Here lies Matt Goss: look on his works, ye mighty, and despair.

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Tim Ferris - reasons to not become famous
• ‘One in four millennials would quit their job to become famous’
• What percentage of people are famous?
• Bloomberg’s Top 500 Billionaires
• John Maltby, ‘An Interest in Fame’
• Does fame make you happy?

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 Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing whether fame is worth it. Nick, I believe you've got a dog in this fight, so is fame worth it, Nick?

Yeah, well, another week, another triumph for the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. News came in recently that we were the 30th highest ranked science podcast in Nigeria and as you can imagine, my life has been a whirlwind ever since. I can imagine. I can barely set foot in the Nigerian Railway Modelling Club without having people accost me and say, are you the podcast guy? Selfies. Yeah, exactly. We're living in a time where fame is discussed a lot. Now, it always was, obviously. People have talked about fame over the years, but it's been democratised recently. You can become famous. The route to fame, which used to be music. It used to be very much that you would have to play the circuits, get picked up by an A&R man who would then get an interview with the record label and then you'd have to have your record label and then they would decide to make you a star and then suddenly you'd hit the big time and it would be all paparazzi and girls and limousines. You would have paid your dues. Yeah. Whereas now you can still be a good musician but get recognised on YouTube and sell music without any of that palaver. So, people are kind of interested in fame. I suppose I'd always wondered, for me it's totally baffling. I actively do not want to be famous. I don't want to be recognised. Well, apart from Nigeria aside, I think you're doing well in Chile. No, I don't. I just don't. I really like privacy and I like living my own life. But enough people feel differently that I think it's worth probing this question of what is it that drives people to want to be famous? Are famous people necessarily the same people who want to be famous? And does it work? Does it get you the things you are hoping to become famous for?

Well, just on that note, doesn't Greggs have... I forget what they're called. It's called like a black card or something where certain retail outlets, they only give this card as a lifetime supply of or lifetime you get this for free. Right, what is it? Well, so it's... I forget the name of this stuff but it's called a black card or something like that. Greggs the bakery. Yeah,

so Greggs the bakery has one. Not Coots the bankers. Greggs the bakery. No, Greggs the bakery. Right. So, you've hit the big time. You've got your first number one. First thing that arrives in the post is the thing that gives you free steak bakes at Greggs. Is that what you're

saying? Yeah, exactly that. And apparently, yeah, people are into it and like all these famous people just go, great, I've got a lifetime supply. Well, not lifetime supply but I can always just pop out for a steak bake or a sausage roll or whatever. Yeah, so it's no longer the case that,

you know, becoming a name at Lloyd's is the mark of success. It's the free vegan sausage roll.

Yeah, exactly. So, already this whole fame game is looking good. Peter. Well,

don't disabuse us of this. Why should famous people get free stuff? That's perhaps not the question but yeah, I think Nick suggested that I think this sort of interest in fame is a long history. And I think it sort of stems from our social nature as creatures that we naturally tend to have leaders and we want to be those leaders or we want to aspire to be those leaders. We're seeking social acceptance, et cetera. But there is a very strong kind of jovaphobic narrative around fame. A what, sorry? Like fear of young people. Oh, jovaphobic. Sounds like it should be juvaphobic but go on. Yeah, but like the whole young people are obsessed with fame kind of narrative. Yeah, okay. But I think that's always been there and I think it's as old as us as a species. It's just that we have a very sort of prevalent celebrity culture now. Yeah. And a celebrity is like a job these days whereas before we'd probably look up to like church leaders and political leaders, et cetera. We didn't have like this notion of people being famous for the sake of fame aside from like members of society. So, you know, people who went to court and they were only there by sort of by hereditary rights really and wealth. There's always been social climbers. But think back. So, when we were young and you were saying what you wanted to be when you were at school, you know, what you wanted to be when you grew up, you know, we might have said doctors and astronauts and pilots and things but these are all quite visible jobs. They're still quite sort of they have a position of authority. So, they're famous in that sense whereas kids now might say, oh, I want to be a YouTube star or a reality TV star. Do they really say that or are we just being, you know?

I think I suspect as many. There are a lot of these articles online which are like all young people now want to be famous. How terrible. And then you look at it and it says one in ten young

people say they want to be on YouTube. I think it's just that they are just new jobs that didn't exist before but that are high sort of high status. But yeah and as Nick said I think the path to fame is kind of more visible. It's more explicit now and you can be a sort of self-starter in fame. So, all it takes is a sort of some sort of talent and some sort of disposition that people like to watch and you can put yourself on YouTube releasing videos and if you make it through the

noise you get picked up and become, go big. Yeah and I think you might instinctively think well no because what talent have you got if all you're good at is being an influencer? But actually the fact is when you look at successful YouTubers and things they're really good presenters. I mean they're engaging to listen to which is why they get so many followers and no doubt you know it's

not. They're no different really to the Phillips Schofields of the world who are just you know they've just always been a presenter and they're very good at it. Yeah they just

I could be wrong yeah so fame is a sort of like a finite quantity that gets shared about so you can have a very small number of super famous people or a very large number of moderately

famous yeah it's a bit like the is it the Dunbar number or something the number of friends you can have you know it's which is about 150 acquaintances I think and because you just literally can there's not time for the cognitive effort of learning about that many people well that raises an

interesting point and brings us back to our question which is let's say back in the day you can be Michael Jackson or Frank Sinatra you probably have a pretty amazing life and fame has some really great aspects to it because you're just one of very few famous people and whereas so what's it like what are the upsides and what are the downsides of being famous when it's like that what are the upsides is that and has that changed yeah so I guess what I'm trying to ask is two things one what are the upsides of being famous what are the downsides and how has that changed

now apart from three Greggs um but I think stop there stop right there yeah yeah there's a there's different because we've the taking our taking this hypothesis uh it's as true we assume that's true it the it's the something about the world has changed that caused this change this sort of this redistribution of fame to a larger number of people um the the it goes Frank Sinatra when he was famous in the sort of 50s 60s the world was less connected so being a super famous person um you probably more like to bump into people whereas if you're a youtuber now you're probably more likely to be able to walk down the street without being recognized because your fan base could be anywhere in the world they're much more distributed so um but if you could have brought off Sam Frank Sinatra to now made them you know I can't think I can't think of any grand equivalent Michael Bublé Michael Bublé yeah so no but I think an equivalent now would

be someone it's not quite the same field but I would say someone like Brad Pitt who is just universally just he's a big star yeah big stars yeah um yeah I think I think in terms of the new

famous I don't think anyone who's in the new famous is is old famous I would struggle to think possible exceptions being people like Michael from Vsauce who who you could imagine recognizing on the street right exactly so Vsauce is one of the biggest YouTube channels it's like a kind of popular science channel and it but even then it's got about 10 million subscribers we're not answering the question no no no let's answer it but I think we've got this space for some more numbers first okay go then so I'm trying I was trying to work out okay so what actually how many famous people are there okay and what do you have to do to get to get into that group right yeah um so the other people have done we're not going to qualify you with this podcast no we are no no we might but the the uh well for this one study that I see someone I say study but it's more of a calculation but they uh they looked at the number of notable people on Wikipedia and divided by the population of the world okay and that gives you about one in one in somewhere about one in two thousand people roughly two or three thousand people which means that all of us should actually know someone who knows someone who's famous and I it's certainly true for me um and I don't know if it's true for you guys but um but that's that's what we're talking about is to get onto well I know Peter and he knows you so I mean I've actually in the last few weeks met two or three people who were on Wikipedia okay so all yeah we've got to do is put on ourselves or something uh no um but then looking at slightly more stringent uh definitions of famous right so because we think there's this sliding scale I mean you've never heard of anyone on Wikipedia um BBC obituaries they have about one a week okay at least on the website really famous people right so these are people you've definitely heard of and um and they are um that there's about one a week which means if there's about 60 million people who die a year which is about right um that's about one in a million so it's only a one in a million people are BBC obituary famous which means that you probably know someone who knows someone who knows someone who's uh who's who's BBC obituaries does that mean there's only 60 million sorry

there's only 60 famous people in the UK at the moment um have I got that right doesn't seem

to quite add up because the famous people are going to be clustered in the United Kingdom you're going to have a higher number of famous people per head um than uh you know it's not globally distributed and the BBC are going to focus on people who are well known to you know English-speaking the English-speaking world you you know there's a billion Chinese people who probably never heard of Nicholas Parsons but likewise I've never heard of anyone that that that they think is famous so this is a very broad sorry um whereas Times famous times a bit so they've got about three or four per day and that that brings it down to about one in fifty thousand so I've got my three levels here Wikipedia famous about one in two thousand people Times famous about one in fifty thousand and BBC famous about about one in a million so that gives you some idea of uh what you have to aim for if you want to be famous right so you've got at which level you're going to get to um and um uh yeah yeah that's that's give me the numbers again what

were the three numbers but well it's one in two thousand one in sixty thousand yeah yeah so it's

about one in one in one but let's say roughly one in a thousand for Wikipedia yeah but one in fifty thousand for Times about one in a million for BBC different levels yeah I think what do you want Fraser what do you want I'm happy with the one in a thousand you're happy to be the Wikipedia famous

yeah yeah I think that could be a new podcast so it would be a journey of sort of self-discovery and like sort of a um how can I get famous kind of thing and uh it's as simple as clicking the edit button add page Fraser McGruer bang done yeah yeah um okay so those are the levels of fame I don't know Peter you can comment on what we've done so far or we can start talking about we'll go back to your question yeah so the question is is two questions is one I mean what we're trying to ask here is um is being famous worth it so we want to know what are the upsides and what are the downsides that's the first thing but the second thing we want to talk about well has you know has anything changed and we've talked about the changing nature of fame so has that altered the upsides and

downsides yeah so yeah I mean certainly the the sort of the YouTube and um TV celebrity of this gen of this this world um their their their their value comes in being famous so in order to for them to continue to work continue to earn they have to maintain their fame so for them that's that's it's the benefit is itself is is they have to I I don't think there's a huge benefit in being famous if you were if you were if you were famous for doing something else that's not related to sales of something or sales of yourself you're just happenstancely famous you get I think everything is a bad thing I mean I I get in if I was famous I wouldn't have be able to do what I do my life would be different um I wouldn't get away with half the shit I get away with but it's like the you know you you'd have to change your your your life it'd be getting away which I which I which brings me to what I think is an important distinction certainly in my mind that there's different types of fame there's fame for having done something or written something or yeah there's David Attenborough fame and then there's and then there's like fame for fame fame fame for the sake

and they feel very different I I don't know I'm going to disagree a bit because I think well even people who are famous are still doing something I mean Peter give us an example of a completely untalented famous person who's only famous because they're famous uh no I'm not

saying they're untalented I'm saying that they they they're they're famous self-perpetuating that they they are famous because they're already kind of known and they need that they need that fame in order to keep well Phillip Schofield so he's he's a good presenter um but he needs his fame in order to get more slots and more programs and more work whereas that's the way we're using Phillip Schofield whereas whereas someone that guy whereas like uh whereas like a sort of researcher who comes up with a cool idea becomes momentarily famous like I'm not seeing the

difference because I think um Phillip Schofield's fame and his viewership his adoring fan base of which you're clearly a massive member uh comes from the fact that he's good at presenting telly like it is that way round he's he's not if you let's say you took someone like uh you're not hearing me no let's get no listen Peter let's take we take you we pluck you out of obscurity and we give you Phillip Schofield's audience for a day right you're gonna throw it away you're

no I'm not saying this Schofield would because he's getting that fame because he's good his fate his his fate he's reliant on his fame to get more work whereas someone who's doing something else like a uh they're they're uh they're they're they're scientists and they're just they're sequencing genes and things and they hit the news because they've solved something or they they they tangentially might get more research funding but actually their core job is not fame dependent

but you could say that Phillip Schofield isn't trying to acquire fame he's trying to communicate clearly to to people on the you know who are watching the telly yeah but in order to in order

to keep doing that he has to maintain his fame well I don't see why it's not the other way

round like like he's famous because he's good at doing that yeah that's that's why he's successful because he's he's good at his job I think you're just saying it's something more intrinsic to being let's say on the telly a bit like being an actor like being an actor is gonna make you famous because you're in front of people who are emotionally invested in what's going on but it's not like to be a good actor you don't have to be famous no but to get to be to be to get the big roles as an actor you have to be famous yeah but I would say that yeah the way that you do that is by being a good actor not by becoming famous I don't think that's born out by it is because I did the example I just used if we plucked you again out of obscurity having having watched you throw away your tv career and put you into a hollywood film you wouldn't you might become famous but you wouldn't get another acting job no but I'm not an actor but if you if you plucked

an actor you plucked a very good actor out of obscurity and put them into their parachuted them into tom hardy's role or something in tpb blinders then they would be they could be as successful because they're good acting they're good acting oh that seems to contradict what

you're saying which is that the goodness again they're good at acting and that makes them get big roles rather than uh you know because they're getting good roles because they're famous I'm

saying it's the motivation for fame which I'm addressing look listen I don't think I mean we

are discussing a point we're discussing a point but it's not okay listen listen I'm gonna you're going round and round I don't believe you because I keep asking you both questions you keep answering something else well no hold on okay this one let's talk about whether fame works let's talk about

whether it makes you rich answer the question right big massive list of rich people right right from bloomberg yeah this list has 500 people on it where do you think the first celebrity right the first celebrity so number 10 what you think of as a celebrity where do you think they appear on the list oh they're way down they'll be way down where do you where would you say okay so you're saying 10 okay I'd say like 450 no they're not on it they're not on it no there is no not a single celebrity on there everyone on there is famous uh well right at the top it's technology people but also investory you know finance people um industry people yeah like they're if you want to be a billionaire don't bother we're trying to become famous because you need you've got to set up an industry start become big get some money yeah invest it no but the top paid actor yeah is the aforementioned mr brad pitt yeah who is apparently worth 300 million but you're not answering the question correctly no no no I am because the question is what does becoming what does becoming famous get you no no listen that one it doesn't make you the richest

person in the world but it makes you rich though it potentially makes you rich if you like how much 300 million rich I mean yeah fine exactly so you're not answering in quite the right way um because you know does being famous mean that you can be rich uh yeah well I remember watching

um I remember watching a documentary about big brother about 15 years ago where there was a psychologist talking about how they prepare people for going on big brother and he said look the problem is what's going to happen is you're going to become famous and you think that is going to make you rich and it isn't and it's true it's even like youtube big youtube channels they don't earn very much no they're certainly not bajillionaires influencers don't get paid very much you know so it is not a route to wealth per se it can be but it'd be very unusual most

famous people are not fabulously rich let's just say most of the most most of the most famous people are though well that's going to be true in any field uh yeah most do you become a scientist

because you want a nobel prize well okay you have to be a scientist to get a nobel prize but you're not going to go into it most of the best nurses are not are not fabulously wealthy if you go into uh physics because you want to get a nobel prize you're going to almost certainly going to be disappointed and what I'm saying is if you go into fame trying to because you want to be rich forget about it yeah no you're quite right certainly but look you're still we're still

not answering the questions I'm going to answer it for you so what's what's the upside of being wealthy um yeah sorry of being of being famous certainly one of them is is is is potentially wealth uh another thing is I think there's three big things actually one is wealth two people who don't know you are nice to you now clearly there's some flip sides to what I'm saying here right but if you're a well-liked famous person people will just come up to you in the street and be nice to you and that's depending on the kind of personality you are that can be a great thing um there's a third thing as well which is I think it can be a relatively easy you don't have to bloody work okay so you don't have to get up and schlep into your office and deal with Marjorie from Accounts who's a bit of a nightmare you don't have to do all of that you don't have to do a nine to five um you just want around on a set or you can you know whatever it is now don't get me wrong and we're always hearing from musicians and and film actors and so on just how difficult their lives are and how hard they're working they've not stopped but actually a lot of them will say well I don't have I haven't done a real job you know in x number of years so let me put those three out there straight away we've already discussed the wealth thing a little bit yes not all famous people are wealthy but people being nice to you um and yeah you don't have to do

regular work yeah I think I boil that down into just sort of status you know fame is basically status yeah it's very very closely associated with that and I think that gets to the root of probably what most people are after yeah but um there's a there's a chap the the uh the one of the leading experts on why people want to be famous uh is um John Maltby at the University of Leicester and he's looked at what it is he thinks there's nine separate factors which um which are about people's desire for fame and it's so you've got ambition you've got personal meaning psychological vulnerability so the desire for affirmation attention-seeking simple good old-fashioned attention-seeking conceitedness so the view that people are better than they are a desire desire to gain social access so go and live in an exciting glamorous world you don't have part of uh altruism the the idea that people are becoming famous because they want to change the world for the better um they want people to like them positive affect and glamour so a lot of those are kind of um muddled together um but anyway so he looked at personality he's also looked at what personality um how personality affects your desire to be famous and uh so interest in fame is is um typified by suitability and desire for a celebrity lifestyle which is associated with influence from family and peer and friends so you'll whether you want to be famous can be influenced by peer pressure um it the vulnerability motive is influenced by neuroticism and low self-esteem problematic attachments so some people are driven by by those things to want to be famous um agreeableness predicts being interested in becoming famous for altruistic reasons and conscientiousness is to do with that desire to be famous through drive and i and i yeah so i so so those are the things those are the things that drive people's desires for fame but i've also looked a bit at outcomes i don't know peter's managed to look find anything about

famous people's outcomes no i i didn't look at that but i found a similar study that uh that broke down into three distilled those nine things the three things that are the drivers that i'll just rattle the six there's an interesting insight that one is the desire to be seen and valued so that's like just being recognized as a status thing um the the desire for a sort of elite lifestyle so that's like the money and the the um the ease of life thing that you kind of alluded to frazier uh and then the desire to help others that's the altruism thing um uh this study um found that there's a correlation between personal narcissist personality types and all three of those things yeah um whereas people with a uh a sort of low self-esteem so there was a tendency for all of them apart from the um uh the the wanting to be recognized they they they like the fantasy world of being famous as a sort of crutch but they didn't

actually want it to happen yeah um look we need to stop well i haven't covered some more concrete outcomes okay let's hear these outcomes just a few right and then i've got a great question that

there isn't very there isn't very much data about celebrities they're not studied as a group actually very well but i tried to estimate suicide rates as an in as an insight into whether they're now according to wikipedia and i think this is people in there in on wikipedia who committed suicide but i might be wrong okay but i think they they reckon there's been about 300 suicides of people on wikipedia in the last 20 years okay which is about 15 a year which given the number of notable people on wikipedia it gives you a suicide rate of two and a half per hundred thousand which is quite a bit lower than the general general public rate is about 10 in a hundred thousand so i think celebrity suicides get press but i don't think they're more prevalent i mean you're not more likely and yeah so so i think i but i think i just i'm gonna sum up i've got a

point well i've got a point as well okay well you'll i'll do my point you do yours all right so i think what's interesting is when you talked about the drivers of of wanting to be famous and the people who become famous is fame worth it well if you're a massive narcissist then being famous is probably amazing it's probably great as long as your fame stays in a good kind of quality you don't want people turning against you because then it would come hellish um but yeah so maybe fame is great for people who want to be famous nick well i think i was gonna say

that i think the question the overall question misses the point which is that and what we touched on earlier about status is something that we're hardwired to want to achieve right so um you know animals have status you know all the sort of social animals apes all of them have status as a thing and it's a massive deal for animals like us to be high status and and i think given that fame and status are so closely correlated we don't need to go much we i'm not sure we can go deeper because we our desire for fame or status is really is hardwired as a fundamental desire and not and not probably an instrumental one you know people who want to be famous who are particularly driven by that probably do not do it because they want something else you know that's all they want is now whether it makes you happy is doubtful but that isn't why people are doing it so you know

there we are okay what's the question so um i've got this really good question but that's what i was thinking i realized i think radio too do something very similar actually i wanted to ask you i don't want a connection but i want to kind of um a moment or a chance something by chance who is the least famous famous person you've ever met or had anything to do with who's the least famous famous person i've ever met yeah or had some kind of interaction with um let's start off with um peter uh my sister ah okay so i was really looking for a moment but a connection is good so

my sister is um she's an actress there's one of her things she does um and she's sort of famous on one level on a very local level so she does lots of um work uh for the medical school in cambridge doing role play so she's got okay uh so part of the professional training for doctors um they they they have actors who are playing the role of patients with particular illnesses and the idea is that it's to help that help the doctors junior doctors in a safe environment um uh practice talking with patients who are difficult for one reason or another so so they might be they might be a difficult patient because they're just generally difficult personality or they might have communication and learning difficulties or something like that or they might just be very difficult to explaining what's wrong with themselves and so it's about eliciting from the patient the symptoms and things so so she's famous on that level but she's also famous because she but she's famous within the medical community medical community yeah within the medical community yeah but she's also famous because uh she uh was the was keely haws's body double keely keely haws yeah she was keely haws's body double in um the tale of trish from shandy the movie uh about four to fifteen years ago um produced and directed by steve coogan okay yes

it was yeah uh what does she what did she do as a body double well she she the back story is that

keely haws uh was pregnant at the time and there's a scene in which uh her character climbs out of a bath and picks up a towel and the scene continues that is my sister i'll go that's my sister's

okay all right interesting i like that she was actually her body double yeah yeah okay nice good good answer uh nick do you have no i still can't it's a really hard question you remain

adrift on well i only know you only know super famous people well i know a few people who are reasonably famous but but what i know exactly what you're after and i'm absolutely sure that at some point i met the guy who you know played to the toaster in the background of that scene in that film yeah but i can't bloody think of any of them yeah well i will come up with i will come up with

it um yeah so my one is probably i've had quite a few of these sort of minor uh flirtations with minor celebrities but probably my favorite is back when i was 15 i was on a cruise ship holiday uh a cruise holiday um and they used to have these like guest lecturers on on these on these things who basically get a free holiday this person they had their family with them and being a 15 year old i got off uh with this bloke's daughter okay um and i'm gonna blow your minds it was john craven okay who used to do news round um in the uk and so yeah that's my kind of claim to fame um that i got off with john craven's of news round's famed daughter and she was a very lovely lady as well well i'm but he's famous so you think he's too famous for my parameters well

no because it slightly opens up my pool of stories okay a little bit i so i know because i think john craven's about the right level of fame this this guy might be a bit too famous okay but the context is slightly uh slightly odd uh when it back when i was playing a lot of poker back in my 20s i went to used to go down for poker tournaments at the gutshot club in clarkham well now i think long since closed uh and my favorite moment was getting knocked out of a poker tournament by sir clive sinclair oh wow now he's pretty famous unfortunately but um but i would say john craven certainly for people of our generation fraser probably up there yeah yeah yeah no you're right

but um i think clive sinclair sir clive sinclair is about is probably about right yeah yeah okay

i mean he's not brad pitt right um i mean but when you start to widen the pool and therefore dilute it yeah i mean i've i've known people who were sort of already diluted one of jimmy hendrix's ex-girlfriends i've met people who built the sets on star wars i've met people who are famous for you know sort of being who people are on wikipedia because they're famous in this guy and all of that yeah i know lots of people who are wikipedia famous it's a kind of whole new level of name dropping it's just the trouble is slightly once you start to widen it it's much harder yeah it is hard it reminds me of uh yeah it's like saying you know the least famous famous person really where do you stop how low down do you go because i know me you know i know you guys yeah i mean you know we're more famous than my next door neighbors because we're on we're on a podcast

and more people listen to us than listen to them we are indeed yeah and on that meta note we'll bring it to a close um so thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew we've been here with nick hare and peter cocker of aleph insights until next time goodbye