Gerald Hüther - Ist das Information oder kann das weg?

Is that information or can it go away? The podcast with Robert Bode and Gerald Hüther. The news. News. Yes, is that information or can it go away? Our podcast Gerald Hüther and Robert Bode for you today with the topic, with the message about the departure of the football national team from the World Cup in Qatar. An exciting football adventure, certainly for everyone who is interested in football. But of course we also received a lot of messages. Was that all information? What went away? We want to take a closer look at that today. I greet you and everyone who is listening to us now. It is so that it was of course a catastrophe and some people feel it like the end of the world. That has had an effect on most people, and let alone that they were terribly excited. I find it exciting, reports that say that Germany was betrayed by the Spaniards. So that should mean that the Spaniards lost on purpose, so that they don't have to play against Brazil. That's quite an understatement. That doesn't really have much to do with information anymore. But then I can also ask myself, what does that actually do to me? Or something nice like, that fits in the same direction, that it was only about such a millimeter drama in the Japan game. Because whether the fire was somehow on the outline or not. And that should now be responsible for the German team having to leave and go home. The information in there means, we were actually good. But unfortunately we lost because we were pulled over by others. Or because the referee didn't pay attention. So others are to blame. That's a completely normal human impulse. We are looking for explanations. And of course we prefer to have the explanation that it wasn't our fault. In other words, everyone who played with the team doesn't necessarily want this team to have played badly. We are looking for the culprits in all possible corners. From swearing Spaniards and Japanese, to a German coach who may have failed. But he didn't play along, he couldn't have been alone either. To the question of whether the discussion about the armband of the team captain ultimately distracted and shamed the team so much that it couldn't win anymore. Do we need these backdoors from the conflict that arises because our team has lost? Yes, I think we can now determine this from all possible excuses that you have listed. But it will be clearer for what we are doing here if we just choose one. For example, Spain is to blame. This is still the most neutral, we don't lose ourselves too much in all possible other areas. So Spain is to blame. I have now received the information. It doesn't do that much with me now. I take it for granted that someone wrote it. But I find it pretty unimportant and I wouldn't pass it on to anyone. So that's information that can go away from my point of view. Because it doesn't mean anything to me. But you are a bigger football fan than I am. It may be that it means more to you. And that it has an effect on you when you are offered this wonderful explanation that it is not the German team's fault, but the Spaniards. So it only has one effect on me, namely the resentment against conspiracy theories. Ultimately, this is a classic conspiracy theory. I have an event that I don't like. So I'm looking for an excuse and I'm looking for it as far away as possible. In this case, just on the next place. That's what it does to me. But that has nothing to do with the information itself. Okay, but it moved you, yes? Yes. And it also helped you. Not that you could do anything now that the German team comes back into the game. But you have found that it has broadened your horizon. In any case, it has broadened my horizon. Because it has shown me with exemplary clarity how easy this path to such conspiracy theories is. Exactly. And we can go one step further and say since the makers of this information know how many Germans would like it to go on, it is of course very beneficial to offer something to these disappointed expectations. So to speak, an enemy who is to blame. Yes. The Spaniards are to blame. And with that we have a very interesting situation that really has a lot to do with what we have experienced in the last two years. Although such conspiracy theories have repeatedly emerged in the most diverse contexts, from migration to Corona. This is not a new concept. But of course there are these seemingly factual things that we also heard when the German team left. The coach didn't manage to set up the team properly. If the ball had been a millimeter further across the line in the Japan game, everything would have been different. These are not conspiracy theories. These are searches for causes. Is that so? Are these really searches for causes? Or are these just ... I'll say it now, Flaps. I'm just trying to explain something to you that we don't want to deal with so easily as an event. I don't know how our listeners are doing now. But what you're saying is all attempts to maintain our belief that the German team is the best team in the world. If you believe that, for you this is a sign that there are those to blame and that it was actually undeserved. For you this is convincing. In terms of brain technology, it comes to a coherence. Now he's still very excited. But now he gets an explanation. Ah, they are to blame. And already there is peace in the brain. And then he pussies it out himself, possibly everywhere. And not only calms himself with it. The belief that the Germans are the greatest in football remains upheld. He pussies it out and tells everyone else he meets that the Germans actually lost because some forces, to put it so generally, played a trick on us and we are not to blame. So that was caused by others. Wonderful strategy. By the way, we do it all day. We are very close to our everyday life now. I don't like it either when my wife accuses me that I don't take care of the household. Then I always have a good explanation why I don't do that. Why it just didn't work. And you are actually the one who is to blame. It was something else to blame, for example, that I am now having such a conversation with you. Let's look at our last question. What intentions does the informant pursue? That's very exciting. Because we actually assume that the information about the sport is also news. In the classical sense, we learn something new. Obviously, this is extremely relative. If the Spaniards had won the last round of the group games against the Japanese, then we would have had a completely different narrative. Then we wouldn't have needed all these explanations. Yes, we all know that. That something completely different would have been in the newspaper. Then German football would have been the biggest again. And we even managed to work out of our own strength from such a miserable situation. So we would have celebrated ourselves. That's self-defeating, yes. Now there are experts sitting there. There are sports journalists who have been observing football for decades. There are football world champions sitting at the table who inform us. And in the same scenario, Germany wins 4-2 against Costa Rica. But in other circumstances, they would have told us something completely different. Is that selective perception? Is that what we also explained in the book, with confirmation bias, that we basically always look for the information that confirms our opinion, our situation? You wouldn't believe it that you can get to such a smooth terrain just by watching a football game. Yes, these are experts. They know their way around football. And depending on how the game goes, we get this and that kind of explanation. That's difficult. Because then I have to ask myself if he's really an expert who explains something. And that's why I would say that such information, which is so random in the end and comes from an expert, oh, wonderful, get out of here. But that also means, if I look at it as a journalist, that we ultimately only have to deal with two factual information on this football evening. Namely, 4-2, the result of Germany against Costa Rica. And 1-2, the result of Spain against Japan. And everything else, if you want to look at it strictly, is actually entertainment. Because emotions are picked up and strengthened. Yes, but that's the business in football. It doesn't seem to be about simply being happy that a football game took place in which one or the other scored more goals. But it's almost a kind of fight or war situation where you have to defeat the other. And where you have to present yourself as the great fighter who won the game. That is highly problematic. And then you see that this has been going on for years. Maybe since the media coverage about sports events exists. Such a self-proclaimed self-proclaimed who cannot be prevented. They can only like to and again and again report about such games to the spectators who deal with it. And you can't feed them how the game turned out. You have to emotionalize. You have to emotionally charge the message. And then suddenly the whole game and this whole world championship is so charged that suddenly people I would say they lose their common sense. They are part of this whole event. It's almost as if they're part of it. And you know that sometimes even your own leg twitches when someone shoots. That has nothing to do with information at all, but that is the attempt to get people to deal with something. And now comes the bad sentence that you can make money with. Ultimately, it goes beyond that. Is there a possibility? Many people love this football and want to be part of it. Can you do that if you answer these four questions that we have now asked? Is there a way to just watch football without getting into this loop? Yes, that would be such a meaning of the information that Germany was eliminated. And how that and under what circumstances it was then brought can also lead to the idea of what football is about and why people play football at all and want to watch it. You can question that again. That would be this opening. So far I've always thought it depends on my team winning. And that made me highly emotional. And then it's enough that I've joined a hooligan group that shoots fireworks and does all kinds of things where I have to say how can that happen just because of a football game? And now the view opens and I can think again why people play football at all. That's a nice question. If you come back that far and can ask this question then I think that's great because then it suddenly becomes clear people have always been playing team games. So that's such a basic feature that we as people have to experiment in a playful way how something works. And we also have to experiment how living together or playing together works. And that's why we invented team sports. It's something where a representative group on the pitch tries to find out how playing together, living together, works. And that's why it's good that we still call it a game because that's the basis for us as people running such team games. So we try on the pitch how playing together works and with that we learn a lot about life because then we see if the team game works the team life outside is a big expansion of our possibilities. It just doesn't work if this wonderful football game is abused to make money. That's how hard I have to formulate it now. Then it's not about playing together but about winning. And that's another dimension and then the world collapses if your own team doesn't win. And then the view is lost that it's actually about playing together. And still, I notice that when I talk to real footballers who are in the business they all know that. They know that in the end it comes down to playing together and that by playing together you almost automatically win. So winning is a side effect of a successful team game. To our world today and our life and today and everything you do today is about if your life together with other people can also be designed to succeed. Maybe then it's much more fun. Instead of falling over each other and wanting to defeat each other we could also try to find out how we not only get along but how we grow together and together and that would be football. That's a positive aspect. I would like to add one more thing. You just talked about a representative group that is on the pitch. It's also about letting go. I identify myself as a spectator with my team and write them down. I have to let go. We have to do that in life often and it's rarely easy for us. The positive, maybe, about football to find reconciliation with football fans is that it always works. Most people don't stop watching football just because the Germans are eliminated. They watch it and get excited for one or the other team. So, on the whole, letting go, identifying with one team works quite well, doesn't it? That's definitely the case and what happens in the Bundesliga is, so to speak, only a small part of what football is. Football takes place every weekend on thousands of football pitches everywhere in our country and everywhere in this country people try to give their best in their little club where they play so that the team play works. And they learn better and better how to organize themselves. And in this respect, the real root of football and what football actually does is to look for where it's not primarily about winning but about the beauty of the game. And then money doesn't matter anymore. Then the importance of money comes back, yes. Yes, definitely. Gerhard, that was the first episode of our podcast Is that information or can it go away? In the next episode we'll deal with the Christmas message. One of the oldest and perhaps most effective messages that at least the younger human history has heard. We want to ask our four questions again What does it actually do to us? Does it move us? Does it help us to understand something? Does it help us to act differently? And what are the actual interests behind it? I'm looking forward to the next conversation, Gerhard. Yes, I'm also looking forward to this topic very much. It's not just about looking at current information but we also want to know how information works and how you can deal with information. And there's a 2,000-year-old piece of information that came into the world. It's exciting. You can take a look at it. So what was the original reason it came into the world and what did it turn out to be? Exactly. Gerhard, we'll keep talking. Thank you to everyone who listened. We'll hear from you again.