The Simple Logical Puzzle That Shows How Illogical People Are

More than 90 percent of people err on this test. Will you? Plus: behind the scenes with Vagina Obscura author Rachel Gross; the spiritual materialist; and more. [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( EDITORS’ CHOICE April 2, 2023   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Good Morning! Here’s some of the latest and most popular stories from Nautilus—and this week’s Behind the Scenes with Vagina Obscura author [Rachel E. Gross]( below [READ NAUTILUS](   [EVOLUTION]( [The Spiritual Materialist]( How transcendent feelings arise from the forces of Darwinian natural selection. BY ALAN LIGHTMAN One morning in Maine, soon after dawn, I stood by the ocean just as a light fog began moving in. [Continue reading →]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   [Enhance Your News Reading Ecosystem]( Every day [Refind]( picks 5 links from around the web that make you smarter, tailored to your interests. Loved by 100k+ curious minds. [Sign up for free]( to get smarter every day. [Subscribe Today](   Popular This Week [ZOOLOGY]( [How Snails Cross Vast Oceans]( The intrepid travelers are widely dispersed despite their sedentary lifestyle. BY THOM VAN DOOREN [Continue reading →]( [HEALTH]( [Why Doctors Can’t Name Female Anatomy]( A vulva by any other name … causes confusion and unnecessary suffering. BY RACHEL E. GROSS [Continue reading →]( [TECHNOLOGY]( [Does GPT-4 Really Understand What We’re Saying?]( One question for David Krakauer, an evolutionary theorist and president of the Santa Fe Institute for complexity science. BY BRIAN GALLAGHER [Continue reading →]( [PSYCHOLOGY]( [The Simple Logical Puzzle That Shows How Illogical People Are]( More than 90 percent of people err on this test. Will you? BY BRIAN GALLAGHER [Continue reading →](   [BEHIND THE SCENES]( [Rachel Gross Takes Us Behind “Why Doctors Can’t Name Female Anatomy”]( “I love the wonder and awe of science,” Rachel Gross said. She thinks of herself “as a Ms. Frizzle”—the beloved teacher from The Magic School Bus—“of the female body.” Gross is the author of the new book, [Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage](. It takes readers on an incredible journey around the world to uncover what’s known about the female reproductive system, and more to the point, [what’s not known](. “One really big problem is that we have no good language for a lot of these parts,” Gross told me in [our recent conversation](. “For instance, we often say ‘the female reproductive system,’ and even that is a pretty biased, narrow lens.” These organs aren’t, after all, just for reproduction. They’re part of a woman’s body for her entire life, even if she never decides to get pregnant, and play a role in immunity and pleasure. “You often hear on feminist Twitter, ‘Don’t call my vulva a vagina,’” Gross said. “It’s a really important distinction for a lot of people, because the vagina is actually the muscular tube that goes from the uterus to the outside. The vulva is everything on the outside. It includes the labia, or the lips, the clitoris, the openings to the vagina, and the urethra—the parts involved in sexuality, the parts you can see and touch.” Gross learned that doctors were concerned that “vulva” was being underused or misused, leading to miscommunication between doctors and patients, and contributing to a lack of interest in these body parts in the medical research community. What’s the difficulty? “You would think that it would not be so hard because bodies have not changed very much for the past two millennia since we've been studying anatomy and medicine,” Gross said. What she learned, speaking with researchers, is that physicians don’t see what they’re not looking for. “You see what you expect to find,” she said. “In gynecology, often that ends up being the reproductive parts. Really what they care about is fertility and infertility. Are you pregnant? Do you want to be, do not want to be? Cancer: They’re gonna give you a Pap smear. STDs. And that’s usually about it. All the other stuff that the vulva is involved in—your microbiome, pleasure and sexuality—your gynecologist really doesn’t ask you about.” Gross attributes this to a long-standing bias against directly studying sexuality and caring about people’s sexual experience in medicine. “That has resulted in a lot less study on the vulva and the clitoris than the other parts of the system. It’s really both a lack of prioritizing it, and I would say a prudishness and squeamishness, even among doctors,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot of stories after writing this article that doctors have talked about people’s ‘downstairs cancer,’ or their ‘down-there problem,’ which is an incredibly vague and euphemistic way to refer to body parts that billions of people have. So even doctors who are supposed to be objective and specific and scientific are often shying away from using accurate language, and that just muddies the water for everyone.” We also talked about, among other things, why doctors might be prudish around invoking the vulva, and what sort of harm this can cause patients. [Watch here.]( —Brian Gallagher, associate editor   [Uplink Ocean Launches Great Blue Wall Challenge]( Do you have a solution that can help protect and restore marine biodiversity in the Western Indian Ocean? Take part in the [Great Blue Wall Challenge](and submit your idea on Uplink, the open innovation platform of the WEF. The deadline is April 23, 2023. [Submit Now](   More in Evolution [Why Is That Funny?]( How evolution made us laugh. BY BRIAN GALLAGHER [Continue reading →]( [The Wizards of Mind Control]( How parasites manipulate the behavior of their hosts. BY LAITH AL-SHAWAF [Continue reading →](   P.S. A new high-resolution map of Mars [just dropped](. The planet’s flattened out to make the whole sphere visible. By design or not, there’s a pleasing symmetry to the landscape, with each side showing off a volcano—Olympus Mons on the left, Elysium Mons on the right. It has the look of a world far passed its prime. Could we revive it? In Nautilus, NASA planetary scientist Chris McKay argued that we can [make Mars great again.](   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   BECOME A SUBSCRIBER [Plants Are Perceptive]( Issue 48 of [Nautilus]( features “[What Plants Are Saying About Us](.” Amanda Gefter discovers that her houseplants are endowed with feelings and memories, shifting her thoughts on human perception. Also: We are all programmed to die; the void in the universe is alive; and more. [Get Nautilus in Print](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2023 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 360 W 36th Street, 7S, New York, NY 10018 Don't want to hear from us anymore? Click here to [unsubscribe](.