The Reasoning Test Psychologists Still Can't Explain

8:53Michael Stevens:You're welcome. I'm sure you all were going, oh, what's he talking about? A bar? A bar? All right. Look, the deal is that in this case, the cards are about people in a bar. and on one side of the card, you have the person's age and on the other side, you have what it is they are currently drinking. Okay. Once again, you have four cards and you are a police officer and it's your job to make sure that no one is drinking under age. On some of these cards, you can only see their age. You're gonna have to turn them over to see what they're drinking. On others, you only see what they're drinking. You'll have to turn them over to get their age.

9:30Michael Stevens:This is what you see in front of you, these four cards. The age 12. The age 35, the drink soda and the drink beer. Okay. Which ones do you need to turn over to determine whether or not the rule is being obeyed that you cannot drink underage? Okay.

9:51Hannah Fry:Well, now it's immediately obvious to me that the person who is 30, they can drink whatever they like. I don't care what they're drinking. Yeah. And likewise, the person who's drinking soda, I mean, someone should speak to their parents about them being in a bar. But I don't care what their age is. It's not relevant. Yeah. So immediately it's like, well, what's the 12-year-old drinking and who's drinking the beer?

10:16Michael Stevens:That's it, right? I mean, that's it. It's the exact same answer as the one before, the first and the last card, except it's just so much faster to get to the answer.

10:27Hannah Fry:Like the original formulation of that is genuinely confusing, extremely difficult to logically work your way through. And even when you get there, you're, I don't know, I'm really like double checking myself, but that one is instinctive. It's instinctive.

10:45Michael Stevens:Yeah. No one needs an explanation for why you need to check the 12 year old and the beer drinker. It's, it's almost just evident prima facie. Like I get it. Whereas when we replace the ages and the beverage with numbers and letters, it becomes very abstract. And of course, we see this reflect in people's performance. When it comes to letters and numbers, like I said, four, maybe 10 % of people get it right. But when it comes to the beer and the ages, everyone gets it right. I mean, the people who get it wrong are the people who are like just trying to be goof-offs. Seriously, it's not even really a question.

11:27So why is it so much

11:30Michael Stevens:more difficult for us to solve the problem when it's abstract like this? Is that the key to explaining why this is so difficult? Well, as you can imagine, for the last, you know, gosh, 50, 60 years, 60 years now, actually, this year. Happy birthday, Wasson Selection Task. You are old enough to drink.

11:50Hannah Fry:Congratulations.

11:51Michael Stevens:You're old enough to drink for sure. You're not quite old enough to collect social security in America though. But when that day comes, we will be here for you. Researchers have spent decades creating slightly different versions, including the drinking in a bar version. The question is, is this revealing something about an individual's abilities or is it revealing something even deeper just about humans in general? because it doesn't necessarily seem to separate the smarty pants people from the dum-dums. Even really smart people tend to perform about as badly. You can take a big Harvard graduating class and they'll struggle with it too.

12:33Michael Stevens:The things that we know help people solve it is making the puzzle be about a social rule or phrasing the question in a way that makes it extremely clear that they need to be looking for today's magic word, counterexamples. Right.

12:54Hannah Fry:So can I ask some questions?

12:55Michael Stevens:You can.

12:56Hannah Fry:The 4 % of people who do get it right, who are they then? In the original formulation of the test or some variant of?

13:05Michael Stevens:I haven't actually found a lot of good breakdowns on who those people are. Like literally in the literature, they're often called exceptional people.

13:16Hannah Fry:I'm serious. I'll show you the papers.

13:19Michael Stevens:They're like, if you get it right, you're either an exceptional person or a lucky guesser. There was one paper that said like the best, the most, the most strong correlation is whether you have taken logic classes.

13:33Hannah Fry:Okay. So it's sort of mathematically minded people.

13:36Michael Stevens:Exactly. It's people who go, aha, yes, I am familiar with modus tollens and denying the antecedent, and here we go.

13:46Hannah Fry:Do you want to give us a quick rundown on modus tollens?

13:49Michael Stevens:Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay, so, I mean, look, the Wasson selection task presents us with what's called a conditional statement. If, then. We use these all the time. Hey, if you don't call me back, then I'm going to punch you in the nose, right? If, then. All right? Now, logicians, people who study the rules of reasoning, people who study logic, they have all kinds of fancy terminology and symbols for the parts of a conditional statement. The if part is called the antecedent. It comes before the end, which is called the consequent. An example would be if it rains tomorrow, I will stay indoors. If it rains tomorrow is the antecedent.

14:34Michael Stevens:I will stay inside is the consequent. So if this thing happens, the consequence will be this. If it rains tomorrow, I will stay indoors.

14:42Hannah Fry:Okay. So if you can, you can take that single date, that single sentence, if it rains tomorrow, I'll stay indoors and sort of chop it in two. And then it's almost like there's two logical chunks there, right? Raining tomorrow, which it can or it can be or not. It's either raining or it's not. And then you've also got you staying inside, which you could be, or you could not be. So you could sort of imagine like a little grid, right? So it's like, whether it's raining or not is on one side and whether you're staying in or not is on the other side. And you can kind of go through and go true, false, true, false, true, false, true, false, right?

15:14Hannah Fry:For the different combinations.

15:16Michael Stevens:Not six times though, just four. Sorry. Which is extremely important though. I'm glad.

15:22Hannah Fry:I went back around to the beginning.

15:23Michael Stevens:You were so excited. Yeah. You're living on that Pac-Man universe again. You went around, but yeah, there's only four combinations here and how many cards are there in the Wasson selection task, there's four. Now, we don't need to make this like a full on let's get into the weeds with logic thing, but let's do it anyway, because our viewers are special. And I'll give you another little - They're that 4%.

15:46Hannah Fry:They're the exceptional people.

15:48Michael Stevens:They're the 4%. So the antecedent, I think maybe we could also just call it P, if you read a lot of logic papers, which I think we should. I'll send these to the producers. We should put the best papers about this down in the description. P, the letter P is often used to represent the antecedent.

16:03Hannah Fry:The first bit, the if bit.

16:05Michael Stevens:The if bit. If P, and you use a variable because now it can mean anything. If it rains tomorrow, or P could also mean I eat a ham sandwich. If P, if I eat a ham sandwich, then what? I will smile. Okay. The consequent is often symbolized with the letter Q. So now we can start talking about the conditional statements like their math equations. If P then Q, if P then not Q, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we can talk about all the different ways we can work with this statement. So there are two valid ways you can use that statement to what draw a conclusion.

16:44Hannah Fry:Could you though, these cards, could you think of these cards then to give you an example of if it rains tomorrow, Michael will stay indoors. Instead of this being AG78, could it be Michael's indoors, Michael's outdoors. It's raining. It's not raining.

16:59Michael Stevens:Exactly. That is exactly what each of the cards in this selection task do. They've got P, not P, Q, not Q. And so in order to answer this correctly, you need to show that you understand or have an innate ability to use a conditional statement in the two valid ways that an argument can be formed. And that's where we get to modus tollens and modus ponens. I'm probably not pronouncing those right, but look, This is about logic, not pronunciation. So modus ponens is the really easy one where we say, here's a rule. If it rains tomorrow, Michael will stay indoors. It is now tomorrow and it is raining.

17:39Michael Stevens:Where is Michael? And they go, well, he's indoors. I can conclude that. Yes, that's valid.

17:43Hannah Fry:The other example would be you're overage and you're drinking an alcoholic drink, right? That would be the other. It's true. It's true.

17:52Michael Stevens:It depends what the rule is about drinking.

17:54Hannah Fry:Okay, the rule is everyone over 21. No, everyone drinking must be over 21.

18:00Michael Stevens:I think so. Yeah.

18:02Hannah Fry:If you're drinking, you must be over 21.

18:04Michael Stevens:Right. Or 18 or whatever. I didn't give a year. I just said -

18:09Hannah Fry:You did. You smartly did that.

18:10Michael Stevens:I smartly chose 12 and 35 so that - Look at that.

18:15Hannah Fry:I've anchored us to the wrong side of the Atlantic.

18:18Michael Stevens:I know. Look at that. And I did all the work to use the word pub.

18:24Hannah Fry:I know. I really should have repaid you better. I apologize. Okay. So the modus polens then is, if you're drinking, you're over 21. So it's the person with the beer, say, who turns out to be the correct age.

18:39Michael Stevens:Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I think the sentence would be, if a person is drinking alcohol, they must be over 21 or over. Therefore, modus ponens would be, hey, they're drinking alcohol. Therefore, they must be over 21. I understand. Yeah. So modus ponens is about affirming the antecedent. We know that the if part is true, therefore we conclude the consequent, the Q part. Now, it is invalid to have the antecedent denied and then conclude something about the consequent.

19:13Hannah Fry:Okay, you're going to have to do that one again for me.

19:15Michael Stevens:Okay, modus ponens is when you affirm the antecedent, you say, hey, the if part is true, Therefore, the then part must be true. If, however, you are able to deny the antecedent, for example, in our raining example, you say, well, hey, it's not raining. You cannot conclude that I'm not indoors because the rule doesn't say anything about other reasons I might stay indoors tomorrow. Now let's talk about the consequent. A valid way to operate with what you know about the state of the consequent is that if it's denied, in our original case, Michael is not indoors, then you can conclude that it's not raining.

19:58Hannah Fry:All right, let's do this with the drinking example, because this is the one that strangely I find most, I can understand most instinctively.

20:05Michael Stevens:Okay, so to make it really easy, let's say that in this bar, it is true, the law is being followed. Everyone drinking beer is over 21. If you're drinking alcohol, you are over 21. And that's true.

20:17Hannah Fry:If you're drinking alcohol, you are over the drinking age. So if you get someone who is not over the drinking age, then you can conclude that they can't be drinking alcohol.

20:29Michael Stevens:Correct. That is modus tollens. Right. However, if you affirm the consequent, you cannot conclude anything validly. Meaning, if you run into a person there at the bar and they are over the drinking age...

20:44Hannah Fry:Then you have no idea what they're drinking. It doesn't mean anything.

20:47Michael Stevens:You cannot conclude that they are drinking alcohol because they might not be.

20:50Hannah Fry:Got you. And that, so then, so then what's that? That's not modus holens or modus holens.

20:57Michael Stevens:No, that's called affirming the consequent and it is invalid. Okay. Now, if all of this sounds really confusing or boring, just rewind, listen again over and over again. We can get some really cool boosts for the algorithm.

21:13Hannah Fry:Just, just remember that you are here to learn not to be entertained. Okay.

21:17Michael Stevens:That's right. That's right. I'm not going to just do a dance for you. I'm going to sit here and mispronounce Latin words for an hour.

21:24Hannah Fry:This is a very special episode of the podcast where at the end we give you a test. And if you are in the 96 % who failed, you're not allowed to listen again.

21:34Michael Stevens:Oh my goodness. I didn't know that rule. Speaking of conditional statements, if you don't understand, then you will not listen again. The point of all of this is to say that the difficulty of the Wasson selection task is that the human brain must just not have an innate modus tollens ability. Like we have since our evolution into modern humans developed and discovered all this stuff about logic, but we just aren't born with a logical table in our brain.

22:07Hannah Fry:But that can't be true because the, because the bar example is so instinctive. It's so instinctive. Yeah. The words that we're using here, the language that we're using to describe this. I mean, it does sound super duper complicated. It sounds extremely mind boggling, even if the original sentence is quite simple. But then as soon as you put it in the bar example, it's like, well, I don't even have to think about it. I know. That is so strange. That is weird.

22:33Michael Stevens:And it's got to be significant, right? So in the late 80s, two researchers, Lita Cosmides and John Tooby, famously said, guys, this whole task and the fact that the social ones are so much easier is clearly evidence that our reasoning ability evolved for social reasons, not for truth-finding reasons. So when it comes to creating different versions of the Wasson selection task, the versions that involve really abstract stuff and facts are called descriptive. Okay? It's just the way it is. If there's an A on one side, there's a 7 on the other. Now, if it instead involves a rule, an obligation, a duty, something that humans made up, it's called deontic.

23:23Okay?

23:25Michael Stevens:I love these words because they're both like called rules or laws and yet one is about can and the other is about may. I don't travel at the speed of light, not because I'm not allowed to, but because I can't, okay? And so that kind of a restriction is called a descriptive restriction. But when it comes to are people breaking the rule, we need to make sure people are complying with the rules, that's called a deontic rule.

23:53Hannah Fry:Where did that word come from?

23:55Michael Stevens:I don't know. I mean, deontic etymology, because what other words use it? It means being needed or necessary from ancient Greek pertaining to necessity, duty or obligation. So Cosmides and Tubi famously are like, guys, this is just human nature. We evolved to focus on duties and obligations that we invented ourselves and not on universal, timeless laws of impossibility. We care more about may I do this than can I do this.

24:31Hannah Fry:I also sort of wonder a little bit about that point about truth finding, because the example of people in a bar, it's partly about social rules and social norms. But isn't it also a little bit about truth finding? Isn't it also a little bit about who should you be suspicious of? Yes.

24:53Michael Stevens:Yes, it is. But it's just it's a truth that is human focused. It's a truth in the domain of deontic principles, obligations, duties and rules and obedience, as opposed to one of an abstract wall. If it has an A, it must have a seven.

25:13Hannah Fry:Yeah, of course.

25:15Michael Stevens:Here's the typical responses people give to the selection task. 46 % of people pick A and 7. Okay. Okay. So almost half of people do that. A third, 33%, choose just A. Right. 7 % of people choose A, 7, and 8. So almost everybody is picking A. Yes. And then only 4 % of people choose the correct cards, A and 8. The other 10 % of people choose other combinations. Some people choose all of them. I mean, at that point, I think it's kind of believed that they just either didn't understand or didn't care.

26:05Hannah Fry:Or just want to finish. They're either the anarchist or the like, get me out of here.

26:10Michael Stevens:Or maybe they understand something we don't. I mean, I'm not going to dismiss them.

26:15Hannah Fry:Maybe they're the ones with their modulus tolerance in their own heads.

26:19Michael Stevens:Yeah.

26:20Hannah Fry:The thing that makes me feel a tiny bit uncomfortable about this, this idea that humans are not innately good at truth finding, even though I'm sure that these researchers have thought about this much more extensively than I ever have, is that science really is based on the hunt for truth. And okay, admittedly, we have come up with really strict methods like hypothesis testing in order to do that. But does that sort of mean that, I don't know, science isn't innate? I'm not sure.

26:51Michael Stevens:That's a really good question. And I'm starting to feel like it's not that innate, that we, from tests like this, we found that we are focused more on our own social lives and ourselves and not on what is the best way to test a hypothesis. Now, the Wasson selection task makes it pretty clear that we're bad at finding counter examples or even being motivated to find them. Like pretty much everyone chooses the first card A. They're like, I need to see if this is an example of a thing that follows the rule. But very few people go, but I should also look for a case where the rule is not true. Is broken.

27:36Michael Stevens:Even though you find a counterexample, you're done. If the rule is that if there's an A, there's a 7 on the back, and you can find an A that doesn't have a 7 on the back, you're done. You can walk away and say, the rule's not true. I've proved it wrong. Now, there's a great study. I was actually cracking up last night reading about this. I don't think it's going to seem that funny today when I tell it. But there was a study that was done by Johnson, Laird, and Watson in 1970 where they had two boxes of shapes. In one box, all the shapes were painted black, and in the other box, they were all painted white.

28:10Michael Stevens:And they told people that people couldn't look in the boxes, okay? The researcher sat there with these two masked boxes and was like, okay, here's this rule, and I want you to test whether it's true, whether this hypothesis is true. All the triangles are white. now tell me what to do and i'll do it for you and people would say oh the first thing almost everyone says is okay i'd like to see a white shape so he reaches in there and he pulls out a shape and it's a white triangle low and cold because literally the only thing in the white bin are white triangles he pulls it out and people tend to just keep asking for white shapes over and over again all right and they keep getting a white triangle and they're like i don't know it's feeling like it's pretty proven and then after a while they start to go maybe i should see a black one because they start to realize, oh, shoot, all it takes is one black triangle to blow the whole thing to smithereens.

29:03Michael Stevens:Basically, no one starts with the black shapes.

29:06Hannah Fry:That is so fascinating. That is so fascinating. I think you've seen this in science as well, right? I just wrote this. I wrote actually this chapter of the book that I'm doing at the moment. I wrote this whole thing about Popper, about Karl Popper, and about how he said that the key point about science is essentially trying to find things that break your own theorem. You should be hunting for the counter examples, not for the evidence that supports it. There's a the thing is, is that it's like it was really, really hard for people to do this. It's not instinctive at all. For almost all of scientific history, people were just like, let's gather more evidence, let's gather more evidence.

29:49Hannah Fry:And actually, Einstein, you know, one of the reasons why Einstein is considered so phenomenal is that when he came up with his theory of general relativity, as part of his theory, he said, here is the way you can prove me wrong. This is my idea. This is what I think it is. there's going to be a solar eclipse in a couple of years. And if I am right, the light will bend around the sun in this way. You'll be able to see the stars that are normally blinded by the sun's glare. Off you go. Here is how to find the counter example. And that was a really bold, brave, unusual, crazy thing for him to do.

30:30Hannah Fry:It's the same as your black shapes, right? People do not go hunting for the black shapes, but Einstein was someone who knew that you had to.

30:37Michael Stevens:He did. And I think back to your original question, I think that that meant he was a little bit less human than most of us. He was willing to look for counter examples and was not just looking for confirmation of the one kind of thing he believed in and wanted to find more of and finding more of them would make him feel more and more confident. He was willing to say, guys, We've got to find a counterexample. We've got to find something that shows that I'm wrong. Here's one way we could do it. Here's another way. The creator of the Wasson selection task became obsessed with our terrible, terrible laziness when it came to finding counterexamples.

31:18Michael Stevens:Okay, well, look, we need to take a break. But when we come back, Hannah, I want to show you an even earlier game that Wasson came up with that brings us to, I think, the same surprising conclusion about humanity.

31:30Hannah Fry:Imagine if he was your dad. He'd constantly be tricking you, wouldn't he?

31:34Michael Stevens:I know, but like dads are always tricky, but this dad is tricking you. This is the trickiest trick. For science. I got your nose. Why do you think I got your nose? Have you not developed body permanence yet? Dad, leave me alone. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, what's that on your shirt? Oh, gotcha. What's wrong with your perceptual apparatus. Let's try that again. And you're like, dad, just prank me to embarrass me not to learn. All right. But we're going to do some of that after the break. Great.

32:11Michael Stevens:Now streaming. Disney Plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docuseries. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only Anything left is to close the book. The end of an era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour. The final show featuring for the first time the tortured poets department. Now streaming only on Disney+. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At Blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs.

32:50Michael Stevens:We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50 ,000 five-star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals. Free samples. Zero pressure. Right now, get up to 50 % off with minimum purchase. Plus, get a free professional measure at Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply.

33:12Hannah Fry:It's deck days at Lowe's, and the savings are stacked. Right now, pros get 15 % off all in-stock composite decking from top brands like Trex, TimberTech, and Decorators. Plus, get a free DeWalt 20V Max 5Ah battery when you buy a select DeWalt tool. The deck's stacked in your favor with brands pros trust. Our best lineup is here in Lowe's. Valid through 422, while supplies last. Selection varies by location.

33:47Michael Stevens:Welcome back. All right. So Hannah, here we go. I'm going to give you some numbers. Again, because of who you are, Hannah, you might do really well at this.

33:53Hannah Fry:That puts more pressure on me. Go on.

33:58Michael Stevens:Good. Good. I want this to be uncomfortable. Look, what I'm going to do is I'm going to name triples of numbers. I'm going to name three numbers that fit my rule. It's a secret rule I have up here. And then I'm going to just give you one example. And then I want you to start naming triples and I will tell you yes or no, whether it fits the rule. Eventually, I want you to be able to tell me what you think the rule is.

34:20Hannah Fry:Okay, go on.

34:21Michael Stevens:Okay. So here is a triple that fits my rule. Two, four, six.

34:27Hannah Fry:Okay.

34:28Michael Stevens:All right. Now I want you to start producing triples and I will tell you if they fit the rule or not until you can guess the rule.

34:33Hannah Fry:All right. Six, eight, ten. Correct.

34:37Michael Stevens:That fits.

34:38Hannah Fry:Okay. 7, 8, 10. That fits. 6, 6, 6. Nope. 6, 7, 8? Yes. I think I've got it.

34:51Michael Stevens:What do you think it is?

34:52Hannah Fry:I think, hang on, let me try one. Okay. 7, 6, 5. No, it doesn't fit. 7, 8, 6. No. Is it just going up? It's just going up.

35:07Michael Stevens:Hannah, you're brilliant. That's the first time this game was played on me. I never, I mean, I'm still playing that game, by the way. I just walked away. And it wasn't until last night when I read about the history of Lawson that I was like, oh, that's it.

35:20Hannah Fry:The answer is that they just have to go up. No. To be fair, though, you primed me because you said fine counter examples. I did. You primed me. Okay, shoot.

35:29Michael Stevens:Well, how about this? Editors edit this around so it looks like that's the very first thing we did. The point is, all right, yeah, I'm still a bit impressed. You did a good job of at least making it look like you didn't know exactly what to do. The counterexamples you asked for is what unlocks the whole thing.

35:45Hannah Fry:Of course. There's so much more information contained within a counterexample than there is in something that confirms it.

35:51Michael Stevens:That's right. Whereas if you're listening, please go try this with your friends and family today. They will thank you. It's so fun. But you'll find that what they tend to do is that people tend to think of what the rule might be, and then they think of other things that might fit that rule, and they ask them again and again and again. And they rarely go, I think the rule is this, so let me think of something that wouldn't fit that rule and test it. Now, why don't we do this so much? Obviously, we don't know, right? This is – it's all very speculative. But I think that Comedies is really onto something with this idea that reasoning didn't evolve to help us solve mathematical puzzles.

36:34Michael Stevens:It originally evolved to help us work together and explain ourselves to each other because humans are just too weak. We need each other. We need to cooperate. And that's the only way we're going to be able to build and collect and hunt. So we have to be able to communicate what's going on in our heads. We don't have to do it well. We just have to make sure that people trust us and feel like we're playing the game. Okay? So on that topic, I would highly recommend Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason. This goes really deep into their social theory of reasoning, which is that, look, we don't use reasons to come to conclusions.

37:18Michael Stevens:We use conclusions to come to reasons. We just intuitively feel and want to do things. And then when we're asked to defend it, we confabulate in our own heads all the reasons we had for it. And we believe them.

37:30Hannah Fry:I think what I'm like is calling to mind about this is that actually when there are situations where people do see counterexamples which puncture their theories, it's not like we innately very happily get on board and just like go along with it. You know, we look for reasons why the counter example doesn't exist. I mean, I'm thinking here about, I don't know, biology in the sort of 17, 1800s, where they spent absolutely years like merrily shooting things and pinning butterflies to boards and putting birds in sacks and stuff. And deciding that, you know, birds are one branch of the tree of life and mammals are another.

38:19Hannah Fry:and had it all perfectly neatly categorized, these rules. And then someone comes along with a platypus body and they have no idea what to do. And rather than saying, oh, okay, hang on, actually, this is a really clear counterexample of the ways in which our rule is wrong, they cut it up looking for stitches. They thought it was a fake. You know, they spent nearly 100 years being like, well, this just can't be possible.

38:43Michael Stevens:Are you saying the platypuses are real? I thought they were Frankensteined together by some pranksters like Jackalope. I mean, that's what they thought too.

38:52Hannah Fry:I've never seen one in the wild, have you? I've never seen one in the wild. Basically, I'm taking someone's word for it. So, you know. No, that's exactly it.

39:00Michael Stevens:And when a whole group of people refuse to accept counterexamples, that's when things can get pretty dangerous. because the conclusion that I think all of this is pointing at, and this is my opinion, is that we truly reason. That is, we give reasons for things and we extract knowledge from knowledge we already have, which is what reasoning is, to get along and be social. And I think that if you really meditate on the consequences of that, suddenly a lot of stuff makes sense, like confirmation bias, which is what we've been talking about this whole time. The pursuit of finding things that prove your hypothesis correct and ignoring or avoiding a search for things that might prove it wrong.

39:44Michael Stevens:Confirmation bias, I think, works really well when you consider the fact that we're supposed to all be working together. As a group activity, it actually saves time if each of us goes off and finds evidence for our own pet theory, and then we come and combine them. If instead we didn't do that, if we didn't have a confirmation bias and we all went off and we did all the research and found everything and read all these different, it'd be too much work for all of us to do. Let's each split the task up. Many hands make light work. All go and find evidence for what I believe. You find evidence for what you believe and then we'll come together.

40:18Michael Stevens:And you've already done a bunch of work on topic A, I did topic B and we combine them. That seems to explain confirmation bias and so many of our other biases so well. I also love that it kind of pushes us to this conclusion that humans need to work together. We need to listen to people even if we really do not agree with them.

40:36Hannah Fry:I'm also thinking here about, I don't know, I have like a few years ago, I was doing quite a lot of work on vaccine skepticism.

40:47Michael Stevens:Oh, yeah.

40:48Hannah Fry:And working with people who were hesitant about the COVID vaccine. Now, I have to be a tiny bit careful about what I say about this because what I will say is they are a vocal community. who are not afraid to tell me what what they think yeah I'm just going to tread delicately and carefully I I've also was uh made lots of mistakes in the way that the whole thing was approached but but the thing that I noticed is well twofold actually one is that people the only way that people make decisions is in an emotional way it may be that you and I, who are scientifically minded, believe that we make decisions based on statistics.

41:33Hannah Fry:But ultimately for us, that is still an emotional story. We have an emotional relationship to data and mathematics and science in a whole story of our lives that kind of builds up to that moment. And it's still an emotional decision. It's just a slightly different one. I think people are not persuaded by data and numbers. I think it is always fundamentally about the social aspect, exactly as you described, right? Because if it was about data, then you could show somebody the right piece of data. You could show somebody the right combination of words and it would change their mind. And people do not work like that.

42:08Michael Stevens:That's not how it works at all. It's not how it

42:10Hannah Fry:works. And the second thing that's called to mind here in what you're describing is there's something which is called the deficit model of public communication. Ah, I haven't heard about this. Okay, so when you work in an academic institution, there's a lot of talk about how do you get the scientific ideas out to the public, right? How do you talk to people about this? Especially when you look at situations where people are making choices that are maybe counter to their health or maybe counter to public health more generally. How do we get the information out there so that people make better choices, make choices that align more carefully with what's right for them and what's right overall?

42:53Hannah Fry:And for a long time, people thought that all you needed to do was just give them information, that if you educated people to the correct level, that if you put information out there, then that would be enough. But the problem with that idea is that it's called the deficit model because it's essentially saying that the only problem is that the public have a deficit of knowledge, right?

43:18Michael Stevens:They just need the facts.

43:19Hannah Fry:They just need the facts. And it is the most arrogant, insulting way to, I think, belittle people and basically imagine that the only reason why somebody is not making the same decisions as you are is nothing to do with their worldview. It's nothing to do with their own version of reasoning, the things that are important to them. It's just because they don't know as much as you do. Right? And not only is it incredibly insulting, it also demonstratively does not work. You cannot argue or maths your way into changing people's minds or persuading them. It just doesn't work. And I think that the way that you've described all of this stuff, the way that people's logical brains are not geared for statistics and data and abstract descriptions, and the way that our brains are geared towards the social aspect of aligning with other people and collaborating.

44:21Hannah Fry:I mean, just looking at the sort of anti-vax movement against that perspective, it just really, really, really resonates with me. Yeah.

44:30Michael Stevens:It's kind of frustrating, but it's almost a relief to realize, oh my gosh, you're right. It's not that with the right facts and reasons, we'll all agree on something because that's not what happens. My favorite demonstration of this was something we did on Minefield where we had a magician come in and act like he was doing a study on appearance. And he showed people two photographs at a time and said, which of these two people would you rather work with in an office? And he would put the people that were chosen in one stack and the people that were not chosen in another stack. And he did this over and over again.

45:07Michael Stevens:And then he said, okay, now I want to go through everyone that you chose to work with and I want you to tell me why you picked them. But he was a magician. So he used sleight of hand to actually slip in a bunch of the people that they had dismissed as I don't want to work with a person who looks like that. And he would then show them the cards and they gave reasons. And whenever, every time, without exception, he would show a face that the person had rejected, they'd go, oh, yeah. So I picked this person because I really like the way their eyes kind of look like they might have like good inside jokes.

45:35Michael Stevens:The point is that we use reasons to explain ourselves and express who we are at a deep level. We don't use them because of anything logical and timelessly true. It was so awkward to watch people defend and explain why they chose a person that they did not choose. It was embarrassing for them, but yet it was enlightening for our species.

45:59Hannah Fry:Yeah. And we're just a mess, Michael. We're all just a big sloshy mess with our squirty water computers. That is true.

46:08Michael Stevens:And the only way to rise above that is for us to stay a big sloshy mess because the average of all of us winds up being better than one individual's opinion on their own.

46:22Hannah Fry:Yeah. I mean, this is the wisdom of the crowd stuff, right?

46:26Michael Stevens:That's right. And this is something that's really important to me. I really believe in it. I did an episode about lotocracy and how I would really love a government run by random people. Like, rather than electing people, let's literally just be like, look, there's a lottery every four years and you'll just get asked to come and be a member of Congress or Parliament or whatever, the House of Lords randomly. You'll do your term, you'll get paid, there's housing for you. and I think that it would be amazing what would happen if you like took such a variety of views and had them all kind of average each other out as opposed to what we have now which is like hey we're all kind of in this political class let's be leaders we all kind of already feel the same way

47:14Hannah Fry:great great great great yeah there's a superiority that comes with that I think I remember reading something about this in Rory Stewart's book uh Rory Stewart of course of rest his politics fame the lesser known Go Hang On podcast. But he is extremely keen on the idea of town halls, but also of civilian panels, civilian assemblies. Because I mean, Deliberation days. Yeah, deliberation. Exactly. Why not? I mean, this is what we do in the judicial system. I mean, it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I also think that it's the best that we've got. And it does exactly what you're describing.

47:53Hannah Fry:It stops pretending that reason is some mathematically pure thing that we can march towards and instead accepts the messiness of human nature and that we are social creatures and social beings. And we are totally perfectly tuned through an astonishing evolution to really prioritize that. Right.

48:19Michael Stevens:Yeah. We evolved to be a group and work together. And so collectively, like all voting together, I just it's hard for me to find a solution that's better than that. That's it's better than asking any particular person or type of people to make all the decisions. We've got to all come in. And there are people who are have terrible ideas. and and sometimes people have terrible ideas uh that that are opposite of each other and they cancel each other out and that's like our only hope is the hope that things cancel out and what

48:50Hannah Fry:we're left with is the wisest way to go what is your uh what does your t-shirt say today michael

48:55Michael Stevens:i sort of feel like somehow rather we've been oh it's very reflective of kind of the mood that we've created here everything is terrible with an atomic bomb going off in the background it's not actually the scent. I'm not saying that I feel everything is terrible. This is a troop of performers who collect found media footage and they do shows where they show it off and they call themselves. Everything is terrible. They're kind of like they really love this like terrible forgotten media. They're a great group. I don't actually haven't checked in on them in a while, but basically what we solved human nature today.

49:34Michael Stevens:Is that right? I think we probably did. We cracked it. We finally cracked it. When it comes to things that we do that are social, there's another really funny example that I've been wanting to do a longer video about. And it's the classic situation where you are at a restaurant and the waiter brings your food out and says, all right, enjoy your meal. And you go, oh, you too. I mean, thank you. Or, you know, you're dropping off your bag at the airport and the gate attendant says, all right, have a nice flight. And you go, you too. Oh, shoot. No, I mean, thanks. Why do we do that? Well, there's a name for those kinds of exchanges, those kinds of words we say to each other.

50:17Michael Stevens:Back in the 30s, a researcher named Bronislaw Malinowski called these kinds of exchanges fatic communion.

50:27Hannah Fry:Okay. Like you're breaking the bread together. That's right.

50:31Michael Stevens:It's communion. It's breaking bread together. It's showing that I'm here. I acknowledge you. We're both humans. But it's communion done through phatic means, which means pertaining to language. So when we say things to each other like, oh, hey, how's it going? I'm not literally asking, tell me how things are going. In fact, a common response to, hey, what's up? Or, hey, how's it going? Is, oh, hey, man. You're literally not answering at all. You're literally ignoring their question. An alien would find that really weird, but we understand that I wasn't actually asking you what is up or how's it going?

51:06Michael Stevens:I'm just saying, I acknowledge that you're here. We're two social beings who can communicate and we just need to say hi to each other. We just need to give each other a bit of a nod. That's it.

51:16Hannah Fry:A little bit of communion.

51:17Michael Stevens:A little bit of communion. And that's what the waiter does when they say, hey, have a great meal. You are automatically ready to exchange these things without conscious thought. And that's why we absentmindedly respond with you two.

51:32Hannah Fry:I have heard from an American who moved to London. He found it extremely confusing when he first got here and people were like, you all right? You all right? He was like, what do you mean? Am I all right? Am I all right? Was it me that told you that?

51:46Michael Stevens:Because this was one of my biggest struggles when I first moved to the UK. Every time I entered a room, people would be like, you all right? And I'd be like, what's wrong? Why do you think something's wrong with me? Am I acting weird? maybe it was you all right but for them just phatic communion was phatic it was just it was just a like beep beep i am human too acknowledged right that's all they meant by it absolutely and you see this between generations because what what is and is not phatic changes over time and so for for like younger people um saying things like oh no problem is very phatic right if someone says hey, thanks.

52:24Michael Stevens:And I'll just say no problem. But to people in an older generation, they don't realize that it's phatic. They take it literally. They listen to those words and they go, no problem. Well, I didn't say it was a problem. Why would it be a problem? Do you think I'm acting like this was a problem? And so I thoroughly believe that by the time I'm an old man, I'll be at the grocery store. They'll bag up my groceries. I'll say, hey, thanks a lot. And they'll go, well, don't freak out about it. And I'll be like, I wasn't. I'm sorry. Why? Why can't you just say no problem? And they'll be like, well, no, dude, I didn't.

52:55Michael Stevens:I didn't say you were freaking out. I just said, don't freak out. And you didn't. So, right.

53:01Hannah Fry:There is one. There is one. Okay. That young Londoners say to each other. What do they do? They go, say less.

53:06Michael Stevens:Say less. Yes. Yes.

53:08Hannah Fry:It's like, I can't take my words back.

53:12Michael Stevens:The first couple of times I heard it, I was like, I don't think I I was saying a lot, actually. I know. That's a great example of how fatic things are changing.

53:21Hannah Fry:I wonder what they were in really old times, though. I wonder what the fatic communication of sort of 1865 was.

53:29Michael Stevens:Just a bunch of belching. I don't know. I don't know. Why did I just say something derogatory of 1860s people? They didn't deserve it.

53:38Hannah Fry:We know that they were belching all over their place.

53:40Michael Stevens:They were just like, yo, hey. Did you find anything?

53:44Hannah Fry:I did. I did. I've got a couple.

53:46Michael Stevens:Okay, tell me.

53:47Hannah Fry:I hope I see you well.

53:49Michael Stevens:I hope I see you well.

53:51Hannah Fry:Yeah. What say you on such day as this?

53:54Michael Stevens:Hmm.

53:55Hannah Fry:On a day such as this, sorry. How does all at home?

53:59Michael Stevens:That one, that one I wouldn't be too tripped up by. I'd be like, oh, it's fine. I hope I see you well. But how would you respond? Did they say fine?

54:05Hannah Fry:Actually, how do you do? How do you do? I feel like I've, you know, sort of feel like the memory of that one has lingered.

54:13Michael Stevens:Yes, yes. I would not be confused. If someone said, how do you do? I wouldn't go, how do I do what? The 1600s is the exact century when the parting blessing, God be with ye, was said so rapidly and often as a phatic communion that it permanently mashed together into God

54:32Hannah Fry:be with ye and eventually goodbye.

54:35Michael Stevens:Goodbye. I like that. You said the 1600s.

54:39Hannah Fry:Apparently.

54:40Michael Stevens:Wow. Hello. Goodbye. I, speaking of reasons, I think it's pretty interesting as I was fleshing out what I wanted to talk about today. I was like, wow, there's kind of three types of things we've talked about. We've talked about difficult questions. I think the Wasson selection task is surprisingly difficult, but there are also questions that we don't answer. Fatic questions. Hey, what's up? I don't actually look up and tell you. I don't really.

55:05Hannah Fry:Well, you can't because you've got top shelf vertigo.

55:07Michael Stevens:I can't, exactly. Just like everyone, when I'm asked what's up, I go, oh, not much, or I'm doing well. But there are also answers we don't question. And I think we've kind of like been talking about this already. It's that a lot of the conclusions and things we believe, we just kind of don't want to question them. We don't feel motivated to find counter examples and falsify them.

55:30Hannah Fry:Are you talking about like social norms, like social rules here?

55:34Michael Stevens:That's right. I'm talking about social rules and taboos. And I know that you are familiar with these because we've both read this book. Jonathan hates the righteous mind. Which way to there? It's so good. It's so good. It's spicy. It's spicy. It's spicy. And we're not going to discuss it today, but we are going to put a little worm in your brain. You've got to be careful now, though, Michael, because if this section that you're if you're going to the very first example, if you if this gets clipped up and does the rounds on the Internet, you could your reputation could be really in trouble. I know.

56:13Michael Stevens:Look, I'm picking I'm picking the safest one. I'm picking the least spicy one. And again, I think that, Hannah, we should just bring this up. And then in a later episode, we'll talk about moral reasoning.

56:26Hannah Fry:Good idea.

56:26Michael Stevens:Which is not much different than reasoning about obligations or abstract mathematical things. It all kind of points in the same direction. But this is one where you really, you really wind up realizing that you had a conclusion before you had any reasons.

56:43Hannah Fry:We should say, actually, just in general, this book really interrogates in an extremely careful and logical way a lot of the moral rules that we fully accept as a society. Things that we find abhorrent, things that we find disgusting, it really tries to understand what is it about that that we have decided is unacceptable.

57:07Michael Stevens:That's exactly right. And it really looks into why we don't agree on what is acceptable and disgusting and good or bad, how complex our reasons are.

57:20Hannah Fry:It's called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. That's right.

57:23Michael Stevens:And I think it's a very insightful book that's perfect for the way the world is today. But here's an example of a question. And I want you to, I'm just going to read from chapter one. I'm just going to read the first paragraph. Okay, good idea.

57:40Hannah Fry:Okay, good idea.

57:41Michael Stevens:I'm going to tell you a brief story. Pause after you read it and decide whether the people in the story did anything morally wrong. A family's dog was killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious. So they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner. Nobody saw them do this.

58:08Okay.

58:09Michael Stevens:So no one saw them do it. The father, let's say was a professional butcher and none of them got sick. Yep. The dog passed away due to an accident.

58:19Hannah Fry:Was already dead.

58:21Michael Stevens:Already dead. And you know what? Afterwards, the family was really glad they did it. They felt that it was respectful and it made them feel closer to the dog. So did anyone do anything morally wrong? That's our question to you. Let us know in the comments below. And I don't know when we'll talk about this. There's a lot that I want to learn and that we both should talk about before we do it. We'll look into moral reasoning.

58:44Hannah Fry:Yeah, I think that's a really good idea. We can read you more examples from that book, as long as you promise audience not to clip it up and share it around as though it's things we actually think is. I mean, yeah, He tests the bounds. But that is a really great example, a really great example of it definitely feels wrong, but it's quite hard to say why.

59:06Michael Stevens:Exactly. These are Jonathan Haidt's, what did he call them? He called them harmless taboo violations, where he knows that there's a taboo and he believes that it's like this almost intuitive thing where we believe it and we provide reasons after the fact. So he constructed these questions where all the typical harms and reasons people give for the taboo have been canceled. They've been clipped. That's not in this case, not in this case. They didn't kill their dog. They just ate it after it accidentally died. Nope, no one got sick. No one saw them do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're left going, but I still think it's wrong.

59:43Michael Stevens:But he's taken all the reasons away because you never needed the reasons in the first place to believe what you believe.

59:48Hannah Fry:You were using the reasons in order to justify your instinctive reaction.

59:53Michael Stevens:That's right. But we're saying too much. We're going to leave it there. If you guys have any questions for us, any despicable, disgusting, perverted moral quandaries, email them right over to us at therestisscience at goalhanger.com.

1:00:08Hannah Fry:Absolutely. And in the meantime, you can check out our newsletter, which I really should have learned by now, but I think it's therestisscience.com forward slash science. And we will see you on our episode of Field Notes that's coming up later in the week. And yeah, send us in everything you're like. Put in the comments also whether you actually got the puzzle right at the very beginning. And all of those of you say that you didn't, I was joking, you can carry on listening.

1:00:34Michael Stevens:All right. Take care, everybody. Bye.

1:00:45Thank you.