Learn about how the meaning maintenance model explains the way our brains make sense of the nonsensical; and how the black hole information paradox may be explained by black holes acting like holograms. Plus: June’s Curiosity Challenge trivia segment!
Learn about how the meaning maintenance model explains the way our brains make sense of the nonsensical; and how the black hole information paradox may be explained by black holes acting like holograms. Plus: June’s Curiosity Challenge trivia segment!
How do we make sense of the nonsensical? Meet the "meaning maintenance model" by Kelsey Donk
Black holes might work like holograms by Grant Currin
Episodes referenced in Curiosity Daily trivia segment with Julian in Los Angeles
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/black-hole-holograms-how-we-make-sense-of-the-nonsensical-and-junes-curiosity-challenge
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how our brains make sense of the nonsensical; and why black holes might work like holograms. Then, we’ll test your podcast knowledge in this month’s Curiosity Challenge trivia segment.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The way our brains help us make sense of the nonsensical is REALLY interesting. I’m talking about when we’re thrust into an uncertain situation, or the world seems to go sideways. Like when you saw what Elon Musk named his kid back in May. Believe it or not, scientists know we do it — and the way our brains adapt can help us see the world around us in a new way.
Psychologists have a theory for how the brain makes sense of the world: the meaning maintenance model. It says that people understand reality by making a web of beliefs that connect the people, places, and objects around them. When something unexpected happens, that disrupts our web of reality — like when a magician pulls a rabbit out of an empty hat. We feel uncertain and we need to reconstruct our web to accommodate this new, sometimes disturbing information.
We can do three different things to rebuild that web of beliefs.
Number one: we can build a whole new mental representation of reality. “That hat must lead to another dimension full of rabbits!” This...is a pretty dramatic approach.
Number two: we can reinterpret the unexpected event to make it fit within our existing web of beliefs and relationships. “The magician distracted me so I couldn’t see that it was a trick hat.”
Number three: we can strengthen other, unrelated beliefs in our web to compensate for the lapse in meaning. You know how sometimes people will see a magic trick and just get angry? That’s this. Researchers call it ‘fluid compensation.’ It’s about avoiding the troubling uncertainty altogether and retreating to a safe place.
Like, one study found that after students did poorly on a test, they were more likely to support their school’s football team after a win. That’s fluid compensation in real life. When these students experienced discomfort, they strengthened other values in their web.
The meaning maintenance model isn’t just an interesting psychological quirk; scientists also think it could be used to our advantage in educational settings. That’s because being faced with the absurd seems to make our brains extra vigilant, which can sharpen our thinking and improve pattern recognition. If teachers can help students dwell in the feeling of uncertainty, they might be able to find more meaning in what they’re learning.
The meaning maintenance model could also explain some of the increasing polarization in politics. When we’re faced with something disturbing in the news, we could engage in fluid compensation and retreat back into what’s familiar to us. But if we can manage to remember that that discomfort could help us grow, we might actually be able to use that feeling to expand our understanding of the world around us.
Black holes are pretty much the coolest. They’re made up of so much mass packed so densely that not even light can escape their gravity. But they also pose a problem, and physicists have spent decades trying to solve it. For instance, they recently proposed a suitably snazzy hypothesis: what if black holes work like holograms?
A hologram is a three-dimensional image that’s created from the information on a two-dimensional surface. Just think about how R2D2’s flat holographic projector was able to create a 3D rendering of Princess Leia.
What does this have to do with black holes? Well, black holes are caught between two competing theories. If you think about them through the lens of Einstein’s theory of relativity, black holes seem like fairly simple bodies that warp spacetime. They don’t contain a lot of information, which means it wouldn’t take a lot of math to perfectly describe one. It also means that if you threw something in, any information about that object would be lost.
But black holes are pretty different from the perspective of quantum mechanics. In that view, they’re extremely complex. And in quantum mechanics, information can’t be destroyed — it has to go somewhere. And yet, Stephen Hawking discovered that everything inside a black hole eventually escapes as radiation. That information is destroyed, even though that’s impossible. That’s a dilemma known as the black hole information paradox.
A huge disagreement between the relativity perspective and the quantum mechanical one comes down to one thing: gravity. There’s no description of gravity that works with both theories. We talked with physicist Adam Becker about this very thing on our May 15th episode if you need a refresher. But in any case, when it comes to black holes, that’s the wrinkle the hologram hypothesis seeks to iron out.
Here’s the idea: maybe the information that describes a black hole isn’t in the black hole itself. That is, it’s not in the three-dimensional object we call a black hole. Maybe that information is located in a different kind of system: a two-dimensional plane that surrounds the black hole. As matter passes through that 2D plane into the black hole, the plane stores its information. When it eventually escapes as radiation, the information is restored.
This wild idea doesn’t just help to iron out the black hole information paradox; it also helps the relativity and quantum mechanical perspectives play nice together. That’s because the holographic principle relies on a sort of inverse, two-dimensional description of the black hole that describes its gravity without actually using gravity in the equation. That lets the theory jive with quantum mechanics. It helps shine a little more light on the mystery of black holes.
It’s time once again for the Curiosity Challenge! Every month, I call up a listener and put them to the test by asking three questions from stories we ran on Curiosity Daily in the previous month. For this Curiosity Challenge, I talked to Julian Huguet in Los Angeles. He’s a host for several YouTube channels, including Seeker and NVIDIA GeForce — and a Twitter friend, who volunteered when I put out the call for trivia players! With that, here’s this month’s Curiosity Challenge.
[CLIP 2:26]
How did YOU do? Think you can do better next month? Well, if you’d like to play, OR if you have a question you’d like us to answer on the show, shoot us an email at podcast at curiosity dot com, or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208!
Leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208!
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about how sleep is being disrupted during lockdown — and how to rest better at night;
The first prescription video game ever approved by the FDA;
Whether chocolate actually causes breakouts;
How spies can eavesdrop on conversations using light bulbs;
And more!
CODY: Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!