The Devil’s Advocate - The Need and Necessity of The 10th Man
Joe: So, first - you got covid.
Todd: Why are you laughing?
Joe: Well, because my assumption is that it's an extroverted plague, I can only imagine you're like a politician going around to dinners and shows and shaking everyone's hand.
Todd: Being a lifelong hugger, this has been difficult for me. But I had this coming because I hadn't been careful enough. And now I feel like an absolute leper. I feel infected. I feel unclean. I feel dirty.
Joe: Okay, well first I want to make fun of you for being an extrovert because I'll take that opportunity whenever I can. But the other part is they released a statement a couple of weeks back. The Basque Museum of Medicine called it the fastest spreading virus in human history, and Harvard University backed this up. So, I am just giving you shit.
Todd: You know, I think I had the original covid that came out, and it was a lot worse than this. And I got every single shot, including the booster. So, I guess instead of being a 10, it’s about a 4. Everything is a little harder, respiratory-wise.
Joe: This is the episode where we obviously will say we're not doctors, but for this episode, I'm pretending to be. I've got a lab coat on here. And so, the next question is - were you wearing a mask at the time?
Todd: I wear a mask. We're in Oregon, a very blue state and everyone masks up when outside. I wear a mask at the gym, when I go to yoga, go to coffee shops, etc. The only time I don't mask is when I'm by myself or outside.
Joe: You know, if we're vaccinated, and we have a mask on, this means we can't be Joe Rogan unless we pretend we hadn't been wearing masks and we're just taking horse steroids or something to cure it.
Todd: Change our stance for financial gain at any time, like any good politician.
Joe: I figured I would call you up and see how you're doing firstly and make fun of you. And then talk about something that I've found interesting. I like to watch movies about history in the Middle Ages and medieval periods. And whenever I see people during the black plague, I like to pretend that I would have survived for no reason whatsoever. I'm like, I know what to avoid. I would have gotten out of the city. I would have worn a mask. But honestly, just speaking for myself, I wear a mask, but if I go out to dinner with somebody, that thing comes off as soon as I start eating.
Todd: Being a student of history in general, the Great Plague finally got traced back to certain watering holes, but it took a long time to figure it out. I’d like to think I would be one of the lucky ones, but I would have probably been one of the poor unfortunate bastards that rotted away. Because like I said, you hide away with your pencil and pen. Me, I would be in the big city at the biggest sporting event.
Joe: This is actually the crux of what I want to get to. If I'm out with friends or colleagues and somebody offers to shake my hand, I still do it. I still feel that social pressure even though I know that there is a literal disease going around.
Todd: But isn't that manners 101?
Joe: Yeah; It's how much is manners, how much is not willing to look foolish in front of friends, and I think that's maybe the lesson here; people who are willing to look foolish, who we brand as alarmists, they're the ones that survived the black plague. They're the ones that stay inside while the rest of us stick out our hands.
Todd: I think in other parts of this country and the world, some people are probably teased and made fun of for wearing masks. And we're not in a place like that. We are in a place where it would be the opposite probably. I've seen a few confrontations of people refusing to wear masks, and the mass majority starts yelling about it.
Joe: I've seen that on the train; people will take that as their social responsibility to yell at others to put their masks back on. So that said, do you mind if I do an episode about skeptics and why we need them? Basically, all the people are still protesting covid.
Todd: The skeptics that turned out to be right?
Joe: I have a pet theory that we need 10% of the population to be lifelong skeptics. We've always had them in humanity and kind of want to explore why we need them.
Todd: I totally believe in that. I believe there needs to be a certain amount of pushback in business and certainly in our personal relationships.
Breaking news this evening, Joe Rogan, an extremely popular podcaster, announced on social media today that he has covid. Rogen has said young, healthy people don't need to get vaccinated in his statement on social media. Rogan said he had taken several Therapeutics to recover. Click here.
As we mentioned in the introduction, The Basque Museum of Medicine and Harvard University called this round of covid Omicron - the fastest spreading virus in recorded history. It is, of course, not necessarily the deadliest. It may not be the most horrifying one as far as the symptoms go. And because it is more like a cold and less like a “plague” in its symptoms, it’s easy to demonize people who react slowly to a crisis or not at all, and it's easy to demonize people who protest safety measures. But that's the history of humanity. And that's what I wanted to talk about today.
I wanted to demonstrate with Todd that we sort of treat people who go around shaking hands during a plague-like they're foolish, and a certain percent of us have more anxiety than others. We had an episode all about depression and anxiety, and we talked about what the amygdala does, its relation to serotonin, and how a certain percentage of us are just straight-up built to be like prairie dogs. We see any danger; we pop our heads up and take it seriously. And we all like to pretend that we would survive the black plague. But honestly, in the moment that social pressure generally hits us, sometimes social pressure wins.
I can honestly say that I shake hands when I go out to lunch with colleagues and friends. I don't think too much about it. Maybe there's a sweating bullet introvert moment where I look at that hand being offered to me, but when we think about it during the plague and the first onset of covid, the survivors are usually the ones who are willing to look foolish. The survivors are the ones who say to a group of people meeting for business lunch, ‘don't pull off their masks.’ They take their food to go, but they sit for the conversation and don't have human contact.
Now, something that has occurred in the news media that I've noticed while researching the show and generally, there are so many articles from every major news venue all about what happens in the mind of an anti-vaxxer. There are VOX articles getting in the minds of anti-vaxxers. There are articles about how to convince your anti-vaxxer relatives. There are groups of people who are speculating that these aren't really anti-vaxxers; they're just following the political trend because they are with the right-wing party, and they want to avoid seeming like they are going against political rhetoric. I want to get away from the politics of it and point out that there is a smaller but substantial percentage of Democrats who are also not getting the vaccine or boosters. But I don't really want to get in the minds of anti-vaxxers necessarily. I wanted today's episode to be about what happens when a certain percentage of the population always plays devil's advocate.
What happens when a certain percentage of the population never really plays along with a safety plan? And what happens if a certain percentage of the population is simply built to never look foolish at a restaurant and always shake hands; They simply choose not to cave to social pressure, especially when it makes them feel a little bit silly. There was a tweet by Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld. And this tweet is effectively what I want to talk about for the rest of the episode. He tweeted, “In WWII, Londoners were asked to blackout their homes at night so the enemy bombers wouldn't see the lights and know where to target. No Londoner said it's my right to have lights on because others would say, your lights on endangers us. Substitute light for mask, now argue.”
Jason Alexander, of course, is implying that all Londoners were kind of on board with the plan, that all Londoners would blackout their lights and all Londoners in neat rows of people would march down from their apartments and go to the nearest Subway and quietly take shelter during a blackout. But it simply isn't true. I'm not pointing this out because I want to take the side of anti-vaxxers. Quite the opposite. I am vaccinated and boosted in case you were wondering which side I landed on this issue, but I want to talk about the fact that we always have devil's advocates. It's built into us.
The human race has a certain percentage of people who will always go against what feels a little bit silly. This comes from an article I found talking about the Blitz. Michael Christian said suggesting that measures to combat the Blitz were happily accepted is just not true. As many historians of commentators have pointed out, the blitz spirit has come to be seen as a propaganda effort, which lacks the nuances felt across the country. Many people complained about the Blitz, objected to it, and even got around the guidelines. So, when London had planes flying over them, dropping bombs on any large building that was lit up, having almost everyone go along with keeping lights off would really confound efforts to bomb London at that time. But there were a lot of people who felt like this was inconvenient. There are pictures of a milkman walking through tumbled-down brick buildings that have been bombed. And that is a symbol of British fortitude and kind of the attitude that a small percentage of people have towards the regulation itself.
During the war, having people drop everything and file down to shelters or blacking out all lights had its own inconvenience and toll. Historian Robert McCabe points out that the blackout measures brought up traffic and road-related deaths early in the war. And at one point, those deaths were higher than the Royal Air Force and navy deaths, which is something you don't really hear about. America had its own version of this, too. People were protesting going down to the shelters and people in America who were protesting blackouts in the Times Square areas. So, if you think people protesting from their car protesting covid or shouting down teachers during a PTA conference because their rights are being infringed, we have had this basically forever, and Mr. Peanut is a good example of that.
In Britain, people were ignoring shelter orders. Of course, there was also looting. Britain had a notorious looting spree during the blackout, some of which got so bad that London MPS had to request a director of anti-looting measures be appointed. So, there was a lot of crime and trouble associated with this. With that being said, our first myth is that things like WWII, where everyone comes together to combat a single foe, isn't as cut and dry as it steams. Now, we certainly do as humans and as a country have heroic efforts in our history, where we have combined forces and toppled incredible odds. But there are always skeptics; there are always devil's advocates. The myth that we have gone hand in hand to defeat larger, more dangerous foes in our past unanimously has never really been the case. We have always had about 10% of us who have simply said, no - I will not change my habits, and I will not feel foolish.
There were, of course, classism divides that were very evident during World War II, especially during the Blitz and the bombings. These classes and divides were possibly more egregious because of the closeness of Londoners. From the article, they say that many wealthier people were able to leave targeted cities like London and go out to their country houses. In fact, there were luxury shelters if they did not want to huddle with the masses. There was also a push for people to be allowed into the tube stations because while we kind of take for granted that subway stations became a shelter for people. Interestingly, the public itself had to push to be let in, and the government eventually had to allow it. It was initially discouraged because these weren't paying tube station patrons; these were just people rushing in during the bombing. So, even though we want to go along with the health plan, sometimes there must be some friction and a flow of people on the path of least resistance before we start realizing what is best for the group.
Now, something that makes me think of this is the idea that we are only just now getting free testing sent to people's homes, which is obviously something we probably could have benefited from two years ago. One of the last myths I want to bust on this covid episode is the idea that people would be skeptics. I'm just going to come out and say I live in the Portland metro area, and it's a very liberal city, which means it's quite easy to hear disparaging comments against those who are protesting covid mandates. Right now, people who don't want to wear masks on public transit are shouted down by passengers, and people who don't want to get vaccinated are being told to work from home. We are generally going against or at least sort of shaming into compliance anyone who is playing the devil's advocate right now. But the idea that a covid-19 believer or somebody playing devil's advocate would not fall into line given evidence leads me into the 10th man rule. The 10th man is actually an official rule of the Israeli government intelligence. It started back in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, and it is a very official position. Imagine 10 seats in a room, and 9 of those are people agree with Military Intelligence as it stands, and it's the job of the 10th man to say that the river isn't safe.
If 9 of us get the same information and arrive at the same conclusion, it's a duty of the 10th man to disagree, no matter how improbable it may seem; the tenth man must start digging with the assumption that the other 9 are wrong.
Overall, this is the idea that we, as a society or species, always need the devil's advocates. It doesn't matter if the rest of us know if a thing is true, we should always have somebody stand up and say, no, it's not and here's the evidence against it. They can be wrong; the tenth man is not always right. In fact, most of the time, they are wrong. But on the off chance that they are not, we may want to explore that just as a thought experiment. Now, I say this in a vacuum, both from being surrounded by blankets and because the idea of a devil's advocate role is made official. It's kind of unpopular right now because it is harmful to be the devil's advocate, but most other times in history, it is a fun thought experiment to be the devil's advocate. You are doing the people around you a service by presenting a side that they otherwise may not have considered because if the majority agrees with a thing being, then people start assuming it to save themselves the effort of considering the opposite. It's generally their role to be ignored when they are proven wrong with due diligence, but that's kind of the role - to make everyone else do their diligence and to consider it.
In 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, the death toll for Israel listed was about 2,600 officially, but Arab casualties were never officially reported. Both Egypt and Syria refused to disclose the numbers. So, it's calculated that during the repeal of the attack, they could have lost as many as 4,000 to 18,000 men. The results are kind of the modern state of the Middle East as we know it today. There are so many SNL skits that joke about trouble in the Middle East. But this was a historic first; this was a time where the conflict had gone above what everyone thought it could as far as predictability. And trying to foresee this in possibility became the task of the 10th man, also known as the devil's advocate in Israeli military intelligence.
I'm a link off to a Star article about this exact thing. So, if you follow our show notes, you can read about this more, but the task of the 10th man, according to them, is to explore alternatives, assumptions, and worst-case scenarios as an official position of devil's advocate. They can do so without fear of damaging their careers. Because if you're the only one in the room saying we can't cross the river, you will have 9 other people shaking their heads who don't want to spend time doing their due diligence to prove what they already know.
It may sound like I'm inflating the role of a devil's advocate, but we need doubters. We need leaders who will point out the high traffic deaths that a citywide blackout is causing. Today, about 10% of Americans are playing devil's advocate and saying that they identify as anti-vaxxers and they won't take a shot. They don't like masks, and they don't want you to teach their kids if their child must wear a mask. I will simply say that there's a difference between having that military intelligence at your back versus finding a Facebook group to follow. Currently, 1/5th of Americans identify as anti-vaccination. Meaning they say they will not get the vaccine under any circumstances. They will not be found going into the subway stations to take shelter. They will not turn their lights out. They will not leave their apartment during the bombing. But one thing the devil's advocate role hasn’t had before is this role being co-opted by politics.
From the Vox article, “Over the past year, among summer of users, a community of intense vaccine denialism has developed and created a sort of psychological scaffolding to support their views. People listen to people from their group and whom they think they can trust.” All these articles popping up non-stop talking about how we convince vaccine deniers. Well, the problem we're having isn't quite that they don't believe science or that they're stupid or that they are following political rhetoric. Part of it is that we are pointing to an invisible set of numbers and data from universities and test labs, and we expect them to react as if bombs are falling out of the sky.
Final Thoughts
It's not that a small sector of Republicans are trying to endanger us. It's not even about Republican versus Democrat. What it really is, is 10% of us want to be the 10th man who sees the code within the Matrix and refuses to go along with the program. 10% of us don't want to turn off Mr. Peanut because a glowing neon sign represents America. Just like going without a mask is more American than capitulating. 10% of us would rather die in our beds than sleep in subway stations. 10% of us would rather shake hands with our friends than hide in our houses and use Purell.
Most of the time, the 10th man, the devil's advocate in our history, has just been playing a harmless thought experiment. At worst, they're refusing to go along with the program, and they're only harming themselves. It just so happens that this time, the 10th man is carrying around the most rapidly spreading virus in recorded history.