Why are we so prone to bad logic? We’re going to hear two everyday fugues in this episode: the search for a lost spatula and a spilled beer. The real story here is how easy it is to be irrational. Who is “we” in this episode? It’s me and my inner voice obviously. Inner Voice and I will do some post-fugue analysis to find out what mental phenomena are at play while I make really bad assumptions about events in my surroundings. By the end of the episode maybe you’ll appreciate why we’re actually doing a lot better than we think we are as a society given how mistake-prone our brains are.
Why are we so prone to bad logic? We’re going to hear two everyday fugues in this episode: the search for a lost spatula and a spilled beer. The real story here is how easy it is to be irrational. Who is “we” in this episode? It’s me and my inner voice obviously. Inner Voice and I will do some post-fugue analysis to find out what mental phenomena are at play while I make really bad assumptions about events in my surroundings.
By the end of the episode maybe you’ll appreciate why we’re actually doing a lot better than we think we are as a society given how mistake-prone our brains are.
--
Credits:
Written and produced by Gabriel Berezin
Original music and sound design - Grant Zubritsky
Opening and closing music: Monuments (featuring Grant Zubritsky (bass), Robby Sinclair (drums) and Bryan Murray (saxophone), Gabriel Berezin (guitar))
Editorial insight - Melissa "Monty" Montan
Logo design - Justin Montan
Find Fugues on Twitter and Instagram.
References:
Hi,
This is Fugues, and I’m feeling really...vulnerable. Not because this is the first episode, but because I have to come clean about something.
I think I might be really irrational. Maybe not my behavior necessarily in any detectable way - it’s more my thinking -
I just don’t the trust direction my mind takes me in certain moments.
I’m gonna share two personal fuges for this episode that I hope explains why being rational is so hard for me, but also, maybe...everyone?and if you haven’t listened to the trailer, the word fugue in this podcast refers to a story, or a retelling of a former state of mind. If you need more explanation just check the trailer or read the description.
In times when rampant conspiracy theories are on full display, I know this fugue will ring true for anyone either engaged in irrational thinking or…
mindful of the irrational ideas surrounding them in person or online. It’s called:
“Where is my god...damn….Egg Spatula.”
SECTION 2
My girlfriend Monty moved into my apartment last June, 2020 right in the middle of total pandemonium in the United States,
and she made the hellscape of that summer not just bearable, but actually wonderful and fun.
More importantly though, she cleaned the ever loving shit out of my apartment.
What was originally messy, ordinary, grey and dusty, was transformed to look unique, green, organized and clean.
By July, after she’d done a complete overhaul,
my friend Dan came over, who'd been to my place a thousand times, told me he barely recognized the old hovel.
(so really it was an overhovel?)
(IV: shut up)
(GABE: you shut up)
If there’s one downside of the overhovel, it’s that I often - still - don’t know where certain things are,
and being a creature of habit, it stresses me out sometimes, like a whiny child.
So one day, back in December 2020, I was working from home and about…
10 minutes into my lunch routine.
The yolks in my fried eggs were just turning whitish.
THey were ready.
The avocado was sliced, and the toast had just popped.
Hot sauce and pickles are out, salt and pepper, next to the silverware and plate.
I just needed my egg spatula.
I’m wondering where is the damn thing
Why wasn’t it in Monty’s new...utensil holder area?
So I tried the 2nd cabinet drawer with all the miscellaneous kitchen stuff, but I kinda knew it wasn’t in there too.
My internal monologue started a Twitter rant:
“I have lost my egg spatula to the Monty’s cleaning army conspiracy
Hashtag rage hashtag cooking hashtag friedeggs”
So I fumble around for a lesser spatula, but now i’m being reckless, because baby didn’t have his special toy.
And In my spaz, as I tried to move the eggs to the plate, I mistakenly punctured one of the fried eggs.
and then I watched on in horror...as it leaked that special golden...egg jizz... all over the pan.
Out loud now, I’m addressing her (she’s not home by the way, which emboldens me), “honey, could you have left me a breadcrumb trail so I can locate my egg spatula?”
So I sat there sulking, ate my ruined eggs, and took my dishes to the sink and ran the water, and then a clue hit…the sound of clanking dishes sparked a memory of doing the dishes from the night before…
and I remembered the sound of something falling into the space between our floor-standing kitchen cabinet and the wall,
a situation i was feeling too lazy to investigate...
But that’s when I realized where my spatula was.
Poor thing was trapped back there b/c it fell out of the, and i’m sorry to say here, Monty, precariously positioned utensil holder.
So I pulled the cabinet away from the wall and sure enough, there baby was…
The whole paranoid delusion of Monty having moved it to some undisclosed location schrodinger's catted out of existence.
SECTION 3
Gabe: Welcome to the first edition of this egg spatula post-fugue analysis, I’m your host.
The conspiracy theorist spaz, Gabriel Berezin
IV: And I’m his trusty sidekick asshole, Gabe’s inner voice. Speaking of which, wow, it’s really you that’s the asshole isn’t it.
Gabe: takes one to know one.
IV: so what’s this again?
Gabe: we’re doing some post-game on some of the common mental phenomenon that contributed to my poor logic re: the lost spatula.
IV: Apophenia?
Gabe: Apophenia.
IV: Apopheniaaaaa
Gabe: Yeah, this word is getting popular. It was in Stranger Things and the and I heard it in the Queen’s Gambit recently,
it’s our pattern-making instinct -
IV: it’s like stoner brain?
Gabe: Right, like if you’re hanging out with a stoner, they’re more likely to make connections between ideas that aren’t probably very valid.
IV: Sounds familiar.
Gabe: No idea what you’re talking about.
IV: So it’s like the hot hand illusion
Gabe: Yeah, exactly. Your last three rolls at the Bellagio Craps table have nothing to do with the next roll’s outcome.
IV: Or Christians seeing the Virgin Mary on a cinnamon roll
Gabe: Right, and if you’re me, sitting on a beach, seeing Prince’s face in a cloud.
IV: I have a feeling this is not the first time we’re gonna hear about prince
Gabe: That is correct
IV: so your hot head took two ideas: One, a lost egg spatula,
and
Two, things not being where they’re supposed to be
and you constructed a theory before you (whoever “you” are in this case) even had a chance to review if it was even true.
Gabe: Shamefully, yes, in no time I believed this was Monty’s fault, and I was unfairly annoyed with her.
IV: But you were wrong
Gabe: Yeah, and when she listens to this, I”m going to tell her it was apophenia’s fault…
sorry honey. For the record, I love where the spatula is now.
IV: mmm, good save.
Hey listener, Gabe’s inner voice here, just checking in to see if you’re enjoying the show?
I’m sure you’ve heard enough by now to know that Gabe has a fragile ego. Help him out by leaving a nice comment or a rating, or share an episode. Go ahead, and close your eyes, and think of that one friend or enemy who would get a kick out of this thingr. Send her a text, and stop ghosting your friends...
Okay, back to making fun of Gabe…
Gabe: Welcome back to the fugues post-game. So inner voice, we talked about apophenia, and as an insider, I’m wondering what else you clocked during my spatula freakout.
IV: Well Gabe, one thing that stood out to me was your tendency to remain in zombie mode.
Gabe: zombie mode
IV: auto-pilot.
Gabe: ah, yes
IV: you love routine.
Gabe: I really do.
IV: you’re like an Excel Macro, especially when you’re making lunch, the same stupid meal every day.
Gabe: It’s good meal though.
IV: every step is basically programmed.
Gabe: Yeah, that’s true
IV: You’re always doing something else while you cook, taking a work call, listening to a podcast, or rage-scrolling Twitter.
Gabe: Do I?
IV: You sure do, but the spatula being out of place broke the macro.
Gabe: Yes, I’ve read that our bodies and brains prefer to be doing mindless tasks, as it’s the most energy efficient.
IV: Yes, it requires more energy than the body wants to expend, and it’s theorized that free will only comes online, when we break our patterns, when our expectations are violated.
Gabe: So that’s why I was so annoyed that I couldn’t find my spatula -
I had to use free will to solve the problem, which expended more energy
IV: Yup, and that’s why you started spazzing out you big baby, which didn’t exactly help your logic.
Gabe: yeah, my kettle was really whistling there.
IV: why don’t you let me do the metaphors.
Gabe: So that extra stress put me in what Daniel Kahneman calls system 1 hot thinking. It’s like the Twitter take.
IV: Yeah, it’s like you’re reading a Ben Shapiro Tweet.
Gabe: Mmm...right.
IV: Had you not been so bent out of shape,
Gabe: Bent.
IV: What?
Gabe: Bent Shapiro
IV: Had you not been so...riled up, you could have paused, and put yourself into System 2 cool thinking.
Gabe: yeah, I needed to switch social media channels, like to LinkedIn.
IV: totally, you’re not going to rant and swear on LinkedIn talking about Ben Shapiro’s micropenis, in fact, you probably just don’t say anything at all b/c let’s face it, nothing good happens on Twitter.
Gabe: So snapping out of zombie mode required more energy and sent me into System 1 Twitter thinking and, by then, I’m basically taking orders from Q.
IV: Qanon joke, didn’t see that coming. It just explains why you’re an asshole
Gabe: great
SECTION 5
It’s a neuroscience rule of law that our brains didn’t evolve to solve for accuracy,
they evolved to maintain balance in our complex bodies, to keep them running, and to keep them alive long enough to pass along its genes.
Brains don’t care if you successfully mansplained the NFL touchback rule to your wife.
There is nothing in our environment, sitting on top of the food chain, that’s forced us to ensure we know exactly what is going on, both inside and outside our bodies.
If anything, our bodies crave certainty, not accuracy.
This brings me to a mini-fugue that will illustrate a different mental phenomenon, further underscoring why we’re wrong so often. It’s really a mini mini fugue, the length of elapsed time this fugue covers is probably about 13 milliseconds.
This one is called “Aw Shit, I Spilled My Beer.”
SECTION 7
This was probably 15 years ago,
I was hosting a poker game in my kitchen,
I was The House - handling the money, dealing hands, ordering the pizza, ensuring Gordon and my sister Lily had a fresh drink, changing the music, probably more frequently than I need to
and at some point in my manic hosting duties, I knocked a bottle of shitty light beer over.
...At least that’s what I saw.
It turns out, I knocked it, and it started falling over
but I instinctively caught it with my hand
like the way a pitcher catches a line drive hit right at her
You don’t try to catch it, you just...catch it.
But the crazy thing is, I actually saw it spill beer-foam all over the table.
I know, I have no way to prove this, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
I basically dreamt the flash of a scene that never occurred.
Anyway, I told ya, this one’s a mini mini-fugue...
SECTION 8
Gabe: Welcome back to the spilled beer mini mini-fugue analysis, I’m your host and serial hallucinator, Gabriel Berezin.
IV: and I’m a smarter version of Gabe.
Gabe: welcome back inner voice.
IV: let’s get right to it, the big mental phenomenon at play for this one is...expectation hallucinations.
Gabe: So that’s how I saw something that didn’t happen?
IV: Yeah, you ever clear your cache in your web browser to accommodate a website’s most recent updates.
Gabe: Yeah
IV: Same idea, you had to clear you cache
Gabe: that’s so dorky.
IV: tell me about it.
Gabe: so a web browser doesn’t reload a website every time it visits, it takes what it already downloaded from prior visits and pieces it together.
IV: right, it’s a stretch, but that’s the idea.
Gabe: so clearing my cache is allowing the information from my eyes to correct the picture my mind tried to portray.
IV: Yeah, the first thing you quote unquote “see,” is your brain’s best guess of an outcome, It’s not necessarily using all the information coming in from your eyes to build the picture
Gabe: Is this all the time?
IV: yeah, it’s all the time, in his TED Talk, neuroscientist Anil Seth, shares how we’re always in a controlled hallucination.
Gabe: What’s that mean. Controlled.
IV: It means we’re all hallucinating, but it’s kept in check (and not always successfully) by the information coming in from our senses.
Gabe: I’d rather listen to my eyes…
IV: Now you’re sounding like a stoner.
Gabe: Well i feel stoned...Okay so my spilled beer fantasy was just an inaccurate portrayal of what my brain expected to happen in the external world.
IV: based on its past experiences, yeah
Gabe: Expectation Hallucinations
IV: Expectation Hallucinations
SECTION 9
I don’t know about you, but I’m entertained by this reality. Sometimes it feels like I’m just watching TV, except the show is my consciousness.
Like “holy shit, that’s where my mind went?” - because it seems more often than not, I only have a small claim as to what’s going on in there...
If I had a radio show, I’d be cueing up “Where is My Mind” by the Pixies, and it would be the original,
not the twee, ukulele instrumentals you’re used to in...every streaming network drama you’ve watched in the past five years.
I’d probably also play “Memories Can’t Wait” by the Talking Heads, and maybe something off “Check your Head” by the Beastie Boys.
Gabe: Is this too on the nose?
IV: Yes it is
SECTION 10
So yeah, I’m irrational. But how is anyone rational? Between apophenia, Hot System 1 Twitter thinking, very minimal check your head ree will, and expectation hallucinations, it’s a modern miracle the human population has any real understanding of the outside world.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise Qanon is such a thing and flat earthers still roam the planet, waiting to...drop off the edge somewhere.
Everyone is irrational, it’s how we’re built. Based on culture and upbringing, some just more irrational than others.
Imagine how much easier we’d understand each other, if we all accepted that we’re hallucinating our realities and making bad assumptions pretty much most of the time and that what we see out there is just an approximation of what’s actually out there.
We could start with a...Humans Anonymous type greeting, one that establishes an equal starting point of communication - that our thinking is flawed.
So if you could all top of your coffee in the styrofoam cups, Oh Terry, welcome back, hey new guy, can you grab one of the folding chairs for Terry, and one more for Evelyn, she’s running late tonight.
I’ll just get us started I’m Gabriel Berezin, and I believe some totally stupid shit that is definitely wrong sometimes and...that’s just my brain’s fault.
Group: Hi Gabe
Okay, who’s up next…
Tell the group how you thought or believed something totally wrong, or were thinking irrationally, or thought you saw something that was that probably wasn’t actually there ...and then how you actively “checked your head,” or “cleared your cache” to understand things better.
And not just the people here in this old church community room, but all of you listening.
Email me at at fuguespod@gmail.com!
Fug
Ues
Pod
@ gmail.com
In the process of writing and recording this episode, I’ve had a lot of self-discovery, i have a hot head. But there’s a weird satisfaction to building self-awareness and admitting when I’m wrong,
And i think we’d do ourselves a big favor if this became a more common behavior,
Let’s celebrate our irrationality by calling it out, sharing it, and laughing about it.
And then understanding that we’re wrong about a lot of stuff.
SECTION 11
Thanks for joining on this maiden voyage of the Fugues podcast.
If you want to get all up in the academic stuff, have at it,
there are links in the show notes to an absolutely brilliant Scientific American article about the brain’s auto-pilot function,
Anil Seth’s TED talk on hallucination is in there,
As well as Daniel Kehneman’s book on System 1 and 2 thinking
and there’s links to some killer “your mind is a whackjob” songs.
You’ll find some rabbit hole articles about apophenia and how it’s used in those Netflix shows,
I even stumbled onto a conspiracy theory that shares how Back to the Future predicted 9/11.
I thought it was a joke, but I think they’re serious? I dunno, maybe don’t read that.
Most importantly, there’s a link to the egg spatula model I use.
Fugues is produced by me, Gabriel Berezin, and many of the other voices in my head. I promise next episode you’ll hear some other voices, from other people’s heads.
Thanks to Monty Montan for her editorial help, Grant Zubritsky for his music and sound design and Justin Montan for his logo design.
See you in the next fugue…