February 10, 2011 • 32 mins
Will the hopeless romantics of the future fall in love with robots? In this episode, Robert and Julie explore the line between love and hate -- and what a world of beautiful robots may mean for the future. Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and we
are in the week of Valentine's right now. We're just
completely amished in the Valentine's um season, with red and
(00:25):
pink everywhere, hideous flowers in hideously priced flowers popping up
everywhere in fact the podcast. But this is full of balloons,
red balloons. Yes, it's really annoying. Who left these here?
Tex stuff? Probably love birds. So that's the thing about Valentine's.
It brings varying connotations. Uh, you know, it's a lot
(00:48):
of people are really positive about it. It's a it's
a bright, happy, fun time full of love. Other people
may legitimately hate it, and uh, it's it's and so.
And then of course you have the saying about how
there's a thin line between love and hate, right, that's right,
and uh and then while I've also seen people that
get on the defensive about that, and it's like there's
(01:08):
no thin line, there's the enormous canyon between love and hate.
And uh, I don't know, but what do we have
some information for you. So today we're we're gonna serve
up a little bit of love, a little bit of hate,
and some robots. Yeah yeah, so if the lover hate
didn't have you, you know, stick around for the robots
or come for the love and the hate, stay for
(01:29):
the robot. That's right, That's what I say. That's your motto.
So there's something called lammerence. Have you heard about this before?
I actually had not heard of about this. I've I'm
not really a you know, even when Valentine's is around,
I'm not super you know, into it. So I have
to I hadn't really like read a lot about the
science of love well, and I didn't realize that that
(01:50):
there's a term for when you are literally love sick. Yeah,
like this is the moment, Like, you know, picture any
any movie, any romantic comedy or whatever. John Cuzak that
the boom box. Yeah, well, I'm thinking specifically, if you
know where the guy looks up and he sees the
woman of his dreams and then the music starts playing.
That works. Yeah, it's like, but what's happening is limerits right, right,
(02:14):
that person is connecting with a sort of near obsessive
romantic love in his or her head, and there's all
sorts of dopamine and uh VA's oppressing and all sorts
of good like oxytocin the field. Good hormones are raging. Yes,
because and and then and there the judgment part of
their brain is kind of shutting down a little bit. Right.
(02:37):
But but okay, so how do we know this? Well,
we can hook love birds up to an m r I, Right,
I mean, what else should we do but hook love
birds up what's going on in that love sick head
of their all? Right, So you know that the cool
thing about the fm R I is that it can
measure basically the blood flow to certain regions of the brain. Right.
And when we look at at the images off and
(03:00):
you'll see like bright colors and all. And that's just
marking where where blood is moving around and where neural
activity is taking place. Right. So, someone, so if someone's
eating chocolate, or they're playing pac Man, or they just
they want a lot of money, or they're in love,
we see the reward center of their brains start to
light up like a pinball machine. Yeah, So that's how
we know when you're in limerince that do doesn't sound sexy.
(03:23):
It doesn't I'm in Limerince Happy Limrince day. Yeah, it
doesn't work. So the thing I thought was really interesting
about this too is that um, according to an author
of Anatomy of Love, Dr Helen Fisher, that when you
are going through these changes, the reason I would yeah
(03:45):
the love doctor, the limerence doctor, Dr Helen Fisher. Um.
She basically says that when you're heartbroken, hormones hormones can
change again and you get another dopamine boasts boost. Excuse me,
so you know when you first fall in love and
you get that dopamine boost, um, do you sometimes you know,
for some people who have experienced this sport, do you
sometimes have a hard time eating? You're not really hungry.
(04:06):
That's the hormones changing. So the same thing occurs when
you have a breakup or heartache, that that dopamine boost
is happening again and you don't feel like eating. So
you could have like one person would be like, oh,
I'm so in love, I forgot to eat lunch today,
and the other person's like, like, my girlfriend just broke
up with me, I forgot to eat lunch to day. Yeah,
that's the same thing going on, right right, in the
(04:27):
break room right now. So you had talked about the
thin line between love and hate. Yeah, there's an interesting
study from the University College London where they actually you
actually had this one researcher, I believe his name was.
It is Sameer Zeki, smeer Zeki. So Zeke has has
co workers, colleagues, and he's pretty sure that one of
(04:49):
them hates him. Right, Yeah, He's like, this dude just
hates me. What's going on? He seems to just hate me?
And then he starts looking into a little moment. He's like, like,
you know, and I think we've all had this with
with various people. We like, I think this guy hates everybody. Right,
he realizes it's not just him, Like, this guy's irrational,
this guy is miserable, and he's done everything he Kenny's
tried to befriend, this guy has been nice to him,
(05:09):
he's whatever, and this this guy still has hatred toward him.
But being a scientist, the the answer is, let's scan it.
Let's figure out what's going on. Yes, let's nail this down.
Let's figure out this hate thing. And the interesting thing
about this is that um sameer Ziki and Andrea's Bartol's
they conducted a previous study about love UM and they
(05:30):
used f M R I of course, and they scanned
the brains the seventeen volunteers who described themselves as truly
and madly in love. And so during the scans, each
of them was shown pictures of their loved ones and
then other pictures of neutral people. And so that's how
they could figure out that this part of the brain
lights up when someone is in love, right, So that
(05:52):
is that that was sort of the the impetus for
Zeki saying, okay, we know where love is, let's find
out about this hate and why my colleague hates. So yeah,
so they they they ended up doing the same thing
with with with some other test subjects where they they
showed them pictures of people they hate it right, And
what they found was that the all right, when when
someone when you're doing the love experiment, like people would
(06:14):
see someone they love and the love circuit with one
light up the terminology and um that they were using
the circuit. And then but then in this other experiment,
people would see someone they hate, the hate circuit would
would light up. But the hate circuit in the love
circuit the same area, right, so the same neural circuit. Yeah,
so I'm on one level there you go. I mean
(06:34):
that's the love and hate are are sharing some of
the same neural architecture, right, And it turns out that
these are two specific brain regions, right, it's the putaman
and the insular cortex. Yeah. The putaman is used to
prepare the body for movements. So to put it in
like real caveman terms, it would be like, oh, there's
a pretty girl, I'll go get her, and then the
(06:56):
other one is there's my enemy, I will go clube.
I guess you might have the caveman would stare typically
club either, right, he would just there would be more
bludgeoning involved with the enemy and more of a loving
a love tap with the cudgel on the head of
the intended naming right exactly hopefully, and then the and
then of course you could also say that this is
(07:17):
also like oh you would you would run to the
pudman is saying, who I love that person, I'm going
to run to help them and keep them from falling
off that cliff, whereas with the enemy would be like
like always totally teetering on the edge of that Cliff,
I better give him a good kick. So that's the pudman.
And then there's again the insula, which is associated with
feelings of distress and jealousy. Right again, that would for
(07:40):
both situations, right right, Yeah, it's like, oh that dude
so successful, I hate him? Or uh you know, or
yeah I'm jealous. Yeah, do you love pac Man more
than me? Why are you playing it so much? You know?
The thing I think is really interesting about the study
is that Zeke was kind of disappointing because he thought
that the that the prefrontal cortex, where the seat of
(08:02):
judgment is and reasoning, he thought that that was going
to be deactivated a bit like it is with love
and hate. And his idea was that, you know, if
it's an irrational hatred, therefore you know someone's uh faculties
should be a little bit dimmed. Right, But it's the reverse,
I mean, were not the reverse. But it's more a
situation where when you're when you're in love, the judgment
(08:24):
falls off. But love is love is blind right when
you're in love, right, because you're you're reasoning dems. But
right when when you're hating, apparently you still have the
ability to think analytically, and of course his idea is like, Okay,
well that means that maybe because the pudamin is also
um in action here, that the two would would allow
(08:45):
someone to attack another person. Yeah, essentially. Yeah, I mean
it's kind of like if you see, if there's somebody
like or even love and they have kind of goofy hair,
you're probably gonna let it go or not think about it, right,
but if you red flag, Yeah, I mean, goofy hair
is fun. But if you hate somebody and they have
goofy hair, you'd be like, you look at his hair
con Brian every night. So I don't hate him. I
(09:07):
actually like him quite a bit. Um So Yeah, So
that that's kind of covers that whole like thin line
between love and hate. Definitely got the same circuits going
on there. And then there's this other question that's recently
cropped up, and it's that can you really fall in
love and a fifth of a second love at first sight?
Right right staring out in the crowd, seeing the woman
(09:29):
or man of your dreams standing over there, and just
and then you know, the music off string quartet rises.
There's a study by Syracuse University professor Sephanie ortigue, and
she determined that falling in love has the same eufork
feeling as using cocaine, but also that affects intellectual areas
(09:49):
of the brain, which is interesting. It is essentially running
more blood to those areas dealing with mental representations, metaphors,
and body image, and that it can also take less
than a fifth of a second love. Now, let let
me break down the cocaine thing for a second. For
anyone to get down, I will break it down. And
I got that. I grabbed this data from from our
excellent article by Stephanie Watson on how stuff works called
(10:12):
how crack Cocaine works. All right, crack cocaine you smoke,
so it gives the brain much faster than inhaled powder cocaine.
All right, So crack cocaine gets the brain and creates
a high within ten to fifteen seconds. Normal cocaine is
ten to fifteen minutes um. And then the effects can
last anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. And then you
(10:34):
have to do more cocaine because it you know, it
kind of sucks. So don't do drugs. Do more love, Yeah,
because love is We're gonna explore, like you fall in
love like that stuff's gonna last fifteen months at least,
you know, cocaine fifteen minutes and then you know, it's
just that's exactly right. That's that's the whole limbrance is
(10:55):
what the shelf life is fifteen months for limrance kind
of love. Yeah, love in one hand cocaine and the
other one you're just going to do you for for
several months either you're just gonna be keeping doing cocaine
over and over again. So I think love is the
obvious winner here. Yeah, they really need to rethink their
p s a s for for anti drug commercial saying
like they need to rethink the cocaine ad campaign that
(11:16):
they're not really getting it out. Yeah, those cocaine marketing
people are really asleep at the wheel. Um. But that
study is interesting because it really does sort of indicate
that it's the that the sort of passionate love is
is again it's centered in the reward center, whereas like
an eternal love for more long term love is found
(11:37):
in the middle brain and supposedly like a mother for
a child or or you know, or a child for
a parent, right, yeah, or a copy I love to us,
And that's sort of like a hasn't there's a different
types of love that's like a like a church thing,
right where I've seen I've seen church programs that are Yeah,
there's some there. I think there are some that use
(11:59):
that term. But I think it's one of like five
different kinds of groovy loves you can have. Anytime I
year a gup a love or at likes used to
I would I would think of Guppy's in love, you know,
so I think a little a little like you know,
Salamander has creatures falling in love, guffies in love. All right,
(12:23):
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
But supposedly they're supposed to have a follow up study
about the fifth of a second thing because that's sort
of interesting, like you know, fifth of a second you
can uh, you know, how do how do they know?
Because that's the specifics weren't necessarily available. Well, I guess
(12:44):
you'd have to hook machinery up to like the kind
of person who just falls in and out of love
a lot, like you know, kind of like a Don
Draper for Madman type, you know. Yeah, okay, so they
had to have like a high limbrance yeah quality well
or or at least I'm not sure how it would
be the kind of person who would can suitably fall
in love and fall in love because because if you
have high limeriance, aren't you more inclined to fall in
(13:06):
love like once and stay in love? For saying DeAndre
for shouldn't we just say lust? Yeah? Okay, he's become
the icon of stupid man lust yeah yeah yeah, And
you know a couple of ladies have I think perhaps
listed after him. Um. But then that brings me to
the question about whether or not we could actually have
like a true love, true love, true love like no, yeah, yeah,
(13:34):
like I don't know, like a completely um unmitigated love.
Could you have that limbrince your entire life? Right if
it weren't a lust limerence, if it was a pure love.
So previous research has laid out the fracture points in
a relationship to be twelve to fifteen months, So BEINGO,
there's there's your you're saying like love can in many
(13:57):
studies last fifteen months, right, and then you've got three
is another sort of breaking point. And then the seven
year itch that we've all heard about. And I think
one thing that or at least my take on this
is that when when you're saying love ends after fifteen months,
we're not saying like, oh what am I doing here?
It's like waking up for a dream and realizing you're
you're in this life you want. You know, it's this
(14:19):
this chemical thing that maybe it definitely becomes something else.
You know, well, yeah, you're the chemical sort of calibrate
and they'd have to write, I suppose, yeah. I think
it's like, it's pretty obvious. This is we're kind of
stating an obvious fact here, But love really powerful. Oh
I just fell in love that that tends to calm
down and become something more mature over time, right, Like,
(14:39):
can you imagine having that horrible, obsessive teenager e kind
of love applied in your adult relationships? Because because general,
you know, love is great, and I love it when
my friends are in love. But but man, it's kind
of tough to be around them if they're they've only
like if they're you know, they've only been in love
with somebody for like, you know, a month or so, yeah,
(15:00):
and they're like, wow, you guys really are not over
this yet. Just like take it down a notch. Wow,
you really drove past the house like fifty times again
this evening making out of my living room. What's going on? Stop? Yeah? Yeah?
Um So, researchers from Stony Brook, you in New York,
compared the longtime couple's brains a group of longtime couple
(15:23):
springs to newly minted in love couples, and they found
that one in ten of the long time couples there
were twenty of them exhibited the same chemical reactions when
shown photographs of their loved ones as people commonly do
in the early stages of relationship. This limitans that we're
talking about. They're kind of super lovers. They call them
swans because they meet for life. Right. Yeah, So it's
(15:45):
it's interesting because, um again you've got that the fading
point fifteen months um in the testosterone levels actually fade
as the Hornburger limit. I think, no kidding, my goodness,
yeah yeah, I just blushed and I have no idea why. Um,
but their testotering levels are fading back to normal, right,
(16:05):
and they still have like those shots of oxytocin um
to create a feeling of attachment, because that's that's really
what this spoils down to. But they don't have the
wild love. So the feelings of obsession in theory, they
shouldn't survive, right, they shouldn't be these couples shouldn't be
having the same sort of reaction, chemical reaction as he's
untually minted. It's kind of like if you're going to
(16:26):
perform surgery on somebody you want, you know, you may
numb them up or not surgery. Let's say a dental procedure.
You may numb them up to perform this quick, fairly,
you know, simple procedure. But then you want that numbness
to wear off so they can feeling again and actually
use their mouth like a normal person. But uh, but
it's but it's like the when the love lingers, when
the limericks remain so intense for so long, it's like,
(16:48):
to a certain extence, kind of outlived its usefulness. Like
it's more about like, let's let's get this, uh, let's
get this relationship started. Let's go let's get everything sealed
up and ready. It's like, you know, let's hire a
hundred guys to start building this this this house, and
then we'll split the work crew down to fifty to
get the real work done, right, right, So, but then
the researchers were kind of like, well, so, what why
(17:09):
is it that they have this chemical reaction? And and
they're not like sitting here like frenching on the waiting
room couch as we're doing this study, Like why are they?
You know, they they seem to be these longtime couples
and love with each other, but they're not like this
other group that's they're all french ing on the couch.
But I just made all that up. But you know
what I'm saying, they're trying to figure out why why
their brains are reacting this way. So it's kind of
(17:31):
like it's the difference between saying like a really old
couple and that they're still in love and going ah,
and then a really old couple that was still in
love and going yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. And so they
said in there, in sort of I think clinical terms,
they said that that sort of romantic love was able
to mature into intensive companionship and sexual liveliness. So the
(17:52):
Swans they could control themselves. I suppose that's that's the
mature part of it. Yeah, I hope. Yeah, they're not
just completely out of control out there. Okay, I'm imagining
that they're not their brains are still letting up because
they truly and madly still love each other. The the
key here, I'm guessing is that Swans need to find Swans,
(18:13):
and and that would seem to like, how do you
do You can't really like put put that out there
and be like, I'm a person that will you know,
fall in love with you and stay in love with
you forever. I just need somebody else who's exactly the
same as me, because it seems like you're going to
get a lot of people who are just just like,
oh that sounds who doesn't want to fall in love
with somebody who's gonna love you back forever and be
like powerfully in love with you, you you know? Is this
your your dating website idea? Yeah, Like if the Swans
(18:36):
had their own dating site, is that I feel like
people would abuse that. Yeah, they would. They would claim
to be a Swan and not be a Swan unless
the thing is that you had mandatory like brain scans,
because I believe that actually, to go back to the
hate Circuit researcher, that was one of the possible uses
they were talking about. It's like being able to have
the the evidence admissible in court so that it's like, hey,
(18:59):
I think so and so murdered. Uh, um, Dave here
because uh he hates him. Let's test him and cev
he hates and show him a picture. Oh red light
lit up. That means he hates it and that he
totally hates him. I like this idea. It's like a
like a photo booth for love, right, except for you're
getting your brain scanned. Yeah, well, kind of like they
all like they have those uh those old contraptions where
(19:20):
you like the love tester where you like squeeze a
joystick and then it lights up to show how how
much you love. It would be kind of having like
having a scientifically accurate one of those. And then every
little like you're getting people getting a fight with their
spouse or something and they're like, do you still love me?
And it was like, yeah, of course, prove it. We're
going down to these shownees where they have that love
(19:42):
love tester up and we're gonna we're gonna test this. Yeah,
and think about I mean, Larry King could have really
you've been helped out by this. I think, Yeah, I'm
not up enough of my Larry King lore. Oh he's
he's sort of like the Elizabeth Taylor of the world. Yeah,
he just keeps getting married and married over again. But
maybe it doesn't Maybe he's not really he doesn't care
about that that reward center lighting up in his partner's brain. Okay,
(20:04):
so you thinking it would have this technology would have
helped Larry King find merited out a true mate for him?
Or is it? Or is the reverse? I mean, I
don't know enough about him. Is it a situation where
the rest of the world needed this device to protect
them from Larry King? That may very well be actually
the answer right there. Um. Yeah, so I like that.
(20:26):
I'm liking this idea of the sort of photo booth
scan that couples can just duck into and then they
can show their children later on, like here's this little
film strip of us in love our brains look at it. Well.
That was another thing they brought up, is that by
under the more we understand love and and ultimately hate
and and heartbreak, that the more that we can we
can sort of rationalize it like that was that was
(20:47):
one of the arguments that did we understand what's happening
chemically in our brains when when we're feeling heartsick, then
then we can we can understand it and and and
make sense a bit more, deal with it better. I
don't know. I I never I never had. I don't
think I had the scientific info when I was going
through heartbreaking situations. No, I didn't need that. I'm not
sure if I'm ready now. I hope I don't. I'm
(21:09):
not put to the test, but I'm saying I'm ready. Yeah,
all right, for now, until I forget everything we researched.
So yeah, so it needs to happen in the next
fifteen minutes because then I flush all this data. All right,
I'm turning my phone off. In that case, let's talk
about robots sex. Yeah, as long as we're talking about
machines and love, then maybe, you know, maybe we don't
need a machine to quantify love between two humans. How
(21:32):
about just love between a human and his or her
sex spot. Okay, So, I mean we've seen some some
of this in the media, right, Like two thousand seven,
David Levi wrote the book Love and Sex with Robots,
and so he posits that in the very near automated
future that will undoubtedly, undoubtably having sex with robots, and
(21:54):
we'll have to developed like robot prostitute sex spots. Yeah.
Well and to a certain extent, we you know, we
definitely already have this technology it comes to fruition. Do
not do an image search on any of this. But
but there there are these things called real dolls, which
are basically dolls. They're human looking things, tactile like, they
feel like human flush and one can can can conceivably
(22:18):
um engage with said there are anatomically correct and uh.
And then there this wasn't just in the last year,
but the company A true companion LLC unveiled a prototype
of something called Roxy with three X is. Of course,
at Las Vegas is two thousand ten adults Entertainment expo,
(22:39):
and it basically looks like an inanimate sex doll. And
uh but it allegedly boast enough artificial intelligence and prerecorded
phrases to engage in pillow talk. So yeah, literally creepy.
Do not do an image search for that one either,
because even like the press images for that, I had
to look it up for an article and uh, it's
into my mind creepy. Yeah, and apparently too, you know,
(23:03):
she could be programmed. Um and if you this is
this isn't from an article that I read it says
that she may even per metallic sounding that gets me
hot after you introduce a topic like soccer, so you
know who wants that? I don't know. It's like I'm
just saying, I'm just in terms of why do you
want your robotic partner getting aroused at that that soccer talk?
(23:28):
I mean, that's that's keep that out of the weird situation.
I know, I know. And we're talking nine thousand clams here,
So I mean you know that do you want your
car or do you want your sex spot? Yeah? I
mean I get it. You know, it's it's that sort
of easy way out in relationships. But and this is
where it gets interesting. Um, there is a woman named
(23:51):
Sherry Turkle, and she's a psych professor M I. T.
And she's been studying robots and human interactions since the seventies.
And it turns out that one day she found herself
smitten with their office robot, cogg is his name, hoping
that he would turn his head her way when she spoke,
and was wishing to be around him more than her
actual coworkers. Now, what did cog do? What was his function?
(24:14):
He wasn't like a room by or anything was, I mean,
not anything wrong. I don't want to get all class
sensitive about who in which robot you can follow up.
You're judging the robot that she falls in love. Um,
I think that his I think this was maybe in
the earlier part of UM A I M I T
and so his main function I think was to turn
around and to engage with a human. So if if
(24:34):
I were to be talking, he would turn around the
neck like he was listening to me, and then I
would think, oh, he's he he's listening to me, understands me.
So UM, she's been that Turkle has been a huge
proponent of social social technology. Um. But she now was
kind of looking at the last forty years of her
career and her studies, and she's weaving a cautionary tale
from her field research, which is filled with hundreds of
(24:56):
interviews with children and teenagers and adults and the elderly
and countering tech gadgets and over and over she would
see how even the most basic robotic dog or baby doll,
or even just a shell of a robot could spark
a deep emotional response. Yeah, I think there's no question
that we're good at Like I don't question for a
second that a human could fall in love with a robot.
(25:17):
I mean we can, we can fall in love with
non robotic machine and things, you know, like to be
there's a the had a real doll or like a
stuffed animal. I mean they're even Uh, there's one particularly
delusional misidentification syndrome called syndrome of delusional companions, where you
(25:37):
end up looking to things like maybe it's something that's
some sort of item that you have an association with.
And this was a typical typically seen in like Alzheimer's patients.
But they begin getting they have these comforting associations with
the toy, and then they start experiencing the toy is
a singent thing and they keep then they're triggered associated
(25:58):
behavior so well. And see that's interesting because what Turkle
is basically saying is that that's that's where it becomes
an ethics question um between ai UM developers and the
community at large, because if you're going to keep using
robots in society and eventually they come to you know,
(26:20):
we already have ones that can spend baith elderly person,
right um, and you program them so that they're so
nuanced that they really do have all these different ways
of communicating with human then what, you know, what are
we what sort of what sort of society are we
setting up? And what are we doing with our human
emotions when you're projecting love onto something that can't love back.
(26:44):
And then that brings me to the other question is
is love just a mirage in the first place? Are
we doing that with humans anyway? So it's my concept
of love for one person, is that even my idea
of that person and that love is that even realistic
or concrete? Yeah, it's kind of I think there's a
line in Terry pratchett hog Father where some wizards have
created a computer and and one of the wizards asked
(27:05):
about whether it's, uh, you know, it's actually thinking, and
it's like, no, it just appears to be thinking. And
they're like, oh, it's just like everybody else. Then, you know. So,
I mean, there there comes a point where when when
you when you look at the possibility of robots faking
things that are human, you have to also look inward
at us and say, well, what, how many things, how
many aspects of the human experience are to some extent
(27:27):
or the other of fate. You know, everything from consciousness
to to love to hate. If you get down and
you analyze it enough and you break down, like even
things like free will, um, it gets down, you can
you can. You can break it down to the point
where it where the magic disappears. It's uh, I think
are the way our Scott Baker put it um when
in talking about his book Neuropath, was that things like
(27:50):
consciousness um that they're like, um, it's it's all part
of like a like a coin trick, a magic trick,
and we are the magic. And so if you if
if you explain away the trick, like we're the magic
that disappears. Okay, so love could just be another construct
of the mind. Yeah. So eventually we create machines that
can that are just as good at creating this kind
of magic, and we either buy into it or we
(28:11):
don't buy into it. It's kind of like I feel like,
you know, every day you can sort of make a
choice whether to buy into the magic of life or not.
You know, you're going to see the person next to
you as a as this uh, this spongy organ setting
in a skull and you know, flooded with different chemicals
and you know, plodding through its day thinking it's conscious
or um or do you look at them as something better?
(28:34):
I don't know. Well, I mean when the technological similarity comes,
will we even have a choice? Yeah? Maybe not? Yeah,
I think you will have to love robots. Yeah, but
maybe maybe the maybe the robots will be worth loving.
That's my my hope. I know, I know, I love
that you're optimistic about that. Yeah, not I mean loving
in a not in a sex spot fashion. But who knows,
you know, a few generations from now that may make
(28:56):
total sense and they'll look back at me and but whoa.
That guy was really out of line when he said
a human should not marry machines that have the name
like Roxy with three xes. Yeah, are right? I mean,
like how Judge metal. So I think that's a pretty
good Valentine note to end to everybody. If you, if you,
if you have somebody in your life, great, If not,
(29:18):
just wait for robots. Um, it'll it'll be around eventually.
But or save up for Roxy. Yeah. But anyway, you know,
some some some different ways to think about love and
hate and what they have to do with each other
and what they have to do with whatever you're going
through right now. So, hey, I have some lister mail.
Oh bring them all right, some fairly short ones here,
(29:39):
Gabriel writes in he says, and he's responding to our
Life on the Floor episode. We seem to be pretty
popular with folks. Uh, says Julian Robert. I don't know
who would write a feature Romeo and Juliet in which
the characters live in ancient skyscrapers, but I can tell
you that the skybridge fight scenes would be awesome. A
curse on both your ancient skyscrapers needs work. Have a
(30:01):
better one, Gabriel. So there it is and it works. Yeah,
it's it's taking form. Keep keep thinking of those ideas
of people. Um. Then also Ryan writes in, hey, Robert
and Julie, I was listening to the High Animals podcast,
the one about Junkie's animal kingdom, and I thought you
ought to know that you can't get nicotine lotion. But
I have seen caffeinated body so apparently if you use
(30:23):
it in your morning shower, it will help you wake
up in the morning as a substitute or in addition
to coffee. All Right, I need all the help I
can get. I'll try it out. Uh. Then we also
heard from well another Um, oh it's the same Ryan. Well, well,
we'll save that one for later. Um. But then Joel
writes in, and Joel says, Hey, guys, I'm an avid listener.
(30:45):
I've been meaning to send this reference in for some time,
but I only just got around to it. I was
reminded when you talked about it again at the end
of the Life Aquatic podcast. There's a great book by
an author which tackles exactly the problem of living in
a giant building interconnected with all the amended. In J. G.
Ballard's novel high Rise, a massive building is being filled
with people rich at the top, less well to do
(31:06):
on the bottom, including shopping malls and swimming pools. The
novel takes a creepy turn when floors based on socioeconomic
standing began fighting with each other, even killing people stopped
leaving the building, sabotage elevators, booby trap hallways, and formed
tribal groups. Even cannibalism and the rate begin. Certain figures
become kinglike and rule over different areas of the high rise,
warring with each other. In the end not to totally
(31:28):
wreck it. If you survive the chaos, definitely a great read.
You can watch organized society breakdown within this one massive building. Um,
so that's uh, that's cool. J. G. Ballard is an
author that I have been meaning to read for some time,
and I have I have friends who keep telling me,
you know, you gotta read this, you gotta, you gotta
read his short stories so supposedly really awesome, and that
(31:50):
this is the second time someone's mentioned Skycrite was great
for to me, but I didn't. I didn't even think
about it lining up with everything that I was requesting
at the end of that podcast. Huh, what, I'm gonna
check into it as well. It's cool. So if you
have any anything you want to add to this, uh,
feel free to interact with us on Facebook and Twitter.
We are blow the Mind on both of those. We
update that pretty regularly with neat links to stuff at
(32:13):
how stuff works and elsewhere on the web. And if
you've got any comments about love hate robots, please do
drop us a line at Blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
(32:33):
in the upper right corner of our homepage, The How
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and we
are in the week of Valentine's right now. We're just
completely amished in the Valentine's um season, with red and
(00:25):
pink everywhere, hideous flowers in hideously priced flowers popping up
everywhere in fact the podcast. But this is full of balloons,
red balloons. Yes, it's really annoying. Who left these here?
Tex stuff? Probably love birds. So that's the thing about Valentine's.
It brings varying connotations. Uh, you know, it's a lot
(00:48):
of people are really positive about it. It's a it's
a bright, happy, fun time full of love. Other people
may legitimately hate it, and uh, it's it's and so.
And then of course you have the saying about how
there's a thin line between love and hate, right, that's right,
and uh and then while I've also seen people that
get on the defensive about that, and it's like there's
(01:08):
no thin line, there's the enormous canyon between love and hate.
And uh, I don't know, but what do we have
some information for you. So today we're we're gonna serve
up a little bit of love, a little bit of hate,
and some robots. Yeah yeah, so if the lover hate
didn't have you, you know, stick around for the robots
or come for the love and the hate, stay for
(01:29):
the robot. That's right, That's what I say. That's your motto.
So there's something called lammerence. Have you heard about this before?
I actually had not heard of about this. I've I'm
not really a you know, even when Valentine's is around,
I'm not super you know, into it. So I have
to I hadn't really like read a lot about the
science of love well, and I didn't realize that that
(01:50):
there's a term for when you are literally love sick. Yeah,
like this is the moment, Like, you know, picture any
any movie, any romantic comedy or whatever. John Cuzak that
the boom box. Yeah, well, I'm thinking specifically, if you
know where the guy looks up and he sees the
woman of his dreams and then the music starts playing.
That works. Yeah, it's like, but what's happening is limerits right, right,
(02:14):
that person is connecting with a sort of near obsessive
romantic love in his or her head, and there's all
sorts of dopamine and uh VA's oppressing and all sorts
of good like oxytocin the field. Good hormones are raging. Yes,
because and and then and there the judgment part of
their brain is kind of shutting down a little bit. Right.
(02:37):
But but okay, so how do we know this? Well,
we can hook love birds up to an m r I, Right,
I mean, what else should we do but hook love
birds up what's going on in that love sick head
of their all? Right, So you know that the cool
thing about the fm R I is that it can
measure basically the blood flow to certain regions of the brain. Right.
And when we look at at the images off and
(03:00):
you'll see like bright colors and all. And that's just
marking where where blood is moving around and where neural
activity is taking place. Right. So, someone, so if someone's
eating chocolate, or they're playing pac Man, or they just
they want a lot of money, or they're in love,
we see the reward center of their brains start to
light up like a pinball machine. Yeah, So that's how
we know when you're in limerince that do doesn't sound sexy.
(03:23):
It doesn't I'm in Limerince Happy Limrince day. Yeah, it
doesn't work. So the thing I thought was really interesting
about this too is that um, according to an author
of Anatomy of Love, Dr Helen Fisher, that when you
are going through these changes, the reason I would yeah
(03:45):
the love doctor, the limerence doctor, Dr Helen Fisher. Um.
She basically says that when you're heartbroken, hormones hormones can
change again and you get another dopamine boasts boost. Excuse me,
so you know when you first fall in love and
you get that dopamine boost, um, do you sometimes you know,
for some people who have experienced this sport, do you
sometimes have a hard time eating? You're not really hungry.
(04:06):
That's the hormones changing. So the same thing occurs when
you have a breakup or heartache, that that dopamine boost
is happening again and you don't feel like eating. So
you could have like one person would be like, oh,
I'm so in love, I forgot to eat lunch today,
and the other person's like, like, my girlfriend just broke
up with me, I forgot to eat lunch to day. Yeah,
that's the same thing going on, right right, in the
(04:27):
break room right now. So you had talked about the
thin line between love and hate. Yeah, there's an interesting
study from the University College London where they actually you
actually had this one researcher, I believe his name was.
It is Sameer Zeki, smeer Zeki. So Zeke has has
co workers, colleagues, and he's pretty sure that one of
(04:49):
them hates him. Right, Yeah, He's like, this dude just
hates me. What's going on? He seems to just hate me?
And then he starts looking into a little moment. He's like, like,
you know, and I think we've all had this with
with various people. We like, I think this guy hates everybody. Right,
he realizes it's not just him, Like, this guy's irrational,
this guy is miserable, and he's done everything he Kenny's
tried to befriend, this guy has been nice to him,
(05:09):
he's whatever, and this this guy still has hatred toward him.
But being a scientist, the the answer is, let's scan it.
Let's figure out what's going on. Yes, let's nail this down.
Let's figure out this hate thing. And the interesting thing
about this is that um sameer Ziki and Andrea's Bartol's
they conducted a previous study about love UM and they
(05:30):
used f M R I of course, and they scanned
the brains the seventeen volunteers who described themselves as truly
and madly in love. And so during the scans, each
of them was shown pictures of their loved ones and
then other pictures of neutral people. And so that's how
they could figure out that this part of the brain
lights up when someone is in love, right, So that
(05:52):
is that that was sort of the the impetus for
Zeki saying, okay, we know where love is, let's find
out about this hate and why my colleague hates. So yeah,
so they they they ended up doing the same thing
with with with some other test subjects where they they
showed them pictures of people they hate it right, And
what they found was that the all right, when when
someone when you're doing the love experiment, like people would
(06:14):
see someone they love and the love circuit with one
light up the terminology and um that they were using
the circuit. And then but then in this other experiment,
people would see someone they hate, the hate circuit would
would light up. But the hate circuit in the love
circuit the same area, right, so the same neural circuit. Yeah,
so I'm on one level there you go. I mean
(06:34):
that's the love and hate are are sharing some of
the same neural architecture, right, And it turns out that
these are two specific brain regions, right, it's the putaman
and the insular cortex. Yeah. The putaman is used to
prepare the body for movements. So to put it in
like real caveman terms, it would be like, oh, there's
a pretty girl, I'll go get her, and then the
(06:56):
other one is there's my enemy, I will go clube.
I guess you might have the caveman would stare typically
club either, right, he would just there would be more
bludgeoning involved with the enemy and more of a loving
a love tap with the cudgel on the head of
the intended naming right exactly hopefully, and then the and
then of course you could also say that this is
(07:17):
also like oh you would you would run to the
pudman is saying, who I love that person, I'm going
to run to help them and keep them from falling
off that cliff, whereas with the enemy would be like
like always totally teetering on the edge of that Cliff,
I better give him a good kick. So that's the pudman.
And then there's again the insula, which is associated with
feelings of distress and jealousy. Right again, that would for
(07:40):
both situations, right right, Yeah, it's like, oh that dude
so successful, I hate him? Or uh you know, or
yeah I'm jealous. Yeah, do you love pac Man more
than me? Why are you playing it so much? You know?
The thing I think is really interesting about the study
is that Zeke was kind of disappointing because he thought
that the that the prefrontal cortex, where the seat of
(08:02):
judgment is and reasoning, he thought that that was going
to be deactivated a bit like it is with love
and hate. And his idea was that, you know, if
it's an irrational hatred, therefore you know someone's uh faculties
should be a little bit dimmed. Right, But it's the reverse,
I mean, were not the reverse. But it's more a
situation where when you're when you're in love, the judgment
(08:24):
falls off. But love is love is blind right when
you're in love, right, because you're you're reasoning dems. But
right when when you're hating, apparently you still have the
ability to think analytically, and of course his idea is like, Okay,
well that means that maybe because the pudamin is also
um in action here, that the two would would allow
(08:45):
someone to attack another person. Yeah, essentially. Yeah, I mean
it's kind of like if you see, if there's somebody
like or even love and they have kind of goofy hair,
you're probably gonna let it go or not think about it, right,
but if you red flag, Yeah, I mean, goofy hair
is fun. But if you hate somebody and they have
goofy hair, you'd be like, you look at his hair
con Brian every night. So I don't hate him. I
(09:07):
actually like him quite a bit. Um So Yeah, So
that that's kind of covers that whole like thin line
between love and hate. Definitely got the same circuits going
on there. And then there's this other question that's recently
cropped up, and it's that can you really fall in
love and a fifth of a second love at first sight?
Right right staring out in the crowd, seeing the woman
(09:29):
or man of your dreams standing over there, and just
and then you know, the music off string quartet rises.
There's a study by Syracuse University professor Sephanie ortigue, and
she determined that falling in love has the same eufork
feeling as using cocaine, but also that affects intellectual areas
(09:49):
of the brain, which is interesting. It is essentially running
more blood to those areas dealing with mental representations, metaphors,
and body image, and that it can also take less
than a fifth of a second love. Now, let let
me break down the cocaine thing for a second. For
anyone to get down, I will break it down. And
I got that. I grabbed this data from from our
excellent article by Stephanie Watson on how stuff works called
(10:12):
how crack Cocaine works. All right, crack cocaine you smoke,
so it gives the brain much faster than inhaled powder cocaine.
All right, So crack cocaine gets the brain and creates
a high within ten to fifteen seconds. Normal cocaine is
ten to fifteen minutes um. And then the effects can
last anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. And then you
(10:34):
have to do more cocaine because it you know, it
kind of sucks. So don't do drugs. Do more love, Yeah,
because love is We're gonna explore, like you fall in
love like that stuff's gonna last fifteen months at least,
you know, cocaine fifteen minutes and then you know, it's
just that's exactly right. That's that's the whole limbrance is
(10:55):
what the shelf life is fifteen months for limrance kind
of love. Yeah, love in one hand cocaine and the
other one you're just going to do you for for
several months either you're just gonna be keeping doing cocaine
over and over again. So I think love is the
obvious winner here. Yeah, they really need to rethink their
p s a s for for anti drug commercial saying
like they need to rethink the cocaine ad campaign that
(11:16):
they're not really getting it out. Yeah, those cocaine marketing
people are really asleep at the wheel. Um. But that
study is interesting because it really does sort of indicate
that it's the that the sort of passionate love is
is again it's centered in the reward center, whereas like
an eternal love for more long term love is found
(11:37):
in the middle brain and supposedly like a mother for
a child or or you know, or a child for
a parent, right, yeah, or a copy I love to us,
And that's sort of like a hasn't there's a different
types of love that's like a like a church thing,
right where I've seen I've seen church programs that are Yeah,
there's some there. I think there are some that use
(11:59):
that term. But I think it's one of like five
different kinds of groovy loves you can have. Anytime I
year a gup a love or at likes used to
I would I would think of Guppy's in love, you know,
so I think a little a little like you know,
Salamander has creatures falling in love, guffies in love. All right,
(12:23):
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow.
But supposedly they're supposed to have a follow up study
about the fifth of a second thing because that's sort
of interesting, like you know, fifth of a second you
can uh, you know, how do how do they know?
Because that's the specifics weren't necessarily available. Well, I guess
(12:44):
you'd have to hook machinery up to like the kind
of person who just falls in and out of love
a lot, like you know, kind of like a Don
Draper for Madman type, you know. Yeah, okay, so they
had to have like a high limbrance yeah quality well
or or at least I'm not sure how it would
be the kind of person who would can suitably fall
in love and fall in love because because if you
have high limeriance, aren't you more inclined to fall in
(13:06):
love like once and stay in love? For saying DeAndre
for shouldn't we just say lust? Yeah? Okay, he's become
the icon of stupid man lust yeah yeah yeah, And
you know a couple of ladies have I think perhaps
listed after him. Um. But then that brings me to
the question about whether or not we could actually have
like a true love, true love, true love like no, yeah, yeah,
(13:34):
like I don't know, like a completely um unmitigated love.
Could you have that limbrince your entire life? Right if
it weren't a lust limerence, if it was a pure love.
So previous research has laid out the fracture points in
a relationship to be twelve to fifteen months, So BEINGO,
there's there's your you're saying like love can in many
(13:57):
studies last fifteen months, right, and then you've got three
is another sort of breaking point. And then the seven
year itch that we've all heard about. And I think
one thing that or at least my take on this
is that when when you're saying love ends after fifteen months,
we're not saying like, oh what am I doing here?
It's like waking up for a dream and realizing you're
you're in this life you want. You know, it's this
(14:19):
this chemical thing that maybe it definitely becomes something else.
You know, well, yeah, you're the chemical sort of calibrate
and they'd have to write, I suppose, yeah. I think
it's like, it's pretty obvious. This is we're kind of
stating an obvious fact here, But love really powerful. Oh
I just fell in love that that tends to calm
down and become something more mature over time, right, Like,
(14:39):
can you imagine having that horrible, obsessive teenager e kind
of love applied in your adult relationships? Because because general,
you know, love is great, and I love it when
my friends are in love. But but man, it's kind
of tough to be around them if they're they've only
like if they're you know, they've only been in love
with somebody for like, you know, a month or so, yeah,
(15:00):
and they're like, wow, you guys really are not over
this yet. Just like take it down a notch. Wow,
you really drove past the house like fifty times again
this evening making out of my living room. What's going on? Stop? Yeah? Yeah?
Um So, researchers from Stony Brook, you in New York,
compared the longtime couple's brains a group of longtime couple
(15:23):
springs to newly minted in love couples, and they found
that one in ten of the long time couples there
were twenty of them exhibited the same chemical reactions when
shown photographs of their loved ones as people commonly do
in the early stages of relationship. This limitans that we're
talking about. They're kind of super lovers. They call them
swans because they meet for life. Right. Yeah, So it's
(15:45):
it's interesting because, um again you've got that the fading
point fifteen months um in the testosterone levels actually fade
as the Hornburger limit. I think, no kidding, my goodness,
yeah yeah, I just blushed and I have no idea why. Um,
but their testotering levels are fading back to normal, right,
(16:05):
and they still have like those shots of oxytocin um
to create a feeling of attachment, because that's that's really
what this spoils down to. But they don't have the
wild love. So the feelings of obsession in theory, they
shouldn't survive, right, they shouldn't be these couples shouldn't be
having the same sort of reaction, chemical reaction as he's
untually minted. It's kind of like if you're going to
(16:26):
perform surgery on somebody you want, you know, you may
numb them up or not surgery. Let's say a dental procedure.
You may numb them up to perform this quick, fairly,
you know, simple procedure. But then you want that numbness
to wear off so they can feeling again and actually
use their mouth like a normal person. But uh, but
it's but it's like the when the love lingers, when
the limericks remain so intense for so long, it's like,
(16:48):
to a certain extence, kind of outlived its usefulness. Like
it's more about like, let's let's get this, uh, let's
get this relationship started. Let's go let's get everything sealed
up and ready. It's like, you know, let's hire a
hundred guys to start building this this this house, and
then we'll split the work crew down to fifty to
get the real work done, right, right, So, but then
the researchers were kind of like, well, so, what why
(17:09):
is it that they have this chemical reaction? And and
they're not like sitting here like frenching on the waiting
room couch as we're doing this study, Like why are they?
You know, they they seem to be these longtime couples
and love with each other, but they're not like this
other group that's they're all french ing on the couch.
But I just made all that up. But you know
what I'm saying, they're trying to figure out why why
their brains are reacting this way. So it's kind of
(17:31):
like it's the difference between saying like a really old
couple and that they're still in love and going ah,
and then a really old couple that was still in
love and going yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. And so they
said in there, in sort of I think clinical terms,
they said that that sort of romantic love was able
to mature into intensive companionship and sexual liveliness. So the
(17:52):
Swans they could control themselves. I suppose that's that's the
mature part of it. Yeah, I hope. Yeah, they're not
just completely out of control out there. Okay, I'm imagining
that they're not their brains are still letting up because
they truly and madly still love each other. The the
key here, I'm guessing is that Swans need to find Swans,
(18:13):
and and that would seem to like, how do you
do You can't really like put put that out there
and be like, I'm a person that will you know,
fall in love with you and stay in love with
you forever. I just need somebody else who's exactly the
same as me, because it seems like you're going to
get a lot of people who are just just like,
oh that sounds who doesn't want to fall in love
with somebody who's gonna love you back forever and be
like powerfully in love with you, you you know? Is this
your your dating website idea? Yeah, Like if the Swans
(18:36):
had their own dating site, is that I feel like
people would abuse that. Yeah, they would. They would claim
to be a Swan and not be a Swan unless
the thing is that you had mandatory like brain scans,
because I believe that actually, to go back to the
hate Circuit researcher, that was one of the possible uses
they were talking about. It's like being able to have
the the evidence admissible in court so that it's like, hey,
(18:59):
I think so and so murdered. Uh, um, Dave here
because uh he hates him. Let's test him and cev
he hates and show him a picture. Oh red light
lit up. That means he hates it and that he
totally hates him. I like this idea. It's like a
like a photo booth for love, right, except for you're
getting your brain scanned. Yeah, well, kind of like they
all like they have those uh those old contraptions where
(19:20):
you like the love tester where you like squeeze a
joystick and then it lights up to show how how
much you love. It would be kind of having like
having a scientifically accurate one of those. And then every
little like you're getting people getting a fight with their
spouse or something and they're like, do you still love me?
And it was like, yeah, of course, prove it. We're
going down to these shownees where they have that love
(19:42):
love tester up and we're gonna we're gonna test this. Yeah,
and think about I mean, Larry King could have really
you've been helped out by this. I think, Yeah, I'm
not up enough of my Larry King lore. Oh he's
he's sort of like the Elizabeth Taylor of the world. Yeah,
he just keeps getting married and married over again. But
maybe it doesn't Maybe he's not really he doesn't care
about that that reward center lighting up in his partner's brain. Okay,
(20:04):
so you thinking it would have this technology would have
helped Larry King find merited out a true mate for him?
Or is it? Or is the reverse? I mean, I
don't know enough about him. Is it a situation where
the rest of the world needed this device to protect
them from Larry King? That may very well be actually
the answer right there. Um. Yeah, so I like that.
(20:26):
I'm liking this idea of the sort of photo booth
scan that couples can just duck into and then they
can show their children later on, like here's this little
film strip of us in love our brains look at it. Well.
That was another thing they brought up, is that by
under the more we understand love and and ultimately hate
and and heartbreak, that the more that we can we
can sort of rationalize it like that was that was
(20:47):
one of the arguments that did we understand what's happening
chemically in our brains when when we're feeling heartsick, then
then we can we can understand it and and and
make sense a bit more, deal with it better. I
don't know. I I never I never had. I don't
think I had the scientific info when I was going
through heartbreaking situations. No, I didn't need that. I'm not
sure if I'm ready now. I hope I don't. I'm
(21:09):
not put to the test, but I'm saying I'm ready. Yeah,
all right, for now, until I forget everything we researched.
So yeah, so it needs to happen in the next
fifteen minutes because then I flush all this data. All right,
I'm turning my phone off. In that case, let's talk
about robots sex. Yeah, as long as we're talking about
machines and love, then maybe, you know, maybe we don't
need a machine to quantify love between two humans. How
(21:32):
about just love between a human and his or her
sex spot. Okay, So, I mean we've seen some some
of this in the media, right, Like two thousand seven,
David Levi wrote the book Love and Sex with Robots,
and so he posits that in the very near automated
future that will undoubtedly, undoubtably having sex with robots, and
(21:54):
we'll have to developed like robot prostitute sex spots. Yeah.
Well and to a certain extent, we you know, we
definitely already have this technology it comes to fruition. Do
not do an image search on any of this. But
but there there are these things called real dolls, which
are basically dolls. They're human looking things, tactile like, they
feel like human flush and one can can can conceivably
(22:18):
um engage with said there are anatomically correct and uh.
And then there this wasn't just in the last year,
but the company A true companion LLC unveiled a prototype
of something called Roxy with three X is. Of course,
at Las Vegas is two thousand ten adults Entertainment expo,
(22:39):
and it basically looks like an inanimate sex doll. And
uh but it allegedly boast enough artificial intelligence and prerecorded
phrases to engage in pillow talk. So yeah, literally creepy.
Do not do an image search for that one either,
because even like the press images for that, I had
to look it up for an article and uh, it's
into my mind creepy. Yeah, and apparently too, you know,
(23:03):
she could be programmed. Um and if you this is
this isn't from an article that I read it says
that she may even per metallic sounding that gets me
hot after you introduce a topic like soccer, so you
know who wants that? I don't know. It's like I'm
just saying, I'm just in terms of why do you
want your robotic partner getting aroused at that that soccer talk?
(23:28):
I mean, that's that's keep that out of the weird situation.
I know, I know. And we're talking nine thousand clams here,
So I mean you know that do you want your
car or do you want your sex spot? Yeah? I
mean I get it. You know, it's it's that sort
of easy way out in relationships. But and this is
where it gets interesting. Um, there is a woman named
(23:51):
Sherry Turkle, and she's a psych professor M I. T.
And she's been studying robots and human interactions since the seventies.
And it turns out that one day she found herself
smitten with their office robot, cogg is his name, hoping
that he would turn his head her way when she spoke,
and was wishing to be around him more than her
actual coworkers. Now, what did cog do? What was his function?
(24:14):
He wasn't like a room by or anything was, I mean,
not anything wrong. I don't want to get all class
sensitive about who in which robot you can follow up.
You're judging the robot that she falls in love. Um,
I think that his I think this was maybe in
the earlier part of UM A I M I T
and so his main function I think was to turn
around and to engage with a human. So if if
(24:34):
I were to be talking, he would turn around the
neck like he was listening to me, and then I
would think, oh, he's he he's listening to me, understands me.
So UM, she's been that Turkle has been a huge
proponent of social social technology. Um. But she now was
kind of looking at the last forty years of her
career and her studies, and she's weaving a cautionary tale
from her field research, which is filled with hundreds of
(24:56):
interviews with children and teenagers and adults and the elderly
and countering tech gadgets and over and over she would
see how even the most basic robotic dog or baby doll,
or even just a shell of a robot could spark
a deep emotional response. Yeah, I think there's no question
that we're good at Like I don't question for a
second that a human could fall in love with a robot.
(25:17):
I mean we can, we can fall in love with
non robotic machine and things, you know, like to be
there's a the had a real doll or like a
stuffed animal. I mean they're even Uh, there's one particularly
delusional misidentification syndrome called syndrome of delusional companions, where you
(25:37):
end up looking to things like maybe it's something that's
some sort of item that you have an association with.
And this was a typical typically seen in like Alzheimer's patients.
But they begin getting they have these comforting associations with
the toy, and then they start experiencing the toy is
a singent thing and they keep then they're triggered associated
(25:58):
behavior so well. And see that's interesting because what Turkle
is basically saying is that that's that's where it becomes
an ethics question um between ai UM developers and the
community at large, because if you're going to keep using
robots in society and eventually they come to you know,
(26:20):
we already have ones that can spend baith elderly person,
right um, and you program them so that they're so
nuanced that they really do have all these different ways
of communicating with human then what, you know, what are
we what sort of what sort of society are we
setting up? And what are we doing with our human
emotions when you're projecting love onto something that can't love back.
(26:44):
And then that brings me to the other question is
is love just a mirage in the first place? Are
we doing that with humans anyway? So it's my concept
of love for one person, is that even my idea
of that person and that love is that even realistic
or concrete? Yeah, it's kind of I think there's a
line in Terry pratchett hog Father where some wizards have
created a computer and and one of the wizards asked
(27:05):
about whether it's, uh, you know, it's actually thinking, and
it's like, no, it just appears to be thinking. And
they're like, oh, it's just like everybody else. Then, you know. So,
I mean, there there comes a point where when when
you when you look at the possibility of robots faking
things that are human, you have to also look inward
at us and say, well, what, how many things, how
many aspects of the human experience are to some extent
(27:27):
or the other of fate. You know, everything from consciousness
to to love to hate. If you get down and
you analyze it enough and you break down, like even
things like free will, um, it gets down, you can
you can. You can break it down to the point
where it where the magic disappears. It's uh, I think
are the way our Scott Baker put it um when
in talking about his book Neuropath, was that things like
(27:50):
consciousness um that they're like, um, it's it's all part
of like a like a coin trick, a magic trick,
and we are the magic. And so if you if
if you explain away the trick, like we're the magic
that disappears. Okay, so love could just be another construct
of the mind. Yeah. So eventually we create machines that
can that are just as good at creating this kind
of magic, and we either buy into it or we
(28:11):
don't buy into it. It's kind of like I feel like,
you know, every day you can sort of make a
choice whether to buy into the magic of life or not.
You know, you're going to see the person next to
you as a as this uh, this spongy organ setting
in a skull and you know, flooded with different chemicals
and you know, plodding through its day thinking it's conscious
or um or do you look at them as something better?
(28:34):
I don't know. Well, I mean when the technological similarity comes,
will we even have a choice? Yeah? Maybe not? Yeah,
I think you will have to love robots. Yeah, but
maybe maybe the maybe the robots will be worth loving.
That's my my hope. I know, I know, I love
that you're optimistic about that. Yeah, not I mean loving
in a not in a sex spot fashion. But who knows,
you know, a few generations from now that may make
(28:56):
total sense and they'll look back at me and but whoa.
That guy was really out of line when he said
a human should not marry machines that have the name
like Roxy with three xes. Yeah, are right? I mean,
like how Judge metal. So I think that's a pretty
good Valentine note to end to everybody. If you, if you,
if you have somebody in your life, great, If not,
(29:18):
just wait for robots. Um, it'll it'll be around eventually.
But or save up for Roxy. Yeah. But anyway, you know,
some some some different ways to think about love and
hate and what they have to do with each other
and what they have to do with whatever you're going
through right now. So, hey, I have some lister mail.
Oh bring them all right, some fairly short ones here,
(29:39):
Gabriel writes in he says, and he's responding to our
Life on the Floor episode. We seem to be pretty
popular with folks. Uh, says Julian Robert. I don't know
who would write a feature Romeo and Juliet in which
the characters live in ancient skyscrapers, but I can tell
you that the skybridge fight scenes would be awesome. A
curse on both your ancient skyscrapers needs work. Have a
(30:01):
better one, Gabriel. So there it is and it works. Yeah,
it's it's taking form. Keep keep thinking of those ideas
of people. Um. Then also Ryan writes in, hey, Robert
and Julie, I was listening to the High Animals podcast,
the one about Junkie's animal kingdom, and I thought you
ought to know that you can't get nicotine lotion. But
I have seen caffeinated body so apparently if you use
(30:23):
it in your morning shower, it will help you wake
up in the morning as a substitute or in addition
to coffee. All Right, I need all the help I
can get. I'll try it out. Uh. Then we also
heard from well another Um, oh it's the same Ryan. Well, well,
we'll save that one for later. Um. But then Joel
writes in, and Joel says, Hey, guys, I'm an avid listener.
(30:45):
I've been meaning to send this reference in for some time,
but I only just got around to it. I was
reminded when you talked about it again at the end
of the Life Aquatic podcast. There's a great book by
an author which tackles exactly the problem of living in
a giant building interconnected with all the amended. In J. G.
Ballard's novel high Rise, a massive building is being filled
with people rich at the top, less well to do
(31:06):
on the bottom, including shopping malls and swimming pools. The
novel takes a creepy turn when floors based on socioeconomic
standing began fighting with each other, even killing people stopped
leaving the building, sabotage elevators, booby trap hallways, and formed
tribal groups. Even cannibalism and the rate begin. Certain figures
become kinglike and rule over different areas of the high rise,
warring with each other. In the end not to totally
(31:28):
wreck it. If you survive the chaos, definitely a great read.
You can watch organized society breakdown within this one massive building. Um,
so that's uh, that's cool. J. G. Ballard is an
author that I have been meaning to read for some time,
and I have I have friends who keep telling me,
you know, you gotta read this, you gotta, you gotta
read his short stories so supposedly really awesome, and that
(31:50):
this is the second time someone's mentioned Skycrite was great
for to me, but I didn't. I didn't even think
about it lining up with everything that I was requesting
at the end of that podcast. Huh, what, I'm gonna
check into it as well. It's cool. So if you
have any anything you want to add to this, uh,
feel free to interact with us on Facebook and Twitter.
We are blow the Mind on both of those. We
update that pretty regularly with neat links to stuff at
(32:13):
how stuff works and elsewhere on the web. And if
you've got any comments about love hate robots, please do
drop us a line at Blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
(32:33):
in the upper right corner of our homepage, The How
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