Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Tracy <inaudible>. I'm Amy Barton and today we're going to tell you everything you never knew you wanted to know about aphorisms. First of all, would you like to know, maybe some of you know what an aphorism is. It's one of those words you kind of know, but you'd have to look up. So we're going to tell you it's a memorable expression of a general truth of principle. So like Murphy's law. Yup. Anything can go wrong, will go wrong. Yeah. Okay. So we were just, before we started recording, I was telling you all my good stuff about Hofstadter's law, Hofstadter's law States, it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account offsetters law, which I really like that because they break the rule of defining a thing by defining it with itself. I have changed jobs recently and Hofstadter's law, it's 100% completely true.
Speaker 0 00:49 And I'm not totally sure if that's because you ooze into the time allocated, like you should give yourself a shorter deadline so that you're <inaudible> ooze. So what you're saying is, is like if you say, this is going to take me a half an hour, it's going to take probably 45 minutes. Yeah. But give yourself a smaller amount of time. Yeah. But then Hofstadter's law says even if you take that into account, you're going to take an hour and a half to do the 30 minute project if you try to do that. Oh yeah. But when you're learning, I mean that's just going to happen. How that goes, you know, it just takes time. Yeah, that's true. And there are so many laws. I had a fun time going through Wikipedia, had the longest list. We'll have a link for that in the show notes and then I fell down into Reddit. Oh yeah.
Speaker 0 01:36 Oh my gosh. Just read it. Have so many good versions of these aphorisms. I really also like how you go down if you start like Sturgeon's law, um, Sturgeon's revelation turned into Sturgeon's law and it says 90% of everything is crap. What I liked about this one is if you type in Sturgeon's law, it comes up with a kajillion tech sites. And so it was very, the techie community has embraced this, like all y'all stuff is all crap. Oh no. Yeah. So that one was funny to me. It kind of relates to, uh, this thing, it's called the Wadsworth constant. So the first 30% of any video can be skipped because it contains no interesting or worthwhile information. This is from a Redditor name Wadsworth. And in 2011 there was even a website called Wadsworth it, which would clip the first 30% for you. Okay.
Speaker 0 02:28 So I went on, I was like, Hmm, so how can online no anything. So I went to Bon Appetit, uh, videos on YouTube, beauty tutorials, cat videos, and I got to tell you that it not wrong. No, not really. I mean, I had my calculator out and I was like, okay, so this is, this is five minutes long and what's 30% of that? And then take that off of the video and then watch it. And you, you did, you get right to the meat of things. And I think this might even apply to recipe blogs cause you know when you go to a recipe blog and you're like, I want to know how to make chocolate chip cookies. And they're like, well when I was a child I went on a car trip with my parents and blah blah blah blah blah. And you're just like, I just want the recipe.
Speaker 0 03:08 We cut off 30% and guess what? You get to the recipe pretty fast. That's true. I am a big fan of the jump to recipe button. I do think that's true because if you were to listen to brain junk, we probably only talk for like 15 seconds at the beginning of ours, but it's all identification of what we're going to talk about and then we talk about it. Yeah. Although we do kind of cut right through to that. We keep it brief for you guys. We do because we love you. We love the idea of you. Please don't try to hug us. If you see us in person, you could maybe can hug trace. I don't know. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Yeah, that'll be okay. How about at tours? Observation. Oh, what did he add? Their line moves faster. Oh, okay. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 0 03:52 It does not matter what line I get into. It will be the longest line always. But I think for me that's a karma thing. I think in a past life I was a horrible human being who was really rude because I mean you could have 12 people in a line over here and one person over here. And I'm like okay, I'll go with the one person and those 12 people will get done before I get through the check stand. Yes. Cause the lady in front of you had check one big thing. Yup. And then it was hiding 32 cans of cat food and she's, yeah, she's got to do a check and she doesn't know how to use the machine and she has coupons and Oh my gosh. So what is it called again at tours. Observation. Okay. I need that tattooed on my forehead.
Speaker 0 04:36 How about, um, I think we both looked this up. Finagles law of dynamic negatives. How can you not like that name? Right? Lifetouch anything that can go wrong will at the worst possible moment. Yes, I'm good. If you're going to drop a cupcake, you've just frosted it and you fumble it, boom. Right into the, you know, dust bunnies on the floor. You know, you could have dropped it on the counter. Oh no. Yeah. I feel like the Christmas vacation movie with Chevy chase is one long example of this and father of the bride, so they're horribly cringy but hilarious. Oh, we talked about the Peter principle. Oh, the Peter principle. Mr venom. I'm going to have to send you a show link to this one because in high school, mr venom to econ and history and he would talk a lot to us about in econ, the Peter principle, you rise to your level of incompetence, so you earn your first promotion, you are in your second promotion. Third one, they bump you up by the fourth promotion or however far up the chain. You've risen a little higher than your skill level and you're no longer actually qualified for the job you're doing, which I've always worried about. I feel like, like the pessimist in me feels like management sometimes is the best example of how this has happened. Why is this person in charge? Yes. Um, I definitely think some places have a more robust system to avoid this problem than others.
Speaker 0 06:12 Is that gracious enough? But honest. I feel that was good. That was good. Yeah. I like that. You're like not not any place I've ever worked. Not any place I've been other places. Uh, I also like Hamlins razor never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. So that's mostly true for me. That wasn't done out of a mean thing. That person was just too dumb to know what they were doing was wrong. Yeah. That one's hard for me to apply and traffic, except it is the truth with me. If I, if I get honked at it's, cause I did not, I was somewhere, Oh, see that car? Yeah. Yes. I've been mortified a time or two. I've had a few times where I have run a red light. It's a super not busy road in the middle of nowhere. And my brain is like, Oh, there's no cars.
Speaker 0 07:07 This is clearly a stop sign or you know, I can just go and, yeah, and as you go under the red light, you know, your brain says Whoa, it wasn't blinking. Yeah, no and I should have stopped if it was to yup. No, I got a really a guy really mad in front of the donut case at yolks on foothills one time and he thought I did something terrible and I'm still not quite sure what, but it's definitely one of those lakes stupid ignorance. If I did do something wrong, I just went up to touching the donuts or something. There was a guy already at the case, but there were two full cases and the one guy was just getting this stuff from one side. So I went over and I grabbed my donut and I walked away. And I don't know if he thought it was one person in the case at a time or not seeing that some of our perception about the world.
Speaker 0 07:49 Did you take his maple bar? Maybe I didn't take the last of anything, but maybe he had been had his eye on that one. That's where he was going next. I do feel the same about donuts, but I got them first, so maybe that was his deal. Yeah, I don't know, but it was definitely stupidity. Not malice. If it was my fault. Let's see. Oh, this is a good one. So this one should be across the top of the entrance to Ikea. <inaudible> it's Alan's Axiom. When all else fails. Read the directions. Ah, yes you have. I found in my new job, there are four screws in the top drawer of my desk. I do not know what those screws are for, and so they don't look like they're from my chair, so I sit with confidence, but my desk might go down these days, so I don't sit on it.
Speaker 0 08:41 Oh, mystery screw. I don't know. I like patents. Law. It's the law of a pragmatist. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. This is not the law. The law of a perfectionist at all. My husband would be like, Oh, he won't like this one. He's going to have a better plan. I can't quite figure out how it sits with me. I'm kind of like the practical part of me says yes, that's good. The type a part of me says that's not acceptable and that's why we're friends because I get the short list done, but I will never get the long projects done ever and my house would never have pictures hung. I mean it might if there's a screw hole in the wall already, you know you've got four screws in the desk at work, you could just bring those home. Right? Yeah, I'm prepared. How about Barth's distinction? There are two types of people in the world. Those who divide people into types and those who don't. Barth is clearly one who does.
Speaker 0 09:37 I guess what's interesting to me about all of these is how well, you know, like you said, it's like it's a general truth. It's a, it's almost a cliche in some ways and yet I don't think I read any of these now. Some of them I didn't understand cause they gets into the weeds of science or math or statistics. And I was like, hi. I feel like that's funny, but I don't get it. If you walk into the science building at a school and you said that, they'd be like, Oh, you're so cheeky. Yeah. But um, if I got it, you know, any of the other ones, it's like, Oh yeah, it's true. Yeah. They very much are. I like Franklins rule. I tend to be a pragmatist. Franklin's rule is, bless it, is he who expects nothing for, he will not be disappointed. Oh, amen.
Speaker 0 10:22 That's true. I disaster. What is the worst possible thing that can happen? We're like, if there's going to be a bill, what is the most it could possibly cost? Yeah. And then when it's not those things, when it's not the disaster, I'm like, well that could've been worse. You know? So I don't know if that's healthy, but it works. I kind of like a good false alarm. Not too often, but you're reminded it could be so much worse. Oh yeah. Do you have any Clark's laws? I'm just sitting here glancing at my notes. I've got Clarke's third law. It didn't ever occur to me. Oh, first or second law. Yeah. Oh, well, let's your Clarke's third law. Any sufficiently advanced society is indistinguishable from magic, which we've joked about before. Oh yes. That magic moment. There's a great side comic where it's the whole bunch of equation and it says magic and that felt true for me in math and science in school math especially.
Speaker 0 11:17 I finally just got to the point where I was like, sure, whatever. I don't really need to understand it. If you tell me this is what happens when I do this, then okay. Yes, exactly. Yeah. The only reason I graduated with my degree is because they had statistics for liberal arts students. They clearly recognize that we could not hack it in the one the the math and science students were enrolled in because our brains think really differently. Yeah, that's true. We have not cultivated that math he side. This is going to be the least funny ending ever. You guys, it's always love the path of progress dates that a shortcut is the longest distance between two points. Your shortcut is never shortcut is basically what that sounds like to me. Yeah. And I took a shortcut once up, um, strong road and I thought it's one of those roads that zigzags back and forth all the way up the Hill.
Speaker 0 12:04 So I cut across one of the zigzags and it was not as exact, it was fenced and concrete wall up and I was on the lunch break and I'd written in Hill is higher than I thought and I had my bike and so I'm like, I have to get back to work. Um, and it was not a shortcut. I rolled in 10 minutes late with bristles in my socks. Like I had a quick lunch break, took a bike ride. So it's always love the path that progress is true. You pay for those shortcuts. Yeah, you kind of do. Anytime you need another dose of random fact tacularness ask your smart speaker to play brain junk podcast. You can also find us on Twitter is at my brain junk and we're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcasts. So if you have a favorite aphorism, go ahead and pitch it to us. Yeah, send that away. Amy and I will catch you next time and we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.
