Learn about the Diderot Effect; how cave art becomes animated in firelight; and why running may be good for your knees. The Diderot Effect is why buying one new thing makes you want to buy more new things by Steffie Drucker Clear, J. (2015, October 6). The Diderot Effect: Why We Want Things We Don’t Need. James Clear. https://jamesclear.com/diderot-effect Hendricks, S. (2018, July 16). How the Diderot Effect explains why you buy things you don’t need. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/how-the-diderot-effect-explains-why-you-buy-things-you-dont-need Wiest, B. (2018, July 10). The “Diderot Effect” Explains Why It’s So Easy To Feel Like You Never Have, Or Do, Enough. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannawiest/2018/07/10/the-diderot-effect-explains-why-its-so-easy-to-feel-like-you-never-have-or-do-enough/?sh=14b863f555fd Diderot, D. (1769). Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown. Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/diderot/1769/regrets.htm Cave art becomes animated when you view it in firelight by Grant Currin Ouellette, J. (2021, June 19). Archaeologists recreated three common kinds of Paleolithic cave lighting. Ars Technica; Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/archaeologists-recreated-three-common-kinds-of-paleolithic-cave-lighting/ Wachtel, E. (2017). The First Picture Show: Cinematic Aspects of Cave Art. Leonardo, 26(2), 135–140. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/606950/pdf Light in darkness: an experimental look at Paleolithic cave lighting. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/p-li060921.php Medina-Alcaide, M. Á., Garate, D., Intxaurbe, I., Sanchidrián, J. L., Rivero, O., Ferrier, C., Mesa, M. D., Pereña, J., & Líbano, I. (2021). The conquest of the dark spaces: An experimental approach to lighting systems in Paleolithic caves. PLOS ONE, 16(6), e0250497. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250497 Running May Actually Be Good for Your Knees by Ashley Hamer first aired September 2, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/infidelity-predictors-buzz-aldrin-s-moon-mementos Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about the Diderot Effect; how cave art becomes animated in firelight; and why running may be good for your knees.
The Diderot Effect is why buying one new thing makes you want to buy more new things by Steffie Drucker
Cave art becomes animated when you view it in firelight by Grant Currin
Running May Actually Be Good for Your Knees by Ashley Hamer first aired September 2, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/infidelity-predictors-buzz-aldrin-s-moon-mementos
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/diderot-effect-animated-cave-art-running-benefits-your-knees
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 why buying one new thing makes you want to buy more new things; how cave art becomes animated when seen in firelight; and why running may actually be good for your knees.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Think about your last big purchase. Chances are, you followed it up with lots of little purchases. A new laptop makes you want to buy new headphones and a second monitor. A new outfit makes you want to buy new shoes and accessories. This tendency to follow one new purchase with more new purchases is so common that it has a name: the Diderot [DID-der-oh] Effect.
The Diderot Effect is named for French philosopher Denis [den-NEE] Diderot, who’s best known for writing a popular Enlightenment-era encyclopedia. Diderot was poor for most of his life, until he got a windfall at age 52 from none other than Catherine the Great. The empress was a fan of his encyclopedia, and when she heard of his poverty she purchased his whole personal library for 1,000 British pounds, or nearly $250,000 USD today. Suddenly Diderot had money to spare.
With his new funds, he decided to splurge on one thing: a beautiful new scarlet robe. But there was a problem. The robe was so beautiful that everything else in his home paled by comparison. It all needed an upgrade. He swapped a straw chair for a leather one and bought a new kitchen table. He eventually replaced all of his belongings but found himself swimming in debt and dissatisfaction.
We don’t all come into a chunk of change as large as Diderot did, but even small purchases can spawn others. You take up a new sport and suddenly have to buy all the gear that goes with it, or your kid gets an American Girl Doll and then begs for endless accessories.
As for why this happens: Sociologists say it’s because our things are an extension of our identities. When one thing no longer fits with the rest of our identity, we’re driven to spend until we forge a completely new version of ourselves. And this drive almost exclusively goes one direction; we barely ever downsize to bring our identity back in line.
There are ways to prevent a Diderot-style spending spree. The first is to avoid triggers that make you buy in the first place: try unsubscribing from sales emails or meeting friends at a park instead of the mall. Next, limit how often you buy new things and how much you spend on them. And when you do buy something, make sure it works with what you’ve already got.
In the end, we have to learn to be happy with what we have. Otherwise, nothing will ever be enough.
Thirty years ago, a media scholar saw something in a cave painting that convinced him we’d been horribly misinterpreting our ancestors’ artwork. A team of archaeologists in Spain have recently conducted some experiments that shed a bit more light on the matter. (...but like… literally!)
That media scholar I mentioned was Edward Wachtel, and in 1993, he visited the prehistoric caves of the South of France to answer a question: Why did ancient humans go to the trouble of making art in dark, dangerous caves when painting out in the sunlight is so much nicer? Most experts said it had something to do with magic or rituals, but Wachtel had a different idea: maybe paintings looked cooler in caves.
He’d seen plenty of pictures of cave art, but the first he saw that day took him by surprise: it was practically impossible to make out anything at all. The paintings were covered by lines chiseled into the rock. These quote-unquote “spaghetti lines” weren’t the only problem. A lot of the paintings had figures drawn on top of each other, along with random legs and animal body parts.
Later in his trip, Wachtel went to a smaller, less important cave. This one didn’t have electric lights, so his guide lit their way with a gas lantern. When the lantern swung back and forth in the dark cave, everything clicked. The flickering light and dark shadows transformed the spaghetti lines into forests and thickets. The random legs became different animals seen only for a moment.
Wachtel said, quote, “By firelight, a secret of the cave painters was exposed. In the space of a few moments, I saw cuts and dissolves, change and movement. Forms appeared and disappeared. Colors shifted and changed. In short, I was watching a movie,” end quote.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to know whether Wachtel is right. We can’t go back in time and ask the cave painters what they intended. Data that would offer further explanation is hard to come by, but experimental archaeologists in Spain have taken the first step. In a recent study, the team took sticks, fibers, tallow, and all kinds of tree resins into a cave to try some ancient illumination techniques for themselves. Their findings were pretty basic. Adding animal fat to a torch makes it burn longer while pine resin makes it burn brighter. That sort of thing.
Still, if we want to get closer to understanding why cave painters superimposed their subjects and carved them up with spaghetti lines, this kind of research is how we can get there. And future findings could give a whole new meaning to the term “motion pictures.”
CODY: We’re moving on from moving PICTURES to moving PEOPLE! I’m talking about runners. There’s a common myth about running that we debunked on our show a few years ago. And we thought you should hear it in case you missed it the first time around. Here’s a 2018 story we remastered to help run this myth out of town.
[ASHLEY: Clip 2:24]
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker and Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!