The Hole In Your Brain That Makes You Doomscroll

[00:00:00]I have here an envelope for you, Michael. It says for Michael on it.

[00:00:04]>> Oh my gosh, it does.

[00:00:05]>> Are you Do you want Do you want to see what's inside?

[00:00:08]>> I have one. Yeah, please.

[00:00:09]>> Are you interested?

[00:00:10]>> I'm Yeah.

[00:00:12]>> Are you intrigued?

[00:00:13]>> I don't know. Maybe I'm not. No. Do it.

[00:00:15]Open it.

[00:00:16]>> I'll tell you a bit more about it.

[00:00:17]Inside is is a piece of card. And um you're very much going to want you're very as the episode progresses, you're going to you're going to want this card more and more. Okay.

[00:00:27]>> Oh, okay. So, you're not going to open it? Oh, I'm not going to open it. Do you think I'm a fool? I'm not going to I'm not going to give into you straight away, Michael.

[00:00:34]>> Right. But I really want to know what's in there.

[00:00:36]>> This is This is what you call a hook and tease. Okay. And that is um that's what this episode is about and and teased.

[00:00:42]>> I'm hooked. I'm being teased. [laughter] >> And that here is uh is what this information is about. What is it about sealed envelopes, locked boxes, clickbait, all of the things that make us desperately want to know the answer?

[00:01:00]This, Michael, is an episode about curiosity. Ooh, curious.

[00:01:10]>> This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Our bodies are incredible machines worrying away making more and more DNA to build the proteins that keep us alive.

[00:01:21]>> In fact, in the last minute, your body has made over 200 million new cells and enough DNA to stretch to the moon and back.

[00:01:29]>> To the moon and back. That's so much DNA that if you compared it to the size of the cell it fits into, that would be like squeezing the London underground into a suitcase. By the age of 50, you have copied almost six trillion miles of DNA. But every time that your body copies DNA, it risks making mistakes.

[00:01:48]And over time, those mistakes can accumulate. And that collection of errors can lead to cancer. But incredibly, Cancer Research UK scientists can spot these errors. And by finding them, they've helped double UK cancer survival over the last 50 years and are driving even more discoveries that could tackle over 200 types of cancer.

[00:02:09]>> For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearch.org/restcience.

[00:02:20][music] All right, let me start off let me start off by telling you about this amazing psychology experiment. My favorite psychology experiments are the ones which involve electrocuting people particularly when when people essentially volunteer to get electrocuted themselves. So this is 2016. It's 54 students and I mean look they they've signed up for a psychology experiment. So let's not pretend they didn't see something coming. But they are led into a room and there is a bowl of joke pens >> on the desk and they're told, "Look, some of these will shock you and some of them won't." If you tell people exactly which pens will shock you and which which ones are safe, they don't touch them. They don't go anywhere near them.

[00:03:06]They're like, "That's fine. I can accept. I'm not going to touch any of the the black pens or whatever it might be." Ah, >> however, if you just tell them that, look, some of these pens will shock you and some of them won't, no further instructions, then uh they get involved. They like they want to find out. They're sort of curious to find out the answer. Five times as often, by the way, if you don't give them that information, if you leave an information gap, um then five times as often, they will go in there and they will fiddle with these pens and get electrocuted.

[00:03:38]Well, I was going to say we know that people will shock themselves knowingly if they're bored enough. It's just something to do. But you say that they're five times more likely to get shocked if you leave it mysterious. What will shock them?

[00:03:53]>> Just a little information gap that they won't glow in. They're not bored, by the way. They they can they can do plenty of other. They're just I just want to know just want to know which ones which one's going to electrocute me. I want to know how sharp the electrical shock is going to be. And there is something weird about this, right? Because there's no prize here, you know? There's no dare.

[00:04:11]There's no like expectation.

[00:04:13]They're just electrocuting themselves purely to discover whether they'd be electrocuted.

[00:04:19]>> Yeah. There's there's it's not a game.

[00:04:21]They can't win. It's not about finding the electric ones. They just do it for themselves.

[00:04:27]>> Right. So, the researchers called this this particular phenomenon, they call it the Pandora. You know, the idea that like, okay, you're you're given an instruction. Don't open the box. sort of a similar draw to touch these pens. But here's the thing that I think is a real puzzle in all of this because our curiosity is quite often this this force that is strong enough to beat self-preservation.

[00:04:50]The drive to not want to be shocked or not want to be heard pales in comparison to our drive to want to find out, to want to to our curiosity to find out an answer. And I think that's kind of interesting, right? Because I was at my daughter's sports day today and they have all of these signs up right around the school. One of this giant sign that just says curiosity. And I think there's something interesting in that, right?

[00:05:15]Like that this is something that we prize in our children that you kind of like you give it to toddlers as like a a banner, a badge of honor, right? Be as curious as possible. I mean, you and I talk about it all the time. It's like a really positive thing. And yet, maybe it isn't, you know, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's the thing that will end up getting you shocked. That's um that's where I'm going with this.

[00:05:37]>> So yeah, we we've talked about curiosity a lot. We often talk about it as a species defining trait, >> though it's a bit paradoxical because it can lead to some bad outcomes. Why would evolution prefer it?

[00:05:51]>> And also I should add right like this this idea you the way you and I talk about it, the way they put banners up about it in school as though it's this incredibly positive trait. That absolutely was not always the case.

[00:06:01]>> Uh for a very very long time, curiosity was considered really a horrendous sin.

[00:06:07]>> Oh, when when are we talking? Because curiosity is something humans have had forever.

[00:06:13]>> And yet our social and cultural attitude towards it has changed, you say?

[00:06:19]>> Yeah. So for about 1,500 years, it was considered a vice.

[00:06:24]>> Not not a virtue at all. And and a proper named one, by the way. So St. Augustine who was writing about 400 AD, side note, basically personally road tested every sin just to decide which ones were really bad. And he said that curiosity was a lust lust of the eyes, right? One of the three lusts at the root of all sin. That's what he wrote.

[00:06:47]He was like, "It's not good." He called it a disease, Michael. I mean, people really were were not happy about this.

[00:06:55]Aquinus, uh, he was the same. He called it curiositas and said that it was a vice as opposed to studio sitas which is studying but only the kind that that god signs off on. So like asking questions about the world around you is not considered a good thing. I mean look if you look at ancient literature um you can see that over and over again the moral of the story is that curiosity is bad. Right? So Pandora's box you know she really wanted to know what was in the box. It didn't turn out that well for her. Eve's apple. She really wanted to know what the apple tasted like.

[00:07:29]There's also uh Lot, Lot's wife, who turned around for a quick look of Sodom and then was instantly turned into a pillar of salt. I mean, over and over again in these stories, the sort of the fable. I mean, partly the accused is a woman, right? [laughter] It's almost always, oh, you silly curious woman.

[00:07:45]>> Always those women the women.

[00:07:48]>> But definitely the sense of these stories is like, do not be curious, you know, like it'll never lead anywhere good.

[00:07:55]>> Yeah. Don't ask questions. I think it it very it seems very connected to the notion of the sacred. Some things just are the way they are. Don't try the apple. Just just accept it. Just accept it. And I think that there was uh elements of sort of population control that were going on around that. you know, especially with Christianity, with the kind of rise of the Christian church, this idea that you can sort of the scripture, the Bible is the ultimate truth >> and don't ask questions about it too much because actually that's just not not going to lead anywhere good. So, in the 1500s, you started getting these little these littlemies popping up where scholars really wanted to ask these kind of questions. There's one called the Academy of Secrets and then the the Inquisition just shut it down because they were like, "No, if you know too much, then you get to decide what is known and that's that's not a good thing." And the turn to curiosity possibly being a good thing actually only happens in about the 15600s when it just flips from from being a vice to a virtue. And actually the turn happens with the um the advent of the telescope and the microscope.

[00:09:09]>> Oh notes on this like I am just I'm learning so much and this is so interesting to me. So yeah the telescope and the microscope they show us that there there is not just hidden knowledge but hidden stuff that can be learned about.

[00:09:25]>> There's more to see. Yeah, >> there's more to see. And suddenly everybody is like, "Oh, okay. And what about this? And what about this? And what about this?" I mean, then you get the era of enlightenment. Then you get the scientific revolution. Then you get, you know, this massive explosion in in in discovery and curiosity and all that that goes on to give us. Um the uh the proof by the way that curiosity wasn't valued before is the word itself. So uh basically it barely existed before about 1640 right almost didn't exist at all um and it comes from the Latin curioitas from cura which means care which is the same same root as cure curator and manicure. So, okay, when you are being curious and getting your nails done, it's basically the same urge, right?

[00:10:16]Same same.

[00:10:17]>> You're caring for something.

[00:10:18]>> You're caring for something, but you literally I mean, you almost don't see this word at all before that point. And then it appears hundreds of times a decade. But, you know, by 1700, it's it's used really commonly. And that's it. You know, before that moment in time, >> we just didn't permit curiosity. In fact, you know, the um I told my daughter, my nine-year-old daughter, I was going to do an episode on curiosity.

[00:10:40]She said, "Oh, curiosity killed the cat." No, actually, the original line from 1598 was care killed the cat.

[00:10:49]>> Are you serious?

[00:10:50]>> Mhm.

[00:10:51]>> 1598, care killed >> 1598. Yeah. The only switched in about 1900.

[00:10:56]>> What does that mean, though? Care killed the cat. What's the lesson that they're trying to convey?

[00:11:00]>> Killing it with kindness.

[00:11:02]>> That sometimes kindness can lead you astray into danger.

[00:11:06]>> So, it was about excessive anxiety.

[00:11:08]Yeah.

[00:11:09]>> Yeah. Looks like uh you can also find the line in much ado about nothing. What courage man? What thou care killed a cat? Thou hast meddle enough in thee to kill care.

[00:11:21]>> So So here's the thing, right? This is this word that we we said was a sin for 1500 years.

[00:11:28]>> Then in the end we we sort of naming a Mars rover over it. And that's like what's going on with those two things?

[00:11:35]>> What's happening now? We're we're putting up big banners that extol curiosity in schools. We want kids to be curious >> as though it's a really positive thing.

[00:11:44]>> Yeah. Wow. So, it wasn't even really a concept that was discussed. It wasn't a virtue. The closest thing was care by which we meant excessive worry and anxiety over someone or something which could kill a cat >> which I would say is not a positive thing. Even Even in 1998, Ebenezer Brewer included a definition that said care killed the cat. It is said that a cat has nine lives, yet care would wear them all out.

[00:12:12]>> I want to show you though. I want to show you just how powerful, right, this like curiosity can be because at some point in the next, let's say, 20 minutes or so, I'm going to open up a little hole in your memory >> um that that you're going to be physically unable to leave alone. Okay?

[00:12:28]You're going to know the moment. You're going to know the moment when it when it arrives. In terms of what is going on when we feel curious, when we have that drive to push the button to, you know, turn over the pen, whatever it might be, sail across the ocean. There are all of these different theories about it. And I think the cleanest theory, you know, the first time people really sort of got hands on this is it was George Loenstein in the '9s, right? This is kind of how late we were like, what is this? Because before then it was all like, oh, it's the pleasure of learning. It's it's, you know, you're just enjoying learning and that's that's all there is to it. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no. There is this drive that you have that is more than just sitting down and reading a textbook. It's where you really want to know the answer. And he said that it is an information gap essentially. It's the distance between what you know and what you've just realized that you don't know. And that just realized bit is >> really key. But the way to think about it is uh to think about a missing tooth, right? So you know precisely where it should be. So this isn't just like some vague information all over the place.

[00:13:36]You know, I don't know very much about 16th century French poetry, but I don't really I'm not sort of driven to find out more.

[00:13:43]>> It's like the missing tooth is a really good analogy because you know exactly where this information slots in and your your tongue will not under any circumstances leave it alone. Right?

[00:13:53]sort of you're poking at it because you feel the gap, right? You sort of have the deprivation. And that's the thing that about curiosity is that it's not a wish. It's not like, "Oh, that would be nice." It's more like a deprivation.

[00:14:06]It's more like your brain is missing something and it needs to know. That's a really good way to put it because yeah, I also don't want to or desire to learn about 16th century French poetry, but I could be made to >> where suddenly if I feel that it's it's a deprivation, I feel like it's a missing hole in my teeth, then I will look it out because I need it for some new reason.

[00:14:32]>> Exactly. Right. I'm going to show you a couple of examples of that in a second of how this works. But the thing is, if you put people in brain scanners and then you make them curious, you you put them in this state of deprivation essentially where they really want to know, then the uh the the same part of your reward circuit inside your brain lights up that you would see if they were at a fruit machine, right? Or if you said, "Would you like a bacon sandwich?" Um or if you get a text back from somebody that you you're really, you know, flirtatiously pursuing, right?

[00:15:03]It's like is your is your dopamine essentially um centers that and what that does is it means that curiosity is a very specific form of motivation.

[00:15:12]>> The prize is dopamine in the end but uh but but you shouldn't mistake the dopamine for pleasure. There's like this there's a difference between wanting and liking. All right? And those those run on separate systems in your in your brain. Um, and we know this actually there's some Parkinson's patients who were put on uh drugs that would boost their dopamine. Um, so that they had like kind of endless motivation but no sort of satisfaction as it were. And what they became they they would sometimes slide into, you know, compulsive gambling or shopping or eating or whatever it was, but they weren't enjoying any of it. They were just driven to just do more and more and more and more and more of it. And that's the bit that your curiosity is doing. is driven to find it.

[00:15:54]>> Right. And then you can sate your curiosity, but these people taking these drugs couldn't sate it. They just can't.

[00:16:02]>> Exactly.

[00:16:03]>> I think that explains a lot of the behavior we're seeing in old folks homes nowadays where they're just throwing caution to the wind, gambling, a lot of STDs are spreading like never before.

[00:16:13]Have you heard about all of this?

[00:16:15]>> No. They might be on medications that are helping their Parkinson's and yet are making them wild uninhibited teenagers who need to pursue these things, >> these these delicious lifestyle treats, but they can't they can't be satisfied.

[00:16:31]>> I mean, they can't be satisfied, but it's not so good. But aside from that, knock yourselves out, guys. I think that's great.

[00:16:37]>> Keep [laughter] it up.

[00:16:38]>> That's great. Maybe use protection, but nonetheless, you know, I think it's great. I think it's great. Right. So here's the other thing about this. When you have created this gap in somebody's mind when you've created that that sort of deprivation, you put them in this curious state. Actually, what ends up happening is that you remember the thing that you learn better. So your hippocampus is essentially primed. It's like, okay, I really want to know this and I'm really going to I'm going to hang on to the answer that comes in.

[00:17:05]Curiosity is like this real attention spotlight that you're like, I'm really focused. I care a lot about what the what the answer is going to be. But there is this shape, you know, kind of as we said with 16th century poetry that that if you know nothing about a subject at all, you're not going to have an itch. If you know everything about a subject, you're not going to have an itch at all. This is the Loenstein work, you get this this peak right in the middle where you know just enough to know exactly where the information is missing, which is not coincidentally where the whole like, oh, you're never going to believe what happened next. 10 weird things that psychologists want you to know, right? Like it's like there's just enough in that that you're like, "Okay, fill the hole for me.

[00:17:48]>> I got to fill it." Right. That's why it's such great clickbait. Yeah. You open up that hole and then it's curiosity that is causes us to need to fill it. I need to click figure this out. Oh, they say number one is really mind-blowing. What is number one? I can't just leave me hanging with this like unfinished promise, >> right? And that phrasing just there is different to um there's something interesting in this film cuz it's not specific enough. You'll enjoy this. It's nowhere near specific enough. Whereas number one is mind-blowing is quite literally a sort of what's in the box, right? What's in the envelope? It's like it's one of those. It's like I want to know what is inside that particular thing. Okay. So, so here if you want to make somebody maximally curious, right?

[00:18:34]here's here's your here's your your three steps and and retain the information afterwards.

[00:18:39]>> Okay. So, the first is that you you need to open up a gap where they nearly know the answer but they don't know. Um so for you um I would like you to name all seven dwarfs. Right. I'll start you off.

[00:18:52]You got Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy. What are the other two?

[00:18:58]>> Say those first five again. Doc, grumpy, happy, sleepy, sneezy, >> bashful, and cutie patootie. [laughter] >> No. What's I know. I know. Bashful is one of them.

[00:19:15]>> You're not allowed to look it up.

[00:19:17]>> I'm not looking it up.

[00:19:18]>> Um >> Um, give me some give me some wrong guesses. Cutie patooty.

[00:19:22]>> Okay, say the five again.

[00:19:24]>> Doc, grumpy. Happy. Sleepy. Sneezy.

[00:19:30]>> Oh, I was going to say sneezy, but you've already listed that one. So, it's bashful. And >> tell you what, we'll come back to this later. Sticky. [laughter] No, no, not not sticky. Not cutie.

[00:19:43]>> Isn't Isn't it like a It's like not even an adjective. It's like, >> well, doc is one.

[00:19:48]>> You know what? I think I think we should come back to this later cuz I've got the answers written in the envelope.

[00:19:53]>> Ah, I see. Yeah. You've made this difficult. You've made me want >> You've made me driven to get the answer.

[00:20:00]>> I have tried to. I have tried to. So, here are the three steps, right? You got to open the gap where they nearly know but not quite. You got to refuse to close it so that it's not just instant gratification. I'm not going to instantly tell you what the answer is.

[00:20:13]And then the third thing, wrong guesses actually end up making people remember the information when you finally get it way more than if you just >> if you just don't worry. And and I think this is it. You know, we sort of gave these examples earlier of like how this is used in clickbait, but actually you can use this to this incredible effect in teaching too. Let me give you an example. Okay, so so this is an example I really love, right? Uh I can tell you your stomach lining regenerates in 3 days. Like how boring is that? Who cares?

[00:20:44]>> Um but I can tell you, hey, you know your stomach acid is strong enough to literally melt metal. How how does it not destroy your insides? How come you're not melting from the inside out >> and then get people to give me guesses and then get all the wrong answers and then when you finally do the reveal when you fill in that missing gap and you say, "Ah, it's because your stomach lining regenerates every 3 days quicker than it can be melted. It's basically building itself again faster than the acid can work." All of a sudden, actually, it's like it's got in there.

[00:21:19]And it's because what you've done is you have literally ripped open a hole in your brain, primed your hippocampus, motivated you to care about the answer, and then the information will end up being retained.

[00:21:31]>> And the wrong answers help.

[00:21:33]>> Mhm.

[00:21:35]>> Can you tell me more about why they help?

[00:21:37]>> I think that so so this is uh this is Loenstein again, by the way. He did this in 1992 and he asked people which US state reaches further east >> uh or furthest east. Sorry. Do you want to make a guess?

[00:21:52]>> Yeah, it's Maine.

[00:21:54]>> Incorrect.

[00:21:56]>> Oh, really? Maine is the closest to Africa.

[00:22:00]>> But the furthest reaching the furthest east.

[00:22:03]>> Mhm.

[00:22:04]>> Uh it's curious. I mean, I really want to look at a map. I really need to get [laughter] this information because if it's if it's not Maine, what could it be? Because I've always heard and seen if you look at a globe, Maine is definitely closer to Africa because of the way we're actually a bit, you know, [snorts] tilted.

[00:22:27]>> Agree.

[00:22:28]>> But >> agree that is true.

[00:22:29]>> Is there some weird thing where it's actually Alaska because it crosses the date line? Yeah. Okay.

[00:22:36]>> Yes. Exactly. It stretches so far west that it kind of essentially wraps around. I mean Sarah Palin who said, "I can see Russia from my window."

[00:22:45]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:46]>> Um it's because it goes so far west that it ends up crossing the dayline and ending up being >> Right. Right. So part there's part of Alaska that's actually just extremely east >> according to our system of of longitude.

[00:22:59]>> Exactly. So Loenstein, he asked people this question and he found that people who were told that their guess was wrong ended up both being far more curious, but also remembered the answer for longer than people who just guessed and then left it.

[00:23:16]>> Well, you know what I mean? I that's a case in point right there. Like if if I had just thought to myself, "Oh, the answer is Maine. I know this."

[00:23:23]>> Then um I wouldn't have thought about it again. But because you told me I was wrong, I I became much more aware of a hole in my knowledge and it's there and I c I I even have a good sense of the shape of that hole now and I go, "Wait a second." And I didn't let us move on until I got it right.

[00:23:41]>> Right. Right. Totally. So, but this is the thing. I think that when you are when you are learning, it feels like wrong answers are just, you know, delaying your progress. But actually wrong answers are making you feel the shape of the gap and driving you to want to find the right answer as long as it is done in a way that is not too hard, not too easy. The right if you get it exactly the right level, it's like where you get the best possible learning like you need to struggle a little bit because that is where your brain is kind of forcing open these gaps. This reminds me of I think Derek Mohler's doctoral thesis was on this method of teaching and he incorporated it into his YouTube videos where he was like people have more fun when things are pretty like easy. They say they enjoy a video but they learn more if you present wrong answers as wrong answers. And that's why he did so many of these interviews on the street where he was like, "Hey, if the Earth was a was a basketball and the moon was a tennis ball, how far apart would they be?" And he showed people getting it wrong. And it made you go, "Oh my gosh, just tell me the answer."

[00:24:56]And people would say they were frustrated by the video, but when you tested them later, they remembered the correct answer better if you had shown them all the wrong guesses.

[00:25:07]>> I bet they watched longer as well. I bet. and they probably watch longer because they they need to wait around for this answer. They can't just think, "Oh, I'm sure I know this. It's probably I don't know about that far." Next, >> here's the thing, right? So, so I mean, despite the fact that this was very unfashionable for a very long time, you know, the idea of curiosity, it is in all of us. It arrives incredibly early this like insatiable need to fill in the gap information. This really gorgeous study using um using babies who are 11 months old. And what they do is they get they get a ball and they basically show the babies a magic trick. So they have like a a kind of a hidden lever which makes it look like this ball passes through a wall. Okay? And then they give the baby an opportunity to play with this ball and other balls. The baby always chooses the magic ball. You know what I said always? Is that nothing is ever 100%. The the baby.

[00:26:00]>> We got to we got to make room for the babies that are like, "Nah, magic ball, big deal. Give me the block.

[00:26:06]Okay. So, but what they do with the ball is they take the magic ball and they start hitting it against tables, against walls, against chairs, whatever it might be. And if you change, if you change the magic trick that you show the babies and you show them where a ball floats in the air, okay, then the babies go to gravitate towards the ball, gravitate, um, and then they pick it up and they drop it. So, it's like they're testing their models of physics essentially. I mean, Certainly, you know, that you wouldn't read like that inside of a baby brain, but that's what they're doing. They're like, "Here is this gap in what I thought I knew about how balls worked, and my drive is to try and fill in that gap by running experiments essentially by by sort of motivated to learn." And I think this is it, right? It's again this this Goldilocks effect because if the scene is too chaotic, if the magic trick is too elaborate, they don't care. If it's too simple, if it's too easy, they don't care. But this sweet spot in the middle of where they can feel what the gap is and they believe that they can fill it, it's like they know the exact shape of this gap, then off they go. They're just like extremely excited by it.

[00:27:20]>> Wow. I'm sorry. I was literally trying to think of dwarves names [laughter] >> because I can't stop. It's annoying, isn't it?

[00:27:34]>> I feel like I should know.

[00:27:35]>> Annoying, isn't it annoying?

[00:27:37]>> And that's what you wrote in the envelope.

[00:27:39]>> That's what I wrote that has my name on it.

[00:27:41]>> Cuz I knew I knew you would want to know.

[00:27:43]>> Well, let me tell you, I no longer want you to open the envelope. I really want to find it myself.

[00:27:51]I feel like it's in there or that I can work my way towards the answer. And I need to finish this. And it's not so much that I'm uncomfortable not knowing.

[00:28:00]It's that I'm anticipating >> the pleasure of getting it. I was I got a taste by saying bashful. That made me feel like ooh yeah more of that. All right. So what's this seventh one?

[00:28:13]>> Yeah.

[00:28:14]>> Let me sorry I just want to know I'll be thinking about this in the background.

[00:28:18]Are there different degrees to which people are bothered by these information gaps? like is it a personality trait to be more upset by them and and more fixated on filling them?

[00:28:30]>> Yes. And also actually your curiosity does decay as you get older. So it's the dopamine reward system that motivates you to find out more that actually in some people it sort of it it ends up dying away as as time goes on.

[00:28:43]>> [snorts] >> Um the other thing is actually I mean if you've got this innate drive and as humans we have this innate drive it also means that it can be exploited and essentially this curiosity drive is the whole reason why doom scrolling works and works so incredibly well >> of course.

[00:29:04]>> Mhm. You can see this by the way there's there's other experiments. So in 2018, OpenAI did this experiment where they cuz this there was a big idea for quite a long time about maybe the way to build intelligence maybe the fundamental aspect of our intelligence is curiosity.

[00:29:22]Actually if you are motivated by wanting to learn information right rather than being motivated but just by food or you know whatever other biological responses there are. If you're motivated by curiosity, maybe that's the way that you get to artificial intelligence. So, OpenAI, they built these these these these agents that was rewarded by only curiosity and they did amazing like they could play Mario from scratch. They, you know, could do all kinds of things. And then somebody added in a TV um in the next level, like a TV screen that just showed random static and the agents basically sat down and never moved again. They were just like, "Oh, transfixed by the sort of maximally unpredictable. It's like maximally curious sort of forever state." Now, okay, you don't get that in humans because as we know in humans, we need the the the gap needs to have a correct size and shape for us to want to fill it, >> right?

[00:30:18]But here is the thing with doomcrolling that is what it manages to do because there is always the promise that the next thing that you see it's like what is this next thing going to be? What is the next video going to show me? And then when you add to that the fact that everybody has worked out that the algorithm just works better. People stay on your videos longer if you also use these tricks. If you also use clickbait.

[00:30:43]If you also say you're not going to believe number one is going to be mind-blowing. It's something built to exploit your curiosity drive embedded within a bigger system to exploit your curiosity drive that can just end up leaving you just there like getting the the dopamine dopamine dopamine dopamine dopamine the the sort of satiating the feeling of having fill the curiosity hole without ever having the kind of joy of actually struggling um with that deprivation. Well, that's why I want to know so much about my algorithm, what what equations are filling my feed because I feel like I would learn so much about myself.

[00:31:25]>> Um because I think we all get different things in our feed. There isn't just one way to skin a cat as we were saying.

[00:31:32]>> Different people are motivated to keep scrolling because they're getting a particular kind of content.

[00:31:37]>> Yeah. I wonder what it is that works on me the best because it works really, really well. and I try to be mindful of what is making me want more of these things that come up. However, yeah, it lacks the the effort. Um, I'm just getting it for free.

[00:31:56]>> Um, >> and in fact, whenever I'm scrolling reels and one of them is a puzzle and it's something like, "Can you name the seven dwarves?" I might give it a second of thought and then I just say, "Ah, whatever. I'll revisit this." I might even screenshot it, see if I can do it later, but I'll just keep scrolling.

[00:32:14]>> So, >> but I think this is the thing, you know, the three stages of like really getting somebody's curiosity drive up is that you can't resolve it immediately. You have to sort of leave it. And the problem is when you're watching videos that are 1 minute, 2 minutes, whatever, it's just resolved, resolved, resolved, resolved. It kind of never >> it never stays open long enough for your hippocampus to sort of actually retain any of the information of the reals that you're watching.

[00:32:38]>> Right.

[00:32:39]Right?

[00:32:40]>> There's a kicker on this which isn't very nice either. So, so Loenstein again, this is in 2020. The thing is is that like any appetite, right? This, you know, your dopamine reward system, which is what's what's going on in your brain, your your your curiosity needs to feel hungry essentially, like you need to kind of have that deprivation. And the problem is is that if you are I mean I'm using an analogy here, but if you're effectively snacking all the time over and over and over and over again, you never get properly hungry. You never get hungry for real information. And so the the real concern here is that actually I mean the evidence is mounting in this in this regard that actually the the kind of attention economy isn't just exploiting your curiosity, it's actually dampening it over time. you are you are less driven, less motivated to find out the sort of deep more meaningful things that otherwise would have caught your attention because it's just so easy.

[00:33:36]It's like the you know it's junk food, right?

[00:33:39]>> Right. You're not hungry long enough or if at all you you're you're just given the snacks and it does it does fulfill a little bit of a drive because you don't know what's going to come next. It might be something important. It might be something funny. It might be something you can share with your friend, but it's nowhere near the the the kind of hunger you would get without the internet, without such accessible information where you're like, how can I solve this problem in my life? Some of them are better just logistical problems like how can I do this but also pick up my kids and also make sure that I go to the grocery store. Like those are all things and once you've got assistance and AI assistance that can do it all, >> there's you're not hungry anymore. But what you're saying is that the hunger is is important.

[00:34:27]>> Yeah, it really is. It's like you getting stuff wrong is the thing that helps you remember. The hunger is the thing that will like drive you on to be more curious. You sort of need it unfortunately. I mean, look, food tastes better when you're hungry, right? And like Yeah. Your curiosity feels better when you like when you when you fight for it. I want to go back to that question though. That idea of like uh are you still working on dwarves by the way? [laughter] >> Actually, I think I figured it out.

[00:34:57]>> Okay.

[00:34:57]>> Yeah. I think and here's what's funny.

[00:34:59]It just sort of came to me when I wasn't thinking about the dwarves, which is how this often works cuz I I was pretty sure it was in my brain. Now, I could be wrong, >> but I think the seventh one is Dopey.

[00:35:12]>> You are correct. It's bashful and Dopey.

[00:35:13]bashful and dopey.

[00:35:15]>> Now, I'm pretty surprised I got that right because I don't think about the seven dwarves very often at all.

[00:35:22]>> No, >> I feel like I had a sense that it was a bit of a silly name, you know? It wasn't a normal like sleepy, happy. It was something that was a little like negative. And I was right. Dopey.

[00:35:34]>> Dopey. It wasn't Julie, which I think was one of your earlier guesses.

[00:35:38][laughter] >> Cutie patootie.

[00:35:41]That's the uh that's the ripoff of [laughter] Snow White Seven Dwarfs, the pirate copy. Um >> stinky [laughter] >> and late >> and late. Yeah. Um okay, I want to go back to that idea of like how on earth could this drive have survived when clearly it is something that would have killed many of our ancestors. Um and the thing is is that while I agree with you about how humans are stand out in our curiosity, I also think that actually you do see this same reward mechanism, this drive in other creatures too. And what I'm specifically talking about here is about separating out information and reward. Right? Okay. So let me let me give you an example. There's this experiment where you have a choice between two options, okay? Um like imagine you've got two levers in front of you and both of them give the same chance of of food after 5 seconds. Okay?

[00:36:43]It's like 50/50 whether you get the food. You press a button, 50/50 whether you get food. There's no difference essentially between the two buttons except that one of them will immediately tell you whether food's coming or not.

[00:36:55]>> Right? So immediately tells you whether you've won or not. Uh I don't know about you, but I'd be pressing that one every time. I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait to find out if I won. Just tell me. Just tell me. Just tell me. Yeah.

[00:37:04]Right.

[00:37:05]>> And there's a difference there because it's like it makes no difference to the reward, but the information is a separate signal.

[00:37:12]>> And humans, you will not be surprised to hear, press the information button, uh, you know, all the time. So do macaks, they um they they care very deeply. They reliably want the information. Tell me when the food's coming. Um, birds also, they want the they want the information.

[00:37:28]goldfish. They don't care. [laughter] Goldfish >> really >> doesn't make any difference. They're not interested in the extra information.

[00:37:34]Thank you very much. Like this doesn't make any difference to them. This is sort of an indication that you are seeing information as its own reward in some animals and not others. Right. It has evolved.

[00:37:45]>> Right. So somewhere between goldfish and macox >> information as a reward emerges.

[00:37:52]>> Yeah. Information as a reward. So we know there is this evolutionary uh selection for it or or an evolutionary drive let's say that has like presented it as an advantage [snorts] and and just going back to that idea of like you know people surely died when they were crossing the oceans. I mean I think there are different ways to look at this. There's back to Augustine around 400 AD. This is when he was saying that curiosity was awful. Uh he talks about how there was a mangled corpse by the roadside and people came out to look at it.

[00:38:28]Right. It's sort of rubbernecking, you know, but um but sort of whatever >> like a morbid curiosity.

[00:38:34]>> Morbid curiosity. Exactly. And he writes it was they they wanted to see to be made sad and to turn pale. And this was one of the reasons why he thought it was a sin because it was like, you know, why would you why would you be drawn to this? But also this is like hauling you towards danger. You know, trying to like go towards a a creature of the same species as you who has died in a bad way. Surely not a very good thing. Um and yet maybe it actually is. Maybe it actually is. So there's a fish called the guppy who has a behavior that's really similar to this. And what it does when a predator turns up to go and eat the guppy, certain certain guppies will leave the safety of their shaw and swim over to inspect the predator. Crazy.

[00:39:26]What are they doing? Like this seems wild.

[00:39:29]>> Well, it seems like a bad idea for them, but is it a good idea for the larger school of guppies? Well, the thing is is that I mean they do the the sort of the the um the kind of tail end rather than the business end. They're not sort of like they're not kind of crazy. They're not suicidal.

[00:39:46]>> Okay. Okay.

[00:39:47]>> Um but the thing is is that actually the guppies that went and inspected were actually not just sort of helping the wider um school. they were less likely to be eaten than the ones that hung back >> because the thing is is that they know where the predator is, right? The predators lost the element of surprise.

[00:40:09]>> Um, >> right.

[00:40:10]>> And actually what ends up happening is the predator itself ends up just leaving the hunt. Just being like, "Okay, well, I've been spotted. Not not going to bother with those ones then."

[00:40:17]>> Oh, wow.

[00:40:18]>> Actually reduce the chance of being eaten for for them and everyone else.

[00:40:23]>> Right. So there's there it's like there's many advantages here because I would say those those morbid curiosities we feel you can kind of justify it as saying well we want to learn about how that accident happened and what happened to that missing person because it in some way is like a a vaccinated danger for us. We can explore it but it's safe.

[00:40:46]It's just a podcast and yet it allows us to experience things and almost feel more prepared for them, >> right? And you know there's actually evidence for exactly that. So during the early weeks of 2020, the pandemic, it turned out, but people who scored highly in morbid curiosity, so we're talking about horror fans, we're talking about people who uh love watching true crime, people who sort of, you know, all kinds of like morbid curiosity, looking at pictures of dead people, all of that kind of thing. They ended up scoring higher on psychological resilience. they were less distressed than everybody else. And like it's almost as though maybe there is something about we're kind of rehearsing. It's exactly as you described, right? Like okay, well let's see what's going on there so we make sure that the same thing doesn't happen to us.

[00:41:40]>> The so so the benefits outweigh the costs.

[00:41:42]>> Exactly. Exactly right. Exactly right.

[00:41:45]And I think this is it actually just going back to the point that you made right at the top about how humans have this drive this curiosity to explore elsewhere and we are still doing it. You know in 2009 NASA ran this competition for people to name this Mars rover and um it ended up being this sixth grader from Kansas in fact. Oh.

[00:42:11]>> Um, called Clara.

[00:42:14]Uh, Lanaxa in Kansas. Do you know where that is?

[00:42:17]>> Yeah, Lanexa. Yeah, of course. I didn't live very far from there.

[00:42:21]>> If I'm pronounced that incorrectly, imagine all the other words that you went there.

[00:42:24]>> I'm a Stillwell/Oland Park kid. So, Lanexa, they were the, you know, they were the big city folk to me.

[00:42:31]>> Okay. Okay. The sophisticated ones.

[00:42:34]>> But still, we're we're, you know, we're brothers and sisters, you know. I love them.

[00:42:37]>> Of course. Of course. I think this is such a lovely story, right, that like they allowed the public to name it. I think Boaty McBoat Face has ruined that forever more for everyone. [laughter] >> Yeah, it's hard to beat that one. It >> is hard to beat that one. Um anyway, she suggested uh the word curiosity. And she wrote this really gorgeous essay, 250 words, and she said that curiosity is an everlasting flame that burns in everybody's mind. The thing that drives us through ordinary days. How gorgeous is that?

[00:43:05]>> That's what it And she got to she got to sign her name on the rover as well.

[00:43:09]>> I didn't know that Curiosity was named by a canen who said such beautiful things about Curiosity. That's great.

[00:43:16]>> Isn't that lovely? I mean, maybe she saw one of the signs at school. Right.

[00:43:19][laughter] >> Right.

[00:43:22]>> It's all been worth it.

[00:43:23]>> It's all been worth it. And I think that's it. You know, this thing has this most the most incredible arc. You know, it's something that was been called disease. the thing that like was the the you know that myths were written about as like the moral of the story was to avoid being curious you know it's the thing that will make you electrocute yourself [laughter] drive you to electrocute yourself even if it hurts and I think actually it's just really lovely that this is the thing that's now on Mars kind of wandering around it sort of strapped it to nuclear battery and let a 12-year-old name in and off we go how fitting >> that's a wonderful story by the way I love hearing a story about any any um canen child who who you know did something amazing. But I I've been doing a lot of research on the history of what it means to be cool. Specifically, the word coolness and why people a hundred a thousand years ago certainly had status and and all of that, but the word cool never existed. And I'm starting to think, and this is I'll tease this for a future episode because we should do one on coolness. I wonder if the concept of being cool might have also emerged for the same social and cultural reasons that curiosity became so important that even children are being taught it and are sharing its importance.

[00:44:43]>> Are you suggesting that um that I go down to the school tomorrow with a sign that just says coolness on it? I think I will >> actually I am suggesting that I think that at schools you know we have the signs that say respect, compassion, curiosity. There should be one that says cool because we live in a society where it's not just where do you fall in the aristocracy hierarchy, but it's like what do you have as an innovative thought or idea? Like we contribute in different ways than we used to. And so being curious and being cool, being autonomous in ways that bring new things, new information, not just existing status, but new information. We live in this like time now where information is the currency. Like of course we're going to find that curious people and cool people >> take up a lot of our time. Well, you watching this podcast, listening to this podcast, you are both cool and curious.

[00:45:46]Um, and you you are forever part of our club. Um, so thank you so much for listening. Tell you what, we got going to have to come up with one head of a clickbait title for this one, aren't we?

[00:45:54]Imagine that. Talking about the theory of clickbait and then not doing a clickbait title. It's going to be punchy. So, but anyway, you can email us as ever. The rest is [email protected] >> and we will see you next time. Bye.