In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: In the Quantum Suicide Thought Experiment, You Never Die To Boost Your Performance at Work, Do Things Other Than Work A Recent Study Says Meditation Kills Motivation, but Ariana Huffington Disagrees If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please considersupporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! Learn about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-temin-effect-power-of-hobbies-immortality-with-quantum-suicide-and-does-meditation-kill-motivation
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Hi, we've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
SPEAKER 2: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn about controversial new research that suggests meditation kills motivation, a quantum physics thought experiment where you never die, and how you can boost your performance at work by doing things that aren't work.
SPEAKER 1: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
SPEAKER 2: Today, we're just going to dive right into quantum mechanics. No warm up.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, that's fine.
[LAUGHTER]
SPEAKER 2: It's fun, I swear. We're really not going to get into hard math or anything like that. We're going to talk about my thought experiment called quantum suicide, where you never die. But let's back up and talk a little bit about quantum mechanics.
The laws of the quantum world are kind of strange, and that's why quantum physics is full of thought experiments. Schrodinger's cat might be the most famous one. It goes like this. If you put a cat in a box with a vial of poison that has a 50/50 chance of killing the cat, then the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. That's because it's in a superposition of states.
Well, in the quantum suicide thought experiment, you're the cat, except you never die. Here's how it goes. Imagine a gun is hooked up to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle every time the trigger is pulled. If the particles measured as spinning clockwise, the gun will fire. If it's spinning counterclockwise, it won't.
A man points the gun at a sandbag and pulls the trigger 10 times. The gun goes off seemingly at random, bang, click, bang, bang, bang, click, click, bang, click, click. Then the man points the gun at his own head and attempts to pull the trigger 10 more times. What does he hear? Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You could keep on pulling the trigger for eternity and the gun would never fire.
So how is that possible? Let's go back in time to the first moment he pointed the gun at his head. He pulls the trigger and the gun fires. The man is dead. How can that happen when we already know the gun never fired?
It's because every time he pulls the trigger, the universe splits into separate timelines, one where the gun fired, one where it didn't. When he was shooting the sandbag, he existed in the timelines created by that series of bangs and clicks. But when he aimed the gun at himself, the only timelines he could exist in were the ones where he survived, and therefore, the ones where the gun didn't go off.
This way of thinking is known as the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, which says that our reality is just one in an infinite web of infinite timelines. It's controversial but cool to think about. You can read more about the background behind this experiment plus a little bit of quantum physics for good measure today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
SPEAKER 1: You know what I've noticed about recording with you?
SPEAKER 2: What?
SPEAKER 1: I feel like I can stop you and give you a direction. And you'll take it right away. And I feel extra comfortable doing that because you're a musician.
SPEAKER 2: Oh. Yeah, that's a really good point.
SPEAKER 1: Have I ever told you that?
SPEAKER 2: No.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, that's a thing, because I was a musician. And I know what it's like to be stopped in the middle of something which is super frustrating.
SPEAKER 2: Sure.
SPEAKER 1: Right? You're in the middle of rehearsal, and your band director just cuts you off when you're in the middle of that link you really want to play, or you're about to get to that really cool solo or soli.
SPEAKER 2: Right.
SPEAKER 1: And I know it's annoying, but that's what you get to do as a musician.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, you just get used to it.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah. I mention this because new research suggests that doing stuff that has nothing to do with your job can improve your job performance. In a recent study, 36 first year medical students at the University of Pennsylvania were randomly split into two groups. One group was given custom art training lessons at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They learned a mix of things like how to identify colors and shapes, ask creative questions, and support their claims about a given work of art. The other group got a free museum membership but no specific training.
Afterward, both groups of medical students were tested on how well they could describe not only various works of art but also retinal scans and photos of people with various eye diseases. The group that had the art training showed a lot of improvement in their observational and descriptive skills, and they were better than the other group at describing every type of image, including the medical ones. This means that looking carefully at art isn't just an artsy skill, it can also help you analyze retinal scans.
Now, this study might seem pretty specific to eye care. But in another article from the same issue of The Journal where this study was published, David Epstein and Malcolm Gladwell say there are broader implications. They call the power of hobbies the Temin Effect, named after biologist and Nobel Laureate, Howard Temin. Temin was a scientist who enjoyed reading about philosophy and literature. And Epstein and Gladwell argue that this helps Temin think outside the box and do better work.
They also argue that Nobel Prize winning scientists at large have more hobbies than the average person or even your typical scientist. Here's the more research to back that up. A recent study by the HR platform, Namely, found that high performing employees take the most vacation time. I'll say that again, high performing employees take the most vacation time. So stop focusing on working longer hours just to impress your boss and get out of the office once in a while.
If you're listening and you're a manager by the way, then think about approving your employees next vacation requests. You might get a better worker when they get back.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, I noticed that when you come back from vacations, you're like ready to go. You have all these new ideas. It's great.
SPEAKER 1: Wait, have you noticed that.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
SPEAKER 1: Oh.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah. You're just out for the weekend, and you came back super enthusiastic about your job. It was great.
SPEAKER 1: I did feel pretty on fire after Gen Con.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
SPEAKER 1: So cool. Wow. I did not know that showed. That's cool.
SPEAKER 2: Today's episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
SPEAKER 1: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash, and people could get hurt or killed.
SPEAKER 2: Let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics. Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 15 minutes. Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives every year.
SPEAKER 1: Drunk driving can have a big impact on your wallet, too. You could get arrested and incur huge legal expenses. You could possibly even lose your job.
SPEAKER 2: So what can you do to prevent drunk driving? Plan a safe ride home before you start drinking. Designate a sober driver or call a taxi. If someone has been drinking, take their keys and arrange for them to get a sober ride home.
SPEAKER 1: We all know the consequences of driving drunk. But one thing's for sure, you were wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober or get pulled over.
SPEAKER 2: We're going to wrap up today with some controversial new research about meditation. We've talked about studies that suggest that practicing mindfulness can reduce stress, improve focus, and even boost your physical health. But last month, a pair of professors out of INSEAD and the University of Minnesota found that after meditating, people lacked motivation. They didn't detect any negative impact on job performance just their motivation to do something.
These findings got a lot of pushback which we've included in our full write up today. You can see some of the things Researcher Christopher Liddy, Psychology Professor Richard Davidson, and even Arianna Huffington had to say about the study. It's always good for scientists to challenge existing ideas, sure. But research has shown so many benefits to meditation that here in the Curiosity office we don't recommend quitting or cutting meditation programs anytime soon even if you're an office boss.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, the gains you get from just how happy, and centered, and whatever people are, so much better than just a little bit of lack of motivation.
SPEAKER 2: It's definitely a tricky thing to study scientifically, but it does seem to help more than it hurts, for sure.
SPEAKER 1: Sure. Read about these stories and more today on curiosity.com.
SPEAKER 2: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
SPEAKER 1: And I'm Cody Gough.
SPEAKER 2: Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 3: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.