Something You Should Know - Dangers of Collective Illusions & The Inadequacy of Language - SYSK Choice

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how to get more people to participate in important meetings. Then, we think we know what other people think and what the majority consensus is, and yet we're often dead wrong. The way your brain figures out what group consensus is, is a pretty flimsy shortcut. Your brain assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority. So you can kind of

Starting point is 00:00:57 already see the problem with that, right? Also, how to make sure your cover letter on your job application actually gets read. And language. It's how we communicate. It's one of our greatest inventions. And it's often inadequate. The thing about language is that it's not really designed to be a complete picture of what somebody is thinking or what exactly they believe.

Starting point is 00:01:21 We like to say about language that it's not perfect, but it's good enough. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. How do you feel about meetings? I tend to be one of those people who believes that the fewer meetings the better, that yes, meetings are necessary sometimes, but you can waste a lot of time in meetings. And I came across some interesting information by a guy named Kevin Coyne, who wrote a book called Brain Steering some years ago, about the science of group dynamics in meetings. It turns out that the larger the meeting, the less likely people will participate. In fact, in a group of 20 people, 17 of them will not participate either because they are

Starting point is 00:02:56 too shy or feel like they don't have anything important enough to contribute. Breaking that group into smaller meetings works much better. In fact, in meetings of three to five people, you'll usually have everyone participating. Why? Well, because it would be weird for someone not to talk in a meeting of just three people. But it's normal not to talk in a meeting of 20 people. Also, when you break a large group into smaller groups, the tendency is to sprinkle the domineering types throughout all the groups. But the research shows that you're better off putting the domineering types in their own group together and let them try to kind of out-domineer each other.

Starting point is 00:03:40 It allows people in the other groups more freedom to talk and not get shut out by the more dominant types. And that is something you should know. You're about to hear a conversation on a topic I doubt you've ever heard of before. It's about something called collective illusions. And trust me, this is really fascinating. You see, it's human nature to want to conform, to be part of the group. The problem is that we often conform even when we don't want to, when we don't believe in what we're conforming to.

Starting point is 00:04:19 How many times have you not disagreed with someone and either stayed silent or just went along? Well, why did you do that? Well, it turns out we all do it, and it can lead to some real trouble. So I want you to meet Todd Rose. He's a social scientist, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and author of a book called Collective Illusions, Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions. Hey, Todd, thanks for coming on Something You Should Know. Hey, thanks for having me, Mike.

Starting point is 00:04:54 So explain what's going on here. Explain what collective illusions are. Look, I mean, we all know that human beings have a conformity bias, which is we're hardwired to want to be with our groups, not against them. That's not new. And we also know that that can lead to kind of groupthink, right, where we just go along with the group just because we want to belong. What I'm writing about is a darker side to that conformity, which is what we call collective illusions. And it's this. They're social lies, right? They happen in situations where most people in a group go

Starting point is 00:05:28 along with a view they don't agree with, just because they incorrectly think that most other people in the group agree with it. And so as a result, the entire group can end up doing something that almost nobody really wants. That seems really stupid. And yet, I think when I hear you say that, and I think when anybody hears you say that, they go, yeah, I've kind of suspected that. It does seem that we go along maybe thinking, well, you know, it's not worth speaking up, and we'll just go along and do what the group wants. Okay, it's one thing to go along, but it seems wild that we would just be wrong about the group to begin with, right? So that's how our brains are wired. But here's the trick. For conformity to work, you have to know what the group actually thinks. Otherwise, what are you conforming to?

Starting point is 00:06:18 And this is the rub. So the way your brain figures out what group consensus is, is a pretty flimsy shortcut. Your brain assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority. And so you can kind of already see the problem with that, right? Like if you are wrong about the group to begin with, because you've got a vocal fringe and a bunch of people are self-silencing, then you're going to think they're the majority. And if you want to conform, you'll conform to that fringe and it becomes reality. Again, that's so stupid.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Right. And here's the thing. This idea of collective illusion heckles back 100 years in research and hundreds of years just in general understanding. But they were rare because it just was hard to get a lot of people to self-silence and get that kind of misread of the group. But because of social media today, they're just rampant. I mean, they are all over the place. And let me give you more specifics about that, which is if you take just Twitter, so we know that about 80% of all content on Twitter is generated by 10%

Starting point is 00:07:27 of the users. And it turns out that 10% isn't remotely representative of the rest of the country. They tend to be more extreme on almost every social issue. But you can see the problem there, right? Like, if only 10% of people hold an opinion, but you think it's 80%, then your brain will treat that as the majority. And if you're not willing to go against that group, you'll just say nothing. You'll self-silence, right? And if enough of us do that, then the results are collective illusion. And right now in America, that's exactly what's happening. Our research and other people's research have shown that about two-thirds of Americans admit to self-silencing right now. Two-thirds.

Starting point is 00:08:08 So no wonder we have collective illusions all over the place. Like our self-silencing guarantees it. Wow. Two-thirds of people don't speak up for fear of not conforming. Yeah. And here's what's interesting. You know, some of them report that it's due to cancel culture that gets all the attention, but it's actually a small percentage.

Starting point is 00:08:31 The overwhelming reason why most people self-silence is decency. They actually don't want to hurt people's feelings. They don't want to create conflict. And they believe incorrectly that other people are just too sensitive these days. And yet when we ask people in private opinion research about their own views, you know, 75% of Americans are like, I'm not sensitive. I would like to hear other opinions. But they are so convinced that everybody else is just fragile, that they're just self-silencing. And now we're just living under this, like, cascade of illusions. So in daily life, give me an example of where this is a problem. Maybe not so much political or social media kind of things, but it happens just every day, right?

Starting point is 00:09:15 It does. I mean, you think about it, just anyone who's listening, you know what I mean. We've all had those moments where we thought we're the only ones in the room who hold a certain view, and rather than speak up, we just say nothing, right? And that's happening. It's happening in our families. It's happening in our workplaces. It's certainly happening in higher education. And it's affecting, like you said, not just our politics, although for sure, our politics, it has seeped into everyday issues that matter, like, for example, even our definition of a successful life, right? What could be more personal than the life you

Starting point is 00:09:52 want to live? Well, at my think tank, Populous, we did one of the largest private opinion studies ever on what people mean by a successful life. And in private, what you get is their trade-off priorities, including things you wish people cared about, like relationships and character, just being a good person, getting a good education and making a contribution in life. But when you ask them what most Americans would say, you get a completely different picture. They think everybody else cares about zero sum, someone's got to lose for me to win, and it's all about wealth, status, and power. And to put a finer point on that, out of 76 possible items that we had people trade off in terms of what matters to them for success, they thought that most Americans valued being famous more than anything else.

Starting point is 00:10:47 So they just think most Americans want to be famous, and that's their view of success. And it turns out, in private, it is actually dead last. So illusions don't get bigger than that. But you can think about just the practical consequences here. If we're all under this illusion of fame, then advertisers and TV producers, when they want to signal success, they sell us fame back to us because they think that's what we want. And then we look at those commercials and storylines and say, well, obviously people care about fame. Why would they sell it to us if we didn't?

Starting point is 00:11:24 And so we're stuck in this illusion. And I'll say one more thing about this, that the practical consequences of collective illusions are that this generation's illusions tend to be next generation's private opinion. And in the case of fame, this is exactly what we're seeing. So my colleagues at UCLA have been studying

Starting point is 00:11:41 middle school kids for quite a while. Like, what are they internalizing from society and from media? And up until a few years ago, the dominant theme every year was character related. I want to be a good person, want to be honest, want to have friends. A few years ago, it changed to, I want to be famous. And it hasn't changed back. Now kids say things like, I want to have a million followers. And you're like, at what? And they can't tell you. They just want to be famous. So it's bad enough when the illusions start to warp our children's views of the kind of life that's worth living. But it gets even worse when we think about the illusions related to the

Starting point is 00:12:20 aspirations we have for our country, the way we want to treat one another, right? Even what we want out of our institutions. And I'm telling you, like, at this point, if you name anything that matters in society, I think it's a coin toss whether we're under a collective illusion or not. So is this kind of collective illusion what happens when there's a pandemic and everybody runs out and buys toilet paper? It's exactly right. You know, I fell for this with the toilet paper one, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, you know, because I was literally writing a book about it as it happened. But, you know, we all thought, oh, we're going to be, there's not gonna be enough toilet paper.

Starting point is 00:12:59 Well, I happen to know someone who actually owns one of the companies that makes toilet paper. So I actually got firsthand verification that in fact, there was no shortage, right? And if everybody just settled down, it's going to be fine. However, I couldn't help shake the feeling that I thought everybody else thought there was a shortage. And so I thought, well, wait a minute, if I don't get the toilet paper, they're going to gobble it up and then I won't have enough toilet paper. So sure enough, I'm going to my grocery store and I'm grabbing toilet paper and I became part of the problem. And lo and behold, there was a shortage because we all rushed to

Starting point is 00:13:34 grab it. And it's all your fault. Exactly. I take full responsibility for that. Here's what's funny. My wife was like, what are you doing? Right. And I still have, we still haven't gotten through all the toilet paper that I grabbed. What you said at the very beginning, though, I just keep thinking about it. It's very troubling that amongst people, whoever speaks the loudest repeatedly is assumed to speak for the majority. That's just crazy. Yeah. So again, this is the problem is that through evolution, we've got a shortcut for estimating group consensus, which is the loudest voices. And it's, you know, loud voices repeated, even when you intellectually know it's the same person or a small number of people, that's not how your brain is treating it. Your brain is treating, it's mistaking essentially noise for numbers. And it will just assume this is what the group thinks. And again, while this is a fundamental thing about being human,

Starting point is 00:14:37 we've never lived with this kind of social technology before, which makes it drop dead easy for anyone in their parents' basement to be able to drive an illusion, right? And what's worse is state actors have figured this out. So like both Russia and China do this all the time on social media in the United States. They have these bots that are programmed to swarm. And what they do is rather than spread lies, they actually go into, say, conservative Twitter and liberal Twitter, and they actually tease out fringe ideas, right? So they're real Americans saying something, but they're not very popular. And then they retweet the heck out of them until it starts to feel like that's actually the dominant view. And so by doing

Starting point is 00:15:23 that, if they do it on both sides, politically, they can drive each of them to the extremes. And it gives this perception of deep polarization in society when it's actually just an illusion. I want to get a specific example of how those bots are used to retweet out things. But first, I want to remind people who I'm talking to. Todd Rose is my guest, and he is author of the book, Collective Illusions. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance

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Starting point is 00:16:32 Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. So Todd, give me a specific example of how those bots retweet things out and do what you were talking about. On the left, one of the things that got a big boost on this was the push to defund the police. And if you remember that movement, there's a real moral imperative for wanting people to be safe and not having police overreach and that kind of thing. That's fair. But suddenly this idea that the answer is defund the police gained steam. It was always by a fringe group, but it got amplified on social media, including with some help from some bots. And enough Democrats thought this is like we have private opinion data on this. The overwhelming majority never believed it, but they thought the majority of Democrats did.

Starting point is 00:17:26 So when they get called for polling, and do you support this? You know what the right answer is. But then, of course, that illusion already burst because in Minneapolis, they put it to a vote, and it turns out supermajority people did not want that, right? But you look on the right, we actually have private opinion data with respect to the 2020 election amongst Republicans. So I can tell you point blank that if you ask Republicans in public, you'll get close to 60% say that the election was rigged. But in private, it's about 14%. So the problem is, is that we're all self-silencing or relying about our views to belong to our group and thinking that we're all self-silencing or we're lying about our views

Starting point is 00:18:05 to belong to our group and thinking that we're not causing any problems. But in fact, once you understand the concept of a collective illusion and how it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, our silence and our complicity really does great harm for ourselves and for society. But does speaking up often result in getting canceled or being shunned or being called names and risk ruining you because you spoke up against the quote majority, even though it isn't a majority? For sure. So, and that's the power that fringe groups wield, right, is the threat of social sanctioning or economic ruin for having the wrong opinion. And that should be unacceptable. You know, look, the only way out of

Starting point is 00:18:51 collective illusions, you know, in a principled way is you got to have the moral courage to be honest about what you believe, but also the civic courage to make it safe for other people to do so. But to your point, there are times, you know, sometimes we just imagine the fear of social sanctioning, but for sometimes it is real, right? And so in the book, I laid out a handful of things you can do instead of self-silencing that we know from research shows it doesn't expose you to that kind of canceling, right? But it can still help to tease out the presence of illusions and shatter them when they're in place.

Starting point is 00:19:29 Things like what? So it's interesting, right? So it turns out groups don't punish people who haven't made up their mind yet. So if you're unsure about speaking up and you think it might be an illusion and you don't want to be on the wrong side of the group, the easiest thing you could do is actually insert uncertainty saying, you know, I'm not sure yet. And you can do that on the one hand, you know, on the other hand. And it turns out that if it really is the group's true opinion, they will try to persuade you. You know, groups will actually try to change

Starting point is 00:20:00 your mind and convince you. If it's an illusion, what you'll see is lots of other people will grab that escape hatch you just offered and end up adopting the sort of uncertain position. And at no point are you at risk for being canceled if all you're doing is expressing uncertainty. Brilliant. Give me another one. So some of these, the most important thing you can do, especially when it's about belonging to your tribe, right? Because under belonging, it's not just that you'll stay silent. You'll often lie about what you believe to show to to be part of that. But when it comes to that, where it's just intense identity-related stuff, the most important thing you can do happens well before you get to that situation, which is, it turns out from neuroscience research,

Starting point is 00:20:57 we know that if you have at least three groups that matter to you, none of those groups can have cult-like power of you. And literally just if one group is challenging your view and you're too afraid to speak up, all you have to do is in your own mind, imagine one other group that matters to you. And it turns out it will blunt the fear response that your brain triggers about being ostracized from any particular group. So it's funny, again, it's what cults do. They isolate you from any particular group. So it's funny, you know, again, it's what cults do. They isolate you from every other group,

Starting point is 00:21:28 so they're the only group that matters. This is so interesting, because it's happening everywhere all the time, and unless you really pay attention, you just fall victim to it. It's amazing, and it happens in, like, so many situations. It does. And the thing is, the one takeaway I would tell people is you have to get comfortable with the idea that you can no longer trust your brain to tell you what your group believes. You just can't. It'll feel like

Starting point is 00:22:00 you know and you're going to be wrong half the time. We just have to get beyond that and realize because of our technologies, we can no longer trust our brains read on the group. And I believe the way forward is a recommitment to some fundamental values that we've held as a society to free expression and protecting people's ability to share controversial ideas, even when we really disagree with them. There's a reason for that. And it's if we don't, self-silence harms everyone. Right. And for me, and the reason I wanted to write the book is when we started this, we've been tracking the American public's understanding of this phenomenon of collective illusions. And right now it's only about 3% of people know that this even exists. So now that you know, suddenly you recognize

Starting point is 00:22:51 there's an incredible value and importance to being what I would call congruent, like working hard to ensure your public self is the same as your private self. We know that it's a critical thing for your own happiness, but now you also know it might be the most important thing you could ever do for the groups that matter to you. So again, going back to your point that it's people on the fringe who speak the loudest and say it often, convince the rest of us that they speak for the majority. Are those people doing that deliberately? Like, do they know what they're doing or not? Well, so here's what's funny. Like, you could imagine that the fringe is like this nefarious,

Starting point is 00:23:35 like, they know that they're in the minority and like their only way to power is to convince you that you're in the minority. And there's certainly going to be some of that, right? But what we have found in our research is that there's a simpler explanation, which is people with fringe opinions are under the same illusions as everybody else, right? So they're hearing the same, you know, amplified retweeted views. And they're like, listen, a lot of people agree with me. And so they get emboldened. So of course, I going to speak out. Like we know that if you believe you're in the majority, you are way more likely to share your opinion because there's no risk, right? And so a simple explanation is

Starting point is 00:24:13 we're all under the same illusions and those illusions are making, they're emboldening people with fringe views to be even more vocal and they're leading a lot of the majority to actually self-silence. And then it basically makes those fringe people look like the dominant view. Now, I will say one thing, Mike, I think is important, which is,

Starting point is 00:24:34 I'm not saying that the fringe can't be right sometimes, right? The truth is, almost all progress comes from fringe ideas to begin with. So I'm not saying that those people shouldn't have a voice. They should. What I'm saying is, is that voice has to be put in the broader context of the broader range of opinions that exist in this society, because if we don't do that, then we get these collective illusions and nobody wins. One example of collective illusions you talk about is about kidney transplants. And I think this is so interesting. Can you explain what that's all about? So it's the same example in terms of this. One of the traps we fall into that can lead us to illusions is this copycat kind of behavior where we think other people must know something we don't, right?

Starting point is 00:25:25 As you know, the kidney, there are so many more people who need kidneys than we ever have healthy kidneys every year, right? A lot of people die from this. What was shocking to me is to find out that a very decent percentage, I think close to like 20% of healthy kidneys are discarded. And here's why that was happening. And then we did solve for it, which is it was the way the kidney list was structured. So basically you get on the list and it's based on fit, like your type of, you know, doesn't work for you, but then a kidney becomes available and you get it 48 hours before it's no longer good. And they just go down that list, right?

Starting point is 00:26:07 So they start with the first person and you get a very small amount of time for you and your doctor to make a decision. Do I take the kidney or not? Well, first of all, if I'm number one on the list, I can be a little patient, right? I can wait for a really great kidney because I'll get another bite of that apple. But what happened was the way that the list was structured is if I'm number 10 on the list and that kidney comes to me, all I know is that the previous nine people rejected it. So what happens is as it starts to tumble, once it gets past like the 10th list,

Starting point is 00:26:39 people just say no to a healthy kidney because they're like, why did everybody else reject it? It turns out that the reason people reject them often is like, I'm not in town. I couldn't get there in time. A whole bunch of other practical reasons. So the solution was so simple. All they did, and this was an MIT professor that figured it out, all they did was actually have people say why they rejected the kidney. So now if I'm 10 on the list, I get nine rejections, but I know why they did. That's it. How simple is that?

Starting point is 00:27:16 I mean, and think about the lives that are saved just by asking and answering the question why. This is one of those conversations that is so eye-opening. I find this fascinating. Todd Rose has been my guest, and he is a social scientist, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the book is called Collective Illusions, Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, and there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. This has been great, Todd. Thanks. Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress.

Starting point is 00:27:53 Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest.

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Starting point is 00:29:58 studies. Nick is professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research and the Sydney Initiative for Truth. He is author of a book called Language vs. Reality, Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. Hi Nick, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi Mike, thanks for having me. So you're on the cutting edge of language research. And so what does that mean? What is the cutting edge of language research? And what is it about language that fascinates you so? I like to say that language for humans is like water for fish, that we are surrounded by it, but we don't tend to kind of question it and look at it as closely as we should. So the average

Starting point is 00:30:45 language is spoken by really only a few thousand people. This is something perhaps a lot of people don't realize, but there are about 7,000 languages in the world and most of them are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. So all of that means that you need teams of people to set out and work with focal communities to really learn the ins and outs of their languages. And that gives us insight into what kind of a thing human language is. And when you look at these 7,000 languages, do they all accomplish the same thing? Are they all fairly well designed to do what they're supposed to do? Well, it all depends on what

Starting point is 00:31:26 is the thing you want to accomplish. It's a fantastic question because you can look at certain functions of language and see that, yes, all languages will achieve those same goals. So, those goals might be things like getting other people around you to do things to help you or collaborate or cooperate with you in everyday life. All languages will allow you to do things like get somebody to pass the salt or make plans for what you're going to do tomorrow or to tell a story, for example. Languages will all give you the basic tools that you need to operate in social life and to entertain each other and collaborate with each other and even argue with each other and so forth. But how they do that can differ quite radically. So we all have had the experience of trying to

Starting point is 00:32:20 learn a foreign language, whether we've gone into great depth or just sort of learned a few words. And people are quickly struck by the fact that words are different in the languages, meanings are different in the languages, you know, greetings, many kinds of aspects of language are different. And the more you get into those details, the more you realize that actually the nitty gritty is where you find quite a lot of diversity. So the answer to your question is at a general level of social function, all languages are adequate and in fact, excellent at their job. But if you're trying to transport one language to another part of the world or into another situation, typically you'll be lacking the relevant technical terminology. So just as an example, with the people who I work with in

Starting point is 00:33:13 the rainforests of Laos, they know a lot of terminology, for example, for plants and animals that you find in the jungle. And if I were to go there with you, I wouldn't be able to talk to you in English very well about all of that biological diversity. But in the languages that have evolved there, they're very good for that function. So languages tend to be quite well adapted to what we might call local functions. One of the things that I saw when I was looking through your book, which I'd never thought about before, is how I can tell you what I'm thinking and you get a general basis of what I'm thinking, but you don't really know. There's no word, there's no way to

Starting point is 00:34:00 describe what I'm really thinking, thinking. Well, that's true. And the question is whether that would even be a good thing. So there's been talk recently about the idea that you could get technology to implant something into my brain that creates a direct connection to your brain. And you know what I'm thinking. You know, We've had mind reading from science fiction for many years. And if you think about that, it's probably not a very good thing to have. In fact, I'm not sure if you really want to know exactly, deep down,

Starting point is 00:34:39 exactly what somebody's thinking. And the thing about language is that it's not really designed to be a complete picture of what somebody is thinking or what exactly they believe. We like to say about language that it's not perfect, but it's good enough. So it's designed to just give the other person enough information that they can get a picture that is adequate for whatever the current purposes are. And when you look at the way people talk, most of the time, we aren't really trying to communicate our deepest inner feelings. Most of the time, when you study the way people use language, people are using it to make plans.

Starting point is 00:35:21 They're using it, for example, to tell narratives, to build common understandings of the world, and very often quite practical things, but also sometimes rather devious things, as we see, for example, in media and so forth, where people are having their attention directed this way and that by language. So most of the time, people are actually not really using language to create a true picture of what they really feel. What language is really good for is influencing other people in a certain direction. Talk about how the language you speak affects how you think. And I guess what I mean by that is, if your language only has one word for the color blue, then every blue is blue. But if, like in English, you have aqua blue and royal blue,

Starting point is 00:36:12 well, then you're able to, in your mind, distinguish between different kinds of blues, which I imagine makes you perceive blue differently. You perceive different shades of blue, whereas if someone speaks a language that only has the one word for blue, they don't really see those other blues. Everything that looks kind of blue is blue. That's correct. It is a controversial point in psychology that would actually be a very strong effect if knowing a language that had certain words for colors meant that you actually would be able to perceive colors that other human beings can't perceive. And I think that's probably a too strong claim. But what people do find with

Starting point is 00:36:59 language is that if you use a language that distinguishes between a lot of colors or some other area of life, then what happens is that you become much more attuned to paying attention to those distinctions. So an example from somewhere else in the area where I work in my field work in Laos is the domain of kinship. So in my native language, English, I have two words, aunt and uncle, and these refer to people, siblings of my parents. So if I tell you in English, my aunt taught me that, you don't know if it's my father's sister or my mother's sister, and then you don't know if it's the older or the younger sister. Whereas in the language that I work on in Laos, the language is called Cree, they in fact have eight different words for aunts and

Starting point is 00:37:51 uncles. They have to specify, is it the sibling of my father or is it a sibling of my mother? Is it the older or the younger? And is it a male versus female as in aunt and uncle. So those people, it's not as if because you speak English, you can't understand the concept of your father's younger sister. But it is that in a language like Cree, there's a simple word that you can use to refer to that person. And in fact, you know, if you live in that community, you have to make it your business to pay attention and not just know that so-and-so is your aunt, but you have to know, is it your aunt on your father's or mother's side and so forth. So it's really a question, not so much of what you can or can't understand about reality

Starting point is 00:38:39 as a result of your language, but really what you are required to pay attention to and what you are interested in. But why is English so imprecise in that particular example? Why not have a word for those relationships so that you don't have to explain it when people say, oh, did you mean your mother's sister or your father's sister? We would have a word for that. Why don't we have a word for that? Wouldn't that save a lot of extra explanation? Well, it's an interesting possibility that you would have to explain it, but I would push back on that a little and say, do you really find people in English very often quizzing you on whether it's the person on your father's side or the mother's side? And I would predict that actually in English for the culture that we're in, just saying aunt is

Starting point is 00:39:30 good enough. Just saying sister is good enough. You're not actually very often having to tell people if it's your older or younger sister and so forth. So in a sense, language is very efficient. In some cultures where you need those distinctions, they have words. In English, it's not all that necessary to have specific words for specific people in your family. So we don't. It's really a case of good enough. That's exactly right. And there's something very magical about language in terms of how it deals with this. So what you've just said is true when it comes to the words that languages give us. So I learned English as a kid and I learned the word aunt and I don't have that separate word for older or younger aunt. But the fact that language has a grammar and has this productive possibility

Starting point is 00:40:26 to always say new things allows me to explain very simply if I have to, if it is necessary to specify that it's the older sister of my father, for example, I can say that. I can spell it out using words older and my father and this kind of thing. So languages are simultaneously giving you a certain set of restrictions on what you can say in the vocabulary that you learn as a kid, while at the same time giving you an almost infinite possibility for expression. So languages are this incredible kind of generative machine for creativity. You can say things that have never been said before, precisely because language allows you to put words together and say new things. So that's coming back to your earlier question. That's one of the things that all languages can do. And one of the great powers of language really is that allows you to express exactly the amount of detail that you need for that context.

Starting point is 00:41:29 So when you need it, it's there and you can specify it for those purposes. It's just that in certain cultures, certain distinctions come up again and again and again. And so people will tend to gravitate towards simpler ways of describing those things. The subtitle of your book is Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. So what do you mean by that? Language is this incredibly powerful tool for influencing people. And that's what leads me to say that it's good for lawyers. And I think it's really built for lawyers in that general sense of built for influence. And what I've come to think is that this is

Starting point is 00:42:12 a really important aspect of language that we want to understand if we want to influence others. But at the same time, we want to be able to recognize when it's being weaponized against us in a certain sense. So if you're a scientist or by analogy, any kind of truth seeker, and perhaps less automatically accepting when describing things or persuading people because they know how to use the language. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. And as you point out, certain people have the gift of the gab. They're able to convince others of things. They're able to sound lovely. They're able to tell stories beautifully. And those skills really do allow you to get ahead.

Starting point is 00:43:36 They are skills that to a large degree can be learned. And that's part of what studying language allows you to understand a bit better. I think it's what I was getting at when I was talking about literacy of language, that is learning, for example, how stories are really structured. Some people, it just comes naturally to them, but others might have to put a bit more time into learning. So I suppose you'd have to say, yes, some people have a certain advantage with language. But one of the amazing things about humans is that we're capable of learning

Starting point is 00:44:12 just about anything that anybody else knows. So if we want to defend ourselves, as it were, against those great skills that others might have and might practice on us, what we need to do is really study the tools that they're using and understand the weapons of the opposition, as it were, and really understand the way that language works its magic upon us. But within any language, almost anybody could use the language better if they were very intentional about it. I mean, think about the teachers you had in school, and some of them were just deadly dull. I mean, they could take a really interesting topic

Starting point is 00:44:53 and make it really dull and boring, and other teachers could use the language and make a topic come alive. And the difference between those two abilities is not huge. I mean, the dull professor could, without a whole lot of effort, I think, become more interesting if he or she just tried. I agree with that. And I think that language, because it's like any other animal communication system in certain important ways, audience design is this crucial feature of language. Now, I've been involved in talking with scientists about this issue. I was involved in a panel about storytelling in science and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

Starting point is 00:45:46 And you would think that everyone would agree storytelling is great. And if scientists can tell stories, they can communicate with their audiences and they should do it. And a lot of people think that way, but you will quickly find scientists who will say, hang on a second, no,elling, which is one form of skilled language use, is this form for persuasion. It's this way of directing people's attention towards certain things and making it more emotive and making it more subjective. And all of these things go against the basic principles of

Starting point is 00:46:26 science. Science is supposed to be objective. You're supposed to present the facts and people will come to their own conclusions, et cetera. So these are principles of science that are really part of the scientific culture. And I think that problem that you're pointing to when a scientist comes across in a rather dull way, it's often because they're talking in the way they would talk to their students and their colleagues and their peers. But storytelling is one of the things that speaks to all human beings. If you can tell a story, you can get people to pay attention. You know, if you're not able to tell a good story or apply a good story to the point that you're trying to make, then you're certainly putting yourself at a disadvantage. You know, I'm curious, since you look at languages as a whole, and there's 7,000 of them, are there any things, I don't know, like words or sounds or inflections or anything that seem to be universal in every language? Well, the word huh in conversation is, as far as we know, a universal word.

Starting point is 00:47:35 The word um and ah is not a universal. Other languages will have other words that they use, but certainly that function, the function of filling in a gap when you're speaking with some kind of a um-like word, that's universal. Because when you're running a conversation, you need to give a signal to the other person that, hang on, I'm not finished my turn at talk. You need to wait. And it's part of the navigation of the conversation itself. So this actually goes back to one of your questions about, do all languages fill the same functions? And this is one of the very important functions of language that is actually to regulate its own use, to give traffic signals in conversation.

Starting point is 00:48:26 And all languages have those. Well, now I understand why you study languages, why you're on the cutting edge, because it's really interesting when you dig down and see how languages work. Nick Enfield has been my guest. The name of his book is Language Versus Reality, Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Nick. Enjoy talking to you. Good talking to you, Mike. Bye. The next time you're looking for a job and have to write a cover letter, here's some advice from Skip Freeman, author of a book called Headhunters Hiring Secrets. He suggests his advice is to add a P.S. to the bottom of that cover letter. That can actually increase the chances of that letter being read by up to 75%.

Starting point is 00:49:16 And you have to make the content of that P.S. count. Some people actually glance down and read the P.S. first. Using bullet points in a cover letter really helps too, even if you have to drop some of the content out of the letter to fit the bullet points in. After all, you'd rather have the reader notice those bullet points than to toss your letter aside altogether because it is just so crammed with information

Starting point is 00:49:42 that nothing particularly stands out. And that is something you should know. Which brings us to the end of this episode, and I think it's a pretty good episode. This would really be, if you were going to share an episode with someone, this would be a good one to share to give them a good taste of what this podcast is about. So please share this episode with someone you know, and that in turn helps support this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper.

Starting point is 00:50:18 In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,

Starting point is 00:50:45 unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again.

Starting point is 00:51:28 And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, "'He's great, we love him,

Starting point is 00:51:51 "'but we're looking for like a really intelligent "'Dacovni type.'" With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - Dangers of Collective Illusions & The Inadequacy of Language - SYSK Choice

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