last four. Like breaking the fourth wall. And just being like, you might have seen in episode three.

[00:42:34] I picked up the banana. The Darlene episode was sort of like that, too, where she's like my whole life. I've always relied on somebody else. But now I realize that I could. It was like it was it was like bad young adult fiction.

[00:42:50] Yeah, but we were supposed to be positive. We're trying to be positive. I love Mr. Robot. I love Mr. However many altars there are, I love them all. All right, we'll be right back to get ready to talk about trash talking.

[00:43:11] Tamler, did you know that mathematicians have found a formula that actually tells you the probability of how many sexual partners you'll have over your lifetime? No, I did not know that. Yeah. It's it's something that maybe we don't want to know.

[00:43:26] There should be an app for that just like in in cell or not app. But you know how I know that? I just read Hannah Fry's book, The Mathematics of Love. Hannah Fry's is a mathematician who I've mentioned before.

[00:43:42] Gushingly, she has a book that I've been wanting to read, but I haven't had just haven't had the time to read completely. So when I say I read it, I actually just read the summary on Blinkist

[00:43:53] like literally right before we recorded and I got all of the highlights. And I'm going to get the book because because of that. And just what is the formula out of curiosity? No, it's too complicated for us. So sure. It's seven plus or minus two.

[00:44:10] You can't just run the numbers right now. You can't run the. We need to give well to run the numbers. Can you guys do a side project for us? Anyway, Blinkist is an app, a service for anyone who cares about learning, but doesn't have a lot of time.

[00:44:28] Blinkist takes the key insights from over three thousand nonfiction bestsellers in over twenty seven categories and condenses them down into fifteen minute what they call blinks, which is basically on my iPhone you just swipe through like ten or fifteen pages and it summarizes each chapter.

[00:44:47] But you can also do it. Blink is like that's a long blink. I would call that more of like a nap. Like a really it's like a blink when I've had a lot of my good. It's exactly. You can also do it on audio

[00:45:03] and basically can just help you summarize and understand the main points of each book. Twelve million people already use Blinkist to deepen their knowledge in over twenty seven categories, including self improvement, which we need personal personal growth, management and leadership.

[00:45:21] I think you and I have had some some issues with. We need to power through some some blinks on management and leadership. Sure. You know, I have a deep respect for books

[00:45:35] and I personally use Blinkist as as a way to vet whether I'm going to read a book or not. But even if I don't decide to read a book, I can get the gist already. So that's that's basically how I use it.

[00:45:47] I already recommended the Hannah Fry book, The Mathematics of Love, which she's a great great writer. But I also saw on there on their most listened to list is Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow, which I actually have to admit,

[00:46:03] I never read the whole thing, but I'm just going to do the Blinkist thing and pretend. Is that system one to do the Blinkist system? To that reading that book, I think is system two all the way.

[00:46:16] All right, right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to Blinkist.com slash very bad wizards to start your free seven day trial and get 25 percent off a Blinkist premium membership. That's Blinkist spelled B L I N K I S T

[00:46:34] Blinkist dot com slash very bad wizards and get 25 percent off and a seven day free trial. Thank you to Blinkist for supporting this episode.

[00:47:50] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the very predictable time of the show, but still very genuine time when we want to thank everybody, especially in the way that you communicate with us and and the way that, in fact, you communicate with each other.

[00:48:06] And we really appreciate all of the emails, all of the tweets and comments. You, as we say often, keep us going with that. And as our audience has grown, but it's it's still stayed positive, weirdly. We really appreciate it. If you want to get in touch with us,

[00:48:25] you can email us very bad wizards at gmail.com. We read them all can't reply to them all, but we still appreciate it. You can tweet to us at Very Bad Wizards or at Tamler and at P's. You can. What am I missing? You can check us out.

[00:48:44] You can follow us on Instagram where we post for each episode. You can rate us on iTunes. We have gotten too many new reviews, but we always love love to read your reviews or just writing of it up a notch.

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[00:49:19] And we've put out a few bonus episodes recently. We had we just put out one on Dark, the two seasons of Dark, which I just love and I think have infected the way I'm watching Mr. Robot. Like I'm sort of yeah.

[00:49:36] You know, I'm bitching about Mr. Robot more because of how much I like Dark. But anyway, we did a bonus episode on it and I have to leave that alone. The we also you and Barry Lam did an episode on Star Trek. Star Trek, yeah.

[00:49:56] And you're about to do one with Mark Linsenmeyer. Well, not a bonus episode. It's for his new podcast. It's for his new podcast on the Watchman, right? Yeah, yeah. The Lindelof Watchman and I guess the whole Watchman universe.

[00:50:09] But yeah, you and Barry Lam and Mark Linsenmeyer should just have a threesome. Get it over with, you know? Well, actually, we've been starting our own podcast. I didn't want to tell you. We have actually more more iTunes reviews and supporters and very bad wizards.

[00:50:22] That's I've expected this. This is what always happens to the Jews eventually. Just just surprised I made it this far. Yeah. So you can become one of our beloved patrons. You get ad free versions of all of our episodes at any level of support.

[00:50:39] Two dollars and up, you get bonus episodes, five dollars and up. You have our unlimited gratitude and also get to vote on our episode. Oh, yeah. Did you mention my beats? I think you just forgot. Oh my God. Yeah.

[00:50:56] And the volumes of Dave's beats, you have what now? Four volumes, right? Four volumes, yeah. Yeah. And they're awesome. Yeah. Thank you. We are really grateful to all of you for your financial support. We work hard on these episodes, and so it's really gratifying to be rewarded

[00:51:18] in all the different ways that you do. And so thank you. All right. So it's time to get to the main topic. It feels like we've been doing this for two days straight. All right. So so I

[00:51:35] I pitch this to Tamler really because because the topic of trash talking or shit talking or whatever I prefer the term shit talking is, I think right up our alley. I think it's it's fun. It ties in nicely to it's so central to so many sports.

[00:51:53] It is central to hip hop. It is central to politics and it's something like Trump. Exactly. And shit talking has always flowed easily from my mouth. I enjoy it. I think that that's one of the only forms of competition that I like to engage in.

[00:52:14] So there happened to be a couple of papers on trash talking. So so I pitched a couple. The first one is called trash talking competitive in civility, motivates rivalry, performance and unethical behavior by Jeremy Yip, Maurice Schweitzer and Samir Norm Mohamed.

[00:52:35] I'll say I learned about this from actually recently giving a talk at Georgetown. And I met Jeremy Yip, who's a wonderful guy. So whatever trash Tamler talks about him personally is ad hominem and is unfair. He disgraced his family, the family name with this.

[00:52:57] And then there's another one I don't know how much we'll talk about. But it's it's I sent it to Tamler because I thought it was a more descriptive exploratory paper. So the one that I just mentioned by Yip at all is is a set of six experimental

[00:53:14] studies in a lab setting. And this one was more of a more of an exploratory, at least pitched as an exploratory study and called Trash Talking and Trolling by Kevin Kniffin and Dylan Palacio, which I the name sounded familiar.

[00:53:33] And I realized Dylan Palacio actually was in my one of my classes as an undergraduate. So it's nice to at least see him doing work. It turns out that it was maybe not what I thought it was.

[00:53:44] And so I think all I've done is give you give you another thing to complain about. It would be nicer to see him doing good work. But but yeah, but I think what we can at least agree about like, well,

[00:53:57] tell me this, like the introduction of the Yip at all where he tries to at least form some conceptual notion of what it means to trash talk. Is there anything there that you found interesting to talk about? Like, well, so it's a good question because

[00:54:16] there's a kind of philosophy paper that I hate, which takes like a really interesting topic, you know, whether it's like friendship or infidelity or like snitching, whistle blowing and then just conceptually analyzes it to death.

[00:54:31] It gives like a really sterile analysis like and so you don't feel like you've learned anything and you feel like you're less interested in the topic than you were before. Like this paper, there's some conceptual analysis in it.

[00:54:48] But like if anything, that was like the only part that was I thought mildly interesting is the way that they conceptualize trash talking. Now, whether we need a conceptual analysis of trash talking or whether we already kind of know what it is is a separate question.

[00:55:09] But I think if they were going to do it, they did a decent job with it. And I think they're there at least I think from their perspective, it's not so much a conceptual analysis. It's trying to say, well, if we're going to study trash talking,

[00:55:22] we need to come up with some definition of it. That's not as you pointed out, it's not. I don't think it's always necessary because there are things like, you know, famously in emotion research defining what an emotion is, is difficult.

[00:55:36] But that doesn't mean you can't discuss people and see what happens. Nobody needed like a tight definition of what an emotion is in order to go about doing that. So I think this is just trying to put in context what trash talking is

[00:55:53] and maybe more importantly, what they don't mean by trash talking. So their definition is boastful comments about the self or insulting comments about an opponent that are delivered by a competitor, typically before or during a competition.

[00:56:08] So right away, the competitive context is something I guess I guess is obvious. Right? I never really thought about it. But but trash talking does seem to be limited to a competitive like whether it's an imagined competition with a rival or a real formal competition.

[00:56:29] I mean, it's so like we'll sometimes shit talk to psychologists for beers. Right? Now, we are not really in any kind of defined competition. They don't they wouldn't exist if it weren't for us. They pretty much owe us most to all of their success.

[00:56:49] We're the fathers of their style. Yeah, exactly. So so if you define competition as loosely as two people having a podcast you know, yeah, but yeah, I think in this case that it's an interesting thing

[00:57:03] to point out the trash talking is in some sense what makes it seem like we're competitive. So so if we're portraying mass competitiveness, like our trash talking is what the very thing that is portraying the competition. So people might infer that competition. But yeah, yeah.

[00:57:21] And and they give a very loose definition. I don't think they're trying to give necessary and sufficient conditions. Definitely. Even the fact that they say typically before during a competition. Yeah. And they interestingly I had never I mean,

[00:57:34] I guess I've heard people talk about incivility generally, but I didn't. I never came across the term as a is a psychological term or some something that researchers would study, but they view trash talking as a subset of in civil

[00:57:51] behavior in civility, which is weird because they say it can also be malicious or playful because they say that it can often happen between more friendly people. Is that then not trash talking is what we do with two

[00:58:09] psychologists, four beers and not trash talking according to how they're operationalizing this or you know, I think that that that is a case in which in civil behavior like has is not a it's not a definition of motivation because I think you're right.

[00:58:27] There are plenty of friendly competitions were trash talking. I think everybody would agree it really is trash talking like, you know, you look at some of the old footage from the dream team in the Olympics, whatever year that was,

[00:58:40] where they're talking shit to each other and they're a team and and it's, you know, maybe someone got pissed in the heat of the moment at some point, but it's pretty clear that they're all getting along.

[00:58:50] I think that calling it in civility is only demarcating the content of the stuff. Right. So if you say like, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to destroy you. Those words are like negative words,

[00:59:04] but that's the only way in which I can think that this is could be considered in civil. But yeah, I mean, I guess so. I don't know the larger in civility literature. I'm sure it's horrific. You didn't even know it existed.

[00:59:17] But the it seems like in civility does involve intention. That's how I understand that term. I don't care, but that's how I understand the term that it is actually something that isn't just playful banter. It is something that is. I agree. I agree.

[00:59:36] I agree. This should be a motivational definition. But for whatever it's worth, like whether it doesn't really matter whether it's a subset of in civility or not. All right, let's take a quick break to talk about one of our favorite, maybe our favorite sponsor, Give Well.

[00:59:51] The holiday season, Dave is almost over. This is our last episode of the year. And so there's no better time to make your philanthropic activity count. Hanukkah is coming up. Christmas is coming up.

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[01:00:23] I think we've talked about this before, but whenever we teach the Peter Singer ethics, you know, we're giving people these puzzles. One of the first things people say is, well, I don't know what the charity is going to do with it.

[01:00:34] But that's one of the things Give Well does. They spend thousands of hours vetting everything these charities are going to do. So if you really have that doubt, you need not. You're going to have to come up with a deeper, more thoughtful objection

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[01:01:14] provide a malaria treatment to a child for less than ten dollars, save a life for a few thousand dollars. And tomorrow night, Dave, is the first night as I'm sure you know of Hanukkah. And just like last year, we always devote the first night to charity donations.

[01:01:31] And I'm making mine to Give Well. Last year, Eliza made hers to Give Well. But I think Eliza's this year is going to a local animals shelter. So I am going to proudly take over the Give Well charity mantle.

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[01:02:27] So if you're a first time donor and you go to GiveWell.org slash Very Bad Wizards, you will have your donation matched up to one thousand dollars. That's even more good that your charitable donation can do.

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[01:02:51] Their money to match our our listeners donations, they have it and they need to use it. This episode is going to come out December 24th. You still have time set up an account, put that money to good use and be generous

[01:03:05] to the spirit. Thank you so much to GiveWell for supporting this podcast. And thanks to our listeners for supporting GiveWell. So the central question of this paper is does shit talking actually improve the performance of the opponent?

[01:03:22] So, you know, you're playing against a player and that player says something to you, presumably I think in the mind of the person who's shit talking. They're trying to to get in your head, rattle the opponent to reduce their performance.

[01:03:42] And I think the central argument of this paper and the point of their experiments is to show that, in fact, this boosts the motivation of the opponent. If what you really want is for them not to perform as well, then then you should actually not trash talk.

[01:04:00] Can I just jump in? Clearly, that is going to depend on the person who's doing the trash talking, the person who's getting trash talk, the context of it, whether it's on a basketball court or whether it's in a chess match or whether it's in like.

[01:04:20] How good you are at that. Yeah, how good how good both parties are. Right, exactly. So like, yeah. So I kind of want to maybe we should talk about that. So so I'm just going to give the the rough outline of what the the experiments are.

[01:04:37] The experiments involve bringing people into the lab, two actual participants into a lab and having them chat with each other for a couple of minutes. And then at that end being told that they're going to play a competitive game with each other.

[01:04:52] And at that point, a Confederate takes over and the participants either receive a message that is trash talky or a message that is neutral. So to give you an example of one of them says, so you like say I'm playing this with you.

[01:05:12] We've just had like a nice chat. We get told that we're about to play this game. And then I type to you, you think, just to let you know that prize is mine, I'm totally going to crush you in this task.

[01:05:23] I'm going to send you home crying to your mommy sucker. So that's the trash talking condition. Is it like from the 70s? The participant will think they got into a time travel machine and went back to like mid 70s. I think you're swell. That's the neutral.

[01:05:43] Yeah. And then in the neutral condition, which is present in most of the studies, then there's various neutral conditions. But the general one is something like whoever does the task better, we'll get the prize. Let's see what happens. That would freak me out, actually.

[01:06:00] That would get in my head right there. Let's see what happened. Here's another one. I'm smarter than you. I'm faster than you. I'm going to beat you so bad. But that's at least that sounds plausible.

[01:06:13] Hey, hey dummy, you're going to lose and you're going to lose bad end of story exclamation, exclamation. So then people actually engage in this task. The task is a it's just a game where you have to use a slider to actually.

[01:06:31] I don't know exactly what it is, but it's basically the more effort you put into it, the more points you get. And what they show across across these studies is that getting somebody to trash talk to you boosts your performance compared to the neutral.

[01:06:48] And it's it's that trash talking is actually increasing effort based performance. And that this is because trash talking makes you seem like a rival. And that causes you to be motivated to beat somebody else. So, you know, they do some

[01:07:09] clever versions of this where the participants are allowed to take a smaller amount of prize money so they get paid for their performance in this. They get to take they opt to take a smaller amount of the prize money to ensure that the trash talker gets zero.

[01:07:27] Nineteen percent of people in a trash talking condition are willing to take a financial hit just to make sure that their opponent who trash talked them doesn't go home with any extra money, whereas none of the people in neutral condition were willing to do that.

[01:07:42] So now here's here's where I think the the heart of I think the heart of your disagreement is something like this context isn't telling us a lot about trash talking as we observe it in the real world, right? Is that is that the the gist of?

[01:08:02] Yeah, I mean, I would put it in stronger terms more like it obviously isn't telling us about it. It also there isn't some sort of universal or general answer to this question. So even just approaching the question in this manner as if

[01:08:18] you could even in principle devise an experiment that would tell you the effects of trash talking in contexts like a professional office or on the basketball court or on the football field or on a golf course or the

[01:08:35] dynamics of how much better one person is than the other. And also the kinds of trash talking that you can do. You know, do you go out there family like Zidane, you know, in the World Cup, which we've talked about.

[01:08:52] So it just seems like such a rich phenomenon trash talking that this to me doesn't come close to even nibbling at in an interesting way. But I do think it also the what you're saying is the worry about

[01:09:11] generalizability or external validity as we psychologists like to call it, I think is is is real. And although I should talk them to psychologists for beers, just did an episode called Against Experiments where and especially YOL, although I think Mickey was very sympathetic to what YOL was saying.

[01:09:37] But YOL was worried about the fact that these experiments don't do a good job of capturing what we care about and basically just provide existence, existence proofs for for things that we already knew. And this seems like a paradigmatic example of that.

[01:09:59] If you set up an experiment in a certain way, you can show that, yes, trash talking will make people work a little harder at a task. But that doesn't like we knew we already knew that that can happen sometimes.

[01:10:14] OK, so so like let me start broadly with your concern. So I don't think the task could ever be in an experiment to give us the richness of all the situations in which trash talking occurs and to give us the nuance

[01:10:30] of the difference between talking about family or whether it's soccer versus basketball or whether you're skilled or unskilled. I don't think that was ever the goal. And I think that that only a huge body of literature could actually inform that broad question.

[01:10:45] Right. That's why that's why I think we have to proceed by having a bunch of people do studies and report all of the things that they find. I think this is very much an existence proof. No experiment can meet those conditions, the lofty conditions of

[01:11:01] informing us about all the richness of trash talking. And I think that it would be a disservice to Yip et al. To think that they don't think that the world of trash talking is rich and nuanced. I. Right. Maybe they do.

[01:11:13] But then they shouldn't be doing these experiments if they. But why but why not? Because in here is where I think the crux of it is. If you believe that this is an internally valid, that is this was a trash

[01:11:26] talking manipulation perceived as such from the from the participant's point of view and the trash talking conditions. And if you believe that these performance measures of of the game are also valid measures of of motivation, then I think you can conclude that in this context,

[01:11:48] this trash talking motivates people to work harder. Now, did we already know that? Well, I don't know because it seems as if it was very plausible that you could have an outcome that trash talking would demotivate you. And they don't find that.

[01:12:04] So I think that no way like that's just wrong. Like this isn't showing that trash talking never demotivates you or even that it often doesn't demotivate you. It just shows that there is a certain kind of condition where trash talking would motivate you, but we knew that.

[01:12:22] But like there's this whole concept of bulletin board material where someone will say something and like Bill Belichick is constantly putting up things that people have said about the Patriots opposing players have said about it on the bulletin board.

[01:12:37] It's like a cliche, don't give them bulletin board material because then they'll work harder, then they'll be more motivated. Like we already knew this. This is I think the this is YOL and Mickey's point is that like

[01:12:51] we the thing that they're showing is not something deeply surprising or at all surprising, like this is stuff that we know. And if you want to set up an experiment to show, show it and make it seem sciencey like, oh, look, mommy, I'm a scientist.

[01:13:07] I'm doing an experiment. You can do it. But like that's not that's not telling us anything. It's not enlightening us. Your your criticism of this as sciencey smacks of somebody who read one article about the problems with psychological ops like studies. I've read so many of them.

[01:13:25] It's not just one. Yeah, but you know, I've read a lot about quantum mechanics, but I don't know how to do it. So like I like you don't have to know how to do it. I mean, like we you've in a different guys have made the same complaint.

[01:13:39] Like but but but it isn't the case that I think that experiments can't show something right? I actually think that in this set of studies, they could have found demotivating a demotivating effect. Now, you could argue you scientist Tamler, real scientist Tamler. You could argue that they could.

[01:13:59] They could they could set up a scenario that showed demotivation, in which case it would be interesting and it would be interesting to have a follow up set of studies to say, well, under what conditions is trash talking demotivating?

[01:14:11] And so through a large body of experimental studies, you could actually say something about what the particular features of a situation that make trash talking demotivating matter. And you've already given some possibilities about this.

[01:14:25] But it could be that if the task is difficult, people give up sooner with trash talking or it could be that in some cases, who is trash talking to you makes a difference. There isn't there's nothing about like what's what strikes me as your criticism

[01:14:42] is that you just never believe that any experiment can show anything. And not even you well would believe that right? Like this is not the heart of the criticism. So I guess the real substantive disagreement then is whether this kind

[01:14:56] of experiment will ever show us anything or can ever show us anything interesting about trash talking, the thing that we care about, the thing that we're trying to investigate and because it's so artificial and because it's so context specific. That artificial. Why do you think it's so artificial?

[01:15:16] Like you're actually a stranger and they're but well, so the game, if you play a video game, like if you're a gamer and you're playing online, it doesn't, you know, whatever the game is and somebody is is trash talking while you're playing. That happens all the time.

[01:15:34] Right? Like Halo isn't, you know, like it doesn't meet the conditions of external validity in that sense. But you could ask the question like does somebody trash talking in your ear while I'm playing a novel video game? Does it demotivate me?

[01:15:50] That's right. You can even say like this only works for this slider game. But if that's what they're saying, that it only works for this slider game, then I don't think anybody would care. The extent to which we care about this is that it shows something

[01:16:06] potentially interesting about that we didn't know before about trash talking in general. And that's where I think it doesn't. Now, if OK, so sorry, I was just going to say, like I'm trying to get at the heart of your criticism of this because

[01:16:22] it sounds like there are two things you could be saying. One is that you can never have a lab based experiment that says anything interesting about psychological phenomena. Right? And that's about maybe this psychological phenomenon. Well, OK, that's what I'm trying to get out, whether whether this is

[01:16:40] this is a disagreement about whether this particular psychological phenomenon was was manipulated and measured properly in this experiment, or whether it's even possible to to make bonafide discoveries about behavior and psychology in an experimental manipulation. This is I want to say something stronger, but I want to.

[01:17:04] OK, so I was getting to this question. So if if in this study, but if they said, well, we don't know if this works in something like a sports setting, so we brought athletes in to shoot free throws and we had some people

[01:17:20] trash talk before they shot free throws. And it turns out that in this case, it does have a jarring effect. Right? So you you randomly assign the person who's about to shoot free throws to get trash talked by by somebody else on the court.

[01:17:36] And you measure whether or not they, you know, how many free throws they made. And you have a finding that in the trash talking condition, whatever, either they made fewer or more like what I want to know is is that is that knowledge to you?

[01:17:52] Is that something that we learned? I mean, I would have to know the specifics of the of the experiment. But I do think there is a problem of like a deep problem with how

[01:18:06] how are you supposed to determine what reason do we have to think that the results of an experiment like this would generalize two contexts that we actually give a shit about, not undergrads coming in to shoot free throws for extra credit

[01:18:24] or even athletes coming into this to shoot free throws in this kind of setting where I don't know how that would work, but it would have to be like a confederate athlete believably plausibly trash talking them.

[01:18:39] And maybe you could manipulate whether they knew the person or whether they didn't. And if if you could do all those things in some kind of, I don't know, formal way, maybe I'm very skeptical though.

[01:18:54] But I think the sort of deep problem is with with an experiment like this is what it's like it's a burden of proof thing. What reason do we have to think that this would generalize to other contexts?

[01:19:08] So the context that we're actually the reason we're even talking about this is because you and I are interested in trash talking as it appears in real life. Right. So I don't I want to separate the generalizability from just the belief that they've shown

[01:19:25] something about this game in this context with undergrads like I just. Yes, they did, I guess. But I didn't care about like how they would perform in a inane sliding task or whatever. You care you care about like if they performed in in like the real world?

[01:19:44] Like right if you if you could do an experiment where right before a Patriots kicker kicks, you had somebody say something about his mom, right, and you had enough observations that you and in random manipulations so that you knew that if somebody yelled your mom's a whore

[01:20:01] right before the kicker kicked and you have multiple kickers and you find some difference, you could conclude that in that context, trash talking did something. Right. If you had those results. And no matter how field the study is like no matter how externally valid it is,

[01:20:20] you'll always have the problem of generalizability because if I care about how trash talking influences video game players, I would say who gives a fuck about your kicker, right? That's just always going to be a problem with an experiment and it's going to be

[01:20:32] a problem with any field observational study. Except that field observational study at least starts out with something that you care about, whereas nobody cares about how people perform in slider. But that's a slider tasks, but that's a different criticism than the generalizability criticism, right?

[01:20:51] Well, no, because no, I disagree, because the only way that we could care about how people are performing in this inane slider task is if we thought that generalized beyond that particular task to some other context that we do care about. That's right.

[01:21:11] But I'm saying that you could say the same thing, right? Aside from Patriots fans, you could say the same thing about the generalizability of that particular experiment. So sure. Right. You you can buy you can buy that this experiment showed that people are

[01:21:26] more motivated in this inane slider task. But but I at least want you to agree that there is no single experiment that could meet the criteria of generalizing to all of the rich, nuanced trash talking. There's not even a set of observations that could meet that richness.

[01:21:42] The only way to explore that richness is to do many, many different studies. Yeah. So there is a question and this is not one. This is something I'm still sort of wrestling with. By the way, I miss this, Tamler. I miss this. I miss this argument.

[01:21:58] Yeah, I know. It's I think hopefully our listeners have to part of me thinks this just isn't like the scientific method is not the right way to approach trash talking it because it's too diverse a phenomenon. It's too context dependent.

[01:22:17] And, you know, Shay Serrano, who does this great like like the most disrespectful dunks of the decade or something like that. You know, like Sean Kemp nuts in your face. Yeah, exactly. Like like that's the kind of thing.

[01:22:33] And then just people giving examples of trash talking, which I think maybe like journalism is better. Maybe sociology would be better. Maybe anthropology to just kind of do ethnographies of trash talking. Like that this kind of the more qualitative approach for something like this,

[01:22:51] I think might be more appropriate than any kind. So it's not just criticizing Yip at all for it. Like I think maybe it is the task of what they're trying to do is doomed from

[01:23:04] the outset part of me is drawn to that view that this is not the right way of approaching the problem. Right. That's that's that's what I I sort of always suspect your view to be. And that's why I think that the non starters are whether these are,

[01:23:20] you know, internally valid tasks or whatever. Right. I think that that if you think that it's never going to get you something interesting, then that's something that is a deep flaw with the whole field that doesn't have that much to do with how we measure things. Right.

[01:23:36] Because all of the discussion about how we measure things and how we manipulate things and how we come up with our lab based studies, those all have an optimism to them. That that is if we improve the way we measure something,

[01:23:49] if we improve the way we operationalize something, if we improve the tasks that we use to make them more like real world tasks, then we will get to something interesting about human nature, maybe even some rules about human nature.

[01:24:02] So if somebody followed up with the Yip studies and manipulated whether it was trash talking about family or or or about athletic ability, and they manipulated whether it was high stakes or low stakes, and they manipulated whether it was difficult versus easy. Right.

[01:24:21] Like that we would accrue knowledge that is telling us something interesting. That's one possibility that I think is the optimism at the heart of even the open science reform, which is we'll get there. We just need to do a better job of it. Your pessimism is deeper.

[01:24:38] Your pessimism is there's no measure, there's no manipulation that will get this to be saying anything interesting. Yes, that's correct. I think there is a part of the open science movement, as I understand it, that is optimistic.

[01:24:53] We have to improve our techniques, get people to pre-register their hypotheses. You know, one worry about this study is they set it up in a way that they kind of could suspect that they would confirm their hypotheses, even their non-obvious hypotheses and pre-registering it, I guess,

[01:25:12] would take care of that. And so I do think there is a darker side of the open science movement. Again, I think they were getting into that in two psychologists for beers. I think this paper, I don't know if you read it yet,

[01:25:24] the generalizability crisis by Tal Yarkoni that just came out and was the subject of some debate. It's totally pessimistic and very much with a little stats stuff that I don't understand, very much

[01:25:41] of a piece with some of the stuff that I've been worried about for the last few years, which is that this generalizability can't be solved or he has this whole section, what should we do?

[01:25:52] And one of them is you should just leave the field because the field is not doing what it claims it can do and it can't do it. And then the other is they should be more honest, at least about what they're doing.

[01:26:06] And he says we should use titles like transient manipulation of self-reported anger influences small hypothetical charitable donations. We should title our papers that instead of hot head, warm heart, anger increases economic charity. And so this paper is like that. Trash talking competitive incibility motivates rivalry, performance and unethical

[01:26:34] behavior. Like that's not what this does. It should be called undergrads spend a little more time moving sliders when they receive like some sort of canned insult from an anonymous person, either online or in the lab, who's competing with them in something

[01:26:54] that is so inane, the slider moving contest. I guess now the title is going too long. But but I take what Yarkoni is saying as to be deeply pessimistic. Not it's not just a question of improving your techniques.

[01:27:08] And then it is a question of we are going about this the wrong way and we need a deep reckoning in a way that I think we do in a lot of philosophy too. Well, yeah, the philosophy reckoning will be very, very different from the psychology reckoning.

[01:27:25] But so so here's the thing, you could be deeply pessimistic about generalizability and still be OK in believing that we're making progress one study at a time. So it is an open question whether or not the inane task with a canned trash talking response

[01:27:45] is going to be the same as the non-canned response with undergraduates or whether it's going to work with New England Patriots kickers. But the the the fact that lab studies can't generalize in, by the way, I agree with the like the claims need to be much narrower.

[01:28:06] Right. So so we do need a deep record. Yeah, we do need a deep reckoning about what it is that we're showing. I think that in some cases, as I think you always mentioning like like the Milgram studies, there is something deep about the demonstration itself that

[01:28:25] that even if it is limited to the conditions in which that Milgram created, it's jarring and unsettling that that can be done given the the manipulations that were used, right? Yeah, that's interesting, which I think we should talk about at another time. But yeah, because I agree.

[01:28:47] It's it's jarring. It's surprising. Does it tell us what we think it tells us is a different question? Right. Well, if if you believe the results and all it tells you is that in right, like if you believe that participants believed in what they're doing,

[01:29:07] then it tells us that it doesn't take much to get people to to shock someone pretty nastily. Like and that that's interesting. Right. And and Milgram meticulously changed various parameters to see what worked and what wouldn't. Now, does that does that generalize to even modern humans?

[01:29:28] I'm not I'm not sure I'm not sure. But but here's where my optimism lies, because, you know, I'm also deeply skeptical about what it is we're doing when we do experiments. Right. I share that with you.

[01:29:42] But I do think that we can make progress in what we understand by many people doing many experiments, none of which satisfy generalizability at all. And combining that with descriptive research in the way that that Paul Rosin's article stated, because I think all the descriptive stuff

[01:30:03] in the world is still not going to get me the kind of information that I might want to know. So, for instance, if I want to simply know, say I'm a I'm a I'm the owner

[01:30:17] of a football team and I want to know do I tell my players to shit talk more or less? And I could do some really interesting analyses. Right. And I saw it. Sorry. And I might to finish that thought. And I might actually say, you know what?

[01:30:31] In fourth quarter pressure situations when the game is tied, shit talking has been like we see a statistical pattern that would would give us a underlying reliable piece of advice, which is shit talk the kicker under those conditions. Right. I mean, you might not.

[01:30:50] But but it could be that that happens and you've learned at least something. What you've learned might be just predicting human behavior. I think that so, in fact, there are all sorts of ways in which you can measure the very thing that you're interested in like understanding.

[01:31:08] So if what you understand, if you if we're interested in charitable donations, we can measure charitable donations directly. So let's take Google as an example or Wikipedia, actually, Wikipedia can do. Right. They're always on a drive once once a year to get money.

[01:31:29] They manipulate the message that people get to ask them for money. You get those messages, right? Yeah, for sure. There are so many people who get those messages. They've actually done this, right? They'll tweak something about the message, right? It'll either have a picture of Jimmy

[01:31:51] Wales or it won't. Right. It'll either have an plea for empathy or it won't. It'll, you know, they can they can do various tests and they can actually show with some statistical certainty the kind of message that's more likely to lead to donations.

[01:32:06] That's information that doesn't need to be generalized because it is right finding exactly what we need to find. Exactly. But it's starting out with the very thing that they're interested in finding out, which is that they which is like, what's the thing that we can

[01:32:20] put at the top of the page that will make people donate the most? And so, yes, then experiments are really useful. And I'm not denying that data and experiments can be really useful like the shift in baseball, you know, like that is something they're starting out

[01:32:38] trying to figure out what will be the best places we can put fielder to get this batter out. And because that's something that you can easily control, you can try all these different configurations and look at where the player hits the ball.

[01:32:54] And if they're more of a pull hitter, you can put the second basement on this on the shortstop side and you can test out how that works. And you do enough of those and you will get some reliable information that you can act on.

[01:33:08] So that's not the issue. And to the extent that psychologists are doing that, that they're starting with the phenomenon that they're interested in and then doing these manipulations, I'm totally, you know, that can be really interesting.

[01:33:22] But my issue with this is that nobody cared about the sliding task thing between undergrads and this particular bit of trash talking that they did. So there, I think the interest and the information provided by the study depends on it generalizing at least beyond what it actually was.

[01:33:48] Right. And that's what I don't see happening. Well, so there's some case, there is some attempt to, you know, shift it to right in the study where they do competitive versus cooperative where they're trying to find some some.

[01:34:08] Difference in the task itself that might lead to a difference in results. So within that set of studies, you can imagine they're saying something. They're at least saying right here's like and even if all they're saying is

[01:34:25] here is a place to start looking if we want if we want to get a rich understanding of trash talking. What these labs studies can do is at least point us in the direction of something interesting, right? We've manipulated cooperative versus versus competitive.

[01:34:43] Now let's look in the real world to see if that difference bears out. Is there a regularity in what we consider cooperative versus competitive tasks in which we could also see this. So prediction is made where we say now let's go to the real world.

[01:34:57] Right? Let's go to some kind of team sport where you can manipulate trash talking to the opponent or within the team and see if the same thing holds. And so the information, I think we're on the same page that that.

[01:35:19] So what's the thing that we learned from the cooperative competitive thing that we needed the experiment to generate this? Like why couldn't we just start out with the real world if that's what we wanted to do?

[01:35:31] Because the real world is is messy in a lot of ways, right? So so while you claim to know exactly what would happen under this task, like they don't claim to know that. And so what they found is that in a cooperative task that it decreases motivation.

[01:35:50] Right trash talking decreases in a cooperative task. Like wouldn't wouldn't you think that that was true already? Like is perhaps but but but it could be that that it came out that it actually motivates people, right? In which case you could have the interesting discussion about well,

[01:36:10] I like let's now go to the real world and see. Right. There is something about creating a microcosm of the world in a lab. The lab isn't a complete simulation in which there are no, you know, which are not using humans. Right. These are still human beings.

[01:36:24] There's still people who think they're playing a game. There's still stakes involved. They're still a manipulation that they believe just to call it artificial. It's no more artificial than a football game, right? You make it sound like it's exploratory what they're doing. But it wasn't right.

[01:36:40] They had hypotheses that they designed their experiments to test and to come out in a certain way. So so you're saying that they stacked the deck to find what they want. You know, because that's that would be giving it too much credit, like,

[01:36:55] because I think that I mean, I think that's that might be true or it might not. I don't know. For all I know they pre-registered this. I would be surprised. But but the way you're describing the approach to experiments in general is

[01:37:10] we're just going to we're going to run some experiments involving trash talking, see what happens and then we'll test it out in the real world based on some interesting things that we might find. But you know that that's not how it works, right?

[01:37:26] Well, let me ask you this, Tamler, if that's how they had structured the the studies and they had done these exact studies, would that all of a sudden make it a valuable contribution? I don't think so because I think that information that you can get from

[01:37:40] that is something that you can just get from talking to like. So it has nothing to do with talking to each other about what we would expect from trash talking and then just going directly to the real world with that.

[01:37:52] But so then it has nothing to do with what you just said, right? Like it has nothing to do with whether they hypothesized it, right? If you if you don't think that it would be interesting, even if it were exploratory, then then it's a red herring.

[01:38:04] And I find that a lot of the criticisms that you level are red herrings for what is just deeply a suspicion about just about whether or not we can learn regularities about the human mind through experiments.

[01:38:17] I mean, you're right that that's not I don't think the deepest problem. It doesn't mean that it's not a problem. It means that even if even if this deeper problem wasn't a problem, then there is this more superficial problem.

[01:38:29] But but yes, I'm happy to admit that that's a red herring in this context, given that we are talking about the deeper problem. So so I think that at the heart of the the the problem is whether or not let's take methodology, just throw it to the wind.

[01:38:49] Or let's say that we have actually, you know, open science has made this a fucking panacea of proper scientific practices and now we all pre-register now. We, you know, do do everything like dot our eyes and cross our T's to make

[01:39:05] sure that we have valid and reliable measures and we come up with great manipulations that seem to the to the participant as if they were in real life. I still think you wouldn't be too bullish about doing experiments because I think that at the heart of your

[01:39:27] skepticism is whether or not this divide and conquer method of putting people in situations and seeing what they do is actually yielding regularities that can lead us to laws of human behavior in the same way that

[01:39:42] let's say physics is because physics, you could say, has all of the same problems with predicting the real world. Right? That's there. There's a reason that physicists and engineers are completely different people. A physicist can tell you under super controlled conditions,

[01:39:59] you know, at what rate will this object fall to the ground? And they can tell you exactly how what that rate would be. In the real world, it's sloppy, right? There is wind, there's people, there's all kinds of things that that matter. The physicist is still finding underlying

[01:40:17] regularities to the physical world. Yes. The engineers know that it's sloppy and they can't rely on those things to actually predict because when you're building a bridge, there are a thousand things that influence whether or not that bridge is going to stand.

[01:40:31] And they often mock like the arrogance of physicists for thinking that they can with some equations tell them whether or not this bridge will stand. Right? But and I think the reason I'm getting to this is this is also my deep worry. That human beings are so complicated.

[01:40:52] That the methods of dividing conquer science that have worked in the other hard sciences will actually never work in the social sciences. That is the regularities that we find the best we can hope for is predicting whether or not Patriots kickers at the, you know, in the beginning

[01:41:12] of this decade under these wind conditions with a shit talker in the fourth quarter will succeed. That's what we've learned is that we haven't learned anything about trash talking or we haven't learned anything about wind conditions. We haven't learned anything about difficulty.

[01:41:31] We have learned that in confluence, it seems to be that all of these things when we measure the very thing we're interested in that seems to make a difference. But what we can't do is infer natural laws from those findings. Is that is that fair?

[01:41:49] Is that a fair way to state your criticism? Yes, the only thing I would say is I think that's the worry. I think it's a worry that like you just said, you you you have as well and you have expressed on this podcast earlier.

[01:42:03] And certainly certainly I have to I don't want to rule out that an experiment could ever tell us something more general or even that there are experiments that have told us stuff that is more general and more interesting than just what the experiment itself shows.

[01:42:24] But I think the worry is that when you are studying something as complicated as what are the effects of trash talking, that the methodology like however well you refine it, pre-registering, no p-hacking, none of that,

[01:42:42] you still are not going to be able to find anything that's close to a general love or even a law that is confined to specific to fairly specific context that go beyond the actual thing that you studied. So so that is a worry for sure.

[01:42:58] Right. So I think like one one way to protect against this is to just infer a generalization from one experiment and then go and test it in as many contexts as possible. And if what you find is that this keeps showing up as an important predictor

[01:43:18] in all of the context that you tested in, then maybe you have something like a generality, right? But that's something that is always going to be an open question so long as there are novel contexts and different people to be tested. Right. There's no.

[01:43:34] It's not a closed system where you can say like we have studied the ball dropping, the bowling ball and the feather in the vacuum. Right. We don't have that about human beings. We have that about about the physical world. But what I.

[01:43:49] What I'm not sure is whether or not. So I think I'm more optimistic about the body of work that experiments, you know, the accretion of studies might be able to tell us something interesting because I think that any one study has the possibility of telling

[01:44:05] us in that context, this is working. If we can find regularities across all the experiments with no p-hacking, with no publication bias, with like something like message framing and loss aversion or whatever, if we can keep finding that across context,

[01:44:22] then we might at least be able to make a tentative claim about a regularity in the way the human mind processes something. Because I don't think it's in principle an intractable problem. Right. The mind is a physical system. Right.

[01:44:36] But it might be intractable for certain kinds of phenomenon once they reach a threshold of complexity. Right. Like the weather, the weather being a classic example. The weather being a classic example. And then you would think that the human mind can.

[01:44:54] The weather is nothing compared to the way not just the human mind, but the human interaction, social interaction in a contemporary world of all these different cultures and all these different societies and all these diverse ways in which they can clash and they appear and all the ways

[01:45:14] in which the physical world imposes on that. So yeah, the other thing I guess that isn't clear to me when I read these. And this is why I think I took a I had a more negative take on this experiment and experiments like it.

[01:45:31] It doesn't even seem like it acknowledges that there is a problem. And not only that, it's not clear to me how we would even know whether this generalizes beyond the very specific context that we don't give a shit about.

[01:45:47] Like I don't know to the it doesn't seem like that bridge that you're talking about of then taking this and applying it to the real world, that anybody knows how how we would do that and how we would be able to then judge

[01:46:02] whether this actually did generalize beyond what we thought it might. That's the work that it doesn't seem like is often done. It seems like it's more promissory notes and more just well, that's that's a job for down the line right now.

[01:46:18] We're just doing this and it seems like the very thing that would make this worthwhile is the thing that isn't getting done. Yeah, so so I mean, I am inclined to agree that I like the way you said it,

[01:46:35] the promissory notes, social psychology traditionally is a bunch of promissory notes. Now, is there a way to get to the generalizability? And you say like, you can't even see how you would get to that?

[01:46:46] I can. I mean, I can see that that you might take the the conceptual distinctions that are made here that are applied to an experimental context and just say, look, like I can get let's get a bunch of people to to tell us in there what

[01:47:02] their sense of competitive versus cooperative is or or trash talking versus neutral talking and then you actually go about testing this. So and this this is why I think the appeal of descriptive research in principle is there for both of us because very it's much easier.

[01:47:21] To have somebody like a journalist or right, like somebody write up something really interesting about the way that humans work in a particular context and that might be true. And to get to that truth through experimentations would be extraordinarily costly in terms of time and money. Yeah, right.

[01:47:44] But what I the reason that I keep hoping that just we just get better at experimentation is it's hard to distinguish the truth of descriptive claims. Yeah, like just saying it sounds right, isn't enough.

[01:47:59] But I'm left at a loss is if it's not enough to distinguish the truth value of a descriptive claim as rich as that that that claim might be. Are experiments in the way that we're doing it the way to get there?

[01:48:14] Well, if they are, I agree with you. We need a gajillion of them. So I want to hold on to the possibility that we can get to some regularities. But to be honest, I'm much more comfortable with saying, let's do studies on the very things

[01:48:35] that we're interested in. Like if I'm interested in how poor kids perform in school, let me go study poor kids performing in school. Right, like the very poor kids and the very schools that I'm interested in studying. Exactly. That way I can use the scientific method. Like Wikipedia.

[01:48:50] Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because there's a reason that when you look at the replicability of behavioral science that you get as you would expect that you get high predictability rates for lower level mechanisms, right? So visual perception, you know, you and I could replicate it right now.

[01:49:11] Like most of the well known studies, like all it takes is a very, very small system that is causing vision relative to something like social behavior. Right. So you get like memory studies where those are robust, right? You and I could replicate those as well.

[01:49:28] Like the primacy recency effect, those are robust. Like that doesn't rely on such a complex interaction of social and you know, mental features. The more you get to social, the worse and worse the numbers get, right? And I think that's just because the complexity is exponentially increasing. Right.

[01:49:50] And here's where I think we can agree. The way that we're going about it doesn't matter whether I'm a Bayesian or a Frequentist, it doesn't matter if I have like two internally valid measures or not. All that shit, all of that debate

[01:50:10] crucially hinges on whether or not it is it is possible to accrue knowledge that will yield general rules about human behavior. And we might not be there for a hundred or a thousand years. I don't know.

[01:50:23] And it might also be so I think you put that really well. And I would just add that when you say with the descriptive stuff, it's very hard to know if it's true because you lack those kind of experimental

[01:50:37] controls, but it just might be that we were not able to do it with the methods that we currently have and that refining the methods could be not the best use of our resources.

[01:50:50] It might be that we just have to do better at some of the stuff that won't that we'll never know for sure whether it's true or not. It'll just better journalism. But we won't have that kind of scientific objective. This is the right theory.

[01:51:10] It might just be that we have to go at it from a more humanistic perspective, because that's just given the complexity of it, that's the best we can do. You know, sometimes science is the right way.

[01:51:29] The scientific method to the extent that that's a thing or experimental methods are the right way of approaching something. And sometimes it isn't and maybe it isn't for something like trash talking. This is the thing I'm on the fence because I'm leaning in a certain

[01:51:47] direction, but it might just be that this is not something we should even try to go about because in the descriptive paper, which we've barely talked about, it didn't do a really good job either.

[01:51:58] I think it could have done a better job, but it didn't do a good job of telling us something that we didn't already know about trash talking. Yeah. And I think that we're at a disagreement about the didn't already know because I think that that

[01:52:18] that we don't know, right? Like we don't like I don't with any confidence know whether trash talking ought to work in team sports versus individual sports. I don't have a confident. I can make a guess, right? But how do I evaluate whether that guess is right or wrong?

[01:52:36] Like it to me. But we already know that that sometimes it'll be one way and sometimes it'll be another way, right? Yeah, but but what are those sometimes? Right? But you don't think these papers tell us what the sometimes is.

[01:52:49] Are they tell us in this specific sometimes, right? This is information, right? It's not that it's not information. It's that it's not information that might reliably predict whether or not tennis versus soccer is going to yield something.

[01:53:04] But I as much as I like the humanistic approach because I think that it is a rich source of understanding of the human world. Like if I'm going to put, you know, it's where the rubber meets the road. Am I going to bank on the vague intuitions?

[01:53:19] If I really, really want to know something, I mean, you might be saying something else. You might be saying that trash talking is too broad a concept to tackle. But but if it's not, if suppose we understand trash talking as being

[01:53:34] whenever somebody, you know, does these negative things and a competitive. I still think that that the the optimism of thinking that a humanistic approach can yield truth is is problematic. So I'd rather I agree.

[01:53:52] It can yield insight, but I don't think it can yield truth in the way that maybe some physical theories, but but maybe nothing can is the is the point. Yeah, maybe the best we can do is insight. Well, why what does insight mean?

[01:54:08] If it's not, you know, it's it's I'm not sure where that gets us because I think suppose that I had a broad understanding of how sports works, you know, I've spent 40 years in in the world of sports and I have some intuition about

[01:54:26] whatever trash talking and whether I should dissuade my players from doing it or whether I should encourage them to do it. I think there you can just you can at least really say that there is an answer

[01:54:40] to this, the answer might be so context dependent as to only matter to you like in your whether or not I give advice to my team. But there's an answer and that answer can at least in a very, very specified

[01:54:55] context, you could test whether or not the broad intuition of a humanist would stand in that context. And if you show that it doesn't, then then there's there's an incompleteness to the to the humanistic approach. Right? Yeah. I'm not doubting that there's an incompleteness.

[01:55:12] I'm saying that it might be that if you want to find that answer, it might be that the journalistic approach will give you a better way of predicting the answer than the scientific approach, just because of the nature of

[01:55:27] the question. So it could be that human beings being what they are, our methods and limitations being what they are, that this necessarily in principally in principle more subjective way of approaching the problem is actually going to give you more insight, more a bigger portion of the truth

[01:55:49] than the other way, even though the other way might give you more of the illusion of the truth. I think that the illusion of truth is more dangerous in the other way. So like if we circumscribed all of our claims about experiments and limited

[01:56:07] to the very context that we are measuring it, I think we are with we can with more confidence say that we've discovered something than the because I'm not sure when you say that it can yield insight.

[01:56:18] Like how we would how we know like how do you never read it like a piece of like an essay or a book that gave you insight, like an ethnography that gave you insight about well, it strikes me as true, but I don't know.

[01:56:31] Like how would I know? Like yeah, I but how would you know if the experiment like well, I can test it. Right. So if I think that like if I have some broad view of how penalty kick

[01:56:45] goalies are likely to act, I could you know, there could be a journalist who says, you know, there is this funny phenomenon that if you just kick straight in the middle like the goalies won't expect that and,

[01:57:00] you know, perhaps that strikes me as true, but there's an answer to that. But that's a that's a totally different. That's a very that is like the Wikipedia thing, like the you know, like the baseball shifts, that's something that it's amenable to empirical testing.

[01:57:16] And there are things that are true insight. What is a true insight that's not amenable to empirical testing? Even if that empirical testing is so complex as to we don't have the methods yet.

[01:57:27] I think maybe trash like the effects of trash talking might be that I am not. Again, I'm not fully convinced of this, but that might be of a phenomenon complex enough that the methods of experimental

[01:57:40] testing will be a waste of time compared to just reading these great books about trash talking and all these historical examples and and just trying to get a sense from these histories about whether it is something that's advisable for your team or not, that that that just the

[01:58:03] clumsy kind of experiments that we're going to do are going to be more distorting than they are illuminating, whereas these things imperfect, necessarily imperfect as they are, they will they'll give us more. I mean, I feel like this is like yeah,

[01:58:20] if you make if you make very vague generalizations from from, you know, your lifetime of experience with trash talking, you're still left with not being able to predict whether or not in any given in any given game, a trash talking will have an influence.

[01:58:36] Like I just don't trust that they that that, right, especially given the amount of conflicting insightful things that people have written about the various complex phenomena that we're interested in without a way to to test whether or not that is a true claim that I can use,

[01:58:55] right, that I can actually actually, you know, find a way to apply that insight. Then it's not to me, it's not insight. OK, I mean, then it's not but it's but neither is a imaginary experiment that you're going to run. No, but a Wikipedia style experiment is right.

[01:59:14] So I have more confidence in the very local experiment than I do in the journalistic broad intuition. Fine. To the extent that you can do the very local experiment. So if you want to narrow down the problem enough so that you can

[01:59:29] do an experiment, then by all means, you know, I think that's a great idea. All I'm saying is that when you're trying to to go beyond that, then and you don't have, you know, like, all right, we have to stop because we've been doing this

[01:59:45] forever, like literally forever. I haven't getting yelled at by my family. But but like parenting, there is this question when you have a kid of what should I what should I read? Should I read a bunch of experiments about parenting that will let me know

[02:00:05] the best ways to raise your kid or answer questions that you have about what I should do and what I shouldn't do? Or should I read these other style of parenting book? It's not obvious to me that I should go to the experimental literature

[02:00:20] rather than get a bunch of perspectives on parenting from from people who have written good personal books about it. It's not obvious to me that I will learn more useful information from the experimental books than I would learn from the more like subjective humanistic style of parenting book.

[02:00:44] I mean, I don't know if you'll learn that much from either of them. Yeah. No, no, I agree. And I think that the disagreement, though, is only in principle whether or not there can be like that. I want to still stick to the thought that

[02:00:59] that with a sufficiently complex set of experiments, we would do better. I mean, there are things that actually like, you know, like letting your baby cry that reliably stop crying behavior. Like we do know that, but but they're few and far between. Like I grant that.

[02:01:19] Right. It's like the existing distinguishing between true and false experimental claims at this point is is as difficult as distinguishing between true and false, say, journalistic claims. Right. And the journalistic claims at least are having a broader, you know, not journalistic specifically,

[02:01:37] but the humanistic claims at least have a broader, more interesting approach and and there is wisdom. I don't I agree there. There is wisdom that is non empirical. But and then if you want to narrow down the problem, like, yes, how do I stop my baby from crying?

[02:01:57] Like what how many hours should you go before feeding or something like that? Yeah. Then if you can sufficiently narrow it down to where there is reliable experimental, then you should do that too. Right. Well, I'm going to I'm going to decide how much my baby

[02:02:13] should sleep by going to ask undergraduates what they think on a seven point scale and then I'll publish it. How much your baby should sleep? All right. That was good. Yes, even though we had an argument, but I don't think we hate each other.

[02:02:32] No, no, no, I loved that argument. Yeah. Good. All right. Join us next time on Very Bad with. Man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.