Learn about why you want things just because others do too; a way to reduce wrongful convictions; and Fermilab’s ferret.
Learn about why you want things just because others do too; a way to reduce wrongful convictions; and Fermilab’s ferret.
"Mimetic desires" are things you want because others want them — here's how to spot them by Steffie Drucker
To reduce wrongful convictions, test a witness's memory only once by Grant Currin
In the 1970s, one of Fermilab’s particle accelerator techs was a ferret named Felicia by Cameron Duke
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CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough. And I will be your host today. Ashley’s back next week.
Today, you’ll learn about how to recognize when you want something just because other people want it too; how to test a witness’ memory to reduce wrongful convictions; and that time one of the technicians working on a particle accelerator was… a ferret.
Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Take a second to think about why you want the things you want. Did you follow a path in life because you knew it would bring you happiness and fulfillment, or was it because it was what people told you you wanted? What about the relationships you’ve pursued? The stuff you’ve bought? There’s a name for the things we want because others want them: they’re called “mimetic desires.” It can be tough to identify them, but luckily, I’ve got a few tips for figuring out what you truly want.
This idea comes from French thinker René Girard. According to him, after we’ve met our basic needs like food and shelter, our desires hit a wall. Without biology to guide us, we look to others to know what we want. We unconsciously imitate family, friends, professional peers, and even celebrities. We pick up on what they want and, in turn, end up wanting the same things. Girard called this “mimetic desire.”
Girard’s work focused on “philosophical anthropology,” which answers the question, “What does it mean to be human?” There’s an author named Luke Burgis who wrote a book about mimetic desire, that draws from Girard’s work. And he says that desire is fundamental to the human experience. Everybody wants something, he says, unless they’re depressed or dead. Philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre believed we’re born as blank slates and create ourselves as we go. But Burgis says we’re born into a web of relationships that shape and limit our free will.
He also has a strategy to sort out genuine versus mimetic desires. Think about them as “thick” or “thin.” Thin desires are mimetic and temporary; they leave us unfulfilled because we took them from other people. Looking forward to retirement is a good example: You get ideas from others about when you should retire and how you should spend that time, but then you might find the decision less than satisfying. After all, your ideas really belonged to someone else. On the other hand, thick desires connect to our core values and are everlasting. Spending more time with family is a thick goal. You can start intentionally working toward that desire today and it’ll grow with time.
To suss out thicker desires, think of a time you put a lot of effort into something and got a lot of satisfaction and meaning from the experience. Identify what motivated you in those situations.
There’s no escaping mimetic desires — humans are social animals, and it’s only natural to get ideas from other people. But if you’re looking for true fulfillment, it’s worth asking yourself: is this desire mine or someone else’s?
Wrongful convictions are bad. People who are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit can suffer years of undeserved imprisonment — or worse. Fortunately, psychologists have come up with a technique for reducing the justice system’s chances of wrongful conviction. And it’s a simple rule based on rigorous research, that goes like this: only ask eyewitnesses to identify the perpitrator one time.
For some context, let’s go back to 1998. A woman who lives in a Texas suburb notices two men going into her neighbor’s house. Several hours later, she's taken to a police station to identify the men, who police believe murdered her neighbor shortly after she saw them.
She easily identifies the first suspect, but the second man isn’t so easy. The witness says he was white with shoulder-length hair. But the police think it’s someone else — a hispanic man with short hair named Charles Don Flores. Hours after the murder, they show the witness a lineup that includes a photo of Flores mixed in with pictures of others who fit his description. She says none of them were the man she saw. But months later, she’s asked again — in court this time. She testifies that Flores was the man. He was convinced of murder and sentenced to death.
The psychologists who proposed the only-ask-witnesses-once rule say the reason she changed her mind is likely the product of how investigations and trials are conducted. See, psychological research has shown that memories aren’t written in stone — all kinds of things can influence them. For instance, when the witness in the Flores case saw the police lineup, she had to study the faces extra hard to determine if any of them matched the person she’d seen. Even though none of them did, that extra brain processing inadvertently created a new memory record in the process. The next time she was asked to remember what the man looked like, she was able to access that newly formed memory. That’s just one of several reasons researchers say we shouldn't be asking witnesses to recall details more than once.
It sounds like a simple change, but it would require the justice system to transform in some pretty significant ways. For example, right now, the most consequential time a witness identifies the suspect isn’t the first time — it’s the last time, when they testify before a judge and jury.
By using lessons from psychology, maybe we can protect people from wrongful conviction. Maybe even people like Flores, who’s still alive on death row.
Particle accelerators are some of the largest machines on the planet, and they allow scientists to explore the smallest fundamental particles that make up our universe. One of them is located at Fermilab, a laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and their machine has discovered several of these fundamental particles. But it might not have discovered anything if it weren’t for a little ferret named Felicia.
In 1971, Fermilab was known as the National Accelerator Laboratory. And it was tantalizingly close to bringing their particle accelerator online. This thing is no simple machine, though. It is composed of a narrow vacuum tube that forms a ring four miles, or six and a half kilometers in diameter. That tube is lined with 774 incredibly powerful electromagnets, and their job is to bend the path of a particle beam so it can make continuous trips around the circle and smash into other beams traveling in the opposite direction. But the magnets kept breaking and needed to be replaced.
Eventually, freshly replaced magnets finally enabled scientists to fire a beam around the circumference of the main tube. At that point, they realized they had another problem: when they increased the voltage above a certain point, the magnets shorted out. It turns out that when they replaced the magnets, they left tiny metal shavings behind, and those shavings were causing all sorts of problems.
The scientists needed to come up with an effective solution for cleaning out the vacuum tube, and they needed to do it quickly. And since four-mile-long pipe cleaners don’t exist, they enlisted the help of a ferret named Felicia.
See, ferrets just love scurrying down tunnels — and a particle accelerator is just one very, very long tunnel. Before the journey, the scientists fitted Felicia with a collar attached to a string. The string was attached to a cloth doused in chemical cleaner that would be pulled through the tube after Felicia exited. (Felicia also wore a tiny diaper, because ferret poop in a particle accelerator would be as problematic as metal shavings.)
Buuut when they tried to put her in the main vacuum tube, Felicia refused. I can’t say that I blame her — it was a four-mile-long, pitch-black tunnel, after all. Instead, she was reassigned to shorter, 300 foot sections of tube that were still under construction. After she swept the tubes clean, they were joined with the main assembly.
But Felicia eventually inspired a higher-tech cleaning method. Engineers devised a “magnetic ferret” that would sweep out the main tube. The method actually worked, and the whole thing is still operational today. Funny to think that one of the most complex machines scientists use today can thank a ferret for helping it get where it is today.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker, Grant Currin, and Cameron Duke. This episode was produced and edited by me, Cody Gough. Curiosity Daily is distributed by Discovery.
CODY: After some self-reflection, I’m confident that you’ll realize that it is your desire — and yours alone — to join me again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
Until then? Stay curious!