Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Science Behind Human Quirks & Why Counting is Complicated

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

During the holiday season, you likely use a lot of power strips to plug in lights and decorations. This episode begins with some advice about what NEVER to plug in to a power strip for the safety of everyone in your home. And you will probably be surprised by what you hear. https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/things-you-should-never-do-with-power-strips/ Human beings are quirky. We do things and behave in ways that are frankly a bit odd. Where do these quirks come from and why do we do them? Here to explore some of the fascinating quirks of our humanness is Marty Jopson. Marty is the resident science reporter on BBC TV’s “The One Show” and is author of the book, The Science of Being Human: Why We Behave, Think and Feel the Way We Do (https://amzn.to/2VYTZqY). What could be more objective than counting? If you want to find out how many of something you have – you count them. It seems pretty obvious. However, counting turns out to be a bit trickier than you might think. People can and do use numbers and counting to deceive you if you don’t understand what they are doing. Joining me to explain the interesting world of counting is Deborah Stone. She is a scholar who has taught at Brandeis, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Yale, Tulane, among others and she is author of the book Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters (https://amzn.to/33UeKZ1) One important difference between men and women is that men are generally better at asking for what they want. Listen as I describe the consequences of that and what women can do to get more of what they want – and the solution is fairly simple. Source: Linda Babcock author of Women Don't Ask (https://amzn.to/3AHEjNj). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Now get a complimentary bottle of Nugenix Total T when you text SYSK to 231 -231.  Tune in to Planet Money every week for entertaining stories and insights about how money shapes our world! Listen now to Planet Money from NPR -- wherever you get your podcasts. When you hire with Indeed you only pay for quality applications that match your must-have job requirements. Visit https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING to start hiring now! With Shopify, everything you need to customize your business to your needs is already in your hands. Sign up for a FREE trial at https://Shopify.com/sysk ! Constant Wonder is a podcast that will bring more wonder and awe to your day. Listen to Constant Wonder wherever you get your podcasts! https://www.byuradio.org/constantwonder Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls & emails with Online Privacy Protection from Discover? - And it's FREE! Just activate it in the Discover App. See terms & learn more at https://Discover.com/Online Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, the things you should never do with a power strip. Then the quirks of being human. For example, how humans move in a crowd. And the human phenomenon of phantom traffic jams. And if you were to look at a phantom traffic jam from a helicopter, the traffic jam itself moves backwards down the motorway and the speed it moves backwards down the motorway

is a universal constant in so much as it's the same speed everywhere in the world. Also an interesting and seldom discussed difference between men and women and counting. Numbers and counting may seem simple. And I want people to understand that numbers aren't a hundred percent objective the way we're taught to think of them. They're human judgments and when people measure or count anything they have to decide what belongs in the category that they're counting. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic.

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Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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 there. You have picked the perfect day to listen to another episode of Something You Should Know. I promise you it will be time well spent. First up today, this time of year, the holiday season, is a time when power strips come out

because we're plugging in lights and decorations and things. And there are some things you need to know about power strips to stay out of trouble. And this advice comes from FamilyHandyman.com First, never plug a power strip into another power strip. Not only is it against half a dozen OSHA regulations in a professional setting,

it can also cause one or more of the strips to fail or even catch fire. Never use an indoor power strip outdoors. While there are power strips that are designed for outdoor applications, unless the strip's packaging specifically says it's for outdoor, it shouldn't be used outdoors. Never put a power strip under a rug. As electricity moves, electrons generate heat. Normally, it's not a problem, but if you put the power strip under a

rug or in a tightly enclosed space, it can create a fire hazard. Never plug beauty tools into a power strip. Hair dryers and curling irons and straighteners and other beauty tools all create heat and draw a lot of amperage to generate that heat. Power strips just aren't designed to generate that kind of consistent high amperage. Those beauty tools should always be plugged into a GFCI protected outlet. Never leave power strips near children. A quick Google search will show you plenty of horror stories about kids putting fingers and toys and forks into outlets. Don't assume they know better. And never get a power

strip wet. That should be common sense, but it happens often enough that it bears repeating. Electricity and water do not mix. Don't get your power strip wet or you risk frying yourself and everything else that's plugged into the power

strip. And that is something you should know. To be a human being and function in the world, well, it's full of interesting and quirky surprises, as you likely know since you are a member of that human group. Marty Jobson has taken a fascinating look at what it means to be human and found some interesting and surprising things I think you will enjoy hearing about. Marty Jobson is resident science reporter on BBC One's The One Show. He's been working in television for several years and he is author of the book, The Science of Being Human, Why We Behave, Think and Feel the Way We Do. Hi, Marty, welcome.

Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here. So I think an interesting place to start here is based on all the research you've done, is how humans behave in a crowd. So this is a fantastic bit of science. And I was very lucky. I got to speak to and do some work with the guy that noticed this. And it's a brilliant story he told me, I remember. What this is, is that if you take a massive crowd of people and you plonk them in a space that they are trying to exit from. And the classic example,

in fact, this is where it was noticed, it was a Queen concert. And hang on, it was the Freddie Mercury tribute concert. And the huge crowd at the end of the concert was all trying to exit through the relatively few exits. And if you look at a sand timer for example what you see is you see the sand in the middle moves the fastest if you look at a sand timer as it's running so it's an egg timer you get a dimple right in the middle if you think about it and that's because the sand is moving fastest there and it's flowing down in the middle fastest and it's slower at the edges. Whereas if you look at a crowd going through a small gap, which is kind of analogous to a sand timer, you don't see that. In fact, you see the complete opposite. The people who are at the edges move the fastest. And the people who are slap bang in the middle, sort of immediately in front of the exit, you move the slowest.

And it takes you the longest to get out of the stadium. And the people who are right up against the walls, the edges, they go the fastest. It turns out the explanation is simple. When you have sand, the friction of the sand against the glass wall slows the sand down. So the closer you are to the edges of the sand timer, the slower you go. Whereas, and this is a fairly standard law that applies to liquids in a tube and all sorts of things like that. But humans, we don't behave like that. We speed up when we're near walls because what slows us down in a crowd is interactions with other people. So if you've got people on both sides of you, you're desperately trying not to bump into people all around you, and that slows you down. Whereas if you're up

against a wall, you can go faster because you're only interacting with people on one side. So if you're literally sort of pressed against the wall, you don't care that you're pressed against the wall. But if you're pressed against another human being, that kind of bothers us. So we try to avoid that. So it's this wonderful sort of enigma of how humans behave in crowds. And crowd behavior is sort of massively important because, you know, obviously, it can be quite dangerous if you have to get people out quickly. So it's changed how people design exits and things like that. It's a great piece of science. Talk about lying, because I imagine humans are the only or one of the only species that deliberately misstate the truth.

And it's pretty interesting what you say. I believe there are examples. I didn't really go into this because obviously this is about being human. But there are examples i didn't really go into this because obviously this is about being human but there are examples of of animals that lie there's quite a few of them that will deliberately go out of their way to lie and and and fabricate uh falsehoods but anyway yes lying is a fascinating thing um and one of the great things i like is is that if you ask people are you any good at detecting lies or are you any good at telling lies? What people generally say is, oh no, I'm not very good at telling lies, but I'm quite good at detecting lies. So we don't want

to admit to being a liar, but we're happy to admit to being really good at detecting lies. And it turns out that both of these are wrong. And essentially, if you sort of average it out you're just as good as lying as you are as not lying and it it's you could toss a die if your term if you're trying to detect a lie and you'd be more likely to succeed actually than if you try to work it out we're all pretty much average at lying itself. But in terms of detecting lies, there is very little you can do from a single statement, be able to establish if someone is lying or not. Tells are a bit of a myth. It doesn't matter where your eyes look.

It doesn't matter if your palms are sweaty or if you stutter or hesitate. None of those things correlate with lying. Even lie detectors are basically, if you want to detect if someone's lying, you have to make them repeatedly tell you the story. You have to just get them to tell you the thing that you're suspicious about over and over and over and over again, and try and make them do it under more and more and more. There's a phrase called cognitive load, which basically means you've got to try and make their brain do lots of things all at the same time. Because if they're lying, that means they're more likely to slip up and make a mistake. And that's when you can catch them out. So are there any real

techniques that can help you pinpoint a liar? I mean, the two tricks that I found the most interesting were number one, you make them recite what they're lying about in reverse chronological order or what you think they're lying about. So, you know, if they're recounting some event, you say, okay, now tell me that story, but in reverse chronological order, so backwards. And that's much harder if you're making up the story as you go along. And the other one is you ask them to look at you in the eyes. And we assume, I mean, you might assume that's because, you know, you can see into the windows of their soul or something and tell that they're lying but it's not it's just that when you're trying to think hard to recall something you tend to look away because our brains are so hardwired to look at human faces that if we can see a human face it actually makes

our brains it's doing a whole load of work when we see a human face it's you know we're looking at the expression we're looking at the features we we're trying to, you know, we're recording, you know, do we know this person? Do we, you know, we're doing all this stuff in our heads. So if somebody is staring at you when they tell you that their statements that you think they're lying about, it makes them do more mental work and they're more likely to make mistakes if they're lying. There's some wonderful science in there. And there's a lot of mythology as well, which is fun to sort of bust open a bit. Human beings, like other creatures, we evolve and we change. But generally, those changes are very subtle and slow, and we don't actually see them. But you say human thumbs are likely to evolve.

And so explain why. So people of a certain age, over the age, I guess, I don't know, maybe 40 or something like that, if you ask them to go and ring a doorbell, they'll press the doorbell with their first finger. They'll reach out and they'll bing bong, they'll press the doorbell with their first finger. But if you ask younger people to press a doorbell, they'll reach out and they'll press it with their thumb because we've become more thumb dexterous, if that makes sense. We're so used to using mobile phones now and thumb typing and doing stuff with our thumbs, that we will become more thumb dexterous. And that is going to change. And I'm sure that, you know, over time,

we will evolve as having more dexterous thumbs. Talk about death. That's certainly a topic. Talk about death. Yeah, we're all interested in that because it's all headed our way at some point. You talk about the speed of death and the difference between dead, all dead and mostly dead. So go ahead. word. And basically, this is something that happens in cells. It's called programmed cell death is its non-Greek name. And this is something that you sort of think, well, this is a bit weird.

And basically, what happens to some cells is they undergo essentially cell suicide. It's a very ordered process. They go from being sort of alive and healthy to disintegrating but in a very ordered way they they sort of undergo you know they sort of compartmentalize all the nasty things that are inside their cells be that sort of nasty enzymes or you know sort of bits that you don't want sort of floating around inside you and they they get compartmentalised up into packages. And then the whole cell sort of regularly and very carefully breaks down. And the assumption a lot of people have is that this is some sort of super rare thing that only happens occasionally. But actually, it's happening constantly to millions of your cells.

You are constantly sort of cells in your body are going through this process of cell suicide. It's really important because you've got to get rid of cells that you don't need just as much as you have to grow cells that you do need. Wait, wait. So explain that. What do you mean by you have to get rid of the cells that you don't need? The obvious places that you see this is in development you know when you're growing the fingers of your hand for example they don't you'll have you imagine how your hand develops it doesn't develop as a blob that then sort of sprouts five sticks out of it it starts imagine as like a plate shaped structure and then the cells between your fingers are sort of removed, they're eradicated, they die away,

they go through this process of apoptosis. So the structure is sculpted by removal rather than by just growth. So this is a wonderful process. And you start to think about sort of that sort of on a cellular basis. But when you look at death on a on a whole organism basis, it starts to become quite interesting because when is when are you dead? What does death mean? What when do what do we die from? And really what it comes down to is a failure of homeostasis. And homeostasis is a process that biological organisms have for maintaining an internal environment. Because the chemical reactions that make up life, let's think of life as a series of chemical reactions, they have to have very specific conditions for them to work. So that's temperature, salinity, you know, viscosity,

and all those various other things that, that you know there's a concentration of the various molecules those have to be very carefully controlled and when that starts to break down that's what kills you and actually you sort of go back and you can look at sort of well you think oh what about heart disease that's a cause of death well yes heart disease is a cause of death but only because when your heart stops, that stops the blood going around, which means that the oxygen levels drop. And that's one of those concentrations. It's that internal, maintaining that internal environment that our bodies are sort of trying to do constantly. And when we cease to be able to do that, that's what kills us.

That's what causes cell death. That's what causes brain death. I'm speaking with Marty Jobson, and we're talking about, well, we're talking about the quirks of being human. The name of his book is The Science of Being Human, Why We Behave, Think, and Feel the Way We Do. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. 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. 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, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type.'" With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be like a really intelligent Duchovny 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. 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. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most.

Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So, Marty, part of being human, it seems, is that we have these common experiences. For example, there is a very common human experience that when you go to the store, the supermarket, and you go to checkout, whatever line you pick seems to move the slowest. And I think everybody's had that experience. And it does seem odd that we always pick the slowest line because somebody's in the faster line, but it's not me. Basically, the reason why the line is longest is more likely to be longer. I mean, you just think about it. Imagine you're in an infinite row of queues at the checkout, the cashiers, and there's loads of lines and you're in the middle somewhere. You've got a queue on your left and a queue on your right. So obviously, there's an even chance

of each of those lines being the fastest line. You could be the fastest, the queue on the right could be the fastest, and the queue on the left could be the fastest. There's one third chance of each of those. So if you ask yourself, what is the chance of one of the lines being faster than me? Well, it's going to be two thirds because there's two other lines. So there's a bigger chance that one of those lines is going to be faster than your line than there is of your line being the fastest. So in other words, there's a 66 percent chance that every time you get in the queues at the checkout, somebody else's line will go faster than you. And there's only a 33 percent chance of one third chance that your line will be the fastest. And that's the simple bit of maths. But then you start saying, okay, well, why is it that we don't understand that? That gets you into the biology of numbers and how we

understand numbers and how we understand probabilities. And we're really bad at understanding probability and chance. We're super bad at it. I mean, most people have a terrible understanding of probability. But then also, psychologically, you know, most people have a terrible understanding of probability. But then also, psychologically, you don't remember when the queue is quicker. When your queue is quicker, you only remember the bad stuff. You don't remember the good stuff. That's sort of human nature, unfortunately. We don't register when things go right. We register when things go wrong. There's a very simple solution. If you want a better chance of your QE going faster you have to reduce the number of cues that you're comparing yourself to so if you go to the queue at the end of the row of cashiers there's only one person next to there's only one

queue next to you because you're up against the wall or something. So there's a 50-50 chance that yours is the fastest queue. So you've just improved your chances by going to the edge. It's just simple math. jam where traffic slows down for no apparent reason. And so if traffic is slowing down for no apparent reason, it must be, assuming that it wasn't an accident that has since cleared, but it must be just human behavior. It must be the way we're driving or something that is causing slowdowns for no reason. They basically just happen when the road density reaches a certain level. Essentially what happens is somebody will do something and it can be very minor, totally trivial. Maybe they change lane. It can be as simple as that. Or they break suddenly for some reason. And then the person behind them breaks a bit more and the person behind them breaks a bit more and it goes on and on and on until somebody has to come to a complete standstill.

But the really fascinating thing about traffic jams like this is they have a life of their own. And if you were to look at a phantom traffic jam from a helicopter, the traffic jam isn't stationary. The traffic jam itself moves. So the clump of stationary cars moves backwards down the motorway or the freeway. Okay. So it starts out in one place. And then as the cars move from the front, more pile up behind. And gradually that lump of stationary cars, different cars moves backwards down the motorway. And the speed it moves backwards down the motorway is a universal constant, in so much as it's the same speed everywhere in the world, which tells us that it's something intrinsic in human ability to drive the automobile that causes this. And this thing goes backwards backwards down the road and the simplest way i

mean people sometimes ask me when i'm talking about this how do you avoid these traffic jams there is no way you can avoid them but you can help your fellow drivers who are on the motorway behind you from avoid them and the simplest thing to do is to not change lane and next time you're on a motorway just think about this for a second when you change lane you are essentially doubling your occupancy of the motorway so you know you've got your single car on the motorway but we're at the point you change lane every time you do this you are occupying two lanes at some point, which means that you are taking up and nobody else can occupy either of those that space in either lane.

So you are taking up two lanes of space, your car width plus the gap in front and behind that people have left. You're essentially taking up both of spaces on both lanes. So you've just doubled your occupancy. And that's one of the reasons why this changing lanes causes phantom traffic jams. So lastly, in our discussion about the quirky things about being human, dementia and your teeth. So there is evidence that some of our understanding about dementia and what causes alzheimer's disease specifically because there are different types of dementia is not quite what we think it is and there is there are sort of some mavericks out there who think that it's got less to do with the standard explanation the standard explanation which is to do with amyloid plaques

in the brain caused by this rogue protein that's being produced, doesn't quite add up. And there's one of these bits of science where we keep banging our head against the wall of trying to understand what's going on, and we're not getting anywhere. So people eventually start saying, well, are we just banging our head on the wrong wall? Should we be looking elsewhere? And there's a really interesting piece of research that has to do with the bacteria that causes gum disease. It's pretty complicated, so I won't go too deep into this.

But basically, there is evidence that localises this bacteria, or at least the product of this bacteria, to the bacterial plaques in your brain. And it's just about conceivable that the bacteria that causes gum disease somehow gets into your brain. And that kicks off the process in some people not in others we don't understand there's a lot to be done yet but uh there so the sort of the implication is that sort of you know gum health is good for your brain which just seems a bit crazy but there does seem to be a bit of a link there um it's uh I don't want to put too much emphasis on sort of exactly how much link there is there. There is still, you know, sort of other things that are,

you know, good for your brain health, and it's not completely stitched up, so to speak, scientifically. But yeah, there is seem to be a link between gum disease and Alzheimer's disease and the bacteria that causes certainly one and might be involved in the other. Well, this has been fun. I always like poking around and trying to understand what makes humans tick. And it's always interesting to hear the research and get some insight. Marty Jobson has been my guest. He is the resident science reporter on BBC One's The One Show and he is author of the book The Science of Being Human

Why We Behave, Think and Feel the Way We Do. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks Marty. My pleasure. Take care. Thanks for your help. Bye. Bye bye now. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world,

looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today.

Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events.

Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. One thing you are probably really good at is counting. You just kind of pick it up as a kid. We learn to count. We count things.

We understand the concept of counting. And it turns out counting is actually very important in life. And it's also a bit tricky. Here to explain what that means and why this is important is Deborah Stone. She is a scholar who was taught at Brandeis, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Yale, and Tulane University, among others. And she is author of the book, Counting, How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters. Hi, Deborah. Hi, Mike Use Numbers to Decide What Matters. Hi, Debra. Hi, Mike.

Very nice to be with you. Well, it's interesting, when I think about counting, I think I probably do it a lot. There's a lot of things to count, either, you know, consciously counting one, two, three, four, or just noticing groups of four or five things. Counting, I do that a lot, but I don't think about it a lot. Well, it's interesting that you say that you don't think much about numbers because I think,

I've asked a lot of people if they remember learning how to count, and I have found no one who remembers learning how to count. Lots of people remember learning how to read, but we think of numbers as something that's just there. Like you said, our parents usually teach us the number words and how to count things. And when we are

in school, we kind of get the idea that numbers, there's just a right answer to how many things there are. Well, and a lot of times there is a right answer. I mean, if, you know, Billy has two apples and Susie has two apples, collectively they have four apples. I mean, there's no other answer, right? In order to count, you have to decide what belongs to the group of things that you want to count. And that means that you're making a subjective decision to decide what counts. And therefore, your decisions will determine what number you get. So where and what is the concern? I mean, again, if Billy has two apples and Susie has two apples, they have four apples. So you're talking about something else that isn't quite so clear cut.

I think we've come to a point where we trust numbers. We think they're more objective than words and stories and anecdotes. And we kind of use them as truth meters. So when policymakers say they want evidence, and they want to make evidence-based decision making, they mean they want numbers. That's what counts as data. And I want people to understand that numbers aren't 100% objective the way we're taught to think of them. They're human judgments. They're based on human judgments. And when people measure or count anything, they have to decide what belongs in the category that they're counting. So give me a real life example of where this is important.

When you count, it's as if you're holding an imaginary clicker in your hand. Each time you see one of the things you're counting, you click. So the clicker reads out a number and the number tells you how many things there are. That sounds pretty straightforward, but it's not really what happens. The clicker is telling you the number of times you noticed one of the things that you're counting. Say I ask you to look out the window and count the cars that go by. If you look away for a minute or you get lost and daydreaming, you'll miss some cars. So the clicker really only tells you how many cars you noticed,

not the number that actually went by. And now I'm going to make it a little spookier. The clicker tells you the number of times you looked at something and said, yup, that's a car. And I didn't tell you whether to count trucks and buses as cars. So you have to decide which way to go. Are you going to count them or aren't you?

And the clicker really tells you how many vehicles you noticed and you decided to count as cars. So now let's go to the ballot booth or the election poll. You're a poll worker and you're counting votes for Biden and Trump, let's say. So the first thing you have to do is decide whether the ballot is a valid ballot and will i count the check marks on here as a vote so in other words the clicker is really keeping track of your decisions it's not keeping track of how many people intended to vote for this candidate or that candidate but rather it counts your decisions. But a lot of it would also, it seems,

have to do with how important this is. So when you're having me count cars, if it was really important and if it really mattered, you'd probably write down the criteria. You would tell me if I count trucks or buses. If it really mattered, you'd give me more details and tell me how much it mattered, and you'd probably get a more accurate count. But if I'm just counting cars that go by and there's no ramifications of that, you know,

you'll get a pretty decent number, but it may not be 100% accurate. That's a really good point. And the problem comes that we can try to be as specific as possible about, say, if I'm giving you directions, I hire you to count something I care about or I want to know about, I will try to give you as specific directions as I can. But there were, especially for the important political and social problems that we're talking about, like health care or productivity or unemployment or how good a teacher is your child's third grade teacher. There's not a completely objective definition of what is unemployment or what is good teaching. Well, that's interesting because, as you say, we're subjective creatures, and a lot of things don't really lend themselves to objective black and white, this is the way it is.

There's a lot of nuance and subjectivity in it, yet we crave objectivity. We want to know that 80% of people do this or 20% of people don't do that. But people use numbers all the time to support their position, and we all know that people manipulate numbers to support their position. So we want, we have a craving for objective criteria, and I think that we've put a lot of faith in numbers because they satisfy, they seem to satisfy that craving. I think that numbers can do a better job

helping us if we understand they do include subjective decisions. Let's take the example of unemployment. And what we see is that a lot of people who don't have jobs and paychecks right now don't count as unemployed. For example, people who've been furloughed don't count as unemployed in the official government statistics. And people who aren't able to work because they're sick or they're injured or they have a complicated pregnancy, they aren't counted either as unemployed, even though they're not getting a paycheck and they are not working. And they're not counted because in the official definition, in order to count as unemployed, you have to be willing and able to take a job next week if you're offered one. That's the question you'll be asked when an unemployment survey is done.

You might wonder why we have these counting rules that violate most people's sense of what it means to be unemployed, which is you don't have a job and you're not getting a paycheck. And the reason we have these rules is because, like all counting rules, they're established by people in power. And the unemployment counting rules were first established in the 1870s by a Massachusetts commissioner of labor statistics. And it was a period like what we're in now with a huge financial downturn and tons of unemployment. And there was a lot of political protest by unemployed workers. And the commissioner wanted low numbers.

So he because he wanted to quell the protests and tell the people they had nothing to complain about. So he asked local cops. No one had ever done an unemployment survey before. And this guy asked local cops to go around and count the unemployed. And he told them to count only men, not women and children, even though most women and children worked on the farms and factories, and they were major sources of family income, so people were dependent on them. And the commissioner told the cops, don't count anybody except able-bodied men who really want to work. No whiners, no complainers, and no people who are just lazy.

That was his real discretionary decision right there in how to count unemployment. That guy, that Massachusetts commissioner, went on to become the first head of the National Bureau of Labor Statistics. And he brought his attitudes with him. So the moral of the story is that people count for a purpose. And as you said, they have their ideas about what is true, and they will count in a way that gets numbers to show that they're right. The commissioner in Massachusetts got low numbers by telling the cops how to count. So that's really the important point. So give me another example, a real life example of counting and the objectivity and subjectivity and how it works. And just another

example would be great. When you go to the doctor and you complain that you have a pain, you'll be asked on a scale from one to 10, how bad is it? Where one is, you know, I hardly notice it. And 10 is, I want to jump out the window. I can't stand it. So it's utterly subjective. Pain is a perception. There's no objective way to measure it. Most people I've talked with say they find that question really difficult to answer when you're in pain. I don't know whether it's a five or a seven or an eight. What the heck does that mean, right? Just because those numbers are really subjective. And when I answer, I think I'm really answering about my pain tolerance. I don't know how bad the pain is, but I just know how bad it is to me and how I feel about it. And it turns out that those numbers really help

doctors and patients communicate about something that is really hard to put into words. A number of people have told me that when they've had really bad pain and the doctors want to put them on Oxycontin or something that's really going to make them a space cadet, they understand that if they give a high number, the doctor is going to give them more medicine or the nurse. And if they don't want more medicine, they know they should say a low number. I've had people tell me, I give numbers in order to communicate or secretly or strategically how much more pain medication I want. So I think this is an everyday example that most people will encounter at some point in their life. And I think it's a really good example of how numbers can be extremely useful, even though they're completely subjective.

One place where we see numbers used a lot is opinion polls. People are asked their opinions about issues or candidates or whatever. And often those polls, the results of those polls turn out to be way off of reality. There's a saying in measurement that sometimes when we try to measure people, our measuring instrument affects the number that we get. People who wear a Fitbit to count their steps, they all say that as soon as they put on the Fitbit, they start walking more or climbing stairs to make their goal, right? So the fact of measuring themselves or the process of measuring themselves stimulates them to change their behavior and change the number that they get because they want a good

number, right? So I think public opinion polls are something like a Fitbit in that they put an idea in people's head and kind of shape the way they think. Let me give you two examples of questions that have been asked recently in very, very reputable poll organizations. Do you think overall immigrants are a benefit or a burden to the country? That's one question that's being asked. Another one that's often asked before elections and presidential elections, where would you rate blacks on a scale of one to

seven, where one is lazy and seven is hardworking? Both of those questions, I find them very shocking because they really stereotype. Both of them send a clear message. And so these public opinion polls are trying to find out what the public thinks about these two issues. And both questions implicitly tell people before they even open their mouths to answer, it's just fine to stereotype whole groups of people like immigrants or blacks. So even if you weren't inclined to stereotype like this before, the question, when the pollster asks you that, it puts ideas in your head. And the question doesn't give you a chance

to say, I don't think you can generalize about all immigrants, or I don't think you can stereotype about all Blacks. You shouldn't do that. So that's an example where I think it's really important to find out what the public thinks. Political leaders want to know what we think about issues, and we want our leaders to know. This is an example where I think it's very difficult to find out what people think. And the measuring instrument, the way you choose to count, can really affect how the answer that you'll get, the number that you'll get, how many people think blacks are lazy, or how many people think immigrants burden the country. But what if you're writing a book about how blacks are perceived in

America and you hire a pollster to go find out? that seems like that'd be a pretty good question, because if you want to know how people are perceived, you kind of have to ask how people perceive. Yes, that's really good. And, you know, I was talking about this in class one day, and one of my students said, if you want to know if white people think that Africans live in trees, she was an African woman, by the way, she said, if you want to find out if white people think that Africans live in trees. She was an African woman, by the way. If you want to find out whether white people think Africans live in trees, how are you going to find out unless you ask them? So that's a really good, you know, a really good point. But I think even if you want to include that question, you could ask other questions that

are designed to get people to think differently. But isn't the purpose of a poll not to get people to think differently, but to find out how they think now, not to move them to think a certain way that fits what you want them to think? Yes, but if you but in those questions that I just read you, they are getting people to think a certain way. I mean, they're built into that question is that blacks can be rated on a scale, you know, all blacks can be judged as lazy or hardworking, right? Yeah, well, I don't think I agree with you, because it would seem the purpose of the question is to find out what people think. Now, you may not like what people think. You may not like the answer.

What they say in response might sound racist, but that's what they think. And I don't think that by asking people a question, you change what they believe. I don't think people do that. I don't think they hear a question and go, oh, now I can think that about that group. No, no, no. The purpose of the question is to ask people to judge whether they think people with a certain skin color are more lazy than people. The question is also asked about whites and, you know, other groups too, right? So it's asked about a group. And I think that it's wrong to, I mean, I don't think we can. Not wrong, it is wrong in a moral sense, but I think it's wrong in a factual sense

to think that you can make and have an opinion that all people in a certain group defined by some characteristic other than their work ethic have a certain work ethic. That seems to me wrong. how counting is more complicated and more important than we ever give it credit for because we learn to count as kids and accounting we do go. And yet there's a lot to it and it's important to pay attention. Deborah Stone has been my guest. She is a scholar who has taught at some major universities in the U.S., including MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Yale, Tulane, and others.

And her book is Counting, How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Deborah. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. I was looking forward to it, and it was fun. An interesting difference between men and women, according to Professor Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon University, is that men tend to ask for what they want and women don't. Professor Babcock has researched this and says the problem is that in our culture,

if you don't ask, you don't get. So women are missing out on a lot of opportunities simply because they don't ask. The good news is that awareness is a big thing. Once women hear this, typically they get it and they're more inclined to start asking for what they want in their personal and professional lives. As the saying goes, there's no harm in asking, and there can be a lot of potential reward. And that is something you should know. The audience for this podcast is pretty big, but we'd like to make it bigger, and you could help if you would share this podcast with someone you know,

so they become a listener as well. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you

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