It's not pathways switched on by propaganda, it's pathways switched off. It turns out that what propaganda does is it suppresses those networks so that I come to understand some other group more like an object rather than another person. Where you associate somebody with something bad like pollution or viruses or whatever. But the point is you don't see them as a human and that's the power of propaganda and dehumanization.

It's not pathways switched on by propaganda, it's pathways switched off. It turns out that what propaganda does is it suppresses those networks so that I come to understand some other group more like an object rather than another person. Where you associate somebody with something bad like pollution or viruses or whatever. But the point is you don't see them as a human and that's the power of propaganda and dehumanization.

I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the world.

I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the world.

And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies.

Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies.

In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.

In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.

Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.

Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.

Will break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipular.

Will break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipular.

Welcome to Mission Implausible. Our guest today is David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist and a teacher at Stanford. Best selling author of numerous books and articles, and the host of the outstanding podcast Intercosmos with David Eagleman. David, Welcome to Mission Implausible.

Welcome to Mission Implausible. Our guest today is David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist and a teacher at Stanford. Best selling author of numerous books and articles, and the host of the outstanding podcast Intercosmos with David Eagleman. David, Welcome to Mission Implausible.

Great to be here, guys.

Great to be here, guys.

So David, I'll kick it off, maybe with an observation and a question to get us going. One of the observation is that CIA and neuroscience, at least when it comes to conspiracy theories, they're actually much closer than you think, because as agency officers, we deal not only with people having conspiracy theories about US secret organization, but in our work we dealt with people who are conspiracy theorists, and we deal with societies that view life through a conspiratorial or conspiracy theory lens. So if you sit down John or I, if we sit down with a Pakistani scientist he's convinced that the Jews run the world. You have to deal with this guy, right, he's got information. We have to figure out how to work with him and how to talk to him. And on the other hand, there was a really smart, intelligent person from a major agent country. He was in their security service. He and I were getting close, and I realized he was trying to recruit me and what his government wanted to know, and what he wanted to know is what was the role of the Masonic lodges in the United States, because clearly they run the US. So, just to kick it off, I'd love your thoughts on why people are prone to conspiracy theories and why societies are as well.

So David, I'll kick it off, maybe with an observation and a question to get us going. One of the observation is that CIA and neuroscience, at least when it comes to conspiracy theories, they're actually much closer than you think, because as agency officers, we deal not only with people having conspiracy theories about US secret organization, but in our work we dealt with people who are conspiracy theorists, and we deal with societies that view life through a conspiratorial or conspiracy theory lens. So if you sit down John or I, if we sit down with a Pakistani scientist he's convinced that the Jews run the world. You have to deal with this guy, right, he's got information. We have to figure out how to work with him and how to talk to him. And on the other hand, there was a really smart, intelligent person from a major agent country. He was in their security service. He and I were getting close, and I realized he was trying to recruit me and what his government wanted to know, and what he wanted to know is what was the role of the Masonic lodges in the United States, because clearly they run the US. So, just to kick it off, I'd love your thoughts on why people are prone to conspiracy theories and why societies are as well.

It's because the job of the brain is to make hypotheses about the world. So your brain is locked in silence and darkness inside the skull, and it's trying to figure out what the heck is going on out there, and so the way it does this is by generating ideas and testing those because you know, we're totally limited in what we can actually know about the world, not only because our reach is very small, but also because the world is very complicated. There are billions of people in the world, and we're always trying to figure things out. Now. Now, brains do this naturally. So if I'm trying to figure out where I put my phone down, my first hypothesis is, oh, I must have left it where I normally do, and then it's not there, so I think, oh, maybe I carried it with me over to the bedroom and left it there, And then I search that and I find that's not true. And then as I continue to not find my phone, what the brain naturally does and appropriately is it turns up the temperature on these ideas and it comes up with whackier and whackier hypothesis. And eventually, if you can't find your phone, you might say, well, I think the electrician who was here maybe took the phone. This is what brains do, and this is a natural part of what they're supposed to do. Now, interestingly, this is what leads to conspiracy theories, because when we're generating a hypothesis about what was it that land in ron aswell, or how did JFK actually get killed? Or the nine to eleven? How did the towers actually fall? When your brain comes up with a really crazy hypothesis, usually you dismiss that one in favor of things that are more likely. And so my interest has been in why people are attracted to certain hypotheses, and I actually think there are several reasons here. One of them is that puzzle solving is very rewarding to the brain. And of course we're trained on this since we're kids. You're in school, you have all kinds of flavors of puzzles that you do all the time, and this actually activates these reward systems when you solve them, and when you generate a good theory to explain a mysterious event or just to have a complete different explanation of event, there's something really rewarding about cracking that puzzle. You are the Sherlock Homes in that moment. And I do want to make clear that when I often you people say things like conspiracy theories are not rational, but in fact they're completely in line with what brains do to solve problems. And when someone buys into a conspiracy theory, it's not necessarily that they're being disingenuous. It's that the world is large and complex, and the best any of us are trying to do is fit together lego pieces to try to figure out what the heck is going on out there. I'll just say a couple other things, which is that fascinatingly, there are many reasons why brains try to solve puzzles all the time. One of them is to reduce cognitive dissonance, which is to say, you know, when we're faced with facts that don't fit or information that conflicts, which happens all the time, that's uncomfortable for us. And so when you can come up with a good conspiracy theory that fits, it can reduce cognitive load and complexity and dissonance. So just a couple other things I think are fascinating here, which is we're also all yoked with a confirmation bias, which just means that we seek out information and we like information that confirms our pre existing beliefs.

It's because the job of the brain is to make hypotheses about the world. So your brain is locked in silence and darkness inside the skull, and it's trying to figure out what the heck is going on out there, and so the way it does this is by generating ideas and testing those because you know, we're totally limited in what we can actually know about the world, not only because our reach is very small, but also because the world is very complicated. There are billions of people in the world, and we're always trying to figure things out. Now. Now, brains do this naturally. So if I'm trying to figure out where I put my phone down, my first hypothesis is, oh, I must have left it where I normally do, and then it's not there, so I think, oh, maybe I carried it with me over to the bedroom and left it there, And then I search that and I find that's not true. And then as I continue to not find my phone, what the brain naturally does and appropriately is it turns up the temperature on these ideas and it comes up with whackier and whackier hypothesis. And eventually, if you can't find your phone, you might say, well, I think the electrician who was here maybe took the phone. This is what brains do, and this is a natural part of what they're supposed to do. Now, interestingly, this is what leads to conspiracy theories, because when we're generating a hypothesis about what was it that land in ron aswell, or how did JFK actually get killed? Or the nine to eleven? How did the towers actually fall? When your brain comes up with a really crazy hypothesis, usually you dismiss that one in favor of things that are more likely. And so my interest has been in why people are attracted to certain hypotheses, and I actually think there are several reasons here. One of them is that puzzle solving is very rewarding to the brain. And of course we're trained on this since we're kids. You're in school, you have all kinds of flavors of puzzles that you do all the time, and this actually activates these reward systems when you solve them, and when you generate a good theory to explain a mysterious event or just to have a complete different explanation of event, there's something really rewarding about cracking that puzzle. You are the Sherlock Homes in that moment. And I do want to make clear that when I often you people say things like conspiracy theories are not rational, but in fact they're completely in line with what brains do to solve problems. And when someone buys into a conspiracy theory, it's not necessarily that they're being disingenuous. It's that the world is large and complex, and the best any of us are trying to do is fit together lego pieces to try to figure out what the heck is going on out there. I'll just say a couple other things, which is that fascinatingly, there are many reasons why brains try to solve puzzles all the time. One of them is to reduce cognitive dissonance, which is to say, you know, when we're faced with facts that don't fit or information that conflicts, which happens all the time, that's uncomfortable for us. And so when you can come up with a good conspiracy theory that fits, it can reduce cognitive load and complexity and dissonance. So just a couple other things I think are fascinating here, which is we're also all yoked with a confirmation bias, which just means that we seek out information and we like information that confirms our pre existing beliefs.

I've got a ten dollar word I want to use, so I probably mispronounce it, but peridola, right, paridolia. So from an evolutionary point of view, as I understand it, we're more likely to survive and breed if we see patterns. If there's a rustle in the bushes in a shadow, it could be a tiger, right, so you run. You don't know if it's a tiger. And of course the person who goes over and says I'm going to go check this out and determine whether it is or isn't, of course they're going to get eaten, right, even if it's only one out of one hundred times. So that we've evolved this innate capacity to see patterns and to even if they're false, evolutionarily speaking, it's still an advantage or it has been an advantage to us.

I've got a ten dollar word I want to use, so I probably mispronounce it, but peridola, right, paridolia. So from an evolutionary point of view, as I understand it, we're more likely to survive and breed if we see patterns. If there's a rustle in the bushes in a shadow, it could be a tiger, right, so you run. You don't know if it's a tiger. And of course the person who goes over and says I'm going to go check this out and determine whether it is or isn't, of course they're going to get eaten, right, even if it's only one out of one hundred times. So that we've evolved this innate capacity to see patterns and to even if they're false, evolutionarily speaking, it's still an advantage or it has been an advantage to us.

Yeah, exactly. So first, let me define the ten dollar word, which is paradolia is seeing patterns in random visual patterns. Probably the most common example of paradolia is seeing faces. You look at the electrical plug on the wall and it looks like two eyes and mouth. You go, there's a old face there. That's paradolia. And of course we see faces and everything, the man on the moon or some burn marks on a piece of toast or whatever. Okay, but I'm going to introduce another ten dollars word, which is apo fenia, which is the more generalized thing. So paradolia is about visual patterns, but apoffenia is about just as signing meaning to random patterns. And I think that's really at the heart of conspiracy theories, is our brain's natural inclination to find meaningful connections in random data.

Yeah, exactly. So first, let me define the ten dollar word, which is paradolia is seeing patterns in random visual patterns. Probably the most common example of paradolia is seeing faces. You look at the electrical plug on the wall and it looks like two eyes and mouth. You go, there's a old face there. That's paradolia. And of course we see faces and everything, the man on the moon or some burn marks on a piece of toast or whatever. Okay, but I'm going to introduce another ten dollars word, which is apo fenia, which is the more generalized thing. So paradolia is about visual patterns, but apoffenia is about just as signing meaning to random patterns. And I think that's really at the heart of conspiracy theories, is our brain's natural inclination to find meaningful connections in random data.

The thing that I don't get is how when people come out the other end and they believe in lizard people and QAnon and the politicians drink blood, those things aren't sensible answers or sensible patterns of solving any kind of puzzle. How does that work? How could someone go down a rabbit hole and believe that politicians drink the blood of children.

The thing that I don't get is how when people come out the other end and they believe in lizard people and QAnon and the politicians drink blood, those things aren't sensible answers or sensible patterns of solving any kind of puzzle. How does that work? How could someone go down a rabbit hole and believe that politicians drink the blood of children.

The thing to appreciate is that it's all on a spectrum, right, So you can believe in a whack your and whack your hypothesis about something, and eventually you find yourself pretty far out on something. But if it confirms the bias you have about this politician, and if it seems to answer some sort of if it cracks a puzzle for you, I don't know what it is. In this case, all these children have disappeared and these politicians seem to be getting healthier or whatever the thing is, then to your mind, that might make sense. But there's actually another thing that I think might shed some light here, which is that there is a social component to conspiracy theories. And I've been very interested in this issue. So actually I would say there's two aspects of social components. One is brains are very predisposed to have in groups and outgroups. You've got the people that you know and like and trust presumably the group that you are in, and then there's the others who are in that outgroup, and we trust them less, we think they're capable of anything any sort of moral turpitude, and that allows for whackier and whack your hypotheses to be possible. But I think there's even a second social component that's even more important, which is that if you are the one that comes up with a conspiracy theory, you get a lot of attention for that, or at least you think you do. You get to say, hey, look I've pieced all these things together, and I know something that is the first time anyone has ever known this in the history of humankind. I mean, look, this kind of thing drives science, right if you are Einstein and you explain this little loop de loop that the planet Mercury does with the special theory of relativity, and suddenly like everything is clear, and no one in the history of humankind has ever felt this, you know, has ever understood this before. What Einstein said is he felt like something snapped inside him. I mean, what a feeling, what a moment. And by the way, I think this social component matters even if you're just the guy repeating the story, the one who came up with it, But you get something out of telling it. Why, Because conspiracy theories are interesting and you get attention at the party for saying this or on social media. And the reason they are interesting is because they challenge someone else's internal model. They think they understood something. Oh, I know how nine to eleven happened, or how JFK got shot orund and certainly you tell them something and voila, there's a totally different framework for explaining the same thing, and that holds their attention. And even if you were at the original sherlock who came up with a theory, you get to glow in the credit of that because you're the ones spreading the word and with a good story, it's like a gift certificate that doesn't get used up, that gives you really great social feedback.

The thing to appreciate is that it's all on a spectrum, right, So you can believe in a whack your and whack your hypothesis about something, and eventually you find yourself pretty far out on something. But if it confirms the bias you have about this politician, and if it seems to answer some sort of if it cracks a puzzle for you, I don't know what it is. In this case, all these children have disappeared and these politicians seem to be getting healthier or whatever the thing is, then to your mind, that might make sense. But there's actually another thing that I think might shed some light here, which is that there is a social component to conspiracy theories. And I've been very interested in this issue. So actually I would say there's two aspects of social components. One is brains are very predisposed to have in groups and outgroups. You've got the people that you know and like and trust presumably the group that you are in, and then there's the others who are in that outgroup, and we trust them less, we think they're capable of anything any sort of moral turpitude, and that allows for whackier and whack your hypotheses to be possible. But I think there's even a second social component that's even more important, which is that if you are the one that comes up with a conspiracy theory, you get a lot of attention for that, or at least you think you do. You get to say, hey, look I've pieced all these things together, and I know something that is the first time anyone has ever known this in the history of humankind. I mean, look, this kind of thing drives science, right if you are Einstein and you explain this little loop de loop that the planet Mercury does with the special theory of relativity, and suddenly like everything is clear, and no one in the history of humankind has ever felt this, you know, has ever understood this before. What Einstein said is he felt like something snapped inside him. I mean, what a feeling, what a moment. And by the way, I think this social component matters even if you're just the guy repeating the story, the one who came up with it, But you get something out of telling it. Why, Because conspiracy theories are interesting and you get attention at the party for saying this or on social media. And the reason they are interesting is because they challenge someone else's internal model. They think they understood something. Oh, I know how nine to eleven happened, or how JFK got shot orund and certainly you tell them something and voila, there's a totally different framework for explaining the same thing, and that holds their attention. And even if you were at the original sherlock who came up with a theory, you get to glow in the credit of that because you're the ones spreading the word and with a good story, it's like a gift certificate that doesn't get used up, that gives you really great social feedback.

Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just.

Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just.

For a minute or two, and we're back.

For a minute or two, and we're back.

I know somebody who's who lost a relative at Jonestown and Jim Jones and the temple famously nine hundred and eighteen people. The word is they committed suicide. They literally drank the kool aid Arsenick and the grave kool aid. But Jim Jones at the end had come up with this intricate conspiracy theory about how the US government was going to attack them. They were going to be murdered and tortured, their children would be taken away, and this was the only way out. And in the end, as people have studied this more probably only about I'll just say half a significant number actually drank the kool aid voluntarily, but a lot of them when push came to shove, when somebody almost literally put a gun to their head and said, do you believe this conspiracy? More than half of them are around half didn't you know? They went along with it for the social component to be in the end group, but when it's like my life's steak, Yeah, they knew it wasn't true. Deep in their hearts. They knew it wasn't They still drank it because they put literally a gun to their head or a crossbow. And so these people did kill themselves because they were forced to. But it wasn't a mass suicide. It was a lot of them. A lot of them did it because they bought into it, and a lot of them did it they didn't really believe. In the end. It was like it was a sham in their inner hearts. They didn't believe in the conspiracy.

I know somebody who's who lost a relative at Jonestown and Jim Jones and the temple famously nine hundred and eighteen people. The word is they committed suicide. They literally drank the kool aid Arsenick and the grave kool aid. But Jim Jones at the end had come up with this intricate conspiracy theory about how the US government was going to attack them. They were going to be murdered and tortured, their children would be taken away, and this was the only way out. And in the end, as people have studied this more probably only about I'll just say half a significant number actually drank the kool aid voluntarily, but a lot of them when push came to shove, when somebody almost literally put a gun to their head and said, do you believe this conspiracy? More than half of them are around half didn't you know? They went along with it for the social component to be in the end group, but when it's like my life's steak, Yeah, they knew it wasn't true. Deep in their hearts. They knew it wasn't They still drank it because they put literally a gun to their head or a crossbow. And so these people did kill themselves because they were forced to. But it wasn't a mass suicide. It was a lot of them. A lot of them did it because they bought into it, and a lot of them did it they didn't really believe. In the end. It was like it was a sham in their inner hearts. They didn't believe in the conspiracy.

I just want to address one point here that I think matters, which is that when it comes to our believing in something, it's not that there's a true answer, as in, oh, I didn't really believe it, or I did. You have lots of different networks in your brain all running. The way I've described to some of my books is that it's a team of rivals under the hood, and so you can both believe something and part of you doesn't believe it at all, and part of you thinks, hey, this may be really true. So all those things can be running in your head at once. So it's hard to say that they didn't believe it at all and they knew it was a sham. It's possible that they were questioning back and forth, wow is this true? Is it's not true? A good mid level conspiracy theory, ninety nine percent of your cognitive mind says, Okay, that is definitely not true. But then you think, hey, what if what you can partially entertain it.

I just want to address one point here that I think matters, which is that when it comes to our believing in something, it's not that there's a true answer, as in, oh, I didn't really believe it, or I did. You have lots of different networks in your brain all running. The way I've described to some of my books is that it's a team of rivals under the hood, and so you can both believe something and part of you doesn't believe it at all, and part of you thinks, hey, this may be really true. So all those things can be running in your head at once. So it's hard to say that they didn't believe it at all and they knew it was a sham. It's possible that they were questioning back and forth, wow is this true? Is it's not true? A good mid level conspiracy theory, ninety nine percent of your cognitive mind says, Okay, that is definitely not true. But then you think, hey, what if what you can partially entertain it.

You talked about sort of truth and the relativism of truth, and that we each have our own sort of worldview or in our own heads that maybe there's not really unimpeachable truth. There are things that are clearly not true, like back to my original question, the view that there are lizard people running the world and running our politics. No one has ever seen a lizard person, So how is it that people can convince themselves of things that there's just no evidence for.

You talked about sort of truth and the relativism of truth, and that we each have our own sort of worldview or in our own heads that maybe there's not really unimpeachable truth. There are things that are clearly not true, like back to my original question, the view that there are lizard people running the world and running our politics. No one has ever seen a lizard person, So how is it that people can convince themselves of things that there's just no evidence for.

Yeah, okay, So I think this is a really important question because it shows a couple things. One is, first of all, this social component. I don't if you hear about the lizard people running politics and you go and you tell someone else, there is some social component to Hey, I get to be the one telling you about this, even if this is unlikely to be true, there's still some social award to get. But more importantly, our world has mental illness. About one percent of the population, for example, has schizophrenia, which means that they're divorced from reality and they can have a thought like lizard people are running society, and to them there's nothing strange about that. They feel like, Okay, I know that's true, because I don't know if you have ever talked or any of the listeners ever known someone or had a loved one or just a friend or someone that talked to with schizophrenia. But when somebody is delusional, they will believe whatever coinage their brain is coughing up. So in the same way that we believe our dreams are completely wacky, ridiculous dreams when we're in them, that's exactly what it's like for a person with schizophrenia. I talked with one gentleman who was telling me that he had just had brunch with the president and advised him on all these things and so on. He was locked in a mental institution, and clearly this was not true, but he believed it. I came back and saw him about ten days later. He was now not having hallucinations, and I asked him about that. I said, Hey, what's your view on that now? And he said, oh, I guess that wasn't true. Now it feels like a dream to me. But when I was there ten days ago, I felt like that was true. So there's some interesting interaction between the one percent of the population that has schizophrenia and then other people who are maybe just adjacent to them. And so I have a suspicion this is a little bit sometimes how things can spread.

Yeah, okay, So I think this is a really important question because it shows a couple things. One is, first of all, this social component. I don't if you hear about the lizard people running politics and you go and you tell someone else, there is some social component to Hey, I get to be the one telling you about this, even if this is unlikely to be true, there's still some social award to get. But more importantly, our world has mental illness. About one percent of the population, for example, has schizophrenia, which means that they're divorced from reality and they can have a thought like lizard people are running society, and to them there's nothing strange about that. They feel like, Okay, I know that's true, because I don't know if you have ever talked or any of the listeners ever known someone or had a loved one or just a friend or someone that talked to with schizophrenia. But when somebody is delusional, they will believe whatever coinage their brain is coughing up. So in the same way that we believe our dreams are completely wacky, ridiculous dreams when we're in them, that's exactly what it's like for a person with schizophrenia. I talked with one gentleman who was telling me that he had just had brunch with the president and advised him on all these things and so on. He was locked in a mental institution, and clearly this was not true, but he believed it. I came back and saw him about ten days later. He was now not having hallucinations, and I asked him about that. I said, Hey, what's your view on that now? And he said, oh, I guess that wasn't true. Now it feels like a dream to me. But when I was there ten days ago, I felt like that was true. So there's some interesting interaction between the one percent of the population that has schizophrenia and then other people who are maybe just adjacent to them. And so I have a suspicion this is a little bit sometimes how things can spread.

So if I understand correctly hate speech, of course, dictators and hate groups use these dehumanizing metaphors that they switch on neural pathways and these neural pathways, they bypass higher cognitive reasoning centers, and over time, these mental patterns become entrenched and it becomes more and more difficult to get out of them. And of course for CIA officers, this is something that's very important when we're dealing with people or societies that view the world this way. And so I know John's a Russia expert, and looking at Russia now, I think there's a lot of this neural pathway change right now where they simply don't view the world exactly in the same way we do. And let me just follow it up with one quick sort of personal So when I was eighteen, I went to Germany and I had a German girlfriend and I met her mother, and she was nice, but she was from the Sudate and Land and driven out after World War Two as a young child. And one night she had a couple of drinks too many, and she said to me, look, she said, it was wrong what happened to the Jews, but with everything they did, they kind of had something coming to them. And I thought, she's never going to wash it out to her head. She's a well educated sixty year old woman and she is never despite all the contradictory evidence and everything, and she's very happy living in a democratic West Germany. Yet how her views formed in her cognitive years, that was depically never going to change. The only way it was going to change is like she hasd her and her generation had to go.

So if I understand correctly hate speech, of course, dictators and hate groups use these dehumanizing metaphors that they switch on neural pathways and these neural pathways, they bypass higher cognitive reasoning centers, and over time, these mental patterns become entrenched and it becomes more and more difficult to get out of them. And of course for CIA officers, this is something that's very important when we're dealing with people or societies that view the world this way. And so I know John's a Russia expert, and looking at Russia now, I think there's a lot of this neural pathway change right now where they simply don't view the world exactly in the same way we do. And let me just follow it up with one quick sort of personal So when I was eighteen, I went to Germany and I had a German girlfriend and I met her mother, and she was nice, but she was from the Sudate and Land and driven out after World War Two as a young child. And one night she had a couple of drinks too many, and she said to me, look, she said, it was wrong what happened to the Jews, but with everything they did, they kind of had something coming to them. And I thought, she's never going to wash it out to her head. She's a well educated sixty year old woman and she is never despite all the contradictory evidence and everything, and she's very happy living in a democratic West Germany. Yet how her views formed in her cognitive years, that was depically never going to change. The only way it was going to change is like she hasd her and her generation had to go.

Here's what I would say. I've actually studied a lot about propaganda and dehumanization, and you're mostly right about what happens there, except by the way, it's not pathways switched on by propaganda, it's pathways switched off. It turns out that you can start by asking the question of what is required for pro social behavior, In other words, what is required for me to care about you and not want to see you get hurt? And what is required are very particular networks, mostly in the frontal lobe behind your forehead. These are networks that allow me to understand you as a fellow human. But it turns out that what propaganda does is it suppresses those networks so that I come to understand some other group more like an object rather than another person. And this is the trick that all propaganda across place in time uses. Is you dehumanize by comparing them to for example, animals or viruses. Because the interesting thing is I've collected up, for example, propaganda posters from all over the world. They all do this. So I don't know what you were thinking, but whatever you were thinking generalizes to everybody. That's the interesting part. So look American World War One and World War two posters showed the enemy as like a gorilla, or I've actually collected quotations from like the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda. The Hutu viewed them as rats. That's a common one across place in time, viewing them as rats or viruses, things like that. Okay, So the point is what this does is this turns down these areas, these networks in the brain that are required to see another person as a person. And so what happened. By the way, there are lots of turned this down. Moral pollution is one as well, where you associate somebody with something bad like pollution or viruses or whatever. There are many ways to do this, but the point is you don't see them as a human. And that's the power of propaganda and dehumanization. And the reason I study this and give talks about this is because once you're aware of these tricks. Then it's easier to see them, and so the next time, oh, this group is like a virus or like rats or whatever, you can think, Okay, well I've seen this trick before. I'm not going to allow that to happen. So clearly the problem is you're pointing out, for example, what this German woman is. Once you come to believe this about in groups and out groups, it's not so easy to change. Now, people do change. There are really interesting examples of a guy who was in the KKKA who changed his view, Or there's a young woman who was raised in a very strict, kind of awful church environment where she was taught to hate all kinds of groups of people and she's really changed her ways. Yeah, these things do happen, But to your point, it's tough. Once you've been taught how to categorize the world. Those are not the kind of people I hang out with, and they're capable of any kind of devious behavior, then that tends to stick.

Here's what I would say. I've actually studied a lot about propaganda and dehumanization, and you're mostly right about what happens there, except by the way, it's not pathways switched on by propaganda, it's pathways switched off. It turns out that you can start by asking the question of what is required for pro social behavior, In other words, what is required for me to care about you and not want to see you get hurt? And what is required are very particular networks, mostly in the frontal lobe behind your forehead. These are networks that allow me to understand you as a fellow human. But it turns out that what propaganda does is it suppresses those networks so that I come to understand some other group more like an object rather than another person. And this is the trick that all propaganda across place in time uses. Is you dehumanize by comparing them to for example, animals or viruses. Because the interesting thing is I've collected up, for example, propaganda posters from all over the world. They all do this. So I don't know what you were thinking, but whatever you were thinking generalizes to everybody. That's the interesting part. So look American World War One and World War two posters showed the enemy as like a gorilla, or I've actually collected quotations from like the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda. The Hutu viewed them as rats. That's a common one across place in time, viewing them as rats or viruses, things like that. Okay, So the point is what this does is this turns down these areas, these networks in the brain that are required to see another person as a person. And so what happened. By the way, there are lots of turned this down. Moral pollution is one as well, where you associate somebody with something bad like pollution or viruses or whatever. There are many ways to do this, but the point is you don't see them as a human. And that's the power of propaganda and dehumanization. And the reason I study this and give talks about this is because once you're aware of these tricks. Then it's easier to see them, and so the next time, oh, this group is like a virus or like rats or whatever, you can think, Okay, well I've seen this trick before. I'm not going to allow that to happen. So clearly the problem is you're pointing out, for example, what this German woman is. Once you come to believe this about in groups and out groups, it's not so easy to change. Now, people do change. There are really interesting examples of a guy who was in the KKKA who changed his view, Or there's a young woman who was raised in a very strict, kind of awful church environment where she was taught to hate all kinds of groups of people and she's really changed her ways. Yeah, these things do happen, But to your point, it's tough. Once you've been taught how to categorize the world. Those are not the kind of people I hang out with, and they're capable of any kind of devious behavior, then that tends to stick.

Do you think that social media and getting everybody in to find these communities of people who believe in these things has made this worse for us today or has it always been the same.

Do you think that social media and getting everybody in to find these communities of people who believe in these things has made this worse for us today or has it always been the same.

I do not think that social media has anything to do with this. Actually, for several reasons. One is that and you guys must be experts in this part. When you look back through history, there is no moment or a place where there haven't been conspiracy theories. There was a great, big fire that destroyed a lot of Rome in sixty four CE, and there are all kinds of conspiracy theories about it where people thought, hey, wait, I think the Emperor Nero was responsible for the fire because he wanted to build this new palace and for that clear land, and so consequently all these conspiracy theories blossom.

I do not think that social media has anything to do with this. Actually, for several reasons. One is that and you guys must be experts in this part. When you look back through history, there is no moment or a place where there haven't been conspiracy theories. There was a great, big fire that destroyed a lot of Rome in sixty four CE, and there are all kinds of conspiracy theories about it where people thought, hey, wait, I think the Emperor Nero was responsible for the fire because he wanted to build this new palace and for that clear land, and so consequently all these conspiracy theories blossom.

Nero blamed the Christians, by the way, yeah.

Nero blamed the Christians, by the way, yeah.

Yeah, exactly, everyone exactly, and probably it was some random spark from whatever, like who knows is ole is cow? Yeah exactly. And the thing is we'll never know. And of course there are no good forensic tools back then. Some people then couldn't have known, you know, there were conspiracy theories. And by the way, this was the same thing behind the assassination of Julius Caesar, the death of Alexander the Great, who actually wanted to ensure that Socrates was tried and executed. So as far back as we have written history. We have conspiracy theories, so first of all, it's not a new thing. But more generally, the idea that social media reduces our need for proof, I think might be a retrospective romanticization to think that we ever used to care about proof. For example, we're all old enough to remember the pre internet world pretty clearly, and you know, one of the things that everybody did at the time was mailed pamphlets. You know, you subscribed and you got pamphlets to our inbox, but it was your physical mail in and they were the craziest, you know. I mean, you can get American Nazi Party pamphlets whatever, and I've read those, and the idea of proof or whatever is the last thing on anybody's mind there. It's just the same kind of stuff that you might find now.

Yeah, exactly, everyone exactly, and probably it was some random spark from whatever, like who knows is ole is cow? Yeah exactly. And the thing is we'll never know. And of course there are no good forensic tools back then. Some people then couldn't have known, you know, there were conspiracy theories. And by the way, this was the same thing behind the assassination of Julius Caesar, the death of Alexander the Great, who actually wanted to ensure that Socrates was tried and executed. So as far back as we have written history. We have conspiracy theories, so first of all, it's not a new thing. But more generally, the idea that social media reduces our need for proof, I think might be a retrospective romanticization to think that we ever used to care about proof. For example, we're all old enough to remember the pre internet world pretty clearly, and you know, one of the things that everybody did at the time was mailed pamphlets. You know, you subscribed and you got pamphlets to our inbox, but it was your physical mail in and they were the craziest, you know. I mean, you can get American Nazi Party pamphlets whatever, and I've read those, and the idea of proof or whatever is the last thing on anybody's mind there. It's just the same kind of stuff that you might find now.

It may make it easier to weaponize for partisan or malign purposes. I mean, the fact that the Russians, for example, can pump stuff into our system. They did do that for decades and decades, the exact same thing.

It may make it easier to weaponize for partisan or malign purposes. I mean, the fact that the Russians, for example, can pump stuff into our system. They did do that for decades and decades, the exact same thing.

It just is.

It just is.

Easier to do it.

Easier to do it.

That might be right. I do wonder about this though. So I was just talking to someone the other day who said, who was actually making this argument that the Internet is responsible for the proliferation of conspiracy theories because it makes it so easy. And I said, okay, look, why don't you start a conspiracy theory like that Joe Biden actually has an alien baby and posted on your Twitter account which has one hundred followers. Do you really think this is going to cause the conflagration of a conspiracy theory?

That might be right. I do wonder about this though. So I was just talking to someone the other day who said, who was actually making this argument that the Internet is responsible for the proliferation of conspiracy theories because it makes it so easy. And I said, okay, look, why don't you start a conspiracy theory like that Joe Biden actually has an alien baby and posted on your Twitter account which has one hundred followers. Do you really think this is going to cause the conflagration of a conspiracy theory?

You know?

You know?

But the Russians can do is they used to create them and try to push them, and usually they didn't catch. Sometimes they would. They made up the AIDS crisis that was created by the Pentagon, for example, and that one caught and had an effect. Usually they don't. But one of the things they can do now is they can just monitor bad actors on Twitter and what have you on social media and then use bots and things to pump that stuff. In other words, it takes this person has one hundred followers and pump it fifty million times into the system and hope it catches. And they can do that over and over and only a few of them have to catch to create a problem.

But the Russians can do is they used to create them and try to push them, and usually they didn't catch. Sometimes they would. They made up the AIDS crisis that was created by the Pentagon, for example, and that one caught and had an effect. Usually they don't. But one of the things they can do now is they can just monitor bad actors on Twitter and what have you on social media and then use bots and things to pump that stuff. In other words, it takes this person has one hundred followers and pump it fifty million times into the system and hope it catches. And they can do that over and over and only a few of them have to catch to create a problem.

But you're right, the.

But you're right, the.

Fact that our brains take it is the same as it's always been.

Fact that our brains take it is the same as it's always been.

So that's really interesting. Glad brought that up because what that suggests is for a conspiracy theory to catch fire, it has to be a good one in a sense. So if you post that Joe Biden has an alien baby from an alien distress or something, the Russians could pump that all they want on their bot farms and it wouldn't catch presumaly.

So that's really interesting. Glad brought that up because what that suggests is for a conspiracy theory to catch fire, it has to be a good one in a sense. So if you post that Joe Biden has an alien baby from an alien distress or something, the Russians could pump that all they want on their bot farms and it wouldn't catch presumaly.

But that fits with our old world, right. So one of the things that intelligence services do is deception, right. So deception is an effort to try to fool people to believe something that's not true, and of course that works best when you know what the other side wants to believe. The better you understand the other side's biases, the easier is to fool them by giving them a piece of what they want to believe, wrapped in something that's not true.

But that fits with our old world, right. So one of the things that intelligence services do is deception, right. So deception is an effort to try to fool people to believe something that's not true, and of course that works best when you know what the other side wants to believe. The better you understand the other side's biases, the easier is to fool them by giving them a piece of what they want to believe, wrapped in something that's not true.

But even still, you have to make sure that it's a good conspiracy that's just on the edge of possibility.

But even still, you have to make sure that it's a good conspiracy that's just on the edge of possibility.

Let's take a break, we'll be right back, and we're back.

Let's take a break, we'll be right back, and we're back.

I have a question about cognitive dissonance in a ways touches on my own family and how we process information. So Alex Jones on his show, he goes on and he sells things like super male vitality drops and lung cleansing plus spray with no FDA approval. Nobody knows what's in this, and people buy millions of dollars of this stuff the same time, and often these very same people are mistrustful of the entire medical community, tens or even hundreds of thousands of medical professionals who have dedicating their lives to saving people, and who they many of them know, like they know their doctor or surgeon and things like that, and yet on COVID vaccines they don't buy it. You know, It's like, no, the entire medical establishment is unethical. Although the super male vitality drops, they're fine, right, I'll put those in my body. And yet at the same time, their kid gets sick with cancer, and those same doctors who they think are unethical and they don't trust, come to them and say, I'm going to have to put poison in your kid's body chemotherarap just enough poison to kill the cancer, but it's going to make your kid really sick, but it could save them. And none of those people, I'll bet you zero, say WHOA. I want to know exactly what's in that stuff, right, they're going to say, if you can save them, do it. So they're conflicting and completely, I think, irreconcilable. So how does the brain work that it functions as a unified hole despite this and with real consequences.

I have a question about cognitive dissonance in a ways touches on my own family and how we process information. So Alex Jones on his show, he goes on and he sells things like super male vitality drops and lung cleansing plus spray with no FDA approval. Nobody knows what's in this, and people buy millions of dollars of this stuff the same time, and often these very same people are mistrustful of the entire medical community, tens or even hundreds of thousands of medical professionals who have dedicating their lives to saving people, and who they many of them know, like they know their doctor or surgeon and things like that, and yet on COVID vaccines they don't buy it. You know, It's like, no, the entire medical establishment is unethical. Although the super male vitality drops, they're fine, right, I'll put those in my body. And yet at the same time, their kid gets sick with cancer, and those same doctors who they think are unethical and they don't trust, come to them and say, I'm going to have to put poison in your kid's body chemotherarap just enough poison to kill the cancer, but it's going to make your kid really sick, but it could save them. And none of those people, I'll bet you zero, say WHOA. I want to know exactly what's in that stuff, right, they're going to say, if you can save them, do it. So they're conflicting and completely, I think, irreconcilable. So how does the brain work that it functions as a unified hole despite this and with real consequences.

The general story is that the brain is perfectly happy to hold contradictions and behavior all the time. I mentioned earlier that the brain is made up of a team of rivals, by which I mean you've got all these different networks that want different things at different times. And think of it like a neural parliament. In a parliament in a country, You've got all these different political parties with different drives. They want different things to happen. They all love their country, they just have different opinions on what the right moves are. And this is exactly what's going on with the brain. So for example, if I put some warm chocolate chip cookies in front of you, party brain wants to eat that. It's a rich energy source. Party of brain says, don't eat it, you'll get fat. Party brain says, Okay, I'll eat it, but I'll go to the gym tonight. You can argue with yourself, you can cuss it yourself, you can cajole who is talking to whom? Here? Right? It's all you, but it's different parts of you. And that's why we constantly hold contradictory information or ways of being in our heads. But it's easy to say you don't trust the medical system when you've got a cold or something, but when something has really gotten serious, then you might change your view on that.

The general story is that the brain is perfectly happy to hold contradictions and behavior all the time. I mentioned earlier that the brain is made up of a team of rivals, by which I mean you've got all these different networks that want different things at different times. And think of it like a neural parliament. In a parliament in a country, You've got all these different political parties with different drives. They want different things to happen. They all love their country, they just have different opinions on what the right moves are. And this is exactly what's going on with the brain. So for example, if I put some warm chocolate chip cookies in front of you, party brain wants to eat that. It's a rich energy source. Party of brain says, don't eat it, you'll get fat. Party brain says, Okay, I'll eat it, but I'll go to the gym tonight. You can argue with yourself, you can cuss it yourself, you can cajole who is talking to whom? Here? Right? It's all you, but it's different parts of you. And that's why we constantly hold contradictory information or ways of being in our heads. But it's easy to say you don't trust the medical system when you've got a cold or something, but when something has really gotten serious, then you might change your view on that.

Is it often a response to anxiety fear. So if a society is unsettled, anxious, or made that way, does that cause more conspiracy?

Is it often a response to anxiety fear. So if a society is unsettled, anxious, or made that way, does that cause more conspiracy?

John?

John?

I mean, you know the Serbs really well. You spend a lot of time in Yugoslavia. I think Melosovich created anxiety amongst the Serve population that made them more likely to believe conspiracy theories.

I mean, you know the Serbs really well. You spend a lot of time in Yugoslavia. I think Melosovich created anxiety amongst the Serve population that made them more likely to believe conspiracy theories.

And again you can it's very easy to use the other. And so the thing in the former Yugoslavia is Serbia with they weren't the majority of the ethnic population, but they were the largest of the minority. So right, so they would say forty percent of former Yugoslavia was serving. So the Slovenes and the Croats and the Montenegrins and Kosovars and others were smaller groups. And so when the biggest group the Serbs claimed that they were the victims of those smaller groups coming after them. It scared the other groups, right, So the most powerful and biggest group was claiming to be the victim and that therefore they could act with impunity. So Meloswitch was very good at He knew communism was falling apart. He knew that he had to grasp onto nationalism, and therefore he used that victimhood for him, but probably without realizing that it was going to create fear in the other ethnic group and created what became a nasty, horrible civil war.

And again you can it's very easy to use the other. And so the thing in the former Yugoslavia is Serbia with they weren't the majority of the ethnic population, but they were the largest of the minority. So right, so they would say forty percent of former Yugoslavia was serving. So the Slovenes and the Croats and the Montenegrins and Kosovars and others were smaller groups. And so when the biggest group the Serbs claimed that they were the victims of those smaller groups coming after them. It scared the other groups, right, So the most powerful and biggest group was claiming to be the victim and that therefore they could act with impunity. So Meloswitch was very good at He knew communism was falling apart. He knew that he had to grasp onto nationalism, and therefore he used that victimhood for him, but probably without realizing that it was going to create fear in the other ethnic group and created what became a nasty, horrible civil war.

And so the question is, can you create the preconditions for people to believe conspiracy theories by making people afraid and making them anxious.

And so the question is, can you create the preconditions for people to believe conspiracy theories by making people afraid and making them anxious.

Yeah, I think that's fascinating that. On the individual level. One of the things that brains do all the time is threat detection. This is the most important jobs of the brain. And when you are sensing that there's trouble or something's happening, you've got the sort of special network in your brain center at the amygdala, which is an emergency control center that says, Okay, look, there's some threat going on. I really need to rev everything up and operate with heightened suspicion and vigilance. And there's one related thing, which is another thing that brains do is agency detection, which is, hey, something just happened. Was there somebody behind this? Was there some group, some person behind this? Is my phone missing because I put it somewhere stupid? Or is there somebody behind my phone being missing here? And so these are natural things that the brains are always doing. And to your point, these things can be cranked up if the message from the government is look, there are threats all around you. There are people doing shadowy things around you. I have a hypothesis that I don't think there's any way for me to prove at the moment, but I know I noticed, starting in about twenty twenty, right after COVID hit, conspiracy theories seemed to become more popular. Now, I'd be really curious before I go on, what do you guys think? Do you think they actually became slight more popular in twenty twenty?

Yeah, I think that's fascinating that. On the individual level. One of the things that brains do all the time is threat detection. This is the most important jobs of the brain. And when you are sensing that there's trouble or something's happening, you've got the sort of special network in your brain center at the amygdala, which is an emergency control center that says, Okay, look, there's some threat going on. I really need to rev everything up and operate with heightened suspicion and vigilance. And there's one related thing, which is another thing that brains do is agency detection, which is, hey, something just happened. Was there somebody behind this? Was there some group, some person behind this? Is my phone missing because I put it somewhere stupid? Or is there somebody behind my phone being missing here? And so these are natural things that the brains are always doing. And to your point, these things can be cranked up if the message from the government is look, there are threats all around you. There are people doing shadowy things around you. I have a hypothesis that I don't think there's any way for me to prove at the moment, but I know I noticed, starting in about twenty twenty, right after COVID hit, conspiracy theories seemed to become more popular. Now, I'd be really curious before I go on, what do you guys think? Do you think they actually became slight more popular in twenty twenty?

That's a good question, I think. So was it a form of entertainment while we were staying at home? I don't know what the answer to that.

That's a good question, I think. So was it a form of entertainment while we were staying at home? I don't know what the answer to that.

Okay, So I have a hypothesis. What I in my lab call an idiothesis, which is an idiotic hypothesis. But here's what I think it is. So I mentioned earlier that your brain's job is to make an internal model of the world, and typically we're pretty good at that. We say, look, I know how politics were on, how people act, that sort of thing. But what happened in March of twenty twenty is that suddenly all bets were off, Suddenly the society shut down, and we didn't know what was going on. And what appears to me to happen is that the brain makes farther and farther reaches for explanatory framework. And just as an example, I don't know if you can really put yourself back in March or twenty twenty, let's say late March or early April, but what I noticed is that people would read one article that said this is all going to be over within a week, and they said, okay, got it, I can repeat the arguments. I got this. And then the very next article you read says, wow, this is going to go on for years and hundreds of thousands or millions will die, and you read it and you think, okay, that's convincing, and okay, I got it and you can repeat that. And so I just noticed that for all of us, we were going back and forth on our frameworks for everything. And that's my idiothesis on why I think conspiracy theory has got more popular when our prediction abilities were frayed by the pandemic and we just weren't able to make good predictions anymore. Then it certainly seems to me that if you are in a country and you're trying to make the population more anxious, nervous and crank up their threat detection, possibly their agency detection, another piece would be just making it so that their brains aren't good prediction machines and they feel like, Wow, I need a better framework to hang on to, and this guy is offering me a framework that gives me a really good stable foundation.

Okay, So I have a hypothesis. What I in my lab call an idiothesis, which is an idiotic hypothesis. But here's what I think it is. So I mentioned earlier that your brain's job is to make an internal model of the world, and typically we're pretty good at that. We say, look, I know how politics were on, how people act, that sort of thing. But what happened in March of twenty twenty is that suddenly all bets were off, Suddenly the society shut down, and we didn't know what was going on. And what appears to me to happen is that the brain makes farther and farther reaches for explanatory framework. And just as an example, I don't know if you can really put yourself back in March or twenty twenty, let's say late March or early April, but what I noticed is that people would read one article that said this is all going to be over within a week, and they said, okay, got it, I can repeat the arguments. I got this. And then the very next article you read says, wow, this is going to go on for years and hundreds of thousands or millions will die, and you read it and you think, okay, that's convincing, and okay, I got it and you can repeat that. And so I just noticed that for all of us, we were going back and forth on our frameworks for everything. And that's my idiothesis on why I think conspiracy theory has got more popular when our prediction abilities were frayed by the pandemic and we just weren't able to make good predictions anymore. Then it certainly seems to me that if you are in a country and you're trying to make the population more anxious, nervous and crank up their threat detection, possibly their agency detection, another piece would be just making it so that their brains aren't good prediction machines and they feel like, Wow, I need a better framework to hang on to, and this guy is offering me a framework that gives me a really good stable foundation.

Yeah, you're describing North Korea.

Yeah, you're describing North Korea.

Yeah, quick questions. We have talked a lot about how the brain and societies get us into thinking about conspiracies. How do we get into conspiracies, how do people get caught up in them? How do we get out?

Yeah, quick questions. We have talked a lot about how the brain and societies get us into thinking about conspiracies. How do we get into conspiracies, how do people get caught up in them? How do we get out?

I'll tell you, I think the most important part is making just a scientific assessment of the likelihoods of things, so all of us might get fooled someday where somebody is doing conspiracy theory and we think, oh, we know what the right answer is. Maybe there are conspiracy theories that happen tame ones, maybe that happen in the world. Who knows, but it probably makes sense to always make sure that we're asking what are the chances. So I'll give an example. Take the moon landing. Apparently there's still some people who say it was done in a production studio and we didn't actually land on the Moon. Now, obviously that's not true, because I actually knew Neil arms Strong, and one of the things he had done was put a mirror on the Moon so you could bounce the laser off its so you could do ranging and find the exact distance of the Moon anyway, so you can prove to yourself it's not. But anyway, let's imagine that you thought, I wonder if the moon landing is a conspiracy. The key is how many people would have had to be involved, presumably everybody at NASA, the president, the thousands of news broadcast whatever like. Lots of people would have to be involved in that. And the question is how long can a secret be kept? And the fact is that if a bunch of people are holding onto a secret every day, there's some chance that's going to spill out, either because someone gets drunk or they have a religious conversion or you know, spasm of guilt or whatever and they decide I'm going to do this. But also it should be noted from a game theory perspective, there's a lot of reward if you're the defector. If you think, okay, look, somebody on this team of one hundred people is going to defect at some point, and I'm going to end up in jail for the rest of my life. But if I'm the defector, then I get the New York Times bestselling book, and I get to be on CNN every day talking about this thing. And so there's all kinds of rewards from me and the guy who I was.

I'll tell you, I think the most important part is making just a scientific assessment of the likelihoods of things, so all of us might get fooled someday where somebody is doing conspiracy theory and we think, oh, we know what the right answer is. Maybe there are conspiracy theories that happen tame ones, maybe that happen in the world. Who knows, but it probably makes sense to always make sure that we're asking what are the chances. So I'll give an example. Take the moon landing. Apparently there's still some people who say it was done in a production studio and we didn't actually land on the Moon. Now, obviously that's not true, because I actually knew Neil arms Strong, and one of the things he had done was put a mirror on the Moon so you could bounce the laser off its so you could do ranging and find the exact distance of the Moon anyway, so you can prove to yourself it's not. But anyway, let's imagine that you thought, I wonder if the moon landing is a conspiracy. The key is how many people would have had to be involved, presumably everybody at NASA, the president, the thousands of news broadcast whatever like. Lots of people would have to be involved in that. And the question is how long can a secret be kept? And the fact is that if a bunch of people are holding onto a secret every day, there's some chance that's going to spill out, either because someone gets drunk or they have a religious conversion or you know, spasm of guilt or whatever and they decide I'm going to do this. But also it should be noted from a game theory perspective, there's a lot of reward if you're the defector. If you think, okay, look, somebody on this team of one hundred people is going to defect at some point, and I'm going to end up in jail for the rest of my life. But if I'm the defector, then I get the New York Times bestselling book, and I get to be on CNN every day talking about this thing. And so there's all kinds of rewards from me and the guy who I was.

In CIA for thirty years. If I knew that we did the JFK assassination, like some people claim, I would be out on the rooftop screaming.

In CIA for thirty years. If I knew that we did the JFK assassination, like some people claim, I would be out on the rooftop screaming.

Exactly, you'd write a book, You'd be super famous for it. Yeah, exactly. Let's imagine you say, okay, well, if these are a bunch of really tough people who who aren't going to defect, you know, just somebody getting drunk, like the woman from Germany or whatever. What are the chances each day? And if you multiply that over a year, over twenty years, at some point you have to allow that mathematically, this isn't really making sense anymore. Also, I think that even if you imagine some really tough guys who pulled off a moon conspiracy theory, their sun or their gen Z grand child is going to say, oh my god, look what I found in the attic and some so anyway, I think that it's probably useful to just take a scientific lens on any conspiracy theory and ask what are the chances.

Exactly, you'd write a book, You'd be super famous for it. Yeah, exactly. Let's imagine you say, okay, well, if these are a bunch of really tough people who who aren't going to defect, you know, just somebody getting drunk, like the woman from Germany or whatever. What are the chances each day? And if you multiply that over a year, over twenty years, at some point you have to allow that mathematically, this isn't really making sense anymore. Also, I think that even if you imagine some really tough guys who pulled off a moon conspiracy theory, their sun or their gen Z grand child is going to say, oh my god, look what I found in the attic and some so anyway, I think that it's probably useful to just take a scientific lens on any conspiracy theory and ask what are the chances.

So it seems you're saying like data and logic can help somebody pull out of that, But data and logic didn't get them into that viewpoint. I could come to them with logic, but I don't know that logic works on them unless they all of a sudden now they are ready to get out of it. And I don't know how people get to that phase.

So it seems you're saying like data and logic can help somebody pull out of that, But data and logic didn't get them into that viewpoint. I could come to them with logic, but I don't know that logic works on them unless they all of a sudden now they are ready to get out of it. And I don't know how people get to that phase.

So I agree with that. Okay, for all these points that we touched on during this episode, I think it's unlikely that you'll be able to talk to someone out of it. Why, there's the social component, which is they're getting something out of it. And if you engage with them and say, hey, let's argue this out whatever, it's joyful to them. They're having a great time argue with you, and they leave feeling smarter and they say, oh, I talk to these guys. We got this podcast, and I told them, you know, I was able to hold my position on this.

So I agree with that. Okay, for all these points that we touched on during this episode, I think it's unlikely that you'll be able to talk to someone out of it. Why, there's the social component, which is they're getting something out of it. And if you engage with them and say, hey, let's argue this out whatever, it's joyful to them. They're having a great time argue with you, and they leave feeling smarter and they say, oh, I talk to these guys. We got this podcast, and I told them, you know, I was able to hold my position on this.

It was really fun talking to you man.

It was really fun talking to you man.

Yeah, David, thank you so much for spending time as it was really enlightening and we can't thank you enough.

Yeah, David, thank you so much for spending time as it was really enlightening and we can't thank you enough.

It was blast talking with you guys. Thanks very much.

It was blast talking with you guys. Thanks very much.

We will see you next time on a Mission implausible.

We will see you next time on a Mission implausible.

Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher, and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible is a production of honorable Mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.

Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher, and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible is a production of honorable Mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.