Comedy Centered

Hey, there, comedy centered. How are you, group? Happy Sunday. This is Tiffany Norton, your favorite comedian. At least I'm gonna go with it until someone argues with me. Anyway, hey, welcome to comedy centered. Every Sunday at 06:00 on Cadre. This is a little meetup. We get together, talk about some little fun tidbits. I am a stand up comedian. Bye, trade. I've got a couple of other things I do on the side as well, but one of the things I like to do most of all is connect with people and also really just, like, talk about psychology and human dynamics.

I think that. I think we're pretty interesting humans sometimes. Really frustrating, though. Anyway, hey, speak wonder. Welcome. Come on in. So I'm just kind of welcoming people, just kind of shooting the breeze as I come in. Hey, Jules. What's up, girl? So, anyway, tonight, I don't know if you guys saw my post on Cadre, so I've been on a little bit of a topic. Hey, good evening. A bit of a run on some of the topics lately, because social media and all this stuff kind of going on in the country seems to really be just taking this really big center stage right now.

And I know myself personally, I am struggling at times. Hey, speak wonder. Good to see you, and welcome to everybody, too. I'm struggling with keeping myself centered in some of these situations. Right. So, I was doing some research because one thing I'm noticing, at least in my own experience, on my personal Facebook page, is that I don't know if anybody else in the group during college took a class called logic, but I was required to because of my background in criminal justice. And it was a really interesting class, and I learned a lot about how we make mistakes innocently in some of our conclusions when we're.

When we're talking about stuff. And these are little traps that we can fall into, and it's very human. This doesn't. This isn't about you being smarter or, you know, being. Or falling for things. This is. These are human nature. This is, like, human nature type stuff. And what's funny is that they tested some of these traps on even physicists, and the physicists also made some mistakes and logic, and they're usually pretty good at that kind of stuff. Right? So, anyway, so here are some of. Here are five.

Now, there are, like, 22 total, but these are some five kind of basic ones that I thought I would just start off with. But one of the most common traps. And we'll see this, and we'll. And, you know, of course, I got to be honest I've totally made this mistake myself, but thinking that correlation actually equals causation. Okay, so something's correlated. That means it's related. But causation means that it's kind of caused by something. Right? So here's an example. On Mother's day, we know criminals from our criminal statistics on Mother's day.

That is the day that there's the least amount of murders all year. Okay, well, what conclusions can we draw from that? Well, here's an. Here's an incorrect conclusion. At least I hope it's an incorrect conclusion. Maybe the reason why we don't have any, as many deaths on Mother's Day or as many murders on Mother's Day is that moms just don't murder people on Mother's Day because they're so busy being celebrated and going to brunch, is that the answer? Probably not. Right. It's a joke. Right. But it depends on how you look at things, right?

So one of the things that has been very, very controversial has been using correlation and causation within the realm of autism and vaccinations. One of the main arguments for that. And it has been debunked, obviously, scientifically. But early on, this was a typical example of correlation and causation. The rise in diagnosis or diagnoses of autism in the population seemed to mirror the increase in vaccinations. So if we only looked at that one little sliver, that would be one thing. Right. But we're also not taking into consideration a lot of other factors.

And so that's what I've been seeing a little bit of online with some of these discussions people are having in and around politics. For example, I was in a discussion with a gentleman who basically was not from the Twin Cities area. I am from originally from St. Paul, Minnesota. And so one of the things since our former, or our governor, Tim Walls, is running, one of the things that a lot of people are criticizing him for was how severe the lockdown was in, in the Twin cities in Minnesota compared to other states.

Now, this gentleman was basically his. He was saying that this was a detriment to small businesses and that we overreacted and that. And I replied, I said, but don't you see that there are very big differences in the population size and, you know, its density between the things that you're comparing? Because he was comparing North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. And I went in and I started researching, and I went back, and I didn't even realize this until I did my own research. There are almost 4 million people within a 50 miles radius in the Twin Cities.

That's how. That's how dense the population is. The whole population for the state of Wisconsin is just under 6 million. And so when I responded with those facts and I showed that gentleman, I said, you can't just say that these towns also have the same population and they have the same problems. Right? That's correlation, not causation. Okay, so we had to handle Covid differently than areas that were more rural, obviously, public transportation, population density, things like that, you know? Okay, number two, um, the exclusive alternatives trap.

Okay, so we hear this one a lot in spaces. I mean, I'm not gonna. I'm not trying to say nothing about Cadre, nothing bad. But you will see, a lot of times this exclusive alternative trap in and around self improvement arguments and those kinds of discussions. One of the things that drives me nuts is work life balance. Have you achieved work life balance? No, you haven't. Do you know why? They aren't two separate things. They are not exclusive. All of the time you spend alive is your life. So there's no work life balance.

Work and life are not separate. The time you spend at work, you're also living. So, yeah, here's another one, too. We have our cognitive. You know, we have our cognitive biases socially as well. There was a lot of people were very surprised as I was when I was a kid, I really loved hello Kitty. Loved hello Kitty. And turns out, little kitty, or, I mean, hello Kitty isn't a kitty. It isn't a cat. It's a girl. I thought it was a cat this whole time. And the. You know, the. The people that developed hello Kitty were like, no, it's.

It's always been a girl. Um, hello Kitty doesn't walk on all fours. Hello Kitty doesn't, you know, hello Kitty talks and walks. And I was like, huh? Hmm. Talk about that. See? I mean, these are the things, right? So. And it's never. These. These conversations are never make you feel bad, but it's. It's. It's just. It's. It's. So we stop and question sometimes, like, hmm, where is this coming from? Right? Okay, now, this one I have definitely done, especially when I was trying to get sober and just stop drinking.

Solve your problems by redefining it. Just redefine the problem. You can solve it that way. Like. Like, okay, here's an even better example. When you're struggling with money, let's say, you know, you need a budget. I hate doing budgets. And it's funny, too, because I have a background in finances, but I hate it. I hate doing it. Right. So what you could do is just decide to redefine your relationship with money. What you could just say is, you know what? People that talk about money all the time, people that care about money, they're superficial.

I'm just gonna not care about money. Cool. Right? That's by redefining it. But technically, you've solved your problem. Now you're. Now. Now you're not. Now you're not caring about it in a way. Right? So solving a problem by redefining it, you want to stay kind of out of that. Right? All right. Focuses. Oh, I can't even read. I've got my little notebook here. Oh, my God. I can't even read my own handwriting. Don't you love that when you can't read your own handwriting? It's like, who wrote this crap?

Oh, the. Oh, the forever changeless. Changeless. That was. How was the word changeless? It's not spelled correctly. The forever changeless trapdoo. We've done that. I know I have. When you haven't seen, like, a young family member in a really long time in your family, right? Like, the last time you saw Timmy, he was three, and it's been a while. And now you go to a reunion, and Timmy's 13, and he's taller than you, and his voice is deeper than yours, and you're like, huh? He changed. He grew up.

He was never. He was. He was not forever changed. Lists. Right? And so. But the thing where you can kind of go off the res a little bit logically is that the idea behind that something is the way that it is now and will not change in the future, it is changeless. Whatever your problem is now, it won't be any different in the future. Whatever things are now won't be different. Won't. Won't change. And. And that. I mean, that could be true, but generally speaking, life doesn't have work that way. Pretty much everything is always changing.

Oh, speak wonder. Oh, yeah. It is all just monopoly money. Right? Right. If you just redefine the money, that's not real money. That's just monopoly money. Just solve your problems by redefining. I don't have to quit drinking. I just have to quit drinking so much. Right. Just redefine. Yeah. Anyway, um, and then let's see. Okay, last one. All right. The process event trap. What's the last one? Looking at an ongoing process as if it's, like, a single event, right. Kind of going back. Let's say, to self improvement or budgeting.

Right. We have a tendency to think that these are. These are one, one, one time deals I need to get in shape. I worked out. We're good. I did it. Right? I need a budget. I wrote the budget. It's all there. It's in my excel spreadsheet. I attach it to my quickbooks. I don't look at it, but it's there. I did it. And we have to remember, these had to be living documents. These have to be living things that we do. So one of the ways that this, you can kind of encourage yourself is to think of some of these projects more in terms of, like.

Like, their laundry. Like, you know that you don't just do laundry once. Right? You got to do laundry every week or two weeks or whatever. I can go longer. I've got several sets of sheets, and I literally, especially in the winter, I'll go three weeks. When I run out of socks, that's. That's when I do laundry. And I'll just do a ton, and I'll make it, like, a whole day of laundry, but I probably shouldn't do that. But that's the way I do it. Um, but trying to incorporate these things as more living.

Right. Integrating them a little bit more. More fully and not looking at these. These things that we've got to do is just kind of a one off. But I hope that helps. We have to think about the ways that we get trapped in our own logic as well. And also, like, you know, and I don't. I don't. You know, like, I have friends that are very superstitious, let's just say. Right. And, you know, sometimes. Sometimes, yes. You know, like, the one time someone wore the wrong jersey to your halftime party, your favorite team lost.

Right. But that doesn't mean they'll always lose. And that's an example that incorporates many of the five I just talked about. Right. So before we react to something and before we get too worked up, you know, take a step back and. And see if the logic really kind of pans out for it. And, you know, ask yourself what you place, what. What part you're playing in, the reaction to it. So at least that's what I try to do anyway. But, yeah, no one actually, no one is allowed to wear any Green Bay stuff to any of my vikings parties.

I will stand behind that superstition. You guys have a wonderful Sunday. Have a fantastic week coming up. I will be here next Sunday. But the Sunday Labor Day weekend, I will not be doing comedy centered. I'm going to be out of town, so I'll see you guys next week.