David McRaney's Blog, page 16
May 19, 2020
YANSS 180 – How too much efficiency coupled with too little slack can cause complex systems to fail and why we ran out of toilet paper because of it
In this episode we sit down with Chris Clearfield, author of Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It.
He says about his book, “By understanding what lies behind these failures, we can design better systems, make our teams more productive, and transform how we make decisions at work and at home.”
[image error]Chris is the founder of System Logic, an independent research and consulting firm focusing on the challenges posed by risk and complexity. He has written about catastrophic failure for The Guardian, Forbes, Nautilus, and the Harvard Business Review blog. Also, as a high school student, he discovered a spinning neutron star with two of his peers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Oh, and he’s a licensed commercial pilot.
In the show, we engage in a two-hour, sprawling, rambling, intense nerd-out over efficiency, complexity, meltdowns, cascading failures, social change, mind change, network science and more.
Omny – Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
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YANSS 179 – How a psychologist convinced 70 percent of subjects they were guilty of a crime they didn’t commit, and other stories about the fallibility of memory
Our guest on this episode is Dr. Julia Shaw, the author of The Memory Illusion.
Julia is famous among psychologists because she was able to implant false memories into a group of subjects and convince 70 percent of them that they were guilty of a crime they did not commit, and she did so by using the sort of sloppy interrogation techniques that some police departments have been truly been guilty of using in the past.
From her book’s website: “In The Memory Illusion, Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our memory can indeed be led astray. Fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, the international bestseller The Memory Illusion has been translated into 20 languages and offers a unique insight into the human brain, challenging you to question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.”
Omny – Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
[image error]Dr. Julia Shaw is a psychologist best known for her work in the areas of memory and criminal psychology. In 2017 Dr. Shaw co-founded the memory science and artificial intelligence start-up Spot. Spot helps employees report workplace harassment and discrimination, and empowers organizations to build a more inclusive and respectful work environment. In 2016 she published her bestselling debut book The Memory Illusion, which has appeared in 20 languages. In 2019 she published her second international bestseller Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side. TWITTER: @drjuliashaw
Links and Sources
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April 20, 2020
YANSS 178 – Why conspiratorial thinking has gone mainstream, why facts don’t always persuade people, and other lessons we can learn from those of us who are pretty sure the Earth is flat
In this episode we sit down with the director and producers of the documentary film, Behind the Curve, an exploration of motivated reasoning and conspiratorial thinking told through the lives of people who have formed a community around the belief that the Earth is flat.
Also in this episode, we spend time with political scientist Joseph E. Uscinski who researches conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them.
In the show, you hear from these conversations that, like most conspiracy theorists, Flat Earthers are usually reasonable, intelligent, scientifically curious people. They love their families, they hold down jobs, they pay their bills and so on. In other words, they aren’t crazy or stupid.
So, what leads reasonable, intelligent, scientifically curious people into fringe beliefs such as these? What makes a smart person susceptible to conspiratorial thinking? Why doesn’t counterevidence seem to sway them? You will learn all that and more in the episode.
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This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. Get unlimited access to a huge library of The Great Courses lecture series on many fascinating subjects. Start FOR FREE with Your Deceptive Mind taught by neurologist Steven Novella. Learn about how your mind makes sense of the world by lying to itself and others. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
• You can also support the show by donating through PayPal at this link.
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The Study of Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy Theories Can’t Be Stopped
Meta-Analysis of Psychological Research on Conspiracy Beliefs
YANSS Episode on Conspiratorial Thinking
April 5, 2020
YANSS 177 – Why people waited so long to take precautions against COVID-19, how to better persuade those who still refuse, and how to take bettercare of your mental health during isolation
Flatten the curve.
That idea has spread through the population faster than COVID-19 ever could.
That’s the power of culture, of human psychology, of brains interacting with brains. Of course, culture and human psychology and brains interacting with brains are also how the virus spread to begin to with, and that is what this show is about — the psychology behind the spread, and the prevention of the spread, of COVID-19.
When I asked followers on Twitter what kind of show they would want if I did a show about the psychology of this moment, the answer I received the most was, “Why aren’t people staying at home?” so, that’s the first thing we talk about (even though we may soon be asking, “Why DIDN’T people stay at home?”)
The second most-asked question was “how do we persuade people, in times like this, to take precautions and follow guidelines?” so that is segment two. And the other topic most requested was how do to deal with anxiety and loneliness and relationships right now. So, that is segment three.
This is a show with six experts, answering all of this, across three segments: Why we respond to situations like this in the way that we do, how to encourage people to respond differently both now and in the future, and how to take care of yourself during a long period of isolation?
– SEGMENT ONE: 5:00
– SEGMENT TWO: 50:00
– SEGMENT THREE: 1:18:00
Oh, and #GoVictorian
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[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
[image error]Dr. Julia Shaw is a psychologist best known for her work in the areas of memory and criminal psychology. In 2017 Dr. Shaw co-founded the memory science and artificial intelligence start-up Spot. Spot helps employees report workplace harassment and discrimination, and empowers organizations to build a more inclusive and respectful work environment. In 2016 she published her bestselling debut book The Memory Illusion, which has appeared in 20 languages. In 2019 she published her second international bestseller Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side. TWITTER: @drjuliashaw
[image error]Dr. Joe Hanson, is a science writer, biologist, and YouTube educator. He is the creator and host of It’s Okay To Be Smart, an award-winning science education show from PBS Digital Studios that celebrates curiosity and the pleasure of finding things out. His science writing has been published by WIRED, Nautilus, Scientific American and Texas Monthly. TWITTER: @DrJoeHanson
Amie M. Gordon[image error] is an assistant professor of psychology and the director of the Well-being, Health, and Interpersonal Relationships Lab (WHIRL) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She studies the ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors shape our close relationships. She writes regularly at Psychology Today under the column Between You and Me. TWITTER:
[image error]From “neurons to social networks,” Jay Van Bavel studies how collective concerns like morals, group identity, and political beliefs affect human brains. His team at the Social Evaluation and Perception Lab studies these issues using social neuroscience, and approach that uses neuroimaging, lesion patients, and linguistic analysis of social media to examine how humans in groups affect the beliefs and perceptions of other humans in groups. TWITTER: @jayvanbavel
[image error]Richard Chataway is Vice President of BVA Nudge Unit UK and founder of Communication Science Group, and one of the most experienced behavioral science practitioners in the UK. His new book is, The Behavior Business. He has worked in senior strategic roles for government in Australia. France, and the UK, and for the four largest advertising agency groups, addressing behavioral challenges as varied as getting people to stop smoking, join the armed forces, drink spirits rather than wine, prevent domestic violence, pay for university tuition, submit their taxes, buy flatpack furniture, and take public transport – to name a few. TWITTER: @rich_chataway
Dr. Jud Brewer[image error] is the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love — Why We Get Hooked and how We Can Break Bad Habits— and his TED Talk on how to change a bad habit has more than 12 million views. He is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. His apps, mentioned in the show, are available at the link. TWITTER: @judbrewer
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The Human Response to Disasters
MUSIC PROVIDED BY: Mogwai, Espanto, Fin Taylor, Twin Musicom, Incompetech
March 25, 2020
YANSS 176 – How a divisive photograph of a perceptually ambiguous dress led two researchers to build the nuclear bomb of cognitive science out of socks and Crocs – Part Two
When facing a novel and uncertain situation, the brain secretly disambiguates the ambiguous without letting you know it was ever uncertain in the first place, leading people who disambiguate differently to seem iNsAnE.
This episode is about the science behind The Dress, why some people see it as black and blue, and others see it as white and gold. But it’s also about how the scientific investigation of The Dress lead to the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs, and how the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs may be, as one researcher told me, the nuclear bomb of cognitive neuroscience.
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[image error]“How do people construct the subjective reality they inhabit?” That’s the question at the center of the work of Pascal Wallisch, who studies how human beings differ in the their interpretations of the objective truth. As part of that work, he has been the go-to scientist when it comes to making sense of The Dress, the Yanny/Laurel illusion, and several other viral phenomena on the internet. In 2017, he produced a study explaining exactly why some people saw the dress as one color, and others saw it as another. And in 2019, he produced another study replicating the conditions of the dress in the lab using socks and Crocs.
[image error]Michael Karlovich is a cognitive scientist and vision researcher who explores “computational methods to create digital art, and to combine these novel methods with principles of visual-neuroscience and gestalt psychology to produce visual displays that ‘captures the brain’s attention,’ and further, produce positive impressions within a majority of viewers.”
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
Links and Sources
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
The Debate that Broke the Internet
The Drama that Divided the Planet
Exploring the Roots of Disagreement with Crocs and Socks
View this post on InstagramA post shared by David McRaney (@davidmcraney) on Dec 15, 2019 at 2:42pm PST
[image error]There are no red pixels in this created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka
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YANSS 176 – How socks and Crocs reveal the science behind why we can share an opinion about something that doesn’t feel like an opinion
Priors are what neuroscientists and philosophers call the years of experience and regularity leading up to the present. All the ways a ball has bounced, all the ways a pancake has tasted, the way the dogs in your life have barks, or bitten, or hugged you when you were sad — these all shape the brain, literally. They form and prune our neural networks, so in situations that are uncertain, unfamiliar or ambiguous, we depend on those priors to help us disambiguate the new information coming into the brain via our senses.
But what happens when we don’t share those priors?
This episode is about the science behind The Dress, why some people see it as black and blue, and others see it as white and gold. But it’s also about how the scientific investigation of The Dress lead to the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs, and how the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs may be, as one researcher told me, the nuclear bomb of cognitive neuroscience.
[image error]
[image error]“How do people construct the subjective reality they inhabit?” That’s the question at the center of the work of Pascal Wallisch, who studies how human beings differ in the their interpretations of the objective truth. As part of that work, he has been the go-to scientist when it comes to making sense of The Dress, the Yanny/Laurel illusion, and several other viral phenomena on the internet. In 2017, he produced a study explaining exactly why some people saw the dress as one color, and others saw it as another. And in 2019, he produced another study replicating the conditions of the dress in the lab using socks and Crocs.
[image error]Michael Karlovich is a cognitive scientist and vision researcher who explores “computational methods to create digital art, and to combine these novel methods with principles of visual-neuroscience and gestalt psychology to produce visual displays that ‘captures the brain’s attention,’ and further, produce positive impressions within a majority of viewers.”
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
Links and Sources
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
The Debate that Broke the Internet
The Drama that Divided the Planet
Exploring the Roots of Disagreement with Crocs and Socks
[image error]There are no red pixels in this created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka
[image error]
[image error]
March 9, 2020
YANSS 175 – How a divisive photograph of a perceptually ambiguous dress led two researchers to build the nuclear bomb of cognitive science out of socks and Crocs – Part One
Back in 2015, before Brexit, before Clinton vs. Trump, before weaponized Macedonian internet trolls, one NPR affiliate called the mass epistemic crisis created by The Dress, “The debate that broke the internet,” and The Washington Post referred to that moment of widespread existential confusion as “The drama that divided the planet.”
This episode is about the science behind The Dress, why some people see it as black and blue, and others see it as white and gold. But it’s also about how the scientific investigation of The Dress lead to the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs, and how the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs may be, as one researcher told me, the nuclear bomb of cognitive neuroscience.
[image error]
[image error]“How do people construct the subjective reality they inhabit?” That’s the question at the center of the work of Pascal Wallisch, who studies how human beings differ in the their interpretations of the objective truth. As part of that work, he has been the go-to scientist when it comes to making sense of The Dress, the Yanny/Laurel illusion, and several other viral phenomena on the internet. In 2017, he produced a study explaining exactly why some people saw the dress as one color, and others saw it as another. And in 2019, he produced another study replicating the conditions of the dress in the lab using socks and Crocs.
[image error]Michael Karlovich is a cognitive scientist and vision researcher who explores “computational methods to create digital art, and to combine these novel methods with principles of visual-neuroscience and gestalt psychology to produce visual displays that ‘captures the brain’s attention,’ and further, produce positive impressions within a majority of viewers.”
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
Links and Sources
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
The Debate that Broke the Internet
The Drama that Divided the Planet
Exploring the Roots of Disagreement with Crocs and Socks
[image error]There are no red pixels in this created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka
[image error]
YANSS 175 – How a divisive photograph of a perceptually ambiguous dress lead one researcher to build the nuclear bomb of cognitive science out of socks and Crocs – Part One
Back in 2015, before Brexit, before Clinton vs. Trump, before weaponized Macedonian internet trolls, one NPR affiliate called the mass epistemic crisis created by The Dress, “The debate that broke the internet,” and The Washington Post referred to that moment of widespread existential confusion as “The drama that divided the planet.”
This episode is about the science behind The Dress, why some people see it as black and blue, and others see it as white and gold. But it’s about how the scientific investigation of The Dress lead to the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs, and how the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs may be, as one researcher told me, the nuclear bomb of cognitive neuroscience.
[image error]
[image error]“How do people construct the subjective reality they inhabit?” That’s the question at the center of the work of Pascal Wallisch, who studies how human beings differ in the their interpretations of the objective truth. As part of that work, he has been the go-to scientist when it comes to making sense of The Dress, the Yanny/Laurel illusion, and several other viral phenomena on the internet. In 2017, he produced a study explaining exactly why some people saw the dress as one color, and others saw it as another. And in 2019, he produced another study replicating the conditions of the dress in the lab using socks and Crocs.
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
There are no red pixels in this image:
[image error]
Links and Sources
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud
The Debate that Broke the Internet
The Drama that Divided the Planet
Exploring the Roots of Disagreement with Crocs and Socks
February 26, 2020
YANSS 174 – Who speaks for science when evidence can be twisted, ignored, and selectively presented to support just about any conclusion?
In this episode, we sit down with vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit to discuss his new book, Bad Advice or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information.
Offit has been fighting for years to educate the public, promote vaccines, and oppose the efforts of anti-vaxxers, and in his new book he offers advice for science consumers and communicators on how to deal with what he calls the opaque window of modern media which often gives equal time to non-experts when it comes to discussing vaccination and other medical issues.
[image error]Offit likes to say, “Science doesn’t speak for itself.” Someone always speaks for it. Evidence can be twisted, ignored, and selectively presented to support just about any conclusion. Although scientists and other experts are the best source of information about the topics they study, they aren’t always great communicators, he says, and so the media instead gathers around those who are — celebrities, politicians, activists, lobbyists and other camera-savvy non-experts who often cause harm with misleading and incorrect interpretations of facts that ignore the scientific method that produced those facts in the first place.
He urges scientists to learn from his own mistakes over the years as he slowly figured how to deliver medical advice and scientific summations in a way that clearly and simply communicates what we know so far without inflaming fears or providing fuel for conspiratorial thinking.
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Soundcloud
This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. Get unlimited access to a huge library of The Great Courses lecture series on many fascinating subjects. Start FOR FREE with Your Deceptive Mind taught by neurologist Steven Novella. Learn about how your mind makes sense of the world by lying to itself and others. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.
[image error]You spend one third of your life in sheets — don’t you want them to be comfortable? Home of the internet’s favorite sheets, Brooklinen’s got more than 50,000 5-star reviews and counting. Brooklinen is so confident in their product that all their sheets, comforters, loungewear and towels come with a lifetime warranty! Get 10% off your first order and free shipping on all the new “sheet” when you use promo code YANSS only at Brooklinen.com. Visit Brooklinen’s first store, in Brooklyn, at 127 Kent Ave in Williamsburg.
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
• You can also support the show by donating through PayPal at this link.
• Survey with chance for $100 Amazon gift card: podsurvey.com/sosmart
[image error]From his official bio, “Paul Offit is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day.” Offit is a professor of vaccinology and pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit has published more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals. He is the author of ten books on science and medicine.
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YANSS 173 – How our differing relationship with norms predicts cultural evolution, innovation, and conflict
In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Michele Gelfand and discuss her new book: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World.
In the book, Gelfand presents her research into norms, along with a fascinating new idea. It isn’t norms themselves that predict how cultures will react, evolve, innovate, and clash, but how different cultures value norms and sanction people who violate them. Through that lens, she categorizes all human cultures into two — kinds, tight and loose.
Tight cultures heavily sanction norm violators. Loose cultures value leniency. Zoomed in, each kind of culture features areas of tightness and looseness, depending on the specific issue or subculture, but as a whole, cultures lean one way or the other. She argues that all human behavior depends on whether a person lives in either a tight culture or a loose one.
[image error]In the book, Gelfand explains that evolution shaped our brains so that we biologically inclined to conform to normative influence. Studies show that infants prefer hand puppets that engage in our most fundamental socially normative behavior, like helping others to open a box full of toys instead of preventing others from opening it, or worse still, opening the box and stealing the toys before others can get to them. And by age three, children will openly and vocally sanction other children who do things that are considered taboo in their cultures by saying, “No, you aren’t supposed to do that!”
Why? Gelfand explains that being predisposed to create and live by norms serves a vital function. They allow human cultures to behave automatically and intuitively in familiar environments. In the interview, Gelfand asks us to imagine a restaurant where people grab food off each other’s plates. Then imagine in another restaurant eating before everyone is served could result in a prison sentence. Now imagine a different set of rules for each restaurant you visit. Common restaurant norms, like all norms, allow humans to coordinate efficiently by using a common set of behavioral expectations. With them, human cultures can develop solutions to solve communal problems, to reach common goals, and deal with group threats. They unite us and allow us to quickly and nearly effortlessly get on with the business of living together in groups.
In the book, Gelfand explains how tightness or looseness develops. You’ll hear about it in the interview, but the short version is that cultures tighten up when they face threats. Those threats can be ecological, like food shortages or natural disasters, or they can be historical, like the threat of invasion, the aftermath of wars, or the wreckage of an economic collapse. When resources are tight or in danger of being lost, cultures become rule makers. When resources are plentiful and threats are few, they become rule breakers.
There are drawbacks and benefits to both, and the dynamic within and between tight and loose cultures explain a great deal of the mysteries of human social conflict and evolution. And you’ll hear all about that in the interview.
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Soundcloud
This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. Get unlimited access to a huge library of The Great Courses lecture series on many fascinating subjects. Start FOR FREE with Your Deceptive Mind taught by neurologist Steven Novella. Learn about how your mind makes sense of the world by lying to itself and others. Click here for a FREE TRIAL.
get 10% off your first
purchase.
[image error] You spend one third of your life in sheets — don’t you want them to be comfortable? Home of the internet’s favorite sheets, Brooklinen’s got more than 50,000 5-star reviews and counting. Brooklinen is so confident in their product that all their sheets, comforters, loungewear and towels come with a lifetime warranty! Get 10% off your first order and free shipping on all the new “sheet” when you use promo code YANSS only at Brooklinen.com. Visit Brooklinen’s first store, in Brooklyn, at 127 Kent Ave in Williamsburg. Brooklinen – everything you need to live your most comfortable life
[image error]Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
You can also support the show by donating through PayPal at this link.
Michele Gelfand is a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland. She directs the Culture Lab, which studies the strength of cultural norms, negotiation, conflict, revenge, forgiveness, and diversity. The lab focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to research, relying on computer scientists, neuroscientists, political scientists, and–increasingly–biologists to understand all things cultural.
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Michele Gelfand’s Official Site
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