Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with the follow
Speaker 3: up to last week's episode called the Doomsday Water, which
Speaker 3: was about a totally non existent but historically very interesting
Speaker 3: hypothetical substance called polywater. Now, if you haven't heard or
Speaker 3: watched the last episode yet, this is one where I'd
Speaker 3: really recommend you do the series in order you should
Speaker 3: go back and check that one out. Today, I think
Speaker 3: we're going to add a few more details on the
Speaker 3: history of polywater and then have some discussion about ideas
Speaker 3: that kind of bloom out of the ashes of this
Speaker 3: failed scientific project.
Speaker 2: All right, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, to start with the condensed refresher on the
Speaker 3: timeline of polywater, the story begins with some isolated chemistry
Speaker 3: research taking place in the Soviet Union in the early
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, and this was carried out by a scientist
Speaker 3: named Nikolai Fedyakin. Fedyakin discovers that by condensing samples of
Speaker 3: what he believes to be pure water pure H two
Speaker 3: inside extremely tiny glass capillary tubes. Under just the right conditions,
Speaker 3: he can somehow cause the water to appear to separate
Speaker 3: into two different substances. You've got regular water and then
Speaker 3: something else, this other anomalous form of water which seems
Speaker 3: to be denser than normal water and have weird properties
Speaker 3: like an extremely high boiling point and a very low
Speaker 3: freezing point. So this is kind of hard to imagine
Speaker 3: because we normally think of water as just water. But
Speaker 3: maybe the easiest way to do it is imagine another
Speaker 3: phase of water that you've never seen before. So you
Speaker 3: can think of liquid water, ice and steam, and no
Speaker 3: imagine the same exact substance also has a form that
Speaker 3: is something like the consistency of wax or vacilline. Rob
Speaker 3: I was actually thinking about it in between when we
Speaker 3: recorded the last episode and this one, Like, why is
Speaker 3: it so hard to imagine this hypothetical alternative form of
Speaker 3: water Because we watch phase transitions of water all the time.
Speaker 3: It's like totally normal to observe that liquid water becomes
Speaker 3: ice and then you boil it and become steam. These
Speaker 3: different phases don't look or feel like each other at all,
Speaker 3: and we would just watch them shift back and forth
Speaker 3: and nothing is strange about that, But trying to imagine
Speaker 3: this other phase is just kind of impossible. It feels like, well,
Speaker 3: if it was this other way, if it had this
Speaker 3: other consistency and feeling and appearance, it just wouldn't be water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is interesting to think about. I mean, a
Speaker 2: big part of it is just how mundane the realities
Speaker 2: of the phases of water are. Like I think already today,
Speaker 2: I've encountered water in and all three of its forms.
Speaker 2: You know, I've put ice in my thermos, I've heated
Speaker 2: up water for coffee and tea and produced steam, and
Speaker 2: of course I've had liquid water and am mostly liquid water.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I guess it's just part of it is
Speaker 2: the world we live in, in the world we are.
Speaker 3: I think maybe that's right, And maybe it's because water
Speaker 3: is so fundamental and central to our lives and we
Speaker 3: encounter it so much that trying to imagine this other
Speaker 3: form of it doesn't feel like it makes sense in
Speaker 3: the way that it would be much easier to imagine
Speaker 3: alternate forms of chemicals that we have less day to
Speaker 3: day interaction with. But so anyway, this initial result by
Speaker 3: Nikolai fed Yakin gets the attention of an esteemed Soviet
Speaker 3: chemist named Boris de Yagan, who replicates the procedure for
Speaker 3: making this anomalist water and then starts publishing papers on
Speaker 3: it in Russian language journals. Derriagan believes this alternative, this
Speaker 3: alternate form of water could be immensely important, of immense
Speaker 3: scientific and technological significance, and then in roughly the years
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty six to sixty eight, Derriogan gives presentations on
Speaker 3: the anomalous water at international conferences and gradually starts to
Speaker 3: get the attention of Western scientists, especially in Great Britain
Speaker 3: and the United States. Several of these scientists begin their
Speaker 3: own anomalous water research program, copying the initial methods for
Speaker 3: making it from the Soviet Union, and then in the
Speaker 3: year nineteen sixty nine, the anomalist water has a breakout moment.
Speaker 3: There is one paper by a group of American scientists
Speaker 3: showing infrared spectroscopy results from the substance that appear to
Speaker 3: show a different signature than that of regular water, which
Speaker 3: is interpreted to mean that well, it is water, but
Speaker 3: it's got a different molecular structure than normal water, which
Speaker 3: is what gives it this different spectrum. It is hypothesized
Speaker 3: to be something like a polymer form of water. So
Speaker 3: a polymer is a long, long or large molecule made
Speaker 3: out of repeating units, and they hypothesize that maybe there
Speaker 3: is a hexagonal arrangement of water molecules forming these kind
Speaker 3: of like sheets or long, long structures. And here's where
Speaker 3: you get the name polywater. It's like a polymer of water.
Speaker 3: We also talked a bit last time about how important
Speaker 3: it might have actually been in the reception of this
Speaker 3: hypothetical substance, that it got a cool name, that it
Speaker 3: was no longer being called just like you know, anomalous
Speaker 3: anomalist behavior of water or various descriptive phrases. That it
Speaker 3: got a name, and the name sounded interesting, that it's polywater.
Speaker 3: You know, of course, poly means many, so it almost
Speaker 3: implies a kind of mini splendor water, water that can
Speaker 3: do many things or has maybe can do anything. And
Speaker 3: in fact, lots of people in the media kind of
Speaker 3: ended up treating it like it could do anything. There
Speaker 3: was a frenzy of attention in the popular media, so
Speaker 3: people start imagining all kinds of wild ways that polywater
Speaker 3: could be applied. Maybe it's going to be the next
Speaker 3: steam engine. It'll just you know, change everything in technology.
Speaker 3: It'll do machine lubrication and nuclear power. It'll unlock the
Speaker 3: secret of eternal youth. There is one article that was
Speaker 3: quoted in one of our sources last time that was like, Hey,
Speaker 3: your living room furniture, it's gonna be made out of water.
Speaker 3: We never got to the bottom of how that works,
Speaker 3: but I like it. But so there would be arguments
Speaker 3: between polywater proponents and polywater skeptics. In these arguments, of course,
Speaker 3: began in the scientific community and scientific literature, but this
Speaker 3: eventually spilled out into the popular media around the year
Speaker 3: nineteen s six nine, and it became a subject of
Speaker 3: controversy that was being covered by the mainstream press, not
Speaker 3: just in scientific literature. Also in nineteen sixty nine you
Speaker 3: get this letter published in the journal Nature by a
Speaker 3: chemist and named F. J. Donaho of Wilkes College in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: which sketches out this really alarming idea. He says, maybe
Speaker 3: polywater is not just a revolutionary discovery, it might be
Speaker 3: the most dangerous substance on Earth, because, according to Donnaho,
Speaker 3: it's possible that like the fictional Ice nine in the
Speaker 3: novel Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. If a seed crystal
Speaker 3: of polywater were to escape into the natural environment and
Speaker 3: get deposited in the soil or the ocean, even if
Speaker 3: you just flush it down the toilet, it's going to
Speaker 3: end up in the in the environment, it could provide
Speaker 3: a nucleation point that would cause all of the water
Speaker 3: in the world to become polywater, which I admit is
Speaker 3: a to me, a gripping image, a truly grotesque and
Speaker 3: bizarre and amazing image, a vasaline apocalypse, or a kind
Speaker 3: of like wax end of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also like kind of the ultimate technological whip
Speaker 2: see like, oops, we broke water. Everyone water is now broken.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work anymore, not the way that we were
Speaker 2: accustomed to you.
Speaker 3: Now, it's very important to note that this is not
Speaker 3: like the mainstream opinion on polywater at the time. Immediately
Speaker 3: after this, several prominent pro polywater scientists respond to the
Speaker 3: letter in Nature. They argue with good reasons, it seems
Speaker 3: that this is not likely. For one thing, if polywater exists,
Speaker 3: it must occur sometimes in nature. So if it could
Speaker 3: turn Earth into a vacilline world, it would have already
Speaker 3: done that. And you know, they had other arguments too.
Speaker 3: Of course, the whole thing is made pointless by the
Speaker 3: fact that we would later discover polywater does not exist.
Speaker 3: But while this big frenzy of excitement and enthusiasm and
Speaker 3: fear is going on in the mainstream media in popular culture,
Speaker 3: there are also lots of skeptical scientists just chipping away
Speaker 3: at the polywater project. The most common objection is, are
Speaker 3: you sure you're not just seeing the effects of impurities
Speaker 3: in your water samples. Derriagan and the polywater proponents were
Speaker 3: always quick to say, no, that is not what's happening.
Speaker 3: Maybe your samples of water are contaminated, but ours are pure,
Speaker 3: And that's kind of hard to argue with. I mean,
Speaker 3: all you can do is test the ones you have
Speaker 3: access to. If somebody is saying the ones you don't
Speaker 3: have access to are the good ones, that's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's a problem.
Speaker 2: But yeah.
Speaker 3: So by the early nineteen seventies, the skeptical undermining of
Speaker 3: the polywater project has made a lot of progress. It
Speaker 3: starts to look more and more like the anomalous water
Speaker 3: is anomal because it isn't water. It's a bunch of
Speaker 3: contamination with leading candidates for the contamination being well. Some
Speaker 3: people talked about particles of silica leaching from the glass
Speaker 3: into the water and forming a kind of gel. Another
Speaker 3: big contender is human sweat biological contamination from the probably
Speaker 3: from the researchers themselves who were carrying out the experiment.
Speaker 3: And then one famous blow to the polywater project comes
Speaker 3: in the early seventies when an American researcher named Dennis L.
Speaker 3: Rousseau does analysis on a bunch of sweat and gets
Speaker 3: almost the exact same pattern that had famously appeared in
Speaker 3: the big polywater spectroscopy paper in nineteen sixty nine. So
Speaker 3: at this point, consensus starts to turn heavily against the
Speaker 3: existence of polywater, and roughly nineteen seventy seventy one, most
Speaker 3: scientists that were initially curious or open minded about it
Speaker 3: start saying, no, I don't think this is real. It
Speaker 3: takes the hardcore or polywater boosters a little more time
Speaker 3: to come around, but by roughly nineteen seventy three, basically everybody,
Speaker 3: including Boris de Riyagan, realizes and admits that it was
Speaker 3: probably all just various types of contamination All along. The
Speaker 3: stuff was not acting like water because it wasn't water.
Speaker 3: So that's the story we talked about in the last episode.
Speaker 3: Like I did in the previous episode, I want to
Speaker 3: mention a couple of major sources here at the top.
Speaker 3: One is an article called case Studies in Pathological Science,
Speaker 3: published in American Scientists in the year nineteen ninety two
Speaker 3: by Dennis L. Rousseau. This article is great because it
Speaker 3: provides a historical overview of the polywater affair, a short one,
Speaker 3: but from the point of view of someone who was
Speaker 3: actually involved in it. Rousseau was initially very interested in
Speaker 3: the possibilities of polywater, as he talks about in the article.
Speaker 3: He's like, he and a collaborator of his, we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: could it be the fountain of youth? Could it unlock
Speaker 3: you know, longevity. But he eventually becomes very skeptical about it.
Speaker 3: He becomes a polywater skeptic, and he leads some experiments
Speaker 3: showing how it is almost certainly just caused by impurities.
Speaker 3: Another big source I wanted to mention is an excellent
Speaker 3: chapter in a book called H two O. A Biography
Speaker 3: of Water by the British science writer Philip Ball, first
Speaker 3: published in nineteen ninety nine. And to kick things off today,
Speaker 3: I wanted to mention another article I was reading. Actually
Speaker 3: I was reading this one in between when we recorded
Speaker 3: the two episodes. This was a piece in Distillations magazine
Speaker 3: from February twenty twenty called the Rise and Fall of
Speaker 3: Polywater by the material scientist and science communicator Anissa Ramirez.
Speaker 3: And this piece raised a few details about the story
Speaker 3: that we didn't talk much about last time, but I
Speaker 3: think would be good to dwell on for a moment
Speaker 3: because they might inform the rest of our discussion today.
Speaker 3: So one thing that Ramirez's account brings up is how
Speaker 3: a lot of the early obsess about the weird properties
Speaker 3: of polywater were visual observations made through a microscope. So
Speaker 3: not getting a sample of this stuff, putting it in
Speaker 3: a machine and getting a numerical readout on it, it
Speaker 3: would be people looking through a microscope. So fed Yakin's
Speaker 3: original experiments. They generated only a tiny amount of the
Speaker 3: anomalous water. It was far less than a droplet, and
Speaker 3: he had to study it through a relatively low resolution
Speaker 3: optical microscope. When he made the original observations of properties
Speaker 3: like the alleged greater density than normal water that was
Speaker 3: like an inference made based on looking at how it
Speaker 3: behaved through a microscope. And then once der Yoggan's team
Speaker 3: took over, they also used microscope observation rather than bult
Speaker 3: measurement to note a lot of things. They used that
Speaker 3: to find that it allegedly expanded more than regular water
Speaker 3: when it was heated, that it had a different pattern
Speaker 3: of light refraction than normal water, and because of how
Speaker 3: tiny the quantities of available anomalous water were, these were
Speaker 3: visual observations of behavior through the optical microscopes in strange conditions,
Speaker 3: like in these extremely tiny glass containers. So that's something
Speaker 3: to remember for later. We'll come back to that later
Speaker 3: in the episode. Another thing that we should dwell on
Speaker 3: for a minute. We did sort of mention this in
Speaker 3: the last episode, but it's worth revisiting is the strange
Speaker 3: fact that while all of this frenzy was going on
Speaker 3: in the late sixties, nobody had ever published a high
Speaker 3: quality chemical analysis of a polywater sample to prove that
Speaker 3: it was actually one hundred percent water. Philip Ball highlights
Speaker 3: this in his chapter. Ramirez highlights this in the article too,
Speaker 3: that this was in part due to how little polywater
Speaker 3: could be made you're making these microscopic amounts of it
Speaker 3: at a time, and so some researchers reported that they
Speaker 3: just couldn't make enough of it that a reliable chemical
Speaker 3: analysis was possible with their instruments. You know, as we
Speaker 3: know from a lot of different domains, like you need
Speaker 3: a reasonable sample size in order to have a reliable result.
Speaker 3: You know, we often think about this in the context
Speaker 3: of much higher levels of abstraction in the sciences, like
Speaker 3: psychology studies. You know, if you have a psychology study
Speaker 3: that's got twenty participants, that's usually not going to be
Speaker 3: a very powerful result. You don't have a lot of
Speaker 3: confidence that the same patterns would show up in the
Speaker 3: general population. And you can say, in a way the
Speaker 3: same thing about physical sciences, though obviously you're dealing with
Speaker 3: different types of quantities there, but like extremely tiny quantities
Speaker 3: are harder to measure reliable. Ramirez writes in our article,
Speaker 3: quote chemicals, like humans, have unique fingerprints, and instruments called
Speaker 3: spectrometers can identify the elements and molecules from a chemical
Speaker 3: fingerprint or spectrum. Yet success hinges on the size of
Speaker 3: the sample, where bigger is better. In published papers, anomalous
Speaker 3: water believers lamented that there just wasn't enough of it,
Speaker 3: certainly not enough to identify its molecular makeup. And I
Speaker 3: think in the last episode we talked about the quote
Speaker 3: from one of the guys who was working on polywater
Speaker 3: at the time, one of the students of John Desmond Bernal,
Speaker 3: who said, if only we had a thimbleful. So, while
Speaker 3: this polywater research project was going on, because you couldn't
Speaker 3: make enough of it to really get a good answer
Speaker 3: to these core questions about it, the core questions like
Speaker 3: is this really water, scientists kept nibbling around the edges.
Speaker 3: They would measure what they could with the amounts available,
Speaker 3: including physical characteristics like boiling point and viscosity, but even
Speaker 3: these results were probably hampered in reliability by the tiny
Speaker 3: amounts that could be tested at a time. Some skeptics
Speaker 3: of polywater were sort of brought around to believing in
Speaker 3: it by a paper that we mentioned last time. This
Speaker 3: was the one published in the journal Science in June
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, which showed the work of scientists named
Speaker 3: Robert Stromberg, Elis Lippencott, and Warren Grant, and they had
Speaker 3: produced what looked like a high quality spectrometry result that
Speaker 3: showed the absorption spectrum of polywater did not match that
Speaker 3: of normal water or they claimed of any known substance.
Speaker 3: But this was taken to indicate not that the sample
Speaker 3: was not water, but that the water had a different
Speaker 3: molecular structure than normal water, hence the idea of polywater.
Speaker 3: Funny thing here is they also tried to do a
Speaker 3: chemical analysis of polywater and they found some contaminants. They
Speaker 3: found like sodium and silicon, but they were like, those
Speaker 3: are there in the quantities observed are too small for
Speaker 3: it to matter, so we don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 3: And this is when you get that letter from Donahoe
Speaker 3: to Nature writing about the dangers of polywater. Ramirez mentions
Speaker 3: a detail here that I didn't encounter in any of
Speaker 3: the other sources I was reading, where she says that
Speaker 3: Robert Stromberg, you know, one of the authors of the
Speaker 3: sixty nine paper, started getting angry letters from people who
Speaker 3: said he was bringing about the end of the world.
Speaker 3: So that's the public engagement we crave, you know. And
Speaker 3: also I think this is maybe important. We didn't talk
Speaker 3: about this enough last time. Ramirez mentions briefly how this
Speaker 3: was affected by the Cold War context. We talked about
Speaker 3: the Cold War context in the idea of the exchange
Speaker 3: of information between East and West being limited in some ways,
Speaker 3: not to say that there was no exchange of information,
Speaker 3: because clearly the ideas were making it across. There were
Speaker 3: international conferences, journals to get translated back and forth, but
Speaker 3: there were, you know, just awkward things about how information
Speaker 3: was shared around the world at the time because of
Speaker 3: the Cold War context. Ramirez mentions that there are indications
Speaker 3: that by nineteen sixty nine, the CIA was trying to
Speaker 3: keep a close eye on polywater research in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 3: and according to reports published in the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 3: the Pentagon started trying to fund polywater research. So it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's like Doctor Strangelove, like, we cannot allow
Speaker 3: a polywater gap. And people made this joke at the time,
Speaker 3: you know, playing up on the idea of a missile
Speaker 3: gap from the nuclear arms race. Now it's like, well,
Speaker 3: if this is maybe going to be the most important
Speaker 3: technology in the world, whether that's for good or for ill,
Speaker 3: and the people were saying it could be for both,
Speaker 3: we better get it first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, hindsight is twenty twenty. We can
Speaker 2: look back and see this as the race to become
Speaker 2: the masters of sweaty water. But again, at the time,
Speaker 2: if it's seemed like an adversary would have mastery over
Speaker 2: some sort of new form of water that had all
Speaker 2: these applications, then yeah, it was worth keeping an eye on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: even though we know how it ended up.
Speaker 3: Right, So we know now for multiple reasons that polywater
Speaker 3: was not actually dangerous. First of all, it didn't exist,
Speaker 3: and even at the time people who thought it did
Speaker 3: exist had good arguments against the idea that it was dangerous.
Speaker 3: But if you strip yourself of hindsight, and you strip
Speaker 3: yourself of access to the good arguments against the danger,
Speaker 3: if you allow yourself to inhabit the vasilyne apocalypse mindset,
Speaker 3: it creates, at least for me, a very familiar feeling, actually,
Speaker 3: the feeling that people somewhere are doing something obscure that
Speaker 3: could be very dangerous. It could even be the end
Speaker 3: of the world, and I have no power to stop it,
Speaker 3: except like trying to write letters or you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And add to that the knowledge that there's pressure operating
Speaker 3: in the opposite direction that's like driving toward this result
Speaker 3: that you're now afraid of and that you don't have
Speaker 3: power to stop that pressure, Like there's some amount of
Speaker 3: international great power competition that is making people think, even
Speaker 3: if this stuff is dangerous, we've got to have it first.
Speaker 3: They can't have it first. Feel similar to the nuclear
Speaker 3: arms race, of course, and also feel similar to if
Speaker 3: people have talked about this a lot where we might
Speaker 3: be with AI. You know, there are I'm constantly struck
Speaker 3: by the idea that there are a lot of people
Speaker 3: in the United States who used to argue that AI
Speaker 3: is potentially very dangerous. We might need to make absolutely
Speaker 3: sure it's safe before developing it, and it might not
Speaker 3: be possible to make sure that it's absolutely safe. And
Speaker 3: now some of the same people are saying, well, you
Speaker 3: can't let China build it first. We've got to build
Speaker 3: it first. So that consciousness we have of these pressures
Speaker 3: pushing in the opposite direction against caution in these scenarios
Speaker 3: where we don't know exactly how dangerous something could be.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got these international competitive pressures, You've got
Speaker 3: money making pressures. Money making incentives, of course, are leading
Speaker 3: people down trails that we don't know could turn out
Speaker 3: to be okay, could turn out to be disastrous and
Speaker 3: we can't really know in advance. It's a maddening feeling.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, this is this is going to be at
Speaker 2: times fun to reflect on, at times maybe concerning, but
Speaker 2: it is absolutely you know, a reality of our modern
Speaker 2: age and our technological anxiety, and some of our anxiety
Speaker 2: is about about science. A lot of it does come
Speaker 2: down to this idea of containment, Like, if something is
Speaker 2: we create something that is pidentially dangerous, how do we
Speaker 2: keep it from getting out and getting places it shouldn't
Speaker 2: be and falling into the hands of people who shouldn't
Speaker 2: have it right? And then there's that added realization that,
Speaker 2: no matter what, containment might not be possible for these things,
Speaker 2: certainly not in the long run or in the short run.
Speaker 2: And I keep coming across examples of this, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea that you could look at a new technology
Speaker 2: and think about like the absolute realization of the thing,
Speaker 2: and how that could present some sort of existential risk
Speaker 2: and some sort of huge danger to everything that we know.
Speaker 2: But then there are also these short term possibilities where
Speaker 2: the thing is not very advanced at all, It is
Speaker 2: just advanced enough to get out of our hands and
Speaker 2: quickly get out of control. So we'll look at some
Speaker 2: examples of some of these, and a lot of it
Speaker 2: also just comes back to the I think it's impossible
Speaker 2: not to think of the tale of Pandora's Box in
Speaker 2: all of this that there is there's except in the
Speaker 2: sense that there's almost this certainty that these boxes will
Speaker 2: be opened, and then once they are opened, we know
Speaker 2: how it goes. Then the the the ill factors that
Speaker 2: were contained within cannot be put back in the box.
Speaker 2: The only thing that remains in the box is hope,
Speaker 2: or at least we hope that's the case. Yeah, So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I wanted to roll through some of these. We can
Speaker 2: we can chat about these. A number of these involves
Speaker 2: some form of runaway reaction, much like the hypothetical polywater
Speaker 2: reaction or the fictional Ice nine reaction. We'll get to
Speaker 2: some examples of that that are you know, a certain
Speaker 2: amount of concern. We have any number of hypothetical apocalypses
Speaker 2: based on science gone wrong, of science that could go wrong,
Speaker 2: or science that could just get out out of our hands.
Speaker 2: And yeah, like we've been saying, AI is certainly one
Speaker 2: of the big ones, clearly the one that resonates the
Speaker 2: most as we are currently living through the realization of
Speaker 2: the thread, and we're going to cover a few specific
Speaker 2: AI related scenario, but ultimately there are so many different
Speaker 2: angles to take on AI and its threat, especially as
Speaker 2: far as the democratization of AI tools goes for various
Speaker 2: nefarious purposes. Many of these pose a significant contemporary threat.
Speaker 2: And that's in addition to all of the various highly
Speaker 2: observable ways that AI is impacting industries and ways of
Speaker 2: life and hurting people's jobs already.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, because AI is so broad as a
Speaker 3: technology class, its effects could end up being so broad,
Speaker 3: so it's almost harder to narrow the focus of the
Speaker 3: conversation like it would be for some of these other
Speaker 3: hypothetical substances or real substances that people have worried about
Speaker 3: being a kind of runaway reaction or containment danger. But
Speaker 3: it is also funny that if you go back, just
Speaker 3: like ten or twenty years, you can regularly find people
Speaker 3: in imagining the future of AI as AI is something
Speaker 3: that would be developed in containment and then there would
Speaker 3: be a question about is it safe to let it out? Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's just not what we got at all. It's
Speaker 3: just like it's just it's out from the moment it exists.
Speaker 3: It's all you know, it's just set loose always it's
Speaker 3: been loose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was kind of a vision of AI and
Speaker 2: its use in creative endeavors that I was exposed to
Speaker 2: years back. You know. It's probably at a I want
Speaker 2: to say, this was maybe a panel at the World
Speaker 2: Science Festival in New York, and it presented this optimistic
Speaker 2: idea of like in the future, in the near future,
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent, contemporary examples you'll have certain
Speaker 2: artists using AI and working alongside it to create new
Speaker 2: forms of art or music or what have you, but
Speaker 2: in a very collaborative way and in a way that
Speaker 2: does that wouldn't feel icky. Instead, we have, like you know,
Speaker 2: everybody out there using these tools, uh, creating a lot
Speaker 2: of material that is that is ikey, a lot of
Speaker 2: AI slop as we've come to call it, you know,
Speaker 2: which is not to say that that original vision is
Speaker 2: is isn't a possibility and there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: value in it. I mean, especially since the tools are
Speaker 2: not going away. I hope that that is what we
Speaker 2: come back to and that is something that we can
Speaker 2: return to. But but yeah, it is. It is alarming
Speaker 2: to watch in real time all around us. Now not
Speaker 2: everything regarding machines and AI is current or near term.
Speaker 2: We also have the likes of the gray goo scenario.
Speaker 2: This is, it's gray goo, not grey goose. That would
Speaker 2: involve some sort of catastrophic event concerning vodka obviously, but
Speaker 2: the gray goo scenario the idea here by which molecular
Speaker 2: self replicating nanotechnology ends up consuming the entire biomass of
Speaker 2: Earth and turning it into itself, so kind of like
Speaker 2: a global T one thousand mass in its most literal sense,
Speaker 2: you know, the idea that it would just turn everything
Speaker 2: into silvery goo.
Speaker 3: Kind of similar to the Eisneine scenario or the vaseline
Speaker 3: apocalypse in that it represents a consumption of the natural
Speaker 3: environment around us, a transformation of substances in our environment,
Speaker 3: substances we need, or the substances of ourselves, into something
Speaker 3: that is not useful to us or is actively harmful
Speaker 3: to us. And so yeah, it has that in common
Speaker 3: with the Donahoe scenario or the Vonnegut scenario, except the
Speaker 3: way I understood people imagining the gray goo obviously, this
Speaker 3: was always just like a speculative, Yeah, kind of science
Speaker 3: fiction thing because we don't have nanotechnology of this type.
Speaker 3: But the way I understood it was that because you
Speaker 3: would have these little tiny robots, nanotechnology robots that would
Speaker 3: be designed to make copies of themselves or to turn,
Speaker 3: you know, molecules into something that they're trying to produce,
Speaker 3: if that ever got out of hand, there really wouldn't
Speaker 3: be a good way to stop it. Is that the idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know. Obviously this idea has been around
Speaker 2: for number of decades at this point. The term was
Speaker 2: coined by molecular nanotechnology pioneer kay Eric Drexler and Engines
Speaker 2: of Creation back in nineteen eighty six, and we could
Speaker 2: easily do an entire episode on it. It's fascinating, I think,
Speaker 2: not only in this kind of like worst case scenario
Speaker 2: and cautionary tale sort of way, but it also feels
Speaker 2: kind of metaphorically sound and intimidating because it is, again,
Speaker 2: like you said, about the transformation of the natural world
Speaker 2: into things, and we do this all the time. It's
Speaker 2: a huge an alarming aspect of human culture. We turn
Speaker 2: things into other substances that we need or we think
Speaker 2: we need, and then those become garbage. And we take advantage,
Speaker 2: of course of a lot of the resources of our
Speaker 2: earth that are not easily replaced or are irreplaceable.
Speaker 3: Massively speeding up and automating something we do, you know,
Speaker 3: from an alien's point of view, we do, which is,
Speaker 3: we take natural substances and turn them into trash.
Speaker 2: Right right. And you know, we've in various ways always
Speaker 2: done this. But we've also observed the way that technology
Speaker 2: and technological advancements have taken something that has been a
Speaker 2: part of human culture and made it even more destructive
Speaker 2: and more problematic, which is, you know, not again not
Speaker 2: to say the technology is bad, but it's about what
Speaker 2: we do with the technology. So the other interesting thing
Speaker 2: when you go back to T. Drexler's original idea for
Speaker 2: the gray goose scenario is that the threat wouldn't be
Speaker 2: bound to some sort of ultimate highly evolved version of
Speaker 2: the thing, but rather, to quote early as similar based replicators,
Speaker 2: they get out and wind up of supplanting advanced organisms
Speaker 2: in the ecosystem.
Speaker 3: So is the idea that people working on this technology
Speaker 3: in this sort of science fiction scenario, they would eventually
Speaker 3: be able to make the nanotechnology safe, but before they
Speaker 3: get to the fully refined safe version. An early version
Speaker 3: breaks containment and gets out of hand and it's making copies.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's kind of a problem to do the
Speaker 3: safety steps last, especially if you're dealing with something that
Speaker 3: you know, if it broke containment could destroy everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's my understanding that this has become less
Speaker 2: of a realistic threat in the eyes of many technologists.
Speaker 2: But it also, at the same time is taken on
Speaker 2: a life of its own, such as in science fiction,
Speaker 2: in the culture novels of the and m Banks, you
Speaker 2: have the hegemonizing swarms, whereas just occasionally the culture and
Speaker 2: or other interstellar powers have to deal with the fact
Speaker 2: that machines will start doing this and decide and basically
Speaker 2: treat it like life form. Like there's a lot of
Speaker 2: the ethical discussions, like at what point does it make
Speaker 2: sense to wipe it out? So you know, in science fiction, again,
Speaker 2: there are a number of takes on it that are
Speaker 2: rather fascinating. You also have these different spin offs their concepts,
Speaker 2: like green Goo, in which engineered organic matter ends up
Speaker 2: taking it ends up taking the place of the nanotech
Speaker 2: in this particular scenario.
Speaker 3: Okay, so something that would be based on organic chemistry
Speaker 3: or maybe cells or something like that instead of just
Speaker 3: tiny machines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it would be gray goo, except Crone and Burgie,
Speaker 2: you know that sort of thing life gou.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, coming back to AI, there is all also something
Speaker 2: called information gray goo, a term that I believe was
Speaker 2: coined by British technology journalist Ian Betteridge. Also, I've seen
Speaker 2: it referred to as the text apocalypse. And this one,
Speaker 2: this one feels a lot, a lot closer and a
Speaker 2: lot more fearsome. In this scenario, AI generated content overwhelms
Speaker 2: human discourse.
Speaker 3: That'll never happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this one feels a lot more like
Speaker 2: a real world threat because we already see the impact.
Speaker 2: I mean, this has just become part of our just
Speaker 2: like standard informational intake, just having to be on guard
Speaker 2: against AI generated material because you know, is it authentic?
Speaker 2: Is it is it real or not? Like we want
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 3: Or do we want to know? I mean, I think
Speaker 3: one of the real danger is is that the the
Speaker 3: scourge of AI slop interacts with our preferences and biases
Speaker 3: such that you when you see something that you don't
Speaker 3: like or don't want to be true, you can recognize
Speaker 3: that it is AI generated garbage and fake and trying
Speaker 3: to manipulate you in some way. And when you see
Speaker 3: something that you do like or do want to be true,
Speaker 3: very often you'll just be like, yeah, that's probably real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe there's a real danger point and it's
Speaker 2: an uneven boundary line because it kind of applies at
Speaker 2: different parts of our life, these different areas where we decide, okay,
Speaker 2: I don't care about authenticity in this area, and it'll
Speaker 2: be something like I see it happening, you know, all
Speaker 2: around me, where someone you know might well say, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want AI doing this or that.
Speaker 2: But then they might think, well, I'm okay with it
Speaker 2: creating my next head shot. You know, I'm okay that.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like maybe I have some you know,
Speaker 2: I have some some hang ups about how my last
Speaker 2: headshot look and I'm totally okay with AI just creating
Speaker 2: something for me, even though it's not authentic. It's not
Speaker 2: really what I look like, and it's not created via
Speaker 2: authentic means. But you know, you say, all right, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna check that off. But then what's the next thing
Speaker 2: to fall? And then ultimately, what does the boundary line
Speaker 2: end up looking like anyway, I want to read a
Speaker 2: quote here from betteredge, he writes, and you can read
Speaker 2: about this at ianbetterage dot com. He has a whole
Speaker 2: post on the information gray Goo. He says, quote, this
Speaker 2: is the AI grey goose scenario and Internet choked with
Speaker 2: low quality content which never improves, where it is almost
Speaker 2: impossible to locate public, reliable sources for information because the
Speaker 2: tools we have been able to rely on in the past,
Speaker 2: Google social media can never keep up with the scale
Speaker 2: of new content being created, where the volume of content
Speaker 2: created overwhelms human or algorithmic abilities to sift through it
Speaker 2: quickly and find high quality stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny how when we talk about the
Speaker 3: dangers of AI, people think about the terminator and Skynet
Speaker 3: or I have no mouth that I'm scream And you know,
Speaker 3: as I said earlier, like we can't really know where
Speaker 3: we're gonna end up. You don't even know how likely
Speaker 3: to rate those kinds of outcomes. You hope that they're
Speaker 3: very unlikely because you know, but you don't really know.
Speaker 3: With stuff like this, I almost feel like you could
Speaker 3: make the case that we're already halfway there. We're sort
Speaker 3: of edging into this scenario, are we not?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I mean it really does feel like a
Speaker 2: lot of the battle is on, you know, who's going
Speaker 2: to win between like this effort to sort of like
Speaker 2: break down the public to where we don't care about
Speaker 2: authenticity and anything, we don't care about human creation. We're
Speaker 2: just like, it sounds good enough to me, it looks
Speaker 2: good enough to me, it feels good enough to me,
Speaker 2: and then we're just okay with all of the jobs
Speaker 2: that are lost, all of the meaning that is lost
Speaker 2: in people's lives just because a particular image was a
Speaker 2: little more pleasing to us, or a particular piece of
Speaker 2: writing was just a little more calibrated to our tastes
Speaker 2: and so forth, or something was we were able to
Speaker 2: generate it quickly and easily through some sort of online interface.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's alarming. It's it's frankly terrifying because I
Speaker 2: wish hope was still in the Pandora's box. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure that it is. A lot of it just comes
Speaker 2: down to like, what what are we going to put
Speaker 2: up with?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess the other thing being that the
Speaker 3: example of AI is much more complicated, I think than
Speaker 3: the other examples like so greygu is just essentially a
Speaker 3: science fiction scenario at this point. There's nothing really like
Speaker 3: it going on, at least that we know, So, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just a hypothetical, and it is debatable to what
Speaker 3: extent it is plausible. Polywater, of course was you know
Speaker 3: that the fears about that are totally unfounded. It never existed.
Speaker 3: Even if it did exist, it probably wasn't dangerous in
Speaker 3: the ways that we're being imagined. I guess AI is
Speaker 3: different for a number of reasons. I mean, for one, thing,
Speaker 3: like it actually exists and is here. I guess you
Speaker 3: could debate in terms of its existence. You can have
Speaker 3: a debate about whether or not it actually constitutes intelligence
Speaker 3: or not, and people do have that philosophical debate and intelligence.
Speaker 2: It's an AI that the term is sometimes used a
Speaker 2: little loosely with what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so people argue about that, but there's no denying
Speaker 3: that it is here and it's doing something. It's doing
Speaker 3: a lot of things that I mean, I don't want
Speaker 3: to sound too negative about it, like it does a
Speaker 3: lot of things that are very useful. It's very useful
Speaker 3: as a you know, as a search engine, as Yeah,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, like it makes information processing tasks
Speaker 3: easier in a lot of ways. Of course, it's still
Speaker 3: you know, has a lot of hallucination problems and all that.
Speaker 3: But it is not an imaginary thing like like polywater
Speaker 3: or like or you know, just a fully science fiction
Speaker 3: speculative thing like gray goo. It's here. It does some
Speaker 3: things that are undeniably useful, and it's integrated into the economy,
Speaker 3: which makes it you know, harder to I guess it
Speaker 3: makes the question of thinking about its potential danger is
Speaker 3: even more fraud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I want to throw out,
Speaker 2: as is always the case, listeners, if you have differing
Speaker 2: opinions on any of this and you would like to
Speaker 2: rationally discuss them with us, you know, write in. We'll
Speaker 2: have that email address at the end of this episode.
Speaker 2: We're always happy to discuss. Now, I'm going to turn
Speaker 2: the page a little bit, get away from the from
Speaker 2: from the the AI concerns. Don't worry, they're not going away.
Speaker 2: They'll be They'll be there when we come back to them.
Speaker 2: But I want to turn to some examples of potential
Speaker 2: you know, chain reaction catastrophes tied to advancements in science
Speaker 2: that have turned out to not be the case cases
Speaker 2: much like poly water, where someone was like, this might
Speaker 2: happen and we need to be wary of it, and
Speaker 2: then for a variety of reasons, that worst case scenario
Speaker 2: turned out to not be the case. Yeah, so we
Speaker 2: already mentioned atomic weaponry, like the advent of atomic weaponry
Speaker 2: being being something that helped inform the understanding of the
Speaker 2: potential threats of poly water and also ends up casting
Speaker 2: a long shadow over any technology to come out after
Speaker 2: the advent of nuclear weaponry, especially and the one I
Speaker 2: want to focus on here is one that I believe
Speaker 2: this I have not actually seen the Oppenheimer film, but
Speaker 2: I believe this actually comes up in the film, and
Speaker 2: that is the idea that, Okay, when we carry out
Speaker 2: this first atmospheric detonation of a nuclear device, it might
Speaker 2: ignite the atmosphere, resulting in a global chain reaction of
Speaker 2: atmospheric fire.
Speaker 3: This is addressed in the movie. The characters do talk
Speaker 3: about the possibility. It's been a while since I've seen it,
Speaker 3: so I don't remember the specific scene, but my understanding
Speaker 3: is that in reality and history they did consider this
Speaker 3: as a possibility, but most of the experts who did
Speaker 3: the calculations on it, rated the likelihood as very low. Again,
Speaker 3: that raises the question of I don't know how low
Speaker 3: does the likelihood of something like this have to be
Speaker 3: for you to feel okay?
Speaker 2: Continuing, Yeah, yeah, especially when in this case where obviously
Speaker 2: the goal is the creation of a weapon of mass destruction,
Speaker 2: a weapon that's going to cast this long shadow over
Speaker 2: human societies for ages and ages to come. A similar
Speaker 2: possibility was apparently explored for underwater detonation as well, and again,
Speaker 2: like you said, while technically possible, scientists of the day
Speaker 2: agreed that it was terribly unlikely, and our current understanding
Speaker 2: of it seems to fall in the idea that the
Speaker 2: density of Earth's atmosphere is just much too low for
Speaker 2: this to take place, as is the atmosphere of Venus.
Speaker 2: Even jennif Flgarris did a nice write up on this
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four for Advanced Science News, I believe
Speaker 2: in response to the Oppenheimer movie, interviewing a pair of
Speaker 2: nuclear astrophysicist on the topic, and that seemed to be
Speaker 2: where they landed on it. It's like, it's just, as
Speaker 2: far as we understand it, this is not possible in
Speaker 2: Earth's atmosphere. And of course all of this is just
Speaker 2: in addition to the other obvious concerns over the potential
Speaker 2: for the rollout of nuclear weaponry to enable humans to
Speaker 2: destroy each other through devastating warfare, fallout, wide ranging fires,
Speaker 2: and the chilling grip of nuclear winter. This is, of course,
Speaker 2: it's just another just obvious and huge aspect of the
Speaker 2: nuclear age. You know, we knew the world would not
Speaker 2: be the same, and it has not been.
Speaker 3: Right, So there was concern about the possibility of a physical,
Speaker 3: immediate runaway reaction that could destroy the world, and those
Speaker 3: concerns were not founded, or at least it was considered
Speaker 3: very unlikely and proved to not be the case that
Speaker 3: a nuclear detonation would do that to the end atmosphere.
Speaker 3: And yet there was a runaway, a destructive runaway reaction,
Speaker 3: and we just don't know like on what time scale,
Speaker 3: if at all, it could prove extremely destructive to the world.
Speaker 3: I mean, the atomic weapons they were designing were used
Speaker 3: in the immediate circumstance, and then you know, it's hard
Speaker 3: to imagine that going through into the future, that we
Speaker 3: could have nuclear weapons on Earth and they would never
Speaker 3: ever be used ever again for you know, however many
Speaker 3: you know, thousands or hopefully millions of years, humans continue
Speaker 3: to exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it would be great, That would be
Speaker 2: great the case, but.
Speaker 3: The odds seem to be against that never ever happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, have you met us, the human race?
Speaker 2: This is sadly something we're highly capable of using. And
Speaker 2: even you know, this is obviously a complex discussion. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of ins and outs, and you can
Speaker 2: get into various analysis of like where we are now
Speaker 2: with various safeguards and so forth. But even if the
Speaker 2: potential for their usage is low, if it's low year
Speaker 2: to year, and then we have to just carry on indefinitely,
Speaker 2: like what does that look like statistically? So yeah, continues
Speaker 2: to be a matter of great concern obviously exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, what are the odds of flipping heads
Speaker 3: on a coin eight times in a row? Is very low?
Speaker 3: But just keep flipping the coin, I mean, you keep
Speaker 3: doing it, Eventually you'll get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now I want to cover a few more here.
Speaker 2: The number of you may be reminded of some of
Speaker 2: the discussions and science headlines and just general media headlines
Speaker 2: around two thousand and eight, regarding the large hadron collideer
Speaker 2: the LHC, specifically, as it smashed protons of greater and
Speaker 2: greater speeds, it was brought up, hey, what if they
Speaker 2: were to accidentally generate micro black holes that could potentially
Speaker 2: grow and, I don't know, consume the entire planet Robi.
Speaker 3: You've looked into this more recently than I have. But
Speaker 3: my understanding of this, just from my memory, is that
Speaker 3: the main people talking about this were not well informed scientists.
Speaker 3: It was more kind of a fringe conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it definitely one of those things that ends
Speaker 2: up resonating at the headline level everywhere else because the
Speaker 2: idea of like creating a black hole in a lab
Speaker 2: and then eating everything, you know, that's an evocative idea.
Speaker 2: It certainly jives with a lot of our science fiction, like.
Speaker 3: The Vasilene apocalypse or like the gray Goo. It's like
Speaker 3: the consumption of the world around us by a strange substance.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to deny how interestingly awful that idea is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just the idea of the black hole, even
Speaker 2: if you only halfway understand it, and I think it's
Speaker 2: probably less most I'm not going to pretend to completely
Speaker 2: understand black holes, but you know they're evocative. It's a
Speaker 2: fascinating idea. LHC scientists considered the possibility and concluded that quote,
Speaker 2: if micro black holes do appear in the collisions created
Speaker 2: by the LHC, they would disintegrate rapidly in around ten
Speaker 2: to the negative twenty seventh power seconds. They would decay
Speaker 2: into standard model or super symmetric particles, creating events containing
Speaker 2: an exceptional number of tracks in our detectors which we
Speaker 2: would easily spot. Finding more on any of these subjects
Speaker 2: would open the door to yet unknown possibilities. In other words,
Speaker 2: it wasn't happening, and it's not a real concern. Now
Speaker 2: there's another related concern that also popped up. I think
Speaker 2: it may be resonated in headline level a little less
Speaker 2: strongly because not as evocative as black holes. But there
Speaker 2: was also this idea that hypothetical clumps of strange matter
Speaker 2: called strangelets could be generated in a particle accelerator, either
Speaker 2: the LHC or or the relativistic heavy ion collideer. The
Speaker 2: rhic and the extreme version of the scenario is that
Speaker 2: it would set off a chain reaction that converts the
Speaker 2: entire planet into a condensed lump of strange goop. However,
Speaker 2: no strangelets have ever been observed at the RHIC or
Speaker 2: the LHC, and the scientists contend that they're even less
Speaker 2: likely at the LHC facility, the planet has not been gooped,
Speaker 2: so we seem to be pretty good on this case
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: I feel like these examples raise a different kind of
Speaker 3: question about these containment fears, which is, you know, we've
Speaker 3: been exploring since we're obviously talking about like very serious
Speaker 3: heavy stuff like nuclear weapons and potentially AI talking about
Speaker 3: stuff that quite clearly I think most reasonable people would
Speaker 3: agree we should be concerned about, like there should be
Speaker 3: levels of caution dealing with these things. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: you really that anybody can raise fears about anything for
Speaker 3: any reasons, good or not. So, like if people are
Speaker 3: raising concerns, just the fact that somebody is raising concerns
Speaker 3: about something doesn't necessarily mean those concerns are things that
Speaker 3: are well founded or that we should take seriously. And
Speaker 3: part of the problem is like in the realm of
Speaker 3: cutting edge science, like most people if they hear about
Speaker 3: a concern with something, oh, you know, they're doing an
Speaker 3: experiment at the particle collider. You know, it could do
Speaker 3: something that destroys the world. Ninety nine point whatever percent
Speaker 3: of people have no idea whether they should take that
Speaker 3: concern seriously or not. But the fact that somebody is
Speaker 3: saying it makes you feel like, well, maybe I should
Speaker 3: be concerned because you don't know, you know, you don't
Speaker 3: have the background knowledge to evaluate these claims and understand
Speaker 3: whether they're they're based on reasonable concerns or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean a lot of it comes down
Speaker 2: to need trust in science. You need trust in scientific institutions,
Speaker 2: and you need regulations in place, and you need all
Speaker 2: of this sort of working together. Another thing I should
Speaker 2: bring up, just briefly. I don't want to spend too
Speaker 2: much time on strangelets and micro black holes, but kind
Speaker 2: of getting back to the poly water. These often raise questions, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're talking about creating something in a lab, but it's
Speaker 2: the thing that we're hypothetically creating. Is it something that
Speaker 2: is that is just occurring elsewhere in the world or
Speaker 2: in the universe, And then we have to sort of
Speaker 2: weigh those two things, you know, like, Okay, if this
Speaker 2: is a possibility in a lab, then it is surely
Speaker 2: a reality elsewhere in the universe. And what does that
Speaker 2: mean for our fears?
Speaker 3: Right with the polywater comparison being that if we can
Speaker 3: make it in the lab with you know, no especially
Speaker 3: weird conditions, we're just like tiny quartz tubes. It probably
Speaker 3: occurs in nature sometimes, so doesn't seem like it could
Speaker 3: be just that some quantity of it in the environment
Speaker 3: immediately leads, or not immediately at all, leads to worldwide catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another case that's interesting to bring up in this
Speaker 2: conversation is the nineteen seventy five a Silamar conference on
Speaker 2: recombinant DNA. This was a gathering of biologists, lawyers, and
Speaker 2: physicians at a Silamar conference center near Monterey, California, a
Speaker 2: lovely place I once attended a wedding there. Oh really Yeah,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend visiting that area if you get the chance.
Speaker 2: But the conference in question was centered around biohazards and
Speaker 2: regulatory concerns regarding developing and as well as just near
Speaker 2: future biotechnological advancements in general, especially recombinant DNA genetic material
Speaker 2: created from two different sources to create all new sequences.
Speaker 2: It was an advancement that at the time was highly promising,
Speaker 2: and it has proven to be very beneficial in biotechnology
Speaker 2: and medicine multiple research areas. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: at the time, researchers also recognized the huge potential for
Speaker 2: the creation of organisms with dangerous properties, not so much
Speaker 2: like space were wolves, or anything, but more so like
Speaker 2: the accidental creation of deadly pathogens that could conceivably wash
Speaker 2: over the globe, like any number of real and imagined
Speaker 2: plagues and doomsday scenarios. There was a lot of concern
Speaker 2: regarding cancer viruses cancer causing viruses in particular. I read
Speaker 2: a quote from French biologist Philippe Kouilsky about the conference,
Speaker 2: in which he underlined the excitement surrounding it, but also
Speaker 2: the confusion quote because some of the basic questions could
Speaker 2: only be dealt with in great disorder or not confronted
Speaker 2: at all. On the frontiers of the unknown, the analysis
Speaker 2: of benefits and hazards were locked up in concentric circles
Speaker 2: of ignorance. How could one determine the reality without experimenting,
Speaker 2: without taking a minimum of risk. I read this quote
Speaker 2: in a silomar in recombinant DNA the end of the
Speaker 2: Beginning by medical researcher Donald S. Fredrickson. This came out
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one, but I think that succinctly summarizes
Speaker 2: some of the issues regarding a number of these scenarios.
Speaker 2: Science advances, like I said in previous episode, kind of
Speaker 2: like a swine mold navigating a maze of understanding. And
Speaker 2: when do we decide to not let it explore a
Speaker 2: particular corridor or to try and slow its pace down
Speaker 2: in a particular corridor.
Speaker 3: Can you even effectively do that? I mean, science is
Speaker 3: not a top down structure. I mean there are structures
Speaker 3: and institutions within it that have some top down control,
Speaker 3: but overall it is sort of like an organism in itself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a worldwide phenomenon where people can independently pursue things,
Speaker 3: I mean, not totally independently. Cooperation is very important to
Speaker 3: how science proceeds. But you know it's very hard to
Speaker 3: you know, put put the lock on it and just
Speaker 3: say nobody can look into this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if there's money to be made, or there
Speaker 2: is a strategic advantage for like a nation state to.
Speaker 3: Acquire or people think either of those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there's whether or not. Yeah, yeah, even if
Speaker 2: there even if there's there's nothing substantial to it at all,
Speaker 2: if there's a possibility of either of those things, it
Speaker 2: may get a fair amount of attention. So the conference
Speaker 2: in question, it resulted in a number of safety guidelines.
Speaker 2: Some research was halted and biosafety levels were established. Some
Speaker 2: of those are still in use today. Frederickson pointed out
Speaker 2: in his paper, though, that some of these guidelines were
Speaker 2: relaxed in seventy eight. By seventy eight, but at the
Speaker 2: time of his writing, none of the more dire biotechnology
Speaker 2: outcomes discussed had come to pass, while many great advancements
Speaker 2: had been made. But he stressed that we shouldn't let
Speaker 2: either factor wayh too heavily on our judgment of the
Speaker 2: precaution exercised at the conference. And I think that is
Speaker 2: something to keep in mind with all these scenarios, Like
Speaker 2: we know that either you know, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of benefits to be gained or there ended up not
Speaker 2: being a threat, But we have to really put ourselves
Speaker 2: in the shoes of the people in the trenches dealing
Speaker 2: with the prospect of some sort of an advancement in
Speaker 2: their given time.
Speaker 3: Well, like we talked about last time. I think it's
Speaker 3: very important when we reflect on the polywater saga for
Speaker 3: our takeaway not to be what a bunch of dummies,
Speaker 3: you know that they like, they're fools, and I'm smarter
Speaker 3: than them because I wouldn't have fallen for polywater. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's silly. We have the benefit of hindsight. We can,
Speaker 3: you know, read how the whole thing unfolded. We know
Speaker 3: the end of the story. A lot of very smart
Speaker 3: and very productive scientists got confused and led into this
Speaker 3: research dead end. And fortunately, you know, we did eventually
Speaker 3: figure it out. Like there was a clarification process that
Speaker 3: went on in the scientific community and eventually it was
Speaker 3: figured out that like, oh, polywater is not real. This
Speaker 3: was mistaken all along in a way that is science
Speaker 3: working the way it's supposed to. I mean, it is
Speaker 3: inevitable in science that some incorrect ideas are going to
Speaker 3: end up are going to be floated and in some
Speaker 3: cases might attract a lot of attention and enthusiasm. But
Speaker 3: the great thing about science is that it is this
Speaker 3: vast collaborative process of gradual clarification where that stuff will
Speaker 3: get sorted out over time. So it's not quite fair to,
Speaker 3: you know, to flog people for having been mistaken for
Speaker 3: some time. It might be fair to flog people if
Speaker 3: they're like really stubborn, you know, and once the evidence
Speaker 3: comes out they refuse to acknowledge it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, another comparison I want to make here, this
Speaker 2: is I think there's a strong comparison to be made
Speaker 2: here between this and the hypothetical polywater scenario, and it
Speaker 2: concerns an HIV AIDS medication by the aim of Retona vir.
Speaker 2: It was originally produced in a crystalline form, and this
Speaker 2: was called form one that was discovered in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: and it was offered in an unrefrigerated capsule. But then
Speaker 2: a couple of years later, form two was discovered with
Speaker 2: significantly lower bioavailability, so less useful as a medication, but
Speaker 2: it also was more stable in this form, and the
Speaker 2: problem quickly became clear that if form two came in
Speaker 2: contact with form one, it would convert Form one into
Speaker 2: form two, and even trace amounts could do this, you know,
Speaker 2: trace amounts in production, and so the pharmaceutical company behind
Speaker 2: it ended up apparently losing millions due to its impact
Speaker 2: on production lines. Eventually, new formulations allowed them to avoid
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 3: So the comparison here would be that kind of like
Speaker 3: the alleged polywater you know, the vasilene apocalypse and or
Speaker 3: the Eisen nine thing, you would have a contagion by
Speaker 3: touch of a chemical form. So like the one touch
Speaker 3: is one comes into contact with the other and it
Speaker 3: changes it and maybe changes property is that you don't
Speaker 3: want changed or important. In this case, it wouldn't affect
Speaker 3: the entire biosphere, but you know, would affect important properties
Speaker 3: of a pharmaceutical as intended.
Speaker 2: Right, right, that's my understanding of it here. But again
Speaker 2: it's also my understanding that they end up finding a
Speaker 2: new formulation that allows them to avoid the problem. Now
Speaker 2: there's another one I want to mention here, vacuum decay. Right,
Speaker 2: So this one's complex and it entails quantum field theory.
Speaker 2: But my best understanding of the idea is that our universe,
Speaker 2: what if it actually has a vacuum state that you
Speaker 2: could describe as a metastable false vacuum, and that suddenly
Speaker 2: if a bubble of lower energy true vacuum were to
Speaker 2: manifest in our university, a quantum tunneling, it would rapidly expand,
Speaker 2: correcting our vacuum to a lower energy true vacuum, and
Speaker 2: rewrite the fundamental laws of physics and alter the masses
Speaker 2: of elementary particles in the process.
Speaker 3: I remember reading about this year's back. I also, of course,
Speaker 3: don't understand the finer points of this, you know, the
Speaker 3: physics involved. But yeah, I remember reading about this and
Speaker 3: thinking like, well, that's kind of interesting, except like, what
Speaker 3: would you do about it? Nothing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if I'm understanding it correctly, it would unmake,
Speaker 2: remake everything in our universe. Life as we know it
Speaker 2: would no longer be possible. Nothing as we know it
Speaker 2: would be possible. But the upside, according to astrophysicist doctor
Speaker 2: Katie Mack, is that since the bubble would expand at
Speaker 2: the speed of light, unmaking or remaking everything into an
Speaker 2: unknowable new form, you would just never know what hit you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things would just simply stop being and that's all
Speaker 2: there is to it. So it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: not really something to lose sleepover. And again it involves
Speaker 2: like something from outside of our universe becoming part of
Speaker 2: our universe. Like it's it's like a borderline outside context
Speaker 2: problem here.
Speaker 3: Borderline that seems like the kind of definition of an
Speaker 3: outside context problem, isn't.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if we've thought of it, then I
Speaker 2: guess we have some context for it, but barely. I
Speaker 2: feel like, yeah, and there's nothing we could do about it,
Speaker 2: And it would be the last if we were to
Speaker 2: worry about it. It would be the last thing we worried about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, And finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't
Speaker 2: at least mention the scenario presented in the series one
Speaker 2: pilot episode of Look Around You, the two thousand and
Speaker 2: two parody of nineteen eighties British educational programming. This was
Speaker 2: created by Robert Popper and Peter Sarah Finowitch. And this
Speaker 2: is the Helvetica scenario.
Speaker 3: Didn't this come up on the show just recently?
Speaker 2: Well, it may have. I do love it and think
Speaker 2: about it way too often. But yeah, in the pilot,
Speaker 2: again this is all parody, and this is all surrealistic humor.
Speaker 2: We learned that under certain unstated conditions, a change can
Speaker 2: take place in the calcium molecule, causing molecular collapse. In
Speaker 2: something called the Helvetica scenario. It's not explained, but we
Speaker 2: see a faceless, agitated human scientist in containment kind of like,
Speaker 2: you know, pawing at the wall and taking what we've
Speaker 2: been discussing here. I guess we could loosely imagine some
Speaker 2: sort of scenario by which cascading calcium collapse would have
Speaker 2: dire consequences for us in our world, especially since it
Speaker 2: plays a number of crucial roles in our bodies. So
Speaker 2: I guess we might imagine that we would sort of
Speaker 2: melt into blobs of some sort. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: we would turn into faceless scientists dudes beating on the wall,
Speaker 2: but it wouldn't be good if it could happen. Luckily,
Speaker 2: it cannot happen. But I can't help but imagine that
Speaker 2: polywater and or ice nine partially inspire the Helvetica scenario
Speaker 2: presented in this program.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess we keep imagining polywater the polywater apocalypse
Speaker 3: as it gets into the environment, takes over everything in
Speaker 3: the environment, and you get like the ending of Kat's
Speaker 3: Cradle where the world is ice nine. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess the other version to imagine is like doctor Manhattan
Speaker 3: locked in the room and he gets the poly water
Speaker 3: inside his body and you just get to watch what
Speaker 3: happens to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and just hope it doesn't get out in
Speaker 2: any way. Look around you. It gives us a best
Speaker 2: case scenario for something like this, where it's happened, it's bad,
Speaker 2: but we keep it locked away.
Speaker 3: Are you cool if we talk a bit about pathological.
Speaker 2: Science, Yeah, let's do so.
Speaker 3: A couple of the big sources that I mentioned in
Speaker 3: the last episode, that chapter by Philip Ball and the
Speaker 3: paper by Dennis Rousseau both frame polywater as a key
Speaker 3: example of what's known as pathological science. I was trying
Speaker 3: to understand the difference between pathological science and pseudoscience. I
Speaker 3: don't think there are actually formal definitions that keep these
Speaker 3: things separate, so instead I just have to infer the
Speaker 3: difference in how they're usually used. So the distinction I
Speaker 3: would make is this pseudoscience is fake science, and it's
Speaker 3: fake science from the beginning. It might be esthetically disguised
Speaker 3: as science. Maybe it is supposed to look and feel
Speaker 3: like science to people who can't tell the difference, but
Speaker 3: it is fundamentally not guided by an earnest search for
Speaker 3: the truth. It is fundamentally not scientific in its methods,
Speaker 3: and so it is sort of doomed from the start.
Speaker 3: There's nothing really scientific about pseudoscience in how it works,
Speaker 3: maybe only in how it looks, whereas pathological science, I think,
Speaker 3: is usually referred to science that begins as real science
Speaker 3: and does attempt to follow the scientific method, but it
Speaker 3: refers to these projects or cases where genuine researchers are
Speaker 3: led into error by things like unconscious bias and failure
Speaker 3: to confront central questions or contradictions. A big thing in
Speaker 3: how people talk about pathological science, at least as it
Speaker 3: seems to me, is a failure to ask the right questions.
Speaker 3: So maybe people are following the scientific method, but they
Speaker 3: are forming their conclusions based on focusing on the wrong questions,
Speaker 3: and so polywater seems to be a great example of that.
Speaker 3: In this paper by Dennis Rousseau, he also uses the
Speaker 3: examples of cold fusion, another pathological science project, and infinite
Speaker 3: dilution properties in water principle behind like homeopathy and stuff.
Speaker 3: What Russeau does in his paper is he tries to
Speaker 3: identify three overriding characteristics of pathological science. Because of course,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not entirely useless when people go astray
Speaker 3: in searching for the truth. You can actually learn a
Speaker 3: lot from looking how smart people get things wrong, it's
Speaker 3: a very useful thing to study. So Rousseau first calls
Speaker 3: to the attention he did not invent the concept of
Speaker 3: pathological science. The term seems to come from, or at
Speaker 3: least was made very popular by the Nobel Prize winning
Speaker 3: chemist Irving Langmuir. Langmuir identified six symptoms of pathological science
Speaker 3: in a famous talk that he gave in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: I think, but Russeau tries to condense them into three characteristics,
Speaker 3: or he condenses langmuir six into two characteristics, and then
Speaker 3: he adds one of his own. So the first one
Speaker 3: I want to quote from Russeau here quote the effect
Speaker 3: being studied is often at the limits of detectability or
Speaker 3: has a very low statistical significance. So if what he's
Speaker 3: getting at here is if the claimed effect is very
Speaker 3: weak or hard to detect, errors of bias can creep
Speaker 3: into the observation or interpretation process. He identifies especially effects
Speaker 3: that are not measured by objective numerical readings on instruments,
Speaker 3: but effects that require visual observation by the experimenter. So
Speaker 3: if you have to rely on looking with your eyes
Speaker 3: to see the effect, and the effect is very weak.
Speaker 3: This is the danger zone for unconscious bias to take
Speaker 3: over in observation. Also, when effects are very weak or
Speaker 3: of low statistical significance, you might not be able to
Speaker 3: establish a clear connection between the size of the effect
Speaker 3: you see and the size of the very variable that
Speaker 3: is supposedly causing it. So I don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: I coat my body in three times as much tiger repellent,
Speaker 3: and I see the exact same number of tigers, which
Speaker 3: is zero.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So like if you're not establishing a strong correlation between
Speaker 3: how much you're tweaking the supposed cause and how big
Speaker 3: the effect is. When you don't see that correlation, that
Speaker 3: should raise concerns. But also Russeau says, the experiment are
Speaker 3: involved in pathological science can sometimes wave that concern away
Speaker 3: by saying, you know, well, we're in the early stages
Speaker 3: of discovering a new phenomenon. We don't understand all of
Speaker 3: the variables yet. In some cases that could be true,
Speaker 3: but that can also be an excuse that allows you
Speaker 3: to keep believing in a false theoretical model. But I
Speaker 3: think this is really important when you compare it to
Speaker 3: the detail that we talked about earlier. Today where a
Speaker 3: lot of these initial observations about the properties of polywater,
Speaker 3: you know, the easing ways that stuff was different than
Speaker 3: regular water. They're observed on tiny, tiny quantities of it,
Speaker 3: and they're not measured with normal you know, bulk measurement instruments.
Speaker 3: They're being inferred from visual observation through microscopes, So researchers
Speaker 3: are relying on things they see through microscopes, acting you know,
Speaker 3: properties of tiny amounts of something that they're looking at
Speaker 3: through these lenses. That does seem to be like a
Speaker 3: real danger zone where you might kind of see what
Speaker 3: you want to see.
Speaker 2: You know, from the micro to the macro. This reminds
Speaker 2: me of some of the pre photography errors in astronomy
Speaker 2: that we've discussed in the show before, be it the
Speaker 2: sighting of a potential planetary body, to even the supposed
Speaker 2: identification of things like canals on Mars and so forth.
Speaker 3: Perfect connection. Actually, because people often cite Martian canals as
Speaker 3: a like a core example of pathological science. It's not
Speaker 3: that it was fake pseudoscience. It was people trying to
Speaker 3: use the scientific method and trying to be responsible but
Speaker 3: getting fooled by you know, they were trying to see
Speaker 3: things with these telescopes that they couldn't get the resolution
Speaker 3: they needed, and they were making these inferences and then
Speaker 3: building on that and that was the problem. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: we got led into this false belief that Mars had
Speaker 3: these canals.
Speaker 2: And it was you know, go back and listen to
Speaker 2: our older episode on it. I forget the title off
Speaker 2: it offn It might have just been canals of Mars
Speaker 2: or something, but you know, it was an exciting idea
Speaker 2: that wasn't impossible at the time. But yeah, it was
Speaker 2: a lot of it was based on what do I
Speaker 2: think I see with with well, not the naked eye,
Speaker 2: but what do I think I see with my eye
Speaker 2: through a telescope?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. Characteristic number two that Russo identifies of pathological
Speaker 3: science is a readiness to disregard prevailing ideas and theories.
Speaker 3: The way he puts it, it's when you know, my
Speaker 3: new observation, Yeah, it conflicts with all previous experience and
Speaker 3: with our current best theories. But you're too dogmatically wedded
Speaker 3: to the past. I'm changing everything, you know. Within science,
Speaker 3: there is always a balance between open mindedness and explanatory conservatism.
Speaker 3: It is, of course true across the history of science
Speaker 3: that older theories are superseded by newer, more accurate theories.
Speaker 3: You know, you can talk about ways that Newton's model
Speaker 3: of gravity was superseded by Einstein, though it also doesn't
Speaker 3: really mean Newton was wrong, Like, at certain scales, Newton
Speaker 3: is still incredibly useful. You know, you can still do
Speaker 3: Newtonian calculations and make good predictions. But it turns out
Speaker 3: that you can't use Newton to understand all gravitational phenomena
Speaker 3: in the world, in the universe. And so you know,
Speaker 3: Einstein provides an update and a refinement that gets more
Speaker 3: accuracy in certain ways, and you know, you get that
Speaker 3: all throughout science. So you have to remain open minded
Speaker 3: that there might be better theories of reality than the
Speaker 3: ones we're using now. At the same time, we have
Speaker 3: the theories we have now because they're really good and
Speaker 3: they consistently make good, accurate predictions. And most of the time,
Speaker 3: when somebody thinks they've come up with a new model
Speaker 3: that changes everything, they're probably wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's exceptional moments and time and exceptional individuals have
Speaker 2: proven the exception. You know, are you the one that
Speaker 2: has reinvented things and broken through to the other side. Maybe,
Speaker 2: but it is unlikely.
Speaker 3: Well, also, I think of your theory is revolutionary, and
Speaker 3: it contradicts a lot of common experience or prevailing theories.
Speaker 3: It should have a good a good account of why,
Speaker 3: like what's going on there? Why did we get this
Speaker 3: previous mistake? And result of this theory is actually better.
Speaker 3: So and one thing I was thinking about is this
Speaker 3: is one way that the social virtues of science come in.
Speaker 3: In my view, what we mean when we talk about
Speaker 3: science can't really be done by one person alone or
Speaker 3: by one team. It is a diverse, global, professional and
Speaker 3: social culture that strengthens itself by acting as a community
Speaker 3: to process new ideas and information and sort truth from error.
Speaker 3: And one of the tools in its arsenal, of course,
Speaker 3: is replication or experiment. New ideas need to be tested
Speaker 3: through critical experiments, and if somebody claims revolutionary experimental results
Speaker 3: that don't fit with our best theories of the world,
Speaker 3: other scientists try to repeat that experiment themselves and see
Speaker 3: if they get the same results. And here we get
Speaker 3: to Rousseau's third characteristic of pathological science. He says, essentially,
Speaker 3: the investigator avoids decisive experiments that could potentially rule out
Speaker 3: their revolutionary theory.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: To avoid confronting the truth, the investigator selects experiments that
Speaker 3: do nothing except perhaps add another significant figure to the
Speaker 3: result or measure a variant of the phenomenon. The investigator
Speaker 3: never finds the time to complete the critical measurement, which
Speaker 3: could bring down the whole house of cards. This connects
Speaker 3: to what we were talking about with polywater, where all
Speaker 3: this stuff's going on while there's never been a really good,
Speaker 3: high quality chemical analysis of polywater to say, are we
Speaker 3: sure we know what it is? Are we sure this
Speaker 3: is just water?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Like the one thing that could really answer
Speaker 2: the question and determine whether we should proceed or not. Well,
Speaker 2: let's not do that. Let's just keep proceding anyway. And
Speaker 2: there may be more to that. As we've discussed with polywater,
Speaker 2: there are other practical reasons of why that major step
Speaker 2: hasn't been taken with polywater, being the amount of polywater
Speaker 2: that is available.
Speaker 3: If it is practically difficult, that's almost kind that makes
Speaker 3: it easier to perpetuate, you know, to move on without
Speaker 3: asking this critical central question. Now, what if somebody else
Speaker 3: does that critical experiment and reveals your new discovery to
Speaker 3: be wrong. In some cases, you will get people ignoring
Speaker 3: the finding or criticizing the method. For some reason your
Speaker 3: results are not acceptable, maybe you did the experiment wrong again.
Speaker 3: You know, this is not usually regarded as good behavior retrospectively,
Speaker 3: but people can get really caught up, you know, in
Speaker 3: trying to pursue their programs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are a number of human factors
Speaker 2: that go into this too, anyway, the ego, sun, time,
Speaker 2: some costs, so much so, so many different factors.
Speaker 3: I would argue science is a superhuman process, but individual
Speaker 3: scientists are humans. And one thing Rousseau points out that
Speaker 3: I think I would totally agree with is that in
Speaker 3: these historical examples where you get scientists getting caught up
Speaker 3: in pathological science, they're usually not doing so consciously. They
Speaker 3: are falling victim to unconscious bias while genuinely believing themselves
Speaker 3: to be on the right track. You might get little
Speaker 3: moments of doubt, like you could ask the question like,
Speaker 3: why isn't more of an effort made to pursue that
Speaker 3: one really decisive central experiment. But you know that kind
Speaker 3: of our motivations can be unconsciously affected by biases as well.
Speaker 3: You know, like what seems like the most important thing
Speaker 3: to spend your time on can also be affected by
Speaker 3: unconscious biases. You may get the occasional conscious fraud, but
Speaker 3: I think it's like most people who have the will
Speaker 3: and intent to do that sort of thing do not
Speaker 3: end up working in scientific research. It's not a very
Speaker 3: natural fit. And yeah, so Rousseau argues that argues that
Speaker 3: in his experience, deliberate fraud in science is extremely rare.
Speaker 3: It's the more dangerous cocktail is these kind of sketchy
Speaker 3: areas where you're relying on these weak results and maybe
Speaker 3: visual obs or it's this cocktail of self delusion and
Speaker 3: sloppiness that can sustain a project like this. And again
Speaker 3: it's important to note that, like, you know, unlike pseudoscience,
Speaker 3: which tends to never go away, you know, the pseudoscience
Speaker 3: comes up and it just keeps on going forever. One
Speaker 3: distinction does seem to be that with these things identified
Speaker 3: as pathological science, they are transient phenomena. They pop up
Speaker 3: for a few years and people get excited about and
Speaker 3: eventually everybody's like, oh, yeah, that's that's not that was
Speaker 3: all wrong, and they move on.
Speaker 2: I guess one of the dangers is that you have
Speaker 2: pathological science. But then what if pseudoscience comes a long
Speaker 2: and says like, hey, what do you got over there?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that does happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they latch onto it or or you
Speaker 2: know someone who's like, this is a great story. It's
Speaker 2: an entertaining story. Let's tell that story and people will
Speaker 2: love to hear it. And now it's taken on life
Speaker 2: of its own outside, completely removed from the science system,
Speaker 2: and therefore now it will live on and for an
Speaker 2: extended period of time no matter what science decides on it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and of course the other factor is on top of that, Well,
Speaker 2: if I buy into this story, if I buy into
Speaker 2: the pseudoscience, does it make something easier for me? Does
Speaker 2: it like, does it give me some sense of hope?
Speaker 2: Does it sort of distills some anxiety or fear that
Speaker 2: I have about the world or my place in it?
Speaker 2: You know, if it becomes useful in that regard to
Speaker 2: the individual or to corporations or to nation states, then yeah,
Speaker 2: that just feeds into it more.
Speaker 3: Or is it entertaining or does it does it flatter
Speaker 3: my biases? Or yeah, yeah, this may be counterintuitive, but
Speaker 3: framing it within thinking about the superhuman qualities of the
Speaker 3: scientific process as a whole, apart from just the individual
Speaker 3: human qualities of each researcher as a person. I kind
Speaker 3: of find the whole Polywater store a bit inspiring. You know,
Speaker 3: it's weird to think of a story of a you know,
Speaker 3: several years long enterprise of error as inspiring, but I
Speaker 3: do think of it as kind of inspiring because it
Speaker 3: shows that, you know, you can have a lot of
Speaker 3: sunk costs, you can have a lot of error and
Speaker 3: people fooling themselves into following something that isn't real, but
Speaker 3: you also get to see how the process eventually corrects
Speaker 3: itself and see what that involves, Like, how is it
Speaker 3: that we soort fact from fiction? And we can learn
Speaker 3: a lot from this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, again, the idea that the system ultimately worked
Speaker 2: the way it was supposed to with polywater, that we
Speaker 2: figured out that it wasn't a thing and we moved on,
Speaker 2: and at the same time we can still look back
Speaker 2: on it and find the concept and the story of
Speaker 2: it entertaining and thought provoking. You know, it doesn't did
Speaker 2: diminish that at all. So so yeah, I agree, this
Speaker 2: is a fascinating journey, and it serves as an interesting
Speaker 2: model again to compare to these various other scenarios and
Speaker 2: hypothetical scenarios. All right, well, shall we go ahead and
Speaker 2: close it out there?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 2: All right? Just a reminder to everyone out there that
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