Episode 214: You Shouldn't Feel Bad (Except You Should)

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

[00:00:17] Oh, do you believe in ghosts, Ted? I do, but more importantly I think they need to believe in themselves. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:15] Dave, a year ago you dismissed it as a racist conspiracy theory, but now the lab leak hypothesis is looking more and more likely. What do you have to say for yourself now?

[00:01:36] Well, first of all I'm not saying that I didn't dismiss it as a racist conspiracy, but I certainly don't remember it. It feels like something you would have done. I'm not sure if you would have done it. Take that mainstream media is all I have to say.

[00:01:53] I was on the side of the lone voice crying in the wilderness like the Weinstein brothers. No, you were dismissing it as a racist conspiracy theory. I am simply rewriting the narrative to map myself. I was right all along.

[00:02:11] I don't know, it's funny that I think when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter one bit whether there was a lab leak or not, but it's now become like this epistemological touchstone like this.

[00:02:22] It represents everything about why the kooks are right and it's just like, ugh. Well no, I think what it represents if you're not on the message boards or whatever that you really can't trust the media on a lot of this stuff and especially anything relating

[00:02:38] to coronavirus, they just haven't been reporting it well. Yeah, I was talking to Yol when he was here. We were talking for a while about this and that of all things always struck me as such a plausible possibility. That's not that kooky hypothesis.

[00:02:58] Now I have no idea whether it's true or not. I haven't bothered to check, but it's not like that a virus could have gotten out from a lab that studies viruses is not that weird.

[00:03:08] Well yeah, no, I actually had a friend, I have a good friend whose brother works in some related industry and he said way back over a year ago that this looks like a lab, like analyzing the virus makes it more look like a lab.

[00:03:23] But I think people are just, unless we're sure about that, and this is what they've done with the coronavirus in general, it's like they're giving information pragmatically, not just in the sake of telling people the accurate information, but what is the information

[00:03:40] that we can tell you that won't lead you to do something destructive or will lead you to do something that we don't want you to do? I think they did that a lot with the risks of the coronavirus. Yeah, that's super interesting.

[00:03:50] I remember a long time ago watching a talk from a behavioral scientist who was doing health messaging and he was talking about how when you ask women about what their risks are of developing breast cancer in their lifetime, it's like an order of magnitude higher than

[00:04:06] what it actually is. So they tend to believe it that it's way more common, but this means that they are way more likely to get checked up. And so he was like maybe it's fine that we continue to make women believe that it's highly likely.

[00:04:24] And that's like a, I don't know, it's a fairly innocuous kind of dishonesty, I suppose. But all of this erodes trust in the community from the people. Exactly. It's all going to come back. So there was a lot of patronizing about risks where you're just like,

[00:04:41] but what is it really? Like what are we just, you know? And look, I don't know if it's maybe all the sheep will really need to be micromanaged with these careful communications. But it just to me, it makes me makes me really suspicious of like the CDC.

[00:04:59] You know, like, I could just imagine the people around the committee, you know, around the table saying like, well, let's not let's not say that. And that's why I think that's why, you know, people have wondered why I'm so

[00:05:12] anti outdoor mask mandates and, you know, that whole thing. It's because once you get it into your head that you can't trust them with their information, even their data, but never mind their kind of recommendations or, you know, guidelines that they think are if you realize

[00:05:28] that you can't trust them and that they're playing you, then it's like you don't you've no longer have any tether to true information at that point. But you so like that's a that's a real problem. Yeah.

[00:05:40] And that's for me, it's a big problem as well because like I'm on the tend to be on the other side where I actually largely believe that we can trust those kinds of data or whatever. And it's it bugs me because it's going to erode trust.

[00:05:57] So like even when we have the real shit, like when we're trying to convince people that there's no conspiracy, it's like, well, fuck man, what do we have left to stand on if we've lied about this? It's a boy who cried wolf situation. Right.

[00:06:10] But you know, seriously, like I again have zero knowledge about whether this was a lab leak or not. But that China would try to suppress that information is not a cookie. It's not a cookie idea. Like the one thing I will say is I don't totally remember it.

[00:06:26] People getting slammed for suggesting it might have been a lab leak. No, yeah. No, I think this is like now that I'm thinking of it. The key members of the IDW who were presenting it just we're getting slammed in general for being doofuses.

[00:06:39] Like now and I'm sure there were people who worried that it could lead to anti Asian violence or something like that. But like I remember it kind of being out there, but then people thought, no, I was more likely a bat. But yeah, so I could be wrong.

[00:06:54] Like this is the thing. What what is going to cause more anti Asian sentiment? A lab fucking up and releasing a virus or like blaming some Chinese street vendor for having like shitty bat meat. Like I don't think to me it doesn't cut either way.

[00:07:11] I'm just like, well, people are going to blame Asians. You just want to hate Asians like no matter what? Like no, no, if I love some of my best friends or Asians, it's just that you don't need an excuse like the minute

[00:07:24] the minute you know that excuse dislike age. Now the minute the virus was like pinpointed is coming out of China. Forget it. You know, it's why they called it the Spanish flu back in the day.

[00:07:34] You know, my people used to be, you know, the Asians of the 20s. You remember Trump would call it the China virus. And then like the consul, which I remember you laughing a little too hard at, you know, I saw it in your eye a little bit of.

[00:07:51] No, I'm a huge fan of our Asian huge fan of your porn preferences. Do not count my friend. Oh, shit. Well, then never mind. Speaking of things so like yeah. And I just thought of this as we're talking about it

[00:08:07] because it has been the narrative in the media that like or, you know, in the sort of revisionist media that that like the mainstream press has a lot to answer for now that this lab leak looks more likely. And I'm just I guess I just don't remember when

[00:08:23] like there was this uproar about people suggesting a lab leak. But what this reminds me of is something I learned in this last week that the Oberlin thing with the cultural appropriation of the sushi like that whole thing that was in every single like IDW adjacent article

[00:08:40] for five years, they like had a sushi company removed because it was cultural appropriation. That's just not true. It just didn't even happen. I saw I came across that just that like that fact or supposed fact. But I didn't catch what like how did that story get created?

[00:08:58] I mean, we did. I'm sure we dedicated a segment to this. Yeah, probably saying, well, it's Oberlin, like what the fuck you expect, but it's not even because it didn't. That's the thing. So like why who created the story?

[00:09:09] Was it was a Christina Hoff Summers and like, you know, like conspiring to get people like I don't think I don't think she was behind the like the vote in favor of it. Right. When they get together in there in the like the Mr.

[00:09:25] Burns house, you know, they all wear masks and say Fidelius to get in. But then they they now don't wear masks because. They don't want people to think they care about. They have only over their eyes. Let's make sure that we.

[00:09:42] Yeah. Yeah, you know, like I could be invited to like an eyes wide shut party. And like, but you're out. You're suspected by people on both sides. Rightfully so. I mean, you're very unreliable. Communist. But then I'll also go to, you know, some white supremacy sex party.

[00:10:03] But wait. So. So what's this? Is there a story about who started the rumor? I don't know. Like, I've heard this like as far as I mean, it might even not be true. Like maybe it did happen. I feel like you told me.

[00:10:16] No, no, no, I have no idea. This we look at maybe we started it. By the way, we should say what we're going to talk about today at this point. Yeah, blame them. Just look this up now. So here are the here are the.

[00:10:32] You should just not edit any of this out. It's like, so people know what I'm going through. Now I forget. So what really happened? There's a there is a box. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. You see it's very long.

[00:10:45] The resulting story published in the student run Oberlin review quotes a total of six students on the Asian food issue. One student from Malaysia had no problem with the dining halls treatment of Asian cuisine seeing it as a cultural blending of sorts.

[00:10:56] This is this was a dish called chicken sushi, which was just like a slap dash use of like leftover chicken. The remaining five, four of whom were from Asian countries whose cuisine had been adapted and one of whom was Vietnamese American,

[00:11:08] all had some degree of problem with it. A Japanese students take on the sushi was one of the harshest comments and would become a staple of national media coverage due to its use of the left wing language of cultural appropriation.

[00:11:19] So whatever they got, like basically three kids to say they didn't like it. Who's taking too much mental energy to discover what really. We still haven't even started talking about like what we're going to talk about this episode. So in the, you know, like we had Ted Chang

[00:11:37] talking or at least alluding to some of his work. Last episode, today we have David Pizarro on the show to talk about his recent work that's making a buzz. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me, Timer. Pleasure to be here.

[00:11:53] Well, thank you for joining us. It's an honor. Yeah, so you're going to talk about a paper you did with who's the lead author? What's Raj? Raj Anderson, who is my PhD student, great kid. And also with Sean Nichols and Rajna Kamthakar,

[00:12:10] who are both in the philosophy department here and my homies. Go we frenemy of the podcast, Sean Nichols. That's right. He can't even be bothered to care that much. Yeah. He doesn't even try. You know, he doesn't even try it. He'd never even listened to his own episode.

[00:12:23] Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it was kind of subpar, so he's probably right. Yeah. So we have an article called False Positive Emotions, Responsibility and Moral Character. But before that, if we have any time left in this intro segment,

[00:12:39] we have to talk about something that's very fucked up. Yeah. Is it? Well, or not. Yeah. Which is a paper that was published in January on the ability of facial detection algorithms to tell someone's political orientation.

[00:12:56] So just an algorithm taking a single picture of your face from like your Facebook profile and or a dating app or a dating app being substantially above chance at predicting whether you're liberal or conservative. Seventy like four percent or something, right? Seventy two. Yeah. Seventy three, I think.

[00:13:14] No small feat and way better than any other method they had of doing it. Like, right. Human beings. So if you use this method and you have, you show two faces and you have one of them is liberal and one of them is conservative.

[00:13:29] And you know this for sure. And you show this to participants there at 55 percent accuracy. So they're slightly above chance of being able to tell which one's the conservative, which is the liberal. Right. But on the algorithm, 72 percent. Yeah. And among US Facebook users, it was 73,

[00:13:50] dating websites, 72 and then the UK and Canada was 70 and 71. And they say that like you might think that the person's race might explain this, but that only if you only showed people same same race, right? Or gender.

[00:14:06] Gender, age and ethnicity, like which you which we're obviously going to be correlated with this stuff, taking all that into account and matching faces on those still the algorithm is still better. So this is an article written by Michael Kaczynski, who people might have

[00:14:25] already known about because he's done a while back. He did one of those articles on like detecting whether people are gay or not from their faces. These, you know, computer, whatever, machine learning algorithms or not even machine learning, just algorithms that he builds that look at individual's faces.

[00:14:44] And you can tell apparently a lot just from people's face. And he was his work was the work that inspired the Cambridge Analytica people. And that's where that scandal came from, because people were using his methods right to gather data about about people's whatever characteristics from Facebook.

[00:15:04] I think one of the most interesting things from this finding is that even when you give personality tests. Yeah. So like the detailed Big Five and we know for a fact that that Big Five is correlated, Big Five personality is correlated with political orientation.

[00:15:19] So specifically openness to experience is higher in liberals than in conservatives and conscientiousness is higher in conservatives and liberals. This facial detection algorithm still does a much better job than personality tests at predicting whether you're conservative or liberal. Yeah, that's that was that was a very striking find.

[00:15:39] Yeah. Some of the items seem like they're almost directly asked asking questions about whether you're conservative or liberal. So so the fact that this does better than that. And like, so what is it picking up on says? Kaczynski found that emotional expression had 57 percent predictive power.

[00:15:56] Liberals being more likely to show surprise and less likely to show disgust. Who shows disgust in their Facebook profile picture or their dating profile picture that I do not know, but I just love the finding because it's consistent with you. Ellen and my right. But yeah, who?

[00:16:15] That made me there was a red flag for me. Like, who are these people that are showing disgust? Yeah, it seems very odd. Like, maybe it's a good strategy on a dating website to look grossed out at things. Yeah, like I'm better than you. Right. Yeah.

[00:16:30] And head orientation. Yeah. Liberals tended to face the camera more directly. Which was surprising to me. Like I would, I'd me too. I would have predicted the other way. Right. Yeah. I would think like the sort of. Flexing of, you know, the power, whatever facial power posing.

[00:16:50] But I think it's like it's not looking another person in the eye. It's like looking a camera. So maybe like liberals are more narcissistic or something. Yeah, maybe. Wait, no, liberals are. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, liberals are facing the camera. Maybe maybe they're just more selfies.

[00:17:06] Yeah, liberals. Yeah. But even then, so this is the thing that intrigues me, which is. You can have the algorithm just do a bunch of. Right. Like basically it just pulled out. Features of the face and converted them to quantitative things like whatever,

[00:17:26] you know, whatever information it could have, it just generates up a whole bunch of data on the particular characteristics of a face and then it's it's used to predict. If you get the things that like we would look at like, you know, like this like facial emotional expression

[00:17:44] or direction of things that we could list as characteristics of a face. Yeah. Even when you include all of those things, it doesn't get up beyond the high fifties. So basically the algorithm is detecting stuff that we don't seem to understand.

[00:17:56] It's well, I mean, that makes sense, right? Like I think we detect things that we couldn't. Articulate like when we look at another person's face. I do feel like I at least believe that I know a lot about

[00:18:10] a person by, you know, looking at their face, but, you know, whether they're a nice person, this is how you just become racist. Nice. I don't know what it is about you and your dark skin. That's pretty much the opposite actually. But no, wait, what was I saying?

[00:18:29] Oh yeah, but I couldn't say how I know that. Like I can't describe how I know these things, but I at least feel like I can tell these things pretty instantly. And so like the fact that an algorithm might be picking up

[00:18:41] either a different set of things or even like if they're picking up a lot of the same things, we wouldn't necessarily know from personal experience how to like what that is. Right. The algorithm, whatever the algorithms, intuitions are better than ours.

[00:18:56] Like that's because humans are at about 55% accurate. The algorithm is picking up on whatever is a say, qua well right for for political like I actually don't think I could. That's actually one that, you know, that's a feature of a person.

[00:19:12] I don't typically think that I can guess by just looking at them unless there's a sort of obvious things like a red tire blue. What I don't think is clear from this article is facial hair. So so I may be picking up on,

[00:19:32] I don't remember reading that they were controlling for that. You know, maybe there's more beards amongst liberals or something. So it says a more detailed picture could be obtained by exploring the links between political orientation and facial features extracted from images taken in a standardized setting while controlling

[00:19:51] for facial hair grooming, facial expression and head orientation. So here's the question. Is it stuff that people are doing like changing the tilt of their head or growing facial hair or not? Or is it the alternative hypothesis, which is there is just something

[00:20:08] about your facial morphology that's that's like, yeah. I mean, that's what I'm assuming for it to be an interesting result. I think it's got to just be about your face, facial morphology, because they're not looking at the whole picture.

[00:20:20] Right? Like if it's someone on like a pickup truck or something, right? They actually they actually narrowed down to just the face. Just the face. Yeah. So then it's got to be right. Think what else?

[00:20:32] I mean, so it could make, you know, maybe it's picking up on piercings or or some degree of facial hair or something like that. Like, I think we don't know. Kosinski, the author seems to think that that doesn't matter

[00:20:46] because he kind of frames this and I don't know the guy at all. But like he kind of frames this as he like he's interested in privacy. And so he wants to see what these companies are probably already

[00:20:58] able to do with our pictures, which I think is in this case. Honestly, everybody puts their political orientation like that's how we know that's how we know that the face is predicting it. So like that an algorithm can predict my political orientation. Isn't that concerning to me?

[00:21:15] So I agree with you that it would be more interesting if there were some more logical features. I just can't conceive of a good hypothesis for what that would be. I think it might just not be picking up on things that are obvious.

[00:21:27] But like people don't have like I bet a vanishingly small percentage of people had pierced like visible piercings on their face. Like a nose piercing. Not a vanishingly small but a small percentage of people. Maybe maybe, you know, facial hair.

[00:21:48] But which way do you think that liberal guys are more beardy? I don't know. Just guys, not the women. Do you tell Bella like if you get too liberally grow beard? This is a million over a million individuals. I know that which is kind of crazy.

[00:22:06] I mean, it's the issue is like first of all, do you care? Like, you know, like I think I can get into the zone where it's like I assume that anybody who wants to know anything about me can know it. And that's fine.

[00:22:18] I'm fine with it. You know. Yeah, I personally don't care. And I the reason I said I don't know the guys because I was about to cast aspersions by saying I think he's selling this as a like we should be worried

[00:22:29] about privacy as a way to like make this an interesting thing. We're actually, I think like now it's just kind of interesting that an algorithm looking at just the face can predict this. But like for God's sakes, like these are people who are putting

[00:22:42] all of their information on Facebook and on LinkedIn and on dating websites. Like I don't I don't think the big concern is that the government now knows what your political orientation is. And that battle has been lost, like protecting like your privacy.

[00:22:57] Like, but so how well do you think you can like know somebody from look from their face? Like just like looking at them. It's yeah, that's super hard because I have the same intuition as you about kind faces.

[00:23:13] Yeah, you can tell when somebody is like seems like a good person. Like they and I don't know what it is, but you know, whatever Tom Hanks has, you know, like that kind of I just don't know whether it's all confirmation bias on my end.

[00:23:26] Like I don't I don't know. I don't. And am I like using other information? Like, you know, we see faces dynamically and we see people smile. This will dovetail maybe into the second segment. But we glean information about people from like, what do they smile at?

[00:23:43] Right. Like what like all that stuff might be providing valuable information that's not just the face. But we're like you said, we don't quite know what we're doing. Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of it.

[00:23:53] But I think like when you I don't know, I'm sometimes aware of this and maybe, you know, sometimes it's because I've taken edibles or something. But I think a lot of the time it's just not. It just feels like there's the conversation you're having.

[00:24:06] But then there's this other sort of form of communication with faces that's going on at the same time that is equally sort of rich and interesting and like information packed or something. And that often the conversations, you know, will be affected

[00:24:22] by like the kinds of expressions that you're getting. But you would not be able to describe how it works or what it is that you might be picking up on. But you're picking up on so many things as you have just a conversation

[00:24:34] with somebody from their face. Right. I suspect that it's less morphology and more what's going on contextually. Like, and here's one example where where it's kind of obvious. So like if someone's flirting with you, they can hold their stare just a little bit longer.

[00:24:52] They'll hold eye contact just slightly longer and you're like, whoa, something's happening. You know, it's a really powerful form of communication. Right. But you know, like, like I wouldn't have been able to. Like now that you say it, it seems totally right.

[00:25:07] But like I wonder I've been trying to flirt with you for eight years. No, no, like now I know why you just stare at me. No, but like, yeah, I'm sure those kinds of things that you would have to,

[00:25:19] you know, you would have to have some special expertise to really be able to articulate. But they must happen all the time, things like that. Exactly like that. Yeah. But that's why I find this stuff kind of interesting

[00:25:30] because it's a static one time, you know, like one of the things Kazinsky says in the article is like, we didn't even look at multiple pictures. Right. So like who knows how how powerfully predictive if you just use two or three pictures, it might be.

[00:25:44] Yeah. The fact that it's completely static, people aren't responding to anything other than whatever the presence of the camera. Yeah. What does he say? He says like this is unlikely to be like the high level of an estimate of how good these machines could be, right?

[00:25:58] Like because they actually have so much more information than just one photo. Yeah, exactly. And again, they also have you saying what your political motivation is. Which is the only way they know that it worked. Yeah. Yeah. No.

[00:26:15] Who knows? I mean, there is this there used to be this you know, this quote unquote science, it was a pseudoscience of physiognomy where people would say like, oh, you can tell people's character traits from the particular facial characteristics.

[00:26:29] And you know, of course, like they would show an illustration of like hook nose person and say that's greedy or whatever. And it was, you know, dismissed as pseudoscience. But like these lately, the way that these machines are able to tell

[00:26:42] from faces all whole bunch of stuff about you. It's still pretty fucking fascinating. And I don't know. If the woke left gets a hold of this technology, like, you know, I don't know what's going to happen. This is the this again, this is the sort of like

[00:27:01] you know, fear that's selling these results, which is whatever, you know, political parties could use this information to specifically target people for like, and it's like, come on, man, people have been doing this for a long, long time. You don't need. You don't need AI.

[00:27:17] Yeah, you don't need AI. Yeah, like what are you worried? The gay stuff may be alright. So like maybe if you don't want to be outed. But like all of those studies were validated by looking at dating websites where people are putting that they're gay.

[00:27:35] And they're probably acting all gay in the photo. It was just like flannel on a woman, you know, like any hint of flannel and like a softball mitt. So so I don't know if you could like use this to distinguish between

[00:27:54] people who were trying to hide their sexual orientation or in this case, even trying to hide their political orientation. Who knows? But I mean, to be fair to the study, I don't think like you're taking your Facebook picture.

[00:28:05] You're thinking I want to show people that I am a fiscal conservative, progressive on social issues or something. Right. It'd be interesting to see like this is where I think it would be interesting to pair this up with some sort of like anthropology.

[00:28:21] You know, like you look at old timey pictures, they were all posed a certain way. There might be trends that sort of sweep through, you know, Facebook where people tend to pose a certain way. Like there's more. Well, I'll never forget Samine Vazir, who's a psychologist,

[00:28:36] formerly of the Blacko podcast. Is that over? It's over. Oh, that's why Alexa is. Now we could talk about that. Our good pal, Joel M. Barr was left at the altar. He was a bandit. Bandit by Mickey. Now it's like one psychologist, no beers.

[00:28:56] And once I called his no beers, so they recently released an episode where Mickey announced that he's leaving. And I think we should give Mickey a bit of a hard time because

[00:29:05] he said one of the things he said was, I think I've said all I have to say. Which like really, really, Nikki. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't have that much to say. He's a professor, he has a lot to say.

[00:29:17] Anyway, Alexa, tell it is the new co-hosts. And I think podcast is going to improve quite a bit. But but bon voyage, Mickey. Bon voyage, Mickey. But Samine was pointing out that like you could tell big five personality traits from people's pictures.

[00:29:32] And one of the things she said during the talk, if I recall correctly, is you think it's hard. Like you think this is like cool and crazy, but really like just imagine and then she did a motion of holding up your phone

[00:29:44] like really high and just like posing a certain way. Yeah, where it's like, yeah, that is a narcissist. That's just and it just turns out that it is correlated with narcissism, like the way that you take your selfies. Right. So yeah.

[00:29:58] Yeah, I'm not a narcissist with how I take selfies. You're your dog is not your pictures. What does that say about your sexual orientation? I think it's pretty straightforward. You don't need an A.I. like genius. Like literal dog whistle.

[00:30:18] All right, we'll be right back with David Pizarro and talk about some of his new research. This episode is brought to you by wine.com. You know, in this day and age where everything gets delivered, a lot of people still think you can't purchase wine

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[00:32:40] Again, wine.com slash bad wizards get $50 off your first order. Terms apply. Thank you to wine.com for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time of the show where we like to take a moment to thank all

[00:33:46] of our listeners, all of our supporters for everything they do. You know, Tamo, the other day, somebody I think it was on Reddit. They were like, why do they do this every time? Like, you know, they were they were asking about this segment.

[00:34:00] And what they didn't realize is I think how much joy we get from expressing gratitude to our listeners. Like this is often for us. So you can skip it if you want. But like, it's not for you. It's not for you. Reddit guy.

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[00:34:56] Would you say seven thousand last time? Yeah, pretty pretty amazing. They like to make fun of my bad video game. There was a letter. Somebody said that they would have paid to see Tamler playing Soma, which made me laugh out loud. And then right before we recorded somebody.

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[00:39:08] and especially to those of you who support us in this tangible way. We're really grateful. We really appreciate it. All right. So I am pleased to welcome to the podcast David Pizarro from Cornell University, who has just published a paper

[00:39:27] along with Raj Anderson, Rajna Kamthakar and Sean Nichols called False Positive Emotions, False Positive Emotions, Responsibility and Mural Character. David, welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us about this study? Thank you. I like this because, you know, a lot of times

[00:39:46] I feel like the podcast is already just summers at all. So, you know, it feels good to be a guest. Yeah, no, sure. This was to be clear. Tamler suggested we do this. I'm very humble. I don't like talking about my my own work.

[00:40:05] But this is, I think, right up the alley of especially like old timey, very bad wizards. In fact, there's a direct, I think there's an episode where we alluded to some of these topics that I think inspired some of the fire, the fire, so yeah.

[00:40:20] So the basic idea in this set of studies was and also Sean Nichols and Rajna Kamthakar wrote a separate paper on this stuff alone. But it sort of comes from a something that Bert Williams pointed out that certainly other people have mentioned, which is

[00:40:39] there seems to be this paradox when people commit harms by complete accident. Suppose that like I get in a car accident through no fault of my own, like somebody pulled out right in front of me and they die. And I feel really shitty about that.

[00:40:58] In fact, there are a lot of people who go through this. There's we've mentioned the paper. There's a website dedicated to just people who go through this called accidental impacts dot org. And on one point of view, it seems weird because you had no control over what happened.

[00:41:14] You certainly didn't intend it. You played a causal role, but not one that you could have foreseen or anything like that. Yet most people feel a great deal of guilt over having been sort of the cause of this. But like your friends would say wasn't your fault?

[00:41:28] It's not, you know, you didn't you certainly don't deserve blame. Don't be so hard on yourself. But the alternative is if somebody just didn't feel guilt at all, right? If they were just like, yeah, it was my fault. Like so the little girl died, you know.

[00:41:40] It's their fault for pulling out in front of me. The Bernard Williams example is a lorry driver. And I'm not even exactly sure what a lorry is. Yeah, it's like a British word for truck, I guess.

[00:41:55] Sort of backs out and like has absolutely no way of seeing a young girl that's just run over and killed. Right. And so his point, like you said, was if the guy didn't feel any guilt, we might wonder about that person, even though we recognize that it's not

[00:42:13] his fault in one sense. Right. It's sort of weird. You both are trying to convince him that he shouldn't feel bad. But if he agreed right away, you'd be like, wait, let me convince you a little bit more. Like you should have resisted this a little bit.

[00:42:26] Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, it's not my fault. Anyway, you going to the game tonight? No, I'm going to the little girl's funeral, you asshole. Right. And so the idea that we had was really wondering whether or not these what we call here false positive expressions of guilt.

[00:42:47] And this this really comes from Sean and Rajna's analysis of this in their previous paper where they point out, well, look, like sometimes emotions over fire in situations that they weren't necessarily designed for. And they have some analogs of this happening in the natural world where

[00:43:04] well, it's easier to just say like, imagine that you feel fear over a snake that's not venomous. You just like feel a lot of fear because it looks a lot like a venomous snake. There your fear on their language would be a false positive.

[00:43:20] Like you wouldn't like even though like there is no actual danger, you feel the fear. So their idea was maybe this is like this. This is good language to talk about this guilt. Like even though technically you're not responsible, you're not blameworthy, you shouldn't feel bad.

[00:43:35] Your guilt is nonetheless over firing. And the basic idea behind all these studies is is that over firing of the guilt, a signal that you're a good person. Like our people using that as information that you have an underlying good character. And so so we used that.

[00:43:52] In fact, I think in our fiery Christian episode, we literally talked about an example where you spilled coffee on somebody by mistake and the person says, don't worry, it's not your fault. But you feel bad nonetheless. And that feeling bad seems to just indicate something good about you.

[00:44:09] Like that you would also feel bad in cases where it was your fault and that you would go to some lengths to ensure that you didn't do that again or that you were more careful or something like that.

[00:44:20] So we did a series of studies basically trying to show whether like try and answer the question as to whether or not people are gleaning character information from somebody when they express this. Go. But you said something when we were first talking about this that that I think

[00:44:33] would be an interesting place to start, which was you were resistant to the term false positive. Yes. Emotions. So yeah. So this is how they describe it or you describe it. These false positive feelings. That is feelings that are not normatively appropriate,

[00:44:49] but are nonetheless characteristically triggered by the situation. And so that's how they define false positive. And then like you said, they use the analogy of a garter snake. A false positive fear is if it's a garter snake, which poses no danger,

[00:45:06] but a true positive if it's a rattlesnake. But like in that, like that seems disanalogous because in that case, there is like a clear independent way of measuring whether something is dangerous or not, whether it could hurt you or not. This thing is either venomous or not.

[00:45:24] It's either venomous or not. It either can harm you or it can't. Whereas calling this a false positive, like it's not normative, normatively appropriate, well, based on what? Like based on maybe a certain conception of guilt, which has the necessary conditions for some sort of intention

[00:45:45] or neglect or something like that. Or but so I guess I would object to calling that a false positive. And then I but what's interesting that you guys do and that I think he did in the other study is you say, well, if it's not false,

[00:46:05] then why do people also try to convince the person that they shouldn't feel guilty, even though they also think that they should? You know, like so it's like that that contradiction, at least, is very interesting to explore. Yeah, there are two things in what you said.

[00:46:20] I think are interesting. One is that it's not dichotomous, which is true in the language of signal detection where you talk about false positives and hits and misses. Those are always real dichotomous outcomes. So like it's just by its nature supposed to be clear.

[00:46:37] Like is it a twig or a snake? Like did you did you make the mistake of thinking it was a snake when it was a twig or vice versa? And here it's certainly a matter of degree.

[00:46:46] And that matter of degree, I think, feeds nicely into the second comment that you're making, which is the look like whether it's normatively appropriate to express guilt or to feel guilt would seem to be pretty like culturally determined, or at least there's some even maybe individually.

[00:47:04] Like there seems to be some flexibility. And I think you're right. Like the language here of the you were kind of using the strict normative criteria of like you had to intend it, control it, you know, foresee it or whatever.

[00:47:18] We're using that just as a way of comparing two situations. One where it's obvious that that everybody would blame you for doing it. And one where it's pretty obvious that they wouldn't. And I think that's where the first person or I mean,

[00:47:32] the third person thing where you would try to convince your friend that they weren't actually blameworthy fits in. Where I don't think it's pretense that we say that like you know, I think that you shouldn't feel guilty. Like it's not your fault.

[00:47:44] Like it's a very natural thing to try to say to the person. But at the same time, you also think they kind of should. Yeah. And that's like, yeah, that's the very thing we're showing, right?

[00:47:55] Which is so that but rather than showing that one of those is true and one of those is false, I think that what that shows is that we're a little torn on that issue. You know, yeah, maybe we're a little conflicted.

[00:48:07] Yeah, I'm trying to think of a good analogy of that kind of communication where where it's like it's almost like do you fight over splitting the bill or sorry, like paying for the check? You know, where you're like, no, I might genuinely think that it's my turn

[00:48:23] or that I'm in the role where I should pay for you. And like absolutely convinced that I'm right. But if you don't put up any fight whatsoever, right? I'm like, well, you could have you could have like tried a little bit.

[00:48:36] Or it's like your wife like says, I don't want you to cheat on me. I like I'll leave you a few cheats on me. But then she's also kind of saying, you know, mixed signals. She won't respect you if you don't.

[00:48:51] I mean, she said that other woman was hot. I mean, what was she trying to? No, it's terrible. It's terrible. So I think at minimum, all we really want is that that tension be there. That's all you need for the studies to be. Right. Wow. Yeah.

[00:49:09] This episode is brought to you by one of our absolute favorite sponsors, Givewell. Look, you want your donation to help as much as possible. But did you know that where you give can make a bigger difference than how much you give? Did you know that Dave?

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[00:49:49] And I am proud to say, I think we're both proud to say that a not insignificant amount of that money has come from our listeners. Yeah, I'm very proud of it. Like we as you say, we actually know how much comes from our listeners

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[00:50:51] I wonder what so like I was trust these people so much that I just let them pick when I donate. I just like, yeah, go for it, you know, because I trust pretty much any charity they donate to is going to be an effective one.

[00:51:05] But there's something about your approach versus my approach that says something about it. Yeah, but you're kind of a robot. Yeah, pretty much. I'm more than you. Surprisingly more than you. Yeah. But if you've never donated to Givewell's recommended charities before,

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[00:51:48] So that's Givewell.org slash very bad wizards, select podcasts and very bad wizards to check out our thanks to Givewell for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. In the first set of studies, we just presented people with like

[00:52:03] the most simple case is exactly this coffee spill scenario where somebody spills coffee purely accidentally, they trip over something and they spill coffee on a person and the person says, don't worry, you didn't do it on purpose, you shouldn't feel guilty.

[00:52:17] And in one case, one scenario, the woman in this case says, no, but I still feel really bad. Another one she says, oh, you're right. Thank you. Like I shouldn't feel guilty. In follow up studies, we actually didn't have her say that

[00:52:34] because that seems to be kind of an asshole thing to say. So we just had her think it. So she thinks to herself. It seems sociopathic. I don't know why we included that still. Sometimes psychologists do this thing where we include a flawed

[00:52:49] study at first to show that we improved on it in the fall of just to show that we did the work. That's right. Yeah, it's a good signal of our diligence. And then and then I think so that the key for us was asking

[00:53:02] a series of follow up questions like what did you think of the person? So their moral character or they like likable. We asked how likely do you think this person would be to feel guilt in in the future when they actually were culpable? And we act.

[00:53:19] We asked like these are questions we asked throughout how likely somebody would be to commit a minor moral offense in the future. And so sure enough, what you find is that people who express guilt even in conditions where they did not have sort of like they did not

[00:53:36] meet the criteria of culpability, people like them more. They think they had better moral character and they found them more or less likely to have to commit a moral offense in the future. So basically what we're saying is that this this is just a good signal

[00:53:49] like over firing is just a good sign of character. And it boils down to that, I think. Yeah, again, I like it's not necessarily over. But I guess it's like it's showing that you will err on the side of taking responsibility for something. Yeah.

[00:54:05] But so and here's where like we did a study to rule out one possibility, which was just anybody who feels guilt would be seen as having better moral character. And I think the story is just like we we want you to be calibrated in some way, right?

[00:54:25] But be more likely to err in one direction than the other. But if you tell people like that the person who spills coffee accidentally was going to meet a friend, their friend comes and they say, oh, man, if only I had arrived five minutes earlier,

[00:54:41] even though I arrived on time, then you wouldn't have spilled coffee on that guy. And now she feels guilty. Right. Well, so she's feeling guilt, but it really that that just seems crazy. It's too far removed. Yeah, it seems like narcissistic. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:54:56] So so it's not just proneness to guilt. Like there are people who are, you know, like Walter Sinner Armstrong has talked about these like scrupulous scrupulousity. Yeah, people who like literally feel that stepping on a crack will break their mother's back or whatever where that's just crazy. Now.

[00:55:16] Does you know what is this show? I think this shows that we think crazy people are crazy. Right. No, but it rules out that it's not. Yeah, it also this is also, I think why I'm resistant to the kind of fault like calling it a false positive.

[00:55:29] There does seem to be like a proper balance of like an equilibrium for how we expect people to feel about this. Not too guilty and you have to have enough of a connection to the original act

[00:55:43] that because I think don't you do a study where like the person is over atoning for it or or feels like too bad for for it, where then it becomes out of whack again? I think it's just the person who who feels bad for having completely no

[00:56:02] no cause rule. Yeah, I think that part like part of it is if you want an agent like a person who would be in this is where I think your point is a good one. Like if you want somebody who would be actually careful to not be negligent,

[00:56:21] for instance, like that they wouldn't like next time they'll just watch where they're walking a little bit more, even though they're not culpable. The person expressing guilt, you might feel like, OK, they care enough.

[00:56:32] That they're going to adjust themselves so that they don't make the same mistake again. It doesn't seem like an error. Maybe really strictly speaking, in a really local sense, like you don't think that they deserve blame in this case.

[00:56:44] But if what they're doing is calibrating their actions for the future, then it seems like well, that's a good sign. A good robot or whatever you would program a robot to be a little more. It's like if you have like a star and a team leader

[00:56:57] like on a basketball team and they lose a game and the star, like even though probably maybe did all that he could. So like, you know, Jason Tatum and I don't know which way he falls on this.

[00:57:09] But like you want him to take responsibility for a Celtics loss, even if like he probably played a pretty good game and did the best he could. And, you know, there are other there were other teammates that kind of let the team down more than he did.

[00:57:25] It's like just a good sign. It's like somebody who's going to step up and own what happens. It's a good sign for their leadership. It's a good sign for their character, which is of course exactly your point.

[00:57:34] Yeah. And I think even it could be even stronger than what you're saying, which is it doesn't even I think we're naturally sort of backward looking. So so we say, yeah, it's a good sign of character that whatever LeBron took control over, like took responsibility for Lakers loss,

[00:57:49] even though he scored 50 points or whatever. But I think even in a forward looking way, that's giving us a good cue that say like a bot like somebody who is in charge of running a factory and a worker has an accident.

[00:58:08] And they like clearly don't like did not cause the accident. And maybe they were up to code, but they say like at the end of the day, this is this comes down on me. That means to me that they're going to in the future,

[00:58:23] just learn like learn from that and maybe try to behave in a way that that doesn't happen again, even if they weren't strictly responsible. Yeah, strictly responsible in like one sort of technical sense in a really technical, you know, like in a content sense

[00:58:37] because with the Lorry driver, you know, like there is a sense in which the Lorry driver was responsible. Like just the fact that he would get into a lorry in the first place without even a clear idea what that is. But.

[00:58:55] So so so they do have like that's why I think the connection is important enough, maybe for exactly what you're saying, because it signals that four things that they are causally interacting with, they will be especially careful in the future.

[00:59:10] Yeah, that actually makes me think it's a good point like that that in fact, there is epistemic uncertainty about whether or not they could have prevented it. And in those cases where you really the counterfactual is pretty strong

[00:59:28] in your mind that like maybe I took my eyes off the road, like maybe, you know, so that maybe their guilt is actually due to some uncertainty about the causal chain. And so yeah, that's a real point. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I wasn't even making that.

[00:59:45] Well, I think it is a good point. But yeah. And you know, even in the Williams case and in some of these studies, it's just sort of stipulated that it that they didn't mean to or it wasn't their fault. But like if you actually visualize those scenarios,

[01:00:02] there would be no way to know that really for sure. Right. And when you do know for sure, it's the case of the crazy person who was taking like credit for or blame for something like, you know,

[01:00:12] like if you in all seriousness told me that you didn't wear your Celtics jersey and you feel really bad that they lost because you know that like had you worn it, I would be like, well, you're crazy. Like you have a disconnect with like how causality works.

[01:00:25] Well, no. I have a cost like the Celtics, like at least five games this season still wasn't enough. Didn't have it. But but I will take my like I will own up to my role. I'm sure they appreciate that really. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:43] No, but I think that's actually a really like you never hear this brought up, actually, this is like a new point as far as I know that like this is it could just be responding to the fuzziness of like exactly how much

[01:00:57] fault you might have in these situations. And you definitely don't want people to kind of assume that no, I was that definitely there was nothing I could have done. Like that's why the sociopath in your first study, like he was like, thank you, you're totally right.

[01:01:14] There was no way I could have avoided spilling coffee on you. Like that's like that's not what you want. You know, exactly. Yeah. No, I think that's right. Now, I wish I could reinterpret the already published paper and add this to the discussion. Well, now you do this.

[01:01:27] This paper is like your first study. That's right. You remind me with a psychopath comment that one of the studies that we did was we actually gave people these individual difference measures, the dark triad measures of psychopathy, macuballionism and narcissism.

[01:01:45] And so this is these are measures that have been used and labeled as dark triad, but it's simple, you know, questionnaire. Yeah, the dark triad. And it's like all the psychology is just Marvel movies now. They get into you. The dark triad.

[01:02:04] So if you ask people whether or not they would feel guilty when they accidentally spilled coffee on somebody, it turns out that people high in psychopathy say that they wouldn't. So they are like, again, to use to use this language. They are technically normatively accurate.

[01:02:26] According to Sean Nick, Sean and Rajna. Now, my name is on it too. I take responsibility for making arguments. They're being right. Like they're they're they're responding in some sort of accurate way. But in reality, we know what's going on.

[01:02:44] These are people who just don't they're not prone to feeling guilt. They're not likely to feel good. Right. I mean, it's a little like, you know, the you always tell the story of going into the prison and getting the trolley problems.

[01:02:55] And then there is certain prisoners who'd be like, but it's the same thing pushing the guy and, you know, like it's a little like that to say it's normatively appropriate to be just as willing to push the fat guy as sweet as flipping the switch.

[01:03:10] Because from one cent in one sense it is, but like at another level for people with normal feelings. Yeah. And you know, I didn't even think that much about the false positive terminology because I like again, I don't think it matters

[01:03:28] that much to the experiments, but it is. I wouldn't have if if an early draft had said people making this glaring error, I would have said no, they're not right. They're not like that. In fact, not only are they not making glaring error, everybody around them

[01:03:43] seems to think that they're not making glaring error. So like it's a particular debauched theory of like to be fair to all of you and also to the earlier paper with Sean and Rajna. Like they they also note that there are accounts of this where

[01:03:58] the person just is blameworthy and and they also kind of highlight this tension, which is kind of interesting where we're actually like telling the person they shouldn't feel guilty while at the same time thinking they should and it would be bad if they didn't.

[01:04:15] And so it's just sort of interesting that we are pulled in these two different directions on this on this issue. That's what's so interesting about a lot of these more luck kinds of cases we you know, it's like the Nagel thing.

[01:04:27] Like we have one way from one perspective, we see one thing from another perspective, we see another. You know, in our conversation with Fiery, we were talking about collective responsibility in those so long ago. Do you think that tension is there to like push comes to shove

[01:04:43] the individual that's part of the collective that didn't play a real causal role kind of note? Do you think they kind of know there wasn't? Yeah, like I think in a lot of cases of collective responsibility, like it's very clear that a person didn't play any causal role.

[01:04:59] This was like a lot of my first book, like the relative justice stuff, which luckily I don't care about citations. But you know, both Sean and Rakhna and you guys failed to site. But like, yeah, it's not even like it's your connection to

[01:05:15] the collective that makes you responsible. And the expectation is that you will accept responsibility for it. Even though you didn't do anything. Right. But what I'm asking is less, even when it's clear, there's no causal responsibility. Do you think they have some intuition that they aren't actually responsible?

[01:05:33] But nonetheless, what they're doing is just being a good team player by like saying they are. I think it's like they are torn, you know, like I don't think they think of it as a clear cut thing.

[01:05:43] I think they see one aspect of it where they're not responsible and it just sucks that they have to be the ones that suffer for something that they didn't do. And then on the other hand, they think it's totally appropriate

[01:05:57] because that's the sort of the norms of that particular context or community. Yeah. And it's interesting that what cultures will do is, you know, lean more heavily on one or the other intuition. Yeah, exactly. To the point where people can think it's crazy to think that they're responsible.

[01:06:18] Right. And the other intuition being like, you're crazy to think I'm not. Right. It's and because I think it is us, it's not it's unlike is this snake poisonous or not. It's it's a kind of a moral question or certainly, you know,

[01:06:33] it's not one that you can do experiments to support one view or the other. It's it's a it's a question about like what norms covered in your society. We have a magical, numinal, Kantian green light if they're responsible, red light if they're not.

[01:06:51] That's what Sean believes that he has. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you by BetterHelp. If you're a regular, very bad wizards listener, you certainly know what BetterHelp is. It's the world's largest e-counseling platform. It's making professional counseling available, accessible, affordable

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[01:08:42] and who are taking charge of their mental health by going to betterhelp.com that's B-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash VBW. Our thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. You know, the last study that I'll talk about specifically is

[01:09:00] in the last study, we actually had people play a trust game where you can you're basically given some amount of money. And so say Tamler and I are in this trust game, I'm given 50 cents. If I give Tamler some amount of that money,

[01:09:19] it will triple and then Tamler can choose whether to give me back some of that money. So but he could keep it all. So my choice as to whether or not to send Tamler money depends on whether I trust

[01:09:32] that he's going to give me some back and then we can all be richer. But he could just be selfish and keep it all himself. So people who report that they would feel guilty in a scenario like this

[01:09:43] are more seen as more trustworthy and people behave to them, like behave as if they were more by sending more money, which is just sort of just a behavioral version of the same thing. Yeah, which totally makes sense. Like I would do that too.

[01:09:55] Right, you know, yeah, I would believe that about the person. I really do think this is I mean, it's a it's a cool study. I think it's a really interesting phenomenon and it's like it's in line with how I think of these things.

[01:10:09] You know, yeah, the character, the like that, that that's the explanation. Like that totally makes sense that this is a this is how you judge whether this person is somebody that steps up or not, whether this person is somebody that you can trust, whether this person is

[01:10:27] honorable, you know, right? And it seems as if the judgment that somebody is trying to eke out of a responsibility would come very quickly for somebody who says, no, you're right. Like I didn't write there like, wait, you're a little too quick to.

[01:10:40] So in the future now, I might not believe, you know, I might not trust that you're going to actually take responsibility when you ought to. But it's not just the future. No, no, no, no, no, I think you're also just like, oh, you're not a good guy.

[01:10:51] No, I actually think that's what we're thinking. I if forced to give like an evolutionary spin for it, I would say like maybe this is because it's it's good at predicting future. But I think there is no psychologically there is no nobody gives a fuck about the

[01:11:05] future necessarily, they could just be like, no, he's an asshole, which is totally my psychology behind it. But sort of like taking a step back, the what one of the reasons that I like this this line of research and care on character is because

[01:11:23] even though there's been this explosion of work on moral judgment, I always think that it's still like super narrow, narrowly focused on whether or not somebody did the right or wrong thing or whether or not something is right or wrong.

[01:11:37] And I think again, like getting back a little bit to our discussion in the first segment, I think we're constantly making these assessments of other people based on their reactions, their emotional responses to things that the moral judgments that they make about other people.

[01:11:53] Like we get a lot of information about somebody else by seeing how they respond to these things. And I think that's like a lot of our social interactions are sometimes character assessments. Yeah. And sometimes we'll even I was talking to my student about this.

[01:12:07] There are ways in which we even on purpose like will test out somebody's emotional responses. So suppose that I send you a picture of my new puppy, like doing something super cute. Right. I want your response to be like, oh, you know, like

[01:12:23] hard emoji. Yeah, or something something like that. You know, imagine you're right next to me. Like I want to see that you like also think that was a little heartwarming. I just are furiously jerking off as my actual reaction. But it's to most things I send.

[01:12:40] Like we're getting information from people's responses. And now imagine if somebody does it, you know, imagine it's like your romantic partner and they just you show them a really fucked up picture of like, you know, some Palestinian kid with half of their legs blown off.

[01:12:53] And they're like, well, you know, that's that's life. You'd be like, no, that's fucked up. I want you to like have an emotional response of the sort that would make me believe that you're actually a good person, even if we

[01:13:05] have an argument about like whatever, like first show me that you're human, like that you actually care. And it's not like I feel like the way we're presenting this is that every interaction is like some severe moral test or

[01:13:19] something like that. I think a lot of the time we do this stuff unconsciously. We're doing it just sort of, you know, we just have expectations for how things will go when we raise topics.

[01:13:29] And if the person reacts in a way that's wildly sort of out of line with that, that's going to like signal some stuff or if like either way, it could signal some stuff like in a good way or a bad way.

[01:13:41] You know, like but also good that, you know, maybe someone reacts in a way that you don't even think of and that that shows extra points, extra care. They show some tenderness where I didn't think like it's happened to me,

[01:13:55] right? You know, I'm sort of like callously mocking somebody and they say, you know, actually I feel bad for that person. I'm like, oh, fuck you're right. I should feel bad for that person. Yeah, you've done that to me and like, you know, like

[01:14:07] trashed pretty much everybody and I try to defend them. Like any non-mess in particular, you're constantly defending him from my time. I don't know why you hate him. I love it. No, you're right. Like in fact, I think that really it's more that we're gleaning information

[01:14:27] not so much that we're trying. I mean, I suppose sometimes we try, but that that information comes to us. But like again, sort of to get back to the discussion, the first segment, sometimes we don't even know what we're picking up on.

[01:14:38] And I think that's what sometimes you come off of a social interaction thinking someone's creepy, you don't know why it might have been something as simple as whether or not they like made the right face when you said something, you know, you're like, well, you have no idea.

[01:14:53] But you're like, I just got a creepy vibe. Like Jesse France. But there's, you know, so Jesse gives talks sometimes where he uses. We all do it like for fuck's sake, like our whole podcast is built on this like willingness to say shit. Yeah.

[01:15:11] But like sometimes Jesse, Kurt Gray is like this too. They'll give examples that are really fucked up and they're having just a little too much like they're just a little too. I don't know. I don't know what the right word is. It's like they know what you mean.

[01:15:28] The response in the first place that should have made them like recoil and horror, what they said, they're not showing the proper like, I don't know, like they're not aghast enough at the thing. Yeah, it's like they don't even get how shocking it is.

[01:15:41] And it's not like that's not the joke or something. I don't know. It's like I can't you can't put your finger on it. But similarly, like you can also come away with an interaction thinking like, oh, that person's really cool or that person's like a really good.

[01:15:57] She she's really a good person. Like you can and you don't know why you think that equally. Like you don't know necessarily why you might have some idea of something. But it's like you just got like you just picked up something and you know,

[01:16:11] and we who knows how accurate these things are. When God knows, you know, like it's probably biased in so many different ways. But like this stuff does happen. I think so. At that part where you think someone's cool or a good person, I think that is severely understudied.

[01:16:25] Like I don't how do we I think we can all agree like people agree a lot on who's cool. Yeah. But how do we get there? And and I think we get there really quickly. You know, like you said, it might actually even be self-fulfilling.

[01:16:40] So you treat people who you think are cool like in a certain way and they get cool toward you. But yeah, yeah, it's this it's also super contextual. So one of the things I remember the first time I went to it was one of the APA's

[01:16:57] maybe like APA Central Philosophical Conferences where it was one of the first times that I got to meet some like of these experimental philosophers. I think Josh Knob had invited me for all I know you were there.

[01:17:13] But I remember being sort of struck by how cool it was. Like in a dinner time conversation, I could bring up the most fucked up thing. Yeah. And somebody like Walter Cinnan Armstrong or Steve Stitch,

[01:17:25] they would not even bat an eye like they would just talk about it as if like, yeah, I get what you're saying and then go like there. I was like, this is so cool.

[01:17:34] I don't have to like wait for them to express some sort of shock and then like ask me what I really mean. Like, no, they get it. So the takeaway then is experimental philosophers are a bunch of like sociopathic perverts.

[01:17:49] I mean, a little bit, but just Jesse Prince maybe, but he's kind of Josh Knob. I feel that I feel like I'm somehow maligning Kirk Gray and Jesse Prince, but I don't mean to. What kind? He knows I love him.

[01:18:06] That's good. Tell him that I do too, because I don't want him to kill me. And not feel guilty about it. Yeah. All right. I think we're done. I think we've exhausted. Yeah, we've burnt enough bridges.

[01:18:19] This is a good good like I was happy to see this paper as soon as I saw that I don't know somebody posted about it on Twitter a while ago. I put it immediately into. I saw it actually. I saw that and everybody made me happy.

[01:18:32] I'm not going to lie. And then, yeah. And for whatever reason today and we're recording this pretty early because we both have traveling coming up, but like people were giving it a lot of love on Twitter. Yeah, Paul, I think it came from Paul. I think Josh Knob.

[01:18:50] Oh, did he just see a pathic pervert? Josh Knob. Yeah. Yeah. All very cool people. This is the stripped down nature of Twitter communication makes all of these processes a little more difficult, you know, like you can't tell sometimes how good

[01:19:10] or bad people are from just seeing their tweets. I think that actually causes a lot of a lot of bad shit to happen. I think that's just we just don't know. Yeah. All right. Thank you for giving me a chance to talk.

[01:19:24] Yeah, it was it was it was fun. Like I'm impressed you're still putting out work. Thank you. Seriously, it's grad students. My PhD students have been extra productive lately. So yeah, that's what you guys do. You just ride on the coattails of your grad students.

[01:19:42] I mean, it's a racket, right? It's like a it's like multi level marketing. Right. It's like made off. Exactly. All right. Well, join us next time on Jerry Douglas. Anybody can have a break. Very bad man. And a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.