Could you land a plane in an emergency?

I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and this and this is no such thing a show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode, we explore the concept of confidence, and more specifically, over confidence. As I attempt to do something I have absolutely no business attempting. There's no such thing, no such thing, such thing.

So there's a survey that's gone around. It came out early last year. And here's the question, and then I'll ask for your answers. This is from you Gov. The question is how confident are you that you could safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency situation, relying only on the assistance of air traffic control. And you can answer very confident, somewhat confident, not very confident, not at all confident, or not sure.

And this is you're not You're not landing it by yourself like someone what it is?

Okay, I would probably say not very confident to not at all. I'm somewhere between there.

I'm pretty confident I could land very yeah, I think somewhere between someone and very confident. If someone's giving me instructions, I think I think I could do it.

I think that's how I feel too, So you both think that, I'd say very.

I think very between.

Someone and when you're an airplane, you either land it or everyone dies, so there's a lot of pressure.

I'm not just I think that's helping me, though, I.

Think that's definitely hurting. It's not just like you know, if you don't land it, everything's cool.

Like even think about like my first time driving a car, I was so nervous with the driving instructor, and the stakes are so much lower.

Yeah, I guess from what I understand of landing planes, which isn't much, but it just seems like because of the way planes are set up, it's all just like.

Is this this is a commercial plane?

Passenger airplane?

Yeah, yeah, that's like a commercial So I'm assuming.

Y'all think ya could land of bowing.

That's easier. I'm saying, I think that would be easier than a small little plane where it's like, okay, like because these planes have so many buttons, it seems like it's mostly kind of automatically setting up.

A lot of them are automated.

Ye are confused, Okay, once they're in the sky, landing and takeoff are still done. By pilots. It's it's like a random person can't just take off, yeah, but maybe.

Landing and takeoff or done by pilots. But at the same time, I think we're imagining them like having some kind of like steering wheel where they're turning. They're like typing in numbers that make the plane.

No, but they're pulling and pushing for see you don't even you bet you better.

Do some research.

They're pulling the throttle.

Yeah, well how high and low the plane?

There's some yeah, but like the moment again, this this person in air traffic control has all these numbers and they're saying like, okay, pull this.

It's just exactly I'm not even yes.

Sorry, that is insane.

The fact that you would have hundreds of people on this plane, you have never flown a plane in your life before, and both of you think that, yeah, I could probably do that. Have you been on a plane when people claping you land? Yeah, that's someone who does this like every day of their lives. Like there's a plane is weird.

It's not like, okay that.

Flying a plane is not just something that anyone can do.

Anyone could do it, probably, we just don't because there's not that many planes. I mean.

A man.

Yeah, I don't look, I don't even like I think that that's crazy. I think most people shouldn't even be allowed to drive.

Does the survey say what percentage of people think they can do it?

I can read you the results. Okay, yeah, so this is for all people that answered. Very confident is thirteen percent. Okay, Somewhat confident is nineteen percent. Not very confident is seventeen percent. Not at all confident is forty two percent.

Okay, So most people are normal.

And not sure is nine percent.

So combine that the somewhat and very confident numbers. Yeah, that would be nineteen plus thirteen thirty two. So thirty two percent of people, thirty two percent of all people. Yeah, all people crazy. This is the weird part. I don't think thirty two percent of people could safely land one in three people, but I believe.

That I could.

Are you a good driver, Yeah, I'm a great driver.

I liver pizza.

What the hell to do it? Because some of the worst drivers I know liver pizza.

You have to be able to weave around traffic. You want to get there on time. You have to know how to parallel park.

And you don't need to do that with a plane. The runway is clear.

But you said you don't think that thirty people could do that, right.

You think that land the plane? You know you're you're built different, you can do different.

I'm not at all confident. I think if I landed the plane, it would be a miracle.

Well, it would be a miracle for any of us to do it. That I agree with, Yeah, but not really hard. Well but actually, yeah, how is.

It a miracle? Both of you feel like you could get.

Because the miracles out here daily just because it's an emergency. Just look, every day is a miracle while we're here.

I treat every day why I wake up as a miracle, thinking very much every heart. I think the reason why I feel like it'd be it would be a miracles like the just think of the headline. Guys never flown the plane before lands Yeah, and that plane. That's my point on these very specific instructions given to him.

Yes through the headphones, So this.

Not too long ago, but it was a small plane. The man with a career in flooring sales explains how we became impromptu pilot when the real pilot passed out of the controls.

They reached over his body because he's at this point unresponsive, and slowly started to pull back on the stick and turn. How did you know how to do that? Just common sense, I guess being on airplanes.

And the guy had flown like hundreds of times before and he was able to land the plane. But it was a smaller plane. He had been in the small planes. You see what the guy is doing all the time. Neither one of you ever been in a cockpit, and you think you can be in a small plane.

I've been in a cockpit just to like say hi to the pilot. But I've also played.

Ace Combat multiple games in that series.

Yeah, have you ever heard of Star Fox? So by gender, this is how it breaks down.

So for very confident, which was thirteen percent of all people, it's male twenty percent and female seven percent.

Yep, ladies got their mind right.

So they need to feel more confident about society that unfortunately, you know, ladies are pushed down.

Guys are confidence. Sky is the limit queens.

I think I think this is a classic case of guys just thinking they can do shit that they can't.

In my opinion, it's a bad thing that women don't feel more confident women are not. It's not a detriment to me. I wish everyone was answering that they're very I was on a.

Plane and the pilot passed out. I wish men and women stood up to volunteer to play play.

And I would also say I would probably prefer a confident women to take that.

I fully believe that like men in general are too like over confident about things. But I think this specific I think this specific question is different though, because you are you aren't relying on yourself. You're relying on a professional who knows how to land a plan.

But you're you are the person who is at the end of the day, going to be responsible for whether or not you live or die.

When I fail and the you know, it's on the cover of the newspaper the next day, they're not going to be like this guy thought he could do it. We gave him perfect instructions and he messed up. They'd be like brave hero, Yeah, gave it a shot, tried his best, and he was the only one who could.

Absolutely.

I think the point that it's not easy is the issue with guys period.

If it were easy, then who would care?

Right, Guys think that they can do impossible stuff all the time and have confidence, unearned confidence, And I think that's what what's happening here. Why Why do you think that you can land on a plan you have no experience with related in your life.

Because the thing you're bringing up about unearned confidence, I don't think it fully applies to this. Because someone is holding your hand through the problem.

I don't think you need a super high IQ to do that.

So y'all are both saying that this is not that hard of a thing to do. Period.

Kind of.

Let's say, Devin, there's something wrong with your car's transmission and you don't know how to fix that.

I don't.

You've never seen, you've never tried in your life.

No, I don't know anything about cars.

Now, what if a mechanic called you on the phone. You have all the tools and he's just walking you through.

I can barely watch a video and put something together.

Yeah, but no, Okay, if you don't fix it, it's gonna explode and kill you.

Okay, a little bit higher, I'm gonna try a little bit harder.

I think you could fix it if he told you exactly what to do. I think that doesn't mean his job's easy.

You can only give me but so much guidance, but at a certain point there's a lot of judgment also involved. They can tell you what button the press, they can tell you when to do something, but you are still flying a plane.

This isn't like putting something together.

Or taking something apart, right Like, this is a moving vehicle in the sky, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong.

I think y'all are thinking of that is like, Okay, you're putting together ikea furniture with like a blindfold, Like can you do it?

I guess from my perspective from what little I do know about these planes is it kind of is like that more so than you know, uh, you know a race car going around a crazy bend that is skill based and like you need you need a very special.

Now we're talking like there's there's gonna be wind, there's gonna be things that I know we're not like putting like something in the middle of the tarmac intentionally, but like it's there's probably gonna be something happening that day that you know, like even if you're driving a car, right like if it's not raining, there's still you know, like maybe there's a po hole. Maybe you know, it's like there's always variable. Sure, yes, but there's a.

Reason that I'm assuming they know that and they're gonna there's a reason why, like air traffic control doesn't just fly to planes.

Well we're it is that they're not in the plane.

There's a reason there's a pilot in the plane.

Yes, I'm not even saying that like in this transmission scenario, you might have been able to fix it, but not as good as the mechanic in this scenario with the plane.

I'm not saying real close to landing, I'm.

Not saying everyone's gonna live or like maybe I don't know if I'll do the landing wheel gears to come out, maybe I'll fuck that part up.

I don't think killing a couple of people safely landing that is.

Come on, there's two hundred other people on the plane.

It's a miracle.

Okay, So so I think that changes things a little bit. Though. If you're saying I can get us.

On the ground, we're gonna get where everyone is gonna live is very difficult.

We're gonna live there.

You're saying safely everyone everyone. People may get like some whiplash.

Or something more turbulent.

Probably, sure, I'm playing on getting the wheels out.

You can like, you know, one of the wheels fall off or something like that. You can be in perfect condition. No, you can.

Crash land, but everyone needs to be alive and be able to like get off the plane.

I'm not talking like half the plane blows off.

Yeah, yeah, I know, the making it to the road.

Yeah, and I'm gonna have a parachute. So I'm I'm in a little bit early.

But okay, so I think I need to try and actually land a plane.

With your control.

Oh that's the run, right, I'm looking at this thing. But first I'm going to talk to an expert. This guy has studied overconfidence so much that he has an effect named after him.

That's after the break.

What break?

We don't have any breaks?

Cool break?

The break is just music. Yeah, all right, we're back.

I'm Anny Noah.

Okay.

Last time we were here, we debated whether Noah and I could land a plane given instructions.

By or not. We debated whether all of us would be able to land a plane.

Yeah, but it turned into me and Noah because you decided that we were crazy. I interviewed this guy named David Dunning. He's a psychology professor at the University of Michigan. I went to Ohio State it, so I almost hung up the call when I found that out.

But we let it slide.

David Dunning is the founder of this concept called the Dunning Kruger effect.

Well, the Dunning Kruger effect, as it's come to be known in popular culture, is the idea that those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. So they do quite badly in various skills, but they think they're doing just fine until the world really makes the lesson very very clear.

He's saying that these people don't even realize. I thought it was like, Okay, I'm super confident at this thing. I try to sing, thinking I'm going to be good at it. But then as I'm doing it, maybe I realized, Okay, you know, it's like we talked about, like playing.

Serena Williams and Tennis.

Obviously, that's an extreme example, but it's interesting that he says the person doesn't even realize they're not good at it even while or after doing it.

Yeah, that's like total oblivious y versus in the Plaine scenario we're talking about saying I'll try this, yes, not like maybe you're doing it and now the plane is crashing and being like, oh this is fine. Yes, Like Devin, you have to allow that's different than we're not that illusional.

Yeah.

Well, well, for our example is if you don't do it while you die, versus like if it was like you thought you were great at like painting or something.

I wondered whether it's a quote unquote good or quote unquote bad thing to be overconfident in an area.

The way I like to think about it is if you are a general and you're leading your troops to battle. Now, the day before the invasion, you want to be very, very under confident. You want to worry about every contingency, every risk, everything that could go wrong, every devious scheme the enemy might have, and prepare for it. You don't want to be overconfident. You want to be diligent to

I think sports is the easiest example to think of, Like, at some point you have to push yourself to try to do something, or like even just working out or something. Right, it's easy in like you know, X minutes into a workout to be like, oh man, I'm really tired. I don't want to do this last thing. Obviously you put yourself that. It's the Peleton instructors screaming at you. You feel better, like they promise you would.

You would do it. It's not like yeah, I can do it.

Yeah, So I mean shout out to them yeah.

And to try to kind of tie this to the plane scenario, I guess he's saying it's bad that we're confident before we're in they.

That's true right now. See he's saying basically you should be mean, right now.

Studying like what exactly?

Want to be prepared and measured, but when the emergency comes, it is good to be confident. I rolled up the sleeves, which is like the inverse of what we are. We're confident before the emergency, and when the emergency happens, we're nervous and can we do it?

Yeah, I'll be like, hey, captain, if you need a few minutes off, just you know, I'm in Rose seventeen back there, economy.

So the next thing we talked about was this kind of breakdown between men and women, like the gender aspect to this, because as as a reminder, men were way more confident than women were in this specific question.

If something is identified with a gender, like sports with men and still cooking with women, people will tend to be overconfident and confident in the things that are identified with their gender. That is one of the things that produces is overconfidence. Is this preconceived notion you have about yourself. So if you think you know everything your male, you're just much more likely to think you know everything about

So it's not necessarily that women are just less confident than men. It's that society gives women fewer things to be confident about. So it's kind of a circular argument.

But right.

The next question I asked him was I just wanted to get his thoughts on the survey. It's I think thirty two percent of people feel somewhat to very confident that they could land a plane in an emergency situation. I just do you do you have any general reaction to that.

I am completely struck with lack of surprise. Actually, that sounds about right. There's a thing that happens when you're distant from what you're considering. So if you're you're never going to actually follow the plane, you're never going to pay for overconfidence. So it's okay, and things may change if you're actually on the plane.

So pretty much every insight that he's had in this interview goes against our confidence in landing a plane.

I can't argue with this guy. You know, this guy sounds like he knows what he said. I guess I still probably wouldn't change my answer at this I don't think I.

Would either, But it's like, and you know, I'm learning more.

I don't know if that's necessarily I don't think that's his point either.

No.

I think he's just like into how that's just how, Yeah, it works.

This is just the way we all think about this.

It's just explaining why you are both so over confidence.

And why you shouldn't be.

And it is easy to feel that way now obviously.

Yeah, because you're not on a plane falling out of the sky here, and you're not in a scenario where you possibly would be.

Now, I had one more question for him. If you were given instruction by an air traffic controller, do you think you could land a plane in an emergency situation?

Oh?

Absolutely not. I react too slow, over I overthink. I mean people think that people are answering because of self puffery, But really what it is is they don't know everything that's going to happen. They have no idea, and but they but in that they have some idea. Well, there's a little steering wheel, and you just do the steering wheel. It's like video game, video games, yeah, so they have.

You're doing a great impression of me. Yeah, so he kind of cooked me at the end there. I just found it so interesting to to understand a little bit better, like why we thought the way that we thought, and why we think the way that we find present tense because at the end of the day, I think we still maybe I'm going to go from like very confident to somewhat confident after learning why I think this way.

Now.

Obviously, testing out this Yuga of survey question in real life would be illegal.

I think I'm assuming.

I don't think what we did it we got many on a plane.

Yeah, the emergency situation, We pushed the yeah you've you've probably been hearing about these little Boeing incidents, and that's trying to get this ready.

One of the doors falls.

We're just trying to make a really good podcast. So we can't actually do this experiment in real life, but we did the next best thing, which is a flight simulator. So the three of us went to a place called Manhattan Flight Club in Midtown, New York City, and we linked up with a pilot named Taylor loosely uh, and we decided to try and play out this scenario as close as we as close as we could get it

Yeah, had all the opponents.

He said it was FCC whatever, right.

You mean FAA certified.

Yeah, Taylor, who was so kind to help us out with this and so patient because we had the dumbest questions ever. He is not an air traffic controller and so he's he's just a pilot and he knows how to pilot these smaller aircrafts. And so it's worth noting before we listen to the tape that the simulation we were running it was not a simulation of a passenger commercial jet. The simulation is a smaller aircraft. So yeah, let's take a listen to the to me trying to land a plane in an emergency.

All right, this is Manny.

I'm here with Noah and Devin at the Manhattan Flight Club flight simulator. I'm looking at this kind of monstrous set up here, and I will say I'm a little less confident than I was when we first recorded.

So yeah, let's do this.

Are you I'm hearing the voice, but I know I don't know how to respond to the voice.

Fude, early, Are you in an emergency joint? Hor Fox Stago?

Yes, please respond.

Okay, here's I'm gonna try this, Mark Fox or Tango.

There's a pilot in compation. I look for a red button on your control to talk to us.

Oh, there should be a red button on your control wheel.

Oh shit, okay, hello, can you hear me more?

Fox Shartano, I heard your trade point.

Are you a flight out of control?

I'm only technically a pilot, but I've never flun playing before. Our our pilot had some kind of emergency and now I'm at the meal.

Mor Fox Hupano, Roger had a declared emergency and you get it.

Help you get to the runway.

Thank com and we're going to figure it out together again.

That sounds great. This is thank you, Thank you so much.

Poor Fox. Are you able to he uh what looks like a comment per south east and some other numbers on one of the dials in front of you.

Yes, the dial on the top has that we're wanting you do to churn.

Now, are you able to earn right and the.

Letter as you see on the dial.

Yes, I'll try it.

You'll have to stop your care now.

Finger to stop the churn much the control of last for functioning.

You're doing good. You're towards the final approach path of the runway.

Here we go ahead and verify that, just so we can see you.

Your waiting light is on.

Here's one problem I see if I go suppress it, but I'm then not on the steering wheel for function.

Thing I understand.

Go ahead and announce her and one to one five.

To look on the other side of the letter.

Ask Okay, your leftern.

Is hooking in a turning laps on the stream.

Here, go ahead and reduce that throttle.

If by about a quarter of an inch.

If we're gonna start your data, head here to help you out. Okay, I'm just trying to balance.

I do love that.

Sometimes may ask as if these are suggestions, I'll get to it.

You might be able to at the point to slightly court the runway with your control than what you see.

Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing.

If you can see anything that could we flap.

We might have to go without the flaps. I don't see the flaps, but poor.

Fox here to be the perfect for a final approach in the landing. Grab itrontal and flowing pullet all the way.

Back toward you.

Okay, you go ahead, and flowing point up to push the lab.

Let's go.

So yeah, fuck all the haters. I landed the goddamn plane. It was obviously a lot rockier than I thought it was going to be, but I did it.

So now, after having done the simulation, do you say, do you think that you feel more or less confident than beforehand about your the probability of you successfully landing an actual plane.

What I learned was that Number one pretty good at this.

I think I'm pretty good at Like now you must be more confident.

Well, here's the tricky part. The reason why I'm not more confident is because obvious it goes without saying, this is a much different scenario than in real life, and of course we knew that going into it. But like sitting in the chair, seeing all the controls, doing everything he was telling me to do, I'm still confident that I could do this, but I now have more respect for like how hard it acts.

Actually is just the.

Overwhelming amount of numbers and dials and controls and switches and levers and buttons that are sitting in front of you are so overwhelming that, like, and I know that.

Taylor are fake.

Air traffic control guy was saying exactly what to do. But when he says, press the red button, Yeah, there's fifty red buttons.

Yeah, like it, it was very hard to get. It's not necessarily labeled so clearly because.

This scenario, Yeah.

Like here's the one you really need.

Now.

The other reason I'm probably a little less confident is this, So like after the experiment, I emailed Taylor to try and tell us what the differences between that aircraft we did in the simulator versus a real like passenger jet that would have like two hundred people on it. There are two key differences. One is that it's even obviously it's even more complex the controls on a bigger flight. However, he noted that in this emergency scenario, you would be ignoring ninety.

Percent of the controls on the plane.

Yeah, but more stuff to look at.

There's more, there's more stuff you have to get through, so that's hard. The second part is pretty detrimental. The speed of the aircraft. Our aircraft was going and landing at around seventy knots.

Do I know what that means?

No?

OK, but a passenger jet goes at one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty knots. So essentially I'd be doing that simulation at twice the speed. Oh yeah, and that just gives you so much fewer minutes.

How much time to mess around reaction.

Time is in the simulation. You could we were really slowly going back and.

Forth to continue to correct everything, you know, removing this from the very specific plane scenario. I think this is you know, I definitely think about using confidence, you know, in my kind of regular life, and like how I actually can use it to my advantage.

Using confidence as a tool.

I think it's like an interesting takeaway, intentional, being more intentional about using confidence in that way. Although I feel like sometimes you just can't control it, you know, I can't control the fact that I don't think I could land that planning.

Yeah, yeah you can't, Yeah you can't necessarily, Yeah, yeah, that way I'm too real, you know, too honest.

Well, the other part of the Dunning Kruger effect is people who are not confident when they should be. So maybe you can't land a plane.

I get a little bit nervous I get on a plane. I have this version where everyone's screaming out there, lovers, and then I think of my mother's come on with the flames. Nothing ever Happens.

No Such Thing is produced by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman and Devin Joseph. The theme song is by me Manny. This song is Nothing Ever Happens by Darryl Ron. Our guest this week was David Dunning. Thanks to our friends for their notes, Julia Lindsay and Mia de Graf, and visit No Such Thing Dot Show to see our setup for the flight simulator.

As it ever happens.

Next week on No Such Thing, the Return of Slurs. I couldn't understand the power of these words until they use them against Lebron James