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Important If True 31: The Illusion of Control

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Important If True 31:

Important If True 31


The Illusion of Control
We're going on a trip through the world's most bizarre mysteries, unanswerable conundrums, and dumb news, and it's going to take a while, so pack something healthy. No, we said healthy. Okay, fine if that's what you want. This week: If you have to babysit a ten year old version of yourself for the weekend, do you both get paid? What do ants see in you anyway? And, when you push a button that you know does nothing, has the satisfaction you felt when pushing it given that button a purpose? We can't stop pushing Nick's buttons about the alleged nutrition of PB&J sandwiches, so it must be true.

Discussed: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, weird jams, haunted sandwich, The NBA's Secret Addiction, Playmobil Traffic Cone Lung, How a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich is Like a Playmobile Traffic Cone and the National Basketball Association is Like a Human Lung, feeding Snickers to ants, Snickers-based ant rituals, the relative impulse for self-care in ants versus octopuses, bothering an ant researcher, generic-brand confections, allsorts bag of candy garbage, bridge mix bag of candy garbage, babysitting your ten-year-old self, existential crisis, tuna fish sandwiches, Jake Rodkin: the perfect babysitter for Jake Rodkin, getting punched by your own ghost, experiencing the past as it happens, mishearing Kraft cheese advertising slogans, the dystopian ambitions of the Kraft corporation, glitches in the universe, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Super Mario Bros. tv commercial and "making of" video, morphed boy bite with bowl fly, stuck in an elevator for the weekend, nonfunctional elevator buttons, the illusion of control, this dismaying observation, video game illusion of control secrets revealed on Twitter, how a toaster really works, toaster don't give a shit

Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: Thimbleweed Park adventure game for computers, Xbox One, PS4, and iOS

Chris' Old Man Endorsement: canned sardines, a tasty sustainable healthful snack! (try "Fisherman's Eggs" from this list of easy sardine recipes)

Nick's Impenetrable Endorsement: Watching StarCraft e-sports—try these introductory videos from StarCraft player and streamer Day9, or just read about The Rise and Fall of StarCraft II Esports

Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill

 

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For the sake of the question there could be a memory wipe to the younger self so no time weirdness happens.

10 year old me would probably be bummed. Though he'd think some of the stuff modern me makes is cool.

Actually 10 year old me would wonder why I barely play video games and also why my house contains no replica samurai swords. 

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I got in an elevator while listening to the podcast, and I learned the truth about elevator-close buttons as I rode to my floor. 

 

Neat coincidence, and I was able to immediately try it for myself.

 

Can confirm - our buttons do nothing but hoist.

 

MJD

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19 minutes ago, Patrick R said:

That is some episode art.

It was so appropriate. I'm really annoyed that both Chris and I forgot to mention it in the episode, even though we both of course thought of it when we saw the email.

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the elevator thing bothered me but for the wrong reasons. i take a lot of very slow elevators in my day to day life and i know for a fact that a lot of elevator close buttons do in fact work. maybe it's because you're american, but the building i live in built in 2006 has elevator close buttons that work. sorry you've had such bad luck with elevators

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A meeting between Idle Thumbs and their ad agency:

 

AD GUY: So tell me about your audience.


Chris: They are the kind of people who would probably enjoy eating more canned sardines.  But watching a StarCraft video would be too weird for them.

 

Jake: Um...

AD GUY: So old man food, but no nerd stuff?

Jake: Uh...

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StarCraft is still my favourite esport to watch, having been a fan for almost a decade. I started watching Brood War during the peak of the Flash vs Jaedong rivalry, and I personally transitioned to StarCraft 2 relatively smoothly. StarCraft I think is pretty easy to get into because despite all the systems in play, from a spectator perspective, there's usually only ever one or two points of interest to pay attention to, and a 1v1 competition is easier to follow than a team game. In terms of Korean competition, the Afreeca Star League (Brood War) and GSL (StarCraft 2, now also owned by Afreeca) are the premier tournaments that rarely fail to deliver interesting matches. They're usually live at bad times for America, unfortunately, which I think was one of the main issues that StarCraft as a spectator esport suffered from (besides lomas eating into its fanbase).

 

Anyway, Nick whenever you want I'll give you a rematch; I'm game for StarCraft: Remaster too ;)

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As someone who's been following and playing Starcraft II for over 6 years (with a few extended breaks), I was surprised to hear Nick's endorsement. It often feels like a game that even people interested in e-Sports as a whole completely overlook, because it had such an unsustainable meteoric rise in the beginning. It seems like people have been predicting the death of the game for years and years, definitely longer than its initial peak period was, and while it's certainly declined, I do think it will maintain a strong loyal community for years to come. I took a break for most of this year, and just started watching again last month, and hey, people are still playing some damn exciting games. I do think it's a difficult game to jump into, but I have also had Nick's experience of introducing a partner to it, and watching them go from zero understanding at all to being able to follow the flow of a match in just a week or so. 

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The elevator button behaviour might be some American thing?

 

Most Finnish elevators don't have close buttons, just the keep open button, but those that have the close button do close the elevator doors immediately. Otherwise you have to wait 5-10 seconds more, this I have tested for example at my workplace since it has a quite modern elevator.

 

Same in Japan, except there every old or new elevator has keep open and close buttons and those always work as well. Japanese people are really effective and polite with the elevator door behaviour also, they keep the door open for others who are approaching and then when everyone is in, they close the door immediately. It's really fascinating to follow the locals elevator door button usage when I'm using elevators while I'm in Japan.

 

In Finland people don't usually keep elevator doors open for others, they just don't care.

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I don't know if I'd call that "completely random." I'd just call that "not standardized." I had never heard the idea that the numbers on a toaster meant minutes and that's so obviously false that if I had heard it I would have immediately ignored it. The numbers on a toaster just mean "higher will toast more."

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On 9/30/2017 at 2:41 PM, WickedCestus said:

@eRonin it is absolutely hilarious that we posted our responses within seconds of each other. 

 

Haha, excellent. How do you normally consume your Korean SC2 content? As someone on the west coast of NA, you're probably in the worst time zone to watch the GSL live. I haven't needed to watch archives in a while, but seems like these days it's all on youtube without the need for a subscription; 

 

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On the topic of lacking control over all interactive systems and they're designed to give the illusion of control, some auditory examples of fooling consumers in other ways:

 

ATMs do not actually make any noise when they dispense money. The sound is played from a speaker. Silence of a  mechanical system is percieved  by consumers as a sign that it's not working.

 

Similarly, many car doors are actually filled with sound dampening to give the illusion of "quality" to consumers, who look for rigidity and heft as a sign of quality. Without it, they would jangle around as hollow pieces of metal and fiberglass with some janky electronic door controls.

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7 hours ago, prawks said:

ATMs do not actually make any noise when they dispense money. The sound is played from a speaker. Silence of a  mechanical system is percieved  by consumers as a sign that it's not working.

 

 

It seems that at least some ATMs have noisy mechanical systems. I don't know if they have managed to make new models silent somehow.

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Babysitting a 10 year old version of yourself was the basic plot to the 2000 movie Disney's The Kid.  Jake is Bruce Willis.

 

The illusion of control reminded me of a Kotaku story about how claw machine games are rigged.  It doesn't matter how well you align the claw, only a certain number of times will the machine actually apply enough pressure to successfully grab the prize.  Your odds of winning are predetermined.

 

The thing Jake was describing inside a toaster is a bimetallic strip.  It's two pieces of different types of metal that expand at different rates when heated or cooled.  The strips are attached together so that when they're both exposed to the same temperature, the strip bends because the metals expand at different rates.  This can be used to open or close a contact, making a switch.  They're a pretty common type of mechanical temperature switch.  One place you've probably used it (besides a toaster) is in analog thermostats with an adjustable dial or meter.

 

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22 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

The illusion of control reminded me of a Kotaku story about how claw machine games are rigged.  It doesn't matter how well you align the claw, only a certain number of times will the machine actually apply enough pressure to successfully grab the prize.  Your odds of winning are predetermined.

This is especially interesting given that I seem to recall Nick Breckon claiming to be "good" at claw machines a few episodes ago.

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On 10/2/2017 at 2:19 AM, Nappi said:

 

 

It seems that at least some ATMs have noisy mechanical systems. I don't know if they have managed to make new models silent somehow.

 

Nice! Need to do my own research before I jump to such conclusions :P

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On 10/2/2017 at 7:39 AM, SecretAsianMan said:

 

 

The illusion of control reminded me of a Kotaku story about how claw machine games are rigged.  It doesn't matter how well you align the claw, only a certain number of times will the machine actually apply enough pressure to successfully grab the prize.  Your odds of winning are predetermined.

 

 

 

Huh! I used to work at a Round Table Pizza as a teen that had a claw machine that we'd routinely clean out due to how easy it was to win.  I never considered myself good at claw machines, I only considered that particular claw machine to be easy.

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