ASM063 Love, Authoritarianism, and Breaking Down Space

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love authoritarianism and breaking down space all that and more on this week's episode of ask science

[Music]

welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life lots going on uh in the very near future i'll be at the liminal conference in ventura california with pete ins i'll be all over the state of texas with gunger and there's more events coming up after that so there's more chances to see me probably than there's ever been but for now we've got a show to do so let's get it started [Music] hey science mike love the show love what you do i just figured i'd ask you a more lighthearted question um my wife's always asking me to scratch her back and her arms and etc uh and i was curious why it feels so much better when somebody else scratches your back versus when you scratch your own back or your own arm or you know whatever uh what's going on psychologically neurologically that sort of thing uh again love what you do thank you so much and looking forward to your answer this is definitely a more lighthearted question it's also really tough believe it or not when i saw this one make it to the poll i was a little nervous i thought okay maybe maybe the patrons on patreon are not going to vote for it and of course they overwhelmingly did so let's start with the obvious most people like to be touched most people like to be touched now some people have touch aversion based on physical disorders that create that you can have trauma that creates that but most human beings like to be touched by other people we are social mammals we are the most social of all the primates and among the most social of all mammals and so evolution has honed in us an affinity for contact with others we get separation anxiety when we're alone if you remember last week's question talking about why humans love dogs and dogs love humans it's because we're both species that enjoy the company of other members of our species to the point of enjoying physical contact when people touch people there is a hormone called oxytocin that gets released that makes us feel pair bonded makes us feel cuddly and that's not just in the context of romance any time someone touches you and it's not in a stressful or fearful or threatening context you have that production of oxytocin and you have the formation of a bond between two individuals now the west has become remarkably touch averse i think that's part of why our culture is very sexualized is because we've created such a stigma around touching now some of that's that's good and that's necessary uh historically male to female touch has often been associated with domination and uh patriarchy to kind of bring up my inner feminist but by and large we're actually seeing an increase in depression and anxiety and even an increased propensity towards violence based on the amount of or the lower amount of touch the touch starvation that happens in western culture so that's kind of the evolutionary impetus now in the brain this isn't isn't perfectly understood i think it may be related to the reason you can't tickle yourself so when someone else tickles you you laugh it's related to probably a reaction we have to creepy crawlies right that should be that's a weird feeling when a bugs on your skin and bug some some bugs bite so we have a reaction to that and tickling kind of feels like that um but it's an unexpected touch you can't not expect your own touch because your brain is mapping your motor cortex is mapping where your hand is and so you can't tick yourself but someone else can probably tickle you if you're ticklish and that's probably related to why it feels better when someone else gives you a massage when someone else strokes your skin or whatever or scratches your back because it has that unexpected notion that you've associated with contact with others now it goes two ways not only do we like to be touched we like to touch people people generally report that another person's skin feels soft when they touch someone and they'll usually say they feel softer than their own skin even if by objective measures the opposite is true we tend to find touching other people to be pleasant or pleasurable and again not necessarily in a sexual context so we have this this need to be touched and grooming scratching all these things are very primate very ape rituals for bonding for creating peaceful exchanges and evolution has primed us to enjoy those things now i wish i could give you like a here's exactly in the brain i can't i don't see it in the sciences and i actually took probably 25 minutes and read a few papers on this and it's just not super well understood in the sciences but what is understood is that humans are social primates we're apes who live in societies and love to touch and be touched [Music] our next question came in from email and it's a doozy hey science mike i just watched a tedx talk about 11 dimensions in quantized space it both intrigued me and blew my mind in fact it probably broke my brain in any case as much as i found it fascinating i'm also not totally sure i grasp it what do you know about the theory of quantized space can you explain it in a way that does justice to the theory but is simple enough for a layperson to understand i'm sure that's a tall order but i'm confident you can do it and what's amazing is in this week's poll this was another question i didn't want to answer in fact all four questions this week were the four i was hoping wouldn't make it on the show because i've just been you know it's been a busy week i'm only home for a week before i'm on the road again and uh i'm having to record two episodes because i'm headed to israel and i don't know if i had a month to prepare i could do a good job on this question in five to seven minutes i might be able to do this in a special edition 30 minute episode like i did with gravitational waves but i don't know here's the reason extra dimensional space is confusing and non-intuitive and our brains don't really have a way to visualize it so doing math in additional spatial dimensions is relatively easy but picturing extra spatial dimensions is basically impossible and this is especially true because there isn't a defined theory about extra dimensions or quantized space this is a a hypothetical framework in physics they don't all agree and in fact in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com you can have a look at both the tedx boulder talk by thad roberts that are the original questions about and you can also see a piece from brian greene where he talks about string theory and they carry different assumptions or at least different metaphors for describing extra dimensional space but regardless let's see if we can explain this so you've probably heard that quantum particles uh like photons or electrons are something called a wave function and that there's something called heisenberg's uncertainty principle that tells us that we can't know both the position and the velocity of a particle at the same time that the more we know about one the less we know about the other and you may have even heard that quantum particles can teleport from point a to point b without traversing the distance in between them and that's weird you've probably also heard if you follow my work at all that the standard model of physics the quantum model of physics doesn't incorporate gravity it ignores gravity and when you combine it with einstein's theory of relativity you get answers that don't make sense and so as theoretical physicists have worked for ways to integrate what we understand about the quantum world with what we understand about the macro universe through relativity one of the things they've used is extra spatial dimensions so one of the earliest attempts was simply adding an additional a fourth spatial dimension and when you do that you can actually integrate relativity and quantum dynamics uh you just can't have electrons so as we built models uh effectively string theory created this need uh for additional spatial dimensions and where are they well the the three dimensions we're used to that are spatial are planar they're flat they extend in all directions but we imagine that dimensions could be curled back on themselves and we already can visualize what a curled dimension would look like the surface of the earth is a two dimensional plane which is curled into a ball so if you go far enough in any direction you come back to where you started because it's no longer a flat plane but a spherical plane so when we talk about 11-dimensional space-time all those additional dimensions we're imagining are wrapped up in these tiny tiny little structures of nine-dimensional space and if that doesn't make sense to you great it doesn't make sense to anybody there's no one can visualize this stephen hawking lawrence krauss brian green they can talk to you about it they can offer metaphors they can certainly propose elegant mathematical models but no one can visualize what it's like to have seven eight or nine dimensions curled in upon themselves in space-time but what we can imagine is the effects of that it starts to solve some of the problems we see with this fuzzy probabilistic nature of quantum dynamics and it makes the universe deterministic again now in this process we get to something called planck length and planck area that's the smallest divisible unit of space and this comes from mathematical models and it's the idea that uh you can't break space apart any farther than that that below that the structures based on as we understand it doesn't mean anything and we actually have a little bit of you know plausible tests to establish this because black holes black holes are maximum entropy objects and we would expect that their entropy would increase along with their volume but they don't the entry of a black hole only increases with its surface area which is what makes us understand or believe that space has a smallest divisible unit just imagine you're looking at a sheet of paper it's graph paper okay and each square is a planck length and you don't have to worry about the size of a blank class just imagine that you literally couldn't cut the paper any smaller than those squares and that would be a two-dimensional plane that was flat so if you kept extending that sheet of paper it'd go on forever there'd be squares forever and now if you can imagine you know crinkling up little balls of paper and setting them on the lines of those squares on each of the four corners and that those are additional dimensions so if you were small enough you know if you're very very small you could actually walk into one of those balls of paper and all across its balled up surface okay and that would be additional dimensions on top of this plane now that's only mapping a two-dimensional surface balled up onto a two-dimensional surface and what we're talking about is multi-dimensional balls of space-time inside a three-dimensional plane uh but we can't visualize that we can't imagine a four-dimensional plane we're gone we're done but that's the best i can do in the amount of time i have to answer the questions so here's what i'm going to do on ask sciencemic.com i'll have a few links to you you can check out black hole thermodynamics if you want to do some reading you can learn more about the planck length as well as see ted talks from two different people who will talk to you a little bit about higher dimensional space if you really want to dig deep brian green's the elegant universe is a great place to go or the fabric of the cosmos also by brian green we'll talk about these topics in depth but it will not be an easy read most of the resources i recommend or something i think will be accessible to everyone these are books you're going to have to sit and study and ponder and contemplate and consult other resources to understand if you care about extra dimensional space that's really the only way to do it [Music] hey mike you've mentioned before that the biggest problem with religion is authoritarianism so my question is how does having power over another affect the brain specifically your ability to react according to your normal moral standards okay well there's there's two things to look at here that aren't uh directly related one is the role power plays and modifying human thoughts feelings and behavior and there's been a lot of studies on that one thing we find is when people are elevated into higher positions of power they tend to be better at delaying rewards so they're they're they're more likely to go for a bigger reward later than an immediate reward now because they feel more secure it has an effect almost like an antidepressant it can help it can help people feel less down it can help people have a greater sense of well-being and purpose to have power over other people those are positive effects on the other hand positions of power tend to in studies reduce the empathy people have towards people they have power over there they literally are less responsive to those people's emotions less empathetic and even in pain studies where they see someone who appears to be in pain their brain doesn't have the same response of emulating that pain as they do when they don't have power over a person so power is emotionally distancing and reduces empathy in most people these are these are measurable and significant effects uh and when we don't have empathy that of course affects our behavior our ethical considerations we start to slowly view people as commodities and i i don't know you know i i did my stint in management in the corporate world and i hated it i think i was actually too empathetic a manager to be effective i don't like to manage other people i really like being science mike where i talk to you guys at events and we do a podcast and you send in questions and we talk and we're all just together and people bring me in for events and i hang out with them they're good people but they're not in charge of me and i'm not in charge of them we're just kind of partnering in the world and that suits my temperament a lot better than managing people oh i hate it and for those of you who listen to the liturgies probably the biggest problem the liturgists face is that neither michael or i have any interest in managing people just zero because of these effects that power has on human psychology and i find them i find them abhorrent now other people are great managers they're able to either be effective amidst those effects or they're able to counteract them intentionally those people make great managers and great leaders when you take people who are psychologically unstable in some way like a narcissist for example and you put them in a position of power when you've already got someone with a low empathy and you lower their empathy further those can create truly toxic conditions for people in an organization now authoritarianism is a little distinct authoritarianism is almost a bottom-up philosophy it's people who are eager to have strong leadership for who status quo is important for whom predictable social norms are important that's closely linked to religious fundamentalism and here there's a ton of terrible terrible scientific work that's been done earlier in this decade and in the previous decade there were a lot of studies that basically said that conservative people were authoritarian and they had extreme amygdala response compared to other people whereas liberal or non-authoritarian people tended to have a lot of activity in their anterior cingulate cortex and the methodology of those studies in peer review just got destroyed so if you hear someone citing that research it's it's just not true that all conservatives are more amygdala activated and all liberals are more compassionate or empathetic it's it's bad science it's just bad science however there have been a few studies i've seen that are interesting and enlightening about authoritarianism and the brain we're all handed most of us are handed we're left-handed or right-handed some people are ambidextrous and the propensity you have to use the wrong hand or your non-dominant hand for tasks appears to be correlated with your authoritarian tendencies so people who always use their dominant hand for everything are more likely to be authoritarian than people who frequently use their non-dominant hand for activities what predictive power does that have it's certainly not causal it's just a correlation i just thought it was interesting more in lightning was a study that i read that will be linked on the show notes at asksciencemike.com that showed that people who have damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex are more likely to be manipulated by authoritarian leadership cues or to be religious fundamentalists and so the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in the brain plays a role in helping people resist or feed out authoritarian control structures systems and influences so that's that's a decent study that appears to have done better in peer review than the ones i saw before that but basically power something we have to wield carefully as human beings it does have a tendency to bring out our darker impulses and the idea that power corrupts is one that i think stands on solid scientific footing and it's essential if you're going to be a manager or a leader of any kind that you have a high degree of emotional self-awareness of emotional health and that you intentionally humanize and are aware of how your actions affect those that you have power over [Music] [Applause] this last question has mature content in it and so if you're one of my listeners who enjoys this show with your children i wanted to give you a heads up and a moment to pause the show before i proceed with the question dear science mike i am a teenage girl with a big problem i am in love now being in love isn't the problem it's wonderful but i am a very scientifically minded person and having these really strong emotions running through my head is kind of frightening sometimes so being the person i am i tried to reassure myself with research i looked up articles online to see if i am crazy for feeling this strongly for a guy at 17. what i found just made it worse every single christian article i read practically made a mockery of love they harped on falling in love with jesus so you won't be heartbroken when he leaves you or sex is bad and i realize that all relationships don't last forever and i realize that i should refrain from sex before marriage so i can reach my full potential but surely there is more to love than that i thought the religion whose main core value is love would be more supportive of relationships is that all there is to a solid relationship no sex and preparation for heartbreak am i naive and childish to be in love thanks kcm well casey first of all it's totally normal to be 17 and feel deeply in love uh your your brain is just this incredible soup of energy um and first of all i'd say enjoy it i mean i know there's an intensity to young love that can be unsettling gosh if i look back to when i was 17 18 19 and the way i processed love and relationships some of those weren't weren't my finest moments but at the same time the kind of intensity of feeling that you're having now your brain will not always be able to pull that off as you get older the saturation the hue the intensity of those feelings starts to dial down considerably and i'm i'm pushing 40 and uh my feelings are just a lot more mellow these days which it has its pluses but what i'm saying is just take a moment to enjoy being young so first of all just hit pause and just celebrate your capacity to have such intense feelings it's not crazy it's normal so let's let's step outside of like the christian bubble for a second and think scientifically if you eliminate culture you are at a child-bearing age and so are uh boys your age and biology evolution has primed you in your teens to have very intense bonding experiences to be extremely preoccupied with sex because the information payload you carry in your cells your dna really wants to make additional copies of itself now want of course is anthropomorphizing a molecule but that's how evolution works it's normal for a teenager to not only fall in love but want to have sex with a partner it's just it's just as normal as can be it's not dirty it's not shameful it's not weird it's how your body has been engineered sex is not bad or shameful or dirty and frankly a lot of the teachings about sex not only in christianity but in america come from a property view of women uh the the the value of being a virgin is linked to women being understood as property and so as a feminist i kind of stand in opposition to those things also sex is a part of a relationship but it's not all of it by any means it's a good part of a relationship but sex is a force amplifier so there are two narratives i am troubled by one is this uh christian this religious notion that sex is dirty or shameful i think that causes harm for people but i think a modern progressive approach to sexuality has its own drawbacks total sexual liberation might be interesting philosophically but does not actually appear to be that beneficial biologically or emotionally we're seeing drawbacks to hook up culture in the data we're seeing an uptick in rates of sexually transmitted infections and we are seeing an increase in people reporting dissatisfaction dependent despondency or despair related to high degrees of promiscuity humans actually are designed to pair bond we we do well in a one-on-one monogamous relationship now i'm not the kind of person who's going to say everyone has to be monogamous i generally don't make any sort of uh behavioral demands on other people as long as behaviors don't affect others but i would say there is some wisdom in what the church teaches about sex sex is an emotional and physical force multiplier and should be treated carefully it should absolutely be handled with care now it's you're 17 years old so you're still a minor so i would defer to your parents on your sexual behaviors honestly but once once you're an adult you have these choices you have to make about how you're going to approach sex and i would say sex is not bad but should be treated carefully in my own life i have found the most joy the most contentment the most peace the most happiness in wholly devoting uh my romantic love and sexual energy to one person i've never in my life been as happy as i have since i got married to my wife and it's been 15 years it's been 15 wonderful years and not only am i emotionally fulfilled by that union but i don't there's just no chance for germs to get into my body through sex because when you have sex you have to lower these immunodefense systems you have to let foreign dna into your body that's how sex happens that's how more people get made and there's a whole class of pathogens that specialize in that stuff and the fact is even even with a condom it is possible for some sexually transmitted infections to make it from person to person with nothing but skin contact uh and of course there's the emotional bonding that happens in sex and it's a complicating factor in relationship so i would say that your zeal for love is beautiful and admirable that it's a great thing to be head over heels and it's also a good thing to be intentional and even cautious with sexual decisions and you're right there's a i share with you your concern about christian media and it's shaming of sexual behavior we've got to fix that but i don't know necessarily that the answer is to go to a completely open sexual ethos on a personal level again on a societal level i think people should make their own decisions about what's right and wrong but what i'm sharing with you as a friend is that in my experience a selective pair-based sexual ethic really does produce healthy relationships and produce personal satisfaction over time i hope that was helpful if you have any additional questions or things you want to ask this is a great conversation to have with your folks if you have a healthy relationship with them for sure i know that uh if you were my daughter i would would love to have this conversation with you so i you know the show is about open safe conversations and i'm always happy to answer any question but i'm also just like a random dude on the internet and uh hopefully there are people in your actual life who you feel comfortable having these conversations with as well [Applause] well there's another episode of ask science mike in the books and i do want to tell you about a few events coming up april 8th i'll be in ventura california for the liminal conference it's me and pete ends doing a three-day event uh we'll talk on friday and saturday and then uh the church's pastor will talk on sunday about the boundaries between science and faith and mystery and mission really looking forward to that event and then april 14th through 17th i'll be hitting dallas san antonio waco and houston and texas with gunger on the one wild life tour april 20th and 21st i'll be in saint paul minnesota at first covenant church and woodland hills community church and then april 23rd i'll be in cascade church in portland you can get more information about all those by going to ask sciencemike.com and clicking on the events tab along with all the other events i have coming up there are more added every week the show is powered by your questions there's no show if there's no questions so keep sending them in ask sciencemike.com you can put in a text question you can record a question and leave a voicemail and that's how those questions get on the show you can also use the hashtag asksciencemike on twitter uh it's also helpful if you go to itunes and rate the show that's how we show up in the rankings in additional to all in addition to all your downloads and i want to thank the patrons on patreon for making the show possible financially and for picking the questions i want to thank andrew govlucky for picking the questions on the show and doing all the pre-production work greg nordin handles the show's sound design and production he does an amazing job and jeff waterford recorded and wrote the theme song thanks for listening everybody and i'll see you next week