Episode 340: The Sublime Folly of Hope

Welcome and podcast introduction

0:00Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. That's like the dream of everyone. They want to be cool because of this, cool because of that, blah, blah, blah. And more people need to know that they're not fucking cool. The Great Enhoss has spoken!

0:33Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

0:42Who are you? Who are you? I'm a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man. They think deep thoughts, and we're no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man.

1:03Anybody can have a brain.

1:07You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

Texting habits and exclamation points

1:14Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamer Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, since we're doing some Gen Z shit in the opening segment, here's a question that I have. And I don't even know if this might be millennial more than Gen Z. I don't know. But what does the exclamation point on a text signify? Oh my God! Dude, I have no idea. I think it might be millennial because some of my, even Gen X friends, have picked up on it. And I am so confused. I need help.

1:45Like, I need help to understand this. Like, it is meaningless to me. It's like, it just happened to me. Like, I texted a friend happy birthday. And he's like, oh, I'm here with my parents. And I was like, oh, give him a hug from me. And he just put an exclamation.

2:00It's completely opaque to me. Like, a lot of the time. Sometimes it's like, like when I use it, it's like. Yeah, it's like, holy shit. Yeah. Or like, what? You know? Whoa. Yeah. But then it just seems like it's being used in ways that I can't understand. This is a good call for listeners. Listeners, please explain. It reminds me of that Boondocks episode where the teacher uses the N-word. And it's like based on a real, like a real thing. You showed me that. Yeah.

2:31And he goes, I need your help. Like, I don't.

2:36He's like, I thought it was fine. I thought with the ah, it was friendly. I'm telling you, I don't understand. And I need your help.

2:46But it's like the possibilities are even greater in this case. It's like there's some other dimension or something that I don't have access to. Does it just mean I saw your text? Like, it's like context clues lead me to believe it means everything. Well, yeah. Or it could mean so many things. But like, it's not the thumbs up, you know, which is more like I saw your text. Dude, we're like anthropologists. We're trying to immerse ourselves.

3:19Funny that you should say that, actually. Because in the second segment, we are going to be talking about an article by... I'm just seeing that his name is on the title. Wait, Malinovsky? Yeah. Branislav Malinovsky. He should consider putting his name on his most famous papers. Branislav Malinovsky. Magic, Science, and Religion. Classic 1925 paper, I think.

3:49Yeah, it was like weirdly published in a collection of things that were posthumously published. So I don't know what it was originally, but he wrote it around the 20s. And that's in some ways the secondary text, or at least it started out that way. It started off that way. Yeah, because you put a nice, much shorter piece called Baseball Magic by George Gmelch. I know. I was hoisted by my own petard here, where I picked like a nice short one, and we were like, oh, we need a companion piece that maybe gives us more meat to the theory.

4:23But like, I'm glad we read this one, actually. Me too. It's really good. I really enjoyed it. Anthropologists, sociologists can do really good things. Everything that we're not. Exactly. They're everything that we're not. But what they don't do is conceptual analysis. That is the purview of analytic philosophers like myself and like you in spirit. In spirit, you know, this is philosophy in the wild. This is applying the tools and methods for the improvement of critical thinking, life understanding.

4:57A hundred percent. And it is public philosophy in the best sense of the term, I think. And unlike certain people, we make this free for everybody. That's right. That's right. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay us. No, not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. So yeah. So today we're going to, we've been doing conceptual analysis of Gen Z words for the most part, like contributions of the concepts of this new generation.

5:30I guess they're not even new anymore. I know. They're like 25. They're adults. Yeah. But yeah. And we, for some reason, have been kind of stuck on the Cs. Yeah. I think we've only, we've only done one that wasn't C, but I don't remember what it was. I don't either. But yeah, we've done cringe. We did corny. Did we do cool? I think we did cool. This is all a way to avoid doing the conceptual analysis of the actual C word, which I don't want to do. This is, we're circling, circling the actual.

6:00No, that's what we're building towards. That's going to be the last episode. Circling the drain. I think that would be a good one. You know, like just all the different ways that's used. I don't even think it's a poison word anymore. I think you can just say it. You and Trump, you know. No, he said pussy. That's true. What a cunt. Oh my God. I can't believe you said that. Auto moderate that.

Defining the concept of crashing out

6:26So today we are still stuck on the Cs, but not quite that far into the Cs. We are going to talk about crash out. Yeah. Crashing out. Crash out. A term that again, you know, for me has become popular in the last, whatever, three, four years, but I'm sure it's probably 10 years. Well, I did a little research. I mean, when I say a little, maybe like two minutes. And I think it's first emerged in like a 2013, 14, like rap song.

6:58Like most of these. I was going to say, it's all black slang. When you were saying Gen Z slang, I'm like, let's give credit where credit's due, you know. Yeah. No, I think Gen Z puts their spin on it is the best you can say. That's right. Because I do think it was a little different. For sure. And it took me a while to get that difference. So it's one of these things where it's a term that I thought I immediately understood because it seemed like face validly like a term that you would use when you just get really angry. Yeah, where you just get so frustrated and so angry and you just start doing stuff that, you know,

7:28it's not going to end well for you and those around you. There was once a professor at Yale who was a World War II veteran who was like very PTSD'd. And he would just unload on Yale students sometimes. And there's this story about like the worst case in which this happened. He walked in late to his own undergrad class, silently stared at the class and just said something like, you fucking Yale fucking cunt students, you're all stupid.

8:00And he just like turned around and walked out.

8:04Another time he actually threw a garbage can from his office. He threw it at a graduate student. That's a crash out. That's a crash out. So he skipped right to the last seat.

8:16Yeah. So let's just get it out on the table, like what you think crashing out is. We'll just do like a, you know, a pilot definition and then we'll try to think of some counterexamples, think of some ways that it doesn't cover, you know, conceptual analysis. Like we'll give the necessary and sufficient. As always, we will arrive at the necessary and sufficient conditions for crashing out. Yeah. My tentative definition is when there's like a, an emotional event that causes a lack of restraint.

8:49So like you end up doing things that you would normally restrain yourself from doing. So that's different from what I originally thought of crash out as like getting really angry and like yelling at somebody, like losing control in that way, because this can include like for me, the prototypical example of, uh, in the movie swingers, when he leaves like 20, you know, voice messages. Oh yeah. Um, he's just lost it. Yeah. And he can't stop himself and he knows it's bad and he still can't stop himself.

9:19He cannot stop himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? That, that is a really good example. And I think a good definition is when you start to spin out, like, I think actually like an accident is a good metaphor because like sometimes you're, you know, you're just driving and then something happens and all of a sudden you've lost a little control of the car. You could get it back, but then you start doing things that are like, you turn the steering wheel the wrong way. The wrong direction. Because if it's on ice, you know, you're supposed to turn it in the door, you know, and then all of a sudden it's getting worse and it's getting worse and you just can't stop it.

9:52And eventually your car just slams into something and it's totaled. I feel like that's what, I think it's interesting that it's, I think most commonly like a short-term thing, you know, someone could crash out on Twitter. Yeah. Like Jason Stanley crashed out famously. That was, I thought, like a paradigmatic example. Like when you start like posting your SAT scores. Your IQ. Yeah, your IQ. You're crashing out. Uh, but like, I also think, and I, like, I credit my daughter with a little bit of this.

10:28Like it can be also more of a long-term thing where you, you know, like in a, if there's a relationship that's gone bad or if there's a relationship that isn't happening, like you can be crashing out for a month just because you're like, you can't stop yourself from reacting badly to this thing. That's right. Like I had a friend in college who, uh, was in love with, he was in love with this girl so bad. He had it bad. Yeah. It was unrequited. And she finally got through to him that she didn't want, like, it finally hit him that like, it was a no.

11:03It was like a firm no. And this poor guy sat in his room. Tony, sorry if you're listening. He sat in his room with like the curtains drawn listening to LL Cool J's I Need Love on repeat. Like, you just walk in and it lasted weeks, like literally. And that's a great example of crashing out when it's not like you're getting angry and you're yelling or you're like responding to every reply on Twitter. Or you're not just yelling at some like lady on a bus or something. And I think like what you're saying is you've lost control and you're doing things that you would never do.

11:41And you might even recognize that. Yeah. Like while it's happening. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That seems like a kind of crashing out that isn't captured by like going berserk where you're actually completely unreflective. You know, you lose control. You're seeing red. Like that's why it can be different from seeing red because you're just like, like in the swingers scene. He knows. Like it's getting worse and worse because he knows. And he's like. Right. And he knows every, like there's no way the next message is going to make it better.

12:12But he still can't stop himself from doing it. Yeah. Now, can you have a crash out that's like super short? So somebody posted a funny, I don't know, it was like a ticked a reel or some shit. It was like Gen Z leaves a voicemail. And it was like, hey, this is, oh, shoot. How do I undo this? Oh, fuck. I don't think I can. And then she's like, I'm really sorry. You're probably never going to want to call me back after this. So have a nice life or something like that. But she like realized like in the moment that she was fucking up the message, like started trying to fix it, realized she couldn't.

12:48And then like just was like, I'm out. Sorry. You don't ever have to call me back. In that moment, she kind of lost control. But that's like a really short. She like figured out how to turn in the direction of the spin pretty quickly. So then I don't think that's crashing out. I think that's something else. Like you fucked up. But then you, yeah, you got the car back on the road. Yeah. You're going to hear it on the border. Like it could have. Like I think like a lot of crash outs as I think of them happen in social media, you know, and academics can be very susceptible to it.

13:25And I think one of the things is that you've lost control of the situation. So maybe you post something, say, and you get piled on for a bit and you didn't mean for like your remark to generate that response, obviously. But you also think that maybe it's a little unfair the way people are reacting. And so now you've lost control of how people are responding to you or understanding you. And in addition, as you go into the crash out, you lose control of yourself.

13:56So you just make things worse. You keep trying to rescue the situation and keep trying to regain control. And in doing so, you keep losing it more than you did initially. Right. It's a form of digging yourself out of a hole, but it's like specific. It's, I don't know. You keep digging a bigger hole, but you can't stop yourself from digging because there's a tunnel here or something like that. Yeah. You kind of leave it. Um, you know, you sometimes see standup comedians, like the more inexperienced ones, like have a crash out with a heckler and they're completely losing control of the crowd.

14:33And they try like that happened kind of to Michael Richards to Kramer when he kind of lost control. It was like, man, like a more somebody who is more seasoned in the art of crowd control wouldn't have let themselves just lose it like that. Yeah. And, and it's interesting because like Bill Burr famously also had this in Philly. The Philly crash out. It's hard to tell when it's Bill Burr. Yeah. But it wasn't a crash out. That wasn't a crash out. Like because he had control, he had confidence in what he was doing. Like, so maybe part of crashing out is also just external.

15:05So maybe I have an externalist, uh, crash out, which is like, if it actually is good for you, then it's not crashing out. Is that right? Yeah. It's funny because if in that setting, they're not perceiving you to lose control, even if you are losing control, you certainly don't get like the hit of having had a crash out. People love that Philly rant. But they didn't love it at the time. Right. Like, well, it's certainly not the crowd, but he's like, it's like a famous, you know, it's, he's applauded for it.

15:35Whereas Michael Richards, obviously, but like I've heard Bill Burr, I could be wrong, but I seem to remember him in an interview saying like, I don't know why people like that so much. And I wonder if he in the moment was like, no, I'm going to let loose. I really am going to like crash out on these people and not give a fuck. Like, okay.

Distinguishing crashing out from meltdowns

15:53So let me ask you this, since it's time to make distinctions, what is the difference between crashing out and having a meltdown? Having a meltdown feels like it can be much more internalized. So like maybe this fits in with your potential externalism, which is a meltdown. You could certainly take it out on people, but you could also burn out and like, yeah, I don't know. Is it melt? Maybe I'm just confusing meltdown with like nervous breakdowns.

16:25Yeah. Yeah. Like, I feel like a meltdown is public. It is public. Yeah. It's, you have to have an audience for a meltdown. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could maybe have a meltdown in your own house with like some appliance or something. With your dog. Like your dog would need to be there at least. Yeah. Someone needs to witness it. Yeah. So are you melting down when, because like one of the things we've been saying is a kind of like a quintessential crash out is the guy who's like the girl broke up with him and

16:57he's doing whatever he can to get her back. Is that also a meltdown? No. I think meltdown is short term. Yeah. Like, you know, that's why like a classic meltdown or people will use meltdown with little kids. Yeah. Tantrum. They'll have like a tantrum and it's just like, oh, he's melting down. I got to take him home. Put him to sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Not put him to sleep. Like euthanizing.

17:20So, yeah. Like that's, I think, a key difference. I also think crashing out is, there's something deeper about a crash. Well. Yeah. I kind of think that a crash out can be any like of a number of sources of restraint that disappear. And it could be like an emotion like anger or desperation in the case of like unrequited love. Whereas a meltdown feels hotter. Yes, that's right. It's like public, but it's also like your emotions are at 11.

17:53Whereas a crash out could be like you're actually acting a little too calm or something under the circumstances or you're being, yeah, you're holding yourself a little too stiffly. Yeah. I think the loss of control thing is so key. And I think you could even have a meltdown. I mean, it's also typically a loss of control, but maybe sometimes you're like, fuck it with the meltdown. Exactly. And a child doesn't care. A child is not like, hmm, I know better than to keep stomping my foot.

18:26Right. Right. You wouldn't say that a three-year-old is crashing out. Like it almost doesn't make sense. You could just like jokingly. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But it would be a joke. Whereas a meltdown is kind of a standard word for a three-year-old. So that's an interesting, again, this is philosophy. This is cutting nature at the joints. It's true. No dictionary is going to give you this wisdom. Do you think you are someone who crashes out often? I would say of all my flaws, like I think that I'm, I'm like, I like to think that I'm

18:57characterized by patients in situations like that. But then it's like, I have very clearly crashed out. Like I've never done it over unrequited love. I've never, you know, gone more than two comments deep on social media. I don't think, you know, like I used to stop. Yeah. You always have one though. One long one maybe, but it's not a crash out. It could be long. Yeah. But like my four-year-old right now has been testing me in ways that like I've probably had what I would consider two crash outs in the last like three weeks alone where I'm

19:33just like, I was seeing myself say things that I would never want myself to say as a parent and that I would judge other people for and like raising my voice in a way that I never did. And, and, and I was just like, you know what? I can't help it right now. Like I see it happening. It's how it's just, this is happening right now. Right. I see it happening and I can't stop it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Actually. I don't think I've ever witnessed you crashing out. Like I don't think like on, even on the podcast, you know, I would get heated.

20:05It gets heated. But not on control. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm prone to short term crashing out, you know, like if the, my refrigerator, we have a comically small refrigerator and I hate this refrigerator. With like the fire of a thousand suns and like, and like, so it's like the raspberries will fall on the floor and then I'll try to get something else to like stop something else from falling. And then like five other things will fall because of what I did. And then I'll just get so, I get so frustrated.

20:35But like. You, you don't, uh, in my experience, you have those mini crash outs about like things. The dumbest shit. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're, the computer's not working right. You're like, remember when it always makes me laugh when you were yelling, you weren't yelling at me, but you were like kind of jokingly telling me to move. Cause like my window was in the way. Like remind me like for real that like you aren't in charge of where the window is on my computer, like 2000 miles away.

21:06And yeah, they're short bursts. Like my sister's kind of like this where you're just like, uh, all of a sudden, like I'm talking to my sister, she crashes out when she's driving. Yeah. Oh, my Eliza does that too. She's such a crash out when she's driving. It's, it's annoying. I'll just be talking to her and she'll be like, oh yeah, I went to mom and dad's like, fucking ass. And I was just like, what the hell? Is that crashing out though? Or is that just a little like momentary rage? It's momentary rage. I think it's all about whether you like how, this is my internalist retort.

21:40How are you feeling in the moment? Did you have to stop yourself or was it just like a cathartic yell? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, I think, uh, I think something you said at the very beginning, like you would never be doing this if you were thinking clearly or if you had control of yourself and sometimes with traffic, like you just, yeah, fine. Fuck this person. And I may, I'm going to yell in my car. Yeah. And you know, one more thing that I had thinking about, I was thinking about like the, you know, the Bob Frank emotion thing and where anger can be like functional in the sense

22:13that people won't fuck with you if they know that you're somebody who might like snap at them. Crashing out actually seems like a bad signal of you. Like, whereas if I know that if I cross you, you're going to like fuck me up. And when you do it, you're really angry. Maybe I might describe it as like losing control and like fucking, you know, kicking my ass. But that's like, seems like a reliable cue not to fuck with you in a way that crashing out makes me think a little less of the person. Like, I don't, I'm not like that worried about like, I, I kind of am like, oh, you're a person who can be fucked with.

22:44Yeah. You know? Right. And sometimes you want to like press those buttons if you're. Yeah. Cause they're hurting themselves. Yeah. Like even maybe if they're crashing out and you throw a punch, but like clearly you're hurting yourself more. You're not in a position of power when you're crashing out. No, you're the opposite of that. Yeah. Yeah. No, actually I think that's super important for this. So one of the questions you might ask is why now is this term gained such popularity? You know, like I think even people our age are using the term now they might not be using

23:15it precisely if they haven't listened to this, but like they're using it. So why now is this like gaining such traction? And I think part of it is we feel powerless. Like we feel like we don't have power when we're in crashing out situations, power over the situation, power over ourselves. So I think it's connected to this feeling of impotence, but for that exact reason, like you said, you're going to lose respect for them because it shows that they don't have power, you know, they don't have power in the situation and over the situation or over

23:49themselves. Yeah, totally. And it is unlike anger, like stereotypical anger that usually is associated with internally feeling like you have control. You are taking control of the situation when you're angry. You're telling someone off, like you're finally feeling empowered. I remember like the first time I got like angry at somebody who is like, had been consistently mistreating me, I thought. And when I finally got angry and they stopped, I felt good. Like I stood up for myself, you know? Right. And that was Tamler. That was you. The first time you finally stood up for yourself.

24:22Yeah. I've never fucked with you again. No, I think that's exactly right. Yeah. I like, I like your analysis though. It's like a materialist analysis, you know, where like the current circumstances of society are like influencing our. Just the fact that it seems like things are beyond our control at every level of government, like the bureaucracy, AI, like all this shit is like making us feel like you don't control your own fate. And so then I think you're more likely to crash out. And I think like the difference in anger and crashing out is you're empowered in anger,

24:57like you said, and you are like disempowered in crashing out. Yes, that's right. By the way, I think LLMs can crash out too in this weird way. Like these videos. There was a guy who said he does these funny AI videos where he's asking like very obvious questions and the AI can't answer. But one of them was, hey, remember when you told me that thing and you were totally wrong? You should apologize and tell me that you were wrong. And the AI, this was a chat GPT voice thing. The AI was like, well, I don't think I was wrong, but you know, I see what you're saying.

25:27Like maybe we could have agreed on something. And he's like, no, no, you were wrong. Remember, admit it and just tell me that I'm smarter than you. And the AI just was like refusing. Like it was actually having an episode. It was having an episode. It was hilarious. So, yeah. All right, we solved it. Well, speaking of how to deal with a world that is unpredictable and that you don't have control over, let's turn to our main segment in the next, well, let's turn to our main topic

25:59in the next segment. That's what I said. I mean, magic, science, and religion by a very distinguished author. Whose name we shall pronounce in the next segment. After a brief break. We'll be right back. Okay. We'll be right back.

Listener support and Patreon details

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30:02Okay, let's get back to the episode.

Malinowski and the study of magic

30:04Now let's turn to our main topic. Two articles, one by the anthropologist Branislav Malinovsky, called Magic, Science, and Religion. You were right, published in 1925 originally. Just like a little bit of background on Malinovsky and this article. Malinovsky was a Polish anthropologist who is, I guess, widely understood to be the person who changed the way anthropology was done from armchair sort of theorizing about

30:35the primitives and occasional visits to other cultures, whereas Malinovsky believed and did this, that you need to live with the people, get to know them, immerse yourself in the culture for more than just a few days and talking for longer than just a couple of interviews. So like ethnography? Like real ethnography, yeah. And he did his work primarily in Melanesia and the Trobriand Islands, where he studied a bunch of cultures from that general geographical area in Melanesia.

31:06And in this article, Magic, Science, and Religion, he proposes a distinction between these three that was different from the way that anthropologists and sociologists thought of them before. And like broadly speaking, people treated magic as like an earlier form of like superstitious view that then kind of evolved into religion. And then we finally got to science. Whereas Malinovsky saying like, no, when you look at these peoples from these cultures, what

31:39he called primitive peoples, what you see is that our view that they are unscientific is totally wrong. They're actually very adept at learning about the natural world and using their knowledge of the natural world to manipulate things, to grow crops, to build boats. They understand that that is a category of thing and that it is a different category than these other ones. So they are able to control the natural world to a certain extent through their understanding of the natural world that is reasonable and seemingly rational and not unlike our modern

32:12science, whereas magic is what they rely on in situations that they have no control over. And so magic is a set of practices that are aimed at directly controlling outcomes that matter that you know, that the people know they have very little control over. So they can build a boat using the best practices that they've learned through generations, a boat that will get them safely out to the ocean to fish and bring them safely back and float right and

32:43all that stuff. You can't control the freak storms that might destroy your boat. So you can't control the weather. You can't control the amount of fish that are out there on the day that you go out. And it's under those conditions that you start relying on essentially this kind of attempt at control through rites and spells and incantations. Yeah. And there's a lot more. There's a discussion about religion as well, but we can get to that. Yeah. Because I do think that's also important. Like magic, he says, has this kind of very specific instrumental purpose.

33:17Yeah. We don't control the weather. So we need it to rain or we need the seas to be calm or I need this girl to love me who doesn't love me right now. And religion is done more for its own sake. Like the ceremony we have because we're having a baby isn't so that the baby is healthy. It's more just a celebration of what's happening. So it's like more intrinsic than magic. That's right. And it's tied to major milestones in life like birth and rites of passage and death very

33:49clearly. Like he has a whole section. You could see like Ernest Becker was a fan of this guy. Like you could tell. At some point I was reading it and I was starting to like have like, I was like, oh man, am I like, is my heart rate going up? And then I was like, oh no, I'm just reading about death. Well, there's a great line in it. Uh, actually, I think he might've been referring to you when he says the savage is intensely afraid of death, probably as the result of some deep seated instincts common to man and animals. He does not want to realize it as an end.

34:19He cannot face the idea of complete cessation of annihilation. That's exactly what I started to have cold sweats. Yeah. The savage. You are the savage. You're just a caveman. You know, his point eventually is that we're all in the same predicament. No, of course. Like that is totally his point. Like he's at, it's the most respectful treatment of, I think, primitive cultures, like even compared to like now, I feel like. Yeah. I'm glad you say that. I thought so too. You know, this view that like, it's not that he cares that it's a disservice.

34:53I guess maybe he does. He just thinks it's wrong. It's like the wrong view to think that, oh, the primitives have magic. Like, and then like they're whatever fucking witch doctors become priests when society gets complex enough. And then eventually we have scientists. And they become physicists. Exactly. And like the final boss. But he says these are like very, like you say, very domain specific. And they are serving their own function. In fact, the thing that he is like known for in anthropology, aside from the methodology,

35:23is his view of functionalism, where he actually thinks that there is a rational account for why people are engaging in these practices. And he had some beef with Durkheim, which you kind of get from this article, where Durkheim believed that like religion was just a sort of manifestation of society at large, that what we were doing is like worshiping the collective. Like we were, we're weak. The collective is strong. And we kind of build these beliefs and institutions that are just somehow projecting our awe of

35:57like the collective onto something else. Yeah. And Malinovsky thought that this was just a mistaken view. He said, religion is performed collectively. Like that part is true, but he thought it was serving a psychological function for the individuals in a way that he thought Durkheim was missing. Yeah. Because it can happen with individuals and it can be just as powerful. Yeah. And on the flip side, you can have this kind of collective effervescence, as he says, that

36:27in a totally secular situation. And like, it's funny that I read that term in the paper because like people were talking about that with the world cup, like collective effervescence, like it's not religious there. It's not. And people will use that. Like they will say, like, I think metaphorically, like rock concerts are like religion or like sports is like religion, but it's only like religion in like that one kind of way. Nobody confuses it for actual religion. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then in terms of how we're all the savage and that this is, that this does have a functional,

37:03pragmatic value, almost to the point where he's willing to call it a kind of truth, right?

Baseball superstitions and control

37:09Yeah.

Baseball superstitions and control

37:10That relates a lot to your other piece that you put in the Slack, the VBW Slack, baseball magic, which is, I think, building on his ideas and explicitly refers to these ideas of all the crazy baseball superstitions and rituals and the various things that people do. And I think this guy might've been a Red Sox fan because he talks a lot about Nomar Garcia Parra and Wade Boggs. He was an actual player. Yeah. He was a Detroit Tiger, I think in the 60s.

37:40But like when he's writing this, you know, it's later than that. And he's speaking about a lot of the people from my childhood and early adulthood. But yeah, Nomar Garcia Parra, I don't know if you like watched baseball or you know who that is, but he had this incredible, like if you YouTube Nomar when he's like going to bat, it's just a crazy group of rituals. I mean, he did it really fast. It's almost like a magician, like doing all these things. And Wade Boggs would have chicken before every game. And you know, like baseball is like almost every day for like nine months.

38:12And the point that he makes at the end, which I thought was so fascinating, why do they do this in baseball more than other sports? It's because baseball is a more unpredictable. Like you have less control. You can have a great swing of the bat and you can make great contact and it just goes right to a fielder and you can do everything right. Like as a pitcher and have a perfect slider that tails away and they get their bat on it and it scoots down the line for like a double and all of a sudden like three run scores. And like, it's just, there's so many things.

38:44And so there's this comfort in routine ritual and all these rites that you do. There's a comfort when there's so much of what you do and so much of your fate depends on things that are entirely beyond your control, even if you're doing everything right. And yeah, I love that insight. And he, he uses, so Melch, the former baseball player who became an anthropologist. That's pretty good. It's crazy, right? Yeah.

39:15He directly references the Malinowski view. And it's like that article is built on this example that Malinowski gives, which is in these Trubranders, when they do lagoon fishing, which is like easy, they don't have magic. Like there's no magic associated with that. It's like in the open ocean that they have magic because that's so hard to control. And Gemelch makes that distinction within baseball, where he says, who has the least amount of control? Like, you know, famously, they say that the batting, like hitting a baseball is one of

39:45the hardest things in all of sports to do and pitching. Whereas the fielders like really are just sort of relying on their skill. Like, you know, if the ball is within their reach and they're good, they're going to get it unless something weird happens. And so the amount of superstition, at least the claim is from Gemelch, is that you see way more superstitious behavior from pitchers and batters than you do from fielders. Yeah. Or, and obviously batters are also fielders. So the same person will have rights for hitting, but they won't have rights for fielding.

40:18That's right. Yeah. That's right. They won't do like a Nomar Garcia para touching his forehead and his chin and his nose and rubbing his crotch every time they're in the field. They won't do that. But that same person, you know, he was a shortstop. He didn't do any of that shit when he was playing shortstop. He just did it at bat. Hitting streaks are talked about and they matter. And when you're on a streak, like you won't shave, you develop a, like catching streaks for the outfielders. Like they don't care. They're not like, I've caught 10 fly balls in a row. I'm not going to shave my, my beard.

40:48Yeah. And like, there's two different things also, right? There's the taboo, which the classic example is you can't say that it's a no hitter. If there's a no hitter, that's like a kind of jinx. So there's also like a lot of taboos about what you can't do. Yeah. And they're again, focused on things beyond your control. No hitter is a classic example. Like you could just get a slow grounder to third base and blow your no hitter. Or even though it was a great pitch and a weak swing.

41:19And, you know, it made me think, I don't know if you're a baseball person at all, but I guess baseball is one of the sports that has the most like kind of fluky, lucky things more than any other sport, more than basketball, more than football. Like what you were saying about fielding in baseball, which is just one part of the game and one of the least important parts of the game in some sense, like that is seems to be true of all the other sports for the most part. Like there's obviously going to be some luck in basketball.

41:51You know, someone hits a bank shot when they weren't trying to hit a bank shot or, but those are pretty minor things compared to like the main things that can happen in baseball. And I guess I just never thought about that, but I think it's right. You know, tennis, there's not a ton of luck in tennis. There's not a ton of luck in hockey. No, I know. I totally agree. It's a weird thing where baseball has, it's a team sport, but it is a team sport that relies so much on individual performances, like the batter and the pitcher and all of the luck

42:27things that you're talking about, like are involved. So there's two separate things that I think are happening in the, in these sports. So there's like the situation where like who wins and loses is more luck based, like of the teams, maybe in baseball day to day than in other sports. And then there is your performance is dependent on other people on your team's performance. And so in that way, your performance is not in your control.

43:00Well, I mean, obviously it's like tennis, there is no other teammates. So, but like in football, like, I guess as a quarterback, you can have great receivers who make catches they have no business making or they can drop the ball or something. Like, I feel like that is more common to other sports. I guess my question is, is baseball just more luck based in general? I think it might be. I mean, it is like, you know, as people often point out, it's like a weird sport where having 30% success at bat is like amazing.

43:32And like, you can be the best player. So like the amount of randomness for any given at bat seems, seems high. It's so high. Again, I don't think you see that in other sports. You might see that in soccer because goals are so scarce. That's how the other thing I was going to say is scoring is scarcer in the way that in basketball, like you kind of know that the better team won, like when they win, like in soccer, you have flukes where any team could win, but there's also just like lots of motion. There's like constant, constant causality in a way that's not, you know, it's more like

44:04winning or losing in the penalty kick shootout where that is luck. And they do, I believe, get pretty superstitious about that kind of stuff. Do they? That, that would be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. And this was all just by like my way of agreeing with you that I do think based baseball is weirdly luck. It's more luck based. I just was trying to figure out what specifically makes it feel that way. And I, yeah, the analytics have always also been, you know, now we have player stats in other sports that can tell us. Yeah. Baseball was the original analytics sport.

44:36And I think maybe for the same reason that is by far the sport with the most superstitions, like it's in another stratosphere than other sports. You don't really hear about that stuff. And if it is, it's some quirky story. It's not like all of them, like it is in baseball and it's just accepted. It's a matter of life. As he says in the article, it's often very like, it's not public. It's rare that it's public. Everyone has their own thing and they go about their own business with their own weird rituals.

45:06They're often just so weird. And there's like tons of funny movies and books about like the thing. Yeah. This article is worth a read if you just want like a descriptive sense of the weirdness of some of these rituals. You know, he like Malinovsky, I think has respect for it. He says towards the end of the paper that like obviously the superstitions and the rituals don't make a pitch go faster or a batted ball find the gaps between the fielders, nor do the

45:36tropian rituals, calm the seas or bring fish. What both do, however, is give their practitioners a sense of control with that added confidence at no cost. And we all know how important that is. If you really believe eating chicken or hopping over the foul lines will make you a better hitter, it probably will. And that's that like practical, like kind of functional, like it's true because you believe it's true, which then makes it come true.

46:06Yeah. Yeah. At the very least, if you believe it and you don't do it, you're worse. Like, I don't know like what the difference is there, like, but it certainly is seeming to have a causal effect. But if it gives you more confidence, which allows you to, you know, play better in that situation, then it really would be right. But it also is true that like, if you run afoul of a jinx or a curse or a superstition or whatever, that will almost certainly have an effect more than if you just do the right

46:37thing. Yeah. By the way, so I was doing some external research as a good scholar and I found an article that was a review article in 2016 called Superstitious Behavior in Sport, a literature review, where they were trying to look at all the work that had been published by that time. And there is a section on type of sport. And so I'm just going to read you a bit here. So superstition in sport may vary with the role of the player as well as with the type of sport.

47:07The greater is the element of chance and uncertainty in a sport or a player's task, the more prevalent is the practice of superstition. The player's role in baseball supports this surmise because superstitious behaviors are more often linked to batting or pitching than to fielding. However, Berger and Lynn, 2005, could not demonstrate this contrast in their investigation of American and Japanese players. Studies with goaltenders in ice hockey have also shown that these players practice a high number of superstitions, which makes sense. Like they're like a kind of locus of control over the game. It's also a low scoring game. Yeah. They get blamed.

47:38In football, clothing and appearance were linked to superstitious behaviors, but no differences were disclosed between goalkeepers and attackers. Oh, that kind of football. So there seems to be like at least evidence since this 1975 article. Is that when it is? Yeah. No, it can't be because he talks about Wade Boggs who's after that. Gemelch. I think it's in the early 90s. I think it's like 92. Yeah. 92. 92. Uh, yeah.

Skill uncertainty and rituals

48:06So like, I like this a lot. Like that, that baseball magic talks about like how pigeons Skinner famously sort of found that even pigeons develop superstitious behavior because if you just gave them rewards randomly, whatever they were doing at the time, they'll just keep doing it. And it's hard to extinguish animals. Because you get such immediate feedback also. That's the other thing is like you go to bat. It's the same thing. You know, basketball can be different besides free throws. Where they do like. And they do have rituals and free throws.

48:36And they do have rituals and free throws. Although, you know, in that case, it's not that luck based. So maybe there's two elements to it. There's just, it's the same thing. You go up to bat and, you know, like you have counts. It's two and one. It's all, you know, if it's two and one, it's two and one. Like if it's 0-2 pitch, it's an 0-2 pitch. Like you've had that like a thousand times over the last two years probably. So like those kinds of things, I think, invite rituals. Which is why like, you know, think about getting a peer-reviewed paper published is something that is very luck based.

49:12Like what referees you get. And yet we don't really have rituals around that because it's just not that. It's like too spread out in time, you know, if we pressed a button and we found out right away, like maybe the shirt we were wearing would matter. Totally. That's why, oh yeah. What I was going to say is like in other sports, I think fans are crazier about their rituals. Yes. You know, because we have real, just no control. Argentina, it's as close to a national religion, the things that people will do. Like everybody has in every household, they have something that they do that they swear they have to do.

49:48Yeah. And this is another thing I found in the lit search. People will say like, no, I know this has like push comes to shove. I know that this is not doing anything, but it's still compelled. Yeah. No, I had that same thought is that even in sports where the players themselves are not that superstitious, the fans are. And I think it's exactly for the reason you say that we have zero control. So this is our way of asserting some control, which is our way of connecting with the team. Yeah. You know, it's like showing that we care.

50:19These things have such an expressive component. And it's also like other people near you. Like, you know, you get mad at your friend if they jinx the game. Like if they like, think of how we talked about this recently, I think, but think of how mad you got at Yoel for texting you congratulations for the last Argentina. Like maybe he did that this time. He did not. He learned. He heard. He heard. So maybe it's the reverse. It's actually. I did develop. I developed a superstition this year. You know, I bought my messy shirt.

50:49Oh, yeah. I saw that. I was witness to that. Yeah. And I, I developed. It's embarrassing. Mock me. Fine. I don't care. Mock me. I would never. Like, I just like as the World Cup progressed, I realized like I had to put the shirt on 10 minutes before kickoff. Like I couldn't put it on before. I couldn't put it on after. I remember when I was picking you up at the airport, I pulled over. Like even though I was like late, like I quickly pulled over so I could get my shirt on. The listeners should know that on, I think at the quarterfinal match, you picked me up from the airport, even though.

51:25Maybe they were playing. They were playing in Syracuse. They should also know that I did not take you to the airport. Well, that was, that was totally fair.

Cultural magic versus individual rites

51:35And they should also know that I had to hold up your iPad on the way home. That's right. You're good. Of all people, I knew you would understand. I totally understand. The other thing I wanted to say about this, you know, it's a little different. There's a thing that Malinovsky says about magic where he points out that the practice of magic tends to be passed down to individuals who have expertise in it. So like there is the whatever witch doctor or the wizard or the witch who knows this shit more than other people.

52:09And so people go to them and that seems slightly different. I don't know what the difference is because he also talks about people, you know, having superstitions. But there is this sort of like cultural aspect to the magic in these cultures that he studied where like it's a formalized set of rites and spells that are kind of secret. Right. Yeah. And one of the other things that I guess we should acknowledge is that baseball, there might be features of baseball that make it really likely to develop superstitions.

52:39There's also a culture in baseball that has developed about this. Yeah, that's right. And I think like the difference maybe is that in a lot of these societies, it is very group specific. It's not individual specific what you do. And in baseball, it's more and maybe this is because the sport is more individual. Like when you're fishing, you're fishing for your family. You're fishing for like maybe like the larger group where in baseball, like you said, there's a lot of individual stats. But it's very personal, whereas there's a social element to the rituals, the rites.

53:14You know, one of the things that I want to say about like Malinovsky, one of the things I like about this article is he's kind of doing psychology. And I think it goes in hand with his functionalist account, but he's he tries to kind of come up with an origin of why we do magic. And he has this like kind of cool way of describing when you really want something to happen and you have a strong emotion that is centered around like that specific outcome. You just like have to do something like it has to come out somehow. It might come out in like saying something.

53:46It might come out in like you trying to do anything you can because you have no control over it. I kind of like that emotional piece to it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that emotional expressive aspect is something that we all have, you know, like when you are sitting in the same spot or when you're putting on that shirt. In that case, it's not social in a way. Maybe it's vicariously social because, you know, other Argentinians are also doing their own rituals. But it's expressed because you love Argentina, even though they're a bunch of thugs that.

54:21They were mourning Messi's dad's. Is that why? Is that why they started like attacking Spain after they watched that? They crashed out a little bit. That was a crash out for sure. But like that's your way of expressing your love for the team. You know, in addition to you actually also like I have to do this so that when it's like this emotional connection, it's a symbol of your emotional attachment to the team. Yes, absolutely. That's right.

Origins of magic in human impotence

54:49So when Malinowski is talking about the sort of like origins of magic, he says, so far we've been dealing mainly with native ideas and with native views of magic. This has led us to a point where the savage simply affirms that magic gives man the power over certain things. Now we must analyze this belief from the point of view of the sociological observer. Let us realize once more the type of situation in which we find magic. Man engaged in a series of practical activities comes to a gap. The hunter is disappointed by his quarry. The sailor misses propitious winds.

55:20The canoe builder has to deal with some material of which he is never certain that it will stand the strain or the healthy person suddenly feels his strength failing. What does man do naturally under such conditions, setting aside all magic, belief, and ritual? Forsaken by his knowledge, baffled by his past experience, and by his technical skill, he realizes his impotence. Yet his desire grips him only the more strongly. His anxiety, his fears, and hopes induce a tension in his organism, which drives him to some sort of activity. Whether he be savage or civilized, whether in possession of magic or entirely ignorant of its existence.

55:52Passive inaction, the only thing dictated by reason, is the last thing in which he can acquiesce.