Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe

[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'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] I thought I understood this whole thing but I guess I don't. I need help! The Great Enfant has spoken! I'm a very good man. Good. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.

[00:00:51] I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, those plucky underdog investigators at Data Collada who work tirelessly to keep science safe from fraud along with the plucky underdog University Harvard, they're being

[00:01:26] sued by Francesca Gino for defamation. This is how we're going to go down, isn't it? I mean, it just is, right? We're getting sued at some point. I mean, like, I'm not gonna lie. For a second I was like, should we get lawyers?

[00:01:38] But then I was like, she's not listening to this. Yeah. Yeah. Not by her. I don't even mean by her. I just mean at some point. We should probably have a lawyer on retainer, you think? Yeah. We need like a general counsel for Very Bad Wizards general counsel.

[00:01:55] That sounds bad. I don't know how those Data Collada guys are gonna... That sucks. Like, what would you do? Like, what if you got sued for $25 million? Like, what would you do? You like can't afford that shit.

[00:02:08] I know there's a couple examples of podcasts I listen to where the people have been sued. One of the guys on Chapo got sued for defamation, although that was less related to the podcast. Also the people at Know Your Enemy, this kind of leftist intellectual left podcast that

[00:02:30] focuses on right wing figures or movements, they got sued too. Just totally frivolous. But the ACLU defended them. So I think we would try to get probably somebody to defend our right to free expression. Our right to mock anybody. To mock graduate students and their papers.

[00:02:57] The thing in the lawsuit that I saw, I texted you guys this, that she's a working mother of four people and that the Data Collada guys seem to always target women. Even though their other really big time person was Dan Ariely, number one, and their example

[00:03:16] that she used was Amy Cuddy and in the Chronicle article about it, it was like they previously raised questions about Amy Cuddy's research and she subsequently left Harvard University. It's not like anybody thinks that what they said was inaccurate about Amy Cuddy. Like defaming.

[00:03:36] Yeah, that part definitely stood out. It's a desperate tactic and obviously I don't know enough about law to know what's defamation and what's not. But her lawsuit does seem to boil down to you can't prove for sure that it was me, it might have been my RA.

[00:03:54] But that's like whatever. I don't feel like it's unreasonable to say, like I think one of the things that's mentioned is this interview with Uri Simonson where he says like clearly he goes, we don't have proof that it was Francesca Gino.

[00:04:06] And then he just says as an aside, I mean, I personally think it was her. Yeah, like that's the defamation. It seems frivolous. I imagine like hopefully it just gets tossed out like right at the beginning.

[00:04:17] And I think it seems like another as if people didn't have enough reasons to be worried about somebody a fraud now the threat of some huge lawsuit. If I were Harvard, in fact, to all the Harvard board members listening to this, I think you

[00:04:36] should pay for Data Colada's defense. For Data Colada. Yeah, I think that would be the right thing to do. Harvard is known for doing the right thing. Always. At every step. Give them, you know, is Dershowitz still alive? Toss old Dershowitz over. That would be hilarious.

[00:04:57] The final redemption, it would be like. Speaking of actually, let's just not further talk about Alan Dershowitz. We don't want to be on the wrong end of a defamation suit just yet. That's true. Speaking of psychological studies and the result in those studies in the second segment.

[00:05:21] What a segue. Bravo. We are going to be talking about a paper called a quantitative examination of half belief in superstition. But first, what are we doing? First, we're taking this is we're going to do a study live.

[00:05:39] So this is actually a study that got shared on Twitter by researchers at University of Madison that will give us by the end a score on how much we have an internal monologue versus or in addition to how much we use mental imagery, just like vivid mental imagery.

[00:06:03] So a few people tweeted this out. I think Vlad, friend of the podcast Vlad, posted his scores like a screenshot of his scores. So I thought, fuck it. I think this is a let's figure this out.

[00:06:14] And after we take it, I'll tell you that I had like my mind blown a little bit about this and like the differences in people I asked. Well, I'll get to that. Between you and other people? Other people. Yeah.

[00:06:27] It just seems like one of those things that you never think about it. And to find out that somebody else might have a phenomenology that is so different from yours, like I wouldn't have believed it. I just don't.

[00:06:38] And I had a conversation about this where we were just expressing disbelief. Like we both thought that the other person was lying about this because it seems. All right, maybe we'll see. Now I'm curious. Yeah. All right, let's do it. All right. Do you have yours up? Yep.

[00:06:53] All right. I'll read the first one. I think about problems in my mind in the form of a conversation with myself. So the scale is one, two, three, five point scale, strongly disagree to strongly agree, neither agree nor disagree. I would say that, I mean, it's hard to.

[00:07:09] I haven't looked at the survey and I wanted to take it fully fresh. I would say I somewhat agree. Like sometimes I'll be like on the one hand, I should like maybe I should do this. And the other hand, like it's you know, it's probably not.

[00:07:20] It's not like I'm have. It's not like a play or something. It's not like a dialogue, but it is kind of a conversation with myself. So I'm going to say some would agree. What do you put? I strongly disagree. Really?

[00:07:33] And I think this is going to get to it. Like, yeah, I just don't. I think like I think about things. It's I just don't verbalize like it's never in the form of words or running on. Not never. But yeah. Really? So yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:52] OK, this is going to get. I am shocked about myself. I find it easy to decide if words rhyme by seeing their. Sorry. I find it easy to decide if words rhyme by seeing their spelling in my mind's eye. I strongly disagree with that. I strongly disagree.

[00:08:10] If I'm walking somewhere by myself, I frequently think of conversations that I've recently had. Like, I don't know how to interpret frequently here. Like, I would. That's not most of the time, but I but I do this a lot.

[00:08:25] So do you think I should do strongly or somewhat? If you do it a lot, I'd say strongly. OK. I somewhat agree. I do think definitely think about conversations. When I read, I tend to hear a voice in my mind's ear. I do not.

[00:08:43] I don't think I know. I don't. Yeah, I strongly disagree with that. I often talk to myself internally while watching TV. I often talk to other people while watching TV. It's not as welcome as I would. You definitely do, but you do talk to yourself, right?

[00:09:01] Like, kind of like. I've heard you. I've heard you when you didn't think that I was on. Like, I swear one time you were like, oh, I was just talking to myself. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. No, no, I do.

[00:09:13] I like I don't often do it while I'm talking to me. Like, is this verbalizing it? Am I articulating it? Or am I just like thinking, oh, that's right. This is the guy from episode two or something like that.

[00:09:25] Yeah, I think this question is asking talk to myself internally just means like, are there sentences that you're creating in your mind to yourself? I'm going to say neither because I don't whatever this is, I don't often do it. I don't think no, I probably do.

[00:09:39] I'm going to say somewhat because I probably do do it. And I think it's bad. Like, I should shut up while I'm watching something. So, all right. If I'm walking. I never do. What you never answer. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I assumed already that you never do.

[00:09:58] If I'm walking somewhere by myself, I often have a silent conversation with myself. What does this mean? How do you interpret this? I feel like it's there must be some because I don't I don't do it.

[00:10:10] It's hard for me to know, but I assume it's something like Tamler. Did you really have to do that? Or like you really should work harder. Like, are you should tell David how awesome he is. Yeah.

[00:10:20] Like sometimes if I'm regretting something that I did, I'm like, that was stupid. You shouldn't have done that. That's like bad. You know, you're a bad person. So, if you don't do it often, I would put somewhat agree.

[00:10:30] I'll put neither agree or disagree since I put somewhat last time. I hear a running summary of everything I'm doing in my head. No, like, no, certainly not everything I'm doing often not even. Like Howard Cosell? And he picks up the soap. Right. He's wiping his ass.

[00:10:54] Now he's getting himself a third glass of bourbon. Should he be having that? I don't know, Bill. What's the stats on this? What happens when he has the third glass of bourbon after 830 at night? How does he sleep? What's the next day look like?

[00:11:08] Rob, no player who's had over three glasses of bourbon has ever reported a good night's sleep. Yeah, they have like all these stats of like my productivity, like the analytics community is like, well, actually, if he only if he has a good dinner before the third drink,

[00:11:24] he can have a fairly productive day the next day. I strongly disagree with that. It's easy for me to imagine the sensation of licking a brick. Interesting. Sure, I somewhat agree. I don't know if it's accurate, but I can imagine it. Yeah, I strongly agree.

[00:11:42] Like it's so vivid in me. It makes me think I must have licked a brick at some point, but I don't remember licking a brick. The texture. I put strongly actually because I kind of feel that same way too. When I think of someone I know well,

[00:11:55] I instantly see their face in my mind. I feel like I somewhat agree. Sometimes it's a... Actually, I might strongly agree. Oh, I was going to say, do I do that? I can do it. Right. So the only thing stopping me from being so sure about this

[00:12:21] is that sometimes I think about somebody and it's jarring that I can't think of their face because I think that normally their face does pop into my head. Yeah. I'm going to put neither agree or disagree because I don't really know. I certainly don't instantly do it

[00:12:39] unless it's somebody that I probably don't know well and I'm trying to figure out who it is. I can easily imagine the sound of a trumpet getting louder. Strongly agree. Yeah, for sure. I find it difficult to imagine how a three-dimensional geometric figure would look like when rotated.

[00:12:58] I somewhat disagree. I don't know if like... It's not the easiest thing in the world for me, but I can do it, I guess. I can picture some dice or whatever rolling. Yeah, I think it's not too hard for me, but I'm going to somewhat agree because...

[00:13:21] It's a little difficult. In some... I've taken those tests where you're supposed to mentally rotate and the harder ones do give me trouble. An old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words is certainly true for me. This is where a Likert scale is like... Yeah.

[00:13:40] I don't know what you're getting at. I guess maybe if what they're trying to say is like our image is just way more powerful than a verbal description. Yeah. Okay, then I agree. So I'll somewhat agree. But I object to the question.

[00:13:57] My memories often involve conversations I've had. Yeah, somewhat agree, I would say. Yeah. I also somewhat agree. I'm trying to find... Okay, somewhat agree. Yeah. Memories are mainly visual in nature. This is really... This is hard to just kind of like... Are they? I don't know, I guess.

[00:14:21] I'm going to strongly agree. Yeah, I think that they're pretty visual, like pretty strongly visual for me. All right, here's one where we may diverge. I tend to think things through verbally when I am relaxing. I tend to think things through verbally when I am relaxing.

[00:14:37] I strongly agree with this because I do. Like I talk to myself or I listen. I don't do the meditation thing, but I will do that. I will get myself verbally in the place to try to relax. No, I strongly disagree for me. Yeah.

[00:14:53] My mental images are very vivid and photographic. Here's where I think like... I hate the word photographic, but I do. I think my mental images are super vivid. I would say I neither agree nor disagree. I don't think they're super vivid. I don't think they're... But they are.

[00:15:11] I think they're meaningful, the images. Right. We did that aphantasia test. It's not like you don't have. For this question, please choose the option that begins with the letter N. What the fuck is that? Is that just a... It's just an attention check.

[00:15:30] Okay, I guess that would be strongly... Oh, that begins. Oh, neither. This is going to get tossed out almost. I often enjoy the use of mental pictures All right. I somewhat agree, I guess. When I hear someone talking, I see words written down in my mind. Strongly disagree.

[00:15:49] I'm with you on that one. That seems crazy. That seems insane. If I talk to myself in my head, it's usually accompanied by visual imagery. No, I would strongly disagree with that. What about you? I just never talk to myself in my head.

[00:16:05] So neither agree nor disagree, I guess. Neither agree nor disagree, I guess. I guess. A strategy I use to help me remember written material is imagining what the writing looks like. Strongly disagree. Yeah, that's weird. I think a lot of these things,

[00:16:23] it should just give you the result. You're crazy. When I'm introduced to someone for the first time, I imagine what their name would look like written down. That's again, a bad shit. Strongly disagree against your will. I rarely vocalize thoughts in my mind.

[00:16:43] I would say somewhat disagree with that. I think I probably sometimes do. Yeah, I somewhat agree because if I have to write something down, of course I'm going to... Actually, I think I'm going to somewhat agree. I think I'm somewhat and you're probably strongly

[00:16:58] because if I actually think about it, I don't vocalize. Oh no, vocalize is different than seeing it in writing. I'll somewhat disagree. I think I strongly agree because now I think about it, even when I'm writing things down, my phenomenology is the thought to the fingers.

[00:17:16] It's hard for me to think. I don't think I think in words, but I don't know. Introspectionism is hard. We just did an episode on something like this, right? But I remember thinking there was something weird about you, how you were answering, but overall we kind of had

[00:17:34] the same general perspective. That's weird. Maybe he misspoke. I like to give myself some downtime to talk through thoughts in my mind. This makes it sound like you're scheduling downtime. And so I'm going to strongly disagree with that. I don't do that. My inner speech helps my imagination.

[00:17:56] Here, I think we're going to be on the opposite sides because I will strongly agree on this sometimes. Sometimes I'm just like, and maybe this is like I'm thinking something or something like that. But like my imagination then is aided by that. Yeah. I'm going to strongly disagree

[00:18:16] because I don't think that. We have such different inner lives. How can we even be friends? For this question, select the option strongly disagree. I'm going to somewhat agree. I can easily choose to imagine this sentence in my mind pronounced very slowly. I strongly agree.

[00:18:42] Yeah, I mean, we edit audio. I feel like it's not too hard. So you can hear voices in your head. You just don't do it. For sure. Like I can imagine like the sounds the slowing down and yeah. When traveling to get to somewhere

[00:18:58] I tend to think more visually than verbally. I guess I will strongly agree. It depends. But like if I can do it visually, sometimes it's just like. Yeah, that's the thing. Like my sense of direction is so terrible that sometimes I have to rely on

[00:19:16] like the turn left then turn right. But I actually have a good sense of direction and I yeah. So I'll strongly agree. I'm going to neither agree nor disagree because my sense of direction is so bad I don't really think.

[00:19:30] I'm just like GPS tell me where to go. When thinking about a social problem I often talk through it in my head. A social problem. I mean I'm a talker to myself. Like my family makes fun of me for talking to myself just verbally.

[00:19:44] And so like I probably just do it in my mind. So I'll somewhat agree. I take it you're strongly disagree. Yeah, I'm strongly disagree. I can easily imagine someone clearly talking and then the same voice with a heavy cold. Yeah. For sure. I can do that.

[00:20:05] I see words in my mind's eye strongly disagree. You're crazy. You're a wack job. I hear words in my mind's ear when I think. Yeah, I'm not sure what the mind's ear is but I'm going to somewhat disagree. Thanks. So that's it for me at least

[00:20:30] on this page. I hope it doesn't go on. So it says your internal verbalization score measures the extent to which you experience your thoughts in the form of language. Your visual score measures the vividness of your visual imagery and people with higher visual imagery

[00:20:47] are also more likely to that's where you're different are also more likely to experience their thinking in the form of language. Your representational manipulation score reflects the ease with modifying your imagery visualizing things from different perspectives. The last score relates to your frequently visualizing words as text.

[00:21:13] Part of this new national psychosis. For example, when someone tells them their name some people report automatically imagining the name as it would appear when written text. That's so weird. I'm glad to hear though that it's still a minority even though they say it's a sizable minority. Right.

[00:21:35] Because I imagine if there's people into camps. So can you take a screenshot of yours so we can post this for our listeners? Sure. I'll just tell you my score. Yeah, let's talk about it. I have an average internal verbalization just like whatever who gives it's a 3.5.

[00:21:56] It's in the 45th percentile. Right. I am in the lowest. I'm in the extreme standard deviation all the way to the left. I have an average of 1.5 and I'm in the lowest. I mean, wow. This is what I was talking to Nikki before. It's black houses about like,

[00:22:15] you know, calling people other people crazy, you know? Well, this is what like right before we recorded I just was like, OK, Nikki, do you have an inner monologue like a voice? And she's like, well, yeah. And she's like, you don't? I was like, no.

[00:22:32] She's like, what the fuck? She couldn't understand how I exist. I wonder if it's like, yeah, no, it's got to be a real phenomenological difference, not just a difference in how you describe how you interpret your own experience. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was struggling with.

[00:22:52] I was like, am I talking to myself? Like I mean, but I didn't say that. Yeah. Yeah. Weird. All right. Visual imagery. Visual imagery is average. It measures the vividness of your visual imagery and my score is a three point seven, which is again in the 45th percentile.

[00:23:14] My imagery scores four point five and it's in the 88th percentile. Nice. Not as extreme as the other. Which is actually not what they predict. So no. Yeah. Orthographic imagery word as text. I am one point one four in the second percentile because I'm

[00:23:32] like we are more normal than everybody. That's what's what's what's weird is that we're actually extreme when it comes to this. Right. Right. Yeah. It's a bunch of fucking psychos. Jesus Christ. Like what are we going to do? It's like we're the crazy people maybe.

[00:23:53] It's like a twilight zone. OK. Also representational manipulation. I'm like a fucking genius. I am four point three eight in the 88th percentile. I'm like Oppenheimer, you know, like I'm like I'm worried about the death and destruction that my mental manipulation skills will yield. All right. That's it.

[00:24:18] I have no inner monologue, I guess, which sounds like a really like a like a terrible thing. But I just think it's weird that people talk to them. I honestly thought in movies when I was watching myself that this was like a Shakespeare exposition.

[00:24:35] Like, OK, they need to do this for us to like know what's going on. When a Shakespeare character will talk to the audience. Yeah. That's interesting. And, you know, it's like this like you're already like two thirds of the way to enlightenment, like awakening, a Buddhist awakening,

[00:24:54] because that is like the thing that you are aiming not to eliminate or in fact, not at all to eliminate, but to not get trapped by it, to not get led by it and to not identify with it. Right. So but here's the weird thing,

[00:25:09] because I have done the meditation of the sort where you're trying to like not not like hold on to your thoughts. So so I remember doing whatever technique I read to like let your thought float away from you as it comes in, like imagine it floating

[00:25:25] out. And I remember thinking to myself, like, if it's floating away from me, I'm going to have to put it into like the words and then imagine their words floating away because it wasn't in words. So like you were already like at

[00:25:38] the next level, next step, and they actually bumped you back. But, you know, the whole idea of monkey mind, which is like exactly this, you always have this monologue running in your head. And it's fine if it's just running and doing its own thing.

[00:25:54] It can even be kind of soothing. It's like, you know, it's like it's like a little bit of a meditation. And I think that's what's so important about it is that it can lead us in, you know. But this is where I'm actually

[00:26:07] having a problem because I don't not have thoughts constantly running through my head. I do constantly have thoughts running through my head, like constantly, like to the point where, like, I'll be reading something and I'll have been thinking about something completely different. It's just that they're not in

[00:26:20] words. Like, I don't know how to describe it. Like, I don't think in words. It's like, you know, in my head is just like, oh, it's a cat. It's like what what McCarthy was talking about, the language of thought. This is that's actually when I

[00:26:33] had you said something in that episode that made me like, what? I don't think it's quite like that, but I thought you just misdescribed what you wanted to say. Maybe I edited it out, like because I was like, you didn't mean to say that. That's too weird. Yeah.

[00:26:52] I guess like there's an inherent thing that you're trying to describe than how you do think. If you're just trying to think of your schedule for the day, like when are you going to record that better help spot? Yeah. Like you're like, you don't

[00:27:06] think like, well, I have this thing at two and then I have that thing at three. Could I get, you know, like, do you think I would still have 15 minutes? You know, you know what I mean? Like, you don't do that. I'm struggling. I'm struggling because I think

[00:27:20] the thoughts like I have something at two. Like I feel like if if now I were to have to share them and I remember always thinking this. OK, I was like, OK, language is for when you all of a sudden have communicative intent and

[00:27:31] then you put those thoughts into language. So I feel like I'm thinking I have to do this and I have to do that. But I never really feel like like if if I were to say them out loud, it would be like a very,

[00:27:43] like a very, very different thing. Whereas I think that like some Nikki talks to herself like quite a bit and I caught her before and I'm thinking like I'm like, oh, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this.

[00:27:56] And then that slow down like that, it would be much quicker to just think the thing. Yeah. Is this why you always like can come up with the perfect rebuttal to my point? You're just doing this at such a more efficient rate. As that did sound super

[00:28:14] pretentious the way I said it. Oh, these poor mortals who have to put their things into words. When I was reading Grote Lescher and you were telling me I've been meditating for almost 10 years and you're like more advanced. You know, it's such a bullshit.

[00:28:29] For me, like, like all of a sudden, you know, some porn like will pop into my head very strongly. You know, I have to get rid of that. That's hard. That's hard. It's not like I have spirit of that either. Yeah, right. That's true.

[00:28:46] But yeah, like when you're if you're like jerking off, are you just like and then she takes her head and then her stepsister enters the room instead of instead of imagining boobs. I think of the letters in English. Oh, yes. All right. Well, I've learned that we live

[00:29:10] completely different in our lives and. Yeah. Or we have or we have completely different ways of communicating the same in our lives. One or the other. That's the weird question that I guess it's really hard to know. Are we just interpret and is there

[00:29:27] even a hard distinction between those two things? Because maybe in the interpretation does change the experience. You know, I'm going to say something crazy. Yeah. Maybe fMRI can help us tease these apart. Yeah, totally. That'll solve it. I mean, it's not insane to think

[00:29:45] that maybe some people have like your verbal areas are more active when you're thinking about a somebody else's visual or whatever. I don't know. That's not improbable that it would be like a possibility, but a study demonstrating that is not plausible. There you go. All right.

[00:30:07] We'll be right back to talk about beliefs and half beliefs. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you once again by Better Help. Have you ever reached a point in your life where you realize that something needs to change? Maybe you can call it a crossroads

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[00:36:29] We'll answer them for you in video form and then also in audio form for all of our bonus tier listeners. So there is a lot going on here at Patreon. We hope you're enjoying them. We're definitely enjoying them. And honestly, from the bottom of our hearts, we're

[00:36:48] going to send you a big thank you. So good to see you all. We will see you soon. Good luck. All right. Thank you so much for all your support. All right. Let's talk about this paper. A quantitative examination of half belief in superstition from Avner Gaspi,

[00:37:15] Itay Shmuel and The Open University. So David, I know you think the impact of superstitious beliefs is just like negligible, like nothing, but it's actually far greater than you think. Did you know American businesses lose 800 to 900 million dollars every

[00:37:34] year on Friday the 13th? I did not know that! In Taiwan people are willing to pay 15% more for products that present the digit 8 since they consider this lucky number, and that in Israel pregnant women prefer to avoid

[00:37:50] buying furniture for babies before birth even when such avoidance incurs a significant cost because they think that preparation for a baby fosters bad luck. I guess like jinxing it. So do you still think that there's no impact to

[00:38:05] superstitious beliefs? You sound like you're being facetious but I fully admit that I did not think that superstitions would matter that much and I'm kind of shocked. Like especially that 800 to 900 million dollars every year on

[00:38:17] Friday the 13th. That's like insane. See, I was appalled but more because this is the way they measure impact in these like depressing capitalistic terms. Well it is an impact. I also don't buy it. Like first of all the 800 to 900 million

[00:38:34] dollars it goes ING et al 2010 but see two other studies for different results it's like, you know, so why are we then putting the one from the one study? Turns out there's a healthy debate in the field about Friday the 13th. I also

[00:38:49] don't buy the Taiwan thing right? Like I would like to see that study. Kramer, no offense to Kramer and Ned Block. Anyway that kind of depressing capitalist way of measuring impact aside I think that this paper is tackling a

[00:39:08] really interesting issue and I think it's come up for us a bunch. The relationship between belief and behavior or belief and practice right? So a kind of contrast between your stated beliefs and how you act in relation to that belief

[00:39:26] and so they focus on specifically superstitious beliefs and they discuss this concept of half belief where your stated beliefs don't match your behavior in practice right? So you may say you don't believe in jinxes that's bullshit

[00:39:45] but if you always knock wood after saying something good is gonna happen or like you throw a glass at somebody. I've been in a situation like this it's a classic it's cliche but someone was like oh hey look he's pitching a no-hitter

[00:39:58] like the team doesn't have a hit. Like you know you're gonna get something thrown at you or you're ass kicked if you do that. Well but if you then say you don't believe in jinxes if you're the glass thrower like that the stated

[00:40:17] belief and the practice would be different and according to this kind of terminology you would half believe in jinxes. So they say that McKellar in 1952 was the first to notice this contrast between practice and belief. I doubt that

[00:40:32] he was that was of 1952 discovery. Well they also say that magical thinking has been common dating back to ancient Greece because probably made a fully formed and only in Greece. Yeah exactly. Everybody else was just like pure

[00:40:49] hardcore naturalist perfect Bayesians and then ancient Greece happened. But in any case sociologists they say have warmly embraced the phenomenon of half belief but until now this phenomenon hasn't been examined quantitatively which is what the authors are doing here. And again like I may be a little facetious

[00:41:14] in how I'm describing this but I actually think it's a kind of really interesting topic. They want to document the imbalance between actual practices of superstitions and the degree that you say you believe them and I really like

[00:41:30] this they want to propose that half belief even this concept of half belief when there's this contrast isn't all or nothing but rather that our beliefs work along two separate continuums like how much we believe it and how much we

[00:41:45] practice in a way that suggests that we believe it. They say they hypothesize that people position themselves differently on each scale. It's a weird phrasing there because I don't think they mean that people actively position themselves but rather that people will fall on different aspects of this

[00:42:04] continuum for both the stated belief and then also how you act. And again I think that's right it's obviously not just you either believe it or you half believe it or you don't believe it. It's a continuum and I like this idea of two different

[00:42:19] dimensions of belief. So they develop these scales that will help identify the distribution of half believers who practice more than they believe and passive believers who practice less than they believe. And then just a couple terminology things to the extent that our practice correlates with our belief

[00:42:41] we're calibrated believers. That's what they call these people and it doesn't mean that you just if you believe in jinx and you always act it can be like let's say like this is probably true of me I kind of believe in jinxes and I and

[00:42:54] I also only kind of act in a way that suggests that I believe in jinxes. So that's calibrated. Right. Contrasting with me who's like a classic half believer in the jinx who got very mad at Yoel for congratulating the Argentina win in the World Cup

[00:43:10] therefore causing them to almost lose. Propositionally I believe that's poppycock but like I was angry. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know you felt that strongly poppycock. Holy shit. My favorite Puerto Rican porn. Here comes the defamation.

[00:43:34] Okay so what do they find. Well first of all they find that very few people practice both practice no superstitions and very few people report complete disbelief in them. I buy that. I think you have to be like one of these toxic rationalists as they say.

[00:43:52] Do you think even Sam Harris would admit to having a superstitious belief. See a question. Yeah. Yeah I'm sure Dawkins would. He would be like no I have no belief I believe in no superstitions and nobody should ever read literature.

[00:44:05] Second that people who demonstrate Cal calibration between belief and practice are just about 15 percent of the sample. Again like doesn't surprise me. We're weird about superstitions and like pressed if we're pressed on it we'll

[00:44:20] say yeah I don't really believe in that but we'll just do it anyway. We don't act in that way. And what they say is I think we're all familiar with someone who says they don't believe in somebody but something but just acts in that way.

[00:44:33] You know like like you with jinxes right. And with all sorts of things like we're like gun to our head. No absolutely that's ridiculous. I'm not going to like totally change the way my understanding of the laws of physics for

[00:44:48] this thing but they don't act that way at all. But then they find this other group which is kind of less intuitive that this would exist which are passive believers. So these are people who believe like imagine you believe very

[00:45:02] strongly that drink jinxes are true but you just like jinx yourself and your favorite teams all the time. You know I guess that would be a passive belief. Right. Right. So you think like if you buy your baby like furniture before it's

[00:45:17] born like that would be a terrible terrible thing. You're like fuck it. I need to get that furniture in there. I'm not going to buy it. I'm not going to buy it. I need to get that furniture in there. I don't want to save like 25

[00:45:31] bucks. Right. Exactly. Have you looked at the cost ensuring our baby's safety and health. I can't I can't stomach that. They also have this other aspect that they're trying to measure you know trying to compare it to like uncertainty

[00:45:50] you know how like the role of anxiety the role of uncertainty and also the potential asymmetry between negative superstitions like jinxing I guess is a negative superstition whereas making a wish when you see a falling star is a

[00:46:04] positive superstition. So they find some differences there like this is less interesting part of the paper to me is trying to match these things up because I just don't buy what they're saying and how they measure those things. But like

[00:46:21] the gen they do also like get some demographics and they have a gender effect I think is interesting. Yeah. What's the gender effect that women just report being more superstitious in general. Yeah. Belief and practice I think

[00:46:35] well they're irrational. They never fully develop their super ego. They live according to their emotions. That's why men have to run things. So this is what gives us bad iTunes reviews you know. Did we get a bad iTunes review last week?

[00:46:52] No no no this was like before when somebody just wrote misogynist. Oh yeah. Oh the very beginning? Repugnant? No no no like a couple few weeks ago like a couple weeks ago. Oh really? Yeah. We're not misogynists. I agree I agree. It's just that we in

[00:47:07] practice sometimes act as if we are. Right. We're half misogynists. At least say that if you're going to leave a bad review. So yeah they also like this the study was taking place right as the pandemic was starting. So they try to look at the

[00:47:22] moderating effects of that again. I just like I kind of glaze over this stuff because I don't buy it. Well the idea like let me at least present the idea. The idea is that that superstitions offer you some control when you feel out of

[00:47:37] control. So so to the extent that you can stop bad things from happening you're impelled to do those things like by exerting control over your environment like whatever you know tossing salt over your shoulder or something. And so people

[00:47:50] who have higher like state uncertainty like higher anxiety for instance would be more likely to endorse superstitions. But yeah. Yeah and I think they find that that evidence is mixed as you might expect. Yeah it seemed very weak actually if they say

[00:48:06] themselves. Yeah. So let's talk about this idea of half belief or this because I'm so on board with the way they talk about the phenomenon of belief as kind of encompassing these two different tracks how you act and what your report your

[00:48:25] belief is. I'll just say just to wrap this up that the Transformers question this this idea came up because I accused you of actually not believing what you say you believe. Transporters. Sorry. Transformers. I'm so confused

[00:48:44] because you thought when the car turned into like the owl that you know what I'm saying like when you you would say it's a murder machine it you automatically die whenever you step into a transporter but then you would watch Star Trek and you

[00:49:02] don't think that oh that's a new Captain Kirk and the Captain Kirk I loved for since he got into the last Transformer Transporter. Now I'm doing that is is dead like you don't think that I mean I disagree. I got to relitigate this like I just

[00:49:19] think I'm suspending my disbelief in that they've created a universe where nobody believes that. So I'm OK. OK. That would be it would be really douchey for me to be like. So maybe then the better example is what you said earlier which is that

[00:49:32] you got actually very mad at you. Well I was on the exchange when he congratulated you. Absolutely. And I was like I like the fact that you hosted him like last like a

[00:49:46] few months later at your house is just well because they pulled out in the end. I think that if they hadn't won in the end like it would have been. Yeah this is how

[00:49:54] this is how communities start blaming the Jews for shit you know. The Jew was at fault that time. You know I don't know. I try to defend Jews when I can but that was indefensible what you did. Yeah I think this is a really interesting question in

[00:50:12] general and maybe under explored. Yeah I think so too. And I actually think that superstition is one of those things that is so like you're you're joking about the way they measured impact like it's it's a decent point. Like that's a funny way to

[00:50:30] like focus on impact by just calculating the amount of money lost. That like our get loses on Amazon never host sales on the 13th. But but I think it's actually quite ignored in something like social psychology who's that's supposed to be

[00:50:46] looking at social phenomena. The the ubiquitous nature of superstitions is it's hilariously not ubiquitous in a social psych text at all. And I think that that that this like a huge part of it. I think it also helps illustrate just in

[00:51:04] general mechanisms of belief. So I think that to the extent that we can understand like some of these like really weird things we get some insight into how beliefs are formed to begin with because I think that probably what's going on with the

[00:51:16] acquisition of superstitions is that it's just the normal learning. Like it's how we learn anything. It's just sometimes like there's a like a weird glitch in the system or in the environment that leads you to like connect to things and then

[00:51:29] that's passed down culturally. And that's pretty fucking interesting. Right. Or like you could even see yourself getting super like I can intuit why a baseball player might not want to change their socks when they've had like a streak because

[00:51:42] like that's actually like something I think that is normal about our psychology. We're connecting things. And sometimes those connections actually start getting weird but obviously not weird to people who believe them. But weird in the sense that they don't match. They're not consistent with the other ways they

[00:52:01] understand how the universe operates. Right. And it's just hard to undo that like in yourself. It really seems like if you've learned these things through the normal mechanisms which is either you've been told it by like the culture

[00:52:15] over and over again or you've actually made the connection on your own. Like it feels a little Pascal's wager sometimes to ignore it. So I would want to separate that although I think that is an explanation. Sometimes let's just not

[00:52:30] roll the dice or let's you know. There's no reason to run the chance that Jack could just as easily do it on Saturday the 14th. And then there is what I think is maybe the more common thing where when you're acting on it you fully

[00:52:43] believe it's important that you do it. You know like the thing that you did. It's not that you were like you know on the slight chance that it could have an impact. I'm going to get mad at you. Well you were just when you were mad at him

[00:52:57] you were wholeheartedly mad at him for doing that. Jenks even if maybe there was some part of you there like I mean this is bullshit. I'm playing a part. But I think like you get mad about this stuff or you just knock wood not because

[00:53:12] you think like well better safe than sorry. It's like no you got to knock wood if you just said something good was going to happen. Right. So that that does get to something that's at the heart of what I want to talk to you about. I think

[00:53:24] maybe it's worth saying how exactly how they measured these things. Do you want to go through the list of superstitions. Yeah. I don't love the list. No. But like also these were all Israelis so I assume that there's some cultural stuff that

[00:53:37] that I don't. You might know what they ask people to do is to rate one how familiar they were with the superstition. So if they don't know actually they just ask them are you familiar with it. Yes or no. And then they ask them to what extent

[00:53:55] they practice it and to what extent they believe it. And those were on both on five point scales. If you make a wish when you see a flying star will come true. Sir asked are you familiar with it. Do you believe this. Do you practice it. If

[00:54:05] you cross your fingers before an important test it will help you succeed. If you make a wish when an eyelash falls it will come true. That's the one I forgot about. But yeah I totally forgot about that one but I used to do that like I'd

[00:54:18] still do it. Jenna and I would do that all the time. Yeah. Yeah. If you lose something in the house I've never heard this one. If you lose something in the house you should turn over a glass and you will find it. No but that's awesome.

[00:54:27] I can't try it. Like I'm constantly losing things in my house. Right. So some negative ones. Those are all positive ones some negative ones if you pass under a ladder will bring you bad luck. I know that one. I believe that you see a black

[00:54:41] cat passing you should spit to prevent bad luck. You know there was anything you could do about that. I didn't either. The spit thing is not anything I've ever heard. Some more positive ones. If you enter a room with the right foot first it

[00:54:52] will promote good luck. See this is where I'm going to like the mild OCD that I sometimes experience is going to like start getting to me. Now I'm going to mild. It's genetic. If you put a horseshoe on the wall of your house it will bring

[00:55:06] you good luck. Yeah. I mean I know horseshoes are lucky. Yeah. You guys have like the Ten Commandments or whatever. Perfect analogy. If you scatter salt upon entrance to a new home it will bring you good luck. I've not heard that one. I

[00:55:23] think that's a Jewish is right. You know slash Israeli one. Yeah because I have If you put a Hamza on the wall of your house it will prevent the evil eye. What's

[00:55:30] a Hamza? Do you know that? No. Never heard of it. Evil eye is a huge thing. Yeah. Everywhere else in the world is a huge thing. What is it? Actually I don't even

[00:55:38] know what the evil eye is. Man evil eye is like I don't know. It's not something I was taught but apparently all of my South American family is like of course there's such a thing as an evil eye. It's just like you can get it's like somebody

[00:55:51] can curse you by the way they look at you but I think it's oftentimes like associated with you like oh man I'm gonna get this wrong. Maybe like being being raggedocious but I think that the common denominator is just that some

[00:56:09] people can look at you in a particular way that will curse you. More frequently malice toward an envy of prosperity and beauty are thought to be the cause. Thus in medieval Europe it was considered unlucky to be praised or to have one's

[00:56:23] children or positions praised so some qualifying phrase such as as God wills or God bless it is commonly used. So it's kind of jinx like jinxy. Those most often accused of casting the evil eye include strangers, malformed individuals,

[00:56:36] childless women, and old women. Okay so you can cast it. Yeah the power of the evil eye is sometimes held to be involuntary. Oh so maybe it's malice so if you say like oh my daughter is doing so good in college to me maybe it's my

[00:56:54] own envy of your family success that will cause me to cast the evil eye on you. So if I'm involuntarily. Oh if your life is doing great and you're like. That's why yeah that's why like and I heard my Muslim students tell me this in Qatar where

[00:57:09] they're like that's that's why you say if God wills at the end of that. Because otherwise your envy will cause bad luck. Yeah yeah right and so so you have to like say something very humble at the end of that braggadocious statement like

[00:57:21] it's God's will or else I might have envy in my heart and cast an evil eye. You know it's funny because like I don't obviously I don't say as God wills if I'm talking about something good but sometimes I will try to like temper it

[00:57:35] just to not seem like I'm telling you that my life is like better than yours or something like that you know what I mean. So I think it probably feeds from the same impulse. I think that's right yeah yeah. Okay so I'm sure we'll get a

[00:57:51] lot of mail about the evil eye. If you celebrate a birthday before its date it will bring you bad luck. I don't know that but that makes sense to me. Yeah I think that definitely is true. Also like like a curb episode like you can't hold

[00:58:04] a birthday party like 10 days after your birthday. It's like you missed your chance, you had it, you missed it, you'll have another birthday. If you encounter oh no wait this is a weird one if you pass a knife or scissors between people

[00:58:17] they will fight. I've never. Isn't that disproven all the time? That seems weird. Oh like right like I've said pass me the scissors and like my wife and daughter haven't gotten like started clawing each other's eyes out. Maybe we've just been

[00:58:31] like hit the lottery. You've been very, you've poured enough salt on your threshold. If they ask me to pass it I'll just be like no but I am laying it down on the table right now. I'll throw it. If you encounter the number seven it will bring you good luck. Sure. If you see a gecko in your house it will bring you good luck. I should have much better luck than I have.

[00:58:55] If we get geckos in our house. You don't know the counterfactual, you don't know the alternate universe where there's no geckos.

[00:59:01] That's true. If a bird poops on your head it will bring you good luck. That just sounds like ssss. That's all you tell people to make them feel better about. It would have been nice to know that like I remember there was one time like eight years ago or something like that where it was just the worst example of that. Just this big thing of shit on my head and I thought oh that sucks I just got shit on by a bird I didn't think like oh my god. You didn't pay attention to all the good things that followed.

[00:59:30] You never connected. If your right hand itches you will get money. Never heard that. If you spill salt it will bring you bad luck. That's one that I actually sometimes do throw salt over my shoulder. Really? Yeah. But that's bad it'll bring you bad luck.

[00:59:45] No if you spill the salt on the table the way to counteract that is to like throw some over your shoulder which just pisses off. Walking under a ladder is one that I actually kind of practice except for when I'm feeling very perverse and I like shake my fist at the universe.

[01:00:00] I take it for you as a toxic rationalist you would just say you completely disbelieve 100% in none of them. So every time you act like all the frequent times that you act according to some of them is all miscalibrated right?

[01:00:17] Yeah. But here's where I get at like so why am I doing it and I think that I was left wanting some a bit more analysis about this because I think that there could be different reasons why you do it.

[01:00:31] Like one it's kind of a fun game to play like it's just like it makes life a little interesting you throw some salt over your shoulder or whatever. Or like you realize other people are gonna notice what you're doing and it's kind of funny or I don't know.

[01:00:43] And then there's the part where like you might actually think halfsies where you're like well I'm not quite sure like this might actually bring bad luck. Again you were very mad at Yoel and it wasn't like oh what a fun game we're playing.

[01:00:55] It was not a fun game but it could but it was kind of a game so I'll give it an analogy. I don't feel very competitive like about achievement stuff like sports or whatever.

[01:01:04] And I remember when I was in high school when we'd play pickup basketball and we'd lose. Like players on my team would be like fuck man they're gonna get super pissed and I would do the same thing.

[01:01:14] I'd be like fuck yeah man this sucks and at some point I realized that like they actually meant it. They were actually upset and I just thought it was something we were all doing.

[01:01:22] Like at the very most it was because we couldn't keep playing because when you lose in pickup you have to not play. But it felt like a social script to me. Yeah I mean obviously if that's how you're approaching it that's how you're approaching it.

[01:01:37] I wouldn't find that like even in cases where as in most of these I think like obviously there's nothing to them. But when I'm acting according to them I don't feel like I'm playing a sort of like I will do it.

[01:01:50] I guess maybe an interesting contrast is are you doing it when you're alone? Yeah that would be interesting yeah. Actually now that I think of it I probably do this stuff less a lot less alone. Alone yeah.

[01:02:03] I knock on wood but it would be in a conversation with somebody else. Yeah I mean I don't really knock on I don't do that one but my daughter takes it very seriously.

[01:02:13] And well if like I knock on wood in addition just because like I'm following the script that's bad because now there's been two knocks so now we have to throw salt behind us or spit or something. Do you think she's a calibrated believer about that?

[01:02:26] It's a good question like I think more so I've been defending this contrast of like stated versus practice but maybe at a certain point the distinction breaks down because you know if I'm like okay Omar will die if you don't get the answer to this question right. Right.

[01:02:46] Does it really matter if you know you jinx something without knocking wood? She would say no and I don't think it would she would struggle with that question but at the same time I don't think it's right that it's that miscalibrated either.

[01:03:02] This is where you know this is where I think that this paper and or these ideas actually could extend far beyond superstitious beliefs. I think that we you might have like a whole bunch of religious people

[01:03:18] who are in the same boat as we are with and by the way I find like both of these segments today I find it so hard to to speak with any authority about what my inner process is where I'm like I don't do I believe it?

[01:03:29] Because you're just this you're a freak. No but you know I'm saying like I don't know what like am I am I saying is what I'm saying accurately representing do I really not believe like am I am I really going through a script most of the time?

[01:03:45] I don't know. Right now that's a really interesting thought actually that this is a script but like when you're following a script you can get yourself in the mindset of believing the script.

[01:03:59] I'll say with yeah with the Yoel thing and I think it's I think you might resonate with this there is a part of really believing in some of this stuff like with sports

[01:04:11] that ups the ante and makes the enjoyment stronger for me and it's akin to like why you would bet maybe to like raise the stakes because there is this good feeling like okay if I'm all in

[01:04:23] it's a it's a more fun experience like I'm gonna be all in on this world cup and that means I'm gonna get mad when the ref calls bullshit and I'm gonna get mad when people

[01:04:32] jinx it like that there is where I'm just like in the zone and maybe in those moments like give me an IAT or whatever I really believe that like you know my team gets fouled more and called less.

[01:04:43] And also you get actually mad at the ref like it's yeah it's it you know I think the fun part is like lie will you shut him up. See this is how you spread hate generationally.

[01:04:57] Yeah Tamler is heard to be saying shut the fuck up to his dog on multiple occasions. Break the cycle Tamler break the cycle. With the refs and you get mad at the refs it kind of makes it more fun but it also makes

[01:05:11] it more stressful and whereas I think with the jinxing it is like it's almost fun when your friend jinxes a team on the group text and you can just rag on them for it you know

[01:05:26] like and so there I think this idea of a social script is kind of interesting it is even though you're playing along and you can definitely get mad in the moment you it is just part

[01:05:38] of the making the whole experience richer and we all accept that when we're doing it you know and if somebody is like well there's no way like there could be a causal impact and it's just like fuck off.

[01:05:54] You know when Joel heard the first time when I was saying how aggri was he he's like dude I just heard the episode man I'm sorry and I was like no I'm not actually mad at you.

[01:06:04] Right it is it's like you both are it's Schrodinger kind of thing it's like I think that's true with a lot of this stuff that makes it hard to just completely isolate

[01:06:14] well my degree in stated belief is this and my degree in practice is this and I think partly it's because of exactly what you're saying that with both those things you know like our kind of social scripts are playing a role.

[01:06:29] There's another thing I want to say so I was saying that I think this can be extended to all kinds of belief but I think superstitions are interesting because I think that we acquire

[01:06:37] rational beliefs through the same mechanisms and it's just a matter of like does the thing happen to whatever be right like on whatever theory of right so like I think that people are quite superstitious about their recycling I got people get really antsy about doing

[01:06:53] it the right way and putting the right stuff in and probably shit all either gets sorted or it doesn't like if it were really that flimsy of a mechanism that like it mattered

[01:07:04] whether you had it in one of the right three things it probably wouldn't work very well but people get really really they have a kind of emotional like emotive reaction that like they

[01:07:15] it's almost compulsive if they see you put something in to the wrong bin they'll get upset I think that might be the same mechanism. Plastic just doesn't really get recycled you know like so it really doesn't matter where you put the plastic because it's getting thrown out

[01:07:29] Now if I acquire a belief say about my car emissions I think that like I'm like it might be actually the case that rationally like my car emissions do not like all said and done like it

[01:07:43] does nothing for global warming but you kind of have to have this this mechanism where you acquire a belief so that like as a as a people as a whole like if we all feel that way maybe something will

[01:07:54] happen. So it's just by analogy because I know superstitions are on very different epistemic ground than some of these other beliefs but I think that like the similar mechanisms are guiding a lot of our everyday behavior we don't know like we don't see direct causal evidence for

[01:08:09] most of the things that we do so we have to kind of go on faith that they're they're having an effect Yeah it's a when it's working well it's a kind of ritual that makes life richer and better

[01:08:21] and makes you a better person and when it's bad it's doing the opposite of that but like I think you know we always talked about this with the distinction between Christianity and Judaism where Judaism is very heavily on like focused on practice and not that focused on belief

[01:08:40] like yeah whatever you say there's no God just do the Shabbat and fast on Yom Kippur and and that's fine you know whereas like in Christianity it's not like that but probably

[01:08:54] in both cases like there is going to be a continuum there as well and the people who go to church like yeah do I believe no but I like going to church with my family you know it's the

[01:09:06] same kind of deal as the people who go to temple yeah right and you take your kids because like I don't know it might matter you know like when you have to think about it for your kids all of

[01:09:16] a sudden you're like I maybe it's like it's like one big knocking on wood experiment you know Did I tell you this story? I don't know if I've told this story. My dad was so my dad was a rabbi

[01:09:28] briefly and went to yeshiva was rabbinical college. I didn't know he was a rabbi. Yeah very briefly it's a funny story about how he got out of that but I'll save that for another podcast but

[01:09:38] he was a student of a very famous rabbi Soloveitchik and one time my dad was struggling with doubts and he was you know he was already getting attracted to the sinful world of analytic philosophy

[01:09:51] and asked Soloveitchik like what's the like I'm starting to doubt the existence of God I mean what evidence do we have for it? Do you believe do you really believe in God? And my dad the way he

[01:10:04] told the story he would say well and it's how I live my life absolutely but intellectually it's 50-50. And just that idea right right you know is I like that you know it's like yeah

[01:10:26] you know but that's that's a more Jewish thing like that's something that makes sense in the Jewish script more than in the Christian script. For sure there's this there's an old Rosen and Cohen paper Paul Rosen and Adam Cohen paper where they look at the difference between

[01:10:42] Christian and Jewish students and how they evaluate like beliefs and intentions like mental states basically versus behaviors and they show that this is actually true that you know if if the Jewish man who hates his parents but nonetheless is a dutiful son and takes care of

[01:10:59] them and tells them he loves them but secretly hates them like that's a good guy. For like Christians that's like what you hate your parents like that's terrible right? Yeah just do the thing

[01:11:12] I think there's a deep wisdom to that. Yeah and I think for a lot of superstitions I mean like I feel like superstitions you know however I fall on the scale of belief and practice like the ones

[01:11:25] that I do like I feel like make life better rather than worse. I can imagine that it might make life worse and especially maybe at a group level it probably leads to a lot of persecution

[01:11:36] and if it's so and prejudice but those you know like these more benign superstitions I think are fun. They're kind of fun until until someone gets hit in the head with a glass because you

[01:11:47] said no hitter. Yeah right but they did they had that coming. It's fun for you. There's a punishment consequences for not learning the social script. I do feel bad for the poor person who has no idea that that's a thing that you're not supposed to

[01:12:04] say. Yeah well then I think people actually feel like if they actually don't know it then it's less likely to have an impact on the game. There's a complicated mechanism to this.

[01:12:21] Well here's a question. Now normally my like just in general if we were talking about a paper like this I would think the methods of trying to analyze this quantitatively are way too crude

[01:12:35] as likely to distort as they are to inform blah blah blah. In this one I'm a little torn just because I think while I don't buy some of the more complex you know associations they make

[01:12:50] between like anxiety or the pandemic or whatever it's kind of interesting that you know just getting a very low number for people who practice and report complete disbelief and superstitions is pretty interesting. Now I don't know it's not like I looked at the math like I didn't

[01:13:08] the data collada guys can tell me that some of this stuff is is bullshit but just the idea They're never going to say anything again. They'll be like this paper is beyond reproach.

[01:13:22] But like just people who are calibrated are 15 percent is kind of interesting you know I'm not sure I would I might have guessed a little higher for calibration you know yeah. There is a sort of too much faith on the precision of measuring these things

[01:13:39] but like if you just look at the means the correlations I think it's saying something when somebody is like on average their belief score is high and their practice score is low. The calibration part I thought was a little tricky because like it relies on like two numbers

[01:13:56] lining up perfectly so like imagine us answering the scales so well like that that it captured we said at three when we meant to three and we didn't kind of read it differently and read it

[01:14:09] as a two. Never mind just how good are we at interpreting our actual experience. Exactly so the calibration if I'm understanding it right the calibration score seemed like a pretty high bar because it requires both numbers to be like the same and which requires all of

[01:14:24] those things to exactly the same. Yeah yeah they're doing some sort of different score so like if you yeah if they perfect yeah but that doesn't mean that the that that's not still saying

[01:14:37] something that like the people who are those two scores are closer together like seem to be in a smaller group than the people who's right like the biggest group if I remember correctly

[01:14:48] the biggest group was the people who don't they say they don't believe that much but they practice nonetheless yeah and then this paradoxical other group what do you make of those people who say

[01:14:57] they believe but don't practice is that just are they just lazy? Yeah it's weird like it's a very common phenomenon like I believe it's wrong always to eat meat that might come from a factory farm

[01:15:10] but occasionally like I will do it if I'm out at a restaurant and I'm like they don't say and whatever but like with superstitions it's a little weirder because. Right seems like why would you

[01:15:21] walk under a ladder if you really believe that it would be bad like unless you're suicidal. Maybe it's kind of that new part of this new gen z nihilism it's like fuck it. Well it's like Paul Bloom's idea

[01:15:33] of perverse action you know like when you do something just because. Yeah this is where my I get kind of almost postmodern about something like this because like do I think that there are exactly 15 percent of the people in the world are well calibrated have well calibrated beliefs

[01:15:53] no not even like that would be silly to think that any that there's even any more reason to believe that now than there was before but I think like it still tells you something and it gets and

[01:16:05] importantly it just gets you to think about this stuff like even just in the course of this conversation I think I've changed my view on the fact that it's good to have these two scales and

[01:16:14] to keep them distinct and compare them to each other and see how they interact and now I'm wondering if that's too simple even that's too simple but just like I didn't I wasn't thinking

[01:16:23] about this issue at all before you know and how to like delineate different things and make the right demarcations. Right I think there's always going to be a lot of noise and stuff like this but I'm

[01:16:36] I'm convinced that there is something you know to the extent that say you and I differ like a rough scale like this is not that bad it's almost qualitative it's almost just asking us. Right maybe that's why I kind of like it is it's almost qualitative.

[01:16:51] Yeah it's like well look like I kind of believe or I like really believe and like you and I we know from a long conversation that we'll have different levels of belief in in certain things

[01:17:00] and a five-point scale seems at least in like a believe to not believe unlike that first thing that we took where we were kind of perplexed at the at the questions. Right you could interpret them radically different ways a lot of the questions whereas these it's

[01:17:16] like like how much do you believe this actually and I guess the reporting on practice is probably a little trickier than we might think. Maybe yeah but no I think it's I think it's a good step like

[01:17:26] a and I think that this is something that weirdly hasn't gotten enough attention. You know I thought that this related maybe to the internalism externalism debate in philosophy but it really doesn't that's really I looked into it I stared into like just the black hole.

[01:17:44] Now this is internalism externalism in epistemology which yeah which is really about justification okay it's it's almost exclusively about justification and that's not what this about right obviously but I think it's maybe related to like functionalists about belief

[01:18:00] versus representationalists or you know you might think that if you're more of a functionalist about belief then to to really figure out whether you believe something you also have to take your

[01:18:12] behavior into account whereas with I don't know if like I didn't I barely looked into this but I think this other more traditional view is that your beliefs are what you say they are after

[01:18:24] you've reflected on the question and if you act in a way that diverges from that then you're just being around your actions are irrational when compared to your belief but I mean if I'm right

[01:18:39] and if not and then this position is open then some graduate student please take it. But like I would imagine functionalism is something like no we take everything about how you're you're behaving in addition to like stating or reporting to determine your beliefs.

[01:18:59] Yeah it reminds me of economists when they talk about revealed preferences where your behavior is your choice like your actual behavior is the best metric of what you prefer even if you say like I love I love Wheaties but you never actually buy it yeah or like that

[01:19:18] classic Netflix example of putting all the documentaries in your to watch list but only watching Marvel movies you say like no I really love documentaries but they could be like well in this case like I don't know what you mean by that because you're just not watching them.

[01:19:32] Yeah that's a really interesting question to me maybe our beliefs aren't transparent to us and we have this different kind of self-image than the facts and then so I guess it's terminological ultimately but like it makes more sense maybe to say well you don't love

[01:19:51] documentaries because you watched one documentary in the last two years you know. So like you may say you do and you may believe that you do. Yeah right. If you're actually talking about whether you do or not that's probably it's at least relevant information.

[01:20:10] Yeah no this whole internalism externalism thing and then you get into more action theory stuff these are interesting questions but you get in very quickly into like the eighth circle of analytic philosophy hell.

[01:20:24] But I'm excited that you even got this far this is see you say you don't like analytic philosophy and here you are talking. The functionalist actually takes twin in one twin earth if this works. All right any last thoughts about this?

[01:20:44] Only that I'm that this episode has made me really suspicious of my introspective abilities. I don't know what I believe I don't know what I think anymore. Yeah I guess for me my final thought is I just feel so bad for these large like corporations

[01:20:59] how much money they lose on Friday. 800 to 900 million. Yeah and I hope this paper can go some way and like fixing that problem for them. Okay but people really not staying on the 13th floor is kind of funny.

[01:21:13] Yeah right and some hotels not like you know how some hotels will just go from 12 to 14. So are those four like people on the 14th floor who might not know this are they fucked now? How does that work? Is it just if you don't say.

[01:21:25] Don't they all know that they're actually on the 13th floor or do they really believe like that they created like a thin sliver of a floor just to make sure that it was the 14th floor? That's a really good question or are they just

[01:21:37] taking advantage of these people that they don't notice like how the floor system works you know. They maybe even have on the elevator nobody ever gets off but there is a phantom 13th floor that actually doesn't exist but the elevator is programmed to show

[01:21:52] that it goes to the 13th floor. People aren't counting windows when they stay in a hotel. So right all right food for thought. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.