Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey there, welcome to Stuff about your mind.
Speaker 1: Julie Here. Robert is out this week with his son
Speaker 1: who has undergone surgery and is doing well. So we
Speaker 1: decided to present a classic episode The Werewolf Principle, in
Speaker 1: which we discussed the ideal astronaut and how we can
Speaker 1: tinker with our humanness to adapt ourselves to space. Latest
Speaker 1: will be discussed a positive attitude, of course, not to
Speaker 1: mention becoming a cyborg. Julie. There is a book I
Speaker 1: read a little while back, and it's reference to the
Speaker 1: title of this podcast, UM The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simmic,
Speaker 1: and I find it really interesting. It's not perhaps not
Speaker 1: Simmic's best works, and he's probably best known for a
Speaker 1: book called City, which one Hugo Award, But it's kind
Speaker 1: of like they came up to the Clifford, you know,
Speaker 1: really established us sci fi dude, and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we want you to write, um a novel about wherewolves
Speaker 1: from space? And then he set out and wrote the
Speaker 1: most intelligent, interesting take on that concept possible, instead of
Speaker 1: it just being where wolves landing and running around howling
Speaker 1: it things, um it involved a guy. Yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: gets into the interesting argument that I've always wondered. It's like,
Speaker 1: what if what would happen to a werewolf landed on
Speaker 1: the moon. Would they be aware a wolf all the time?
Speaker 1: Would they be affected by what the Earth was doing?
Speaker 1: Would it be howling all the time? Yeah? Yeah, interesting
Speaker 1: But but but Clifford, the simics, the whole take was
Speaker 1: that he decided to make this a person who had
Speaker 1: been engineered to adapt to different environments and sent off
Speaker 1: into space. So he goes to, if you were to
Speaker 1: land on Mars, his body would rapidly change so that
Speaker 1: he could know live on Mars, um et cetera. And anyway,
Speaker 1: he's returned to Earth and he's he keeps changing into
Speaker 1: these previous forms. Uh, And that's the base. There's also
Speaker 1: something really like that, like humans live in houses that
Speaker 1: can fly around and there, and they're brownies like little
Speaker 1: um creatures that live in the woods. So isn't he
Speaker 1: like two hundred years old or something by the time
Speaker 1: he returns. Yeah yeah, yeah, so he's got he's got
Speaker 1: a lot of living. Yeah, but it's it's such a form.
Speaker 1: But at hard it's such a fascinating concept because, uh,
Speaker 1: we're we still talk about tera forming a lot. We
Speaker 1: talk about I mean, one of the basic models of
Speaker 1: space flight is let's take a little bubble of our
Speaker 1: environment and let's blast it up into into orbit. Because
Speaker 1: we are ultimately we're creatures that can that are that
Speaker 1: have evolved to live only in a very small region
Speaker 1: of our own atmosphere, just a small portion of of
Speaker 1: the Earth's crust, because the crust also some definitions includes
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. So so we're only really supposed to live
Speaker 1: in this one little section. But we keep pushing the boundaries.
Speaker 1: You know, we want to climb on Everest, we want
Speaker 1: to to live in space, and then we want to
Speaker 1: have our little environment when we're in orbit. We want
Speaker 1: to turn Mars into Arizona. Uh and uh and and
Speaker 1: and and and you see these fantastic science fician visions, um,
Speaker 1: where we've gone out and done that to all these
Speaker 1: different worlds where we we just find you know, exo
Speaker 1: planet after exo planet, change it into into Florida, change
Speaker 1: it into a vacationville, right right. Um, we're looking at you,
Speaker 1: Richard Branson. But and then do you think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean fish. They're not doing this. They're not saying, Wow,
Speaker 1: I wish I could live on land run and have
Speaker 1: these gills. You know, how do I come up with
Speaker 1: some sort of lung situation here? Right? They ended up evolving,
Speaker 1: adapting over time and uh and reaching the point where
Speaker 1: they where something could not return to the water. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and so you run into this interesting argument of
Speaker 1: what should we be doing to evolved to our setting
Speaker 1: and as opposed to changing our setting to to to
Speaker 1: adhere to our demands? Right, And of course the astronaut
Speaker 1: is like the perfect specimen to look at this whole
Speaker 1: argument with, right, Yeah, it's they're not very ideal in
Speaker 1: terms of trying to actually explore space and nothing against them, yeah,
Speaker 1: getting in the way. Well, that's actually a good place
Speaker 1: to start, Like what is the ideal astronaut given what
Speaker 1: we currently know about you know about about sending people
Speaker 1: into orbit um. One of the more interesting things is
Speaker 1: that you want somebody with ideal methane output of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course, for I think we all know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about farts of course in space. And when
Speaker 1: you see ideal, I think you mean minimum minimum um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at first of the methane is it's flammable, so
Speaker 1: you don't want you have a closed environment. You don't
Speaker 1: want like a lot of gas going off in there
Speaker 1: and potentially catching on fire while guys are carrying off
Speaker 1: you know, experiments, etcetera, plus the whole psychological thing. If
Speaker 1: you're going to be stuck in a spacecraft for six months,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want to be gas and people out
Speaker 1: right right right. There's a govern name of Edwin Murphy,
Speaker 1: and he did some he conducted some research on this.
Speaker 1: Uh and this is this is really anoting it was.
Speaker 1: It was. There's a whole chapter dealing with with this
Speaker 1: topic and Mary Roach's latest book UM about Mars and
Speaker 1: the Space the space program. So Murphy used an experimental
Speaker 1: bean meal and he fed it to volunteers who had
Speaker 1: been rigged to a erectal catheter uh to uh and
Speaker 1: and to to measure how much gas was going out
Speaker 1: uh and he was he was interested in individual differences,
Speaker 1: not just the the overall volume, but in you know,
Speaker 1: the percentage of methane in the game in the the
Speaker 1: the flattest I believe it's the flattest technical term for it,
Speaker 1: because if you're writing a scientific you know, um, discussion
Speaker 1: on something you don't want to just you know, keep
Speaker 1: saying the farts over again part doesn't cut it. Yeah
Speaker 1: in sert cheese joke here Yeah, uh so. Um, but
Speaker 1: what he found was really interesting. Uh he found out
Speaker 1: that about half the population doesn't produce methane in there. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought that was incredible because it was something about
Speaker 1: like their their bacterial flora. Yeah, it's and it's great,
Speaker 1: and it's important to know that methane itself is like
Speaker 1: a it's not methane doesn't stink. Okay, there are other
Speaker 1: things at work in one's digestion besides methane production. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not something where you can where where these
Speaker 1: people are not creating or uh you know, emanating or
Speaker 1: expressing express thing flattist, though he did apparently claim that
Speaker 1: one he found one individual who was quote flattist free,
Speaker 1: which just sounds I just I don't I didn't even
Speaker 1: think that was possible. I mean, can you imagine, I
Speaker 1: mean you can put that on your resume? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean people would or would they hate you? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would kind of I would feel like like if
Speaker 1: someone if I was in a position to hire somebody
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, by the way, I'm flattist free.
Speaker 1: I would be like, well, I'm not hiring you, jerk.
Speaker 1: You're gonna set around just make us look bad. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, we could never blame anything on you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just can't. It would happen and like we do.
Speaker 1: We just said they're all smug like and just it
Speaker 1: would be horrible. Yeah, but you could always be an astronaut. Yes,
Speaker 1: being an astronaut would be great because because there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be any concerned with methane at all. Um. So, Murphy's
Speaker 1: whole argument was, hey, NASA, you need to focus on
Speaker 1: getting astronauts who have the proper um flattest output for space.
Speaker 1: You want to want people that are that are producing
Speaker 1: the less hostile flattest and only those people. Everybody else
Speaker 1: you're you're out of the pool. Yeah. And then NASA
Speaker 1: was like, no, we're just gonna not serve beans, that's right,
Speaker 1: No cabbage, broccoli. I think we're going to get the
Speaker 1: go the easier route. Yeah. And actually, this guy to um,
Speaker 1: if I understand this correctly from Mary Riches book, he
Speaker 1: was like a flattest researcher, Like he was employed as
Speaker 1: a flattest reacher researcher, and only a plattest research. This
Speaker 1: was his life work. Yes, yeah, so you can can
Speaker 1: imagine why he took it so seriously and and didn't
Speaker 1: he even uh insert the rectal cath Yes, she actually
Speaker 1: talked about that, the rectal catheter. Yeah. I mean it's
Speaker 1: we're we're laughing, but it's you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: an important area of study if you're talking about sending
Speaker 1: guys up in gals up into space in this little,
Speaker 1: tiny environment. But it's but this is cost it's also
Speaker 1: like one of the first like real you know moments
Speaker 1: like which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna
Speaker 1: gonna gonna change our environment? Are gonna change us? And
Speaker 1: this was a chance to not really change us, but
Speaker 1: to you know, selectively choose. And I mean granted there
Speaker 1: there are you know, minimal requirements for for astronauts and
Speaker 1: and uh members of any you know, space program stuff
Speaker 1: like um you know, you know, I sight blood pressure height. Um.
Speaker 1: You know obviously that they tend to go for people
Speaker 1: who have at least a bachelor's degree in some sort
Speaker 1: of science or engineering. Our mathews. Yeah, so and and
Speaker 1: you have to have kind of a happy, go lucky disposition, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even like space tourism, most of them models we're
Speaker 1: looking at, even the ones like you know, even like
Speaker 1: the Branson's whole whole space tourm tourism deal. As as
Speaker 1: much as they're going to try and cater that to
Speaker 1: to make make it available to everybody, Uh, the certain
Speaker 1: people are just not going to be eligible to go
Speaker 1: into space, right, So people who have a fear of flying, right,
Speaker 1: I think are going to be cut off the list. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but this is a case where where NASA could
Speaker 1: could either have have have said, yes, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: after the people who who have minimal flatt us you
Speaker 1: know in our o methane producers um, and they said, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to change the meal plant. So it's so practical.
Speaker 1: So so other areas that the mary roach brings up.
Speaker 1: Bone mass, of course is a big deal if you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose bone mass if the more you're in a
Speaker 1: in a in a microgravity environment. Yeah, and actually that
Speaker 1: I mean the staff that I saw in that was
Speaker 1: astronauts lose one to two percent of their bone mass
Speaker 1: for each month they spend in spe that's quite a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and but but the interesting thing is that
Speaker 1: black women, for instance, are seven to denser in their
Speaker 1: bones than than than wider Asian women. And uh, of
Speaker 1: course Mary didn't have the the data for men, just
Speaker 1: for the women, and I've seen that's tied to osteoporosis research.
Speaker 1: But but conceivably, um black men would also have better
Speaker 1: bone density than wider Asian men. So so it ends
Speaker 1: up creating an interesting argument there should we only be
Speaker 1: using um minimal flatt us black astronauts, you know? Why not?
Speaker 1: Why not? Yeah, if they're gonna be more suited for space.
Speaker 1: And you can take this even one step farther, and
Speaker 1: that is that maybe they should all be deaf, because
Speaker 1: because you know, if anybody's ever had motion sickness, be
Speaker 1: it on a boat, in the car, etcetera, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you get kind of nauseous. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you're throwing up into the the floorboard of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: And it's an inner ear thing. And I think it
Speaker 1: used to think it was tied to the stomach, but
Speaker 1: it's not. It's tied to inner ear and uh and
Speaker 1: and many people argue that it's kind of a mistake
Speaker 1: of evolution, because vomiting, as much as we may hate it,
Speaker 1: does serve a number of really key functions. You know,
Speaker 1: you eat something and it's bad, it's poisonous, you barf
Speaker 1: it up, start over um and and actually animals that
Speaker 1: don't vomit, I mean that becomes a problem because if
Speaker 1: they eat something they should eat a belief. Horses are
Speaker 1: like this, Uh, they eat something they shouldn't eat. They
Speaker 1: can't vomit it up. It's it's you know, it's more
Speaker 1: of a it becomes a real problem with discomfort, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like with kids, right, if a kid eats something
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to. A child, not a goat. If
Speaker 1: a child eat something that he or she is not
Speaker 1: supposed to, you can always there's the vomiting, right, you
Speaker 1: can give them epicac or something, right. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this too, like this is sort of accident
Speaker 1: of nature, right, because whatever controls our vomiting response is
Speaker 1: near our inner ear or function or something along this time. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't have the correct terminology, but I sort of
Speaker 1: scan that remembering. Okay, so that's why we sometimes vomit
Speaker 1: because we're Yeah, but it serves no evolutionary you know,
Speaker 1: there's no reason for it. It's like I'm feeling kind
Speaker 1: of motion sickness and my body's like we have to
Speaker 1: vomit now, you know, there's no Yeah, it serves no
Speaker 1: like evolutionary advantage. UM. So the only way to a
Speaker 1: completely get rid of motion sickness is um is for
Speaker 1: the human have a non functioning inner ear. And uh
Speaker 1: so you we can see within go for deaf people.
Speaker 1: So all black death astronaut crew with minimal flattus, all right,
Speaker 1: I mean it could happen. I guess the problem is
Speaker 1: is that you just keep narrowing the pool to the
Speaker 1: point where it's probably harder and harder to get astronauts
Speaker 1: right unless you create and this is I'm throwing this
Speaker 1: out there is like a future kind of thing and
Speaker 1: and and kind of a potentially scary eugenics kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But like then you create a breeding program, right just
Speaker 1: for astronauts, just to encourage the traits. I mean, we
Speaker 1: do it. We've done it with dogs and that has
Speaker 1: some horrible effects and many times. But conceivably, it seems
Speaker 1: to me you could you could have a breeding program
Speaker 1: similar to the you know, like something out of dune
Speaker 1: where you're just breeding for ideal astronauts and and so
Speaker 1: it's like a genetic, you know, hereditary thing. You create
Speaker 1: an entire cast or subspecies of astronauts. I know. And
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking now, like the Island of Misfits and
Speaker 1: we have bread nose reindeer in the elphit wanted to
Speaker 1: be a dentist, Like there might be that person that's
Speaker 1: bread to you know, do this and guess you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I really want to go to space. Thanks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then when you have to sit down with and
Speaker 1: be like like but dude, listen, listen like you well,
Speaker 1: don't listen, like read the words from the writing because
Speaker 1: you're deaf, because we bread for that. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like your your death, your bone density is incredible, your
Speaker 1: you have no methane when you when you when you
Speaker 1: break wind, like this is this is for you. But
Speaker 1: they're like, no, I really really want to be an artist.
Speaker 1: But what do you do? Yeah? Right, I guess what
Speaker 1: it's time to take a break. We get back. We
Speaker 1: will talk more about the werewolf persiple. So there's that
Speaker 1: that viewpoint like what if we so you know, step
Speaker 1: one we we only choose the people that are ideal
Speaker 1: for space. And then okay, we can take that a
Speaker 1: step farther. What if we we bred people for space?
Speaker 1: But then then the next step is, what if we
Speaker 1: engineered people for space? What if we made them, um
Speaker 1: adapt or made them better? We adapted them and to
Speaker 1: the cyborg yes, um, And like a simple version of
Speaker 1: it would be like if you just made people deaf
Speaker 1: before we sent into space, which is kind of horrifying,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure a lot of people go for that.
Speaker 1: They might, I don't know, but there are a number
Speaker 1: of interesting changes that could that could take place that
Speaker 1: would be less scary, though some of them are pretty scary. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's look get the cyboard now that this is
Speaker 1: a term that is preloaded these days, because when when
Speaker 1: when I say cyborg, what do you think of? Well,
Speaker 1: I think of the terminating I think he's technically yeah,
Speaker 1: he was more of a robot covered with flesh, with
Speaker 1: flesh um Darth Vader. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was
Speaker 1: pretty cybernetic in his state. Um RoboCop. Perhaps the cyborg.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of foggy on the explanations in the
Speaker 1: first two movies. But but yeah, you get this idea.
Speaker 1: It's like a human being that has been augmented terrifically
Speaker 1: or terrifyingly with machines. Six million dollar Man, six million
Speaker 1: dollar man is is a prime example on the cyborg Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but again, this is kind of a term that's
Speaker 1: gon been taken by by science fiction and and just
Speaker 1: sort of they run wild with it. So now you
Speaker 1: just think of like man with half metal face kind
Speaker 1: of thing. The term actually originates back in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: September of nineteen sixty in UH an edition of Astronautics.
Speaker 1: And this was an article by men manfred E. Kleins
Speaker 1: and Nathan S. Klein uh one with a C, the
Speaker 1: second with a K, and it was titled Cyborgs in
Speaker 1: Space and it's a great read. I will have to
Speaker 1: throw up a link to it on the the accompanying
Speaker 1: blog post when this podcast comes out. Um, but they may,
Speaker 1: they just may. May. They make the huge argument that
Speaker 1: like here's just a quote from it. It It really sums
Speaker 1: it up. In the past, evolution brought about the altering
Speaker 1: of bodily functions to suit different environments. Starting as of now,
Speaker 1: it will be possible to achieve this to some degree
Speaker 1: without alteration of heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic
Speaker 1: modifications of man's existing um bodies. So and so, what
Speaker 1: I thought was kind of cool about this too is
Speaker 1: that it's not necessarily that they felt like they were
Speaker 1: changing humans, but that they were improving humans so that
Speaker 1: they could explore more and they could have more independence
Speaker 1: to to create more and to think more if they
Speaker 1: if they weren't um burdened by their own physicality. Right,
Speaker 1: and you in pulinding, people make the argument that the
Speaker 1: cyborg has been around for ages. Right, the second that
Speaker 1: we skinned an animal and started wearing its fur cyborg. Second,
Speaker 1: with the second we strapped or wristwatch to our to
Speaker 1: our arm cyborg dentures exactly, Yeah, how are you gonna chew?
Speaker 1: You know, you throw the dentres in. You've augmented the
Speaker 1: individual with technology to better enable them for their environment.
Speaker 1: You've become something more than human. Right and and certainly
Speaker 1: we went into a number of of these possibilities on
Speaker 1: the previous uh UM Accessorizing podcast about you know, somebody
Speaker 1: can wear flippers, They're gonna they're gonna swim faster. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we we wear about computers, are you know,
Speaker 1: are our iPhones? It's like there's there's so much technology. Eyeglasses, contacts, um, lasers.
Speaker 1: These are all examples of something where technology changes the
Speaker 1: person to better suit them for their environment. You may
Speaker 1: think of it as just your everyday life, but your
Speaker 1: everyday life is here on earth. But what if the
Speaker 1: everyday life was in space? So clients and client took
Speaker 1: that and then they looked at all the problems facing
Speaker 1: us and trying to exist in space or explore space.
Speaker 1: And I thought that the solutions they came up with
Speaker 1: were incredible. I mean, they're they're really creative, and they're
Speaker 1: really interesting ways to to approach the problem. Yes, And
Speaker 1: I have to tell you though, to like reading this,
Speaker 1: I thought, God, this is this is so crazy, Like
Speaker 1: this is the Madman era. Can you imagine them like
Speaker 1: sitting in a cocktail party saying, well, I've got an
Speaker 1: idea about this whole problem of the lungs in space? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or I mean it reminds me a little bit. In
Speaker 1: Mary Roach's book, she talks about like when you would
Speaker 1: have scientists, the scientists that designed space travel and the
Speaker 1: jock afternaughts that would do it, like sitting in the
Speaker 1: same room and the and she pointed out how that
Speaker 1: the scientists would be like, you know, we could develop
Speaker 1: a way for the for them to actually eat parts
Speaker 1: of the ship on the return trip from Mars, and
Speaker 1: maybe there's a way we can make it to where
Speaker 1: they can eat eat pooh or something. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like they're actually beginning to think along those lines. And
Speaker 1: the astronauts were like, no, no no, no, no, we're not
Speaker 1: doing that because it's something about like the scientific mindset
Speaker 1: when you really get into it from a just a pure,
Speaker 1: purely logical problem solving, uh you know, frame of mind. Right.
Speaker 1: So so there's a hint of that, more than a
Speaker 1: hint of that in this in their original article, because
Speaker 1: it's some of the possibilities are a little uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they make you shake your head a little,
Speaker 1: but but but they're but the logic of it is
Speaker 1: is interesting and intensive. For instance, they pointed out that
Speaker 1: we could have osmotic pressure pump capsules, um and sensing
Speaker 1: and controlling mechanisms in our bodies, like implanted to give
Speaker 1: us medications for blood pressure to give us basically speed
Speaker 1: if we need to to stay awake um, which you know,
Speaker 1: they have various medications on space UM any kind of
Speaker 1: a space mission these days, but you generally have to
Speaker 1: pop the pills yourself. But what if it was an
Speaker 1: automatic thing. And that's one of the huge key um
Speaker 1: you know, aspects of of what was basically cyborg one
Speaker 1: um as outlined in this proposal, and that was that
Speaker 1: we were taking these different things and turning them over
Speaker 1: to subconscious functions, so automating the right Yeah. So it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like like, oh, I'm getting a little sleepy
Speaker 1: and I've got the high pressure job ahead of me.
Speaker 1: I better you know, pop some of this uh this
Speaker 1: NASA speed Uh No, you would just it would just
Speaker 1: kick in ums all these sensors that are taking the
Speaker 1: data and recalibrating your body based on that. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and other things too in this situation, would be like
Speaker 1: any radiation medications, uh, pituitary drugs to help induce hibernation.
Speaker 1: That was a big key too, because you get into
Speaker 1: the issue of how are you going to worry about
Speaker 1: sending people on long space voyages where you know they're
Speaker 1: gonna be that they're going to be setting around doing
Speaker 1: nothing for you know, years. What if you can we
Speaker 1: could learn something from bears. Well, bears don't technically hibernate,
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, it's a different Well, I think that
Speaker 1: they are interested in pairs. It's something that when they hibernate,
Speaker 1: they're actually redistributing the calcium back to their bones or
Speaker 1: something nuh like that, that which they thought. Well, if
Speaker 1: we could just replicate that humans would be great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because bears are sitting around doing nothing for for the
Speaker 1: period of their of their their winning nap time. But
Speaker 1: they're not they're not losing a bone in their bone
Speaker 1: density and their their muscles. They can still walk at
Speaker 1: the end of it. The human lad in bed for
Speaker 1: X number of months here, she would not necessarily be
Speaker 1: able to move when I got it when they woke up.
Speaker 1: And the crux of the problem too is that yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you might have muscle atrophy atrophy, but you
Speaker 1: can get your muscles back afterward, right, And you'll have
Speaker 1: some bone loss, but you may not be able to
Speaker 1: recoup actually all of the bone density that you lost
Speaker 1: in particularly um the area and your hips. So if
Speaker 1: you're an astronaut and you reach retirement age, then it's
Speaker 1: not a great scenario for you, because that's like the
Speaker 1: number one thing that happens to people in your older
Speaker 1: years is that they fall and break their hips. So
Speaker 1: it's actually like a real problem for Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Here are a few other things from the Cyboard paper.
Speaker 1: They suggested replacing them, along with an inverse fuel cell
Speaker 1: um altering your intestinal plumbing so that don't love this
Speaker 1: waste water goes through a filter and right back into
Speaker 1: your blood, which which this is one of those where
Speaker 1: you can just imagine it coming up in in the
Speaker 1: Madman era where it's like, you know, we're wasting a
Speaker 1: lot of water when we go to the bathroom. I
Speaker 1: think we can we can probably pump that through a
Speaker 1: filter right back into the bloodstream. Yes, yes, And to
Speaker 1: your point to about redistributing the poop so to speak, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a quote from the paper that says sterilization of
Speaker 1: the gas show intestinal tract plus intravenous or direct intra
Speaker 1: gastric feeding could reduce fecal elimination to a minimum, and
Speaker 1: even this might be reutilized. So yes, to your point,
Speaker 1: they're absolutely thinking about this eating your own Well, well
Speaker 1: that's kind of the you're putting the dark spin on
Speaker 1: it do it that we'll put the light spin on it,
Speaker 1: minimizing and hate. You know, I'm a dreamer one day
Speaker 1: eliminating pooping, just completely get rid of it. What a
Speaker 1: world we would live in? Um So. I mean that
Speaker 1: most assuredly be the death knell for the newspaper industry. Um.
Speaker 1: The of course, the whole idea of like a recycling
Speaker 1: like urine. Of course, we're already doing that in space.
Speaker 1: We we have water filtration systems and uh and and
Speaker 1: and of course everybody has the the idea of the
Speaker 1: still suit from from the dune novels, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea that you could pee in the suit and it
Speaker 1: would turn back into water. So um So, some of
Speaker 1: the ideas are like I would not be opposed to
Speaker 1: wearing a still suit to you know, or or two
Speaker 1: or someone said hey, this this water was p an
Speaker 1: hour ago. I'd be like, well, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of water was p at some point, so it's good.
Speaker 1: But the whole idea of like we're now gonna re
Speaker 1: reroute your intestinal system so that the waste water goes
Speaker 1: back into your bloodstream. That's a little more extreme, but
Speaker 1: it's an interesting solution. Um let's see a few other
Speaker 1: ones here enzyme tinkering to create uh anaerobic organisms in
Speaker 1: other words, astronauts that don't require air or can live
Speaker 1: in different atmospheres. So that's some extreme makeover right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And for those types of solutions, I can't help but think, like,
Speaker 1: how do you recircuit the autonomous part of your body,
Speaker 1: like your lungs that want to breathe? Like and I do.
Speaker 1: I think that all of their solutions are really fascinating,
Speaker 1: but that's to me, those are the sticking points like that, well,
Speaker 1: the humanness part of our body that wants to do this.
Speaker 1: How do you shut that off? Um? They go back
Speaker 1: to the inner ear thing and and getting a little
Speaker 1: motion sick and weight business. They proposed either draining ear
Speaker 1: fluid or filling them up. So there you go. Um
Speaker 1: they said electric slash drug cardiovascular control. They recommended drugs
Speaker 1: to preventing a muscle atrophy, which sounds perfectly reasonable except
Speaker 1: in their in their argument, would probably just happen on
Speaker 1: its own through something implanted in you, which I guess
Speaker 1: you would have to get like a refill pack. You'd
Speaker 1: be kind of like a printer. I'm thinking on your
Speaker 1: back where you have like the cyan and the magenta
Speaker 1: and all this. You suddenly you get like a little
Speaker 1: light would show up and it's like, oh, I'm running
Speaker 1: low on anti radiation medicine. Yeah, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: there'd be one that would run out the fastest, you know,
Speaker 1: because it seems like we're always having to replace cian.
Speaker 1: I don't know it's true. Why is that? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a weird color. But they also recommended lowering body pressure
Speaker 1: to facilitate better facilitate space walks, perhaps naked space walks.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking like, like, basically they're saying we we would
Speaker 1: we would just remove some of the necessary functions of
Speaker 1: a space suit. So that's that's pretty wild. They also
Speaker 1: talked about engineering humans to have a light sensitive, chemically
Speaker 1: regulated system that would change their reflecticity. In other words,
Speaker 1: you wear you know, you wear a black shirt on
Speaker 1: a bright day, you end up being hotter and you
Speaker 1: have a lot more of that heat you were a
Speaker 1: white shirt reflects. So in space you're gonna have situations
Speaker 1: where where you need to eat or don't need the heat,
Speaker 1: because it can make a difference between cooking and freezing.
Speaker 1: Is this the protective plastic sponge clothing they were talking about. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: which sounded um, sounded like I don't know something in
Speaker 1: my attic right. They also brought up anti basically anti
Speaker 1: space madness medications, anti psychosis medications, because you're gonna be
Speaker 1: up there for a while in this cramp space. You
Speaker 1: don't want your fellow astronauts going crazy. Yeah. So yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that that drugs were huge part of
Speaker 1: the solution here for a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes sense at the time, but I guess not
Speaker 1: knowing as much about the side effects now. Well, well,
Speaker 1: the thing is they keep a lot of these type
Speaker 1: medications on the spaceship. I have a blog post on this,
Speaker 1: which will also link to when I get around and
Speaker 1: doing the the accompanting blog post for this. But but
Speaker 1: there are a number of different medications that they keep
Speaker 1: on on the shuttle. So it's not not just the
Speaker 1: idea of using them, but having them where they kick
Speaker 1: in automatically, where it's like you start feeling a little
Speaker 1: crazy and then you're the system that's implanted in your
Speaker 1: side like checks you, you know, so you only feel
Speaker 1: crazy for a second. That now, oh it's interesting this, uh,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, this features into n and Banks
Speaker 1: culture series. We have the humans have been augmented over time,
Speaker 1: so everybody has like all these systems that are either
Speaker 1: subconsciously or consciously control so they can they can feel
Speaker 1: less psychotic or or you know, crank up there. They're
Speaker 1: sort of caffeine level without actually uh, you know, having
Speaker 1: something to drink. She's actually made me think about this
Speaker 1: book that I just read, Super Sad True Love Story.
Speaker 1: I believe this is the title. And they talk about
Speaker 1: everybody has something called an apparette, which is they wear
Speaker 1: around their neck and it basically will tell you every
Speaker 1: bit of data about yourself, will communicate it to another person,
Speaker 1: so you could feasibly see what my cholesterol level is
Speaker 1: and you know whether or not I need to adjust
Speaker 1: that or if I even have like little nano robots
Speaker 1: going through my blood like cleaning things up as well
Speaker 1: as my credit score. It's good stuff, but just reminded
Speaker 1: me of that. Um. They also talked about prolo using
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals too, to have to kick in some prolonged sleep
Speaker 1: if you get injured. Like they're all deals. Like you're
Speaker 1: on your return trip from Mars and you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you step into really badly, or more likely you're injured
Speaker 1: on a space walk, etcetera. You might need to just
Speaker 1: be able to put that person under for the ride home.
Speaker 1: It might maybe a condition that can't be or an
Speaker 1: injury that can't be treated reasonably on the ship. That
Speaker 1: was another hallmark. Yeah, putting people inder and um so yeah,
Speaker 1: those are some of the key arguments that they made. Um.
Speaker 1: From there, they went on to do a number of
Speaker 1: other cyborg studies, where each one dealt with another level
Speaker 1: like cyborg to dealt with the manipulation of human emotions
Speaker 1: through mental exercises. Um. And and this this one involved
Speaker 1: like a lot of hypnosis, like like the idea of
Speaker 1: using using hypnosis to and uh and I could see
Speaker 1: like like meditation being a big thing too. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: mentioned in yoga too in the paper Yoga in space?
Speaker 1: Can you do what here? You will have done more
Speaker 1: yoga than me. Could you do yoga without gravity? I
Speaker 1: assume you could do some of the postes, right, um,
Speaker 1: I mean never having done it and then gravity free environment,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure, but yeah, like I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems like the different balancing poses would
Speaker 1: be kind of pointless and like down dog. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the down dog even count if there's no gravity. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. I mean I think you'd have to have
Speaker 1: your compression suit on, and perhaps you'd have to do
Speaker 1: like partner yoga with one person holding you down. This
Speaker 1: would be interesting if if anybody out there has any
Speaker 1: thoughts and what a micro gravity yoga technique would consist of.
Speaker 1: I have to ask my yoga teacher. Um, so there's
Speaker 1: that level. Maybe I will No, I will do it, okay,
Speaker 1: Um maybe alright. So then Cyberg through his genetic alterations
Speaker 1: to enhance the human emotional range uh Cyberg four deeper
Speaker 1: genetic changes, and then uh Cyborg five. Ultimately, they were
Speaker 1: talking about the separation of mind from body, um, which
Speaker 1: you know, the ideas like, perhaps instead of sending humans
Speaker 1: to this hostile environment, you can fall back on the
Speaker 1: human creation that is best suited for space travel, the machine.
Speaker 1: If we could just simply put our consciences in it,
Speaker 1: or somehow experience what the machine is experiencing. Uh, you know, remotely,
Speaker 1: we could have some sort of implant that tied into
Speaker 1: the Yeah. Yeah, like it more or less an extension
Speaker 1: of what we're already doing, right, we just more data. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked a big game, you know about sending humans
Speaker 1: to Mars, but ultimately we can send robots there and
Speaker 1: we can you know, move our hands on a on
Speaker 1: a keyboard and move things on Mars. We can we
Speaker 1: can look through a screen and see what's happening on Mars.
Speaker 1: And as that technology improves, and I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: basically like we're there and without having to worry about
Speaker 1: how you're gonna feed this person, how are you gonna
Speaker 1: keep them alive, how are you gonna you know, tackle
Speaker 1: the the the huge obstacles of engineering a person that
Speaker 1: can or buy this environment. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, to to do the sort of surveillance that
Speaker 1: you need, right to to have nano robots or robots
Speaker 1: go out and accumulate all that data. The thing that
Speaker 1: I think about is what what's missing there? Is um
Speaker 1: like the overview effect, right that the reporting back of
Speaker 1: the the human part of it. Yeah. So yes, the
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before in a podcast about overview
Speaker 1: ef fact that since the beuphoria, you get in this
Speaker 1: deeper better understanding of the planet that you live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Grand Canyon example is great. Like, I've never
Speaker 1: been to the Grand Canyon, but I've only seen photos
Speaker 1: of it. It looks really cool in the photos, but
Speaker 1: everyone will tell you that's been there, that the photos
Speaker 1: just don't cut it. That you don't really like understand
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon until you see it, which which I
Speaker 1: totally buy because I mean, that's that's how seeing anything,
Speaker 1: you know, amazing works. It's like the photo, the video.
Speaker 1: You can really capture a moment or a string of moments,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same as being there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you know, I don't know, I think about that.
Speaker 1: S robots makes so much more sense. But you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like I've been bringing this up a lot.
Speaker 1: But like the exo skeletons we talked about the military
Speaker 1: is using, you know, is there a way to combine
Speaker 1: that technology as well as the carbon nanotube muscles that
Speaker 1: they're trying to create to glomb that onto the human too,
Speaker 1: to again make them more of this um the cyborg
Speaker 1: in reality as opposed to the future that we keep
Speaker 1: pointing to. Yeah, so, one of the big questions that
Speaker 1: comes to mind when we talk about all these different
Speaker 1: variations on the cyborg is is that if we change
Speaker 1: humans to live in space or live in another world,
Speaker 1: at what point are they no longer human? You know,
Speaker 1: like what you know, you get to where you're adding
Speaker 1: a lot of hardware, you're genetically altering somebody and then
Speaker 1: you're sending them out. And is that a human being anymore?
Speaker 1: Is that something else? Is it a subspecies? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Paul Davies of Study has actually said that biological intelligence
Speaker 1: is only a transitory phenomenon of leading phase in the
Speaker 1: evolution of the universe. And so his feeling is that
Speaker 1: the supplies to humans and and if there are indeed
Speaker 1: in uh, extraterrest extraterrestrial life out there, that it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be some sort of machine hybrid mhm.
Speaker 1: So this is an idea that's come up before. Is
Speaker 1: aliens Is these more evolved UM replications are iterations of
Speaker 1: ourselves that are the sort of machine cyborg being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it falls back in line with what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, Like it comes to like
Speaker 1: the like the like say Cyborg five was talking about
Speaker 1: UM like basically machines with human intellects, you know, it
Speaker 1: becomes more of a I mean again, just look at
Speaker 1: what we've sent out, We've sent machines. Machines have been
Speaker 1: the first to land on on, on Mars, on on
Speaker 1: the moon first, I'm going to be the first to
Speaker 1: leave the Solar system. So it says the definition then
Speaker 1: if the brain is intact, then we're still human. But well,
Speaker 1: I think we would kind of like that to be
Speaker 1: the case. But again, we're not just our brains. It's
Speaker 1: like we're you know, we're We're a much more complicated
Speaker 1: system than that up the gut. So anyway, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting question at what point, at what point do do
Speaker 1: have At what point would we not be human anymore?
Speaker 1: At what point are we already not human? Um? This
Speaker 1: there's a n stat that and this ISNT seven which
Speaker 1: which argued that that of the human population was already
Speaker 1: a cyborg just counting like everything from you know, pacemakers
Speaker 1: to prosthetics. Two Denture's that there was just a huge,
Speaker 1: huge population segment of the population that was already not
Speaker 1: fully human. And certainly, I mean if you start counting clothing,
Speaker 1: like none of us are except for those those few
Speaker 1: nudists out there, they're keeping it real for the for
Speaker 1: the original humans. Hey guys, thanks for listening in. If
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