Stand-up mathematician Matt Parker explains real-life “salami slicing” attacks like the one in the movie Office Space. You’ll also learn about how Tylenol can help ease the pain of social rejection; and why you probably don’t know the back of your hand very well at all.
Stand-up mathematician Matt Parker explains real-life “salami slicing” attacks like the one in the movie Office Space. You’ll also learn about how Tylenol can help ease the pain of social rejection; and why you probably don’t know the back of your hand very well at all.
Tylenol and forgiveness may ease the pain of social exclusion by Grant Currin
Additional resources from Matt Parker
How well do you know the back of your hand? Probably not very well at all by Cameron Duke
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/stealing-money-with-salami-slicing-attacks-w-matt-parker-you-dont-know-the-back-of-your-hand-and-tylenol-eases-social-exclusion
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 Tylenol can help ease the pain of social rejection; and why you probably don’t know the back of your hand very well at all. You’ll also learn about a real-life scheme to steal money that comes straight from movies like “Office Space,” in this week’s edition of Math Mishaps with Matt Parker.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Tylenol won’t just ease your headache — it can also ease a more metaphorical kind of pain. New research says that a special blend of Tylenol and forgiveness can ease the pain of social rejection.
Surprising, right? How is it possible that the same Tylenol that treats back pain also treats that gnawing feeling you get when a date ghosts you? And yet! It is possible. And this isn’t even the first evidence for it. Research from a decade ago showed that people who took acetaminophen regularly tended to have fewer hurt feelings over that time than people who took a placebo. When the researchers looked at the Tylenol-takers’ brains in an fMRI, they saw less activity in regions associated with processing emotional pain than they did in the brains of people who took a placebo.
Scientists think this works because the brain uses some of the same pathways for signaling physical pain as it does social pain. Since acetaminophen eases physical pain by influencing those pathways, it makes sense that it can do the same for social pain.
A new study from researchers at UCLA and UC Davis adds another element to the mix: forgiveness. The team already knew that practicing forgiveness can help lower the stress and negative feelings that come from social exclusion, but they weren’t sure what would happen when they mixed this more psychological approach with Tylenol’s pharmacological fix.
So they had 45 people take either acetaminophen, a placebo, or nothing every day for 21 days. Every night, they took surveys that measured their levels of forgiveness, by asking how they felt about someone who wronged them in the past, and social pain, by asking how easily their feelings were hurt that day. After the study was over, the participants with the highest levels of forgiveness who took acetaminophen reported a reduction in social pain of nearly 20 percent.
Why is this combo so effective? The researchers say it’s because acetaminophen acts “synergistically” with a person’s ability to forgive.
This research promises to do more than ease the sting of being excluded. One of its most important applications might be helping teenagers who go through a socially painful life event, like a big breakup or their parents’ divorce. Experiencing that kind of intense social pain in adolescence strongly predicts developing depression in the future. It’s possible that this over-the-counter medication could ease that damage.
But before you head to the medicine cabinet, a word of warning: taking too much acetaminophen can cause liver damage. Stay on the safe side by consuming less than 3,000 mg per day — or better yet, check with your doctor first.
(And to be crystal clear on this: we are absolutely not telling you to just pop some pills to fix your problems. Please do not do that. Regardless of future medical applications, a major takeaway from this research is that it shows us how interconnected the mind and body really are.)
Have you ever seen the 1999 movie “Office Space”? It is a CLASSIC comedy, kind of like a rated-R version of the Dilbert comics. Definitely for adults only. But one of the central plot points has to do with manipulating math to make money — and believe it or not, it’s a thing people have tried in real life. Welcome to another edition of Monday Math Mishaps with Matt Parker. Matt is a stand-up comedian, YouTube personality, and best-selling author, with a new book called “Humble Pi (Pi as in P-I): When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World.” The book educates and entertains with stories like this one, which Matt told us about when I mentioned that central scheme from Office Space. And don’t worry — he’s about to fill you in on the plot in case you’re not familiar.
[CLIP 2:21]
Does anyone else suddenly feel like eating some salami? And… never messing with the IRS? We’ll be back next Monday for more Math Mishaps with Matt Parker. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good book, then check today’s show notes for a link to pick up “Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World.”
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You’ve probably heard the saying, “I know it like the back of my hand.” That usually means you know something really, really well. Well, I don’t want to be pedantic, but that’s not totally right. Recent research suggests that your mental image of the back of your hand is probably not as accurate as you think.
So how well do you know the back of your hand? Researchers at York University decided to find out — not to test an old cliché, but to learn more about how our brains perceive our bodies. After all, our hands are super important, both in our everyday lives and in scientific studies. Neuroscientists use people’s hands to test the brain’s role in sensory perception, motor skills, tool use, and lots of other skills. So it’s pretty important to know whether our brains have a vastly distorted sense of what our hands actually look like.
They brought in 40 participants and took pictures of their hands, both the backs of them and the palms. Then they created all sorts of different distorted versions of the photos to make them wider or narrower, or longer or shorter than the original. Finally, they showed each participant two photos of their hands, one after the other in random order. One would be the original, and one would have some level of distortion. After the participant saw both photos, they chose the one that best matched their actual hand. Sounds easy, right?
Apparently not. The participants routinely chose pictures of hands that were longer and narrower than their actual hands when seen from the back, and that was especially true if the pictures were sideways or upside down. What might be more fascinating is that this wasn’t true for pictures of their palms. It turns out that the brain’s visual image of the palm is far more accurate than its image of the back of the hand. That could be because the palm has more nerve endings.
Given all of the complex things that we do with our hands, the researchers were surprised to find that the brain’s mental image was so inaccurate. Their conclusion is that visual information might not play as big of a role in how the brain relates to the body as we once thought. Understanding what information our brains use to relate to our bodies could provide a path to helping people with distorted body perceptions, such as recent amputees.
So next time you are giving someone directions in an unfamiliar neighborhood, go ahead and tell them you “know the place like the back of your hand.” That way, they can’t blame you for getting them lost. They were warned.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Grant Currin and Cameron Duke, 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: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!