Listener Mail: Hasten Down the Wind

feedback to recent episodes. If you have something fascinating to add to a topic we have talked about. I'm going to kick things off today with responses to our series on the illusion of control, which is a psychology concept, a type of cognitive illusion in which, in many cases, people believe they have more control over outcomes than they actually do. And this first message comes from Lauren. Lauren says, Hi, Robin, Joe. This response pertains to the comment made about light switches

and cookies in the kitchen. Yeah, so for context, this was something that came up in part three of the series when we were talking about magical thinking and its relationship to control heuristics, which are mental shortcuts we use to judge whether we had influence over an outcome or not. And Rob was talking about how even normal direct physical causation can feel kind of alien and maybe even kind of magical if we don't recall consciously willing in action

before doing it. Then the example was absent mindedly turning on a light when you go into the kitchen at night for a cookie. So you flip the switch as you enter the room, but it could suddenly occur to you. I don't remember intending to do that. Then troll heuristic doesn't really give you the green check, because you did take the action and the outcome happened, but you don't remember consciously intending the outcome in advance. Anyway, back to

Lauren's message. In the single room restroom at work, they took out the light switch near the entrance two months ago and replaced it with a flat piece of plastic to cover the electrical gap. They installed sensor lights that automatically go on when you enter. This irked me for two reasons. First, I didn't like no longer having control over whether the light was on or off, and I felt mildly insulted that my freedom of choice had been taken from me. Did they not trust us to decide?

The second reason the whole situation annoys me is the fact that I still lift my hand to turn on the light upon entry every time, even when the lights are flickering their way on as I move my arm. Maybe humans, led by a pervasive, occasionally subconscious desire for control and an inability to cope with the loss or lack of it, delude themselves into believing they have it. Thanks for making an extremely interesting and enjoyable podcast, Lauren, Well,

thank you so much, Lauren. Yeah, as for automatic lights in the bathrooms, I don't know, I can see exactly what you're saying, but I would kind of feel like that's got to be more hygienic, right, You're forced to touch fewer things while you're in the bathroom. I don't know, so. Yeah. The idea that some amount of the illusion of control is driven by wishful thinking or by a desire for control is something that came up casually in these episodes but was not explored as like a major hypothesis in

the literature that we were looking at. So the main explanatory models we talked about were Ellen Langer's skill chance confusion hypothesis and then Suzanne Thompson's favorite hypothesis of the imprecise control heuristic what I was just talking about a minute ago. So remember the the control heuristic was the idea that we usually make judgments of whether we can control an outcome or not by using a shortcut that asks a few questions, and those questions would be did

I intend an outcome? Did I take an action? Did I get the intended outcome or at least in part or intermittently? And was the action connected in some way, most often by temporal proximity. You know, there's a time relationship. Was the action connected to the outcome? And if these criteria are met, we usually think we had control over

the outcome. And this system works fine most of the time, but it can get us really confused when results are mixed or when the connection between action and outcome is ambiguous, especially in contrived artificial scenarios with hidden mechanisms of causation and manipulative patterns of feedback like a slot machine. And I think in the episode Rob and I both thought it seemed like the control heuristic explanation made a lot

of sense, and there's pretty good evidence for it. But also it's absolutely true that illusions of control could arise from a combination of different factors and confusions of the control heuristic might be only one part of the equation.

Wishful thinking or a desire for control could play a part as well, and that would dovetail nicely with some experimental findings that we did talk about in the episode, such as the finding that people who are highly motivated to get a certain outcome show more illusions of control

over the process of getting that outcome. So the example we talked about would be if you enter a lottery and the prize is a sandwich, people who are currently hungry apparently show more illusions of control over the lottery than people who aren't hungry. So I definitely think you're onto something with the hypothesis that in some situations wish full thinking or motivated reasoning could play a part in causing these illusions, And I guess that's to invoke cliche.

More research is needed. Be good to see more studies on that anyway, Thank you, Lauren. All Right, this next message is from Anna Anna says, Hello, Robert, Joe and JJ. In your first episode about the Illusion of control, you talked about the buttons that you pressed to cross the road. I just wanted to mention the brilliant design of the crosswalk buttons in Australia. They are specially designed for people with different abilities. They're positioned at a level so that

people in wheelchairs can press them. The button is a large silver button that is easy to press, so people with arthritis can easily press them. This is also helpful if your hands are full, because you can press it with your elbow. Also, they make a special noise when it's time to cross. This is for people who are vision impaired. When you're waiting, there's a slow beeping and when you cross, there is a fast trill of beeps. I think some of these are now implemented in other countries,

but from memory, they were invented in Australia. I seem to remember an article praising Australian innovation and inclusiveness that mentioned these buttons. Yeah, in the States, we have some crosswalks that have set ups basically like this, but not all crosswalks are like that. You know, it varies and

it goes on. I also wanted to mention a tangential topic related to the illusion of control, which is the idea that if you have one piece of good luck, somehow that luck will continue and you need to harness that luck because it will only last a short time. Like if you have a particular piece of luck, like you get a very good parking space, someone will say something like you should go out and buy a lottery ticket.

I guess this could also be chalked up to the idea of good omens, and she specifies not the excellent book by Neil Gamon and Terry Pratchett. This can be a good thing. Say, if you're going to a job interview and you park on a street that has the name of your best friend or a particularly lucky sounding name, you will feel this is a sign. Then you will be more relaxed and confident in the interview, and that will increase your chances of getting the job. Anyway. Thanks

for all the great work, Anna well, thank you, Anna. Yeah, I totally agree. I think, much like with the beneficial side of the illusion of control, little lucky feelings like this can be a net positive in our lives, even if they are strictly speaking, illusions and not predictive of external outcomes. So we talked about this a little bit in the episodes, and I would stand by this idea.

I think it can be a good thing sometimes for people to wear their lucky charm, even though I don't believe that lucky charms are literally efficacious in changing your luck. So I don't believe the charm would change the external chances of a good or bad outcome. The thing it probably actually does is help you regulate your emotions, which in turn could actually lead to a better outcome, just

like the example you give. So if you go into a job interview more relaxed and confident because you are wearing your lucky charm, this could literally improve the impression you make and your chances of getting the job. Even though the lucky charm isn't actually magic, it's just helping you control your own feelings and your own behavior. So I think that's a great point. Na, thanks for getting a touch. This next message, still about the illusion of control,

is from Renata. Renata says, Hi, Joe and Rob, one of my job responsibilities is testing software, and the illusion of control crops up all the time in my work. One thing I've encountered several times and seeing others get stuck on too, is trying to figure out the elaborate steps it takes to reproduce a bug when the bug in fact occurs due to factors that are not in my control. For example, there might be a bug that only happens at a certain interval or after a delay

because of system processing time. But what sometimes I end up doing is coming up with totally irrelevant steps that just happen to take the exact amount of time you need to wait to see the bug. Another example is similar to an elevator door close button, where we may introduce a button knowing that it doesn't do much, but it makes users feel more in control, for example, a button that refreshes information even though it automatically refreshes every

few seconds. The illusion of control also reminds me of the self help industry manifestation and the law of attraction prey on a combination of the illusion of control and confirmation bias. I think the authors you cited who critiqued the illusion of control are probably right that as humans, we are generally bad at knowing the probability of an outcome.

And therefore we estimate our control in correctly. But the illusion of control is apparently much easier to exploit than the illusion of non control, so it ends up being a bias we see in the real world that causes harm more often. And then Ranata ends the message with some kind words about the show and by attaching a picture of a couple of pet rats. I gotta say,

these rats are very cute. In the picture, They're kind of smooshed together on top of each other, so I'm trying to figure out are they like cuddling or are they climbing over one another to get your attention? Unclear?

Let's see regarding your comments about illusions of control. So with illusions of control and beliefs about manifestation or the law of attraction or other types of magical thinking, this got me wondering where the line is between the normal, healthy, empowering optimism and feelings of self efficacy that we talked about, which may in some cases even encompass what are objectively illusions, maybe thinking you have a bit more control over an

outcome than you actually do. Where's the line between that and these beliefs in things like manifestation or whatever. You would call a theory of literal psychic control over outcomes, which in most cases I would judge the latter personally to be not just mistaken but fairly toxic, associated with the just world fallacy, just generally bad epistemic values and connections to other false belief formation and so forth. Maybe it's just a matter of degree, like how strong are

your illusions of control? But I'm a little bit tempted to think there's a qualitative difference here and not just

a quantitative one. I kind of wonder if it is literally the presence of a model or a concept like manifestation or the law of attraction or whatever it is x externally socially validated model that explains and justifies the workings of this principle, and the existence of this socially reinforced model can turn normal, healthy, motivating, empowering minor illusions of control into full blown delusions with all of these

toxic consequences. I don't know, that's just a guess, and I'd be curious what listeners think, Like, how do you go from minor illusions of control that are mostly harmless, you know for the most part, and can help us achieve our goals. How do you go from that to thinking that you can literally will yourself to win the lottery if you just focus and stay positive. I think that's actually a very consequential question about the thing about

software testing. I don't know if I've ever considered this before, but yeah, software testing and bug hunting could function like a really devious skinner box where the trigger for the buzug is not clear and consistent. It's been a while since I read the history of the operant conditioning research, so I hope I'm remembering this correctly, But what I recall is that conditioning is pretty straightforward when the reinforcement is consistent. So the rat presses a button, it gets

a food pellet. It's the same type of food pellet every time it learns to press the button when hungry.

But the variation was that you could really drive test animals crazy and make them addicted to the conditioned behavior by inserting some randomness and unpredictability into the reward allocation, giving us the notion of intermittent variable rewards, which are little rewards, little fleeting bursts of pleasure that come at variable time intervals or variable levels of quality with a somewhat ambiguous relationship to your inputs, so it's not one

hundred percent predictable which of your inputs will produce the best reward and with what reliability and intermittent variable rewards are what you get on slot machines or on your social media app of choice. And we've talked about this on the show and before. It's been several years now, but this is one of the reasons I had to pretty much completely get off of social media years ago.

I know it works for some people, but for me, I realized it was just way too addictive, way too easy for it to completely monopolize my time and attention. And while it had control of my attention, it was busy rapidly installing malware on my brain. So I don't want to be too preachy as the anti social media guy, and I'm sure lots of people do genuinely have a healthier relationship with it, but I had to get off,

and I'm extremely glad I did. And if you find yourself having the same kind of relationship with it that I did, I would recommend the same. But anyway, thank you so much, which we're not a very interesting email, A lot to think about all right. This next message is from Calvin. Calvin says, Hello, Rob, Joe, and JJ. Greetings from Chicago. I've been listening to the show daily for several years, starting with the episode on the First Monster, or about the Loewen Minch. Yeah, it's been a while

since we did that episode. That was where we talked about this truly fascinating thirty five thousand year old mammoth

ivory artifact. It's a little statuette from Paleolithic Germany called the loewen Minch, which means lion man or lion person, and we were talking about it because it appears to depict a human body with a lion head, and at the time this was the earliest or one of the earliest known artistic depictions of a creature not existing in nature, and this led to us talking more generally about the idea of when and how it was that humans first

imagined not just existing predators, but synthetic monsters, predators purely of the imagination, based often on combinations of pieces of anatomy from other creatures. I should flag that I think I've read in the meantime since that episode that there's some dispute about whether the loan minch is best interpreted as a human body with a lion head, or maybe whether maybe it's supposed to depict something else like a

bear or something more strictly found in nature. Don't know the answer there, but whatever this particular artifact is based on, it's obviously not the first time in history some human imagined a monster. It would just be like our first extant piece of evidence for it. And the historical emergence of an imaginative capacity to dream up nonexistent beings and creatures is a really really interesting subject to me, like,

where does that capacity come from? What powers it? Anyway, back to Calvin's message, Calvin says, You've given me so much great content that helped me get through many boring work days. Glad to hear that, Calvin. So Calvin says, I've never really felt like I had anything to contribute or write in about until I was listening to the Illusion of Control series. My experience with the Illusion of Control comes from playing the original Pokemon Red, Blue Green

games as a child. It was a well known quote fact among my friend group that if you threw a poke ball and Presston held the B button that the precise moment the poke ball hit you would greatly increase the chances of a successful capture. Now I know the chances of catching a Pokemon is really just a dice roll with modifiers for various statistics of the Pokemon. But at the time, I pressed bee every time, and if the Pokemon broke out of the ball, it was because

I didn't time it right. Even after realizing that this wasn't really part of the game mechanic, I still press to be every time for a long while, even when playing later generation games. It just never felt right to not press it. It was like I just couldn't leave it to chance if there was even the slightest possibility that I was having some kind of impact. Anyway, I just want to thank you for all you do and for giving me a great list of movies from Weird

House Cinema. I know a lot of people prefer to watch the movie and then listen to the episode, but I like to listen first and then watch. Well, thank you so much, Calvin. Yeah, the Pokemon thing is a great example. Again, It's like when the mechanisms and the feedback are ambiguous, there's so much room to think we're exerting control when we're not so Yeah, thanks Calvin. Okay, this next message comes from Cindy. It is about our

Vault episodes on heart removal and heart burial. Cindy says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I thought you'd get a kick out of this. I listened to part one of Because It Is My Heart on February tenth and remembered that it was an earlier aired two part series. So I searched for part two to listen to it again and noticed that I had never finished. I wondered aloud, why did

I stop part way through the episode? I pressed play, and I was immediately transported back to that fateful day almost a year ago, exactly when the vivid description of the most teutonicus funerary process caused me to press stop. Yeah. So, for those who don't remember, and Cindy, I'm very sorry to subject you to this a third time. The most Teutonicus translates to the German custom, and it was a solution used in medieval Europe for transporting dead bodies back

home from far away lands. If, for example, a rich German warrior died while away in the Crusades, untreated of course, the body would be subject to horrible decomposition during travel, so the German custom was to remove the flesh from the bones before transport back home, sometimes by boiling. I think we called this making a crusader bone broth in the episode, and then you would of course take the clean bones home to the family. Crypt Cindy's message goes

on this time around. I only had to take a break once, but managed to power through the rest of the episode. I can't say it was extremely enjoyable, but it was very enlightening and interesting. Smiley face emoji. I choose to be boiled in one of my favorite liquids, maple syrup, if that was an option. Thanks for covering all sorts of topics, even the ones that make us mentally squirm. Keep up the excellent work. Cheers, Cindy. Well,

thank you so much. Cindy. Does maple syrup boil or would it start to kind of like cook and caramelize? It's got a lot of sugar. I don't know how that works. Uh yeah, thank you, Cindy. Okay, this very last message is about Weird House Cinema. It's from Andy. Andy says Hi, Robert and Joe loved the show, and as always, thank you and your excellent audio producer JJ

for all the work that goes into it. Your weird house cinema episode on Flash Gordon took me back to my youth, where I first saw the film on my dad's pirated Betamax cassette. I hadn't watched it in probably thirty years until you inspired me to seek it out again. Just a few minutes in I saw a familiar face

which escaped your analysis. Munson, doctor Zarkov's beleaguered and rationally fearful associate, was played by William Hootkins, best known as Jack Porkins, hero of the Rebellion and the first casualty of the audacious assault on the Death Star Trench. Though I'm not happy about it, I disagreed with your reading of the plane crash scene this is in Flash Gordon. It seems clear to me that Munson does not escape, and is indeed crushed to death by the airplane as

it crashes through his laboratory. I suppose it's his cinematic penance for failing to board Doctor Zarkov's dicey homebrew rocket Flash, and Dale must not have noticed him or else they'd have been far more distraught. Doctor Zarkov, however, is so consumed by his need to see his mission fulfilled that he seems not to care. All in all, it seems an ignominious end for one who gave his life to the cause of galactic freedom. Thanks again, and keep up

the good work. Andy. Thank you for bringing this up. Andy. Yeah, I didn't even think about the actor. Though he did look familiar to me, I didn't make the connection. But now that I had a chance to go back and peek at his filmography, I realized that William Hootkins is not only Porkins from the original Star Wars. He was

also in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In one of my favorite scenes, he's one of the two Army intelligence officers who sort of come to give Indy his mission to retrieve the Ark or the beginning of the movie. I've said this on the show before, but that scene is so good, I think specifically from a screenwriting and filmmaking point of view, it's one of the most efficient

and powerful exposition scenes in movie history. So it's like very short, but it quickly and convincingly tells us so much about the characters, about the significance of the arc, the stakes of the coming conflict. It infuses the whole story with the sense of mystery and power and magic and all that. It's great, great scene. But also I think William Hootkins is He's the later in the movie. He's the guy at the end who assures us that further investigation of the arc has been assigned to top men.

All right, I think that's going to be it for today's mail bag. Thank you so much to everyone who wrote in. If you are new to the show, Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday, we read back listener mail on episodes like this. On Wednesdays, we have a short form scripted podcast called The Artifact or The Monster Fact or maybe even there are new

forms emerging. On Fridays, we do a special series called Weird House Cinema where we just watch and discuss weird movies, good or bad, well known or obscure. We do them all huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.