One of the many criticisms levelled against a show like Jerry Springer is that the controversy was inauthentic and manufactured in order to drive up ratings. But why do we worry about whether fiction is true or not? Should we just stop caring and enjoy it for what it is?

In this week’s episode, we discuss truth and fiction. We speak about New Journalism, postmodernism, open-world computer games, historiography, the coconut effect, Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, histrionic personality disorder and the nature of reality. Finally we share our favourite fictional media that are based on a true story.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• Jerry Springer: Era-defining TV host dies aged 79
• Tops in Tele-Trash : ‘Springer’ worst stinker on TV guide list
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer
• The Coconut Effect
• Aluminum Christmas Trees
• Histrionic Personality Disorder

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

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

He was left wing, wasn't he a socialist or something? I can't remember.

Let's just enjoy it. Yeah. Nicely introduced. There's lots going on there. Yeah, lots of questions, as you've already said, and you know, what is truth? What is real? What is authenticity? How blurred is it? And why do we care? And to answer maybe some of those is our own agent of

chaos. Chris? Can I just tell you his poker nickname when I used to play poker with this man? Go on. Loki. Right. The tricks to God of Norse mythology. So yes, I think. Yeah, yeah. Frequently posing as a horse.

Yeah, no, where do we go with this? What do we want to say? How do we start to narrow this down a little bit? There's a lot to go out here. It feels like we're sort of just like little fish

around a decaying whale. There is a lot. This is very metaphysical in its nature. There's a lot to lot to talk around here. I'm not sure we're going to get. I think philosophers have been debating this for some time. And although we have a lot of assembled intellectual horsepower here, I'm not sure we're quite going to cap it all off. 90 or 95 percent. Yeah. Choose your angle. Right. OK. Well, so I think why does it matter? I suppose how realistic something is, whether or not something is real or fictional. Why does that matter? Well, one reason, I think, is to do with the notion of authenticity. And we like authenticity. Why do we like authenticity? Because in a sense, why are we being told things? Why do we share information? Right. It's in order to base decisions on that information. It's evidence for something having happened that we then take into account when we decide what we're going to do. Right. That's essentially what storytelling is. It's about sharing other people's experiences, not our own experiences, but other people's experiences. So it's data. Right. And if that data is corrupt, inaccurate, false, then that messes with our model. So we're OK. If our aim is to be entertained, then that's OK. Right. But if we want to base some sort of decision making on it, then we want to know whether it actually happened or not. Right. So I think that's one of the fundamental reasons as to why we want to know, yeah, but did it really happen? There's a burning sort of need. Sometimes you're just happy to leave it vague because it's entertaining. Right. But when it comes down to it, if somebody said, do you know, the other day I, you know, I went to that restaurant and it was terrible and you found out they lied to you and actually it's a really nice restaurant, that would be sort of you'd feel cheated in some way. Even if they told you why it was terrible by telling you

this hilarious story about something the chef did that was disastrous and that they almost died from being poisoned by the lobster. And it might be a great story, but if it wasn't true and you wanted to choose which restaurant to go to, then it would be they misunderstood the rules of some.

Be disquieting. Yeah. Stuff to delve into there. Yeah. But I also think there's an interesting angle, which is that actually so Jordan Peterson, you know, among many of his slightly mad ideas, he has this notion that stories are actually truer than reality. Right. Okay. It's quite an interesting idea. And this is that stories are the distillation of truth. They're a concentration of lots. So he particularly talks about it in the context of religious texts and stories. But and if you think about it, you know, I thought that's quite an interesting idea. Effectively, what you've done is you've taken lots and lots of people's experience and you've distilled it into an archetype and you've gone, okay, well, here's a set of universal truth. It's a little bit like the process of statistics where you, you know, like one point of data is interesting, but a sample and the, you know, the parameters of the statistics relating to the sample possibly give you a truer picture of reality. You know, maybe nobody is five foot six point, you know, three, whatever inches are divided into. But, you know, in terms of that telling you something about the height of a population, maybe that's better than knowing that there are dozens of people with different heights. Like facts and truth. So yeah, exactly. So that I think that's quite an interesting thing that actually, even if even if it is fictional, it might be more truthful than whatever reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. Jordan, what do you got?

I really think that the postmodernists really scrambled this one for everyone. I've got a lot to answer for. Because, you know, their whole thing about truth is relative and subjective. It's constructed, not discovered. Truth is plural and decentered. There are many truths.

I was arguing with my daughter about this the other day. She's very much a relativist.

Yeah, many truths, not just one universal absolute truth. I think that really just opened up this whole, you know, I think something that before that was quite, well, it probably wasn't totally agreed upon, but like there are facts and there are things that aren't facts and there's truth and there isn't truth. I think that just really opened up this whole web of possibilities where truth is just this very elusive thing that doesn't really matter too much. And, you know, it can be sort of whatever you want it to be in a way. Sounds like a secret manifesto for.

I think if you were to take it sort of the sort of thing that you might expect a postmodernist to say is the Times newspaper is as much a work of fiction as Jerry Springer or anything else. It's just a construction.

Yeah, yeah. Jordan, keep going.

Well, yeah, that's. Well, yeah. So what do you think to that? I mean. Well, that's all I wanted to say about the postmodern thing. But then, like, I do think there's interesting. So I when I used to work as a journalist, I was interested in new journalism and gonzo journalism, you know, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom, all these kind of guys. And this is very much in there. You know, a quote from Hunter S. Thompson is absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. So this, you know, like it's very much questioning truth as a necessary component of journalism, which I think it's most people sort of think that what they're reading is truthful. But it kind of span all that into chaos. And I think that but I think when you start doing these things, I do think you get. And it's sort of like back to what Chris was saying about, you know, like there is. I think there is a need for us to know what is truth and what isn't. And I think that I think these things that sort of these things that cast a bit of doubt or sort of blur those lines,

I think, are potentially destructive. Yeah. Okay. Um, good. Also, I guess it goes back to this thing about aims and getting close to what you're talking about, Chris, as well, in terms of, I guess, information exchange, or not exchange, but providing information. What do we want to do with that? Because let's think about this for a moment. Let's say you just bought a new stereo system, as we're always doing these days. Yeah. And the instructions, yeah, you want those to be true. You want them to be factual, probably. And you want to get some information from those. And if you later found out that the instruction manual was lying to you, that actually the volume knob goes the other way, then you'd be disappointed. And that would be an egregious sort of, you know, wrong. Whereas if it's if you found out that the person on Jerry Springer happened to it didn't happen to them at all. And they were just acting really and just trying to get some fame. You'd still be annoyed, but you probably wouldn't be as annoyed. But you'd probably intuitively recognise it as a different sort of environment that we're working in. It is kind of entertainment. Is this an avenue we want to explore? Yeah. Yeah, go on, Nick.

Well, I think to pick up this idea that, you know, stories are useful. I know it's something we sort of cover quite a lot on this podcast. Don't you have some Shannon entropy thing? Right. So I'm just still that space. We're not going to dig up about that. But keep going. But the idea is that stories are useful. The utility of a story comes from the fact that it informs us, which means that it has to do something new, at least, you know. OK, well, if stories are entertaining in themselves, then you wouldn't find you'd find it just as interesting to watch a film a second time as you did the first time. And that's patently not the case. Now, we might with some. And there's a few films I've watched dozens of times. But in general, you'd accept that. You'd accept that reading a story the second time isn't is different. So what you're looking

for in the second or third experience is very different from what you're looking for the first

one, probably. But I think the idea would be that at its root, there is something about being informed about a story about learning something. So what are you informed by? Well, reality is more informative than lies. Right. The problem is that nearly all of reality is boring. Right. So we have this we have this. There's really a tension between the two roles that we want. We you know, we want things to be true, but we also want them to be informative. And the trouble is that most of reality isn't both. Right. So so it's much I can come up with 100 things that if they were to happen will be entertaining and only one will be actually what happened. Right. So no, no, actually, the thing is, it's very it's actually very similar to the problem of open world computer games. It's a similar problem that people think they want open world computer games. Right. It's really nice. The idea where you can go off and explore this whole, you know, entire world of lots of different characters and people. The problem is that unless some structure is imposed into that by the game designers, it's boring. It's like nothing entertaining will happen. So generally in an open world computer game, what happens is you just you go somewhere and a little quest starts. And that quest actually has a narrative structure that's imposed by the game designers, you know, and you know, and that's that's essentially open world, good open world computer games do that. You know, so in Skyrim or something, you go to a new town that you've not been in before and you discover the Thieves Guild and then you have some missions and that kind of thing. Because people think they want the open world, but they don't. They actually want an entertaining narrative. Then they want to be in it and they want to be the hero. And you cannot get both. You cannot have a narrative free, realistic game. You can't have one or the either. Right. You've got to have both. Yeah. Yeah. What I mean, well, you can have a narrative free, realistic game, but it'd be boring. Yeah. So so there you go. I think that's the fundamental problem. And and and yeah, but I got a slightly I've got a sort of, you know, slightly enhanced version of that, but I might get to that.

OK. In a bit. Because what you've just said sums up how I often feel about this podcast. Right. Which is when you guys are talking, I sometimes get a bit bored. Right. Because it's just it's just you've just got this ability, this talent for turning a really interesting, fun topic into something really dry and boring. Right. So when I look

at it by understanding something, by understanding something and taking it apart, applying a structure by opening the back of the clock and seeing how it works, that is more interesting to me than just marveling at the hands going round, going, oh, look, that one's going faster

than that one. But it needs that leavening that I can bring to this. Maybe. I mean, maybe it needs it needs the front of the clock as well. You've got to have some front. Yeah. But no, it really does actually does. Because, you know, I do get frustrated sometimes going, oh, God, these guys are going on about it's a bit boring. And it's all. Yeah. OK. It's really important. It's factual and informative, etc. But it's not very fun. And then afterwards, I go, you know, either in the moment or much later go, actually, that's probably worthwhile. We needed to hear that. So it's that same kind of tension, maybe. So you've got something we're going to come on to later. Let's keep going round. So Chris takes on a bit further.

Yeah, well, so I think that idea that that reality is diluted information, whereas stories are concentrated information, you know, is kind of consistent with that idea we talked about earlier of earlier of stories being more truthful than reality potentially. But I think there's two things that I think are quite interesting is one is the era of, you know, in a postmodern era, this notion that truth can somehow be voted on and the way that social media has accelerated that idea that, you know, where literally is voted on, you know, by likes and so forth. That's what does that mean where there's less acceptance of the idea of an objective truth and that it's much more subjective. And then you look at things which are becoming more contentious currently, like history. OK, so say that last bit again. Things are becoming more contentious now in the environment that we exist in, like history and historic interpretations. Well, like the recent Cleopatra sort of, in inverted commas, documentary. Well, it was a biopic, not a biopic, but I think it's meant to be a documentary. Right. But I think people have disagreed with certain aspects. It's been controversial. Exactly. But Hilary Mantel said, which is quite an interesting quote, basically, that as soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Right. And she gives the example of, you know, if you ask two relatives of somebody who's recently died, you will understand that because you get two totally different interpretations of who they were and what they are. And so particularly when we're sort of, you know, looking at establishing facts about the past, what actually happened, there is a reality which is that our evidence is always subjective. There's, we can't, you know, there are elements of it, but I think it's the historian Patrick Collinson who said that, you know, basically 99% of the evidence is unrecorded speech, you know, and that's why it's very difficult to establish what the truth was historically. I think Chris is giving a very

elaborate excuse for the only way is Essex, and it's completely inexcusable in my mind. I don't think he's defending it, to be fair to him. No, no, but I think, you know, it feels to me at the end of all this, I want to go, yeah, but look, I mean, Henry VIII was the King of England.

Yeah. And he did have a certain personality. I think Chris probably feels the same. There

might be uncertainty about it, but it doesn't mean that too, if someone came along and said, actually, did you know that Henry VIII was a woman or something? That's not an equally valid viewpoint, because it just isn't true. Correct. I think we three oldies probably agree on this,

about, you know, Mr Zuma millennial. I agree as well. Okay, that's good. That's reassuring. Yeah.

Yeah. So where does that leave us with Jerry Springer? Okay. So I've got an interesting sidelight, which might be a small diversion. Again, I know I always reference TV tropes, but it's such an awesome website, but they've got a thing that they call aluminium Christmas trees, which apparently comes from the fact that you sometimes see references to aluminium Christmas trees in slightly older, you know, works of fiction. And everyone thinks that sounds like a preposterous made up thing, taking the mickey out of commercialism. But actually, they were real, and quite a lot of people bought them. And there's quite a few of these things where things that are in fiction are judged to be unrealistic, even though they're not, or things that writers don't even include, that are realistic, because they're worried that they'll seem unrealistic. So things like, apparently, a lot of people, I guess, particularly younger people, think that the DeLorean in Back to the Future was not a real car. No, and was made up as meant to be a sort of one of Doc Brown's inventions. Oh, right. Okay. In Days of Thunder, a lot of people characterised, sorry, criticised the name of the main character, which was Cole Trickle, because they said that sounds like a parody of a southern name. But apparently, there was a real life stock car racer called Dick Trickle. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. There's a bit where they try and reverse the wheels to make the odometer go backwards. Well, apparently, that used to work. Oh, really? Yeah, it seems like a ridiculous thing to do. But actually, it did work. In fact, it doesn't in the film, but it feels... Ridley Scott apparently wanted to include a bit in Gladiator, where the Gladiators do a product endorsement. Because apparently, yeah, apparently, they used to have sponsors, you know, Raid Shadow Legends, or whatever the equivalent would be. But they didn't, because they thought that would seem so unrealistic.

And rightly so. I think that was a good decision, because people would go, it was absurd. Yeah. And

then there's the swimming pool in It's a Wonderful Life, which is underneath the dance floor. Apparently, a lot of people think that was... No, but they were quite common. The helicopter buzzsaw in The World is Not Enough. And then... What was that one? Oh, there's a chase with a massive buzzsaw. Yeah. But they use those for forestry and stuff. So and then there's a bunch of things like, which aren't realistic, but have to be included, because it doesn't seem realistic without them. So things like the sounds of a fist fight, for example, you get all the whoosh whack kind of sounds, lasers making noises, radioactive things glowing, the flashbulb sounds you get when you've got a flash, even if it's not actually a flashbulb. And the noises that, you know, typing and using a phone make, like they have to be in there because it doesn't feel right if they're not. And that's sometimes called the coconut effect, because horses' hooves, even if they're on soft ground, have to make a coconut shell sound. So anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in as, you know, there's our conceptions of what reality ought to look like in fiction can actually diverge from what reality is actually like. And we in almost in some ways prefer the fictional version. Yeah.

On that, and I think advances in VR, so virtual reality, with, as they're becoming increasingly immersive, that that distinction could be, so I think like, it's possible that a virtual reality could become indistinguishable from reality. And so perhaps I was thinking maybe this is just, maybe reality is kind of just a technical problem. And once we solve it. Feels like kind of thing Peter would say. Yeah, but it's kind of, it's interesting, because if VR becomes so realistic, that it's, you can pretty much coexist in a completely virtual reality and universe. Is that just reality then? At some point? Well, that's the brain in a vat.

But also this is the matrix as well. I had to reinvent it because it was too perfect before.

So yeah, this is Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis. But the, I mean, there's this idea that our perception of reality, right, is just that, it's the perception of reality, right, which is where this subjectivity element does have some truth, I think. Sorry, I used the word unironically there. But yeah, it's because when you, you know, all we know about what the world looks like and sounds like and feels like, just those terms are based on our sensory experience, right? So we look at the world and we think, well, that's what it looks like, isn't it? But of course, if there's no one there to look at it, it doesn't look like that, right? So your nose should appear in your peripheral vision all the time. It's there in your peripheral vision, but you don't see it because your brain edits it out unless you concentrate on it, right? And so the reality is your nose is there all the time, but you don't perceive that as your reality. There's this sort of sense that we are sensing information and we're processing that information, and that's giving us our reality. Now, to Jordan's point, if you, you know, if you evolve virtual and augmented reality technologies forward and, you know, you provide us with new senses that we don't currently have that enable us to in some way perceive things that we can't currently perceive, that, in a sense, changes our reality in some way. Because, so yeah, I think it's...

Well, if you put on my son's got virtual reality headset, it doesn't matter how realistic the thing he's looking at is, when he walks into the coffee table, he still falls over.

Exactly. Because, yeah. And also, although this is true, that we're all our own walking narratives, because it's always passing through some sort of sensory bridge, as it were. And there is a sense of commonality, because we all, we're all doing that. And yet, you know, he does walk into a table. And Stalin did declare war on Hitler. So there's some, there are still some facts there. Yeah. But maybe this explains why it's tricky to boil, to nail stuff down, especially this question of perception and has got to augment to make it true.

Have you heard tell of histrionic personality disorder? No, but I like this. It just strikes me that that's almost like a one person walking reality TV, almost like Jerry Springer. What is it? Well, basically, in the context of this podcast, it's like turning your life into the Jerry Springer show, right? It's people who really have a high desire for attention, and sort of loud and inappropriate. They're exaggerated in their behaviours and emotions, and they crave stimulation. Essentially, I think it's about wanting to be, to live your life as though it's a drama. Ah. So, but it's recognised as so. Is this something you've been diagnosed with? It's recognised as a personality disorder. I see this a lot. Yeah, sorry, go on. Sorry, sorry, sorry. No, no, I just thought, it just struck me as interesting when we're thinking about that kind of personalised, you know, it's almost like instead of not the literal perceiving the world as different, because the world is like it is, it's an actual attempt to create your life as though it is a

drama. It's nice to hear this defined, because, and this can be, you know, horrible sweeping generalisation and very kind of anti-American, but something I see a lot in American Friends, but also just stuff that we know is out there is, for example, what do you call it when everyone suddenly dances in a certain style? That when everyone, it's like a pre-prepared dance that looks spontaneous, but it's not spontaneous.

A flash mob, yeah.

And when that happens at people's weddings and everyone's prepared it, and it's where the event becomes more the thing than the actual thing underneath. And so I'm rambling and not making sense.

My dad, I remember my dad saying to me once we were, this was before Jerry Spring, this would have been in the 80s, and we were watching something like whatever the kind of American daytime TV show thing was. And he said, Americans are such naturals on TV, like you just get an American, you stick a microphone in front of them and hey, presto, they're a TV personality. And I think there is a truth to that. In a way, like Jerry Spring, it's hard to imagine Jerry Spring having emerged in Poland.

Yeah. Well, if you compare the Price is Right, the US version versus the UK version, I don't know if you have ever seen, you know, from the 80s, Price is Right in the US. And they're just all, you know, the entire crowd is absolutely on top form, whereas it just didn't work in this country.

And that's when you get these beautiful, awkward, horrible, but delightful clashes with someone like Hugh Grant being interviewed on the Oscar red carpet. We need to, we need to stop. Yeah, I think we've covered a lot of ground there. Okay, I need to round this off. So question, what's your favourite fiction that's based on a real story?

But also in A Perfect Storm, if I remember, there were like two or three fronts all moving in together.

Yes, it was a perfect storm. Right, yeah. So, yeah, but you've got all this sort of essentially entirely extrapolated, supposedly based on reality. But it's quite entertaining.

I've not seen it for years. I've probably only seen it once. Guys, what about you?

I mentioned Huntress Thompson before. I think I'm going to go with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Excellent choice. The film, though, not the book. The Johnny Depp film. Also an excellent choice. Which was, yeah, allegedly based on a true story, but it doesn't seem possible.

Is that directed by Terry Gilliam?

I was just trying to look. I don't know.

Might be. There's a lot of it that seems to.

Yeah, but yeah, just a hallucinogenic, you know, drug fuelled, just ridiculous.

Yeah, it's a realistic depiction of a LSD trip. Yeah. Reality or fiction.

Yeah, I've never watched that film and I think I've read the book, but I just remember that I think the film's kind of unwatchable.

No, no, both are good.

And yet you have watched it.

Got Benicio Del Toro in, I think. Yeah, does it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Nick?

So I'm going to, slightly unusual example, but Fargo, which is the Coen brothers. The first?

The first one. The film, as opposed to the TV show.

Which opens with a statement that this is based on true events that happened in Minnesota or something. But the Coen brothers are quite upfront, actually, about the fact it isn't. It's total fiction. But they put that in as a device, as a fictional device. I think it's a really interesting thing to do, to say, well, we're actually quite, we're going to tell you it's a true story. And does that affect your perception of it? And I think, I feel like, actually, everything we've discussed, it probably does, I think. So I think it's an interesting move. So I'm going to go with Fargo, even though, in fact, it isn't based on a true story.

Yeah, yeah, no, I like that. Okay, I've got Braveheart.

Controversial choice.

Yeah, because also because of my antecedents, but also I just sit there just being terribly Scottish watching it. Really? And you can hear how Scottish I am right now, actually. Well, your surname is McGruer. Yeah, and but I think it's pretty much entirely fictional, well, not entirely fictional. And yeah, there's some vague... There was a country called England. There was a country called Scotland, and they didn't always get on. And there was this guy, William Wallace. But beyond that, you know, I think most of it is a load of rubbish. Yeah. But it doesn't matter because it's bloody amazing.

Yeah, I had the misfortune of being at Edinburgh University when that came out. And it's fair to say it rode a bit of a tide of Scottish nationalism at the time. So yeah, I think people were willing to overlook the slight inaccuracies of 95% of the film. Because to them, it's like, well, it should be true. Yeah. So that'll do. If they want to be led by an Australian, Jordan can go.

Okay. All right, nice. Let's stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I am Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare, Chris Wragg and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.