Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2023

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last December, with Argentina minutes away from a World Cup championship, friend of the show Yoel texted David “congratulations.” David was furious, and soon after (with less than 2 minutes left in extra time) France’s Mbappe scored a game-tying goal to send the match into penalty kicks. (Argentina ended up winning or Yoel might have become ‘former friend of the show.’) David says he doesn’t believe in jinxes at all but his actions suggest otherwise. We talk about a paper on this phenomenon of “half-belief”: when your behavior and your stated beliefs don’t align. Plus Tamler and David take a survey and discover that they lead radically different inner lives.

James Steele's Tweet

Caspi, A., Shmuel, E., & Chajut, E. (2023). A quantitative examination of half-belief in superstition. Journal of Individual Differences.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro,
0:05.9	having an informal discussion about issues and signs and ethics.
0:09.4	Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say,
0:13.6	and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
0:16.9	I thought I understood this whole thing, but I guess I don't. I need help!
0:30.0	Who are you? Who are you? I'm a very good man.
0:44.0	Good man. Good man.
0:49.2	They think he's lost, and with no more brains than you have.
0:53.2	Pay to our attention. Come on, man.
0:59.2	Anybody can have a brain.
1:03.2	You're a very bad man.
1:05.7	I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.
1:10.0	Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:13.6	Dave, those plucky underdog investigators at Data Colada, who worked tirelessly to keep
1:20.0	science safe from fraud, along with the plucky underdog university Harvard.
1:25.6	They're being sued by Francesca Gino for defamation.
1:29.2	This is how we're going to go down, isn't it? I mean, it just is, right?
1:32.3	We're getting sued at some point.
1:33.7	I mean, like, I'm not going to lie.
1:35.4	For a second, I was like, should we get one?
1:37.6	But then I was like, she's not listening to this.
1:40.9	Yeah, but I mean, not by her. I don't even mean by her.
	...

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