How Many Words Do You ACTUALLY Know?

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28:00That's why you wreck.

28:10Okay, we're back with a question from Andreas from Sweden, who says, I recently listened to your episode about microwaves and fridges, and I've heard that if you stand at the right distance from a nuclear blast, you get a perfectly microwave pizza. Is that really possible, or is it just nonsense? Okay, I want to imagine that when I was listening to this, I was thinking of it very literally. And it's like, if you stand just far enough away, you get a perfectly frozen pizza. Like it just falls out of the sky. There you go. A perfectly cooked pizza. You have to be holding the pizza to begin with, I think is what he means.

28:42And then it becomes cooked because of the blast. Right. Is that true? No. Oh. Is the short answer. But the slightly longer answer is no, but in an interesting way, I think. Okay, so the thing is, is that you get almost no microwaves from a nuclear detonation. Oh, bummer. I would have assumed it'd be a lot. Yeah. A lot of everything, every kind. All across the electromagnetic spectrum. But no? But what it is, is you get 5 % that's gamma rays, neutrons, the sort of initial nuclear radiation. 35%, this is from the nuclear detonation, 35 % is thermal radiation. So infrared, visible light, UV, the kind of great blast.

29:2350 % is kinetic energy. Half of it is just a pressure wave through matter, through the air. Yeah. Wow. And then 10 % is residual radiation, the kind of fallout. And I mean, there's not that much microwaves in that list, right? So it's almost all this flash of infrared and visible light. But also a flash is kind of the operative word there because it's not lasting long enough. You know, you're not it's not sort of like you put your your frozen pizza in the microwave. If that's how you're cooking them. Oh, yeah. Right. Now, I wouldn't do it that way. No, me neither. But fine. Who asked this question?

29:59I've got a lot of suspicion. Someone from Sweden. All right. I'll make sense now. But yeah, it's right. You're not good. You could put your pizza in the microwave and shoot microwaves at it for minutes and minutes. A nuclear blast is going to ionize for years, but it's going to blast for a second. A few seconds, exactly, maximum. It's like, but it doesn't cook in the same way. It won't cook in the same way. It's like, it's more like you're standing next to the sun for a second. Yeah, right, right. It's sort of the difference between warming yourself by the fire and warming yourself in the fire.

30:34Ah, big difference. That's sort of the fundamental difference of what's going on here. Also, I mean, the other thing is that the heat that is coming through isn't going to distinguish between the pizza and, you know, your face. Ah, true. Because I was just about to say, look, you could thaw the pizza. You could thaw the pizza. If you stood next to enough sequential atomic bomb explosions, just a blast of heat, another blast of heat, another blast of heat, eventually it'll be room temperature. I would say overall an inefficient way to do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Yeah, because you're getting cooked too.

31:04You are getting cooked too. Yeah. And if you survive that bit, then the blast will come through immediately afterwards and knock you off your feet. So yeah, I'd go with no, generally. Okay. Overall. Okay, next question. This one is for you. This is from Mark. Sat in a bar in Portugal, and there's a lively discussion on why human needs their hair cut, but monkeys and apes don't. Yeah, this is one that I've asked a lot, and we don't know the answer. The question is, why are humans like the only primate that just kind of keeps growing hair only at one place, by the way? Now, would you call them orangutans or orangutans or orangutans?

31:50Okay, so orangutans have pretty long hair. They do. Chimpanzees don't. humans, the theory goes, lost most of our hair because we needed to be able to sweat. We walk and move and especially run in ways that our tree dwelling ancestors didn't. And so it was really helpful to have less fur and more open skin so that we could cool down through sweating. But we needed protection on our heads because of ultraviolet light from the sun. but then for some reason we not only kept fur hair on our heads we also started growing it much longer like the growing phase of each of our hair follicles on our heads is really long it can be years but for a pubic hair it's like weeks yeah for an eyelash hair it's uh weeks but like not many yeah like six weeks and that's and that's why the hairs are as long as they are it's not Not that the body knows to stop growing after a certain length on my eyelash versus my head.

32:57Well, my head, it doesn't know what to do. But the point is that they fall out eventually and new ones grow in and they only grow for a certain amount of time. But why it would be that humans would have longer hair than a lot of other primates is up to just guesses. It could have been sexual selection. It could have been that human populations around the world just liked it. They just thought it was pretty and they chose partners who were able to grow longer hair. It could have been a sign maybe of health to them. We don't know. It could be about thermoregulation, though it doesn't quite make sense.

33:32Even the sexual selection guess doesn't really make sense because there are populations where people grow much longer hair than others. And there are papers where researchers have said, well, it's definitely sexual selection. It was up to us and our choices and who we mated with and that's why. but those selections were different in different places okay so in like the tropics there was still a preference for longer hair but there were other things that were more important and so that's why you'll have shorter hair here and longer hair there but yeah it's amazing how little we know i mean it could also be that there is no reason you know like evolution doesn't have a trajectory.

34:14It doesn't have a direction that it's heading for. Sometimes you just get features that appear for no reason at all. There is no pressure on it one way or the other. That's right. So either it helped in some way or it didn't help or hurt. And so it's just the way it is. Because I think the other thing that's worth saying is that actually the length of our hair is in part because we have the conditions in which to be able to take care of it. Right. If you imagine instead of taking a modern human and making them wild, in inverted commas, where they're kind of like moving around, you know, sleeping in different conditions, it's probable that the hair would break before it got to its full length, you know?

34:56So it could also just be there is no reason at all. Yeah. But it wasn't getting in the way. Oh, for one, I'm glad it is though because… Look at that. It's my greatest feature. Hair care companies, sponsorship opportunities. Astonishing that they haven't already, frankly. I mean, look at this. I won the hair lottery. Look at this. Hello. Between us, we average half a good head of hair. Between us, it's like one good head of hair. Because you've got like more than, I've got less than. I wouldn't consider myself negative. I meant on average, each person gets half. I was sharing. Oh, you were sharing.

35:39I was sharing. Okay, fair enough. Okay. I phrased it wrong though. I appreciate it came across that way. Okay, all right. Last question. This one from Megan, who asked, why do we talk to ourselves? Oh. This is good. Okay, first off, you know not everyone does. Yeah. Some people do not have an internal voice. I don't know if I believe them. Really? It's very hard to define and talk about things like this. they don't have an internal voice. What does that mean to them? Because what does it mean to have an internal voice? When I silently think, it doesn't feel like it's a talking thought thing. Do you feel like it's words?

36:24Yeah, words would be the best way to describe it. But they're not fully spoken. Oh, I think mine are. I talk out loud to myself a lot. That helps me to figure out what I'm thinking and feeling. But in my own head, like, let me just try. Give me something. Give me like a something to. A difficult puzzle. Yeah. Okay. The only puzzle that sprung to mind is the last one you told me. Hold on. Let me get one. Let me get one. Okay. I am an odd number. Take away a letter and I become even. What number am I? 11. I mean, that didn't involve very much. No, it didn't. But here's what I'll say. It still gave me some insight into what's going on.

37:09It's very visual. There's one other answer. Oh, there's another answer. Okay, so it's, I'm an odd number, take away a letter. Tune. No, stew. I don't know, what is it? Seven. Shoot. Yeah. Of course, seven. Okay, now tell me what happened in your mind. So what happened in my mind was very visual. It was more about images. While you were looking for a riddle, I was thinking about what did I eat typically for breakfast as a kid? And in my head, I wasn't thinking, well, usually I had this food. I just saw images of them. Interesting. What is it like in your head? Oh, she will not shut up. She is constantly chatting.

37:54And it's verbal. It's verbal. It's verbal. The people who don't have this instantly, people who have the inability to visualize images in their mind. Yeah, I've heard about this. There's a sort of standard spectrum that you see, which is you imagine an apple. Imagine a juicy red apple in your head. And some people will see essentially a photorealistic version of this apple. That's what I got, yeah. Is it? Yeah. Lucky thing. It's like I'm remembering a photo of an apple I saw once. Okay. With a lot of detail. even before you ask for the detail, it's there. Like I'm noticing things that are there.

38:32I'm not looking for them and then confabulating them. Whereas for other people, myself included, it's much less like a fully formed picture. It's sort of like there's maybe the feeling of the shape of an apple. Yeah, I know what that's like too, though, because if you say, well, imagine an apple and a strawberry, I don't think too much about them. Sure. But if you really make me imagine an apple, I can get it all. Fully photorealistic. Fully photorealistic. Oh, it's red and green and it's very ripe, you know, but. I don't think I can quite get there. If you were to say, well, Michael, imagine you had eight apples and you needed to share them with two people.

39:12I don't see eight photorealistic apples. I probably see like a half, half image, half word kind of thing. And that's all I need. So now this is the slight difference actually, because if you, there was one program that i did where they put me in an mri scanner and then asked me to do a number of mathematical calculations okay some of them were just simple arithmetic and some of them were about the movement of surfaces uh some of them were about um some calculus basically trying to trying to solve these quite long complicated equations and over and over again regardless of the the problem that i was being given the the part of my brain that was lighting up was the visual cortex right Right.

39:49Okay. So, and that I think matches. It's not like a photorealistic version of what I'm manipulating, but it's definitely like the visual cortex is definitely doing a lot of work when it comes to mathematics. You're kind of manipulating things. But the people who are, who really struggle to create images in their minds, there's quite a big overlap with them and the ones who do not have an internal monologue whatsoever. Oh, is there? Yeah. So to not have an internal monologue, these people are still aware of the thoughts that they're having and they're just normal people from the outside but they insist that what when they like debate something in their head like oh should i should i take a break from studying right now what are they it just doesn't appear in the form of words right i mean i think i i mean i'm not i'm not one of these people right um but but yeah they say it appears in your head in the form of words yeah for me if i'm like ah should I take a break I imagine what I could be doing during the break I imagine the benefits I get from not taking a break as like experiences like I feel them and I'm weighing them I definitely aren't the words break doesn't enter into it right oh no until I take another step back if I want to talk out loud about what I'm trying to decide then it becomes very verbal I think we should do a whole episode on this you know at some point because I think it's really really fascinating all of the different ways that you can test because it's incredibly be difficult.

41:16I mean, this is like the hard problem of consciousness, right? It's like understanding the experience from somebody else's perspective and how difficult it is to describe your own internal world, your own internal monologue. Yeah, because I don't even know if I'm describing it the way I should be. It's hard. And I don't know if I should trust other people's descriptions of it. You know, I've always loved this hard problem of consciousness. What is it like to be someone else's mind? I just read a Greg Egan story where this couple wants to get closer. They just feel like they don't know why they got married.

41:47Like they don't really. So they decide, well, maybe we need to be closer. And through all these various steps, they eventually, they realize that they cannot swap minds because as soon as they swap minds or bodies, they just learn what it's like to be in the other person's body, but not what it's like for them, for their conscious awareness. Right. So this doctor has an idea. What if I take both of your memories and pool them together so you have each other's memories? And then I'll knock you unconscious and I will put your brains into exactly the same physical mechanical shape. Your awareness is still there.

42:26And then when I snap my fingers, you won't be each other, but you will both be for a moment the same third person. And this makes them so close that they get divorced because they realize that not knowing the other person is exciting. and now that they're so close, they're like, I don't care for you anymore. You may as well not be there because I already have myself. That's such a great idea. It's kind of cute. Yeah, I like that a lot. In terms of why we all do this, by the way, in terms of why we have this voice or where this voice comes from, if you, and experiments have been done on this, where you look at three, four-year-old children, at that point, all of the voices are external for them.

43:02They're narrating everything they're doing. They're like, I'm going to put this block here and then I'm going to do this here and then they're chattering all the time continually. And the idea is that essentially you just stop doing it out loud. It's the same voice that's going on, but you just do it in your head instead of doing it particularly out loud. But speaking out loud, by the way, I mean, so many people do this. It's way more, I mean, people do it in private because it's associated with something, you know, there's something that people who've lost their minds. I know, I know. But people do it all the time.

43:31Like it's really difficult to find people who don't do this ever at all. And it's good. It's kind of good. It improves your performance on particular tasks. There's one of my favorite studies on this is from 2012, where they were asking people to find particular items in a supermarket. And those that were told to say the item's name out loud were much faster at finding than others. Yeah. That makes me feel better because I talk out loud all the time. Even in the grocery store, I know that I can't. So I'll like mouth it. And if you look at me, I'm going. and i'm always afraid someone's gonna like record me in public and be like he's losing his mind you're optimizing i'm the old man muttering around the store being like under my breath going well would those be in the the uh the thai food section or the potato chip section i just want prawn crackers come on i see i am doing that but i'm doing it's all in your head yeah i think that i never gave it up as a kid right i never internalized it so i have to externalize it in order to form the words.

44:32But I'm always doing little shows and stuff too. Like when I'm alone in my hotel room, I'll be like, ah, now when this, I'll literally talk out loud. I'll be like, you know, I think that the warmer, it's like I'm on the podcast, even when no one's listening. The warmer soda has stronger flavors, but it's not as refreshing. And I think it's because of this. Do you really? Yeah. On your own? And that's, I think is why I'm such a, like a loner. Cause I know that I can't do that around other people. So I have to escape. I work in my office by myself and I'm just sitting there basically performing a whole thing, externalizing every single thought I have out loud with words.

45:08Can you do it in front of your wife? No, but I'm terrified that she'll walk in on me and I'll be doing this and she'll be like, dude, you are not on camera. But I'm like this when I'm all alone. So you on camera is the most authentic version of you. The least authentic is this version. Wow. That must feel quite suffocating then where you need to continually talk in order to to process and think things. Yes. And so I find myself in your head. No, especially when I'm like traveling, visiting my wife's family and we're staying in their house and I never have a moment to myself. I'm like, I don't know what to do.

45:53I can't. I need to sit down and go, oh, why is Susan always saying that? I think it's because I need to just do that. And you say that to myself. And it's embarrassing because it makes it look like I think that I've got an audience all the time. No. The first time I noticed this was weird is when I was on vacation with my family and they went down to the pool and I was going to go join them. And I just started talking out loud about why there was this sealed for your hygiene seal on the toilet. And I was like, out loud I just said they do that so that people feel that the toilet is clean and and I realized that no one was listening and that it wouldn't be an interesting thing to listen to and yet I was compelled to do it see see I think I am having very very very similar conversations but I'm just not doing them out loud well good for you sometimes I'll be like narrating that I mean it's almost like there's two or more conversations going on simultaneously so I might be like oh this hygiene thing it's so that people blah blah blah blah blah and then the other person will come in and be like either good job or you're an idiot that's sort of that goes on a lot oh there's like a conversation oh there's a conversation and sometimes it can be this is the one uh that i find um the most disconcerting i'm i'm sure other people have this exact same experience but i can be on stage uh and having giving an entire talk right a full presentation especially if i know something reasonably well and i can be verbally delivering the words and there will be an entire conversation going on in my head about something different do you like this other voice she's really annoying okay but she's part of you and it like informs what you say out loud in this she's called colin um where did this name colin come from she actually is called colin well uh maybe i'm giving away a bit too much for myself colin is the nasty part you know yeah because i think it's just when when when when colin is just like, whoa, you're a bit much today, Colin.

48:04It feels very useful to externalize it. To externalize it, give it a name. I am definitely talking way too much. This reminds me of the Carl Jung thing about like as soon as the unconscious becomes conscious, it loses its power. And I think this is also a thing for another episode, but this is one of those silly reels from like the, I'm a Navy SEAL teaching you how to be a man. But there was one that I thought was actually really, really insightful. And it was that to disarm someone who's who's got the upper hand, just mention how good they are. So, like, if you're being interrogated, one way to disarm them and to kind of like make them second guess themselves is to actually say, you're really good at this interrogation.

48:50Like, I can tell that you have been trained and have a lot of experience. Wow. Once it's spoken, now they have to live up to that. and he was like, if a guy comes up to you and shakes your hand, like really firm, he's got power over you so long as you're going, oh gosh, okay. But if you go, wow, that was a really strong handshake. They say that that's what alpha men do. Then the guy's like, oh. Oh, now I need to be an alpha. Yeah, and now it's out there and it's been named and it doesn't have power. It's not fate if it's been said. Right. And I think about that a lot beyond just the like strong handshake kind of a thing, but just in life.

49:29It's like as soon as you name it and you've said it, it's just not scary anymore. No, it's just not scary anymore. You know, also speaking out loud, I mean, even just beyond naming the things that otherwise go unnamed, there is also some evidence that it does help with emotional regulation, that there is something really positive about this. so um there's one study where they were like looking at people who had muttered to themselves you've got this sarah like you can do it claire you know as they were doing a task yeah yeah yeah and they actually like it reduced their anxiety it reduced their their their stress levels you know and i want to i i think that that's so true but it can come in different flavors all right like for someone like me i don't think you got it michael i externalize myself this is very common I think like when I'm playing like basketball, you know, in the backyard, I'll be like, and look, look how well he does this.

50:22It's the announcer saying it. And then if it doesn't go in, I'm like, oh, we'll do that again. Now look at Michael never misses. Right. It's like a third person describing how good I am. Um, but it does make me better. So I don't know who asked this original question, but you got a full episode. You, you basically got more of me and Michael there than, than I think either of us have ever given away on anything. But I think that ultimately, you know, the reason why I like talking about these kinds of things is because I think every single person is extremely weird. Every single person is extremely weird.

50:56And we have been taught and sort of societally expected to hide our weirdnesses from each other. And I think let's not do that anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't help because it makes us think that other people like have just nothing weird about them, that they have no trouble waking up in the morning, that they love getting all their tasks done. And it's like, guys, it's called a task rather than having no name because it's terrible. Yeah, yeah. We're all in the same boat. We're all in the same boat. You're weird, Michael. I'm weird. And so are you, our listeners, each and every one of you.

51:29So stay weird and please, yeah, reach out to us. Jake, who else? We had Megan as well. Megan. Guys, you are great role models for the rest of the audience. Send in your questions. The rest is science. at goalhanger.com. Can't wait to hear from you. Or you can leave a comment under the video which you're watching now or the podcast which you have downloaded. We read all of them and we love your questions. So thank you. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

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