Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks the future and says, you know, I
Speaker 1: hate to ask, but our friends electric. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And of course they are all
Speaker 1: organisms are electric? Actually is that true? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Maybe electro chemical. Are they all electric? Maybe not viruses?
Speaker 1: That might be one of the weird virus definition issue.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're all electric. I think some are hybrids.
Speaker 1: That was a terrible joke. All right, Well, let's actually
Speaker 1: transition into the introduction for our podcast that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: weird word play that doesn't get us anywhere. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about, uh, something that we've touched on in
Speaker 1: previous episodes, right, cyborgs. No way, we haven't touched on that.
Speaker 1: And I've never personally touched us like cyborg. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I would. And furthermore, we have talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about cyborgs in the past, or rather about upgrading organisms.
Speaker 1: Um back into scemberteen, we did a whole episode about
Speaker 1: cyborg cockroaches. It's called biobots. If you want to look
Speaker 1: it up. Uh. And we also talked about the possibility
Speaker 1: and the ethics of human upgrades way way way back
Speaker 1: in March. I wonder what that's like. I can't even
Speaker 1: believe anyone was alive. Then it seems so long ago.
Speaker 1: Um that one's called cyborg's ethics and you, um, it
Speaker 1: just occurred to me. Did we even talk about the
Speaker 1: amazing X Files episode were of the cop cop copper phages?
Speaker 1: Am I saying that right? Copper pages? I don't know
Speaker 1: if we did the Christian and I did in a
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind episode that we did about
Speaker 1: the science of the X Files. I want to say
Speaker 1: that at that point, none of us were rewatching the
Speaker 1: series and so we probably weren't talking about it, okay,
Speaker 1: And then once it all hit Netflix and we started
Speaker 1: kind of binge watching X Files episodes, I was kind
Speaker 1: of hate watching it. Well, hey, if you have Netflix
Speaker 1: and you can go back and watch War the Copper Fadges,
Speaker 1: that's like a top five episodes. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's
Speaker 1: one of the four that was written by Darren Morrigan.
Speaker 1: I might be a huge X Files nerd uh. And
Speaker 1: those four that he wrote I think are the best Uh,
Speaker 1: he starred or co starred in one of the others
Speaker 1: that I really like, called Small Potatoes at any rate,
Speaker 1: So we're not talking about Darren Morgan in this episode
Speaker 1: X Files that much. But but yes, uh, cybernetic life forms,
Speaker 1: life forms that have some extra bits kind of worked in,
Speaker 1: and or synthetic life because we also touched on synthetic
Speaker 1: life relatively recently. Uh, I don't know, scroll down, see
Speaker 1: what you find. Yeah, it's like it's like maybe from
Speaker 1: maybe a month back or something. It's pretty recent that
Speaker 1: we talked about synthetic life forms. You know, it sounds
Speaker 1: no offense to you all. It sounds like we are
Speaker 1: already getting a little mushy with the terminology here, Like
Speaker 1: what it what is the category distinction we're trying to
Speaker 1: create eight about these uh, the joining at the edges
Speaker 1: of of technology and life. Let's let's let's clear that
Speaker 1: up a little bit. Okay. Uh, this term cyborg, you
Speaker 1: probably know it most from the Genclaude van Damme movie
Speaker 1: Cyborg directed by Albert Pune, or maybe not. You probably
Speaker 1: know it from culture. Cyborg is a term that has
Speaker 1: generally come to be understood as some sort of union
Speaker 1: between the biological organism and the machine in some way
Speaker 1: or another. And I say that generally because there is
Speaker 1: a gap between the specialized definition of cyborg and the
Speaker 1: common use of the term in culture, right, Like, he's
Speaker 1: more a machine now than C slug, twisted and evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the term cyborg is a shortening of cybernetic organism.
Speaker 1: You might know that much. And it was coined back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty by Manfred Klein's and Nathan Klein. Their
Speaker 1: names sounds similar, but they're not the same, spelled different.
Speaker 1: And that that article in nineteen sixty was in the
Speaker 1: journal Astronautics and it was called Cyborgs and Space. So
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote for you. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: If a fish wish to live on land, it could
Speaker 1: not readily do. So they're off to a good start,
Speaker 1: I think, starting to sell very susical at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: If a fish wished to live on land. Uh, If, however,
Speaker 1: a particularly intelligent and resourceful fish could be found who
Speaker 1: had studied a good deal of biochemistry and physiology, was
Speaker 1: a master engineer and cyberneticist, and had excellent lab facilities
Speaker 1: available to him, this fish could conceivably have the ability
Speaker 1: to design an instrument which would allow him to live
Speaker 1: on land and breathe air quite easily in the same manner.
Speaker 1: It is becoming apparent that we will in the not
Speaker 1: too distant future have sufficient knowledge to design instrumental control
Speaker 1: systems which will make it possible for our bodies to
Speaker 1: do things which are no less difficult. So specifically, in
Speaker 1: this human analogy that they make, they were talking about
Speaker 1: space clients in client argue that as humans venture into space,
Speaker 1: it's going to be easier to change the human animal
Speaker 1: to be better suited to space conditions than it will
Speaker 1: be to create earthlike conditions in space for the unaltered human. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so they're talking about actually changing human beings in some
Speaker 1: form or function, not necessarily, you know, using technology to
Speaker 1: compensate for the things we would encounter in space, but
Speaker 1: to actually change humans. So that well, yeah, they are
Speaker 1: talking about using technology to compensate, but the compensation wouldn't
Speaker 1: be external in our environment, integrated into humans as opposed
Speaker 1: to like a space suit, right right, and and I'll
Speaker 1: be it. This is before space suits existed, right, this
Speaker 1: was before there was any human space exploration. Published in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, the first human space flight. Your Garrands in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, so this is before we had any
Speaker 1: experien rants whatsoever in this field. But by their definition quote,
Speaker 1: the cyborg deliberately incorporates exogynous meaning coming from outside exogenous components,
Speaker 1: extending the self regulatory control function of the organism in
Speaker 1: order to adapt it to new environments. And this means
Speaker 1: that the cyborg is not enslaved to his or her
Speaker 1: survival machinery. Uh, the the incorporated survival machinery operates quote
Speaker 1: automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create,
Speaker 1: to think, and to feel. So in in an interesting
Speaker 1: kind of way. I think the emphasis here because people
Speaker 1: always think about human cyborgs and the human context is
Speaker 1: changing our nature. But the way Clines and Incline here
Speaker 1: envisioned it, it it was almost as if it was enabling
Speaker 1: us to be more like the kind of creature we
Speaker 1: wish to be, you know, the ideal, yeah, trans humanism,
Speaker 1: rather than cybern netics the way that we consider maybe
Speaker 1: cyborg netics. Yes, well yeah, I mean the emphasis is
Speaker 1: on is on not making us different fundamentally, but just
Speaker 1: sort of like getting all of the rudimentary survival junk
Speaker 1: out of the way, so that our existence can be
Speaker 1: focused on the things that really matter. This gets right
Speaker 1: to the heart of a lot of different issues we've
Speaker 1: talked about on this show that aren't necessarily directly related
Speaker 1: to technology. The general basic income, one could argue, is
Speaker 1: covering very much the same ground, the idea that once
Speaker 1: you have accounted for the necessities, the basic needs of survival,
Speaker 1: you free people up to pursue the things that they
Speaker 1: value and thus can become better contributors to society overall.
Speaker 1: It's the same similar ideas, just a very different kind
Speaker 1: of approach to it. Yeah, so in their vision, they'll
Speaker 1: remember that this is talking about trying to adapt us
Speaker 1: to other environments very specifically, and cyborg came to mean
Speaker 1: something much more general role in the parlance of our times.
Speaker 1: But originally they were talking very much about space. And
Speaker 1: one example to give of modifying the human to live
Speaker 1: in space is breathing. So you know, breathing is required
Speaker 1: to purge CO two and replenish oxygen. There's no oxygen
Speaker 1: in space, you might have heard before, and so clients
Speaker 1: clients incline right quote an inverse fuel cell and no,
Speaker 1: we we would probably call this a regenerative fuel cell today.
Speaker 1: The idea of an inverse fuel cell is it does
Speaker 1: the opposite of what a normal fuel cell does, instead
Speaker 1: generating electricity through this chemical reaction that you put in
Speaker 1: electricity and you get chemicals out. Um, they say, Uh,
Speaker 1: an inverse fuel cell capable of reducing CO two to
Speaker 1: its components with removal of of the carbon and recirculation
Speaker 1: of the oxygen would eliminate the necessity for lung breathing.
Speaker 1: Such a system operating either on solar or nuclear energy
Speaker 1: would replace the lung make breathing as we know it unnecessary.
Speaker 1: Conventional breathing would still be possible should the environment permit it,
Speaker 1: discontinuing the fuel cell operation. Also, for quote fluid balance,
Speaker 1: they basically recommend a sort of catheter filter IVY circuit. Pleasant. Okay,
Speaker 1: what what book does that It's gonna remind me of
Speaker 1: like Catch twenty two or something with one tube going
Speaker 1: in and one tube going out and the character convinced
Speaker 1: that the two tubes are essentially all part of the
Speaker 1: same system. Um, yeah, that's so well. Anyway, given this
Speaker 1: stricter understanding in the light of the original definition, that
Speaker 1: there is really a distinction between cyborgs like as they're
Speaker 1: defined here, and other terms you might use like bio
Speaker 1: hybrids or bio robots or something like that. So cyborgs
Speaker 1: are technically augmented organisms, and these augmentations are designed to
Speaker 1: expand the self regulatory control function. As they said a
Speaker 1: lot like technological equivalence of homeostasis systems and humans. That said,
Speaker 1: I think for the purpose of this episode, we should
Speaker 1: probably just accept that most people use cyborg to mean
Speaker 1: any kind of hybrid of an organism or robot or machine. Right,
Speaker 1: So you could either start from the the perspective of
Speaker 1: an organism that you have modified technologically in some way,
Speaker 1: or technology that has has uh biological material incorporated into
Speaker 1: it in some way exactly. Yeah, So that that brings
Speaker 1: up the question of like, what are the what's the
Speaker 1: necessary constituent nature of an object that we think of
Speaker 1: as a cyborg. So imagine a space pig. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got a space pig with an inverse fuel cell
Speaker 1: that facilitates lungless respiration. It's a cyborg. This is cyberpig
Speaker 1: um and it can use electricity to oxygenate its tissues
Speaker 1: and purge c O two in a vacuum without lung breathing.
Speaker 1: Isn't that great? Pretty sure? That's the definition of link
Speaker 1: hogthrob in pigs and space and keep on. I like
Speaker 1: where you're going with this, Okay, But what if hypothetically
Speaker 1: you had something sort of coming from the opposite end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. There's a mechanical fuel cell that uses
Speaker 1: a disembodied pig lung to facilitate the generation of electrical current.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not sure if you could really do that,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying hypothetically, by the more common understanding,
Speaker 1: would this be a cyborg too? Technically yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the original definition probably not. But and we've also
Speaker 1: moved from the Muppets to David Cronenberg kind of territory.
Speaker 1: But I'm willing to roll with it. Okay. So does
Speaker 1: the organic synthetic hybrid system in some sense need to
Speaker 1: have a brain or nervous system to be a cyborg?
Speaker 1: It seems like, yeah, yeah, it depends. Like like I
Speaker 1: would argue that if you were to go back in
Speaker 1: time thirty years and talk about the concept of cyborg,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would would in all fields,
Speaker 1: would generally agree that they think of it as as
Speaker 1: largely an autonomous sort of thing, that whether it's a
Speaker 1: computer brain or an organic brain, that the robotic biological
Speaker 1: thing itself would have some form of autonomy. I would
Speaker 1: argue today that's not that's no longer a necessary criterion
Speaker 1: that you could argue. You could have a cyborg organism.
Speaker 1: I guess that's that's being redundant. You could have a
Speaker 1: cyborg that the machine exactly and your pin number. You
Speaker 1: could have the decisions quote unquote that the cyborg is
Speaker 1: making come completely externally through external controls. That I think
Speaker 1: would be an acceptable idea today, The idea that that
Speaker 1: you've got this organic slash technological thing, but it's under
Speaker 1: external control, it has no agency of its own. I
Speaker 1: think people would still say, like, well, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better unless you're going to go with something like
Speaker 1: bio hybrid, or we might as well call it a
Speaker 1: cyborg and is so much more fun. It is also
Speaker 1: just like you immediately sit there like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about ce slug cyborgs very shortly. And when you
Speaker 1: sit there and think CE slug cyborg, first thing I
Speaker 1: think is that there's like a terminator version of a
Speaker 1: sea slug out there. That's not what is actually happening,
Speaker 1: but it's way more fun to think of it that
Speaker 1: way though. Well, let's get to the slugs. Then we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back to some sort of theoretical discussions at
Speaker 1: the end. But Jonathan, do you have something to tell
Speaker 1: me about slugs? I't. I didn't want it to come
Speaker 1: out this way on the podcast. I have a complicated
Speaker 1: relationship with slugs. I admit. When I was young, I
Speaker 1: had an occasional uh foray into sadism by placing the
Speaker 1: salt upon the slugs. I regret those actions. Now as
Speaker 1: an adult, I think I did it too. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but dogs, but these slugs are different. These are sea slugs.
Speaker 1: These are not not land based slugs that are gnawing
Speaker 1: on the various things you have in your garden. Different
Speaker 1: kind of animal, different kind of animal entirely, and can
Speaker 1: at you for what you did when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: one would hope. I mean, if it holds a grudge,
Speaker 1: then they they are far more united than I gave
Speaker 1: them credit for. Hopefully we can upgrade their mental powers
Speaker 1: through extra computing add ons CA so that way they
Speaker 1: don't Yeah, well, the whole thing we're talking about here
Speaker 1: is actually a research project done with a team working
Speaker 1: with Case Western Reserves Biologically Inspired Robotics Laboratory, which is
Speaker 1: a real thing that exists. It's incredible. Uh. They've developed
Speaker 1: an organic robot bio hybrid, or if we prefer our
Speaker 1: our other nomenclature, a cyborg that consists of three D
Speaker 1: printed parts, very very tiny three D printed parts, and
Speaker 1: the mouth muscle from a sea slug. Just the mouth
Speaker 1: must just the mouth muscle. They they first started practicing
Speaker 1: with muscle cells. They tried to grow muscle cells on
Speaker 1: kind of an organic scaffold, but they found that the
Speaker 1: actual structure of the mouth muscle from this particular sea
Speaker 1: slug was already pretty much exactly what they needed in
Speaker 1: order to accomplish the movements they had in mind with
Speaker 1: this this three D print material. So, as we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier in that analogy, this would be kind of
Speaker 1: like the pig lung that facilitates the fuel cell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that in this case, the muscle is there in order
Speaker 1: to provide the locomotion of this little robot. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have any you know, other anima to it. That's that's
Speaker 1: what they're using. The muscle. For it's it's a pusher,
Speaker 1: it's a binder. I guess because I think of it
Speaker 1: that you've connected two ends of a muscle. This is oversimplifying,
Speaker 1: but you've connected two ends of a muscle to two
Speaker 1: anchor points on a bendable, flexible three D inted material.
Speaker 1: And then when you apply an external electric field. We
Speaker 1: know that when you stimulate muscle tissue with low levels
Speaker 1: of electricity, you cause it to contract so or or spasm,
Speaker 1: depending upon the way to series of contractions. Exactly so,
Speaker 1: doing that they can make the muscle contract and thus
Speaker 1: bend the bendy three D printed parts, and then you know,
Speaker 1: through pulses, they can make the actual robot move forward.
Speaker 1: But just to be clear, I mean we sort have
Speaker 1: already said this, but I do want to specify there.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about like a mechanical thing inspired by
Speaker 1: the way the cea slug muscle works, literally just a
Speaker 1: CE slug muscle. Yeah, we're talking about, well, why would
Speaker 1: you choose a CE slug muscle in the first place, Like,
Speaker 1: why not do some other means of propulsion? What's what
Speaker 1: did the sea slug ever do to you that you
Speaker 1: required to remove the muscle from its mouth and paste
Speaker 1: it onto a three D printed robot. Well, let's get
Speaker 1: some details first. Uh, the type of sea slug we're
Speaker 1: talking about is specifically the Eplesia californica sea slug, and
Speaker 1: it is apparently ideal for this particular application, and they
Speaker 1: the team plans on using robots like this one. I
Speaker 1: would argue that the ones they produced so far are
Speaker 1: kind of in that prototype range, but they expect to
Speaker 1: use robots like this one in specific environments that would
Speaker 1: be hazardous or impossible for humans to explore. An example
Speaker 1: would be let's say a plane has gone down over
Speaker 1: the ocean, and perhaps it's a deep part of the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult for us to get down there and
Speaker 1: search for the black box to determine what exactly happened.
Speaker 1: You could deploy a swarm of these robots that could
Speaker 1: explore the bottom of the sea floor. Keep in mind
Speaker 1: that sea slug muscles, they're they're made made, it's probably
Speaker 1: the wrong word. They've evolved to inhabit various ocean environments,
Speaker 1: and they're incredibly hardy. The the muscle tissue and sea
Speaker 1: slugs they are able to survive in various conditions of
Speaker 1: ocean water, different levels of salinity and temperature. So they're
Speaker 1: ideal for going into these kind of situations because you
Speaker 1: can have them survived through all the different depths of
Speaker 1: the ocean as they make their way to where you
Speaker 1: want them to go. Then they explore the ocean floor
Speaker 1: looking for this black box. When they find it, you know,
Speaker 1: you get the signal and then you can actually send
Speaker 1: in something to retrieve the box. That's one example. Another
Speaker 1: one that they gave is imagine that you have a
Speaker 1: pond and you know that there's some toxic material leaching
Speaker 1: into the pond. You do not know what the source
Speaker 1: is or where it is, but you are observing ecological
Speaker 1: changes around the pond. So you don't want to send
Speaker 1: a person in there because it could be the levels
Speaker 1: of toxicity could be dangerous to the human beings. So
Speaker 1: you put in these robots that are capable of moving
Speaker 1: through the water to seek out the sore and then
Speaker 1: maybe you can do something about it. Those are some
Speaker 1: of the examples they've given. Well. Uh the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about using a ce slug muscle as opposed to a
Speaker 1: three D printed um uh or or traditional type of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's using something like that. Well, for one thing, like
Speaker 1: if you're using actuators, they tend to be stiff and inflexible.
Speaker 1: They they aren't good at adapting to various environments, and
Speaker 1: that also means that they have limited range of motion, right,
Speaker 1: Like they might have a very simple action like a
Speaker 1: piston would be a very simple action in or out right.
Speaker 1: So if you want to create a limb that has
Speaker 1: a lot of flexibility to it, you end up having
Speaker 1: to use a lot of actuators, which ends up adding
Speaker 1: to the complexity of the robot itself. It increases the
Speaker 1: number of potential points of failure. It also increases the
Speaker 1: cost of developing and building those robots. And it's not
Speaker 1: easy to create something that's very adaptive to its environment,
Speaker 1: whereas using a muscle or from a creature that lived
Speaker 1: in that environment gets around those problems. Muscles are much
Speaker 1: more flexible. Uh, they're very this particular sea slug, it's
Speaker 1: very resilient, like I mentioned before, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry so much about failure In that case, um
Speaker 1: and the muscle tissue itself can get nutrients from the
Speaker 1: ocean water around it to keep the muscle alive. Now
Speaker 1: that doesn't power the muscle, as in, it doesn't generate
Speaker 1: the ability for the muscle to contract. You still have
Speaker 1: to at the moment anyway stimulate it with an external
Speaker 1: electric field. They do hope to eventually develop other organic
Speaker 1: based robots using this uh the sea slugs muscularture, but
Speaker 1: also including other parts of the sea slugs nervous system
Speaker 1: like anglia and stuff. In order for it to be
Speaker 1: able to move without using an external electric field, you
Speaker 1: would have some other control mechanism to make the robot
Speaker 1: move when you want it to move, which would be
Speaker 1: important because trying to stimulate a swarm of robots deep
Speaker 1: under the ocean with an electric field would present its
Speaker 1: own challenges, right You that that it's not a practical
Speaker 1: solution to the problems that we're actually talking about these
Speaker 1: robots potentially tackling in the future. And uh, I love
Speaker 1: the idea that they eventually want to create essentially an
Speaker 1: entirely organic robot, so no inorganic parts. It's all yeah
Speaker 1: meat robot, which by the way, is is pretty much
Speaker 1: the way Catereral Capec envisioned robots and Rossum's universal robots.
Speaker 1: They were synthetic beings but they were not necessarily electronic beings.
Speaker 1: The robots and Carol Capex play were closer to the
Speaker 1: like the replicants in uh In Blade Run or and
Speaker 1: even more organic than they were, at least in most
Speaker 1: of the variations I've read of the play. I've never
Speaker 1: read it in the original because I can't I don't
Speaker 1: have that linguistic ability. But they at any rate, they
Speaker 1: wanted to do a fully organic robot, the idea being
Speaker 1: that if you lose them, like if they if through
Speaker 1: whatever means, like they're going through a hazardous area and
Speaker 1: eventually they break down, they would decompose naturally, or they
Speaker 1: could even be eaten by stuff in the environment, that is,
Speaker 1: and not cause harm. This almost reminds me in some
Speaker 1: ways of when we talked about edible electronics, like wanting
Speaker 1: to make electronic devices entirely out of components that you
Speaker 1: could digest safely. Sure, because yeah, if you're gonna accidentally
Speaker 1: pollute a waterway, it's nicer to do it with a good,
Speaker 1: friendly corpse than with electronics which have batteries that can
Speaker 1: you know it's bad times of battery leaks into your water, right,
Speaker 1: just making the problem worse. I hope fully, the synthetic
Speaker 1: organic what are the terms completely organic robots would be
Speaker 1: sterile correct, Well, I mean they from what I understand,
Speaker 1: they would be still completely controlled. Externally, they would have
Speaker 1: they would have no uh autonomous function whatsoever, so they
Speaker 1: wouldn't contain the reproductive bits. Yeah, you would essentially just
Speaker 1: have it. You would just have an inert robot if
Speaker 1: you weren't, if you weren't using that external control. Be like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had a remote control car and
Speaker 1: there's no wireless frequency going on around that car, it's
Speaker 1: not going to start moving on its own unless it's tobor. Granted,
Speaker 1: if Tobar has been reincarnated as an RC car, you
Speaker 1: might have some problems. I think we just came up
Speaker 1: with a plot for Toy Story five. Pixar call us, yes,
Speaker 1: please do? I mean generally, yeah, Well, we'd love to
Speaker 1: talk to you. I love the idea of a completely
Speaker 1: organic row bot. I think that's hilarious and it's it's
Speaker 1: something that should encourage us to be thoughtful. Look as
Speaker 1: what what is a robot in that sense? So you
Speaker 1: say a robot is something it's a machine that uh
Speaker 1: that in well, actually, I mean there are different definitions. Well,
Speaker 1: if you can, you go with the classic definition, the
Speaker 1: Carol Capeck definition, where you had organic robots. A robot
Speaker 1: is a synthetic being humans have built in order for
Speaker 1: it to do work that humans do not want to
Speaker 1: do or cannot do. And in the case of Rossam's
Speaker 1: universal robots, you have these synthetic beings that rebel against
Speaker 1: that because in that sense, robot is essentially a slave.
Speaker 1: It's just it's an artificial being that's been created by people,
Speaker 1: but still has this feeling of of well, I am
Speaker 1: being forced to do this work, it was not on
Speaker 1: my own volition. So same sort of idea for robots
Speaker 1: in general, except we've met largely not gone the organic route,
Speaker 1: except in a few odd cases here and there, and
Speaker 1: by odd I mean infrequent h and also sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: kind of unusual and weird. But we've mostly focused on
Speaker 1: the electronic version of robots, right, the technological version of robots.
Speaker 1: So I would argue that this definition goes right back
Speaker 1: to the heart of the original definition. It's a synthetic machine,
Speaker 1: whether it's organic or inorganic, that is meant to do
Speaker 1: work that we humans are either unable or unwilling to do. Ourselves,
Speaker 1: That's what I would say. All right, well, under that definition,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you could imagine a scenario where we
Speaker 1: synthetically create a dog and it is, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much like any other dog, except you've grown all of
Speaker 1: its organs in a in vitro and then combined them
Speaker 1: to make a functioning dog. I mean, should should our
Speaker 1: attitude towards this organism be any different than it would
Speaker 1: be towards a naturally occurring dog. Birth to two dogs?
Speaker 1: As an excellent question, I don't. I mean, obviously, it's
Speaker 1: one of those that I think people would come up
Speaker 1: with their own individual answers. The fact that you chose
Speaker 1: dog which hits our super soft spot. For me, I'll
Speaker 1: be like, well, I mean, if it's it's like the
Speaker 1: you know, if it looks like a duck and if
Speaker 1: it quacks like a duck, that it's good enough for me.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the same thing. Except if it looks
Speaker 1: like a duck and quacks like a duck. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to call it a dog, Joe. That's stupid, that
Speaker 1: would be absurd. Yes, um would? I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I think that we shouldn't morally speaking treat this
Speaker 1: cyber dog with any difference than than we would treat
Speaker 1: a regular dog. But but I think we would well,
Speaker 1: and I think it's human nature to look at that
Speaker 1: and runaway screaming, and well, if it looks like Frank
Speaker 1: and dog, then definitely, well okay, So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems to me that the crucial bit
Speaker 1: there would be the nervous system. Like if it has
Speaker 1: a nervous system, you wouldn't feel okay to even a
Speaker 1: dog you grew in vitro. If you grew a brain
Speaker 1: for it and it worked like a normal dog brain,
Speaker 1: I know, I wouldn't feel okay, like sending that dog
Speaker 1: into a dangerous situation or something like that. That's still
Speaker 1: a dog. Yeah, But I mean, if you're growing organic robots,
Speaker 1: it seems like you will need some sort of nervous
Speaker 1: system type type apparatus to control it. Which it gets
Speaker 1: into what they were talking about with future future versions
Speaker 1: of it. Well yeah, and and it would all depend
Speaker 1: on like how sophisticated a nervous system are you talking about?
Speaker 1: You talking about something that would allow enough for someone
Speaker 1: else to have external control of the the robot, whether
Speaker 1: it's organic or in organic if you're going to make
Speaker 1: the muscles move, you need a nervous system. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean, is it one that is capable now having
Speaker 1: any sort of experience or is it simply going to
Speaker 1: be one that follows the instructions that you give it
Speaker 1: in real time? Another words, is it more like a
Speaker 1: remote controlled object or is it able to do anything
Speaker 1: semi or or fully autonomously. The closer you get to autonomous,
Speaker 1: I would argue, the more you're gonna have to treat
Speaker 1: that as a living thing, whether it's organic or inorganic.
Speaker 1: I feel that way. Um oh yeah, you know, which
Speaker 1: we discussed at length the other week in our Robotic
Speaker 1: Personhood episode right right, and and we've even talked about
Speaker 1: it in previous episodes where we've mentioned the idea that
Speaker 1: if a robot is capable of simulating behaviors that are
Speaker 1: are that we associate with organic beings, that living natural creatures.
Speaker 1: If the more it's able to exhibit those sort of behaviors,
Speaker 1: even if it's just a simulation, it may be for
Speaker 1: our own personal benefit to treat the robots as if
Speaker 1: they are in fact natural creatures. Uh, this would be like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of a weird thing to think about,
Speaker 1: but it's almost better for for human being psychologically to
Speaker 1: treat robots that would exhibit such behaviors as if they
Speaker 1: were alive, even if you could argue that the robot
Speaker 1: itself somehow, you know, empirically, isn't alive at any rate.
Speaker 1: That's so much further down the road than simply attaching
Speaker 1: a c slug muscle to a piece of three D
Speaker 1: printed um material. If people are talking about creating entirely
Speaker 1: organic robots, I think that's something we need to be
Speaker 1: thinking about. Yeah, eventually, Yeah, I think the initial organic
Speaker 1: robots are essentially going to be the organic counterpart to
Speaker 1: a remote controlled car. It's not gonna be any more
Speaker 1: sophisticated than a microprocessor that would allow a radio signal
Speaker 1: to be translated into physical motion. Yeah, and that actually
Speaker 1: is an excellent tie in into our our next subject
Speaker 1: in this episode, which is synthetic sting rays. Yes, so wait,
Speaker 1: is this closer to the like a stingray modified with
Speaker 1: predator vision or more like a pig long It's more
Speaker 1: like a pig lung. Uh, It's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: robot powered by living tissue. Up. But I would say
Speaker 1: that it's design principles could lead to the modification of
Speaker 1: organisms in the future. I will explain. So, a team
Speaker 1: out of Harvard University has built a synthetic sting ray
Speaker 1: that can swim around and be stimulated to move by
Speaker 1: exposure to these little blue lights. Why is stingray you
Speaker 1: ask with your eyeballs. Um, Because it's an organism that
Speaker 1: has a powerful and efficient muscular system that has the
Speaker 1: capacity to act and react in moving fluids when it swims. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: And and basically, our circulatory system is a system of
Speaker 1: moving fluids that acts and reacts to stimuli via a
Speaker 1: powerful and efficient muscular system. A k A your heart.
Speaker 1: Are you about to tell me that we're going to
Speaker 1: eventually have synthetic sting rays swimming through our blood streams?
Speaker 1: Because I didn't prepare myself for that eventuality. No, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I could take a breath then. But their
Speaker 1: thought was that if we can create a synthetic stingray,
Speaker 1: then maybe we can create better artificial hearts. Oh how interesting.
Speaker 1: I never would have made that connection. Yeah, the connection
Speaker 1: was was made by the team leader, one Kit Parker Um,
Speaker 1: who's it's the same team that created an artificial jellyfish
Speaker 1: back in and this Parker Fellow has been inspired by
Speaker 1: aquarium visits with his daughter and and also by his
Speaker 1: frustration with with the lack of really good artificial hearts
Speaker 1: in our in our current medical culture, when we do
Speaker 1: have lots of examples of things living things that beat
Speaker 1: and pump in nature. Uh, you know what, why don't
Speaker 1: Why don't we have a better hearts? Um? So he
Speaker 1: sees he sees projects like this jellyfish and the stingray
Speaker 1: as ways to help develop better human biotechnology. That's so interesting,
Speaker 1: But he does it in real creepy ways, mad science style.
Speaker 1: I mean a little bit. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It depends on how far you played up and how
Speaker 1: how much you choose to be squeaked out by it.
Speaker 1: But okay, Like, did I mention that the stingray and
Speaker 1: the jellyfish are powered by rat heart cells? You mentioned
Speaker 1: they had biological material, but didn't mention that they were
Speaker 1: they were deriving their power from rat hearts. I want
Speaker 1: to I want to give you guys. I want to
Speaker 1: give you guys a quote. Um there. Parker did this
Speaker 1: interview with NPR, and in it he was talking about
Speaker 1: sitting down with one of his fellow researchers and explaining
Speaker 1: this plan and so and so Parker says, I said,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a rat apart, we're going to
Speaker 1: rebuild it as a stingray, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: use a light to guide it. And then Parker says,
Speaker 1: and the look on his face was both sorrow and horror. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this that sounds like it comes straight out of like
Speaker 1: a B movie, like horror film, right like that? You know,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of an episode of The Mighty Bush
Speaker 1: where it's called Mutants and it's all about the owner
Speaker 1: of the zoo, in order to attract more people to
Speaker 1: the zoo, decides to take apart all the animals and
Speaker 1: put them back together in weird ways because that will
Speaker 1: attract a bigger crowd, Lauren, wasn't this the story that
Speaker 1: was behind Miss Quimby and the Rats of nim Good reference?
Speaker 1: But you know the name of the missing rat, right,
Speaker 1: the husband rat. You know what his first name was, right, Jonathan?
Speaker 1: But only in the book. I don't think he's mentioned that.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's mentioned that way in the movie too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time since I've seen the rats
Speaker 1: of nim or read the book, so I can't say
Speaker 1: that I recall specifically. Uh but furthermore, Parker Parker went
Speaker 1: on to program these these living, disembodied rat heart cells
Speaker 1: to propel plastic stingray bodies through the water, always heading
Speaker 1: towards the light. I just want to shake this dude's hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like every every horror movie I've ever seen has
Speaker 1: been wrapped up in the story. Somehow we got some
Speaker 1: poulter Geist in there, you know, we got Frankenstein and
Speaker 1: but but but it is. It is a fascinating technological,
Speaker 1: biotechnological approach to a to a problem. Uh so, so
Speaker 1: what what they did exactly was they took about two
Speaker 1: thousand rat heart cells um genetically altered them to react
Speaker 1: to this pair of of of blinky blue lights and
Speaker 1: fitted them into a little silicone stingray shaped body that
Speaker 1: has this thin, tiny gold skeleton. UM. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is a little bit less than an inch in diameter,
Speaker 1: like like twenty millimeters or so, about the size of
Speaker 1: a US nickel and UM and and the living cells
Speaker 1: in it are fit together in patterns that allow them
Speaker 1: to be stimulated sequentially. UM. It's sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: the wave in a baseball stadium. Uh, you know when
Speaker 1: when when everyone this is such a visual thing and
Speaker 1: I was like about to do it to show you
Speaker 1: guys on air. That's not efficient, but it would have
Speaker 1: been a very small but enthusiastic wave. Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: think we could. We could do a good wave in
Speaker 1: here anyway. Um uh so yeah, so so so insequential patterns, um,
Speaker 1: and by giving the giving the little synthetic creature different
Speaker 1: light inputs, like by modulating the frequency of the flashes,
Speaker 1: and by acting by by activating either both lights simultaneously
Speaker 1: or only the right side or only the left side. Um,
Speaker 1: they've guided this little stingray buddy through an obstacle course,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it moves like a real sting ray. Well
Speaker 1: it makes sense that they would have to have it
Speaker 1: in this sort of modulated fashion. After all. That's the
Speaker 1: way that if you watch a sting ray swimming in
Speaker 1: slow motion, you see that sort of like a ripple
Speaker 1: effect through its musculature as it propels itself through. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really cool. Yeah, And what they're hoping will come
Speaker 1: out of this research eventually is an artificial heart made
Speaker 1: with real living muscle cells. Um, you know, rather than
Speaker 1: being just just a mechanical pump or even you know,
Speaker 1: a fancy mechanical pump that's outfitted with sensories that can
Speaker 1: react to blood pressure. Um, this kind of artificial heart
Speaker 1: could grow and change and react more like real hearts do. Right.
Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. So if for example, a child
Speaker 1: were to need a heart transplant, uh, and you didn't
Speaker 1: have and a donor is an available, you didn't have
Speaker 1: a donor available, and you don't necessarily want to uh
Speaker 1: fit an artificial mechanical heart because growing child, right, because
Speaker 1: then you may have to do future surgeries to correct
Speaker 1: for that later on. This is an alternative approach that
Speaker 1: could be incredibly helpful for those sort of cases in particular,
Speaker 1: a lot of different cases obviously. Oh yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean heart hearts are muscles that that
Speaker 1: grow and change very much with us, depending on how
Speaker 1: much exercise we're doing and uh and other other lifestyle factors.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it could be it could be huge, all right.
Speaker 1: So we have these these two different examples of incorporating
Speaker 1: biological material into a synthetic robot of some sort, whether
Speaker 1: and different plans for either approaching this to create more
Speaker 1: organic robots in the future, as is the case with
Speaker 1: a c slug, or to develop technologies that are inspired by,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily easily linked to on on a surface level,
Speaker 1: to a synthetic creature the case of the stingray. What
Speaker 1: about the future of cyborgs? This is obviously very uh
Speaker 1: early days in in that kind of realm. What are
Speaker 1: we seeing moving forward? Well, in some ways, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, humans are already sort of cyborg is
Speaker 1: with our contact lenses and our pacemakers and our Pokemon
Speaker 1: go machines. But I was kidding about that last one.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you might be. But you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna catch that gush darn sid duck that's been haunting
Speaker 1: the office for the last twenty five minutes. There's a
Speaker 1: side duck in the office right now. No, there's not.
Speaker 1: Why would you lie to my Jonathans? It was germane
Speaker 1: to what Joe was saying, really just for the purposes
Speaker 1: of entertainment. I I feel very ashamed, and having gotten
Speaker 1: your hopes up, Jonathan is going to create a side
Speaker 1: duck dynasty in here. I'm trying to grow out the
Speaker 1: beard anyway, but so so there's already the human case.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we've talked about human modification before, and
Speaker 1: in many cases, I think it's interesting to think about
Speaker 1: how biohybrid animals and cyborg animals may proceed cyborg or
Speaker 1: biohybrid humans. Yeah, they're still going to be I imagine
Speaker 1: a lot of ethical considerations even with the idea of
Speaker 1: transforming animals in different ways, especially the more complex the organism.
Speaker 1: I I imagine the more ethical questions we will ask ourselves.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me that it's far more likely
Speaker 1: we're going to to see examples of that in and
Speaker 1: even complex organisms. Well before we get to a point
Speaker 1: where it is widely accepted within human culture, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: still have maybe one or two people who are seeking
Speaker 1: out the opportunity to enhance themselves on an individual basis,
Speaker 1: but those will be outliers, not like this is a
Speaker 1: general trend. We're gonna see lots of people following well,
Speaker 1: And as we've discussed on the show before, there are
Speaker 1: so many, um like legally ethical questions and and and
Speaker 1: hurdles to too mechanically jump over. I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: I was going with that. But before we have doctors
Speaker 1: with the legal capacity to make that kind of upgrade. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But it's it's interesting to think, well, assuming we do
Speaker 1: reach a future where more complex organisms can be altered
Speaker 1: into some form of cyborg whether you're changing an existing
Speaker 1: animal or you're developing a brand new type of animal
Speaker 1: from scratch. Uh, you know, and maybe a type of
Speaker 1: animal that completely resembles an existing one but is in
Speaker 1: fact like lab made as opposed to we we found
Speaker 1: this puppy and decided to give it infrared vision with
Speaker 1: cyborg eyes. Uh what what are some of the things
Speaker 1: we might see? I like, I like that you have
Speaker 1: the idea of augmenting animals to make them easier to
Speaker 1: care for. Well, yeah, I mean that's a thing that
Speaker 1: in some ways already exists. I mean, people have wearables
Speaker 1: for animals that are meant for health tracking purposes of
Speaker 1: various kinds. I think they're probably kind of crude today,
Speaker 1: But and we do have GPS tracking chips and a
Speaker 1: lot of our and like like i D tags and
Speaker 1: a lot of our animals. Yeah, yeah, it's true pets
Speaker 1: with tracking capabilities. Now, your dog might very well already
Speaker 1: have an embedded microchip with like identifying information in case
Speaker 1: that dog gets caught. But you wouldn't call that integrated system, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's a tag that's underneath the skin of the animal,
Speaker 1: but doesn't integrate within the dog's actual internal organs or anything. Well,
Speaker 1: a version that might do something like that was imagine
Speaker 1: something like this pets with built in range limitters, so
Speaker 1: kind of like the principle behind a collar and an
Speaker 1: electric fence combo. So you can let your pet roam free,
Speaker 1: but they get within a certain range distance of your
Speaker 1: hub on the GPS coordinates, the pet has gone too far,
Speaker 1: and it gets some kind of internal control mechanism telling
Speaker 1: it to turn back right, like it suddenly gets uneasy
Speaker 1: or hungry or terrified and now I want to go
Speaker 1: home and hug my dog, or you know, maybe it
Speaker 1: could simulate, you know, it gets a certain distance away,
Speaker 1: there's suddenly the simulated sensation of hearing the food bowl
Speaker 1: rattle back at home or something. But in less cute
Speaker 1: and cuddly ways, you could have like spy animals for
Speaker 1: warfare and espionage. I'm sure that you can upgrade in
Speaker 1: all kinds of bizarre cybernetically, yes, I mean you can
Speaker 1: still have it cute and Cuddley if it's like a
Speaker 1: Jack Russell right right. If you guys ever want to
Speaker 1: read something real depressing um and and you are of
Speaker 1: an adult age, then then pick up the graphic novel
Speaker 1: WE three W E and the number three that's by
Speaker 1: Grant Morrison and it's real sad. It's if you want
Speaker 1: be real sad someday and read a real great story
Speaker 1: about that thing that we just talked about. Check that
Speaker 1: one out, Okay, I always want to be real sad.
Speaker 1: I highly recommended. Actually, it's one of my favorite little
Speaker 1: one shots anyway. But those are the more standard types
Speaker 1: of things. I mean, you can think of things like
Speaker 1: this yourself, right, and you know, what's a way we
Speaker 1: can modify a pet or organism to have some kind
Speaker 1: of control function augmented by technology. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things is that in the examples we
Speaker 1: look today, it's more the pig lung model. It's coming
Speaker 1: from the other direction, not modifying a whole organism with
Speaker 1: a little bit of technology, but using an organ from
Speaker 1: an animal or or you know, just some kind of
Speaker 1: biological material that is incorporated into a machine or a robot.
Speaker 1: And so there are lots of cases where we've studied biomemetics,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, designing machines and robots to mimic
Speaker 1: the behaviors of living organisms and tissues. But in a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases, it's probably worth asking, now, hey,
Speaker 1: if we want a robot that can do the same
Speaker 1: thing as a squid tentnacle, is there a reason we
Speaker 1: shouldn't just use a squid tentnacle. I'm I'm sure that
Speaker 1: if squids could talk, they would have something to say
Speaker 1: about that. Well. True, imagine you could grow one in vitro. Okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll skip that part. Uh, I'm not saying you
Speaker 1: could grow as squid tentnacle in vitro without having to
Speaker 1: have any harm come to an actual squid. Sure, while
Speaker 1: you're eating your calamari, I'm saving them so much suffering. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it didn't mean to sound so callous there. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just having a shellfish issue. In many cases, this
Speaker 1: is going to be impractical, right, Like maybe you can't
Speaker 1: actually control the biological tentacle with precision, or maybe it
Speaker 1: tends to rot or decompose in the environment that you
Speaker 1: would want to use it. But in some cases, the
Speaker 1: real tissue or organ might do just as well as
Speaker 1: the synthetic copy at which would save us a lot
Speaker 1: of R and D. Right, Yeah, it makes me think
Speaker 1: of remember the snake like robot that could swim through
Speaker 1: a pool and climb trees and stuff. This was from
Speaker 1: a few years ago, where it's like the segment of
Speaker 1: robot and yeah, bio mimetic. It was, you know, mimicking
Speaker 1: the movements of a snake in order to propel itself
Speaker 1: through both water and over land, uh and up trees
Speaker 1: as it turns out, And you would imagine that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's probably pretty tricky, a tough engineering challenge. If
Speaker 1: we reached a point where we were able to either
Speaker 1: take an existing snake or grow as a snake essentially
Speaker 1: a snake sands near uh sands snake brain in the lab,
Speaker 1: and replace that with like a technological version of whatever
Speaker 1: is we need in a control system that kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: that might end up being much easier. And depending upon
Speaker 1: what you were planning on putting that snake robot to use,
Speaker 1: you know, however you're playing on using it, it may
Speaker 1: end up being more practical in that In that respect. Um,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a lot of work that has to go
Speaker 1: into making that actually happen, like you were saying, with
Speaker 1: the idea of the precision, making sure that you can
Speaker 1: get all those movements just right. Uh. As we mentioned
Speaker 1: before on this show, when it comes to living organisms,
Speaker 1: they have had the benefit of millions and millions of
Speaker 1: years of research and development to get to where they
Speaker 1: are today. We yeah, we've been working on a much
Speaker 1: smaller time scale, not even a blip in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things. So it's it's not like I don't
Speaker 1: wish to say, like, oh, yeah, if we just did
Speaker 1: it this way, it would make way more sense, because
Speaker 1: it is in itself a monumental task. It just maybe
Speaker 1: that in certain cases it ends up making more sense
Speaker 1: to go down that road than trying to replicate the
Speaker 1: movement of a particular organism through purely mechanical means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so here's just one example that comes to my mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: animal organs often can do the same job a machine
Speaker 1: can do, but with a lot greater energy efficiency. This
Speaker 1: is a great one. Like, uh, it's a very sci
Speaker 1: fi concept, But just stick with me for a second. Here.
Speaker 1: Imagine we're going to create some neurally inspired computing robots,
Speaker 1: robots that have some brain power, uh, and they they've
Speaker 1: got you know, neural network kind of logic, why not
Speaker 1: use real neurons to do the computation. Animal nervous systems
Speaker 1: are known to be much more energy efficient relative to
Speaker 1: their computing capability than electronic processors are. So if you're
Speaker 1: trying to create a robot that's maybe both small and smart,
Speaker 1: it would make a lot of sense to try and
Speaker 1: see if you could use organic nervous system neural material
Speaker 1: rather than processors, you know, silicon chips. So the big
Speaker 1: challenge there is creating the interface that allows for the
Speaker 1: technological commands to be converted into organic commands or organic
Speaker 1: requests in the case of something like you wanted to
Speaker 1: do some sort of machine learning type of situation. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a very sci fi kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: we're not close to to do anything like this today,
Speaker 1: but it is is an interesting concept. I like the idea, especially,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're able to grow neurons in the lab, right,
Speaker 1: not not pull it out of an animal. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get real squeaky squeaky about that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm so I like animals like I like
Speaker 1: them I like them as they are, like them with mustard,
Speaker 1: depending on the animal. That is true. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's but I like the idea of leveraging that
Speaker 1: incredibly efficient, powerful unit that collectively can create a really
Speaker 1: uh robust network as opposed to trying to replicate it
Speaker 1: through technology, which requires not just more energy but a
Speaker 1: lot more space too. We've gotten really good at minaturization,
Speaker 1: but nowhere near on the level of like how deadly
Speaker 1: packed our brains are with neurons. So it is an
Speaker 1: interesting idea. I don't know if we'll ever get there.
Speaker 1: I mean it'll It really will depend on which branch
Speaker 1: of research ends up being the most economically feasible, at
Speaker 1: least in the short run. Right Like if you say, well,
Speaker 1: we could pour more money into research on the true
Speaker 1: neural network side of things, where we're actually using neurons,
Speaker 1: but we're so far away from that, we think we're
Speaker 1: so many decades away from that being a viable discipline.
Speaker 1: Whereas while this other approach clearly is less energy efficient
Speaker 1: in the in the end result, we're closer to being
Speaker 1: able to do that. And maybe it will be that
Speaker 1: the other method is one we never explore it's just
Speaker 1: a branch where we we identify it but realize, like
Speaker 1: it just not practical for us to go down that road.
Speaker 1: I mean, someone will, like a mad scientist version of
Speaker 1: Robert Frost take the road less traveled. That will make
Speaker 1: all the difference. All right, So that wraps up this discussion. Fact.
Speaker 1: You know, that's one of the most misinterpreted poems in English.
Speaker 1: As a as a fellow liberal arts major, yes I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should look it up. Look it up. People read
Speaker 1: about it sometimes. This is kind of funny. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's misused in inspirational speeches all the time. It's actually
Speaker 1: kind of a depressing poem. Most of Robert Frost's poems
Speaker 1: are kind of depressing poems. Dark. Yeah, I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're they're beautiful and and and they're so simple sounding.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but most of them aren't like pleasant. But
Speaker 1: if you want a pleasant experience, get an Emily Dickinson
Speaker 1: poem and read it to the tune of Gilligan's Island
Speaker 1: because it works also Yellow Rose of Texas. They both work.
Speaker 1: Um at any rate. I'll with that little bit of
Speaker 1: knowledge and trust me, it works. Go and try it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to sign off here. If you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of forward Thinking, or you have
Speaker 1: some questions or comments, send them our away Our email
Speaker 1: addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
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Speaker 1: or Facebook. At Twitter where f W Thinking you can
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Speaker 1: I'm seriously never going to be able to unthink this,
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