September 16, 2014 • 33 mins
Would you like more money? Sure, we all would. In this encore presentation, Robert and Julie dive into the world of Scrooge McDuck, King Midas and look at how greed is expressed in the brain.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
And the new episode this week is about happiness and
the big question can money buy any happiness? This episode, however,
(00:23):
is going to be a little something from the way
Back Machine, one of one from our seven Deadly Sin
series about greed and the science of creed and well,
so we decided to replay this episode because there are
obvious connections between between greed and what we take for
greed and human behavior and that, uh, and the idea
that money is going to give us happiness and that
(00:45):
the things that we that we want are going to
make us happy. Yeah, that's right. So we thought this
would compliment the next episode. In the meantime, as you
listen to this, you are going to hear us talk
a bit about the jerky behavior of luxury car drivers,
and we wanted to mention that there's a newer study
out two thousand and thirteen that actually pinpoints seat design
(01:10):
is the possible culprit for behaviors from luxury drivers like
running stop signs and so on. And so forth. Turns
out that the seats are more expansive. And if you
think back to one of our episodes on expansive postures
and how they can make a person feel more powerful
like a king on a laid back on a throne. Right, Yes,
(01:31):
as some luxury cars have that kind of seating, that
throne like seating, then you can kind of see how
that might actually change someone's behavior in the car. Interesting. So,
the individual who is in a fancy car is in
a fancy seat, and that fancy seat allows them to
to lounge about and feel superior to everyone else else
around them. That's right, I'm so fancy. I don't need
(01:54):
this stop sign that I think that's the thought bubble. Now.
You were telling me when you encounter jerky rider, you
you have a reaction that lignes up with this research.
If I'm driving on the highway and I generally speed
anyway and there's someone behind me who's super close, I
tend to reach out and put my my arm reach
it across the other seat. As if you know, I'm
(02:15):
on a date and I'm the alpha male, and I've
noticed my behavior in doing this, and I think that
I'm just trying to signal like I'm not intimidated. So
maybe there's something here to that. It brings to mind
two things. First, there there might I wonder if there's
an added level of them having poor posture in these
in these reclined positions, and maybe if they're you know,
(02:37):
they're all lounged back, they're also less happy and less
uh you know, less less secure in themselves as they're driving,
whereas somebody that's in a less comfortable seat is maybe
setting up a little more straight with their with their
chest puffed out, and maybe they're they're gonna have a
little more a little more confidence and only just less
lucky to the lash out of those around them. Maybe
(02:59):
unless greedy. Perhaps maybe let's find out the third circle
of Dante's Inferno is where the glutton of hang out,
and the fourth circle is where the greedy hang out.
To be more specific, this is the circle of avarice
and prodigality. It's it's interesting Dante is really down on greed.
(03:22):
It's not like one of these sins like lust, which
he has a lot of sympathy for. Well, because he's human,
yeah right, yeah, he has like he has a lot
of sympathy for some of the individuals. Yeah, that's what
I'm getting too. He hasn't he has needs. But when
he encounters the greedy, he's it's it's a lot harsher.
He divides it up. You have the prodigal and the
more typically miserly greedy. So the prodigal, they're reckless spenders.
(03:47):
It's coming in and it's it's going out twice as fast.
I think that's something we can all, if not relate
to personally, we can, we can we definitely witness in
the world around us. And then you have the the
truly greedy, the hoarders and the misers, the ones that
take the money, hold the money, that are just in
it for the money itself. Okay. And so when Dante
(04:09):
and his guy Virgil show up an inferno, first of all,
they're greeted by Plutus, which is the god of riches,
with a little a little pluto, god of the underworld
thrown in because you know, the underworld, underground, that's where
gold and silver come from. And he's beast, he always
full of rage, and he's babbling and he's saying poppy Satan,
poppy Satan, Nalipi which is kind of just nobody. There's
a lot of discussion about what in the heck that means. Yeah,
(04:31):
I'm gonna say, like poppy Satan sounds a little poppy
Satan pop Satan. Yeah, I mean there's a sense like
maybe it's something papal, because certainly there's a lot of
discussion of sinful popes in the Inferno and then Satan
of course. But but this is actually one of the
few instances where Satan is actually mentioned, because when you
actually encounter the big demon himself the bottom of Inferno,
(04:51):
he's referred to as Lucifer. So anyway, back to these centers,
so you have the spin Thrifts and the Misers, and
they're all first of all, they're all so abby you
can't even recognize them, Like Dante is all like, I'm
probably gonna look around here, I'm gonna know some people
that I met know from life, and that your Italian
accent very mildly. Your Italian is much better. And the
(05:13):
Virgils like, now you're not gonna You're not gonna recognize anybody,
because everyone's so twisted here from their lives, from their
their earthly lives full of greed and and overspending that
you're just not gonna be able to reckon? Is that
part of the punishment? Um, it's not as much a
part of the punishment. It's just kind of like the
reality of the like the like spiritually there deformed from
(05:34):
this life of the task. The punishment itself is that
they have there. It's kind of a joust between the
spinthrifts and the greedy, except instead of having like you know,
swords or spears or any kind of typical jousting equipment,
they are rolling large objects against each other using only
like their chests. And if you look at the illustrations
(05:54):
provided by good staff Dora, the large objects that they're
jousting with their giant money bags. So if you imagine
these these hideous looking like naked people and they're all
sort of like pushing big money bags, rolling them around
with their chest into each other and arguing with each
other and calling each other's other names, and so there
there there are no demons um staffed here to punish
(06:17):
these guys. They provide their own punishment to each other. Okay,
so it's like a scene from Eyes Wide Shut Well no, no, well,
you know what, Okay, maybe more accessible is the illustration
that you sent me, and it showed a lucky cat
a mountain, and the mountain was there was a little
(06:38):
trail going to the very top with a lucky cat
is perched, and there's mice with big hunks of cheese
weighing them down as they bring it to the lucky cat. Yes,
I will, I will link to this in the blog
post that goes with this podcast, and cause you're interested
in saying that. But there there are many artistic interpretations.
And now if one goes into Dante's purgatory and this
(07:00):
again is the mountain that connects Earth to the to
the heaven, and well, you're you're you're complicating the matter
with lucky cat. At this point, there's no lucky cat
in this thing. It's just a mountain. It connects Earth
and hell beneath it to the heavens above. And if
you travel up the mountain, each terrace purges you of
(07:21):
a sin so that you'll be clean enough to enter heaven.
So the fifth terrace is where you would purge yourself
of all this greed, and you do it by lying
lying face down on a hard rock floor, weeping and
praying until the greed has washed away from you. That's
your punishment. Yeah, it's kind of It's not a punishment, remember,
it's a it's a cleansing. Okay, seems kind of weak sauce.
(07:42):
It is. It is kind of weak sauce. I don't know.
Maybe Dante just wasn't bringing his a game when thinking
about greed. He's really down on it. But it's it's
it's not like they're like, you know, boiling rivers of
blood and feces. They're just dudes in hell pushing bags
of money against each other. And and here a lot
of people pray. So the eyes being soon shut as
(08:02):
in with v right, and there's some gas ler ones ahead.
But um, let's look to Buddhism real quick again before
we get into the real science of all this. In Buddhism, greed,
along with delusion, slash, ignorance, and hate, is one of
the three poisons at the heart of all suffering. So
if you look at the center of the Tibetan wheel
of life, the wheel of sam Sorrow, which we have
(08:23):
an excellent interactive illustration of in the How Stuff Works
article how sky Burial Works, if you look at the
center of this wheel, you'll find three animals, a pig,
a cock, and a snake, and they are all biting
each other's tails, forming a ring. And each of these
three animals represents one of the three poisons. The snake
is hate, the pig is delusion or ignorance, you see
(08:43):
it referred to as is either, and then the cock
represents greed. It's interesting how Buddhism greed is very central
to everything that is wrong with life here on earth.
And just as a side note, some people are really
into like crazy burgers. I think it would be it
would be fascinating if someone were too concoct a burger
that contains three meats snake meat, pig meat, and rooster meat.
(09:05):
And then you could have it be the the three
poison burger or the the burger that is the root
of all suffering. Well, isn't there already the true ducan?
It's kind of like that your're duncan, except um, it's
responsible for all of man's woes. Okay, so it's more
of a some and it'd probably be a pretty heavy
launch too. Yeah, And just throwing that out there, if
anyone wants to create such a blasphemy or if if
(09:27):
you know, next Thanksgiving when that rolls are in. You
can't take your tree duc in, which is a turkey, chicken,
and duck all roll together, right, and you can offer
it up as a way to consume the sins of
the past year. Yeah, because I think that would go
over really well at Thanksgiving table. You know, people don't
think about that. So that's kind of the there's the
religious introduction, and both of these examples are very down
(09:50):
on the idea of greed. But it is this poisonous thing.
It is this this awful thing that that distorts the
soul and renders us unrecognizable in the afterlife, that is
responsible for all of this pain around us. But then
there's another way of looking at it, right, Well, yeah,
you write a more materialistic view. Are you talking about
(10:10):
Gordon Gecko? Yes, read from us from the book of
of Gecko. Alright, Gordon Gecko, the character in Wall Street.
We're talking to high eighties here, and I don't know
if I can do a Michael Douglas voice. The point is,
ladies and gentlemen, greed is good, Greed works, Greed is right.
Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the
(10:30):
evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, money, love,
knowledge has marked the upward surge in mankind and greed.
Mark my words. We'll say you've not only telled our
paper that the other malfunctioning corporation called the U s
a W. Yeah, well, okay also fights stains. That's right,
(10:55):
that's right. I've got a greed stick at home. Um.
But yeah, I mean, this is an idea that isn't
too far away from reality and certain eras of our existence.
Certainly in nineteen eighties, you know, accumulation of wealth is
something that a lot of people are concentrating on, and
there is this idea that greed is this sort of
evolutionary birthright that we can't evolve without continuing to amass
(11:19):
more and more and sort of step over each other
in order to get to it. Yeah, I mean, and
you can go with the I mean, the classic argument
that stuff like Indian greed, these are the motivating forces
of ambition, and we need ambition in life. Like on
some level, greed maybe is good because I need things
to live, right, I need a little money and a
(11:40):
little more is maybe even a little better, So I
should want those things, right, yeah, but it's the excess part, right, Yeah. Okay.
So there's this guy named Andrew Low, and he's the
Harris and Harris Group professor m I T and the
director of its Laboratory for Financial Engineering. And in a
two thousand and nine interview with Freakonomics, he commented on
the unprecedented air of wealth just recently that we have, right, um,
(12:04):
and he said that quote extended periods of prosperity act
as an anesthetic and human brain. Okay, so that's here's
one reason why greed isn't so grand. Right. Essentially, he's
saying that all of us who were trading in on
the real estate based financial bubble, we're in a quote
drug induced stupor that causes us to take risks that
(12:25):
we know we should avoid. He's saying basically that monetary
gain and we've we've seen this before, certainly in the
laboratory is uh. It stimulates the same reward securitary as cocaine.
And in both cases, again we've talked about this, you know,
over and over in terms of this, and since dopamine
is released into the nucleus incumbents um and then the
(12:49):
opposite of this, this is really interesting. Financial loss activates
the same fight or flight circuitry as physical attacks, releasing
adrenaline in the cortisol in the bloodstream. So I mean,
here you have different sides of the coin, but certainly
you've got dopamine and you've got madrinaline on the other side,
and all of this is tied to finance. Okay, so
(13:10):
it's kind of like the Again, he's in the drug example,
a young man takes cocaine and then writes a really
horrible song or it gets a really or is really
into an idea that is just dreadful. Likewise, a young
man who has a financial success for a short amount
of time. During that success, everything is so great he decides,
I'm going to buy a sailboat, right right, I mean anything,
(13:31):
I'm gonna I'm gonna blow my money on this, I'm
gonna spend it on this. I'm gonna do this because
things are great. This couldn't possibly wear off. And of
course both individuals quickly find that, uh, the sensation does
wear off, right, I mean, basically, this is deadening that
part of your brain that meaning not literally deadening, but
certainly the part of your brain that is thinking about
(13:51):
the long term is now offline, and you know your
short term brain is like, hey, do whatever, Like let's
go buy a boat. It sounds like a great idea. Um,
So it would make sense that in terms of economics,
there's something happening in the brain that really feeds into greed. Okay,
so this question comes up, greed. Everybody is greedy to
(14:12):
to some extent or another. Right, Um, but who could
be the greediest jerks out there? Is there is there
natural answer to that question? Who could be? Or who
who might be? Who might be? Who might be? Like
who out there in the world is the greediest jerk? Yeah,
well one would. I mean, if you go on with
the stereotype, you're looking at people like your Gordon geckos,
like your Scrooge McDuck's a lot, you know, the individuals
(14:35):
that have so much. It's an addiction, you know, like
the money and the money unto itself, is an addiction. Okay,
So bingo wealth corrupting? Right, And you're right, this is
you know, somewhat of a cliche. But there are some
scientists who decided to put this to the test or
whether psychologists Paul piff of the University of California at Berkeley.
He conducted seven different studies that the seven different scenarios
(14:58):
really testing out socio economic levels and ethics, wondering if
indeed wealth corrupts. And I'm just gonna highlight a couple
of them because I think that they're interesting, but I
should point out and that all seven scenarios, the overwhelming
evidence is that people with higher socio economic levels tend
to have uh dodgy ethics, or that that was the
(15:22):
conclusion that was drawn from this um There was a
study in which uh PIF and his team monitored traffic
at a four waist stop in San Francisco, and they
noted all the makes and the models of automobiles because
that's a really good indicator of your socio economic level
usually right, Um, so guests who more often than not
(15:42):
cut the other drivers off the fancy cars fancy cars,
I mean overwhelmingly. Okay. So then there's another study that
they did, and this was they had test takers asked
to imagine themselves being very rich or very poor and
then given an opportunity to take candy from a jar
that would next be delivered to children in another lab.
(16:03):
Like really like taking candy from from a baby. Right, see,
all I can think it is a Simpsons episode where
though of course that Mr Burns is another I mean,
if not a few examples of the stereotypically rich, misurely
awful person who's been totally corrupted by wealth. But there's
an episode, of course where he he actually steals or
attempts to steal candy from a baby. Well, right, there
(16:25):
you go. He in this study certainly would have borne
out the results. But so again here here you see
the people who are imagining themselves is very rich somehow
distancing themselves from their action and saying and taking asually
more candy than the other people who imagine themselves is
very poor. H And again seven of these different scenarios. Uh.
(16:48):
And you'd have to have many more studies in order
to have more conclusive data on this, I think. But
I think at least it gives us an idea of
the direction of what happens when you are exposed to
extreme wealth and the sort of distancing that you experience.
You know, I'm not sure that the lab full of
(17:10):
babies or children actually need that candy, though, I mean, well,
I have to say I thought that too, because I
thought well I might be. Okay, you know what those
two roles, that kid doesn't need it, nobody has to
go to the dentist. And what kind of candy is it?
Because there's there's candy, and there's candy. Like if it's
if it's like um, you know, the office bank suckers
(17:30):
or candy corn, then by all means like other children
have it. But if it's upscale candy that's clearly designed
for a more sophisticated adult palette, then then I'm not
sure taking it is really the best. I agree, I agree, Um.
But there there's this evolutionary psychologist and he's a consumer
researcher in his name is Vladists of the University of Minnesota,
(17:52):
and he says this work is important because it suggests
that people often act unethically, not because they are desperate
and in the dumps, but because they feel entitled and
they want to get ahead. Okay, so that exactly what
I just did. I laid out my entitlement for the
fancy candy, that the that this candy would be lost
on these children, and therefore I'm i a am doing
(18:13):
them a favor because they don't need it, and be
I am the intended audience for this candy. So I've
already I've already rationalized stealing candy from a baby. It's
a it's a great day in my life. You know what,
all your gold rings with your diamonds were kind of
shining pretty rightly. Can you kind of just take a
couple off their Mr Money bags? Um? Okay? So what
(18:35):
is the opposite of greed, Well, not necessarily opposite, but
a reaction that you might have to greed, revulsion, a
sense of injustice. Right, Because we were discussing this the
other day, like, like, there's something particularly foul about greed,
especially when we I mean well pretty much only when
we glimpsed it in others, because when we glimpse it
in ourselves, we tend to, like everything else, we tend
(18:58):
to find more enlightened ways of of understanding it or
lying to ourselves about it. You know. But when you
see greed in another person, it's like, I mean it
all bows send the money right and money on on
a on a very crucial level, it's not real. Like
even when you're dealing with like gold coins, it's just
it's all it's all ultimately kind of arbitrary. I mean, yes,
there's there's a great deal of numbers and mathematics backing
(19:19):
it up, but it's all and none of it is real,
you know. And then when when we when we when
we raise that this abstract thing, this unreal thing, above
everything else that is real in life, when we place
this in this this made up money, above the heads
of very real people, it's terrifying and awful and absurd.
(19:39):
Right well, when the fantasy of this, right, it becomes
grotesque and you can't really see the reality around you, right,
I mean, it clouds your vision of your ability to
actually accurately since what's going on around you. That's when
I when I think, you know, you make decisions that
perhaps and other people creates this of disgust, because all
(20:01):
of a sudden you become this person who is a
caricature yourself to a certain degree. There's something called the
ultimatum game, and it's interesting the premises. Okay, I have
ten dollars that I can share with you, Robert Land,
anyway I choose. Okay, if you accept my offer, then
we both keep my proposed shares. If you reject my offer,
(20:25):
neither of us sees any of the money. Wait now,
what's the offer? Okay, um, okay, have ten dollars, I
will give you a quarter a quarter of the money
or just what do I have to do? Do you
mean you just can you can take or you can
leave it. Well, in that case, I would take it
because is better than no money. Right, you are so rational,
(20:49):
But most people would actually reject it. Huh yeah, because
you would think like the rational thing to do is
to say, like, um, you know, sure, now we're both
richer for this, right, But there's a sense of injustice
going on, like someone might think, that's not really why
are you keeping and I'm getting but I didn't do
anything to earn it. You just you have ten dollars,
(21:11):
you're giving me twenty cents and I'm and and if
you give me that cents, I'm halfway to getting something
out of the office snack machine. All I have to
do is find one more quarter and I'm gonna be
rolling in granola bar. Okay, Well, if you were a normal,
flawed person, you would say, no, I'm going to penalize
you for your stinginess. No, I'm not gonna like neither
of us are going to get anything, right. That's weird. Yeah,
(21:34):
So even Ian, it's understandable, like I can totally I
can totally get it. Yeah, like I have. And it
is in a way, if you think about it, um,
it's sort of a power structure, right, because if that
person has the money and they're offering it to you,
how do you get your power back if you have nothing,
if you don't have really, uh any choice in the matter. Right,
So I guess I could I could considerably make the argument, well,
why don't you you know you're keeping nine five, why
(21:57):
don't you just give me one quarter more? And then
I can go ahead and at that granola bar instead.
I'm I'm tempted. I'm with half. I'm here with half
a granola bar, basically that I can't eat. Well, I mean, yeah,
I don't know what you're gonna get, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
You start to think about that, and what happens in
your brain, Uh, the anterior insula starts to get activated.
(22:18):
And this is the area associated with negative emotions. And
this has been seen by Jonathan Cohen, He's a Princeton neuroscientist.
The interesting thing is that when you up the amount
of money, like, for instance, if if I said I
have twenty three dollars and I'm going to give you
eight dollars. Then you start to see people go okay,
(22:39):
well that's that's a little bit fairer, and the part
of the brain, the the anterior insula, actually starts to
die down a little bit in terms of activity as
a way to tamp down this and say, okay, let's
start to be rational about this, because now the stakes
are getting a little bit higher. There's a little bit
more money here, and it really I think it's very
telling on how we make some portant decisions. Huh. So
(23:02):
this is definitely the part of the brain is lighting up.
When you've just had a dinner with those some friends
at a restaurant and you have to figure out how
the bill works, or or even when like far before
the bill comes, say when the guacamole comes out, or
the pizza's placed on the table and food has to
be divvied up, I can see that kicking in, you know,
because you're wondering about how things are going to be
distributed and parsed out, and then how are they going
(23:24):
to be paid for? Like even if you're not like
a stingy kind of person who's counting the slices of
pizza as they leave the table, like your brain can't
help but sort of think in those terms, right. Well,
and they've seen this in babies, they've seen this in
primates too, that there's a sense of injustice. Study after
study that people are mentally taking notes on what is
being parsed out at that time. Well, because I mean,
(23:45):
we have to live in a community. We have to
live in some sort of a group. Be at a
primitive group that is just you know, crawling through the
grasses and prehistoric times, or a community of people who
are trying to figure out how in the heck they're
gonna do the tip with a group on discount at
a restaurant. Right, Yeah, that's just the recipe for disaster
right there. Yeah, Yeah, the whole group on thing. Uh,
(24:07):
not to say that I haven't taken advantage of it's great,
but yes, um, you have to come to some sort
of point of cooperation. And like you said, that's that's
what really makes a society. That's that's the glue of it.
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back, more of the science of greed. All right,
(24:27):
we're back. Why do donuts distract Summer Simpson. Why is
Hommer Sipson obsessed with with donuts? We had to boil
this down to a single Oh, I don't know, brain hormone,
what would it be? Delicious dopamine exactly. Just the mere
thought of the donut can can result in dopamine release.
Just the the the anticipation of rewarding yourself with those
delicious cowards. I have to say, I think I might
(24:48):
be salivating a little bit right now. Yeah, I've been
picturing that. I don't even really eat donuts, but I'm
picturing that that Simpsons doughnut with the pink I sang
in the sprinkles. Yeah. Dopamine keeps popping up in these
podcasts we're doing. I mean, dopamine pops up a lot
because it's anytime we're trying to figure out neurologically why
we do the things we do, because dopamine is the
reward juice, and uh, most of it were not most,
(25:10):
but a lot of the things we do are about
releasing that chemical, about achieving the reward. Our life is
kind of this game, and when we, uh, we actually
hit the points where we get the achievements, we get
the dopamine it's not surprisingly would show up here. It
show it seems to have shown up in all the
other sense. And it's one of these things that we
learned a game a long time ago. Primitive man kind
(25:32):
of figured out what was going on with the dopamine
and figured out, hey, I can actually cheat and get
all the dopamine I want. Right, so we end up
with this whole legacy of bad habits and addictions and
and sins if you will, And greed seems to play
especially well with dopamine because it's tied up in three
of the big needs that we have in life, the
needs for safety, the need for approval, and the need
(25:53):
for esteem. Right, we need safety because we want to survive.
We need approval because we want to live in a
community d uh. And we need a steam because we
want to rise up in that community. And money, as
it happens, and pretty much buy any of those things.
You have money, you can buy safety for yourself. You
want to be approved of, You can buy the right clothing,
you can buy the right lifestyle to do that, and
(26:13):
if you want to steam as pretty much any stay
presidential election or or you know, or a political kind
of gate illustrates you can buy that if you have
enough money and enough will to invest in it. So
money is the ultimate dopamine inducer. If money in and
of itself doesn't create fuel the dopamine, then it can
(26:34):
buy something that will, which makes sense again why people
would be chasing that high with with wealth or greed,
right um. And it actually plays into something that has
been called the scrabble strategy before, and again we're talking
about the short term versus the long term, and the
scrabble strategy is actually called the greedy algorithm. And this
(26:55):
is a computational mathematics term, and basically it say is
that you can do well by making whichever move seems
best at that moment and not worrying too much about
future consequences. And in mathematics, the greedy algorithm builds up
a solution piece by piece, always using the next piece
that offers the most obvious and immediate benefits. So for us, right,
(27:16):
that would translate to dopamine ding ding ding. Okay. So
in the scrabble scenario, the the idea here is that
I get a high number value kyle like an X
or a Z or something I'm better off holding onto it,
but instead I play it immediately, right, Yeah, because I
mean that is not playing game, right. It's not like
chess where you have to really consider, you know, three
(27:39):
moves ahead, you just have to. In scrabble, it really
is like whatever you have right in front of you
at that very moment, you have to play and you'll
you'll benefit from that strategy. So you know, that's that's
what greed sort of falls into, is this greedy algorithm.
Although the greedy algorithm obviously isn't sustainable because at some
point you have to uh, you know, inhabit your future
(28:00):
rain and start thinking about consequences. Yeah, and I guess
with human lives, the problem is that by the time
you start realizing you need to play the long game,
there's not In many cases there's not been much game left.
I don't know, you didn't see that a lot. I
mean it's like we said earlier, it's like people end
up not caring during the rich years, during the bountiful years,
(28:20):
which are there the grasshopper, right, the grassopper in the
ant That sounds right because the grasshopper, Yeah, the aunt
in the fable, right, is is piling away for the
becoming winter, and the grasshopper is like, whoa, I'm having
a great time and then it gets cold and the
ants like I'm set in the Grasshopper dies. It's kind
of a right from your Rosebud we walked. I don't know.
(28:45):
I can't leap to that logic. I don't know if
that actually plays in all that well, but I don't know.
He was chasing after greed, Yeah, well he was, he was.
He is another iconic greedy character. But but yeah, when
we're in the midst of the of the Plenty, we're
not thinking about the long game, and it's easier to
think about the long game when there's not that much
game left. I don't know if I'm making sense on that. No, No,
I'm getting it. I'm getting if you are obsessed your
(29:08):
whole life with chasing after the Precious and uh and
trying to battle do battle with the sneaky little hobbits
is for the Precious. Well, the Precious was pretty awesome.
It was one of the rings of power. So I mean,
I you could you kind of have to side with
Gollum on that one, I know, But the point is
that that you could you could waste your entire life,
(29:28):
you know, obsessing over the precious and then you no
longer have a life. You just have a shiny did
get to travel pretty well, and he lived a long life.
I don't know what's going on here, Robert Lamb. I'm
just saying, you know, greedy got just coming out, don't
you know, hate on Sneakle too much because you know,
you got to see the world of mental Earth, and
(29:50):
you know, and he and he his spoiler, he dies
by falling into a volcano, which is something I kind
of want for myself. So okay, So there we are
revealing something about you right now, into your affinity for snag.
Like imagine if your if your obituary said something like
Robert Land has away today when he fell into the
mountain Doon, Like that's pretty after chasing absolute power. Well,
(30:15):
now that makes it not kind of sad. I guess
all right, you've got You've got a point we were
discussing earlier, like the research into degreed doesn't go quite
as deep to some of the other ones we've we've
talked about. Yeah, I was thinking about Dante. I was like, yeah,
of course, he's like this is awful. This is bad.
It's awful, it's bad. But I'm not really going to
devote a lot of time. Same thing with researchers so far.
I mean, I guess a lot of its kind of
surface level comes down to you. We want money because
(30:36):
money makes a lot of things possible. It allows us
to have safety, it allows us to to eat, to
to have shelter, it allows us to move through life.
So of course we want it. And like with all
the sins we've looked at, there's like a tipping point
between like a normal level of wanting money and an
unbalanced level. You know, what I think would be interesting
is some research on the super wealthy and wondering there
(31:00):
or not if you reach a certain point of wealth
that you become more altruistic and you actually become more ethical.
That isn't because a number of billionaires have taken that
pledge to donate a large portion of their their wealth charities.
And there are for every you know, miserly Scrooge McDuck
type individual in the world, you can you can generally
(31:20):
think of someone else who is using their fortune, or
at least a large portion of their fortune to try
and do good things and not just as a tax,
right right, right, So yeah, I would like to see
more more numbers on that, for sure, because there are
there are certainly some individuals that really make a case
for the old adage money corrupts and money is the
root of all evil. But then there are some individuals
who seem to stand apart from that and and really
(31:40):
give us a little hope. Yeah, and and some people
who I'm sure at four waste uff and they're driving
a luxury car that that actually, uh, they're not jerks,
I don't know. Let me get that. Let Dante have
the last word on this though, because there's a lovely
little line and this is of course translated from the
Italian and then this is Virgil talking to Dante. He says,
now you can see, my son, the brief mockery of
(32:01):
the goods that are committed to fortune, for which the
human race of squabbles, for all the gold that is
under the moon and that ever was, could not give
rest to even one of these weary souls. So that's that,
as they're looking at the tortures and help. So there
you go, all right, So there you have it, one
(32:22):
of our favorite episodes from one of our favorite series.
If you'd like to hear the other episodes in the
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(32:44):
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(33:04):
stuff works dot com for moralness and thousands of other topics.
Is it how staff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
And the new episode this week is about happiness and
the big question can money buy any happiness? This episode, however,
(00:23):
is going to be a little something from the way
Back Machine, one of one from our seven Deadly Sin
series about greed and the science of creed and well,
so we decided to replay this episode because there are
obvious connections between between greed and what we take for
greed and human behavior and that, uh, and the idea
that money is going to give us happiness and that
(00:45):
the things that we that we want are going to
make us happy. Yeah, that's right. So we thought this
would compliment the next episode. In the meantime, as you
listen to this, you are going to hear us talk
a bit about the jerky behavior of luxury car drivers,
and we wanted to mention that there's a newer study
out two thousand and thirteen that actually pinpoints seat design
(01:10):
is the possible culprit for behaviors from luxury drivers like
running stop signs and so on. And so forth. Turns
out that the seats are more expansive. And if you
think back to one of our episodes on expansive postures
and how they can make a person feel more powerful
like a king on a laid back on a throne. Right, Yes,
(01:31):
as some luxury cars have that kind of seating, that
throne like seating, then you can kind of see how
that might actually change someone's behavior in the car. Interesting. So,
the individual who is in a fancy car is in
a fancy seat, and that fancy seat allows them to
to lounge about and feel superior to everyone else else
around them. That's right, I'm so fancy. I don't need
(01:54):
this stop sign that I think that's the thought bubble. Now.
You were telling me when you encounter jerky rider, you
you have a reaction that lignes up with this research.
If I'm driving on the highway and I generally speed
anyway and there's someone behind me who's super close, I
tend to reach out and put my my arm reach
it across the other seat. As if you know, I'm
(02:15):
on a date and I'm the alpha male, and I've
noticed my behavior in doing this, and I think that
I'm just trying to signal like I'm not intimidated. So
maybe there's something here to that. It brings to mind
two things. First, there there might I wonder if there's
an added level of them having poor posture in these
in these reclined positions, and maybe if they're you know,
(02:37):
they're all lounged back, they're also less happy and less
uh you know, less less secure in themselves as they're driving,
whereas somebody that's in a less comfortable seat is maybe
setting up a little more straight with their with their
chest puffed out, and maybe they're they're gonna have a
little more a little more confidence and only just less
lucky to the lash out of those around them. Maybe
(02:59):
unless greedy. Perhaps maybe let's find out the third circle
of Dante's Inferno is where the glutton of hang out,
and the fourth circle is where the greedy hang out.
To be more specific, this is the circle of avarice
and prodigality. It's it's interesting Dante is really down on greed.
(03:22):
It's not like one of these sins like lust, which
he has a lot of sympathy for. Well, because he's human,
yeah right, yeah, he has like he has a lot
of sympathy for some of the individuals. Yeah, that's what
I'm getting too. He hasn't he has needs. But when
he encounters the greedy, he's it's it's a lot harsher.
He divides it up. You have the prodigal and the
more typically miserly greedy. So the prodigal, they're reckless spenders.
(03:47):
It's coming in and it's it's going out twice as fast.
I think that's something we can all, if not relate
to personally, we can, we can we definitely witness in
the world around us. And then you have the the
truly greedy, the hoarders and the misers, the ones that
take the money, hold the money, that are just in
it for the money itself. Okay. And so when Dante
(04:09):
and his guy Virgil show up an inferno, first of all,
they're greeted by Plutus, which is the god of riches,
with a little a little pluto, god of the underworld
thrown in because you know, the underworld, underground, that's where
gold and silver come from. And he's beast, he always
full of rage, and he's babbling and he's saying poppy Satan,
poppy Satan, Nalipi which is kind of just nobody. There's
a lot of discussion about what in the heck that means. Yeah,
(04:31):
I'm gonna say, like poppy Satan sounds a little poppy
Satan pop Satan. Yeah, I mean there's a sense like
maybe it's something papal, because certainly there's a lot of
discussion of sinful popes in the Inferno and then Satan
of course. But but this is actually one of the
few instances where Satan is actually mentioned, because when you
actually encounter the big demon himself the bottom of Inferno,
(04:51):
he's referred to as Lucifer. So anyway, back to these centers,
so you have the spin Thrifts and the Misers, and
they're all first of all, they're all so abby you
can't even recognize them, Like Dante is all like, I'm
probably gonna look around here, I'm gonna know some people
that I met know from life, and that your Italian
accent very mildly. Your Italian is much better. And the
(05:13):
Virgils like, now you're not gonna You're not gonna recognize anybody,
because everyone's so twisted here from their lives, from their
their earthly lives full of greed and and overspending that
you're just not gonna be able to reckon? Is that
part of the punishment? Um, it's not as much a
part of the punishment. It's just kind of like the
reality of the like the like spiritually there deformed from
(05:34):
this life of the task. The punishment itself is that
they have there. It's kind of a joust between the
spinthrifts and the greedy, except instead of having like you know,
swords or spears or any kind of typical jousting equipment,
they are rolling large objects against each other using only
like their chests. And if you look at the illustrations
(05:54):
provided by good staff Dora, the large objects that they're
jousting with their giant money bags. So if you imagine
these these hideous looking like naked people and they're all
sort of like pushing big money bags, rolling them around
with their chest into each other and arguing with each
other and calling each other's other names, and so there
there there are no demons um staffed here to punish
(06:17):
these guys. They provide their own punishment to each other. Okay,
so it's like a scene from Eyes Wide Shut Well no, no, well,
you know what, Okay, maybe more accessible is the illustration
that you sent me, and it showed a lucky cat
a mountain, and the mountain was there was a little
(06:38):
trail going to the very top with a lucky cat
is perched, and there's mice with big hunks of cheese
weighing them down as they bring it to the lucky cat. Yes,
I will, I will link to this in the blog
post that goes with this podcast, and cause you're interested
in saying that. But there there are many artistic interpretations.
And now if one goes into Dante's purgatory and this
(07:00):
again is the mountain that connects Earth to the to
the heaven, and well, you're you're you're complicating the matter
with lucky cat. At this point, there's no lucky cat
in this thing. It's just a mountain. It connects Earth
and hell beneath it to the heavens above. And if
you travel up the mountain, each terrace purges you of
(07:21):
a sin so that you'll be clean enough to enter heaven.
So the fifth terrace is where you would purge yourself
of all this greed, and you do it by lying
lying face down on a hard rock floor, weeping and
praying until the greed has washed away from you. That's
your punishment. Yeah, it's kind of It's not a punishment, remember,
it's a it's a cleansing. Okay, seems kind of weak sauce.
(07:42):
It is. It is kind of weak sauce. I don't know.
Maybe Dante just wasn't bringing his a game when thinking
about greed. He's really down on it. But it's it's
it's not like they're like, you know, boiling rivers of
blood and feces. They're just dudes in hell pushing bags
of money against each other. And and here a lot
of people pray. So the eyes being soon shut as
(08:02):
in with v right, and there's some gas ler ones ahead.
But um, let's look to Buddhism real quick again before
we get into the real science of all this. In Buddhism, greed,
along with delusion, slash, ignorance, and hate, is one of
the three poisons at the heart of all suffering. So
if you look at the center of the Tibetan wheel
of life, the wheel of sam Sorrow, which we have
(08:23):
an excellent interactive illustration of in the How Stuff Works
article how sky Burial Works, if you look at the
center of this wheel, you'll find three animals, a pig,
a cock, and a snake, and they are all biting
each other's tails, forming a ring. And each of these
three animals represents one of the three poisons. The snake
is hate, the pig is delusion or ignorance, you see
(08:43):
it referred to as is either, and then the cock
represents greed. It's interesting how Buddhism greed is very central
to everything that is wrong with life here on earth.
And just as a side note, some people are really
into like crazy burgers. I think it would be it
would be fascinating if someone were too concoct a burger
that contains three meats snake meat, pig meat, and rooster meat.
(09:05):
And then you could have it be the the three
poison burger or the the burger that is the root
of all suffering. Well, isn't there already the true ducan?
It's kind of like that your're duncan, except um, it's
responsible for all of man's woes. Okay, so it's more
of a some and it'd probably be a pretty heavy
launch too. Yeah, And just throwing that out there, if
anyone wants to create such a blasphemy or if if
(09:27):
you know, next Thanksgiving when that rolls are in. You
can't take your tree duc in, which is a turkey, chicken,
and duck all roll together, right, and you can offer
it up as a way to consume the sins of
the past year. Yeah, because I think that would go
over really well at Thanksgiving table. You know, people don't
think about that. So that's kind of the there's the
religious introduction, and both of these examples are very down
(09:50):
on the idea of greed. But it is this poisonous thing.
It is this this awful thing that that distorts the
soul and renders us unrecognizable in the afterlife, that is
responsible for all of this pain around us. But then
there's another way of looking at it, right, Well, yeah,
you write a more materialistic view. Are you talking about
(10:10):
Gordon Gecko? Yes, read from us from the book of
of Gecko. Alright, Gordon Gecko, the character in Wall Street.
We're talking to high eighties here, and I don't know
if I can do a Michael Douglas voice. The point is,
ladies and gentlemen, greed is good, Greed works, Greed is right.
Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the
(10:30):
evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, money, love,
knowledge has marked the upward surge in mankind and greed.
Mark my words. We'll say you've not only telled our
paper that the other malfunctioning corporation called the U s
a W. Yeah, well, okay also fights stains. That's right,
(10:55):
that's right. I've got a greed stick at home. Um.
But yeah, I mean, this is an idea that isn't
too far away from reality and certain eras of our existence.
Certainly in nineteen eighties, you know, accumulation of wealth is
something that a lot of people are concentrating on, and
there is this idea that greed is this sort of
evolutionary birthright that we can't evolve without continuing to amass
(11:19):
more and more and sort of step over each other
in order to get to it. Yeah, I mean, and
you can go with the I mean, the classic argument
that stuff like Indian greed, these are the motivating forces
of ambition, and we need ambition in life. Like on
some level, greed maybe is good because I need things
to live, right, I need a little money and a
(11:40):
little more is maybe even a little better, So I
should want those things, right, yeah, but it's the excess part, right, Yeah. Okay.
So there's this guy named Andrew Low, and he's the
Harris and Harris Group professor m I T and the
director of its Laboratory for Financial Engineering. And in a
two thousand and nine interview with Freakonomics, he commented on
the unprecedented air of wealth just recently that we have, right, um,
(12:04):
and he said that quote extended periods of prosperity act
as an anesthetic and human brain. Okay, so that's here's
one reason why greed isn't so grand. Right. Essentially, he's
saying that all of us who were trading in on
the real estate based financial bubble, we're in a quote
drug induced stupor that causes us to take risks that
(12:25):
we know we should avoid. He's saying basically that monetary
gain and we've we've seen this before, certainly in the
laboratory is uh. It stimulates the same reward securitary as cocaine.
And in both cases, again we've talked about this, you know,
over and over in terms of this, and since dopamine
is released into the nucleus incumbents um and then the
(12:49):
opposite of this, this is really interesting. Financial loss activates
the same fight or flight circuitry as physical attacks, releasing
adrenaline in the cortisol in the bloodstream. So I mean,
here you have different sides of the coin, but certainly
you've got dopamine and you've got madrinaline on the other side,
and all of this is tied to finance. Okay, so
(13:10):
it's kind of like the Again, he's in the drug example,
a young man takes cocaine and then writes a really
horrible song or it gets a really or is really
into an idea that is just dreadful. Likewise, a young
man who has a financial success for a short amount
of time. During that success, everything is so great he decides,
I'm going to buy a sailboat, right right, I mean anything,
(13:31):
I'm gonna I'm gonna blow my money on this, I'm
gonna spend it on this. I'm gonna do this because
things are great. This couldn't possibly wear off. And of
course both individuals quickly find that, uh, the sensation does
wear off, right, I mean, basically, this is deadening that
part of your brain that meaning not literally deadening, but
certainly the part of your brain that is thinking about
(13:51):
the long term is now offline, and you know your
short term brain is like, hey, do whatever, Like let's
go buy a boat. It sounds like a great idea. Um,
So it would make sense that in terms of economics,
there's something happening in the brain that really feeds into greed. Okay,
so this question comes up, greed. Everybody is greedy to
(14:12):
to some extent or another. Right, Um, but who could
be the greediest jerks out there? Is there is there
natural answer to that question? Who could be? Or who
who might be? Who might be? Who might be? Like
who out there in the world is the greediest jerk? Yeah,
well one would. I mean, if you go on with
the stereotype, you're looking at people like your Gordon geckos,
like your Scrooge McDuck's a lot, you know, the individuals
(14:35):
that have so much. It's an addiction, you know, like
the money and the money unto itself, is an addiction. Okay,
So bingo wealth corrupting? Right, And you're right, this is
you know, somewhat of a cliche. But there are some
scientists who decided to put this to the test or
whether psychologists Paul piff of the University of California at Berkeley.
He conducted seven different studies that the seven different scenarios
(14:58):
really testing out socio economic levels and ethics, wondering if
indeed wealth corrupts. And I'm just gonna highlight a couple
of them because I think that they're interesting, but I
should point out and that all seven scenarios, the overwhelming
evidence is that people with higher socio economic levels tend
to have uh dodgy ethics, or that that was the
(15:22):
conclusion that was drawn from this um There was a
study in which uh PIF and his team monitored traffic
at a four waist stop in San Francisco, and they
noted all the makes and the models of automobiles because
that's a really good indicator of your socio economic level
usually right, Um, so guests who more often than not
(15:42):
cut the other drivers off the fancy cars fancy cars,
I mean overwhelmingly. Okay. So then there's another study that
they did, and this was they had test takers asked
to imagine themselves being very rich or very poor and
then given an opportunity to take candy from a jar
that would next be delivered to children in another lab.
(16:03):
Like really like taking candy from from a baby. Right, see,
all I can think it is a Simpsons episode where
though of course that Mr Burns is another I mean,
if not a few examples of the stereotypically rich, misurely
awful person who's been totally corrupted by wealth. But there's
an episode, of course where he he actually steals or
attempts to steal candy from a baby. Well, right, there
(16:25):
you go. He in this study certainly would have borne
out the results. But so again here here you see
the people who are imagining themselves is very rich somehow
distancing themselves from their action and saying and taking asually
more candy than the other people who imagine themselves is
very poor. H And again seven of these different scenarios. Uh.
(16:48):
And you'd have to have many more studies in order
to have more conclusive data on this, I think. But
I think at least it gives us an idea of
the direction of what happens when you are exposed to
extreme wealth and the sort of distancing that you experience.
You know, I'm not sure that the lab full of
(17:10):
babies or children actually need that candy, though, I mean, well,
I have to say I thought that too, because I
thought well I might be. Okay, you know what those
two roles, that kid doesn't need it, nobody has to
go to the dentist. And what kind of candy is it?
Because there's there's candy, and there's candy. Like if it's
if it's like um, you know, the office bank suckers
(17:30):
or candy corn, then by all means like other children
have it. But if it's upscale candy that's clearly designed
for a more sophisticated adult palette, then then I'm not
sure taking it is really the best. I agree, I agree, Um.
But there there's this evolutionary psychologist and he's a consumer
researcher in his name is Vladists of the University of Minnesota,
(17:52):
and he says this work is important because it suggests
that people often act unethically, not because they are desperate
and in the dumps, but because they feel entitled and
they want to get ahead. Okay, so that exactly what
I just did. I laid out my entitlement for the
fancy candy, that the that this candy would be lost
on these children, and therefore I'm i a am doing
(18:13):
them a favor because they don't need it, and be
I am the intended audience for this candy. So I've
already I've already rationalized stealing candy from a baby. It's
a it's a great day in my life. You know what,
all your gold rings with your diamonds were kind of
shining pretty rightly. Can you kind of just take a
couple off their Mr Money bags? Um? Okay? So what
(18:35):
is the opposite of greed, Well, not necessarily opposite, but
a reaction that you might have to greed, revulsion, a
sense of injustice. Right, Because we were discussing this the
other day, like, like, there's something particularly foul about greed,
especially when we I mean well pretty much only when
we glimpsed it in others, because when we glimpse it
in ourselves, we tend to, like everything else, we tend
(18:58):
to find more enlightened ways of of understanding it or
lying to ourselves about it. You know. But when you
see greed in another person, it's like, I mean it
all bows send the money right and money on on
a on a very crucial level, it's not real. Like
even when you're dealing with like gold coins, it's just
it's all it's all ultimately kind of arbitrary. I mean, yes,
there's there's a great deal of numbers and mathematics backing
(19:19):
it up, but it's all and none of it is real,
you know. And then when when we when we when
we raise that this abstract thing, this unreal thing, above
everything else that is real in life, when we place
this in this this made up money, above the heads
of very real people, it's terrifying and awful and absurd.
(19:39):
Right well, when the fantasy of this, right, it becomes
grotesque and you can't really see the reality around you, right,
I mean, it clouds your vision of your ability to
actually accurately since what's going on around you. That's when
I when I think, you know, you make decisions that
perhaps and other people creates this of disgust, because all
(20:01):
of a sudden you become this person who is a
caricature yourself to a certain degree. There's something called the
ultimatum game, and it's interesting the premises. Okay, I have
ten dollars that I can share with you, Robert Land,
anyway I choose. Okay, if you accept my offer, then
we both keep my proposed shares. If you reject my offer,
(20:25):
neither of us sees any of the money. Wait now,
what's the offer? Okay, um, okay, have ten dollars, I
will give you a quarter a quarter of the money
or just what do I have to do? Do you
mean you just can you can take or you can
leave it. Well, in that case, I would take it
because is better than no money. Right, you are so rational,
(20:49):
But most people would actually reject it. Huh yeah, because
you would think like the rational thing to do is
to say, like, um, you know, sure, now we're both
richer for this, right, But there's a sense of injustice
going on, like someone might think, that's not really why
are you keeping and I'm getting but I didn't do
anything to earn it. You just you have ten dollars,
(21:11):
you're giving me twenty cents and I'm and and if
you give me that cents, I'm halfway to getting something
out of the office snack machine. All I have to
do is find one more quarter and I'm gonna be
rolling in granola bar. Okay, Well, if you were a normal,
flawed person, you would say, no, I'm going to penalize
you for your stinginess. No, I'm not gonna like neither
of us are going to get anything, right. That's weird. Yeah,
(21:34):
So even Ian, it's understandable, like I can totally I
can totally get it. Yeah, like I have. And it
is in a way, if you think about it, um,
it's sort of a power structure, right, because if that
person has the money and they're offering it to you,
how do you get your power back if you have nothing,
if you don't have really, uh any choice in the matter. Right,
So I guess I could I could considerably make the argument, well,
why don't you you know you're keeping nine five, why
(21:57):
don't you just give me one quarter more? And then
I can go ahead and at that granola bar instead.
I'm I'm tempted. I'm with half. I'm here with half
a granola bar, basically that I can't eat. Well, I mean, yeah,
I don't know what you're gonna get, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
You start to think about that, and what happens in
your brain, Uh, the anterior insula starts to get activated.
(22:18):
And this is the area associated with negative emotions. And
this has been seen by Jonathan Cohen, He's a Princeton neuroscientist.
The interesting thing is that when you up the amount
of money, like, for instance, if if I said I
have twenty three dollars and I'm going to give you
eight dollars. Then you start to see people go okay,
(22:39):
well that's that's a little bit fairer, and the part
of the brain, the the anterior insula, actually starts to
die down a little bit in terms of activity as
a way to tamp down this and say, okay, let's
start to be rational about this, because now the stakes
are getting a little bit higher. There's a little bit
more money here, and it really I think it's very
telling on how we make some portant decisions. Huh. So
(23:02):
this is definitely the part of the brain is lighting up.
When you've just had a dinner with those some friends
at a restaurant and you have to figure out how
the bill works, or or even when like far before
the bill comes, say when the guacamole comes out, or
the pizza's placed on the table and food has to
be divvied up, I can see that kicking in, you know,
because you're wondering about how things are going to be
distributed and parsed out, and then how are they going
(23:24):
to be paid for? Like even if you're not like
a stingy kind of person who's counting the slices of
pizza as they leave the table, like your brain can't
help but sort of think in those terms, right. Well,
and they've seen this in babies, they've seen this in
primates too, that there's a sense of injustice. Study after
study that people are mentally taking notes on what is
being parsed out at that time. Well, because I mean,
(23:45):
we have to live in a community. We have to
live in some sort of a group. Be at a
primitive group that is just you know, crawling through the
grasses and prehistoric times, or a community of people who
are trying to figure out how in the heck they're
gonna do the tip with a group on discount at
a restaurant. Right, Yeah, that's just the recipe for disaster
right there. Yeah, Yeah, the whole group on thing. Uh,
(24:07):
not to say that I haven't taken advantage of it's great,
but yes, um, you have to come to some sort
of point of cooperation. And like you said, that's that's
what really makes a society. That's that's the glue of it.
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back, more of the science of greed. All right,
(24:27):
we're back. Why do donuts distract Summer Simpson. Why is
Hommer Sipson obsessed with with donuts? We had to boil
this down to a single Oh, I don't know, brain hormone,
what would it be? Delicious dopamine exactly. Just the mere
thought of the donut can can result in dopamine release.
Just the the the anticipation of rewarding yourself with those
delicious cowards. I have to say, I think I might
(24:48):
be salivating a little bit right now. Yeah, I've been
picturing that. I don't even really eat donuts, but I'm
picturing that that Simpsons doughnut with the pink I sang
in the sprinkles. Yeah. Dopamine keeps popping up in these
podcasts we're doing. I mean, dopamine pops up a lot
because it's anytime we're trying to figure out neurologically why
we do the things we do, because dopamine is the
reward juice, and uh, most of it were not most,
(25:10):
but a lot of the things we do are about
releasing that chemical, about achieving the reward. Our life is
kind of this game, and when we, uh, we actually
hit the points where we get the achievements, we get
the dopamine it's not surprisingly would show up here. It
show it seems to have shown up in all the
other sense. And it's one of these things that we
learned a game a long time ago. Primitive man kind
(25:32):
of figured out what was going on with the dopamine
and figured out, hey, I can actually cheat and get
all the dopamine I want. Right, so we end up
with this whole legacy of bad habits and addictions and
and sins if you will, And greed seems to play
especially well with dopamine because it's tied up in three
of the big needs that we have in life, the
needs for safety, the need for approval, and the need
(25:53):
for esteem. Right, we need safety because we want to survive.
We need approval because we want to live in a
community d uh. And we need a steam because we
want to rise up in that community. And money, as
it happens, and pretty much buy any of those things.
You have money, you can buy safety for yourself. You
want to be approved of, You can buy the right clothing,
you can buy the right lifestyle to do that, and
(26:13):
if you want to steam as pretty much any stay
presidential election or or you know, or a political kind
of gate illustrates you can buy that if you have
enough money and enough will to invest in it. So
money is the ultimate dopamine inducer. If money in and
of itself doesn't create fuel the dopamine, then it can
(26:34):
buy something that will, which makes sense again why people
would be chasing that high with with wealth or greed,
right um. And it actually plays into something that has
been called the scrabble strategy before, and again we're talking
about the short term versus the long term, and the
scrabble strategy is actually called the greedy algorithm. And this
(26:55):
is a computational mathematics term, and basically it say is
that you can do well by making whichever move seems
best at that moment and not worrying too much about
future consequences. And in mathematics, the greedy algorithm builds up
a solution piece by piece, always using the next piece
that offers the most obvious and immediate benefits. So for us, right,
(27:16):
that would translate to dopamine ding ding ding. Okay. So
in the scrabble scenario, the the idea here is that
I get a high number value kyle like an X
or a Z or something I'm better off holding onto it,
but instead I play it immediately, right, Yeah, because I
mean that is not playing game, right. It's not like
chess where you have to really consider, you know, three
(27:39):
moves ahead, you just have to. In scrabble, it really
is like whatever you have right in front of you
at that very moment, you have to play and you'll
you'll benefit from that strategy. So you know, that's that's
what greed sort of falls into, is this greedy algorithm.
Although the greedy algorithm obviously isn't sustainable because at some
point you have to uh, you know, inhabit your future
(28:00):
rain and start thinking about consequences. Yeah, and I guess
with human lives, the problem is that by the time
you start realizing you need to play the long game,
there's not In many cases there's not been much game left.
I don't know, you didn't see that a lot. I
mean it's like we said earlier, it's like people end
up not caring during the rich years, during the bountiful years,
(28:20):
which are there the grasshopper, right, the grassopper in the
ant That sounds right because the grasshopper, Yeah, the aunt
in the fable, right, is is piling away for the
becoming winter, and the grasshopper is like, whoa, I'm having
a great time and then it gets cold and the
ants like I'm set in the Grasshopper dies. It's kind
of a right from your Rosebud we walked. I don't know.
(28:45):
I can't leap to that logic. I don't know if
that actually plays in all that well, but I don't know.
He was chasing after greed, Yeah, well he was, he was.
He is another iconic greedy character. But but yeah, when
we're in the midst of the of the Plenty, we're
not thinking about the long game, and it's easier to
think about the long game when there's not that much
game left. I don't know if I'm making sense on that. No, No,
I'm getting it. I'm getting if you are obsessed your
(29:08):
whole life with chasing after the Precious and uh and
trying to battle do battle with the sneaky little hobbits
is for the Precious. Well, the Precious was pretty awesome.
It was one of the rings of power. So I mean,
I you could you kind of have to side with
Gollum on that one, I know, But the point is
that that you could you could waste your entire life,
(29:28):
you know, obsessing over the precious and then you no
longer have a life. You just have a shiny did
get to travel pretty well, and he lived a long life.
I don't know what's going on here, Robert Lamb. I'm
just saying, you know, greedy got just coming out, don't
you know, hate on Sneakle too much because you know,
you got to see the world of mental Earth, and
(29:50):
you know, and he and he his spoiler, he dies
by falling into a volcano, which is something I kind
of want for myself. So okay, So there we are
revealing something about you right now, into your affinity for snag.
Like imagine if your if your obituary said something like
Robert Land has away today when he fell into the
mountain Doon, Like that's pretty after chasing absolute power. Well,
(30:15):
now that makes it not kind of sad. I guess
all right, you've got You've got a point we were
discussing earlier, like the research into degreed doesn't go quite
as deep to some of the other ones we've we've
talked about. Yeah, I was thinking about Dante. I was like, yeah,
of course, he's like this is awful. This is bad.
It's awful, it's bad. But I'm not really going to
devote a lot of time. Same thing with researchers so far.
I mean, I guess a lot of its kind of
surface level comes down to you. We want money because
(30:36):
money makes a lot of things possible. It allows us
to have safety, it allows us to to eat, to
to have shelter, it allows us to move through life.
So of course we want it. And like with all
the sins we've looked at, there's like a tipping point
between like a normal level of wanting money and an
unbalanced level. You know, what I think would be interesting
is some research on the super wealthy and wondering there
(31:00):
or not if you reach a certain point of wealth
that you become more altruistic and you actually become more ethical.
That isn't because a number of billionaires have taken that
pledge to donate a large portion of their their wealth charities.
And there are for every you know, miserly Scrooge McDuck
type individual in the world, you can you can generally
(31:20):
think of someone else who is using their fortune, or
at least a large portion of their fortune to try
and do good things and not just as a tax,
right right, right, So yeah, I would like to see
more more numbers on that, for sure, because there are
there are certainly some individuals that really make a case
for the old adage money corrupts and money is the
root of all evil. But then there are some individuals
who seem to stand apart from that and and really
(31:40):
give us a little hope. Yeah, and and some people
who I'm sure at four waste uff and they're driving
a luxury car that that actually, uh, they're not jerks,
I don't know. Let me get that. Let Dante have
the last word on this though, because there's a lovely
little line and this is of course translated from the
Italian and then this is Virgil talking to Dante. He says,
now you can see, my son, the brief mockery of
(32:01):
the goods that are committed to fortune, for which the
human race of squabbles, for all the gold that is
under the moon and that ever was, could not give
rest to even one of these weary souls. So that's that,
as they're looking at the tortures and help. So there
you go, all right, So there you have it, one
(32:22):
of our favorite episodes from one of our favorite series.
If you'd like to hear the other episodes in the
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Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Just drop seven
Deadly Sins or your favorite sin uh be at wrath
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(32:44):
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(33:04):
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