Very Bad Wizards

We hit the jackpot with this one! Economist Robert Frank (you may remember him from such episodes as The Greatest Books Ever Written) joins David and Tamler to talk about his new book Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. What role does pure chance play in making or breaking our careers and lives? Are effort and talent enough to succeed, or does the ball need to bounce our way? Where do we get our will-power and talent--is that ultimately a matter of luck as well? And what happens when we reflect on the lucky breaks we've received in our lives? Does it make us happier and more generous? Or do we feel like our accomplishments have been taken away? Plus a brief discussion of the Frank's revelatory 1988 book Passions Within Reason, and of some recent studies about how we convey our commitment to cooperate.      Links Robert Frank [johnson.cornell.edu] Robert Frank interviewed on Fox News by Stuart Varney [video.foxbusiness.com] Ronald Coase [wikipedia.org] Everett, J.A.C., Pizarro, D. A.

We know that criminal punishment has consequences, both good and bad, and that many people think that offenders deserve it. But what does punishment mean? What is society trying to express in the way it punishes criminals? And since people from all sides of the political spectrum agree that the prison population is way too big, is there a way to convey that meaning with alternative forms of sanctions? David and Tamler discuss Yale Law Professor Dan Kahan's classic paper "What do alternative sanctions mean?" that addresses these questions. But first, Tamler gets sanctimonious about other people being sanctimonious about guns on campus. At the risk of angering "that student," we "go there."   Links University of Houston Faculty Devises Pointers on How to Avoid Getting Shot by Armed Students by Elliott Hannon [slate.com] A PowerPoint Slide Advises Professors to Alter Teaching to Pacify Armed Students by Rio Fernandes [chronicle.com] Kahan, D. M. (1996). What do alternative sanctions mean? The University of Ch

Philosophers can be funny and funny movies can be philosophical. David and Tamler welcome frequent VBW guest and arch-enemy of empathy Paul Bloom to discuss their five favorite comic films with philosophical/psychological themes. Groundhog Day was off-limits for our top five (we would've all chosen it) so we start by explaining why it's the quintessential movie for this topic. Links [all movie links are to imdb.com] Paul's Top 5 The Big Lebowski Shaun of the Dead The Man with Two Brains/All of Me Stranger than Fiction Being There Tamler's Top 5 Defending Your Life/Lost in America Modern Times Seven Psychopaths/In Bruges Barton Fink/Sullivan's Travels Purple Rose of Cairo David's Top 5 Office Space Dr. Strangelove Pinker, S. (1999). "The Doomsday Machine" in How the mind works. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 882(1), 119-127. Brazil Trading Places Mr. Skin The Princess Bride Special Guest: Paul Bloom. Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler talk about the perils of trying to step outside of your own perspective in ethics, science, and politics. What do Rawls' "original position" thought experiment, Pascal's Wager, and Moral Foundations Theory have in common? (Hint: it involves baking.) Plus, what movies (and other things) would serve as a litmus test when deciding on a potential life partner? What might liking or not liking a certain film, book, or TV series tell you about a person, and whether or not the relationship would work? And what sexual position is it rational to choose under the veil of ignorance? (It's a night episode...) Links Part 1: Litmus Tests The Bad News Bears (1976) [imdb.com] A Confederacy of Dunces [wikipedia.org] Drive [imdb.com] Every Frame A Painting--Drive: The Quadrant System [youtube.com] Ferris Bueller's Day Off [imdb.com] The Far Side [wikipedia.org] Frank [imdb.com] Hustle and Flow [imdb.com] Jackie Brown [imdb.com] Key and Peele [imdb.com] Miracle of Morgan's Creek [imdb.com] The Office (UK) [

David and Tamler continue their series of breaking down a classic essay/article in their fields. For this installment, David assigns Tamler Anthony Greenwald's fascinating 1980 review article "The Totalitarian Ego." What do totalitarian regimes, scientific theories, and your own cognitive biases have in common? As it turns out, quite a bit. Why do egos rewrite our memories, preserve our beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, and make us think we're way more important than we are? And how does Thomas Kuhn fit into all this? Plus, we read a few of our favorite iTunes reviews. Links Audience video of Society for Personality and Social Psychology 2016 Session on Moral Purity with Kurt Gray, Jon Haidt, David Pizarro (courtesy of Kate Johnson) [youtube.com] Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American psychologist, 35, 603. [verybadwizards.com]   Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler take a break from their main jobs as TV critics to talk about a masterpiece in political philosophy: "Two Concepts of Liberty" by Isaiah Berlin. While they both celebrate the style and substance of this classic essay, in a startling twist Tamler praises conceptual analysis and David expresses a few misgivings about his Kantianism. What is the elusive idea of positive liberty, and  how can its pursuit lead to totalitarian rule?  When is it more important to buy boots than read Russian poetry? And why is David still so depressed by pluralism? Plus, coddling in Wisconsin? And another famous set of social psych studies is accused of biting the dust.   Links In Wisconsin, Efforts to End Taunting at Games Lead to Claims of Coddling By Mike McPhate [nytimes.com] Take my Breath Away by Berlin [youtube.com] Cortex Podcast Episode #20 [relay.fm] Amy Cuddy "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are" TED Talk [ted.com] "The Power of the Power Pose: Amy Cuddy's Famous Finding is the Latest Example of Scie

Hello, listener. Hello, listener? That's lame. Maybe I should give you a name, but that's a slippery slope. You're only in my head. Or maybe we're in your head. Are you listening to this with headphones? Shit. It's actually happened, I'm talking to imaginary listeners.   What I'm about to tell you is top secret, a conspiracy bigger than all of us. There's a powerful group of people out there that are secretly running the world. I'm talking about the guys no one knows about, the guys that are invisible. The top 1% of the top 1%, the guys that play God without permission. That's right, it's the Partially Examined Life guys. And now I think they're following me. Special guest Yoel Inbar joins us to talk about the best show of last year. Warning: This episode is full of spoilers. Do not listen until you've seen Season 1 of Mr. Robot. Links Mr. Robot  IMDB Wikipedia Special Guest: Yoel Inbar. Support Very Bad Wizards

It's our last episode on campus protests and political correctness for a while, we promise! But it's a fun one.  David and Tamler welcome two guests on the opposite side of the debate spectrum. Recent Yale Alum, cognitive scientist, freelance writer, (and writer of novel-length emails) Vlad Chituc joins both of us to defend the Yale protests, provide some context, and explain why the good people at FIRE are hypocritical about free expression. In the middle segment, Tamler talks with his notorious stepmother and "factual feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers (author of "Who Stole Feminism?" and "The War Against Boys"). They argue over whether the new political correctness poses a serious threat to campus climate, whether it is even "new," and over whether one is obligated to smoke weed on Joe Rogan's podcast. Plus, Tamler gets all huffy about the panic over terrorism, and we read some email responses to VBW Episode 78 ("Wizards Uprising").  Oh, and we have a recording a date set for the Mr. Robot episode! Links Vla

Special guest Valerie Tiberius joins us to talk about values, well-being, and friendship. What role should reflection play in the good life? What about emotion? How can we make our values more consistent and sustainable? Do we know our friends better than we know ourselves? Plus, are philosophers experts? Experts of what? What are the boundaries of our discipline? And what motivates a gay Mormon to stay in the Church? In the first segment, David and Tamler list a few things they're grateful for on Thanksgiving, including you, the listeners (awwwwww...) Links National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation [wikipedia.org] Valerie Tiberius personal website [sites.google.com] Tiberius, V. (2012) Cell Phones, iPods, and Subjective Well-Being. In Brey, P., A. Briggle & E. Spence (Eds.). The good life in a technological age. Routledge. [verybadwizards.com] Desire theories of well-being ( from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Well-Being) [plato.stanford.edu] Special Guest: Valerie Tiberius. Support Ver

David and Tamler return to the minefield of campus politics and talk about recent events at Yale, Missouri, and Amherst. Are the protests are long overdue response to systematic oppression and prejudice? Or is this new generation of students coddled, hypersensitive, and hostile to free speech? A little bit of both? Can our hosts get through this episode without fighting?    Links The New Intolerance of Student Activism by Conor Friedersdorf [theatlantic.com] President Peter Salovey's statement to Yale community [news.yale.edu] 2015 University of Missouri Protests [wikipedia.org] Amherst College Uprising (with list of demands) [amherstuprising.com] Vlad Chituc (@vladchituc) [vladchituc.com]   Support Very Bad Wizards

Special guest Eric Schwitzgebel joins David and Tamler to discuss the moral behavior (or lack thereof) of ethicists. Does moral reflection make us better people, or does it just give us better excuses to be immoral? Who's more right about human nature--Mencius or Xun Zi? What did Kant have against bastards and masturbating? Plus, we talk about jerks, robot cars, and killing baby Hitler. (Godwin's Law within 1:42--might be a new record for us).  Links Eric Schwitzgebel publications.  (Has links to all the discussed papers). Why Self-Driving Cars Must be Programmed to Kill  [technologyreview.com] Bonnefon, J. F., Shariff, A., & Rahwan, I. (2015). Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars? [arxiv.org] Mencius [wikipedia.org] Xun Zi [wikipedia.org] "The Philosophical Problem of Killing Baby Hitler." [vox.com] Why it's Unethical to Go Back in Time and Kill Baby Hitler. [forbes.com] Special Guest: Eric Schwitzgebel. Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler list three things they've changed their minds about in their careers. (This episode was recorded before Episode 75, but that one was way too long already.) What does Tamler think about X-phi these days? Has Dave lost his faith in the power of reason? What the hell is 'non-cognitivism'? Plus, Dave disagrees with John Hodgman about the metaphysical property of a hot dog. And a couple of listener shout-outs, including giving credit to a listener for giving us a topic idea we discussed without realizing she had suggested it in an email weeks ago.  Links Ethical Expressivism (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Moral Anti-Realism (Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy) John Hodgman on the hot dog/sandwich debate.  (NY Times Mag) "Perspectives on P.F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment." (Really good introduction by Michael McKenna and Paul Russell.) Support Very Bad Wizards

Dave and Tamler celebrate their 75th episode by welcoming six BFFs of the podcast and asking them to share the biggest thing they've changed their minds about in their professional careers. You'll hear Dan Ariely on our moral duty to take science into the real world, Laurie Santos on the the role of neuroscience in explaining psychological findings, Yoel Inbar on what it means to do good science as a psychologist, Eric Schwitzgebel on his metaphysical epiphany about materialism, Nina Strohminger on breaking-up with priming research, and Sam Harris on Artificial Intelligence and its perils, and his recently changed views about vegetarianism. (Sadly, we had a technical glitch with the audio when we recorded our most-frequent guest Paul Bloom, but we'll bring him on again soon.) Plus we play some hilarious mash-ups, raps, and voicemails sent in from listeners. Links to info about our Guests Dan Ariely Laurie Santos Yoel Inbar Nina Strohminger Eric Schwitzgebel Sam Harris   Listener-Created Music in this Episo

David and Tamler return after an end of summer hiatus to finally talk about the ethics of deception….eventually. But first they break down a recent article in the journal Science documenting an attempt to replicate 100 recent psychology experiments. What does it mean that just over 1/3 of the studies were successfully replicated? Is social psychology in crisis or is this just how science works? Will David somehow try to pin the blame on philosophers? Plus--a brief and almost certainly regrettable foray into the Ashley Madison hack, the neuroscience of lying to your kids about Santa, and we announce a new way to contact us to help celebrate our 75th anniversary. Links Authors, Shitload of (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science, Science, 39.  The Bayesian Reproducibility Project  post by Alexander Etz [alexanderetz.com] Harris, S. (2013). Lying. Four Elephants Press. Buy on Amazon Bok, S. (2011) Lying: Moral choice in public and private life. Vintage, 2011. Buy on Amazon Santa on th

In what is possibly our most repugnant first segment ever, David and Tamler break down the ethics of zoophilia and investigate the true nature of consent. In the second segment we answer some listener emails and address our first question in our new capacity as International Ethics Experts.™  If your family is religious, how honest should you be with your children about your non-belief? Do the comforting aspects of religious belief outweigh the fears and anxieties? What’s the deal  with Christians and hell? Plus, sex-ed from a female perspective, a brief nostalgic trip to The Electric Company, and David overcomes his horror of self-promotion to thank some people for praising the podcast.  Links Top 25 Podcasts for Men [hiconsumption.com] People Behind the Science podcast episode featuring David [peoplebehindthescience.com] Radio Tatas! Episode 37: "In a Row?!?" (their review of VBW starts at around the 30:00 mark) [radiotatas.libsyn.com] Cecil the Lion [wikipedia.org] New York Court: Chimps Are Still Proper

It finally happened: David and Tamler welcome special guest Joshua Weisberg to the podcast to talk about Turing machines, Chinese Rooms, and AI. What does it mean for a machine to acquire intelligence? What is the proper test? How much processing power would it take? Do computers shed light on how human beings think? Why is John Searle trapped in a Chinese room, anyway? Plus, a spoiler-filled discussion (beginning at 58:20) of the recent movie Ex Machina. David tries to assert his feminist bonafides but Tamler takes Eva's side, proving once again that he is the real feminist. And we have a quick 5-minute discussion of Mr. Robot Episode 4 (beginning at 1:24) and respond to a couple of emails from the authors of the Inside Out article we discussed in our previous episode.  Links Turing Test [wikipedia.org] Chinese Room thought experiment [wikipedia.org] Artificial Intelligence [wikipedia.org] Weisberg, J. (2009). It stands to reason: Skynet and self-preservation. In Irwin, W., Brown, R., & Decker, K. S. (

David and Tamler go deep into the best TV show of the summer, "Mr. Robot. They talk about the moral ambiguity of its central character, the distorted vision of reality it portrays, and play a round of "Real or Not Real" with all the main characters. Plus, what the swooning critics ignore about Pixar's "Inside Out"--its irresponsible failure to reference the relevant literature in cognitive science and philosophy of mind.      Links Two philosophers explain what Inside Out gets wrong about the mind [vox.com] The James/Lange theory of emotion [wikipedia.org] Mr. Robot [IMDB] Unreliable Narrator [wikipedia.org] Shoot the Dog Trope [tvtropes.org]     Support Very Bad Wizards

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, papers by Williams and movies from Sweden. Long graphic novels that celebrate being. These are a few of our favorite things. Dave and Tamler offer some moral psych-themed recommendations to help you get your summer off to a good start. Plus, is porn bad for you now that it doesn't come in brown paper packages tied up in string? Links Pornucopia by Maria Konnikova [aeon.com] Maria Konnikova on Twitter [twitter.com] Zhana Vrangolova [zhanavrangolova.com] Books Daytripper by Fabio Bá and Gabriel Moon [amazon.com affiliate link] [comixology link] Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro [amazon.com affiliate link] Movies Force Majeure [imdb.com] Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter [imdb.com] Academic Papers Kahane, G., Everett, J. A., Earp, B. D., Farias, M., & Savulescu, J. (2015). ‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater good. Cognition, 134, 193-209. Williams, B. A. O., & Moore, A. W. (2006). Philosop

Dave and Tamler try to figure out what we talk about when we talk about objectivity. In past episodes we’ve claimed that logic and science (when it isn't fraudulent) are objective. Tamler has claimed repeatedly that "Louie" is an objectively better TV show than "Jessie." Dave is constantly claiming that Kant is objectively the best philosopher. But to be honest, we say these things without being exactly sure what we’re saying.  Today we try to be sure--only to get more confused.  Plus, we get into a big fight over trigger warnings, the Kipnis affair at Northwestern, and other related issues. (The infamous Episode 45 was an ecstasy-fueled love fest in comparison.) However, we have spared our listeners the drama, and have only included a few lowlights. If you listen closely, you can even hear Tamler apologize.  Links Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe by Laura Kipnis [chronicle.com] Laura Kipnis Is Cleared of Wrongdoing in Title IX Complaints [chronicle.com] Title IX [wikipedia.org] For Tamler's views on the cam

Dave drags Tamler into the nerd abyss by making him watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Tapestry,” from the 6th season. It's available on Netflix instant in the US, and likely worldwide on many sites of varying legality). We talk about the themes of the episode: regret, risk aversion, the arrogance of hindsight, and the dream of living your past “knowing what you know now.” What are the things that shape our character? Should we embrace our mistakes or would we change something if we could? How should we think of our lives--as one long continually unfolding story or as a series of unrelated episodes? And speaking of regret, we reflect on our comedy episode and some listener dissatisfaction (we agree with much of it) and talk about yet another fraudulent study with sexy results.  Plus, Dave finally learns what ‘chuchma’ means.     "Science Retracts Troubled Gay Marriage Study." [retractionwatch.com] "Michael Lacour Responds to Critics." [latimes.com] "The Strangest Thing about Lacour's Res