#28: Munchausen’s, Munchausen by proxy, Cognitive Bias | Robert Sapolsky Father-Offspring Interviews

[@DC-ps3kn]

I am a medical doctor travelling between Italy Uganda and Canada. I have watched all of Professors’ KZbin videos and listened to all his Stanford lessons. During times of stress, in order to fight the tense thoughts and worries that cause insomnia, nothing better than his Stanford lessons: thoughtful, humane, ethical wonderful science lessons by a Master Storyteller that drive all other thoughts away. One hundred years, Professor. Thank you Offspring for bringing him close to us with these interviews.❤

[@gratefuldad4405]

I'm a family law attorney in Virginia. I had a Munchausen case many years ago. Herbert Schreier, from Berkeley children's hospital, was my expert witness. It's probably one of the most significant cases I've ever handled and one of the most eye-opening as well. The facts of the case are perfectly mirrored by what doctor sapolsky says in this video. I'm such a huge fan and wished I could have taken courses with him in my youth. Thank goodness I've been able to watch everything on KZbin from his courses that's been made available.... And read every book... Great video thank you so much I love what you do and share. Thanks for tolerating the voice to text. It's late, I had to jump on my phone to post this, and my cognitive bias tells me it'll do. Had to add that consideration of cognitive biases is a large part of how I plan and prepare my cases for presentation. Not sure if I should admit that but it's an important thing for those of us and the judicial system to consider on both sides of the bench

[@nadyayurukova]

This channel is seriously underrated. Let's spread the word, people!

[@z-horn7265]

Dear Prof. Sapolsky and Offspring Sapolsky! I wish to express my profound admiration for your invaluable insights and the remarkable content you share through your channel. Having read all of your works, I am deeply grateful for the breadth of knowledge and wisdom you so generously impart to us. Your erudition is a source of great inspiration for my work as a psychotherapist, and I feel privileged to learn from it. With heartfelt appreciation, I send my warmest regards and love from Romania. Raluca Lechner

[@jonahblock]

I like how you circled munchousen back to cognitive biases

[@mihaelateleptean5220]

I'm a Romanian florist living in Italy, who's absolutely love your sharing of such knowledge, wisdom and fun. I appreciate with all my ❤. Love you both.❤ Just wanted to let you know the impact that you have. ❤

[@augustwest-e8l]

I love how deliciously excited the doctor gets when discussing the horrors of Munchhausen!

[@Shubhamsv28]

13:08 Wow. Thanks for taking my question. I read about this syndrome in Sapolsky's book Monkeyluv (Nursery Crimes).

[@curiousreporter4292]

Good question brother

[@histarchus]

Your follower from India. Have listened to several of your Stanford Lectures.

[@thomasmaddox5638]

Incredible session! These amazing discussions and explanations provided by Professor Sapolsky are so valuable and informative. Finding Dr. Sapolsky was a major turning point for me... I am so grateful. Thomas Lund.

[@JeffThomasBlack]

"G.I. Joe Fallacy" history - Hello Robert and Offspring! From Edge - "2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?" "Children of the 1980's (like the younger of these two co-authors) may fondly remember a TV cartoon called G. I. Joe, whose closing conceit-a cheesy public service announcement-remains a much-parodied KZbin sensation almost thirty years later. Following each of these moralizing pronouncements came the show's famous epithet: 'Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.'" That's the story. I'm doing a broadcast on it today. All the best!

[@shexec32]

I see why you discussed cognitive biases in the same episode as Munchausen syndrome. A really great example of convergent storytelling from Sapolsky.

[@CathyKeating]

I thought the same. 👍🏻

[@personanongrata987]

Dr. Sapolsky: Your Munchausen by proxy explanation scared the shit out of me. I think I'll watch it again. --

[@jeremymr]

Thanks to Sapolsky I just added an amazing new word to my vocabulary... Geegaw: A showy thing, especially one that is useless or worthless.

[@OrafuDa]

13:39 Nice, near perfect pronunciation of Münchhausen in German! :) (I’m German.)

[@gangwarily2877]

I think I have been a victim of munchausen by proxy. I have thought this for a long time. I am absolutely horrified by the new information I have learned from this video. I didn’t think she wasn’t at the extreme end but now I’m really not so sure that it wasn’t worse than I thought. I didn’t know that there was a profile for mbp mothers and wow, she fits it perfectly. I have no idea if she was munchausen before I came along but she certainly showed signs of it after she couldn’t do it to us kids anymore. It was embarrassing accompanying her to various appointments to be told she’s wasting their time, there’s no reason for her to attend that clinic, etc. she’d then use that to get referrals to other departments or for other investigations. It’s very confusing not knowing what of my childhood medical history is fabricated or endured by her. I’m now in my 50’s and still have to deal with issues related to fabricated medical records. I do not know how she managed to get doctors to put medical warnings on my file that just aren’t real.

[@illinoisan]

Rhyming couplets are a product of our ancient oral culture. Thousands of years before the advent of writing, mnemonics were invented for retaining and transmitting information, especially our stories. A story was considered correctly rendered if it fit the expected mnemonic scheme. This gives meter and rhyme authority.

[@maryroark1396]

These lectures are awesome! Thanks for making these available! I always learn so much!

[@curiousreporter4292]

Good morning sir Sapolsky Shahid from India

[@rrichards3399]

brilliant just friggin brilliant, both.

[@MrRobhorn]

Thank you the Sapolsky family, important and informative video. Thanks again..

[@KeithCooper-Albuquerque]

Thanks you two for another great video!

[@ScottMarc-RT1]

Question for a future podcast: is there a connection btw emotional childhood trauma and autoimmune diseases ? If true, do genetic factors exacerbate the correlation ? Immensely enjoy these talks. Thank you.

[@CathyKeating]

Great question. I'd love to hear Dr. Sapolsky's take.

[@cindyscott8470]

Another amazing video full of valuable gems. I,myself am very grateful to you both. Much love

[@breft3416]

I'm a male RN with a bedside career that spanned 40 years. Two Munchausen cases come to mind. One was a very handsome, athletically built guy with a high tolerance and demand for iv Demerol. He had multiple bilateral shoulder and knee surgeries and stories of college football fame- all false. The women who met him in the ER came to see him daily, my female coworkers were enamored with him and his three gorgeous but overly sympathetic girlfriends maintained a vigil. I figured he was fabricating it all immediately. A kidney specialist who was also a psychiatrist consulted did, too, and diagnosed Munchausen's. He had to be investigated in order to be discharged and was going from hospital to hospital, state to state with the same m.o. That kid had charisma! The second was a patient injecting herself with stool contaminated saline via her port for chemotherapy. I wonder if the feces thing is connected beyond certainty of infection and convenience?

[@rrichards3399]

they wanted sex w him

[@CathyKeating]

Thanks for sharing your professional experience and respect to you for having the clarity to see what was in front of you, instead of being "infected" by it. Canny question about the meaning of the use of feces. We can't know the answer I think, because it would have to be a question the patient herself would need to answer. Her therapist (if she had one, and if they were any good) would have a really interesting path of inquiry there.

[@GrowwithMOKY]

PLEASE KEEP DOING THESE ♡

[@TopQuark2013]

Thank you so much for sharing. Fascinating as always !

[@Things606]

Please make a video about people with avoidant behavior and avoidant personality disorder. It’s rarely talked about

[@artiearthur83]

WOW, so informative. Thank you for your commitment to educate us.

[@CrazyMovieMakerRiG]

truly horrifying , making me rethink Thanks

[@andrewbaker8373]

Thank you both

[@olajankowska1408]

thank you

[@drone306]

ROBERT SAPOLSKY HAS A KZbin CHANNEL? YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN HIDING?! I loved watching your Stanford University lectures.

[@christinley5213]

Wow this was a good one!! I feel like i say that alot lol! Im addicted to this lol

[@theAmygdalaiLama]

I forget which episode you talked about Wrangham in, but I too found him to be an utterly gracious fellow to disagree with - and he was lovely to me despite some terrible straits of his own at the time and despite that I am less than nobody, a lovely man. I believe I looked him up and pestered him while I read The Goodness Paradox, sorry I bothered him, but glad to have touched him. 😍

[@JeffThomasBlack]

☮️❤️🎶I love your shows!

[@bebe8842]

Great content as usual👍💫

[@davidwilkie9551]

I have a biased preference for Professor Sapolsky's POV because of the relevance of the work done and presented in comprehensible terminology at lectures. It's gret to have teaching-learning exercises that are sufficiently well explained to allow discussion of correlations +/- with parallels, and Carver Mead at Caltech, his Students work on the mechanics of perceptions in Retinal neurological terms gets to the formed-function of temporal thermodynamical superposition focus, ..of memory associations in the coherence-cohesion sync-duration resonance=> holography format suggested by Susskind's lectures => Sublimation-Tunnelling/Singularity-point positioning Conception Perspective in/of Bose-Einsteinian coherence-cohesion sync-duration resonance quantization. But everyone must align themselves with the functional condensation-coordination objectives of Actuality for themselves, in due consideration for/be-cause-effect self-defining real-time Actuality demonstrated by Professor Sapolsky's analysis.

[@cht2162]

That's exactly what I think?!?!

[@catface101]

The GI Joe cartoon from the 80s used to end with a moral followed by the phrase "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle, GI Joe". I suspect the fallacy is named as a nod to this and also a mnemonic

[@geonaedwards7134]

So glad someone else knew this 😂

[@watcher1326]

I have found that pain can cause me to focus so much on whoever is nearby to that pain, that cognitive biases were created, related to similar types of people. Seem to have seen that happen over and over. Took time and experience to trim those biases back down to (hopefully) closer to reality. Even the people actually involved got simplified during that time. Perhaps as my mind had less resources available, it took more shortcuts.

[@msnohmski]

G.I. Joe fallacy - Because knowing is half the battle!

[@seanwelch71]

GI Joe!

[@cherubic_axiom]

i hope dr sapolsky is doing well!!

[@lizlemon9632]

And the neurological correlates of Munchausen are? As always thank you for your brilliance.

[@singing-sands]

I'm beginning to come around! 😉

[@pitdog75]

The younger monkey does a great job of being a host.

[@tracy9610]

😂

[@nancychace8619]

Interesting about cognitive bias. It's natural to look at it from the view of someone who has it, but what about in reverse? What happens if a person is overly stereotyped for some reason? What could cause that tendency? Munchausen's, etc. - Yikes! Mothers from Hell! Angry Birds! Apoplectic! The part of the story that gave me pause was how the head nurse who figured it out was so disbelieved b/c of others' emotional investment or otherwise. Is that a form of cognitive bias? Our brains are so adaptable in some ways they can easily get sidetracked into unhealthy behavior. The road less traveled becomes mired in thick brambles and poison oak. In a hurry going nowhere. Better lace up your dancin shoes -

[@dievukaz]

I apply different Münchhausen's trick in my life - pulling myself out of a mire (bad moods) by my own hair:) I have a question - which religion is "the best" (including Buddhism in the mix although some say that it's not a religion)? And why Buddhism also have its restrictions in a sense of real life application and practice to way of behaving? Thank you very much for all these videos, I'm always looking forward for it and it makes my week brighter:) Greetings from Lithuanian living in Paris. Best, Kestutis

[@Immolate666]

Thank those stone cold caregivers with concrete boundaries

[@tracy9610]

Oh my god, I'm traumatized by proxy!

[@RafaelPolidoroBio]

Hi Robert. Amazing video. I am a huge fan of Tversky and Kanehman's work. After reading the biography of their friendship in the Undoing Project book, I wouldn't say their research was inseparable, but definitely when together they were scientific magnificent beasts. Amos was a force of nature and Kanehman was narure itself. Beautiful book. Let me know if you like it. You should still have my email up 😉

[@MechasCalvo]

I wonder if in the underdeveloped world there is an equivalent of Münchhausen by Proxy.

[@NancyLebovitz]

In re rhymes: I believe that "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" makes people really stupid (it leaves out the possibility of false convictions or excessive punishment), and I think the rhyme is a hook.

[@devonnorris1586]

Y’all we just got Sapolsky’d 😮

[@chuckheppner4384]

🥇 #KahnemanAndTaversky 🥇 "Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings." Robert Bloch "The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation. Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation. For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society --- a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and --- if disseminated widely enough --- should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence." Alice Miller

[@joyg2526]

The G.I. Joe fallacy may come from the famous catchphrase from the cartoon show: "And knowing is half the battle!" Each show would conclude with a brief moral lesson, and the G.I. Joe characters featured in that episode would end by saying this phrase.

[@jimjackson4256]

It seems to that cognitive bias is an example of economy of thought and hence an economy of energy usage and therefore an evolutionary advantage at least in the short term.

[@augustwest-e8l]

Thankfully, my most recent experience with a colonoscopy was the anesthesiologist asking me if I’d like a muffin. Me saying what? And then being handed a muffin as I blink stupidly in the recovery room.

[@luizalonso9990]

How can we send questions?

[@janicedowson7793]

There is a link in the show description.

[@RobertVeitch-w8i]

What happens when deterministic factors conflict? For example, you are trained as a utilitarian but the person on the siding is from your "Us" group and the five tied to the main line are either "thems" or unknowns? Doesn't that require an informed choice?

[@rincasarff5200]

I’m assuming the GI Joe fallacy is called what it is bc of the trope line, “and knowing is half the battle”. Like knowing means we can dodge it easier, but in the end that doesn’t hold up.

[@annaynely]

Can you give your opinion about The center for evidenced based psychiatry & professionals that follow them. They believe mental illness is not chemically based. What do you think about Doctor James Davies & his book The sedation of nations. How the state together with business have created the mental health crises.

[@jqyhlmnp]

I wonder if there were any variants of Munchausen cases before traditional medical or nursing schools developed

[@batchint]

we have a crown court case in due process at this time…. 🧚🏻

[@robotempire]

Why do humans like being the first commenter

[@terenzo50]

Could you speak about the UK's Sally Clark case in which a mother was convicted of two cot deaths of two of her infants due to the testimony of an "expert" later found to have "cognitive bias" which led him to fudge his statistical analysis leading the jury to convict. Four years later, he was found out and struck off, but the psychological damage was so severe that the poor woman, now exonerated, drank herself to death in about four years. Is it cognitive bias when the "expert" is so inundated with the possibility of murder that he sees it everywhere -- even in cases when it is not murder? Or is it something else? There are other cases of a similar miscarriage of justice, but I personally find this one particularly disturbing.

[@meee4217]

When you mention the cognitive bias in relation to “us and them” is it not rooted in our primal-tribal instincts? Meaning this isn’t cognitive at all but rather our “us” dna, as it were?

[@Tamarahope77]

I don't think there is such a thing as an "us" dna. Rather, those, primal-tribal instincts are expressed as the way we automatically prefer us to them, which happens in the cognitive realm.

[@GBriser]

Eminem brought me here

[@kevinprice4536]

Nurse Lucy Letby Munchausen by proxy ?

[@gibbogle]

The first couple of examples are not examples of cognitive bias. It is completely rational to think that a 20-year old male is harder to handle (in a physical confrontation) than an 80-year old woman. Selling something for more than you paid for it shows a desire to make a profit. If that's cognitive bias then all business people suffer from it.

[@Tamarahope77]

The bias is the immediate automatic conclusion that the 20 year old male is dangerous, not that he is harder to handle. It would probably be true, hence the heuristic (i.e., shortcut). To investigate if that were true in every case would require too much effort. In some cases, the 20 year old male may be someone with physical disability and extreme kindness, while the 80 year old woman may be a dangerously and acutely psychotic woman with a gun, but that wouldn't be typical. In most cases, both would be equally safe to walk past. The endowment effect is more about attaching more value to something you already own, even if you weren't selling it. You may not even buy it if you did't own it, but once you own it, you think it's worth more than it is.

[@gibbogle]

@@Tamarahope77 Is it biased to think a 20-year old male is stronger than a 80-year old female? That's a funny idea of bias. To me it's just rational.

[@Tamarahope77]

@gibbogle The bias is the automatic conclusion that one should be avoided. The odds are that the young male is stronger, certainly. But to automatically conclude that one party should always be avoided is a "lean" in thinking. In the case of the given example, the bias is probably warranted. In others, e.g. a juror automatically concluding that a dark-skinned person is guilty, is not.

[@rockugotcha]

what a warm horrible talk it was.

[@scientious]

Robert was mostly correct about cognitive bias, but he clearly has gaps in his understanding. He seems to be confusing hypochondriasis with Muchausen's.

[@haleygray6443]

No, he made the distinction right when he was defining it.

[@Tamarahope77]

Really? "Hypochondriacs" don't make themselves sick in order to chase medical attention and care, they simply worry that they are sick.

[@NihilisticRealism]

ah yes, make a fish wish

[@stevenlaube7535]

i give both all the support i can still did not mean she did not do it, the chance all 5 snuffing is just too out there ,, , and Bob Cognitive Bias horse troff bile habituation levels of acceptance or reject do i really have to ? we are educated to believe the old witch wont eat us through reinforced positive ^ negative experiences habituation , Cognitive Bias is degenerative concept with guilt attached, and thats a crime to convict the guiltless , reality habituation is automatic response for safety no guilt," will i stand with those knife welding illegal migrant "or " people of my own family colour and style of dress" no guilt for loving or feeling comfortable with whats is ,its a crime against humanity to allow or force that on to the population one is charged with there care ,as the girl in the Max said : "every one a democrat until there mugged "

[@seanwelch71]

Hi from Madison! Come to Wisconsin and let's ape out!