257 - What Do You Mean? - Celeste Kidd

You Are Not So Smart

Science, Psychology, Brain, Business, Mental Health, Culture, Neuroscience, Mind, Health

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is a hotdog a sandwich? Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person's concept are shockingly low. In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.
0:27.4	Episode 257.
0:46.4	Are you familiar with the Internet debate over whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich?
0:51.2	I'm familiar.
0:58.2	That is the voice of famed psychologist Celeste Kid. She is a cognitive scientist and
1:04.7	developmental psychologist who is well known for her research on human curiosity and human certainty.
1:11.6	How brains develop knowledge. My name is Celeste Kid. I am an assistant professor in psychology
1:19.0	at UC Berkeley and my lab is the Kid Lab. We study human belief formation.
1:28.5	Kid studies how we acquire and conceptualize information. How we form beliefs around
1:34.7	those concepts and in general make sense of the torrent of information blasting its way into
1:40.6	our nervous systems via all the senses and how that affects our development. How the development
1:46.7	of the mind proceeds from childhood all the way to the day. We find ourselves in an argument
1:53.0	about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. So what do you think is a hot dog a sandwich? This is one
2:06.2	of those debates that became the central topic of discussion in our marketplace of ideas a few
2:11.6	years back. One of those viral moments that spread all across the Internet and then into homes
2:17.5	and house parties. If you missed out on this you really missed out on a mid 2010s cultural milestone
2:25.2	because everyone chimed in on this from Meryl Streep to Matt Damon to better homes and gardens
2:31.2	to readers digest to the National Hot Dog Council and yes there is a National Hot Dog Council.
2:37.9	The Today Show read a piece about it and so did the Verge in USA Today and Parade and the Guardian.
2:44.7	Even Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg chimed in on this saying quote you tell me what
2:52.8	a sandwich is and then I'll tell you if a hot dog is a sandwich. Steven Colbert who was interviewing
3:00.4	her replied to that definition by suggesting the definition of a sandwich was two pieces of bread
	...

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