Learn about why it’s hard to save money for our future; how Babylonians knew the Pythagorean theorem; and situs inversus. It's hard to save money because we see our future selves as strangers by Steffie Drucker Johnson, S. (2021, August 10). Brain hacks for saving money. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/how-to-save-money Qin, P., & Northoff, G. (2011). How is our self related to midline regions and the default-mode network? NeuroImage, 57(3), 1221–1233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.028 Did the ancient Babylonians discover the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras did? by Briana Brownell Calabretto, S. (2021, August 13). A new angle on ancient trigonometry. Cosmos Magazine. https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/babylonian-tablet-trigonometry-pythagorean-triplets/ Plimpton 322. (2021). Math.ubc.ca. https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m446-03/pl322/pl322.html Mansfield, D. F., & Wildberger, N. J. (2017). Plimpton 322 is Babylonian exact sexagesimal trigonometry. Historia Mathematica, 44(4), 395–419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2017.08.001 Mansfield, D. F. (2021). Plimpton 322: A Study of Rectangles. Foundations of Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-021-09806-0 Pythagorean theorem | Definition & History | Britannica. (2021). In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/Pythagorean-theorem Some People Are Born With Their Organs Reversed by Reuben Westmaas originally aired June 1, 2018 https://omnystudio.com/p/curiosity-daily/clips/b453641c-9bf5-427e-acbd-ab530157338a 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 why it’s hard to save money for our future; how Babylonians knew the Pythagorean theorem; and situs inversus.
It's hard to save money because we see our future selves as strangers by Steffie Drucker
Did the ancient Babylonians discover the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras did? by Briana Brownell
Some People Are Born With Their Organs Reversed by Reuben Westmaas originally aired June 1, 2018 https://omnystudio.com/p/curiosity-daily/clips/b453641c-9bf5-427e-acbd-ab530157338a
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/future-you-is-a-stranger-babylonian-trig-reversed-organs
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 the way we see ourselves in the future makes it hard to save money; why the Pythagorean theorem may predate Pythagoras; and why some people are born with their organs reversed.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Saving money is hard. Saving money to use decades into the future? Even harder. And one reason for that is that your brain sees your future self as a total stranger.
See, just like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, there are at least three versions of you: your past, present, and future self. You do small favors for your future self all the time, like laying out your clothes and packing a lunch so Future You’s morning goes smoothly. But we can also be unkind to our future selves by putting off bigger problems or decisions. When it comes to something super long-term like saving for retirement, we struggle. That’s because that future self is so unknown that it’s almost like saving for a stranger.
Brain science backs this up. When we think about ourselves, an area in the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex lights up. But that region quiets down when we think about other people, especially folks we don’t have much in common with. And when we think about our future selves, the medial prefrontal cortex stays dark — as if we’re thinking about a total stranger.
There are other reasons our brains don’t like saving money, too. When deciding whether to spend or save, there are three neurological systems duking it out. The “thinking” system is in another part of the prefrontal cortex, and it plans out what you need to do to achieve your goal. But the other two systems in play team up to overrule logic. The habit-forming parts of your brain work on autopilot and sway you to do the thing you’ve always done, and the reward system goes for what’s instantly gratifying, like that shiny new purchase.
On top of that cognitive tug of war, thinking about retirement forces you to think about aging, mortality, and purpose. And, uh… yeah. Existential stress can really make a dent in your willpower.
So how do you fight it? One approach is to connect with your future self. In a 2011 study, scientists asked a group of participants to make a hypothetical budget, including the option to save for retirement. Half the group saw an age-progressed photo of themselves before making their money moves — and they saved more than those who didn’t see their older selves. The more you can picture what you’re saving for, whether it’s a new car, a nice vacation, or your Golden Years, the more you’ll be able to keep your hands off your cash.
So break out that Instagram filter and start putting some money away! Your future self will thank you.
The Greeks get a lot of credit for their achievements in mathematics. But a clay tablet that’s roughly the size of your phone is adding a twist to the story of one such method. I’m talking about the Pythagorean theorem.
If you’re a little hazy on the Pythagorean theorem, I’ll refresh your memory: a squared plus b squared equals c squared. It’s the formula that lets you find the length of any side of a triangle if you know two of the others.
As you might expect, you can’t substitute a, b, and c for just any numbers. Only certain sets of numbers satisfy the formula. Like, 3, 4, and 5 work: 3 squared plus four squared equals five squared, or in other words, 9 plus 16 is 25. There are other ones too, like 5, 12, and 13.
As you get higher and higher on the number line, you can find more and more of these number sets. In fact, there’s an infinite number of them.
Pythagoras knew about these special sets 2,500 years ago, which is why they’re often called Pythagorean Triples.
But according to a 3,800 year-old clay tablet, the Babylonians were using triples a thousand years before Pythagoras and his contemporaries.
That tablet is commonly called Plimpton 332 after the person who bought it. It was originally found in the Iraqi desert and eventually found its way to Columbia University, where it’s been studied since the 1930’s.
It’s written in cuneiform using Babylon’s sexagesimal [sex-uh-JESS-ih-mull] number system — that’s a base of sixty, instead of the base ten we typically use nowadays.
And amazingly, it has three indexed columns and fifteen rows that show various examples of Pythagorean Triples.
Scientists have been debating whether the tablet was an example of ancient trig homework, or whether it was somehow used in construction or measurement. The selection of triples are a clue that it might be more than just schoolwork.
See, only Pythagorean Triples that can be written as a finite value in sexagesimal appear on the tablet.
By combining this artifact with a similarly dated one from the Istanbul Archeological Museum, historians have found another possible explanation for the tablet: land surveying. The second tablet was used to distribute plots of land — and it contains several Pythagorean triples that were used to fairly divide that land. This suggests that the first tablet might have been used for a similar purpose.
Either way, these unique triples have been with us for way longer than we thought. How’s that for a trig lesson?
ASHLEY: People can be left or right handed. And believe it or not, they can also be right HEARTED. To learn more, we remastered this fun story from 2018 just for you.
[CODY: 0:57 clip]
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker, Briana Brownell, and Reuben Westmaas.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
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!