In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Self-Control Isn't Always Good for You The Red Baron Was a Real Person Who Absolutely Tore It Up in Battle Motivated Reasoning Is Why You Can't Win an Argument Using Facts Inside Pseudoscience And Conspiracy Theories [Podcast] Plus, hear how and why we search for aliens using current methods, straight from special guest Seth Shostak. Seth Shostak is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and the Director of the Institute’s Center for SETI Research. More from Seth Shostak: Seth Shostak’s Website Seth Shostak on Twitter @SethShostak Big Picture Science: The radio show and podcast of the SETI Institute, with Seth Shostak To learn more about motivated reasoning and how we think, read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. 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.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Plus, hear how and why we search for aliens using current methods, straight from special guest Seth Shostak. Seth Shostak is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and the Director of the Institute’s Center for SETI Research. More from Seth Shostak:
To learn more about motivated reasoning and how we think, read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt.
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.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/seti-on-how-we-search-for-aliens-w-seth-shostak-facts-dont-win-arguments-self-control-and-the-red-baron
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com, plus a special guest to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn why you can't win an argument using facts, why self control isn't always good for you, and the fascinating true story of the Red Baron.
CODY GOUGH: Well top up this Sunday episode with a sprinkle of curiosity, where Ashley digs into a question from an awesome listener like you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today's question comes from Saba, who asks, why are scientists looking for life signs, like water and oxygen on other planets? Isn't there a chance that there's life that, for example, needs methane to breathe or that only survives in extra hot temperatures or severe radioactive conditions?
Thanks for your question, Saba. And Thanks for telling your friends about the Curiosity app. We wanted to give you the best possible answer. So we got in touch with SETI or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. To answer your question, today, you'll hear from astronomer Seth Shostak, who is currently senior astronomer for the SETI Institute. I've got a feeling you'll have a pretty solid answer for you, so stick around.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. All right, Ashley, when is it the hardest for you to use self-control?
ASHLEY HAMER: Probably when I'm in a social situation, and someone is saying something about ghosts or pseudoscience. And I want to be nice. That's when it's very hard to control my self-control.
CODY GOUGH: You get upset about ghost, believers?
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, there are different levels, right?
[LAUGHTER]
If someone's just having fun with believing in ghosts, I don't care.
CODY GOUGH: I also have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. Sometimes, my mouth gets me into trouble more than anything else, which is funny because I'm podcaster. But a new publication suggests that self-control is more complicated than just being a positive or negative trait. So maybe, it's OK that I don't always use self-control.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: In current directions in psychological science, a new publication points out that you can have problems when you only focus on self-control. For example, somebody with a lot of self-control might go along with social norms even if their instincts tell them not to. Or you might stay in an unhappy marriage and strictly control how you appear and behave around your spouse instead of finding ways to work on your problems.
Previous studies have actually shown that people with high and medium self-control are actually more likely to binge drink. And we've also written about how wishing that you had more self-control, makes you less able to resist temptation. We'll put a link to that right up in the show notes. But the takeaway from this story is that you shouldn't think of self-control as the ability to resist a temptation when it's right in front of you.
The key to healthy self-control is to know when you can't afford to be tempted in the first place. So you don't buy a 12 pack of Mountain Dew even if you love it as much as I do just to prove that you can resist the temptation to drink them. If you know they're your weakness, then don't keep them in the house at all.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, yeah. Having a whole lot of self-control can actually make you overwork or overexercised or even watch what you're eating to an unhealthy degree.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Too much discipline can be a bad thing.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, absolutely.
CODY GOUGH: Too much of anything. Everything in moderation.
ASHLEY HAMER: Everything in moderation. Have you heard of the Red Baron?
CODY GOUGH: I've heard of the Red Baron, especially on pizza.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, that's what everybody thinks of, right? The Red Baron pizza or if you are a really big fan of the Peanuts comic strip Snoopy.
ASHLEY HAMER: So the Red Baron was actually Manfred von Richthofen. He was German nobility, and his title of Free Lord is often translated to the rank of Baron.
CODY GOUGH: So he literally was a Baron.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, he was a Baron. Even though he had high status, he still joined the military, first, as a cavalryman and a messenger on horseback. He won an Iron Cross for his service but got bored and transferred to the Air Corps. He actually crashed during his first solo flight. But after that, Rocky start. His career really took off.
CODY GOUGH: Huh!
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody made me say that.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: I did.
ASHLEY HAMER: His first confirmed kill was in September 1916, and that kicked off a nine-month streak, where he shot down 80 other pilots. Remember, that's in less than one year. He started scavenging for trophies from the planes he shot down. He eventually ended up decorating his house with machine guns and serial numbers from his enemies' planes. And he even had a French pilot's engine turned into a chandelier.
When he was given command of his own squadron, he painted his plane red to celebrate. He became a bit of a celebrity in Germany, and his squadron got the nickname the Flying Circus. Even his enemies respected him. With one British magazine writing, quote "anybody would have been proud to have killed Richthofen in action, but every member of the Royal Flying Corps would have also been proud to shake his hand had he fallen into captivity alive." unquote.
The Red Baron did eventually fall in battle in April 1918, though, nobody knows for sure who actually shot him down. You can read about the full details of his legacy today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
CODY GOUGH: Right, Ashley. How much time do you spend arguing online?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, I'm cutting it down. But boy, I have spent-- in my day, I've spent a lot of time arguing online.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I actually joined a Facebook group that is called-- it's a couple of friends' political corner, and there's about 150 people that completely disagree with each other on everything. But the idea is to have civil discussions. I engaged with that for a year or two and then realized it's really not much better than anywhere else.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Part of the problem is because you can't win an argument using facts, and there's a reason for that. So pay attention because it's important, especially in today's world. Psychologists call this motivated reasoning. When we want to believe something, we look for evidence that supports. It if we find even a single piece of pseudo evidence, then we give ourselves permission to believe. That's a justification that lets us allow ourselves to stop thinking, basically.
So you see a little article from some random journalist. You've never heard of him. You don't know where these facts came from. But hey, it supports what you're saying, so all right, I'm going to stop thinking about it and just believe that. And in today's world, it's easier than ever to find evidence that supports anything we want to believe.
One of my favorite books is called The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Psychology Professor Jonathan Haidt. And in it he writes, quote "now that we all have access to search engines on our cell phones, we can call up a team of supportive scientists for almost any conclusion 24 hours a day. Whatever you want to believe about the causes of global warming or whether a fetus can feel pain, just Google your belief. Science is a smorgasbord and Google will guide you to the study that's right for you." unquote.
And ironically, smart people are better at motivated reasoning. When is the last time you actively searched for an article disagreeing with something you believe? But there are ways to overcome your biases and get past motivated reasoning. We got an idea from Dr. Steven Novella from The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. He talked to us on the Curiosity podcast last year. Here's what he said about overcoming your biases.
STEVEN NOVELLA: Another way to look at this, I'm always the most suspicious of beliefs that I have conclusions I come to that are in line with my own ideology. So if I have a particular worldview and this supports my worldview, I have to be especially suspicious of it because that's what I'm going to be most vulnerable. That's when my motivated reasoning is going to try hard to engage.
And also, just confirmation bias. I'm going to want to just oh, yeah, that supports what I believe and want to believe. So yeah, I'll believe that. It makes sense. I'm not going to question it. But that's exactly when you should question it the most.
CODY GOUGH: Check the show notes for a link to that full episode if you want to listen to it. But a big takeaway is that the way to overcome motivated reasoning is to question your own beliefs and to try the Socratic method when you're trying to convince someone else of something. Ask them to explain the disconnects in their beliefs. It won't always work, but it's better than losing another battle of facts.
ASHLEY HAMER: And one thing I always try to remember is that you're never going to convince someone in the moment. It takes planting a little seed that they think about. And then eventually when they change their mind, they're going to think it was them that changed their mind, not you that changed their mind, and that's OK.
CODY GOUGH: Always a good idea to make somebody else think it was their idea.
ASHLEY HAMER: Absolutely.
CODY GOUGH: That's a great idea that I just had.
[LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm am so excited about this segment. We got an email from Saba, if you remember, who asked us, why are scientists looking for life signs, like water and oxygen on other planets? Isn't there a chance that there's life that, for example, needs methane to breathe or that only survives in extra hot temperatures or severe radioactive conditions? We went all out for this answer. So we talked to the senior astronomer for the SETI Institute Seth Shostak. Here's his answer.
SETH SHOSTAK: People like to talk, particularly in science fiction films about life, not as we know it. And yet, whenever we're talking about looking for life, whether it's on Mars or some of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn or even on planets around other stars, we always assume that life will be similar to ours in terms of the biochemistry. In other words, that it will be carbon-based life forms.
And maybe it'll use oxygen. Maybe it won't breathe oxygen. Maybe it'll breathe methane, whatever. But it's some sort of biology that we know about from planet Earth. And why is this? Is this because we just don't have any imagination? No. It's because we have to begin somewhere, right? And we might, as well, start with something we know rather than something we don't know. I mean it's possible.
Life could be based on something other than carbon. You could have silicon-based life. They certainly do in science fiction. And the science fiction author Isaac Asimov actually wrote a whole paper. He was a chemist on other elements that could be used as a basis for life. And there are some others. It might work in high temperatures, like silicon-based life.
And so we-- but it's much harder. It's just much harder. It's like saying, maybe the Klingons have built cars, but they don't use wheels on the bottom. They use something else. Well, they might. But wheels are really a great shape if they're round, right? If they're not round, they don't roll nearly as well. So it's the same with chemistry. Carbon-based chemistry works great. We know what to look for. So maybe, we can be forgiven as it were for looking for life that's more life as we know it than life as we don't know it.
ASHLEY HAMER: We hope that satisfied your curiosity. We're working on questions all the time, so keep them coming to podcast at curiosity.com. Thanks, again, Saba.
CODY GOUGH: Visit curiosity.com or check out the Curiosity app for Android and iOS to learn more about everything we talked about today. Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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