Weird News

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare, Chris Wragg, and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing weird news. Nick, this is right up your alleyway, weird as it is.

Speaker B: 00:00:29

s actually been tracked since: 2017

Speaker C: 00:03:39

I looked at sort of, I looked at trust in the news, because I think that's a kind of, if you're talking about whether something's weird or not, I suppose it's also like how much you trust the source and where it comes from. And apparently the UK is one of the lowest, has one of the lowest faiths in media among 27 countries surveyed, I think. That's presumably a result of our media, our own disposition.

Speaker B: 00:04:06

Yeah, World War Two bummer found on me.

Speaker C: 00:04:09

I think it's slightly up from: 2021

Speaker A: 00:04:49

Chris, I want to come to you, but I think this question of what is weird, just a brief story, which is someone I work with is an American guy, I really get, he's a great bloke, but he was talking about how when he was on doing some work in Poland for our company, that the hotel he was staying that the first morning he went down and he asked for a large bucket of ice, okay, I'm not quite sure why I wanted it, something to do with water, I guess, I don't know. And it took him a long time to say, explain. So they would give him a bit of ice, no, no, no, I need more than that. And eventually got to bucket size, and he was happy. And they were looking like he was complete nutter. And then the next morning, he went down and said, I'd like, you know, the same thing I had yesterday. And they looked at him, oh, okay, this guy wants the same again, great. We'll sort that out for him. And then the third morning, it was ready for him. So two things. One, weird became normal in that context, one. But two, he then said to me, Fraser, what do you think? Do you think that was weird to do that? And I said, of course, it's bloody weird. Who goes around ordering buckets of ice, you know? But I suspect in the US, that might be quite normal behaviour.

Speaker B: 00:05:55

Unless we know what it's for, I can't decide whether it's weird.

Speaker A: 00:05:59

I'm gonna say, I think it was...

Speaker B: 00:06:00

Chilling a bottle, sure.

Speaker A: 00:06:01

No, I think it was for chilling his, either for chilling water, or for chilling tea, maybe, like, because they're into iced tea. I think it was something like that. Or I don't know. I mean, whatever. But I feel like you missed the key element there.

Speaker B: 00:06:15

Well, what was it for? I think I probably knew that in the story at the time. I've just forgotten that. So something a bit mundane. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker D: 00:06:22

But yeah, unexplained makes it weirder. Right? I think in terms of, you know, thinking about if there's no explainable reason for something happening... Let's say you wanted it for water. Simple as that. Yeah, okay. Less weird. But if somebody was ordering a bucket of water every day, a bucket of ice every day, and nobody knew what it was for, that becomes weirder, I think, because of the unexplained aspect of it. It's like, you know, one of the reasons the balloons are... If everybody knew exactly what the balloons were for, oh, the Chinese send spy balloons over. Less weird. But where it's like, we think they're spy balloons, but maybe there's something else going on here. That becomes more weird, I think.

Speaker A: 00:07:06

Chris, take it somewhere.

Speaker D: 00:07:07

Well, I was just going to say, you know, so we sort of talked a little bit about responses. And I think when you think of lots of those things that Nick was mentioning there, I think one of the things that characterizes them is the public reaction to them. And I just want to talk a little bit about Stanley Cohen, the South African criminologist who kind of developed the theory of moral panic. And, you know, in all of those cases, especially this recent one of the balloons, there is an element of moral panic about them. And his definition of moral panic was a condition, an episode, in this case, an episode, a person or group of persons, the killer clowns, that emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests in some ways. And he gave the sort of the seminal example of the Mods and Rockers as a sort of case study where, you know, on the first sort of day of them sort of meeting up, there were mild acts of vandalism and so on. You mean the Battle of Brighton Beach? Battle of Brighton Beach. Exactly. And over time, the press, there was a sort of vicious cycle of exaggeration of the tensions and the activities and then actually that inflaming tension so that they became sort of more real. But the point is, you know, broader society is assessing a threat as being well beyond its actual sort of concern to, you know, that it would be rationally sensible to be concerned by. And he sort of talks about the idea that, in order to generate this idea of moral panic, one of the reasons it occurs is because you get this symbiotic relationship between or sort of mutual interest between the media, politicians and sort of law enforcement type activities, and that it's all in their interests to make this thing seem very, very threatening. And he says, you know, the sort of progression of this is that you get this kind of focused attention on the actual threat itself and you get this developing gap between the concern and the actual threat. And then the cycle itself, you know, very similar echoes Nick's pattern of weird, you know, how weird news is received, that you get this sort of discovery of the threat, then you get kind of public hysteria about the threat, then you get punitive legislation or action, you know, shooting balloons down or bringing in laws to stop rave parties or whatever it might be. And then a loss of interest and perhaps a ruin of the actions that were taken at the time. So I think it's interesting to sort of think, you know, that's a very common reaction to these kinds of weird, you know, bits of bits of weird news that lots of those examples Nick gave are things that society has panicked about.

Speaker B: 00:10:34

What's the etymology behind the word weird? It sounds quite German. Come from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning fate, I think. Like the Weird Sisters in Macbeth. I think it's your weird is your fate. So it's connoted with predestination and the occult, I think. Okay, so I've got a kind of general theory of weirdness. And it ties together some of the stuff we've been talking about really. So a weird phenomenon has, first of all, to be improbable. The actual phenomenon has to be improbable. And I think that's true. So improbability is important because things that are relatively frequent, even though each individual thing might be a bit unexplained. You know, like we don't necessarily know who left that bit of rubbish outside on the street. But that's not weird. It's unexplained. But it's the phenomenon isn't unusual. So it's not that doesn't count. That's first off improbable sort of phenomenon. Something rare has to happen. But that's not enough. So we also have to have a lack of an explanation for it. Right. And this is that's really important, or at least some uncertainty about what the correct explanation for it is. But I think the last piece of the Holy Trinity of weirdness is that some of those explanations might turn out to be very significant for us. Right. So so it's where we have an unexplained phenomenon that unusual phenomenon that might indicate some new threat or development about which we should be concerned. Yeah. So that's my that's my three part theory of weirdness, improbable, unexplained, important. Right. So I've I've sort of I've sort of put together some some kind of list of of of things that are, you know, it might fall into that category. So this is a kind of list of weird phenomena. Right. That well, there's there's first of all, are they real? That's the first thing. I mean, obviously, I've assumed in my three part theory of weirdness that the news has to be true. So you could say actually, really, it's a four part theory, because because being being true is the first part, because actually a lot of weird phenomena turn out not even like the phenomenon itself turns out not to have happened. But so things that have various times been been reported that fall into different or make different grades of weirdness, according to my schema. Right. So but I've actually started with a list of things I think are fake, right? Things that don't actually happen. Okay. Spontaneous human combustion, out of place artifacts. That's when people find, you know, a 20th century transistor inside a million year old rock. Yeah, it does happen. Teleportation, levitation, poltergeists and associated phenomena, apparitions, ghosts and things. Weeping statues. Stigmata. That's when people get the marks of Christ. Cryptozoological findings. That's things like the Yeti and Bigfoot. Messiahs, the appearance of a new Messiah. And yeah, so that's that's my list of things which where the phenomena itself like it probably probably isn't the Messiah. He's probably a very naughty boy. So then we've got to the thing, then we get to things which are real and improbable, but I think are explained, right? Already have an explanation. And that would include crop circles. Now, if you were alive during the 90s, you probably remember crop circles. They were massive news. And for a long time, no one had a clue what was causing them. They were real. Right. They were definitely crop circles. And and the reason that was weird was because people felt that there was no way a human could have done it. And that therefore the only explanation we can have unusual weather phenomena or aliens. Yeah. Right. Out of place animals. That's when you get like a Jaguar or Dartmoor and that kind of thing. The the the 14s call those ABCs alien big cats. But usually they are actually just a real a real big cat that's escaped from a zoo or something. So obviously unexplained flying objects or aerial phenomena is that is a slightly more modern term. They're real. They're probably not aliens. They're probably explained by things we already understand. And and then but then the just in terms of these weird phenomena, the things that are real and I think still unexplained and therefore really interesting. Ball lightning, ball lightning, ball lightning. It's moderately well attested that people have observed floating balls of lightning that move slowly around. Right. Okay. Are they are they big or small or where they're apparently about the size of a football in a storm? No. Yeah. Well, no one really knows because there's no proper there's no real video and they kind of high up in the air or like they float around perhaps at head height. Right. So this could be one behind Chris, as it were. Yeah. Okay. Animal rain, falls of fish and yeah. Okay. It's strange, unaccountable noises like, you know, the great Dorset shear hum and stuff. Well, yes. Yeah. I mean, there's towns where there's weird hums and obviously like unexplained disappearances, things like, you know, what happened to Lord Lucan? I mean, they're, as I said, like still unexplained. They're improbable, still unexplained. And then incidents of mass hysteria as well, which which while we have observed them and they're definitely real, we don't necessarily know why they happen. So anyway, that is a list of common categories of weird thing that you hear about. And I'll pop them into those those categories. But but yeah, so so I think for me, the most interesting weird bits, weird things are the things that meet all of those criteria. So so real, right? That's a hard thing to get to. Often the thing that is being reported isn't real, but also unexplained and important. So I think the Chinese weather balloon meets those criteria, actually.

Speaker A: 00:17:02

Okay, just to say, it feels to me like weirdness is a bit like a joke, which is if you explain it, it suddenly ceases to be funny. And I'm disappointed. I'm feeling a bit, you know, cast down about this because everyone likes weird stuff, right? But as we're explaining this, it's just as we unpick it, everything feels less weird and less fun.

Speaker B: 00:17:26

Well, I've got a psychological theory about that, which we'll get onto.

Speaker A: 00:17:29

Because I'm not having fun anymore. I was having fun at the beginning, but you know, it is, isn't it? So let's have Chris or Jordan pick up. And then you go back to this theory you were talking about. Yeah, I was just gonna say those are all the Nick mentioned all

Speaker C: 00:17:43

those weird things. But I guess it's also what you do when you're presented with that those weird bits of news, like how do you how do you process them? And what do you make of them? And I think and I think one aspect of that is that the news tends to exaggerate trends that may not reflect reality, probably to sell more news. So like, you know, this, this could lead us to, you know, fear things that probably won't kill us like a nuclear power plant, and things and not fear things that probably will kill us like a coal fired power station or something like there's, there's, there's something about the way the news operates, that kind of signals to us whether something is weird or not, and then how how we should perceive it, it's sort of the news tangles our perception of the world, which, which then leads us to kind of make judgments about

Speaker D: 00:18:49

what's weird and what's not. That's, that's right. And just sort of kind of picking up on that. There's, there's a study by or not study, I suppose, a treatise by a an academic from SOAS, a guy called Mark Neal, which was about preparedness for the discovery of an alien life, right. And, and one of the points he makes up front is that, like, it's not ridiculous to study this, this thing, right? It's, it's, it's, you know, while, while there might be elements of improbability about our, you know, alien life being discovered in our lifetime is not, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that there is alien life. In fact, most, you know, most sort of people suggest that there probably is alien life somewhere in the universe. And that, you know, it might be within touch, not touching distance, but it might be within observability distance of us at some point. And, and he says, and yet, people interested in the possibility of, of alien life are generally marginalized and viewed as cranks and, and weirdos, you know, even if they're sort of pursuing this in a relatively rational, rational way. But he looks at the, the sort of the perceived, his angle is, he's sort of in a kind of finance and management kind of faculty. But his angle is disaster study, right? And he's sort of saying, well, this is a, you know, a very high impact, but low probability event, just like, you know, other things that we, we become prepared for, albeit it's unprecedented, but, and he looks at five scenarios that, that are possible and sort of thinks a little bit about what the disaster, you know, kind of responses might need to be, not in detail, but in a high level.

Speaker B: 00:20:50

Right, go on, hit us with them and we'll decide what we should do.

Speaker D: 00:20:52

So that there is no life, right? So that's the, the, you know, the boring sort of status. But it turns out that's the scariest thing of all. Right. That there is life, but it is unintelligent life. You know, it's sort of bacteria or, you know, sort of not very sophisticated organisms. That there is intelligent life, but it is no more technologically advanced than us. So, so it is, it is immobile, right? But it is communicative. And so we receive some signals from this, this life form. But, but, you know, we know we're not going to meet up with them anytime soon.

Speaker B: 00:21:32

Are they being generally friendly or are they?

Speaker D: 00:21:35

Well, at this stage, yeah, he talks about that they are intelligent, but more technologically advanced than us. And that, and then the last one is that they have already been here and are already, or are already here. And so he sort of talks about, you know, kind of things that, that you might need to think about. And, you know, in the event that it's unintelligent life, you know, the main sort of threats are some sort of potential incursion into our ecosystem. If we discovered it somewhere, we, you know, actually, if it was within our solar system, for example, and we looked under a rock and there it was, and we brought back samples and it turns out that was not a good thing to do for some reason. In the event that it's intelligent life, but not more technologically advanced than us, he talks about sort of some of the sociocultural risks, like, basically, they're not going to come here and impact us in any way. But we sort of freak out as a result of this in some way, or, you know, societal. Sadly, I feel like it will be on page,

Speaker B: 00:22:38

page seven by the end of the week, you know? Yeah, I think. Suddenly discovered aliens are great. No, it's really exciting for a day or two and then we'll go back to normal.

Speaker D: 00:22:48

I mean, is it what's the South African film District? District nine. Yeah, District nine, where effectively, you know, everybody's amazed and then eventually they just become a nuisance to everybody. I think you're probably right. Yeah. Intelligent, but more tech advanced. That's that's the whole sort of war of the worlds kind of situation, you know, we actually get getting invaded or, you know, actually they so they're hostile to us or they turn up and, you know, bring smallpox with them, you know, or something. And he more or less dismisses the idea that they've already been here or are already here. But effectively, the problem there were that to be the case would be a bit like finding out you were adopted. You know, it's that sort of like, oh, my God, you know, that sort of collapse of your belief system and so on. So a lot of the impacts are not are not actually about what would physically happen to us. It's about our response, which I think comes back to Jordan's point. Also, it's got me wondering about, you know,

Speaker A: 00:23:54

if it's a bit of a coin flip or not as to whether you get the Vulcans turning up or the Klingons.

Speaker B: 00:24:00

So anyway, yeah. Is it the aliens from Aliens or is it the ETs because they're really cute and

Speaker A: 00:24:08

Yeah, right. Exactly. Now, look, Nick, go for it. I don't want to hear a point from you. And then we

Speaker B: 00:24:12

kind of got to finish things off. Yeah. So I suppose, you know, all the things we've talked about, I just want to probably make the point that the reason we find it so interesting, why weird things are interesting, is because we are hardwired to want to find explanations for things. Right. And particularly, I want to say this is rational, rational for us to focus on weird things, because, you know, because they can be they might be important. They demand an explanation. They could be a threat. We've evolved to want to explain things that are fall into that category. So I guess the other half of the kind of 40 and mentality is looking for those explanations. And I think this is where, you know, working out what I guess you have a bunch of, let's say, very low probability explanations that would be absolutely groundbreaking, e.g. aliens. And then you have the mundane explanations for things. So just looking at the looking at the kind of weird explanations, which, you know, were we ever to get confirmation of this for a given phenomenon would be really big news. Things like, you know, well, all conspiracy theories, you know, posit a great, a very important kind of potential threat that there is some conspiracy of something happening that it is aliens in some disposition or other. That is the result of magic or religion. Right. So if that was true, if it was true, that something can only be explained because of magic or something that would have a massive impact on our scientific worldview. And into that, I'd say eschatology is a sign of the end of time. Is it is it the work of ancient civilizations? Again, that would be groundbreaking if it were to turn out that, you know, ancient civilizations were far more technologically advanced than we thought. Or is it the result of just some weird science thing like is the Earth flat? Is perpetual motion possible? You know, and sometimes those really weird scientific theories turn out to be true, like quantum quantum mechanics. And of course, very mundane explanations are that, well, first of all, that it has a scientific explanation and we know what it is, but also that it's just a coincidence, that it's a hoax, that it's some sort of cock up. So often that the argument that the extra bit of weirdness, which you often get with weird phenomena, is that people often it will look a little bit like it's an explanation for the explanation itself falls into one of the weird explanation categories. So so, yeah, that's that. I think that's sort of why you get weirdness tied together. You get an interest in weird phenomena tied together with an interest in weird explanations. But I suppose all I perhaps want to round off before I get on to some examples of how you can sort of think about this is that what it implies is that things don't stay weird forever. Weirdness is only ever a temporary state that a phenomena can be in because once it is explained, even if it's caused you to have to radically revise your worldview. So, yeah. And

Speaker D: 00:27:11

I've got I've got a few examples of that. Just before you go into that, something you said there made me made me think about theoretical physics. You mentioned you mentioned, you know, scientific theories and so on. But if you look at where a lot of theoretical physics sort of bounces around, it is intuitively very weird. You know, I find I find relativity weird and I find quantum physics even weirder, the concepts within it. And the more sort of, you know, in popular science books, the more I read about sort of theoretical physics, the weirder it gets, you know, the progression of time. What is the nature of time? And I wonder whether that whole community is basically just a set of cranks who are chasing chasing weirdness, you know, they're marking each other's homework or marking each other's homework. But but but, you know, obviously, very useful things come out of that, which kind of speaks to your point of there being some broader utility of chasing something that looks weird, but not obviously useful to you. And then, you know, hey, presto, suddenly you've got quantum computers or something. Yeah, Nick. Yeah. So I've

Speaker B: 00:28:31

got some examples of things that were weird. And now we don't think of as weird because we've explained them and they're not. So the the existence of rhinoceroses, blue whales and giant squids. I think they're really weird if you think about it. Rhinoceroses are basically unicorns. I still think giant squids are weird. Blue whales are the biggest animals ever to have lived. I mean, they're all things that if you if you were in the 15th century and someone said, did you know this animal as big as a church, people would go, don't be silly talking fibs. But, you know, we totally accept them now. The Litvinenko and Salisbury poisonings. Yeah. Super weird. Totally explained by Russian naughtiness. The shrinking Arctic ice and heating up of the world. Preposterous. Yeah, possible. Yeah, but but exactly. But like, actually, that's pretty major and pretty weird. But I think we all agree on the explanation. The the the balloons, of course, we've discussed, you know, again, sort of now they're kind of explained and we've fitted it into an understanding and a narrative, perhaps less weird. And then, of course, the Godzilla egg. We all know about the Godzilla egg, don't we? A big ball was washed up somewhere in Japan. Oh, yes. Yeah. As yet, I think unexplained. But so you go. So there's a little bit of weirdness still still there. But yeah, I guess that's so I suppose my I've got a little guide to how to interpret weird news to tell you whether to be hysterical or not. Okay. And it's basically, first of all, is the data real or fake? If it's if it's improbable, your presumption should be it's fake unless you've got really good evidence for it. Right. So start with that. Is it actually a new phenomenon? Could just be one of these, you know, like a moral panic could be just something where we're saying something new has happened. But actually, this thing has happened lots of times before, like the balloons. Turns out there's actually been loads of these balloons. Is it genuinely unexplained? Right? Is it a coincidence? Is it a hoax? Is it explicable through, you know, scientific knowledge already? And finally, does it significantly raise the possibility of an explanation? That's that's extremely significant, if true. If all those are true, panic time. However, unfortunately, I think most of the time, well, nearly all the time. The answer is no, it doesn't meet all those criteria. But but there we are. There's my guide to how to how to deal with weird news.

Speaker A: 00:31:02

Yeah. We answered the question. We investigated the question. I prefer just the question, a different question. Well, what's weird? Yeah. Because when you narrow it down to news, you

Speaker D: 00:31:14

have to, you know, we covered it. Yeah, we did. We did. But yeah, a little bit like your bucket of ice story. I've got a weird story about when I worked for a government agency, which I find very weird. And I still can't get my head around it. But there was the Phantom Pooher. Oh, God. Okay. So in the office I worked in, there was there was somebody and a Pooh was found in the office. Like on a desk? No, no, on the floor in the morning by a cleaner. And this happened on a number of occasions, like, let's say, you know, half a dozen occasions or

Speaker B: 00:31:57

something. Can we call them the Phantom Pooher of Whitehall? The Phantom Pooher. Well, this was

Speaker D: 00:32:02

out of London office. And I just find that super, super weird. Still unexplained. Still unexplained. Nobody, nobody caught. No CCTV. Yeah, exactly. And someone out there knows the answer. I know. Yeah, we need someone. They're staring you a bit here, Chris, if you crack. Mulder and Scully on

Speaker A: 00:32:23

the case. Yeah. That's kind of, I wanted to ask a question. We don't have time, really, but that's kind of preempted it. I feel slightly, yeah, not. Yeah. It's because it's weird, Fraser. It's unresolved. It's thrown in. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'll stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg, Nick Hare and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.