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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: You know we've just on the podcast here. We've discussed

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Speaker 1: before how science is sort of this gigantic slime mold

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Speaker 1: feeling its way through a maze. You've got tapers of

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Speaker 1: its substance seeking down long, twisting corridors in search of

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Speaker 1: that that food prize. I guess the food prize of

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Speaker 1: knowledge in this case, and when they find it, uh,

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Speaker 1: when we find it, it's on the Greater Meals and uh.

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Speaker 1: And when this science slime doesn't find it, well, the

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Speaker 1: tintrals of inquiry tend to dive back, and the system

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Speaker 1: knows which tunnels are fruitless. So this scenario is somewhat

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Speaker 1: true even in times before science, or times during which

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Speaker 1: scientific inquiry was still held back by various shortcomings, because

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Speaker 1: humans still proceeded on a basically by a trial in

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Speaker 1: her basis. And there's no surer way to air than

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Speaker 1: to base a hypothesis on purely magical thinking, right, because

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Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about some sympathetic blood magic,

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Speaker 1: some magical thinking that has supposedly been at least proposed,

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Speaker 1: if not actually used, in the history of what would

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Speaker 1: you call it seafaring navigation, uh, finding one's one's allies

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Speaker 1: under cover of deep ocean and determining one's place on

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Speaker 1: the globe. Now, I like this metaphor Robert of the

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Speaker 1: slime mold as as as the model of scientific progress,

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Speaker 1: because one of the interesting things about scientific progress is

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Speaker 1: we can almost definitely say that progress is actually made

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Speaker 1: in science. In other realms, it's debatable whether progress is made.

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Speaker 1: People argue about whether there's actual progress in philosophy. We

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Speaker 1: just had our interview with our Scott Baker, and Scott

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Speaker 1: did not seem to think that philosophy actually made much progress.

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Speaker 1: He said, you know, we're still asking the same questions

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Speaker 1: that we were asking thousands of years ago, and we

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Speaker 1: don't really have new answers to them. Science isn't like that.

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Speaker 1: Now we definitely know things that we used to not know,

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Speaker 1: and we can use that knowledge, and yet there's nobody

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Speaker 1: at the top of the scientific process. There's no brain

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Speaker 1: of science making decisions about what's knowledge, what's not knowledge,

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Speaker 1: what's true, what's not true, what areas are the best

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Speaker 1: to explore. So in the way you use this analogy

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Speaker 1: of the slime mold, it's almost like a a It's

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Speaker 1: a process that's blind from the top down and yet

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Speaker 1: really does make true progress from the bottom up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's no there's no brain here in the slime mold.

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Speaker 1: There's no king of science, no secret caball running the

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Speaker 1: whole scientific operation. And I think the fact that science

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Speaker 1: is like that, that it doesn't have a top down

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Speaker 1: control process, that it's just this emergent phenomenon that nevertheless

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Speaker 1: produces real results and actual progress in the world that

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Speaker 1: you can be quite sure are real progress. It it's

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Speaker 1: one of those things that makes it hard to define.

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Speaker 1: And we've talked about the difficulty before in defining science

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Speaker 1: and producing a definition of science that is quote necessary

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Speaker 1: and jointly sufficient. We talked about that back in our

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Speaker 1: episode about you know, beyond this veil of testing, like

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Speaker 1: whether things that were maybe post empirical could still be

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Speaker 1: considered science. And so a necessary and jointly sufficient list

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Speaker 1: of properties to describe science would be something that describes

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Speaker 1: everything within the category of science and nothing outside of it.

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Speaker 1: A good example would be a list of properties that

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Speaker 1: are necessary and jointly sufficient to describe a triangle. Right.

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Speaker 1: A triangle is a closed two dimensional figure with three

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Speaker 1: straight sides and three angle three angles. This rules in

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Speaker 1: everything that is a triangle, and it rules out everything

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Speaker 1: that is not a triangle. Sometimes it's really difficult to

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Speaker 1: do something like that with science. How can you come

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Speaker 1: up with a list of properties that describes everything that

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Speaker 1: generates true scientific knowledge and rules out everything that doesn't.

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Speaker 1: So it seems to me sometimes science might be more

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Speaker 1: like the concept of a game, things that fall into

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Speaker 1: a category that Wittgenstein would have called family resemblances. There's

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Speaker 1: sort of like overlapping similarities between the things we call science,

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Speaker 1: But there's no list of properties that everything has an

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Speaker 1: equal measure and that nothing that is not science can claim.

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Speaker 1: But nevertheless, we do know some really basic categories that

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Speaker 1: we can say pretty much seem like they pretty much

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Speaker 1: always appear in science. Right. One of them is going

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Speaker 1: to be subjecting ideas to empirical testing. That means you

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Speaker 1: can't just do science in the hypothetical at some point

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Speaker 1: it needs to encounter a test in real world conditions, right.

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Speaker 1: And then the other thing is the um when successful

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Speaker 1: science produces ideas that generate accurate predictions about reality. So

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Speaker 1: if you're doing science right, you should be able to

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Speaker 1: predict the future with the ideas you create from it.

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Speaker 1: That's right now. There are plenty of inherently supernatural notions,

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Speaker 1: of course that that cannot be proven one way or another.

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Speaker 1: But when you engage in this process to produce a definite,

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Speaker 1: measurable result, then you have something. If you're if you're

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Speaker 1: gonna work some sort of magic and and there's a

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Speaker 1: definite result, something measurable, something observable. If you set out

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Speaker 1: down this path, you're gonna get an answer, and uh,

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Speaker 1: you can probably know what that answer is going to be.

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Speaker 1: If if you you, if you have you know a

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Speaker 1: fair amount of scientific reasoning about you. Yeah. I think

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Speaker 1: one way of putting what you're getting at here and

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Speaker 1: and correct me if I'm wrong, is that if there

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Speaker 1: is genuine magic power in the world, you actually should

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Speaker 1: be able to do science to detect it, Like even

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Speaker 1: if the causes of it are not necessary early physical

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Speaker 1: as we would understand the classical concept of physicality, if

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Speaker 1: there's some other kind of property in the universe guiding it,

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Speaker 1: we should still be able to do science to detect

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Speaker 1: magical phenomena as long as the magic behaves in a

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Speaker 1: consistent way. I think this is the thing that's crucial

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Speaker 1: to me. And maybe from here I would split proposed

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Speaker 1: magic into two categories. There are two camps of it.

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Speaker 1: One is what you might call magical law. In this sense,

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Speaker 1: it's something that happens in the universe, and it happens

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Speaker 1: outside the laws of physics, and yet it's still behaves consistently.

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Speaker 1: You do the same stimulus, you get the same results.

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Speaker 1: So every time I cast a spell of the same type,

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Speaker 1: I get the same actual outcome. The other one I

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Speaker 1: would call capricious magic, and this is magic where it's

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Speaker 1: not really clear what the consistency of cause and effects

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Speaker 1: should be. Maybe it works, sometimes it doesn't work other times.

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Speaker 1: If you have a magical system like this, you really

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Speaker 1: can't do science on it, because the idea of science

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Speaker 1: is that you can reproduce your results, right. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: this makes me think of a few different examples here.

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Speaker 1: So obviously the existence of God, like a big g God,

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Speaker 1: a divine being that created the universe, that is most

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Speaker 1: degree that that's not the kind of thing you can

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Speaker 1: really scientifically prove one way or the other. Right, there

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Speaker 1: could be, there couldn't be. In science doesn't really give

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Speaker 1: you much help knowing the answer, right, and you can

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Speaker 1: always sort of adjust your parameters for that question to

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Speaker 1: lean one way then or the other. But what an

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Speaker 1: area where it becomes a little more interesting is when

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Speaker 1: you look at let's say, the healing powers of prayer.

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Speaker 1: And there have been a number of studies that have

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Speaker 1: looked into this. This is an area where, on one hand,

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Speaker 1: it seems rather straightforward. You know, okay, this person praise

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Speaker 1: and then we can see if if health changes, But

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Speaker 1: of course you're you're engaging not only like magical thinking,

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Speaker 1: but also varying levels of psychological responses. Right, you could

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Speaker 1: have a placed effect and stuff like that. And that's

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Speaker 1: why if you wanted to do a genuine good prayer study,

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Speaker 1: it would need to be blinded with proper scientific procedures,

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Speaker 1: so the people and administering the study and the test

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Speaker 1: subjects and all that don't in fact know whether they're

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Speaker 1: the ones being prayed for or not. But then on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, something like turning um staffs into serpents

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Speaker 1: or water to wine stuff is like a genuine miracle, uh,

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Speaker 1: that's where it's very clear. Yeah, where there's no like

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Speaker 1: mediating chance effects, right, unless you ended up explaining in

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Speaker 1: a way by sort of the you know, thou shalt

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Speaker 1: not put the Lord thy God to the test kind

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Speaker 1: of a scenario, and then you're opening it up to

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Speaker 1: you know, you don't know what's going to happen, right,

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Speaker 1: you put it back in the capricious magic category. Not

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Speaker 1: to say that if you believe God behaves that way

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Speaker 1: that you necessarily believe your your deity to be capricious.

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Speaker 1: But at least the outcomes seem capricious, there's no way

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Speaker 1: to predict them, and if there's no way to predict them,

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Speaker 1: then there's really no way to test it to see

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Speaker 1: if it's true. So we're gonna continue talking about this topic.

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Speaker 1: But essentially, as the title of the episode suggests, we're

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Speaker 1: we're kind of playing a what if game to some

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Speaker 1: degree as well as we discuss UH as we dive

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Speaker 1: into some history and some science here, because it's always

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Speaker 1: it's endlessly fascinating to to play what if games with history. So,

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Speaker 1: what if European imperialists had suffered more from the New

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Speaker 1: World illnesses the native people suffered the old world pathogens?

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Speaker 1: What if the wrong herald had won at the one

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Speaker 1: the Battle of Stanford Bridge in ten sixty six? Uh?

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Speaker 1: And and what if the divine win did not save

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Speaker 1: Japan from Mongol invasion? Okay, but these are all fairly

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Speaker 1: standard historical outcomes. I mean, we like to play the

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Speaker 1: game of alternate history. You know, everybody plays it, with

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Speaker 1: the Man in the High Castle as one example of

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Speaker 1: how many people have played this. What if the access

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Speaker 1: powers of one World War two? What would the world

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Speaker 1: look like? But that's all that's all non magical? Are you?

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Speaker 1: Are you planning to explore with me, how would history

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Speaker 1: look different if magic had been real to a certain extent? Because, yeah,

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Speaker 1: any of these events, if they had occurred, they would

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Speaker 1: not have changed our understanding of physical reality. But we're

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Speaker 1: gonna look at a couple of cases where some degree

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Speaker 1: of if not scientific investigation, then then then at least

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Speaker 1: semi scientific and inquiry went into a scenario and attempted

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Speaker 1: to solve a real world problem with essentially magic. Either

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Speaker 1: if any of these cases had gone differently than yes,

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Speaker 1: we would have we would have an age of magic,

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Speaker 1: because it would have changed everything. We would live in

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Speaker 1: a drastically different world. Okay, well, I have faith in you, Robert.

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Speaker 1: I want to follow you down this rabbit trail, so

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Speaker 1: so take me wherever you're thinking we need to go.

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Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna do a quick break and when

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Speaker 1: we come back, we will consider a world, a magical

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Speaker 1: world where navigation of the high seas depends on the

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Speaker 1: magical torment of dogs. All right, we're back. So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking now about longitude and the then the

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Speaker 1: the actual problem of longitude is it related to too

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Speaker 1: high season navigation? Okay, Now, which one is longitude? That's

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Speaker 1: east west direction, right, Yeah, that's right. Longitude is east

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Speaker 1: west positioning. Uh. Latitude is north south positioning and uh

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Speaker 1: and and we'll get into too why this is a

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Speaker 1: problem in a bet. But first of all, let's let's

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Speaker 1: let's break down, um, the potential solution that was that

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Speaker 1: was that was instrumented, and that entails the use of

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Speaker 1: sympathetic magic. Okay, Now, sympathetic magic dates back to humanity's

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Speaker 1: distant prehistoric past. This is the idea that you can

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Speaker 1: heal a wound by treating the weapon that caused it,

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Speaker 1: or that possession of an individual's toneo clippings gives you

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Speaker 1: power over the former owner that you have to hide

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Speaker 1: your hair after you cut your hair, so which doesn't

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Speaker 1: get it to use it against you. Really, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's a there's a rich variety of sympathetic magical uses

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Speaker 1: throughout history. Yeah, sympathetic magic, I think is considered a

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Speaker 1: major class of of magical behavior. And this is the

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Speaker 1: Scottish anthropologist James Frasier actually wrote plenty about sympathetic magic.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about Fraser on the show before. I always

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Speaker 1: want to call him Frasier, but there's not that extra

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Speaker 1: I in his name. So James Fraser wrote The Golden Bow,

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Speaker 1: you know, one of the big influences on T. S. Eliott,

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Speaker 1: one of the big influences on modernism generally. It was

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Speaker 1: this anthropological work that was attempting to explain the origins

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Speaker 1: and of religious customs around the world. And it is

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Speaker 1: a fascinating book to jump into. It's one of those

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Speaker 1: that I've never read cover to cover, but I jump

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Speaker 1: into different chapters and read them. And Fraser, I think

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Speaker 1: would not hold up to modern scrutiny in terms of

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Speaker 1: anthropological methods. So I'm sure a lot of what he

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Speaker 1: reports is not necessarily corre act to data about you know,

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Speaker 1: different people's all over the world. It's based on a

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Speaker 1: outmoded anthropological data gathering method. You know, he's relying on

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Speaker 1: all these weird anecdotes and stuff. But he also just

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Speaker 1: has a lot of really interesting analytical things to say

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Speaker 1: about the way people think about magic and the way

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Speaker 1: people think about religion, and the relationship between different magical

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Speaker 1: and religious ideas. So he breaks down sympathetic magic into

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Speaker 1: two different categories. One is homeopathic magic, which is the

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Speaker 1: law of similarity, and the other is contagious magic, which

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Speaker 1: operates on the law of contact. So I'm going to

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Speaker 1: read a quote where he talks about the difference of

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Speaker 1: the ideas here quote. Homeopathic magic is founded on the

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Speaker 1: association of ideas by similarity. Contagious magic is founded on

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Speaker 1: the association of ideas by contiguity. Homeopathic magic commits the

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Speaker 1: mistake of assuming that things which read symbol each other

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Speaker 1: are the same. Contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming

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Speaker 1: that things which have once been in contact with each

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Speaker 1: other are always in contact. But in practice, the two

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Speaker 1: branches are often combined, or, to be more exact, While

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Speaker 1: homeopathic or imitative magic may be practiced by itself. Contagious

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Speaker 1: magic will generally be found to involve an application of

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Speaker 1: the homeopathic or imitative principle. And I think there's a

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Speaker 1: lot to what he's saying there. We've got this general

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Speaker 1: idea that you can use one thing that's like another

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Speaker 1: thing in order to have some kind of magical influence.

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Speaker 1: I think of a you know, a doll that represents

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Speaker 1: a person, looks like them, and you can use that

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Speaker 1: to manipulate the person. But almost any time you have

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Speaker 1: the idea of contact, you can't just touch a random

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Speaker 1: thing to a person. Usually, maybe in some cases you

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Speaker 1: can touch a random thing to somebody's arm and then

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Speaker 1: now you've got power over them. Usually it seems like

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Speaker 1: it needs to be a thing that has some kind

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Speaker 1: of sympathetic route with the person, like it's it's it

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Speaker 1: was formerly a part of their body, or it's something

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Speaker 1: that belonged to I don't know, a member of their

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Speaker 1: family or something like that. Now, another one of the

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Speaker 1: key observations I think Fraser makes is that in the

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Speaker 1: mind of the magic believer, quote logic is implicit not explicit,

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Speaker 1: And I think this is one of the things that's

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Speaker 1: key to understanding what magic is when when we try

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Speaker 1: to reckon the idea of magical thinking versus scientific thinking.

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Speaker 1: And I would put it like this, with scientific explanations,

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Speaker 1: a lot of times when you when you see a

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Speaker 1: phenomenon in the world, it doesn't seem to make much sense.

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Speaker 1: You don't understand why it happened. But when you get

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Speaker 1: a scientific explanation, it starts to make more sense. Right,

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Speaker 1: And the deeper you go, the more everything fits together

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Speaker 1: and the call usal relationships become clear. Magical thinking, on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, means that the more you try to

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Speaker 1: explain exactly how magic works, the less sense it makes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just think about watching fantasy movies or reading fantasy books.

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Speaker 1: I would say in my experience, I don't know if

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Speaker 1: maybe you'll disagree, but in my experience, the more general

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Speaker 1: and vague the magic, the easier you accept it, and

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Speaker 1: the more explicit it gets about magic powers, how they work,

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Speaker 1: where they come from, the function of magic objects all that.

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Speaker 1: If it gets really deep into the weeds, almost like

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Speaker 1: trying to explore the scientific causation underlying magical influence, it

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Speaker 1: becomes more and more ridiculous and makes less and less sense.

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Speaker 1: At least in my experience, I would agree with without

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Speaker 1: in most cases, I think that they're the rare exception.

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Speaker 1: And one of the reasons, one of them the many

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Speaker 1: reasons I love this series so much is that our

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Speaker 1: Scott Baker's dark fantasy series, though the Second Apocalypse, like,

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Speaker 1: he has a really thought out magical system that's ultimately

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Speaker 1: based in philosophical models, So that one works for me.

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Speaker 1: But I think for the most part, you're You're correct.

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Speaker 1: There's a certain I think part part of the thing

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Speaker 1: is here is so you have a wizard on the

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Speaker 1: screen and casting a spell using you know, homeopathic magic

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Speaker 1: or contagious magic perhaps, like both of these are forms

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Speaker 1: of magic. It kind of made to make a subconscious

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Speaker 1: sense to us in just in our daily lives. But

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Speaker 1: for instance, with with contagious magic, I instantly think of

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Speaker 1: examples of someone's someone's like, oh, you know, I shook

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Speaker 1: hands with a famous person. I'll never wash this hand again.

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Speaker 1: Four sentiments of like, oh, this this shirt was touched

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Speaker 1: by by, uh, you know, Paul McCarthy. I can never

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Speaker 1: wash this as Paul McCarthy. Yeah, Paul McCarthy the Beatle, Right,

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Speaker 1: Paul McCartney McCartney. McCarthy, sorry, I've got a lot of

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00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:57,440
Speaker 1: man you got ripped off on eBay, Robert Darnet Paul McCarthy, Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I thought he was really down on communism for an

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Speaker 1: old school rocker. But anyway, uh my My point being

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Speaker 1: that both of these types of magic kind of play

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Speaker 1: into the ways we we think about objects and we

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Speaker 1: think about contact. Oh totally. Yeah. I think it's interesting

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Speaker 1: that that you see homeopathic alternative medicine still being practiced today.

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Speaker 1: The idea, you know, and and it really does have

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Speaker 1: a root in this idea of homeopathic magic because here

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Speaker 1: it's the idea of similarity gives things magical influence over

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Speaker 1: one another. In homeopathic medicine, so called medicine. The it's

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Speaker 1: the idea is basically that like cures like one the

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Speaker 1: thing that produces one effect will also cure that effect. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a good point. Now, I mentioned this weapon

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Speaker 1: example earlier, and that's going to be a key to

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Speaker 1: what we're discussing about the idea that you could heal

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Speaker 1: the wound by treating the weapon that caused it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so if I walk up to you and stab you

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Speaker 1: with a bowie knife and then later I feel bad

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Speaker 1: about and I want to heal you, but I can't

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Speaker 1: find you. I could just what rap bandages around the knife. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like like he's been stabbed. Get this

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Speaker 1: knife to a hospital. A certain extent um, This was

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Speaker 1: a real idea that was that was that was rather

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Speaker 1: popular in the seventeenth century because it all entails this

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Speaker 1: thing that was called the powder of sympathy. Oh boy,

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Speaker 1: that sounds great already. Yeah, this was the idea. Here

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Speaker 1: was simply dust the weapon and the special powder, and

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Speaker 1: you in turn treat the wound it created. It's a

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Speaker 1: it's you know, it's kind of a spooky action at

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Speaker 1: a distance kind of scenario. This particular notion was concocted

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Speaker 1: by natural philosopher uh Sir Kenelman Digby, who through sixteen

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Speaker 1: sixty five distant relative of Arthur Digby Sellers. He wrote

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Speaker 1: a book on this subject, Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy,

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Speaker 1: and it went through like twenty nine different editions and

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Speaker 1: so popular stuff. I guess, yeah, it it made the

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Speaker 1: rounds uh. And he would in this book he would

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Speaker 1: describe how he could he could make a patient jump

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Speaker 1: by putting addressing from the patient's wounds into a basin

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Speaker 1: full of this special powder. So it is sort of like,

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Speaker 1: h It's like a remote acting sympathetic magic catalyst essentially. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I actually have have some instructions on how to

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Speaker 1: make it, uh that I'm gonna read. You're gonna jump

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Speaker 1: in with some some explanations here as needed, But this

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Speaker 1: is Digby's own words. Okay, take good English vitriol, which

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Speaker 1: you may buy for twopence a pound, And of course

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Speaker 1: vitriol means sulfate, usually sulfuric acid. Dissolve it in warm

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Speaker 1: water using no more water than we'll dissolve it, leaving

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Speaker 1: some of the impurest part at the bottom undissolved. Then

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Speaker 1: pour it off and filter it, which you may do

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Speaker 1: by a coffin of fine gray paper. The coffin that's

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Speaker 1: what I have here, Uh, put put into a funnel,

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Speaker 1: or by laying a sheet of gray paper and a

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Speaker 1: sieve and pouring or water or dissolution of vitriol into

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Speaker 1: it by degrees, setting the sieve upon a large pan

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Speaker 1: to receive the filtered liquor. When all your liquor is filtered,

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Speaker 1: boil it in an earthen vessel glazed till you see

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Speaker 1: a thin scum upon it. Then set it in a

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Speaker 1: cellar to cool, covering it loosely so that nothing may

365
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:31,560
Speaker 1: fall in. After two or three days standing, pour off

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Speaker 1: the liquor and you will find at the bottom and

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Speaker 1: on the sides large and fair green crystals like emeralds.

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Speaker 1: Drain off all the water clean from them and dry them.

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Speaker 1: Then spread them abroad and a large flat earthen dish

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Speaker 1: and expose them to the hot sun in the dog days,

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00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:53,199
Speaker 1: taking them in at night and setting them out in

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Speaker 1: the morning, securing them from the rain. And when the

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00:21:56,480 --> 00:22:00,760
Speaker 1: sun hath calcimed them to whiteness, beat them to powder.

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Speaker 1: And set this powder again in the sun, stirring it sometimes,

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Speaker 1: and when you see it perfectly white, powder it and

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00:22:08,720 --> 00:22:11,399
Speaker 1: sift it finally, and set it again in the sun

377
00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:14,080
Speaker 1: for a day, and you will have a pure white powder,

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00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:17,720
Speaker 1: which is the powder of sympathy. I like how there

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00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:21,320
Speaker 1: is almost the You get the feeling that he's inserting

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00:22:21,480 --> 00:22:24,920
Speaker 1: unnecessary steps to make it more work, to make it

381
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 1: seem more likely to have a real efficacy. Yeah, and

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00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:32,480
Speaker 1: this this reminds me of other recipes that I've read

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Speaker 1: from particularly books on alchemy, whether it'll be this kind

384
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:40,760
Speaker 1: of convoluted recipe, instructions that entail moving it in and

385
00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:43,880
Speaker 1: out of the sun, hiding it in a basement, and

386
00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:47,400
Speaker 1: in the more magical examples like making sure that it's

387
00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:51,480
Speaker 1: exposed uh to sunlight at the right degrees and through

388
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:54,600
Speaker 1: the you know, like a westward facing window, etcetera. I've

389
00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:56,520
Speaker 1: got a theory about this, let me know what you think.

390
00:22:57,160 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 1: Probably not a very well developed theory, more of a hypothesis.

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00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 1: My idea is that spells and instructions like this, for

392
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:07,120
Speaker 1: for all these potions and things have all of these

393
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:11,920
Speaker 1: complicated steps, maybe not consciously, but they often do because

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00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 1: they're exploiting the sunk costs fallacy. I think about the

395
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,800
Speaker 1: sunk costs fallacy a lot. I think it determines a

396
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: lot of our decisions. The sunk costs fallacy is that

397
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:26,600
Speaker 1: you are more likely to continue investing in something, or

398
00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:29,439
Speaker 1: more likely to continue believing it or to think it

399
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: was a good idea. If you've already expended a lot

400
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: of personal time, money, or energy on it, You're you're

401
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:40,919
Speaker 1: trying to convince yourself that you have not wasted your resources.

402
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:44,479
Speaker 1: And thus, if you tell somebody well, uh, you know,

403
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:46,720
Speaker 1: just get this one thing from the store and grind

404
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 1: it up into a powder and it has magical powers.

405
00:23:50,160 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: You've not made them go all in with it, right,

406
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:55,600
Speaker 1: and so if it doesn't work, they're just like, well

407
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 1: I got ripped off. But if you make them spend

408
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: days and days and doing all these complicated, laborious steps,

409
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: you might be able to exploit their desire not to

410
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 1: have feel that they have wasted their time. Un Thus,

411
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 1: they're more likely to be like, wow, yeah, I think

412
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:14,359
Speaker 1: it works. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's it's kind

413
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:17,120
Speaker 1: of like if you if you have poor in assembly

414
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:19,399
Speaker 1: instructions for a piece of furniture and you have to

415
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:22,639
Speaker 1: backtrack and reassemble and switch things around at the end

416
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, I'm not going to add I'm

417
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 1: not going to add on the additional feeling of defeat

418
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,480
Speaker 1: by thinking it looks bad. I'm gonna tell myself, no,

419
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,080
Speaker 1: this thing looks this looks good. It's worth the money,

420
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:36,360
Speaker 1: it's worth the time I spent assembling it and partially

421
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 1: disassembling it. It was it was worth the effort. Or

422
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 1: I think some people may encounter this with a recipe.

423
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:44,280
Speaker 1: You know, you spend half a day making a cake,

424
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:48,240
Speaker 1: Um my mind will not be able to just survive

425
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:52,399
Speaker 1: the reality of that cake not tasting absolutely delicious. And

426
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: I think it has Uh, it has a similar effect

427
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: even if you're not actually trying to convince yourself it's

428
00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 1: not bad. So I think about if I spend a

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00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: lot of time working on a dinner, if I put

430
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:05,400
Speaker 1: a lot of work into it, I enjoy it more

431
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:08,000
Speaker 1: in the end, even if it's not like it turns

432
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: out bad and I'm trying to convince myself it's actually good.

433
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:13,199
Speaker 1: Even if I think it's actually pretty good, I just

434
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: like it more if I worked on it a lot. Now,

435
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 1: in the case of the powder sympathy, obviously we're we're

436
00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: going with working assumption that this does not work. This

437
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: is purely magical thinking. But you can easily imagine a

438
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:29,240
Speaker 1: scenario where this is used and it seems to work.

439
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:31,919
Speaker 1: Either there's just sort of a you know, the psycho

440
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 1: somatic effect of someone thinking that you're you're healing them

441
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 1: and they just puts them at ease a little bit

442
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: and then they heal naturally, or you know, it's just

443
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 1: kind of the roll of the dice. You think of

444
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:48,400
Speaker 1: the imperfect medical understanding of the time, poor wound treatment, uh,

445
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: confirmation bias. And it just sort of the idea too,

446
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 1: that just the mere fact that anyone's giving, you know,

447
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:57,200
Speaker 1: some amount, just the fact that you're changing the dressings

448
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: so that you can dip the dressings in this magical

449
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,400
Speaker 1: powder might might play a role. Oh yeah, totally. I mean,

450
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 1: I think that's often the case with a lot of

451
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: these magical treatments, is that in many cases they might

452
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 1: have actually done something helpful, but it was just an

453
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: unnecessary byproduct of what they thought they were doing. Yeah,

454
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 1: so we're we're left with the situation then, where Yeah,

455
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 1: this idea of the powder of sympathies out there, it's

456
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: it's not working, but it may seem to work in

457
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 1: some cases, and the the idea remains somewhat popular. So

458
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 1: that leaves the question if enough people believe that the

459
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: powder of sympathy is working or maybe working, or there's

460
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 1: something to it to the magic here, what else can

461
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: you do with it? Could you perhaps tackle one of

462
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 1: the most pressing challenges of the day is this where

463
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: longitude comes back in exactly and again longitude is east

464
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:53,440
Speaker 1: west positioning and latitude is north south, and in navigating

465
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: by c it pays to know exactly where you are. Now,

466
00:26:57,119 --> 00:26:59,159
Speaker 1: all you need is a peek at the altitude of

467
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 1: the noonday sun one and a few glances at a

468
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:04,160
Speaker 1: table that gives the sons a declination for the day,

469
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: and then you've got your latitude. So it's not so

470
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 1: hard to know how far north or south you are, right,

471
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: but at the time to calculate longitude one hand to

472
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: depend largely on what's known as dead reckoning. Oh boy,

473
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: that sounds good. Yeah, this is calculating your current position

474
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:25,199
Speaker 1: based on your previous position. Uh and uh and uh

475
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: and and known or estimated speeds over elapsed time and course.

476
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: Oh wait a second, so that's not as cool as

477
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: I imagine. It's not like using a skull holding it

478
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 1: up to the sky in a certain way. No, now,

479
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: you're just talking about something that sounds very approximate and

480
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:42,239
Speaker 1: often wrong. Right. It's you end up it's rife with

481
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,479
Speaker 1: cumulative errors. So essentially what you're doing here is like

482
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: the first time that you like each leg of the trip,

483
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: each point uh you know, on on the on the map. Um,

484
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:56,160
Speaker 1: it gets gets the further out you get, You're you're

485
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:58,199
Speaker 1: a little more prone to air. It's kind of like

486
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: a game of telephone, right when you start with one

487
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: word spoken whispered into ears, and it goes around in

488
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,640
Speaker 1: a circle, and by the end it may or may

489
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: not resemble the original word. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you're saying, like,

490
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,680
Speaker 1: you know, you started at fifty degrees west, and then

491
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,399
Speaker 1: you say, well, I think we went maybe about a

492
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:21,399
Speaker 1: hundred miles west today, so we're at this new point west.

493
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:24,360
Speaker 1: And then I think maybe we went about a hundred

494
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 1: miles the next day. So you think, but each time

495
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: you do that, you're reckoning from your previous guests about

496
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: how far west you were right, And then you're you

497
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:36,919
Speaker 1: also have to factor in what kind of tools do

498
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: I have to measure these things? Can I can accurately gauge, like,

499
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: truly accurately gauge how far I've come? Do I do

500
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:47,360
Speaker 1: I have an accurate understanding of what time it is? Uh?

501
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: These become issues. Oh and I should also note you

502
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: also need an accurate longitude latitude reading to make up

503
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:57,560
Speaker 1: for an up to ten degree difference in magnetic north

504
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: versus true north on certain trade route. Okay, okay, So

505
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: by the sixteenth century we had a pretty good method

506
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: for determining longitude by land, depending on the use of

507
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: Galilee and moons of Jupiter as an astronomical clock. But

508
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: this was far more difficult to carry out by sea,

509
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: so you needed a better method. Is it going to

510
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: be magic, Uh, we're gonna get to a Yeah, we're

511
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: gonna get to some magic here. Now, not everybody trying

512
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 1: to tackle this problem was trying to tackle with magic.

513
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: There's a great deal of terrestrial, celestial, and mechanical solutions

514
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: that were making the rounds. And this was also a

515
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: stirred on by the fact that there was there at

516
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: least a couple of hefty prizes, the most notable being

517
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 1: that offered by the British government in seventeen four team

518
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 1: the Longitude Prize. So there's there's there's not only fame

519
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: and the solution of a problem at stake here, there's

520
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: also a cash reward. You could already be a winner

521
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: if you have some magic powder. Yeah. So enter an

522
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: anonymous author. We have we have no idea who this was,

523
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 1: but they printed a pamphlet titled Curious Inquiries being six

524
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: Brief discourses. Uh. Now, a great many commentators insist that

525
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: this entire pamphlet is just a work of satire, poking

526
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: fun as scientific practice. It's kind of a mad magazine

527
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: or even you know, maybe a more more opt to

528
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: comparison would be a modest proposal, right, Jonathan Swift. The

529
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: idea being here that we should we should eat the poor, Yes, yeah,

530
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:30,880
Speaker 1: but not everybody agrees that it was definitely satire. So

531
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 1: in the book Longitude, there's the true story of a

532
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 1: loan genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of this time.

533
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: Historian Davis Sobel says that it's more difficult to determine

534
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: if the pamphlet prevent presents the idea as a serious

535
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: solution or a mere satire. So it's not necessarily clear, right,

536
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: which one it's supposed to be. Yeah, it kind of

537
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 1: It just depends on who the commentator is. Then that

538
00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: sounds like the perfect zone for comedy. Yes, and and

539
00:30:56,920 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: I do have to before we get into the grizzly

540
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: details here and let everyone know that there's no evidence

541
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: that anyone ever actually tried this out, Uh, but it's

542
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: been makes for an interesting discussion point here. So the

543
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: solution that's proposed in this pamphlet depends entirely on the

544
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: powder of sympathy. You take a wounded dog with you

545
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: to see, and you leave someone back home on shore

546
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 1: to dip the dog's bandage into the sympathy solution every

547
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: day at noon. This will cause the dog you yelp

548
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: out in pain. Informing you that quote the sun is

549
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: upon the Meridan in London. Compare that hour to the

550
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: local time and you can now calculate longitude. Now, this

551
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: whole thing would depend not only on sympathetic magic, but

552
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: also on the effect working across thousands of miles. Uh,

553
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: and also without the dog healing, because I remember, the

554
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 1: whole scenario is that the powder of sympathy can be

555
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 1: used to to treat, to heal the wound, to heal

556
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: the wound by treating the weapon or the dressing, And

557
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: in this case you are just hoping to keep the

558
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: dog's misery going. So navigate. Yeah, that's horrible, and so

559
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: this might actually require additional injuries to the dog. So

560
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: I gotta admit I was reading about this last night

561
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: a little bit, and I had my dog sitting next

562
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: to me on the couch, and I felt so sad.

563
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 1: It is it's a even if I mean I'm not

564
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: a dog owner, but this is a horrific notion. And yet,

565
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: as a Sobell points out, the author of the pamphlet

566
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: goes on to state that quote, submitting a dog to

567
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: the misery of having always a wound about him is

568
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: no more macabre or a mercenary than expecting a seaman

569
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 1: to put his own eye out for the purpose of navigation. Now,

570
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: now what does that mean? So they were like stabbing

571
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: sailor's eye so they could be good navigating. This sounds

572
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: like just another level of of of grotesque magic. But uh,

573
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: she explains. English navigator John Davies had this this backstaff

574
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: that he developed in and this improved on an older

575
00:32:55,960 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: cross staff or Jacob's staff, and this was used, um uh,

576
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: this was what was required to measure the height of

577
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: the sun above the horizon, uh, in navigation. And you

578
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: do it by looking directly into the glare of the

579
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 1: sun with only a darkened bit of glass to protect you.

580
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 1: And so just a few years of this was enough

581
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 1: to destroy that, you know, one's eyesight in your favorite eye.

582
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of of you know, the

583
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: older sailors about and they'd be blind in one eye

584
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: from using this method at the time. Now, I don't

585
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:28,320
Speaker 1: think that I don't know about the argument that this

586
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 1: is is the same thing as torturing a dog, especially

587
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:35,239
Speaker 1: in the name of magic, as opposed to simply, you know,

588
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: making solar observations. But there you go. It's in the pample.

589
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: The takeaway from today's episode is staring at the sun

590
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: it works, gets results. Okay, so let's answer the obvious question. Uh,

591
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: why didn't this work? Assuming you mean the powder of

592
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: the powder of sympathy? Why why did this not work?

593
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 1: Why was this this dog option? Uh, not even remotely

594
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: feasible because it involves of magic powder exactly. Yeah, it

595
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: has no basis in science or the natural laws of

596
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 1: the universe as we understand them. Now, some of you

597
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: might be thinking, oh, well, this is this is what

598
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 1: I've seen described as a spooky action at a distance.

599
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 1: Isn't there something in quantum mechanics that says that you

600
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 1: can have two items become a quantumly entangled, two particles

601
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 1: come into contact, and as a result, any change to

602
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 1: one of the particles creates an instantaneous change in the other. Yeah,

603
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: this is a phenomenon and quantum mechanics the idea of entanglement,

604
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,760
Speaker 1: where if two particles are entangled, you can separate them

605
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,560
Speaker 1: across vast distances. You can take them, you know, opposite

606
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 1: ends of the galaxy, and then supposedly looking at one

607
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: of these particles will instantaneously tell you something about the

608
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: state of the other. Um. Now, I've actually I've read

609
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 1: criticisms of the idea that this can be used to enable,

610
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: for example, faster than light communication, because you automatically assume,

611
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: m oh wow. So if you could do that, you

612
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: could take them to opposite ends of the galaxy and

613
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: they still have an influence on one another, then couldn't

614
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: you use that to send messages instantaneously from one end

615
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 1: to the galaxy to the other. The physicists that I've

616
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: read say, no, that is not possible. You still cannot

617
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:20,919
Speaker 1: send information faster than light. Uh, there are there are

618
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 1: facts about how the system works that means that. That

619
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 1: means that you can't encode information in one in a

620
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 1: way that can be received at the other end. So

621
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: even even are even the scientific ideas that we have

622
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 1: today that most resemble sympathetic magic could not work as

623
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: we understand them within these parameters. No, because they're not

624
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: sympathetic magic their quantum intent. Alright, So our next question

625
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:53,719
Speaker 1: what if it had worked well on one hand as

626
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,240
Speaker 1: umberto echo rights in the Island of the day before.

627
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:58,480
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine anyone who's read that book, you were

628
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 1: already familiar with the powder or sympathy and this this

629
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:03,839
Speaker 1: dog angle from that. If this had worked, you would

630
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: have had a world where global trade and travel depends

631
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:10,200
Speaker 1: on the torment of dogs. So this is the alternate

632
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 1: history we're being asked to consider here. Yeah, just kind

633
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 1: of horrific magical alternate reality. But then that's the thing.

634
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 1: If if the dog trick works, and that means the

635
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: powder of sympathy works, that means that any number of

636
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: sympathetic magical scenarios are also true, And it just opens

637
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:35,839
Speaker 1: the Pandora's box of of magical possibility and magical complication

638
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: of life. Of course it does. I mean, if magic

639
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: is magic, then I don't know how to finish that sentence. Yeah, well,

640
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: I mean everything is different then, yeah, I mean you

641
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: have you know, magical spies running around, Voodoo dolls are

642
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: are just like everybody has a voodoo dogs just a

643
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 1: growth industry. You're gonna have one for everybody. You know,

644
00:36:57,160 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: just to make it's like a cold war of voodoo

645
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: for everybody. Now, one thing I do want to point

646
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: out about the kind of magic you're talking about is,

647
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:07,680
Speaker 1: if we go back to my earlier distinction between magical

648
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:11,240
Speaker 1: law magic that operates by law and has consistent results

649
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: versus capricious magic, this would seem to be something that's

650
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: more like magical law right there there, insisting that this

651
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 1: would work every time. It would be a dependable principle

652
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: of nature. Oh yeah, it would have to be, otherwise

653
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to base navigation around it. Because again,

654
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: this was this was life and death like that. That

655
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 1: was the I can't really stress that enough that that

656
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 1: was the whole reason for this, this quest for a

657
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: solution to the longitude problem. So it's not like you're

658
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: praying to one of the gods to make the dog

659
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 1: on your ship give you the longitude correctly, and it

660
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:47,919
Speaker 1: may work or it may not. Their idea was if

661
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: if anybody actually believed this. The idea was that this

662
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 1: could be depended on and in that sense, maybe it

663
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually change all that much other than it would

664
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:57,880
Speaker 1: make the world a much worse place because of all

665
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 1: these people cutting dogs. But it wouldn't change all that

666
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 1: much in terms of our understanding of reality because it

667
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: would still be yet another dependable principle. Yeah now, and

668
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,360
Speaker 1: I imagine everyone's wondering at this point, Okay, well, what

669
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:17,359
Speaker 1: actually solved the problem? How did we actually uh figure

670
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: out a way to accurately determine a longitude? Fun fact,

671
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 1: nobody knew how far they were easter or west until

672
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:28,960
Speaker 1: they had iPhones. Well there's actually there's actually something to that,

673
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:32,880
Speaker 1: but um, the main individual that's credited with it was

674
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: solving the problem initially is that eighteenth century clockmaker John Harrison.

675
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:39,879
Speaker 1: So he created the first clock that was accurate enough

676
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:43,320
Speaker 1: to determine longitude at sea, most notably here that the

677
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: Jeffreys Watch and the Sea Watch, which is also known

678
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 1: as H four. And this revolutionized a navigation and greatly

679
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: improve the safety of sea travel. And then after that

680
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: we had other technological advances. They would introduce wireless time

681
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:03,240
Speaker 1: signals sent by telegraphy radar, the radio based Lauren system,

682
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 1: and of course GPS technology. Alright, that's the big one.

683
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:08,760
Speaker 1: And again coming back to your your comming on iPhones,

684
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: like once we once we have the GPS in place

685
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: like that. That certainly just fixes everything in terms of

686
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 1: knowing where you are in the world and moving around anyway.

687
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,359
Speaker 1: So please just confirmed to us we we don't know

688
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:24,360
Speaker 1: any evidence of dogs actually being tortured for navigation. That

689
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 1: didn't happen in reality, as far as we know, as

690
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: far as I know, it did not happen, and certainly

691
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: do not try it, because you're a monster. If you do, well,

692
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: I feel much better now now we cannot say the

693
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: same with the with the with definite accuracy for rabbits.

694
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: And that's what we're gonna we're gonna get to next.

695
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:50,760
Speaker 1: After a break, all right, we're back. So we're gonna,

696
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we're gonna transport ourselves in time. Now we're

697
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna move on up to the twenty century,

698
00:39:56,560 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: all right, So we're gonna chase the connection between UH

699
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 1: seafaring navigation or seafaring communication and blood magic. Yes, to

700
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: the modern era, that's right, that's right. So inevitably we're

701
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:14,759
Speaker 1: talking about military matters and military research here, and UH

702
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 1: military interests have always pushed technological advancements. I mean in

703
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:22,320
Speaker 1: weaponry obviously, but also in everything from food storage to

704
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:25,919
Speaker 1: communication and in times of war, and certainly in times

705
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 1: of total war. Uh, this has a way of of

706
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: of even absorbing non military explorations. I mean, just consider

707
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: German rocketry. During the Second World War. You had all

708
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:37,919
Speaker 1: these minds that in many cases had dreamed of space exploration,

709
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: and they were maneuvered into developing, uh, weapons of mass

710
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: destruction instead, such as the the V weapons like the

711
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:48,960
Speaker 1: V two rockets. And after the flames of the Second

712
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: World War died down, of course, the Cold War set in.

713
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 1: The race was on to to perfect one's weaponry, to

714
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:59,359
Speaker 1: advance to a state of superiority over your rival superpower.

715
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,080
Speaker 1: And with nothing short of nuclear war haunting the horizon,

716
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:07,800
Speaker 1: what wouldn't you try? What a riskier, even unlikely avenues

717
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,399
Speaker 1: wouldn't you explore in hopes of gaining that upper hand. Yeah,

718
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: I think sometimes it's easy for us today to look

719
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: back on on Cold War myopia, on the you know,

720
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 1: the behavior of the leadership in both the Western Powers

721
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: and in the Soviet Union, and to kind of and

722
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: to I don't know, think like, wow, how paranoid and

723
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 1: stupid they were. Now I'm not saying that they necessarily

724
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:38,720
Speaker 1: behaved wisely I think in most cases they probably didn't

725
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:43,720
Speaker 1: yet during the Cold War, it's uh, if you put

726
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: yourself back in the past during the Cold War and

727
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:50,280
Speaker 1: you take away the fact that you know how everything

728
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:54,280
Speaker 1: turned out, it's easy to understand why people were highly

729
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: motivated by fear and and and and as we're going

730
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:02,480
Speaker 1: to be discussing the with the scientific exploration of essentially

731
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 1: paranormal phenomenon, uh, you know, this is a this is

732
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:08,759
Speaker 1: an area where you can also make that make the argument, well,

733
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,720
Speaker 1: had that had the slimy and the slime mold tentacle

734
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:15,600
Speaker 1: of science really truly explored that cavern? Well, and how

735
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:17,479
Speaker 1: do we know for sure that this kind of this

736
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: this part of the maze doesn't lead to the food reward.

737
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:23,240
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things about the slime Mold

738
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: of Science not having any top down control means that sometimes, uh,

739
00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:31,800
Speaker 1: one one tendril might not know what the other tendrils

740
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 1: are doing, right, Uh. Is so one tendril might be

741
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: creeping down an avenue that is in fact a dead

742
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: end and has been explored before, or might be creeping

743
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 1: down some avenue in secret, so that other tendrils might

744
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:48,399
Speaker 1: not know what it's doing because it's exploring some some

745
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: cavern in secret. And that's something we we often get

746
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 1: in the development of military and defense technology. Right and

747
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 1: of course our our our example, our metaphor of the

748
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:01,800
Speaker 1: slime mold is science is kind of the ideal shape

749
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: of science. But in times of war, you may have

750
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 1: someone come in and say, actually, I'm going to be

751
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 1: the king of science right now, Hey, get this tendral

752
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,919
Speaker 1: down this hallway because I really need this to work,

753
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: or I think it could work. But boss, that's a

754
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: bad hallway. It doesn't work, it doesn't matter. It starts

755
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: sending slim down there, and we'll we'll worry about it

756
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, five to ten years. Okay, So

757
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: the hallway we're gonna be talking about in this section

758
00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: is going to be parapsychology, right right, And we see

759
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 1: this plan in the history of both US and Soviet experimentation. Uh,

760
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:37,359
Speaker 1: you know, looking into parapsychology and specifically mind control being

761
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 1: a big one. Uh. DARPA uh certainly explored the possibilities.

762
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: You had Sydney Gottlieb, who was head of the Office

763
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:47,399
Speaker 1: of Technical Service at the CIA, and he spearheaded such

764
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: projects as MK Ultra, which I imagine a number of

765
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 1: you familiar with this is the project that explored the

766
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:56,719
Speaker 1: possibilities of l s D enabled mind control. Yeah, we

767
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: explored that a little bit, I think definitely in the

768
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 1: episode where we talked about what mind control would feel

769
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 1: like if it were possible. That's right, we did. And

770
00:44:05,480 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: then of course the Soviets were conducting their own experiments. Uh.

771
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:12,160
Speaker 1: And this, now, this is a situation where we don't

772
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: always have the best primary sources on what exactly was

773
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: going on. It's kind of there's a game of telephone

774
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: going on here. There's kind of a situation of dead

775
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: reckoning with the reporting of what the Soviets were actually

776
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 1: up to. Yeah. Now, as far as U. S. Intelligence services,

777
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: we do now have some declassified documents and still have

778
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: parts redacted in some cases and all that. But uh,

779
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:38,400
Speaker 1: but yeah, we have descriptions now what was going on

780
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:41,720
Speaker 1: for example in the c i A. Yeah. But meanwhile

781
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:44,840
Speaker 1: with the Soviets, there's some areas where we have less information.

782
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:48,880
Speaker 1: For instance, there's the study combiled by the Rand Corporation

783
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:52,479
Speaker 1: for DARPA, and they make special mention of Russia's plan

784
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: to launch psychics into orbit into orbit. Yeah, in spaceships

785
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: or just naked. Um, I assume in space ships, but

786
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:03,799
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of psychic space gods just flying naked through

787
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:07,000
Speaker 1: space looking down over the prairies of the United States. Well,

788
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:09,279
Speaker 1: there is a certain guild navigator vibe. It is for

789
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,799
Speaker 1: sure totally So the quote from this particular report is

790
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 1: regarding a precognition. We found only one unverified report by

791
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:20,680
Speaker 1: a Soviet investigator that a program was being planned to

792
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 1: train astronauts to quote foresee and to avoid accidents in space.

793
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: What it was clear from the context that he was

794
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: referring to precognitive process. Now, hold on a second. If

795
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: you were developing in the Cold War context, you've got

796
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: projects somewhere deep in your defense research agencies to develop

797
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 1: precognition where you know what's going to happen before it happens,

798
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: would you really primarily think to employ it by having

799
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 1: astronauts look into the future to make sure there's not

800
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:56,279
Speaker 1: going to be an accident during their space mission. That

801
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem like the primary way that people would

802
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 1: put this use. Yeah, I mean, it makes you ask

803
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: is as true as as false? Is this Russian disinformation

804
00:46:06,560 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: certainly could be certainly saying Hey, what are we up

805
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 1: to while we're shooting psychics into space? You better get

806
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 1: on that. Think about that and not this, uh, this, this,

807
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,440
Speaker 1: this other thing that we're working on. It's actually a

808
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,399
Speaker 1: legitimate threat. Yeah, I mean that's a big thing when

809
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: you're considering defense capabilities in the Cold War context, not

810
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: just Cold War, I mean throughout the history of of

811
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 1: you know, great powers interacting with one another. But it's

812
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: certainly there in the Cold War. Is that a lot

813
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: of capability that was developed, or capability that was just

814
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 1: talked about, was not necessarily for the purpose of executing

815
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 1: that capability in a real scenario, but was for the

816
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: purpose of provoking some kind of impression or behavior on

817
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: the other side. So, if you're doing research for some

818
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:55,359
Speaker 1: kind of US defense or security agency, you might want

819
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: to put out reports creating the impression for the Soviets

820
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: that you have some kind of capability you don't really have,

821
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: just because you want them to react to it in

822
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: a certain way, and vice versa. Yeah. Like another example

823
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: that was brought up in that same Randah paper was

824
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: the idea that one might be able to use psychokinesis

825
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: to disrupt an intercontinental ballistic missiles electronic guidance system. Yeah,

826
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,000
Speaker 1: so that, like imagine it, the the the nuclear death

827
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 1: is coming down in the form of this warhead, and

828
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:31,920
Speaker 1: then all this psychic soldier needs to do is look

829
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: up at it, concentrate just right, and click something inside it.

830
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:38,440
Speaker 1: So they've detected a launch. The president immediately picks up

831
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: the phone, dials up the Long Island medium. Yeah, exactly,

832
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 1: get her on the k those must get those missiles

833
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 1: out of the air. Now. Of course, researchers, researchers were

834
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: ultimately on both sides interested in all forms of extrasensory perception.

835
00:47:52,239 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 1: We you know, we have we have documents and releases

836
00:47:54,680 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: on things like tele epathy, claric clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, um,

837
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: voluntary nervous system control, faith healing, the use of dowsing

838
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:10,840
Speaker 1: rods and UH and UH and dermo optics, UH, the

839
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:14,320
Speaker 1: ability to, for instance, to see with one's own hands,

840
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So there was a lot of

841
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: stuff that was at least, uh, at least looked into,

842
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: if not you know, thoroughly explored. And of course this,

843
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 1: this whole scene is tremendously interesting, and we could devote

844
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:32,799
Speaker 1: multiple podcast to just its exploration. But Robert, I know

845
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:35,759
Speaker 1: you want to talk about cutting animals. Yes, that that's

846
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: our focus here today is the the use of blood

847
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: magic in a in a nautical sense. Well, okay, So

848
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: one source that we looked at that I thought was

849
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 1: pretty interesting was this article by a national security journalist

850
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: named Sharon Weinberger. And so this article was published in

851
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: I Tripolice Spectrum, I think just a month or so ago.

852
00:48:56,520 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 1: But it's from a book called The Imagineers of War,

853
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: so it's an adapted chapter and the article was called

854
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:06,279
Speaker 1: the Bunny the Witch in the War Room. I like that. Yeah, yeah,

855
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: the C. S. Lewis connection, establishing a little bit of

856
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: which would that be homeopathic or contagious magic? With C. S.

857
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: Lewis guess homeopathic? Yeah, I think so. Now some of

858
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: you may have heard Weinberger because she was recently a

859
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:22,320
Speaker 1: guest on NPRS Fresh Air, which he talks about about

860
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 1: about this book and about uh, this particular chapter here,

861
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:28,399
Speaker 1: and Weinberger points out that in the US a lot

862
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: of this this zeal for paranormal research, uh, it came

863
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: together in the wake of the nine seven Soviet sput

864
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: Nick launch. So Washington ends up moving after this to

865
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:42,320
Speaker 1: prioritize research via the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

866
00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: That this was the first space agency, and it is

867
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,919
Speaker 1: the entity that becomes DARPA. Yeah, And to get into

868
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 1: the relevant part of Winburger's article. So you, Robert, you

869
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:54,240
Speaker 1: already mentioned this guy, Sydney Gottlieb, who was apparently quite

870
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: a character. He was a chemist by original training, but

871
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:04,040
Speaker 1: he was the head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Office

872
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:06,680
Speaker 1: of Technical Service. I think you already mentioned that division

873
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:10,400
Speaker 1: earlier in the early nineteen seventies. In in the early

874
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, this division had contracted the Stanford Research Institute

875
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 1: to carry out a program of experiments in the field

876
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: of parapsychology, which we already mentioned. A parapsychology is paranormal

877
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:28,360
Speaker 1: psychic phenomena. So some of the stuff we've already mentioned, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition,

878
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: remote viewing. I think they were specially into remote viewing

879
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:33,840
Speaker 1: because it was like it was like having a spy

880
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: plane that could go inside an enemy base and just

881
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:40,480
Speaker 1: see what was on anybody's desk and all that. If

882
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:42,640
Speaker 1: it actually worked. And of course this is something that's

883
00:50:42,680 --> 00:50:46,840
Speaker 1: explored in a lot of uh science fiction treatments, including

884
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 1: a Stranger Thing so or a firestarter. Yeah. You know,

885
00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:53,960
Speaker 1: anytime you have a shadowy government lab, you often find

886
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:57,560
Speaker 1: echoes of of this of these experiments there, right, So

887
00:50:58,040 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 1: it's obvious that if there were anything real to be

888
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: discovered in this arena, like if there is anything to parapsychology,

889
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: of course it would be of tremendous use to military

890
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:13,000
Speaker 1: and intelligence agencies. So the the director of the of

891
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:16,400
Speaker 1: our PAT at the time, the Advanced Research Projects Agency

892
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, Stephen Luca Sik, recalls going

893
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 1: to visit Sydney Gottlieb in nineteen seventy one, and apparently

894
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:26,640
Speaker 1: one of the subjects Scott Lee wanted to talk about

895
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 1: with talked talked to him about was bunnies stead bunnies

896
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 1: and their use in strategic nuclear arms positioning around the world. Now,

897
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy a book had been released in the

898
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: United States called Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by

899
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, and this book claimed to

900
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:56,399
Speaker 1: document the findings of Soviet research into psychic phenomena such

901
00:51:56,440 --> 00:51:59,959
Speaker 1: as esp. It was saying, look the Soviets are already

902
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 1: making great strides in parapsychology. They're already figuring out how

903
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: to do all the CSP stuff, and this apparently spurred

904
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 1: these American officials to get into the game. Now, I

905
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: haven't read this book, but I did a little reading

906
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:15,760
Speaker 1: about it, looking at some of the things that appear

907
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:18,239
Speaker 1: to be talked about in it, some things reviewers have said,

908
00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:21,800
Speaker 1: and admitting that I haven't read the book, it looks

909
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:25,399
Speaker 1: to me very sketchy. It looks to me like this

910
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:29,600
Speaker 1: book perhaps fraudulently reports or at least credulous. Lee passes

911
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: on reports of EESP results as if they're genuine. Now,

912
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:36,839
Speaker 1: maybe I hope I'm being fair. Maybe I'm not being fair,

913
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:38,640
Speaker 1: And if I got into it, the authors would show

914
00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:43,279
Speaker 1: a little little bit more skepticism. But I'm um, I'm

915
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:46,440
Speaker 1: a little bit wary of anything that is passed on

916
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: as true from the contents of this book. Just at

917
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 1: first glance, now you might be thinking, wait a minute,

918
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:55,200
Speaker 1: where do the bunnies come in. Well, according to the

919
00:52:55,239 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: allegations in this book by by Ostrander and Schroeder, one

920
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 1: experiment used a supposed psychic connection between mothers and recently

921
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:13,799
Speaker 1: born infant mammals to establish communication across difficult physical barriers. Specifically,

922
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:18,799
Speaker 1: this involved nuclear submarines. Now, in the Cold War, strategic

923
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 1: defense for both the United States and the Soviet Union

924
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:26,040
Speaker 1: meant being able to offer a credible threat of nuclear

925
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:28,640
Speaker 1: retaliation in the event of an act of war. So

926
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:32,080
Speaker 1: you might ask somebody, wait a minute, you know, if

927
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 1: we don't want to start a world war and kill everybody,

928
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 1: why do we need nuclear weapons? And the reasoning at

929
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 1: the time given by both powers was well, we need

930
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:44,239
Speaker 1: them as a credible threat of retaliation to prevent the

931
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 1: other side from attacking us first. And one of the

932
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 1: most important things that you could do in order to

933
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:54,600
Speaker 1: make sure that you had retaliatory power was to make

934
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:57,799
Speaker 1: sure that you had some hidden weapons. So you might

935
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 1: have ground based weapons all over the place is but

936
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:02,640
Speaker 1: the enemy might know where some of those are. You know,

937
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: you never know how good the spying is. But if

938
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:10,360
Speaker 1: you could launch missiles from a deep water submarine, there's

939
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 1: you know you could keep. You could move them all

940
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:15,480
Speaker 1: over the place in secret, and the enemy wouldn't be

941
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:17,880
Speaker 1: able to take out all of your capabilities, so you

942
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: could always retaliate. And the submarines could always stay hidden

943
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:24,720
Speaker 1: as long as they stayed submerged deep in the ocean.

944
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:26,440
Speaker 1: And this is where we get the idea of these

945
00:54:26,480 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: these nuclear subs with nuclear missiles going out and essentially

946
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:33,760
Speaker 1: just hanging out in the ocean in case they are needed.

947
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: But this sort of defeated the purpose because if you

948
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:40,800
Speaker 1: wanted your slb ms as they were known submarine launched

949
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,879
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles to respond quickly to an attack, you would

950
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:47,520
Speaker 1: need to be able to have rapid wireless communication with

951
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:50,320
Speaker 1: your nuclear subs, right, you need to get the message

952
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:53,680
Speaker 1: out to them that it's time to retaliate. It wasn't

953
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: easy to get a message to these crafts submerged so

954
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:02,719
Speaker 1: deep underwater. And one leeged Soviet solution, according to Ostrander

955
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:06,600
Speaker 1: and Schroeder, was psychic rabbit research. So the theory went

956
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:11,239
Speaker 1: something like this, You've got an inherent psychic link that's

957
00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 1: created between the brain of a mother and her immediate offspring.

958
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: If a baby rabbit is killed, supposedly, it's mother will

959
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:23,200
Speaker 1: be able to know this instantly, even at a great distance.

960
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:26,920
Speaker 1: So hypothetically you could keep a mother rabbit in a

961
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: cage on a submarine and keep its baby back at

962
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: the home base. And if you needed your nuclear sub

963
00:55:33,200 --> 00:55:35,760
Speaker 1: to rise up to the shallows in order to receive

964
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:39,000
Speaker 1: orders to execute a launch, you would just kill the

965
00:55:39,040 --> 00:55:43,280
Speaker 1: baby rabbit. Now immediately the mother should start showing symptoms

966
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,360
Speaker 1: of distress. And note that's kind of a vague work like,

967
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: what does distress look like in a rabbit? Rabbit not

968
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:52,239
Speaker 1: only a rabbit, a rabbit that's kept on a submarine, right,

969
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:56,279
Speaker 1: it would know psychically that it's baby had perished, and

970
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: this would mean the person watching over the rabbit on

971
00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: the submarine would signal the officers and the sub would

972
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 1: rise to the proper depth to receive orders. Now, according

973
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:09,279
Speaker 1: to Austrander and Schroeder, the Soviets claim their experiments were

974
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:14,080
Speaker 1: successful and the technique worked. I doubt it, yeah, I

975
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: just we'll discuss. I just can't imagine that scenario in

976
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:21,320
Speaker 1: which this works. So I'm skeptical at multiple levels of this.

977
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:23,920
Speaker 1: I don't know whether they actually did this or not.

978
00:56:24,040 --> 00:56:26,680
Speaker 1: It's reported that they did this, but I'm skeptical of

979
00:56:26,719 --> 00:56:30,120
Speaker 1: the reports. Uh. And of course, even if they did

980
00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:33,439
Speaker 1: actually try it and claim that it worked, I don't

981
00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:36,719
Speaker 1: believe them. Yeah, though I do like the story of

982
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:40,440
Speaker 1: this in how it reveals kind of a lunacy of

983
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:44,319
Speaker 1: of nuclear war and retaltory attacks, you know, and and

984
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:50,280
Speaker 1: and certainly goes along rather nicely or frighteningly with various

985
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:57,400
Speaker 1: stories we have about like near incidents of of false launches. Yeah, God,

986
00:56:57,600 --> 00:57:00,800
Speaker 1: those are terrified. Uh. And it's it's arry how close

987
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 1: we've come in some scenarios to an accidental nuclear war. Uh.

988
00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:07,960
Speaker 1: You know, the worst possible outcome that there could be

989
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:11,600
Speaker 1: on planet Earth would be a nuclear exchange. And and

990
00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 1: it's it's terrifying to think that such a thing could

991
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:17,240
Speaker 1: happen without incredibly deliberate I mean, it's terrifying to think

992
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:21,760
Speaker 1: it could happen for any reason. But it's just added

993
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: absurdity that it could happen by accident. Yeah, and even

994
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:28,440
Speaker 1: more absurdity to say it could happen because you misinterpreted

995
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 1: a distressed rabbit on a submarine. Right now, Hopefully what

996
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:35,160
Speaker 1: they had in mind, if anybody was actually thinking about

997
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: implementing something like this, would be more what I talked about,

998
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:42,040
Speaker 1: not that you'd see a distressed rabbit and you just launch,

999
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:44,600
Speaker 1: but that you'd see a distressed rabbit, and that would

1000
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: mean Okay, come up from the deep water so you

1001
00:57:47,040 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 1: can receive a signal and then you'd get your complete

1002
00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:52,920
Speaker 1: orders once you were at the surface. Right, So like

1003
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: if this, if this were utilized by the Soviets, you

1004
00:57:56,560 --> 00:57:58,920
Speaker 1: could also imagine a scenario we have like a Soviet

1005
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:02,440
Speaker 1: sleeper agent hanging out in an apartment like cleaning guns

1006
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:05,240
Speaker 1: and looking after a pet rabbit and the rabbits distressed

1007
00:58:05,280 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh, I've got to go to the

1008
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:10,520
Speaker 1: pay phone across town and await my call to see

1009
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 1: who I'm supposed to assassinate. Wait, so there would be

1010
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: multiple levels of rabbits there. Oh no, wait, no, he

1011
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:17,440
Speaker 1: wouldn't be communicating with a submarine that it would just

1012
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 1: be the rabbit, right, This would just the rabbit used

1013
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:23,480
Speaker 1: as a means of communicating with you between agents and

1014
00:58:23,520 --> 00:58:26,080
Speaker 1: so in the US, getting rid of the number stations

1015
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:29,800
Speaker 1: or you know, secret radio communications, just have rabbit. Yeah,

1016
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:31,800
Speaker 1: it is this factor into the Americans at all. You've

1017
00:58:31,840 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 1: you've been telling me that I need to watch to

1018
00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:37,080
Speaker 1: pick up the Americans again, Like, I haven't gotten to

1019
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: any rabbits if they're in there. But I'm not done

1020
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:42,800
Speaker 1: with the series yet. The series isn't over yet, but

1021
00:58:42,880 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: I've not gotten any rabbits anyway. So reports ofsp research

1022
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:49,920
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union did help sort of create this

1023
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:54,280
Speaker 1: climate of fear in US defense research circles. It's what

1024
00:58:54,320 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: we've talked about. It's the sort of I don't know,

1025
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,480
Speaker 1: you might almost call it like conflict jealousy, you know,

1026
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:02,960
Speaker 1: it's like advantage paranoia. If the Soviets are gonna have

1027
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 1: psychic assassins, shouldn't we have them too. If their remote viewing,

1028
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:10,000
Speaker 1: shouldn't we be doing some remote viewing as well. The

1029
00:59:10,040 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 1: Soviets have have our training clowning troops. If they have

1030
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: clown troops, we've got to have clown troops to start recruiting.

1031
00:59:17,040 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: But obviously, I mean, I think you'll probably agree with

1032
00:59:20,200 --> 00:59:24,200
Speaker 1: me that I doubt any either side ever had any

1033
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:27,320
Speaker 1: real success at anything like this, And I almost doubt

1034
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 1: how deep the research actually went on either side. I mean,

1035
00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:33,800
Speaker 1: I think you might get a few stories of some

1036
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:37,600
Speaker 1: research on this, but they it probably didn't take them

1037
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: too long to figure out on both sides, however deep

1038
00:59:40,240 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 1: they went, that this was nonsense and it was never

1039
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 1: gonna work. Yeah, I guess you have to ask yourself like,

1040
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:48,760
Speaker 1: imagine wherever you work, imagine a bad idea, like an

1041
00:59:48,840 --> 00:59:53,240
Speaker 1: untotally unworkable idea, coming down from management. How long can

1042
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:57,280
Speaker 1: that initiative live within your organization depends on how delusional

1043
00:59:57,320 --> 01:00:01,919
Speaker 1: management is. So and actually, no, that's a good point,

1044
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:04,400
Speaker 1: because I can see that being a problem, for example,

1045
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:07,600
Speaker 1: in your business scenario, if management does not respond well

1046
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:11,960
Speaker 1: to negative feedback of criticism, as sometimes governments don't, especially

1047
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:16,760
Speaker 1: totalitarian governments. Imagine you are a Soviet scientist and you

1048
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 1: you're you're proper early you're exhibiting proper scientific skepticism, but

1049
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: you get orders from the top down telling you you

1050
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 1: need to figure out how to make psychic communication work

1051
01:00:26,440 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 1: for spies. You're like, Okay, I know that's not real.

1052
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: But if I tell my boss that I might just

1053
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:35,520
Speaker 1: go to the Gulag, right, I've I've got to at

1054
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: least look like I'm I'm throwing due diligence at the problem. Yeah.

1055
01:00:39,640 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 1: And of course we know from from other instances that

1056
01:00:42,520 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union was not uh not immune to being

1057
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:49,440
Speaker 1: totally anti science for political reasons. I mean, I think

1058
01:00:49,480 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: about like a like sinco ism, right, this this completely

1059
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:57,440
Speaker 1: non scientific idea about biology and agriculture pushed like this

1060
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:01,920
Speaker 1: sky trophimal sinko. Uh that they that they tried to implement.

1061
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:05,600
Speaker 1: They tried to just make it science by force, say like, yes,

1062
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:08,720
Speaker 1: this is what science is now. But you know it

1063
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: wasn't true anyway. Back to the end of the story,

1064
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:16,160
Speaker 1: So US defense and Intel research on parapsychology went down

1065
01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:18,680
Speaker 1: a lot of weird rabbit holes, so to speak. I

1066
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 1: had a bad pun. But the the ar per researcher

1067
01:01:22,080 --> 01:01:24,720
Speaker 1: George Lawrence, who had been assigned to work on the

1068
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:29,200
Speaker 1: parapsychology research, later said, quote, I worked so long and

1069
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 1: so hard and dealt with so many fools and Charlatan's

1070
01:01:32,760 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 1: there is no question in my mind that all of

1071
01:01:35,320 --> 01:01:39,400
Speaker 1: it is bunk, all right, So much of the pretty

1072
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 1: much all of it didn't work. And in this case,

1073
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:47,000
Speaker 1: the rabbit scenario, if it was even truly attempted, obviously

1074
01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:50,200
Speaker 1: didn't work. But why doesn't it work? Well, I mean,

1075
01:01:50,240 --> 01:01:54,160
Speaker 1: how would it work? So I want to say effects

1076
01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:57,200
Speaker 1: in the world, if you can make a change in something,

1077
01:01:57,360 --> 01:02:00,560
Speaker 1: if you can cause an effect, it always appears to

1078
01:02:00,560 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 1: be mediated by the transfer of energy. In order to

1079
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 1: send a signal, you've got to direct some form of

1080
01:02:06,720 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 1: energy or matter transfer that makes a change in your

1081
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:13,880
Speaker 1: environment something you can detect. So, uh, you know, talking

1082
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:17,440
Speaker 1: transfers acoustic energy back and forth. Writing a letter is

1083
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:20,120
Speaker 1: storage on physical matter. You have to spend energy to

1084
01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:23,040
Speaker 1: move at one place to another. You can transmit by

1085
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:27,680
Speaker 1: radio waves, that's energy. When you're talking about psychic transmission,

1086
01:02:27,680 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: you're proposing that information is being transmitted from one place

1087
01:02:31,440 --> 01:02:35,960
Speaker 1: to another with no known quantity of energy being exchanged

1088
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:38,600
Speaker 1: in between. And first of all, that just doesn't drive

1089
01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:41,760
Speaker 1: with anything we know about science. But also I want

1090
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:45,400
Speaker 1: to just roll with the idea of maybe psychic energy

1091
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:48,400
Speaker 1: is real, okay, And I want to just accept that

1092
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:52,160
Speaker 1: as a hypothetical for for a second and apply some

1093
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 1: critical thinking to it. Maybe you tell me if I'm

1094
01:02:54,440 --> 01:02:59,520
Speaker 1: being overly pedantic here, but I've got a prediction if

1095
01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:02,600
Speaker 1: psychic powers are real, if we do discover that, for example,

1096
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: humans or rabbits can wirelessly share thoughts with one another,

1097
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:11,280
Speaker 1: I would think the effectiveness of this information transfer would

1098
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:15,800
Speaker 1: have to be mediated by physical distance. Because if you're

1099
01:03:15,840 --> 01:03:19,840
Speaker 1: transmitting something between people's brains, think about your head like

1100
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:25,960
Speaker 1: an antenna, and antenna transmits omnidirectionally. And because of that,

1101
01:03:26,360 --> 01:03:30,160
Speaker 1: the further you get away from the antenna, much greatly

1102
01:03:30,200 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 1: proportionally weaker the signal is. It works by the inverse

1103
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:36,480
Speaker 1: square law. So the further you get away, the much

1104
01:03:36,480 --> 01:03:39,600
Speaker 1: weaker the signal becomes, and eventually it's going to become

1105
01:03:39,640 --> 01:03:43,640
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from whatever other noise is floating around in the

1106
01:03:43,680 --> 01:03:48,720
Speaker 1: ether around you. So I don't see how you could

1107
01:03:48,720 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 1: have a psychic connection between a mother rabbit and a

1108
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:55,320
Speaker 1: baby rabbit. Even if such psychic connections are possible, they

1109
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 1: would really be detectable across hundreds of feet of ocean

1110
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:01,840
Speaker 1: water and you know thou sens of kilometers. Well, and yeah,

1111
01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:04,120
Speaker 1: it also comes down to the fact that, like, why

1112
01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:06,040
Speaker 1: would it need to be that strong? If this were

1113
01:04:06,280 --> 01:04:09,640
Speaker 1: if this were an actual, essentially biological reality, it would

1114
01:04:09,640 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 1: be an involved biological reality. What purpose would it serve? Yeah,

1115
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:18,800
Speaker 1: and we we know too that evolution weeds out, um,

1116
01:04:18,840 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 1: you know, unnecessary energy expenditures. The claw on the crab

1117
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:25,959
Speaker 1: is only going to be as big as it needs

1118
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 1: to be. So, like and under what scenario would rabbits

1119
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: have evolved to deal with not only the you know,

1120
01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 1: the kidnapping of young but the but the transport of

1121
01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 1: that young across the globe and then deep under the sea.

1122
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:45,560
Speaker 1: That it doesn't it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, okay,

1123
01:04:45,600 --> 01:04:47,960
Speaker 1: well maybe we we've got to get to your alternate

1124
01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:51,760
Speaker 1: history hypothetical magic here. We already sort of have explored

1125
01:04:51,800 --> 01:04:54,560
Speaker 1: this a little bit basically the same answer. Yeah, what

1126
01:04:54,560 --> 01:04:58,040
Speaker 1: what would have happened if the Soviets in fact discovered

1127
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:01,959
Speaker 1: it is real? You can d communicate with submarines via

1128
01:05:02,160 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 1: via rabbits and you had to kill baby rabbits, which

1129
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:08,680
Speaker 1: also makes me very sad to think about. How would

1130
01:05:08,720 --> 01:05:11,360
Speaker 1: history be different, Well, I mean a rabbit on every submarine.

1131
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:16,320
Speaker 1: It would mean that you have psychic spies, precaga, astronaut cosmonauts,

1132
01:05:17,120 --> 01:05:20,600
Speaker 1: remote viewing and remote writing is just a standard espionage tool.

1133
01:05:21,040 --> 01:05:23,320
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is that, uh, you know,

1134
01:05:23,680 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 1: how how does all of this uh this uh, this

1135
01:05:26,600 --> 01:05:30,760
Speaker 1: newfound uh psychic technology, how does it all remain just

1136
01:05:30,920 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: within the government that doesn't end up trickling down to

1137
01:05:34,280 --> 01:05:36,120
Speaker 1: the private sector as well? Do you end up having

1138
01:05:36,160 --> 01:05:39,880
Speaker 1: a precog in every corporation, a scanner cop and every

1139
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:44,480
Speaker 1: police precinct I hope So, so obviously that didn't come

1140
01:05:44,520 --> 01:05:45,960
Speaker 1: to pass, So we don't even have to consider it,

1141
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:48,120
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's basically the same answer as in

1142
01:05:48,160 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 1: a previous question. If this had been true, then what

1143
01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:52,720
Speaker 1: else would have been true? And it would have just

1144
01:05:52,920 --> 01:05:55,520
Speaker 1: completely changed our world? It would it would just be

1145
01:05:55,720 --> 01:06:00,200
Speaker 1: magic or psychic phenomenon just utilized in every interest. Though

1146
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:04,240
Speaker 1: I do want to point out if this were true again,

1147
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:07,280
Speaker 1: it would follow the laws of magic as opposed to

1148
01:06:07,280 --> 01:06:10,840
Speaker 1: the capricious magic, or it wouldn't be useful, right, like

1149
01:06:10,920 --> 01:06:14,600
Speaker 1: if you if it's capricious magic that allows psychic connection

1150
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:17,240
Speaker 1: between mother rabbits and baby rabbits, it would not be

1151
01:06:17,280 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 1: a dependable tool for communicating with your submarine officers if

1152
01:06:21,760 --> 01:06:24,520
Speaker 1: it only worked at a random amount per cent of

1153
01:06:24,560 --> 01:06:27,320
Speaker 1: the time. Right, it has to work every time, otherwise

1154
01:06:27,320 --> 01:06:30,600
Speaker 1: it cannot be part of your your your your country's

1155
01:06:30,920 --> 01:06:33,640
Speaker 1: you know, defense protocol. Yeah, it has to work every

1156
01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:37,919
Speaker 1: time or a predictably high percent of the time. Um. Yeah.

1157
01:06:37,920 --> 01:06:41,000
Speaker 1: And so if it's just capricious, it's just apparently at random,

1158
01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:43,560
Speaker 1: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, like there's somebody up

1159
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:47,600
Speaker 1: there making random decisions about it. Then this does just

1160
01:06:47,680 --> 01:06:50,040
Speaker 1: sort of become a part of science, right. We study

1161
01:06:50,120 --> 01:06:53,560
Speaker 1: the phenomenon. We discover when it works, when it doesn't work,

1162
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:56,080
Speaker 1: at what rate it works, and it becomes just part

1163
01:06:56,160 --> 01:06:58,600
Speaker 1: of the known laws of reality, even if we don't

1164
01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:03,320
Speaker 1: understand the mechanism. That's true. Now, obviously the blood magic

1165
01:07:03,320 --> 01:07:07,040
Speaker 1: with rabbits thing didn't didn't shake out. How did that?

1166
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:10,120
Speaker 1: How did science step in and solve this problem? Well,

1167
01:07:10,120 --> 01:07:12,520
Speaker 1: this is actually kind of interesting, I think. So by

1168
01:07:12,600 --> 01:07:15,480
Speaker 1: the time the Cold War, obviously we had radio transmissions,

1169
01:07:15,480 --> 01:07:18,000
Speaker 1: wireless radio where we could talk to submarines. That way,

1170
01:07:18,040 --> 01:07:20,360
Speaker 1: if they were at the surface of the water. Right,

1171
01:07:20,400 --> 01:07:21,840
Speaker 1: you go up to the surface, you put up a

1172
01:07:22,200 --> 01:07:25,439
Speaker 1: radio antenna, we can talk to you. But that sort

1173
01:07:25,440 --> 01:07:27,480
Speaker 1: of defeats the purpose of a submarine. Right you come

1174
01:07:27,520 --> 01:07:29,560
Speaker 1: up to the surface of the water, put up your antenna.

1175
01:07:29,600 --> 01:07:34,200
Speaker 1: You are suddenly detectable to enemy enemy forces. Um. So

1176
01:07:34,520 --> 01:07:38,360
Speaker 1: the problem was that standard radio waves could not penetrate

1177
01:07:38,560 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: deep oceans to reach deep sea subs um And yeah,

1178
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:45,080
Speaker 1: the question is was there any way to signal them

1179
01:07:45,160 --> 01:07:48,400
Speaker 1: without killing rabbits and without forcing them to rise to

1180
01:07:48,440 --> 01:07:52,920
Speaker 1: the surface and reveal themselves. So the problem with penetrating

1181
01:07:52,960 --> 01:07:56,520
Speaker 1: deep sea water is that electromagnetic radiation, which is what

1182
01:07:56,560 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: we used to transmit radio waves is attenuated by sea

1183
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:04,120
Speaker 1: wall water because seawater is a reasonably good electrical conductor,

1184
01:08:05,160 --> 01:08:07,360
Speaker 1: sort of similar to how radio waves will have a

1185
01:08:07,360 --> 01:08:10,720
Speaker 1: hard time penetrating a shield of conductive metal. Right, you

1186
01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:13,360
Speaker 1: can put a shield of conductive metal around you and

1187
01:08:13,400 --> 01:08:16,080
Speaker 1: prevent radio signals from getting to your cell phone or

1188
01:08:16,080 --> 01:08:20,479
Speaker 1: to your brain or whatever. And it's standard frequencies. A

1189
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:23,720
Speaker 1: signal just can't get very far under the ocean. But

1190
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:27,479
Speaker 1: the extent to which a radio signal is attenuated is

1191
01:08:27,520 --> 01:08:32,280
Speaker 1: determined by the frequency of the transmission. The lower the frequency,

1192
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:35,880
Speaker 1: the deeper it goes into the water. So how low

1193
01:08:35,920 --> 01:08:38,479
Speaker 1: would we need to make the frequency to get down

1194
01:08:38,479 --> 01:08:41,760
Speaker 1: to deep sea subs? Apparently you have to go really,

1195
01:08:41,840 --> 01:08:45,679
Speaker 1: really low. And this is where we meet my friend ELF. Ah,

1196
01:08:45,680 --> 01:08:47,960
Speaker 1: So the elves step in and solve everything. So we

1197
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:50,640
Speaker 1: do have a medical solution. It in fact is no,

1198
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 1: it's not. ELF stands for extremely low frequency. So FM radio,

1199
01:08:56,160 --> 01:08:59,760
Speaker 1: for example, operates on the scale of tens to hundreds

1200
01:08:59,840 --> 01:09:04,360
Speaker 1: of mega hurts in the radio frequency omega. Omega hurts

1201
01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:08,760
Speaker 1: is a million hurts. On the other hand, ELF transmissions

1202
01:09:08,760 --> 01:09:12,200
Speaker 1: occur at a scale of tens of hurts. So this

1203
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:16,200
Speaker 1: is literally millions of times lower frequency than FM radio.

1204
01:09:16,960 --> 01:09:20,480
Speaker 1: And as you know, frequency and wavelength are inversely correlated,

1205
01:09:20,600 --> 01:09:24,840
Speaker 1: right the the lower your frequency, the longer your wavelength.

1206
01:09:25,160 --> 01:09:30,439
Speaker 1: So we're talking about massive, massive, huge waves of electromagnetic energy.

1207
01:09:31,080 --> 01:09:33,599
Speaker 1: You might also know that if you want to generate

1208
01:09:33,680 --> 01:09:37,920
Speaker 1: a massively long wavelength, you need a massively big antenna.

1209
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:41,840
Speaker 1: And in the in the idea of e l F transmission,

1210
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:44,960
Speaker 1: these generally because you couldn't build an an antenna this big,

1211
01:09:45,040 --> 01:09:48,720
Speaker 1: it was ridiculous of standard metal antenna. So instead what

1212
01:09:48,760 --> 01:09:51,639
Speaker 1: you had to do was essentially put together the form

1213
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:56,040
Speaker 1: of extremely long assemblies of wires hung up on poles.

1214
01:09:56,240 --> 01:09:59,040
Speaker 1: And we're talking like dozens of miles long. And I've

1215
01:09:59,080 --> 01:10:03,400
Speaker 1: actually seen varying reports the length of these wires of

1216
01:10:03,439 --> 01:10:07,040
Speaker 1: the two known e l F transmitters in the United States.

1217
01:10:07,240 --> 01:10:09,880
Speaker 1: And I don't know if these varying reports reflect different

1218
01:10:09,880 --> 01:10:13,519
Speaker 1: stages on the project or just confusion or misreporting or what.

1219
01:10:13,600 --> 01:10:17,360
Speaker 1: But and definitely in the realm of dozens of miles long,

1220
01:10:17,439 --> 01:10:21,680
Speaker 1: if not longer. But anyway, the United States supposedly had

1221
01:10:21,720 --> 01:10:24,880
Speaker 1: these two stations for e l F SU subcomms and

1222
01:10:24,920 --> 01:10:29,280
Speaker 1: It was one in clam Lake, Wisconsin, another one in Republic, Michigan.

1223
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:31,599
Speaker 1: But what these things would do is have these huge

1224
01:10:31,840 --> 01:10:35,840
Speaker 1: long wires on poles that would sort of use the

1225
01:10:35,920 --> 01:10:39,400
Speaker 1: Earth itself as an antenna, and then it would bounce

1226
01:10:39,479 --> 01:10:43,040
Speaker 1: this ELF signal off the ionosphere and then back down

1227
01:10:43,080 --> 01:10:45,200
Speaker 1: into the water, and then it would reach the sub

1228
01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:48,480
Speaker 1: of course, at great at great depth. Like that communication

1229
01:10:48,680 --> 01:10:52,040
Speaker 1: is one way. There's no way for the submarine to

1230
01:10:52,160 --> 01:10:57,080
Speaker 1: signal back. Also, communications transmitted by extremely low frequency had

1231
01:10:57,120 --> 01:11:01,000
Speaker 1: to be extremely simple because bandwidth is very low with

1232
01:11:01,080 --> 01:11:05,240
Speaker 1: that frequency. This is interesting. Basically we have an answer

1233
01:11:05,320 --> 01:11:08,800
Speaker 1: here that uses actual science, but that kind of has

1234
01:11:08,840 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 1: the same relationship. You couldn't. All you could do would

1235
01:11:11,240 --> 01:11:13,960
Speaker 1: be to signal the sub and make them reach a

1236
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:16,360
Speaker 1: position where they could be you could communicate with them. Yeah,

1237
01:11:16,400 --> 01:11:18,880
Speaker 1: basically you can say like, all right, come up for orders,

1238
01:11:18,960 --> 01:11:22,559
Speaker 1: it's time. Uh. Now. There were reports a few years back.

1239
01:11:22,560 --> 01:11:25,840
Speaker 1: Obviously things have developed since the late twentieth century. There

1240
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:28,400
Speaker 1: were a few reports I read from I think around

1241
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:31,920
Speaker 1: two thousand ten or so where lockeed Martin was developing

1242
01:11:31,920 --> 01:11:34,840
Speaker 1: a program called communications at Speed in Depth, and this

1243
01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:38,719
Speaker 1: would use different combinations of things to enable different types

1244
01:11:38,720 --> 01:11:43,720
Speaker 1: of communication. One would be antenna booey's attached to submarines

1245
01:11:43,840 --> 01:11:47,479
Speaker 1: by cables that are several miles long, and this would

1246
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:50,680
Speaker 1: allow subs to communicate both ways while staying deep and

1247
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:54,040
Speaker 1: operating at normal speed. Another option was something I thought

1248
01:11:54,040 --> 01:11:57,920
Speaker 1: was interesting. It was an acoustic to r F booy system.

1249
01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:00,840
Speaker 1: So here the submarine launches a buoy or a plane

1250
01:12:00,880 --> 01:12:03,160
Speaker 1: drops a booy. Either way you've got a communication buoy

1251
01:12:03,280 --> 01:12:05,880
Speaker 1: on the surface with the radio antenna on it. But

1252
01:12:05,920 --> 01:12:10,600
Speaker 1: then the buoy communicates with the submarine via acoustic transmission

1253
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:12,960
Speaker 1: sound waves in the water which travel through the water

1254
01:12:13,040 --> 01:12:15,600
Speaker 1: fine over long distances, so that you have it, no

1255
01:12:15,680 --> 01:12:19,080
Speaker 1: dead rabbits required, as far as we know now. Now,

1256
01:12:19,120 --> 01:12:22,320
Speaker 1: who knows what happened when they're installing those giant antennas

1257
01:12:22,360 --> 01:12:25,960
Speaker 1: out in the Wisconsin and Michigan wilderness. I know. I

1258
01:12:26,000 --> 01:12:29,400
Speaker 1: think there was some environmentalist opposition to like the Reagan

1259
01:12:29,479 --> 01:12:34,240
Speaker 1: administration wanting to do some various ELF communication projects. So

1260
01:12:35,240 --> 01:12:38,920
Speaker 1: I cannot say honestly that no rabbits were harmed in

1261
01:12:38,960 --> 01:12:41,880
Speaker 1: the making of this film, but at least they weren't

1262
01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:44,920
Speaker 1: killing baby rabbits to communicate with mother rabbits in a

1263
01:12:45,000 --> 01:12:49,400
Speaker 1: cage in the red room. All right, Well, you know,

1264
01:12:49,400 --> 01:12:51,320
Speaker 1: as we as we begin to close out here, I

1265
01:12:51,360 --> 01:12:53,879
Speaker 1: do want to throw in one more a little tidbit

1266
01:12:53,920 --> 01:12:58,600
Speaker 1: here from from Sharon Weinberger. We have decided earlier. She

1267
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:02,080
Speaker 1: points out that while the world of blood magic, submarine communication,

1268
01:13:02,200 --> 01:13:05,720
Speaker 1: and psychic soldier didn't come to pass, George Lawrence, the

1269
01:13:06,240 --> 01:13:10,080
Speaker 1: DARPA program manager that we mentioned earlier, he was super

1270
01:13:10,120 --> 01:13:14,519
Speaker 1: into this idea of brain computer interfaces. So she shares this,

1271
01:13:14,760 --> 01:13:17,280
Speaker 1: This is extra from the Fresh Air interview. He was

1272
01:13:17,320 --> 01:13:20,280
Speaker 1: part of this new age counterculture, which even at DARPA

1273
01:13:20,400 --> 01:13:23,040
Speaker 1: was unusual at the time. He kind of belonged to

1274
01:13:23,080 --> 01:13:25,840
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist, and he was excited by the idea of

1275
01:13:25,840 --> 01:13:29,040
Speaker 1: communicating directly with the human brain. But rather than doing

1276
01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:31,840
Speaker 1: it through magicians or bunny rabbits, he said, suppose we

1277
01:13:31,880 --> 01:13:35,360
Speaker 1: can do it through computers. Now, I remember what I

1278
01:13:35,400 --> 01:13:40,160
Speaker 1: said earlier about using telepathy and and psychokinesis uh to uh,

1279
01:13:40,240 --> 01:13:43,679
Speaker 1: you know, to manipulate I CBMs, or indeed, to establish

1280
01:13:43,920 --> 01:13:48,080
Speaker 1: a quasi uh symbiotic relationship between a human brain and

1281
01:13:48,160 --> 01:13:53,200
Speaker 1: computing equipment. Well, essentially what he did, uh And in

1282
01:13:53,240 --> 01:13:55,559
Speaker 1: the midst of all of this, uh, this magic and

1283
01:13:55,800 --> 01:13:58,559
Speaker 1: essentially you know, nonsense. I guess you could say he

1284
01:13:58,640 --> 01:14:00,840
Speaker 1: ended up laying the foundation for the field of brain

1285
01:14:00,920 --> 01:14:05,360
Speaker 1: computer interface and bio cybernetic computing, the very field that

1286
01:14:05,400 --> 01:14:07,559
Speaker 1: you and I discussed at length in our in our

1287
01:14:07,600 --> 01:14:11,320
Speaker 1: podcast episode Brain to Brain the Science of technotelepathy, and

1288
01:14:11,360 --> 01:14:14,800
Speaker 1: we've also discussed in our recent neuro security episode. Yeah, yeah,

1289
01:14:14,800 --> 01:14:18,400
Speaker 1: it came up there as well. So it's it's it's

1290
01:14:18,479 --> 01:14:21,240
Speaker 1: kind of funny, right, because that kind of technology. I

1291
01:14:21,280 --> 01:14:23,200
Speaker 1: think we even commented on it when we were we

1292
01:14:23,280 --> 01:14:26,599
Speaker 1: were we were discussing it. It sounds a bit like magic,

1293
01:14:26,640 --> 01:14:29,200
Speaker 1: doesn't it. It makes me think. There's a line in

1294
01:14:29,240 --> 01:14:33,200
Speaker 1: William Gibson's Neuromancer where he's talking, you know, the futuristic

1295
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:37,400
Speaker 1: cyber punk environment and talking about technology reaching the point

1296
01:14:37,760 --> 01:14:41,000
Speaker 1: where humans can make their most magical ideas actually real,

1297
01:14:41,720 --> 01:14:44,639
Speaker 1: such as making a pack with the demon, which becomes

1298
01:14:44,640 --> 01:14:46,840
Speaker 1: possible in this book because it's you may end up

1299
01:14:46,840 --> 01:14:50,600
Speaker 1: making a pack with an artificial intelligence. But we have

1300
01:14:50,600 --> 01:14:53,439
Speaker 1: a case herey where was something that is seemingly magical,

1301
01:14:53,520 --> 01:14:56,000
Speaker 1: the idea that that that one brain can speak to

1302
01:14:56,040 --> 01:14:59,960
Speaker 1: another via some sort of an interface, be a magical

1303
01:15:00,120 --> 01:15:03,280
Speaker 1: or technological. As the case ends up being, the only

1304
01:15:03,280 --> 01:15:06,400
Speaker 1: way to achieve real magic is not through magic, yeah,

1305
01:15:06,439 --> 01:15:08,960
Speaker 1: but through but through science, calling on the old, the

1306
01:15:09,000 --> 01:15:12,080
Speaker 1: old slime mold itself. So there you have it. I

1307
01:15:12,200 --> 01:15:15,800
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this, uh, this this journey, this uh,

1308
01:15:15,880 --> 01:15:21,599
Speaker 1: this exploration into into history, into uh, into magic, into science.

1309
01:15:21,640 --> 01:15:23,519
Speaker 1: We really covered a lot of bases here. About the

1310
01:15:23,520 --> 01:15:24,920
Speaker 1: only thing we didn't do we didn't drag in a

1311
01:15:24,920 --> 01:15:28,320
Speaker 1: lot of mythology or or theology, but we uh, we

1312
01:15:28,400 --> 01:15:30,439
Speaker 1: hit on a number of topics here. This was a

1313
01:15:30,439 --> 01:15:32,639
Speaker 1: weird one, but I had a lot of fun. So

1314
01:15:32,640 --> 01:15:36,040
Speaker 1: so hopefully everyone out there feels the same. But hey,

1315
01:15:36,160 --> 01:15:38,160
Speaker 1: let us know about it. In the meantime, you can

1316
01:15:38,240 --> 01:15:40,080
Speaker 1: check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's

1317
01:15:40,080 --> 01:15:42,920
Speaker 1: our mothership. That's where we will find all the podcast episodes,

1318
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:45,759
Speaker 1: including the episodes that I mentioned here. We'll have links

1319
01:15:45,760 --> 01:15:48,520
Speaker 1: to related episodes on the landing page for this episode.

1320
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:52,200
Speaker 1: You also find videos, blog posts, you name it, links

1321
01:15:52,200 --> 01:15:56,440
Speaker 1: out to our various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram.

1322
01:15:56,439 --> 01:15:58,280
Speaker 1: We're on all those things, and if you want to

1323
01:15:58,280 --> 01:16:00,479
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, directly. You can mail us

1324
01:16:00,520 --> 01:16:03,040
Speaker 1: as always that blow the mind at how stuff works

1325
01:16:03,200 --> 01:16:16,280
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1326
01:16:16,520 --> 01:16:26,040
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com. SAI