Messing With Your Mind QI

GOOD evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening and welcome to QI,

where this week I shall be messing with your minds.

Joining me on the psychiatrist's couch,

we have the open-minded Sarah Millican.

APPLAUSE

The sharp-minded Josh Widdicombe.

APPLAUSE

The broad-minded Tommy Tiernan.

APPLAUSE

And...

Oh, never mind, it's Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

So, let's be mindful of their buzzers.

Sarah goes...

MUSIC: You Were Always On My Mind by Elvis Presley

Josh goes...

MUSIC: I've Got My Mind Set On You by George Harrison

Tommy goes...

MUSIC: Making Your Mind Up by Bucks Fizz

And Alan goes...

-TRAIN RATTLES

-'Mind the gap. Mind the gap.'

LAUGHTER

Good.

So, it's time to get down to minding our own business.

Alan, we've been working together now for 13 years,

playing together, I like to think of it.

-But of course.

-Quite wrongly.

And we get on like a, like a mouse on fire.

Was it love at first sight?

Oh, yeah, absolutely, Stephen.

CLAXON Oh!

That's such a shame.

No. No, it wasn't.

Well, it's about the mind and another capacity of the mind,

one of its most important capacities, that begins with M.

-Memory.

-Memory is right, yeah. Absolutely.

Can we really remember things?

13 years ago, emotional states,

do we remember them accurately?

Things like falling in love at first sight.

But isn't there a difference between fact and truth?

-Right.

-So...

-JOSH:

-13 years of QI saps us.

-That's good...

-Keep going, we like this.

This could really help me on this show, you know.

So, I would remember stuff from my childhood that my father says

didn't happen, but there's truth in the memory.

-Yes.

-I have a memory, he would suggest that it never happened,

of him holding me by the ankles over the side of a ship.

LAUGHTER

And he says he...

So, he thinks that's a false memory syndrome event.

He questions it, but I know that the feeling of being held by the ankles

over the side of a ship by my father speaks a truth of my childhood.

-Right.

-That the facts may not support.

-It doesn't mean...

-Is your dad...?

-It's very profound and correct.

So there's truth in the feeling of the memory,

so the feeling is nothing to do with facts.

You wouldn't fail a lie detector test

if you explained that memory to a polygraph.

-Much to my father's chagrin.

-Right.

I think I've got the opposite,

cos I think my first memory is something that I've been told

so many times happened, that I don't think I do remember it.

-I did...

-Yes, so that's the opposite of what happened to Tommy.

-You've had yours reinforced by your family.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Does that make you worry that you might be a robot?

And like they've just been,

all these memories have just been uploaded.

Well, we're all a bit like that.

Certainly in terms of falling in love at first sight, there was

a survey of 10,000 people in long-term relationships

and half of the men in that survey

said they fell in love at first sight.

A quarter of the women said they fell in love at first sight.

So a lot of men were fooling themselves.

No, what that is though, I think that's just the law of averages,

because say like you're a single man, I think when I've been single,

I fall in love with women 20 to 30 times a day.

LAUGHTER

-I think...

-So, the law of averages,

eventually the one I get together with,

she'll be one of the 400,000 I fell in love with.

There is a sense in which many people would say

that despite this view of women's sentimental literature

and the rest of it, men are far more sentimental than women.

Women are practical and less sentimental

-and they probably have a clearer...

-Because women...

LAUGHTER

-There, see.

-Why has he got it facing away from him though?!

That's so rude!

On the other side of it though, it's a picture of Stephen.

Bound to be.

APPLAUSE

Oh, dear.

He's looking at the back of your head.

Yeah, maybe that's what it is.

That's rather, you see there he's all dreamy-eyed

-and maybe you're clear-eyed.

-Well, women are more practical

because they've got more shit to get done.

-Yeah. Yeah.

-That's what it is.

Do you know that story about the journalist who interviewed

a busy sort of woman and said they were doing this

survey about who makes the important decisions in your household.

She said, "Oh, my husband makes all the important decisions, I make all

"the trivial decisions, like what the children should wear and what they

"should eat and how much we should spend on our household budget, and

"where we should go on holiday and what sort of car we should drive.

"But my husband makes all the important decisions, like whether

"there should be a United Nations presence in Bosnia for example."

That sort of sums up basically men fantasising about political things,

where women get on with the real business of life, maybe.

-I don't think I fell in love at first sight.

-You didn't?

I don't think so. I don't think, that makes it sound...

I've never been so hurt in my life.

Yes, well, we'll do an experiment actually with memory

a little later on.

So there we are. I can't remember what kind of point

I was trying to make there.

But fortunately, neither can you.

Now, how much sleep does a paradoxical insomniac get?

TOMMY'S BUZZER

Paradoxical, lots?

Well, yes. He does.

-More than he thinks.

-Yes.

It's like a paradoxical kleptomaniac who leaves things in shops.

What a wonderful thing to be.

APPLAUSE

Oh, look, he's left a DVD on the teabags again.

Yeah, it's a very rare condition, but essentially your body sleeps

very happily and all the scientific equipment that goes onto the

brain to check that you're sleeping shows that you are sleeping,

but you're awake, and you remember where you are and what's going on.

But you're refreshed.

-Are you doing stuff, like are you driving a bus or something?

-No.

No, absolutely not. No, they're definitely asleep in bed.

So are these people, do they...? Sorry, I don't really understand

and I think you're lying, but anyway.

Are these people the sort of people, do they say,

"I've had a good night's sleep," or, "I haven't slept a wink"?

How do they feel? They feel refreshed?

-They feel refreshed, they feel fine.

-How do they know they haven't slept?

-Cos they've been awake all the time.

-They've slept, haven't they?

In their mind, they've been awake all the time.

Is this when you have to be awake at ten to five,

and miraculously you are awake at ten to five.

That's an alarm clock, love.

LAUGHTER

-No, I have that too, I do definitely.

-Yeah.

-It's extraordinary.

-So is that the same kind of...

-It works very well.

At school when we, if we were going on a, you know,

a little dawn raid, or something like that, you'd, they'd say...

Sorry?

Well, you know, to do a raid on the kitchens and steal jelly

and things, you know. So...

I forgot you grew up in an Enid Blyton novel.

LAUGHTER

To get your catapult back from the teacher.

You would do this onto the pillow, you would go,

"One, two, three, four,"

like that, and you'd wake up at four in the morning.

-And it always seemed to work.

-No.

-Honestly, I can't remember a time when it didn't.

-That is bullshit!

-No...

-OK.

I totally agree.

It's maybe a false memory I've got, but it's a very clear one.

It all changes when you get an enlarged prostate.

LAUGHTER

And do you have to hit it four times on the pillow?

This is something that Blyton didn't cover much.

She didn't, did she? Not lashings of enlarged prostates, no.

Oh, dear.

Anyway, how well you sleep is really all in your mind.

Now, how much would you pay for a machine that can print money?

TOMMY'S BUZZER

Nothing, because the person you bought it from wouldn't need cash.

-Oh, clever.

-Very good.

-Clever.

Well, I'm going to put it up for offers, because I've got

a machine which I hope you will see is able to print money.

What I've got is a piece of paper,

which is the right size.

And my printer, which is pretty accurate.

-At least if I print it well.

-Ah, very good.

Well, there it is.

-Oooh.

-There you go.

-Blimey!

-What do you think?

-Eh?

APPLAUSE

There you are.

So, how much would you pay for that machine?

I'd pay a tenner, because...

LAUGHTER

And then I'd go out onto the South Bank and make loads of money.

We'll keep that.

We'll keep that, we'll keep that ten and maybe we'll see

if we can make more money later on.

Tell me this, which do you find most convincing, the IKEA Effect,

the Rhyme As Reason Effect

or the Frequency Illusion?

Is the IKEA Effect just arrows on the floor?

Is that what that is?

Just not being able to get out of anywhere ever.

That, if you can...

Is that prison? Is that prison?

Prison with tea lights.

It may be better understood by saying things like

if you make crab apple jelly, say, or jam, in my case apricot jam,

I made last year, it's just the best apricot jam there ever was.

I knew this, it's a fact.

It's the best apricot jam anyone's ever tasted.

But I'm told that it's part of the IKEA Effect. In other words,

if you've made it yourself from your own ingredients, you just think it's

better than anything else that you can buy in a shop or anything else.

-Is that why people are really smug about their babies?

-Yes.

LAUGHTER

Basically, they are an IKEA Effect.

APPLAUSE

Well, let's move on to the second in our list then, which is

the Rhyme As Reason Effect.

What do you think that can be about?

Is that like, no pain no gain?

-Yes.

-Or treat them mean, keep them keen, would be another.

-Yes.

-Oh, like, there's loads of alcohol ones,

isn't there, like if you drink wine you'll be fine, and...

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

-Beer you'll be queer.

Only shots, yeah.

But that did work, didn't it, Stephen?

It did, yeah, yeah. It worked on me.

-Only shots, you'll get the trots, that sort of thing.

-Yeah.

Yeah, all the boozy ones.

-Yeah, isn't there one with grape and grain?

-Yeah.

Never the twain with... No.

-LAUGHING:

-..with the grape and grain.

They do seem to work, in as much as, if you suggest a kind of rhyming

piece of advice to someone, and to another group of people you put the

same sentiment that doesn't rhyme, they'll believe the rhyming one.

So, for example, they gave "wealth makes health,"

to a group of people, and almost all of them agreed with it.

They then said, "Financial success improves medical outcomes."

Catchy. It's catchy.

And they didn't agree at all, despite it meaning the same thing.

So it shows there is a strange quality that a rhyming phrase has.

It's easier to remember as well,

-so you might want to pass it on to somebody else.

-That's right.

If it rhymes.

And it seems just to have some sort of authority or imprimatur,

that an ordinary phrase doesn't. It's also the Keats heuristic,

because it's beautiful, it must be true.

Beauty is truth and truth beauty, is the idea.

You may remember OJ Simpson's defence lawyer,

Johnnie Cochran, do you remember him?

-Oh, it doesn't fit.

-If the glove doesn't fit...

-If the glove doesn't fit...

-..you must...

-Acquit.

-Acquit.

That's it, yeah.

That seems to be one of the things that got OJ...

That's quite specific as well,

you can't use that, like, every day, can you?

It's not going to come up a lot, that one, is it?

No. It worked on the day though.

The Frequency Illusion, does that mean anything to you?

No.

No reason why it should.

When I used the word heuristic, it may be that you didn't know

the word, but it's quite likely that in a couple of days you might

see it in a magazine or hear someone else using it on the radio or

TV and you go, "That's weird, I only just heard that word

"for the first time two days ago, and now it keeps cropping up everywhere."

-Have you ever had that experience?

-Yeah. I was talking to Richard Osman

about this, cos he was complaining about people saying there's always

-tennis questions on Pointless.

-Oh, yes.

And the moment you think

that there's tennis questions on Pointless,

if you see one, you think,

-"Well, that completely reinforces everything."

-Yes, that's right.

All these things are called a sort of cognitive bias, they push

you into a way of thinking, some different ways of thinking.

So, you can tell the most appalling lie,

if it rhymes or it's featured on QI.

What did the amnesiac say when the doctor asked him his name?

TOMMY'S BUZZER

I don't know the answer to that question.

Oh! CLAXON

No, no, I was telling you that...

-That you didn't know the, very clever.

-Right...

Very clever, give him his points back.

He didn't know the answer to the question.

Did he just say his name,

because it was written on the inside label of his knickers?

That would be the contortionist amnesiac.

Yeah.

There's the guy that they said, "What's your name?" and he

asked for a pen and paper, and he drew a piano and they brought him

a piano and he wouldn't speak to them, but he'd just play the piano.

-Do you remember this guy?

-I do.

Yeah, and then it turned out, I think, that he was a con artist.

-Yeah, he was.

-He didn't have amnesia at all.

Because, if you have amnesia, you don't forget your name

and you don't forget your past life.

What you're not capable of doing

is remembering new things that happen to you.

-That's the point.

-You've just ruined loads of films.

I know, you're absolutely right.

It's films in particular that relish this idea that you

might have a trauma and you lose all memory of who you are

and you become a fresh, new, empty person.

And very often as well a second clump on the head

will bring your memory back.

And all this is utterly unknown to medical science.

-It's completely made-up.

-A very rudimentary psychiatric hospital in

the west of Ireland would use that as a technique.

LAUGHTER A clump on the back of the head.

If it was a thump on the head that got you sick,

it'll be a thump on the head that'll make you better.

Yeah, we're back in Memory Lane and now it's time for our memory test.

All right, I want the audience and you four,

if you'd be kind enough, to listen to and remember these words.

Bed. Rest. Awake.

Tired. Dream. Wake.

Snooze. Blanket. Doze.

Slumber.

Snore. Nap.

Peace. Yawn.

Drowsy.

All right?

Remember those words, if you'd be so kind.

Good. Well, I think we've earned ourselves

-another money-making moment, yes? Go on.

-Excellent.

Because I've got another machine. Well, it's not a machine

in this case, it's just an ordinary blotter and a piece of paper.

This is a, see, there you are.

It's all pretty straightforward.

The blotter is to blot out all the excess ink as we try

and print out this, we try and print it out, there we go.

Oh, let's have a go. Oh.

-Oh, yes, that's worked.

-Now that is good.

-That's good.

-That is so good.

APPLAUSE

There you are. More money for us.

Isn't that pleasing?

Are you going to show us how they work later on?

-Of course!

-Good.

Before I kill you.

-I don't mind. I don't mind. No.

-Oh, you don't mind, good, no.

-It's just...

-If you do any...

-What a way to go,

that's a trade-off I'll take.

Now for some multiple choice, listen carefully. True or false?

True or false questions are more likely to be true than false.

-I'm going to...

-I need an answer.

JOSH'S BUZZER

Oh, I love George Harrison.

I'm going to go...true.

-Is the right answer.

-Oh!

APPLAUSE

Very good. Yeah.

50/50 ball, as they say.

And you did well, that's right. Yeah, it's...

But there isn't a vault or a bank where all the true or false

questions in the world were ever asked

and somebody decides to count which are more true or more false.

That's like saying, when you're given directions, is the first

direction more often likely to be turn left or turn right?

Depends where you're going.

-Left.

-Yes.

But you can analyse a huge bank of questions, which is what was done.

American exam questions, in this instance.

And they found that it was 56% of them the answer was true,

-and 44% the answer was false.

-Right.

And it seems the reason is that the examiners, of course,

have to think of the questions all the time, and it's a lot

easier to think of a true question than it is to think of a false one.

When I did my GCSEs, they said as a tip,

if you're doing a multiple choice, A, B, C, D,

and you don't know the answer, go B or C, because the lazy examiners

are more likely to put the answer in the middle than on the edge.

Would have been better if they just taught us the answers.

-Yes, I was going to say.

-Just important to...

Don't worry about learning about science, just go C.

All right, I'll give you another chance then, OK.

If question one is true in an exam, what is question two likely to be?

True.

Oh! CLAXON

No, true, false, true, false is more prevalent.

Oh, that's so boring though.

It's not absolutely guaranteed, of course,

but the chance the next answer will be different

from the present one is 63% though, so it's quite a high amount.

So if question two the answer was true,

question three, 63% that it will be false.

The way therefore to optimise your scores, if you're doing a true

or false, is to answer all the ones you know the answer to, obviously.

Then the ones next to them, put the opposite.

And then all the rest that are left over put true.

And then you've got your best chance of a good score.

-Oh, that's, I like it.

-Yeah.

-Or just revise more.

Or just revise more.

Yeah, you are everything that is wrong with British education.

LAUGHTER

So, pay attention now, it's time for another magical money-making moment.

Oh.

Yes. I've got a proper, proper printing press here.

It's very, it's a rather exciting one,

and as you can see, it's got all the bells and whistles.

And it's even got a little calibration here.

I'm going to, let's, can you see it's on ten, I'm going

to move it up to 20. Because I've got a 20-sized one here.

This may, I hope this works.

It takes a long time to fill it with ink,

so if it doesn't work, I'm not going to do it twice.

Oh, yes, that works. Oh, good, there you are.

-Oh, wow.

-There you are. APPLAUSE

Oh, there we go.

Stephen, hold on, one of the options is 100.

I just want to see what one of them looks like.

OK. OK.

Oh, oh, there we go.

And, oh... Oh, it's a 50. It should be 100.

Oh, it is 100. There you are!

That's good.

APPLAUSE

There we are.

So, yeah, we've made a, made a proper amount of money today.

Just shows, with a little application

and a little skill, you can make money pretty easily.

-That's amazing.

-Yes.

But I feel guilty about it, so I'll probably give it away,

to a bookmaker.

LAUGHTER

Now, how would you swear like a pre-pubescent supercomputer?

Bum, bum, wee.

-Bum, bum, wee.

-And poo.

-Pretty close.

-They're the main, they're the main ones?

The big three.

It's a supercomputer, we've called it pre-pubescent

because it's about 11 years old now. And...

And it swears?

Well, it's called Watson

and it is one of the smartest supercomputers around.

It was first trained to win at the American quiz game Jeopardy,

which you may have seen if you've ever been in the United States,

it's on every single day.

They give an answer and you say the question.

Exactly. So this actor played Jonathan Creek.

The answer is, on Jeopardy, Who is Alan Davies?

-Yes.

-It's been going for 40 years or something on American TV.

Does the supercomputer do proper swearing or swearing like

-"mother funster," or...

-Melon farmer!

-Yeah, exactly.

-Yeah.

What they did was, they fed it an online dictionary

and I think you can guess which one it was, if it was swearing.

Urban Dictionary.

-Urban Dictionary, yes, which is a rather naughty dictionary.

-It is.

It has bad M words.

I don't know what, I really, what's motorboat?

Am I, am I the only...?

Oh, OK. I've got this one,

-I've got this one!

-APPLAUSE

I'm not going to do it, it's where you

put your head in between there and then do that...

Oh, yes, that's right. "Brrr." It's rather sweet, that, isn't it?

-Rather sweet?!

-Well...

LAUGHTER

Well, I don't know.

Nicer than minger, or muffin top? Milkshake.

Where's your man cave?

That's not... Oh, no, is that, have I got a man... No?

LAUGHTER

-No. Is that what...?

-Is it like a den where you...

Oh.

LAUGHS

That sounded like you'd suddenly got a catchphrase,

where's your man cave?

It's Sarah 'Where's Your Man Cave' Millican.

It's Sarah Millican, Where's Your Man Cave!

-TOMMY:

-Sarah, you definitely have one man cave, the question is,

do you have two?

Ah, yes.

LAUGHTER

No?

-Was that the right answer?

-I don't know.

I'm still recovering from motorboat.

So, that's Urban Dictionary and it was popped into Watson,

this IBM computer and unfortunately, he learnt too much from it

and so when they were testing it, before it went on Jeopardy,

it was just saying bullshit to every question that you posed

to it, like a stroppy pre-pubescent, basically.

It's now...

The question he asked was never, "Where's your man cave?"

No, it never was.

We just gave you some M's just because it's the M series,

but there are plenty of others.

Are they all like new words, because milkshake's been around

for a long time, but has it got a new meaning that I need to learn?

-Yeah.

-You're young.

-Um, well...

-What is it?

Well, Kelis sung, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,"

-didn't she?

-Yes, because she had like a van that sold milkshakes.

If that's what you want to think she meant, that's what she meant.

My dormitory at school had a milkshake club,

but we won't go into that.

It wasn't all like Enid Blyton, then, was it?

No, no.

Ooooh, where were we?

Oh, yes. Good.

And so we glide from the canyons of our minds into the clueless

depths of General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, if you would.

Do mushrooms prefer to grow in the light or in the dark?

SARAH'S BUZZER

Well, the thing's going to go off if I say in the dark,

so I'm going to say in the light.

-CLAXON

-Oh, bugger!

The answer is they don't prefer either.

They grow just as well in dark, half light.

They rarely express a preference. What would you like?

Would you like the light on, or shall I leave it?

Maybe a little bedtime story, be tucked in.

But going by how much they thrive, it clearly doesn't make any

difference, so why is it traditional to grow them in the dark?

Because it's a dirty secret?

Like if you have them in your house,

it's not something you tell everybody.

I've got mushrooms in the back bedroom.

It's simply cheaper. We don't have to turn the light on.

So you just shove them in a cellar or a dark room,

somewhere you've got and they'll grow.

-It's that simple.

-Oh.

Not very exciting, but quite interesting.

Magic mushrooms, double M, they have psychotropic,

or at least hallucinogenic qualities, I believe, don't they?

-Good Lord!

-Is that, we're now seeing that?

That's horrible.

But they have a disadvantage,

which is that you get a terrible tummy ache,

and what did people do in order to obviate this disadvantage?

-I'm afraid...

-They'd make themselves sick, would they?

Well, no, what they did is,

they'd give the mushrooms to the village idiot.

And he'd then have a pee and they'd drink the pee, which had all the...

-No!

-..had all the psycho-active properties.

-Wow.

Who is the idiot in that scenario?

I don't know. No.

It is very unfortunate.

Are we the only creatures who are affected by eating magic mushrooms?

Like, if a cow went into a field full of magic mushrooms, and ate

them all, will it have some moments of insight

that it would be impossible to share with us,

the whole town would gather round him there.

Moooo!

"I don't get it, I don't get it."

Moo!

-And there was a...

-Are you trying to tell us something?

There was a theory that Jesus Christ...

..was a magic mushroom.

He actually was a mushroom?

I mightn't have remembered this entirely correctly, but...

LAUGHTER

Does your dad deny this story?

There's a thing called the Amanita muscaria, which is the,

it's the notion of using mushrooms as a means to transcendence.

-Right.

-And I don't know the rest of the story.

Oh! You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen.

Yes, mushrooms are grown in the dark to save electricity.

So, with that we stagger dazed and confused into the most

mind-numbing and mind-bending subject of all, the QI scores.

Oh, how interesting they are. My goodness me.

In fourth place, with a very respectable -22,

is Josh Widdicombe.

APPLAUSE

In third place, with a splendid -18 is Sarah Millican.

APPLAUSE

He's achieved heights that may require oxygen,

on -6, it's Alan Davies.

-Thank you very much.

-APPLAUSE

What a debut, Tommy Tiernan on 2!

Plus 2!

MUSIC PLAYS

Thanks to Sarah, Josh, Tommy and Alan.

Oh, I nearly forgot our memory test.

Oh, how ironic. Can we turn the cameras onto the audience?

Let's see by a show of hands which words you remembered me saying.

Who remembered the word bed?

Oh, most of you, that's pretty good.

Snooze?

Pretty good.

Sleep?

CLAXON Oh, audience.

No, I didn't say sleep,

I said words so closely connected to it that it was easy to force

yourself into the memory of thinking that I did say it.

So you all encountered a sort of false memory planting there.

If you don't believe me,

you'll just have to watch the show all over again, won't you?

So, from me, from all of us, thank you and goodnight.

APPLAUSE