WEBVTT - The Doomsday Water, Part 2: Pathological Science 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:15.360 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:16.599 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:19.680 And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with the follow 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.479 up to last week's episode called the Doomsday Water, which 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:28.920 was about a totally non existent but historically very interesting 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:34.479 hypothetical substance called polywater. Now, if you haven't heard or 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.520 watched the last episode yet, this is one where I'd 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.160 really recommend you do the series in order you should 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:42.239 go back and check that one out. Today, I think 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.360 we're going to add a few more details on the 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:49.599 history of polywater and then have some discussion about ideas 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.319 that kind of bloom out of the ashes of this 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:54.040 failed scientific project. 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:55.680 All right, let's do it. 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.440 Yeah, So, to start with the condensed refresher on the 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.800 timeline of polywater, the story begins with some isolated chemistry 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.319 research taking place in the Soviet Union in the early 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.240 nineteen sixties, and this was carried out by a scientist 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:15.720 named Nikolai Fedyakin. Fedyakin discovers that by condensing samples of 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.200 what he believes to be pure water pure H two 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:25.000 inside extremely tiny glass capillary tubes. Under just the right conditions, 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.680 he can somehow cause the water to appear to separate 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.440 into two different substances. You've got regular water and then 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:38.520 something else, this other anomalous form of water which seems 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.360 to be denser than normal water and have weird properties 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.760 like an extremely high boiling point and a very low 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:49.559 freezing point. So this is kind of hard to imagine 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:53.360 because we normally think of water as just water. But 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.720 maybe the easiest way to do it is imagine another 0:01:57.400 --> 0:01:59.800 phase of water that you've never seen before. So you 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.640 can think of liquid water, ice and steam, and no 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.800 imagine the same exact substance also has a form that 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:13.639 is something like the consistency of wax or vacilline. Rob 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.239 I was actually thinking about it in between when we 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:20.960 recorded the last episode and this one, Like, why is 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:25.600 it so hard to imagine this hypothetical alternative form of 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.400 water Because we watch phase transitions of water all the time. 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:33.080 It's like totally normal to observe that liquid water becomes 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.120 ice and then you boil it and become steam. These 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.200 different phases don't look or feel like each other at all, 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:42.320 and we would just watch them shift back and forth 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.440 and nothing is strange about that, But trying to imagine 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.680 this other phase is just kind of impossible. It feels like, well, 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.040 if it was this other way, if it had this 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:55.920 other consistency and feeling and appearance, it just wouldn't be water. 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.239 Yeah, that is interesting to think about. I mean, a 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.000 big part of it is just how mundane the realities 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.960 of the phases of water are. Like I think already today, 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:10.200 I've encountered water in and all three of its forms. 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:14.440 You know, I've put ice in my thermos, I've heated 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:18.000 up water for coffee and tea and produced steam, and 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:22.240 of course I've had liquid water and am mostly liquid water. 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.520 So yeah, I guess it's just part of it is 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:27.600 the world we live in, in the world we are. 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.400 I think maybe that's right, And maybe it's because water 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.960 is so fundamental and central to our lives and we 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:38.920 encounter it so much that trying to imagine this other 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:40.760 form of it doesn't feel like it makes sense in 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:43.320 the way that it would be much easier to imagine 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.840 alternate forms of chemicals that we have less day to 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:51.240 day interaction with. But so anyway, this initial result by 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:55.040 Nikolai fed Yakin gets the attention of an esteemed Soviet 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:59.240 chemist named Boris de Yagan, who replicates the procedure for 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.160 making this anomalist water and then starts publishing papers on 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:07.640 it in Russian language journals. Derriagan believes this alternative, this 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:12.280 alternate form of water could be immensely important, of immense 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:16.559 scientific and technological significance, and then in roughly the years 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:21.400 nineteen sixty six to sixty eight, Derriogan gives presentations on 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:25.920 the anomalous water at international conferences and gradually starts to 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.360 get the attention of Western scientists, especially in Great Britain 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.200 and the United States. Several of these scientists begin their 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.880 own anomalous water research program, copying the initial methods for 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.760 making it from the Soviet Union, and then in the 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.720 year nineteen sixty nine, the anomalist water has a breakout moment. 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.039 There is one paper by a group of American scientists 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:54.320 showing infrared spectroscopy results from the substance that appear to 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:58.320 show a different signature than that of regular water, which 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.880 is interpreted to mean that well, it is water, but 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.120 it's got a different molecular structure than normal water, which 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:09.680 is what gives it this different spectrum. It is hypothesized 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.159 to be something like a polymer form of water. So 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.839 a polymer is a long, long or large molecule made 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:21.320 out of repeating units, and they hypothesize that maybe there 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:26.240 is a hexagonal arrangement of water molecules forming these kind 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.800 of like sheets or long, long structures. And here's where 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:32.440 you get the name polywater. It's like a polymer of water. 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.839 We also talked a bit last time about how important 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.400 it might have actually been in the reception of this 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.640 hypothetical substance, that it got a cool name, that it 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.240 was no longer being called just like you know, anomalous 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.680 anomalist behavior of water or various descriptive phrases. That it 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:55.440 got a name, and the name sounded interesting, that it's polywater. 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:58.479 You know, of course, poly means many, so it almost 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.280 implies a kind of mini splendor water, water that can 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:05.080 do many things or has maybe can do anything. And 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.000 in fact, lots of people in the media kind of 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:10.680 ended up treating it like it could do anything. There 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.440 was a frenzy of attention in the popular media, so 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.040 people start imagining all kinds of wild ways that polywater 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:20.719 could be applied. Maybe it's going to be the next 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.560 steam engine. It'll just you know, change everything in technology. 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:28.719 It'll do machine lubrication and nuclear power. It'll unlock the 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:33.880 secret of eternal youth. There is one article that was 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:36.240 quoted in one of our sources last time that was like, Hey, 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:38.960 your living room furniture, it's gonna be made out of water. 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:42.320 We never got to the bottom of how that works, 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:47.560 but I like it. But so there would be arguments 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:52.320 between polywater proponents and polywater skeptics. In these arguments, of course, 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:56.080 began in the scientific community and scientific literature, but this 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.480 eventually spilled out into the popular media around the year 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:03.359 nineteen s six nine, and it became a subject of 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.800 controversy that was being covered by the mainstream press, not 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:11.400 just in scientific literature. Also in nineteen sixty nine you 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:14.640 get this letter published in the journal Nature by a 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:19.160 chemist and named F. J. Donaho of Wilkes College in Pennsylvania, 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.240 which sketches out this really alarming idea. He says, maybe 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:27.360 polywater is not just a revolutionary discovery, it might be 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:32.080 the most dangerous substance on Earth, because, according to Donnaho, 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.800 it's possible that like the fictional Ice nine in the 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:41.080 novel Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. If a seed crystal 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.160 of polywater were to escape into the natural environment and 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:47.800 get deposited in the soil or the ocean, even if 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:49.440 you just flush it down the toilet, it's going to 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:53.840 end up in the in the environment, it could provide 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.640 a nucleation point that would cause all of the water 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:02.000 in the world to become polywater, which I admit is 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:06.040 a to me, a gripping image, a truly grotesque and 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:11.160 bizarre and amazing image, a vasaline apocalypse, or a kind 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.000 of like wax end of the world. 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.040 Yeah, and also like kind of the ultimate technological whip 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:21.560 see like, oops, we broke water. Everyone water is now broken. 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:25.760 It doesn't work anymore, not the way that we were 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:27.240 accustomed to you. 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:29.880 Now, it's very important to note that this is not 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.239 like the mainstream opinion on polywater at the time. Immediately 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:40.360 after this, several prominent pro polywater scientists respond to the 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.280 letter in Nature. They argue with good reasons, it seems 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.079 that this is not likely. For one thing, if polywater exists, 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.760 it must occur sometimes in nature. So if it could 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.160 turn Earth into a vacilline world, it would have already 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:57.280 done that. And you know, they had other arguments too. 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.880 Of course, the whole thing is made pointless by the 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.439 fact that we would later discover polywater does not exist. 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.600 But while this big frenzy of excitement and enthusiasm and 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:12.199 fear is going on in the mainstream media in popular culture, 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.120 there are also lots of skeptical scientists just chipping away 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:19.640 at the polywater project. The most common objection is, are 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.600 you sure you're not just seeing the effects of impurities 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:28.080 in your water samples. Derriagan and the polywater proponents were 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.760 always quick to say, no, that is not what's happening. 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.600 Maybe your samples of water are contaminated, but ours are pure, 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:38.160 And that's kind of hard to argue with. I mean, 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:39.920 all you can do is test the ones you have 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.280 access to. If somebody is saying the ones you don't 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.080 have access to are the good ones, that's like, oh, 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:45.800 that's a problem. 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:47.640 But yeah. 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.520 So by the early nineteen seventies, the skeptical undermining of 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:55.480 the polywater project has made a lot of progress. It 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.880 starts to look more and more like the anomalous water 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.840 is anomal because it isn't water. It's a bunch of 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:08.760 contamination with leading candidates for the contamination being well. Some 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.720 people talked about particles of silica leaching from the glass 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.200 into the water and forming a kind of gel. Another 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:19.600 big contender is human sweat biological contamination from the probably 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.400 from the researchers themselves who were carrying out the experiment. 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:27.600 And then one famous blow to the polywater project comes 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:31.400 in the early seventies when an American researcher named Dennis L. 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:36.280 Rousseau does analysis on a bunch of sweat and gets 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.840 almost the exact same pattern that had famously appeared in 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.800 the big polywater spectroscopy paper in nineteen sixty nine. So 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.080 at this point, consensus starts to turn heavily against the 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:51.760 existence of polywater, and roughly nineteen seventy seventy one, most 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.760 scientists that were initially curious or open minded about it 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.840 start saying, no, I don't think this is real. It 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.360 takes the hardcore or polywater boosters a little more time 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.719 to come around, but by roughly nineteen seventy three, basically everybody, 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.520 including Boris de Riyagan, realizes and admits that it was 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:15.320 probably all just various types of contamination All along. The 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.439 stuff was not acting like water because it wasn't water. 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.640 So that's the story we talked about in the last episode. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:24.880 Like I did in the previous episode, I want to 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:27.120 mention a couple of major sources here at the top. 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:31.760 One is an article called case Studies in Pathological Science, 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.720 published in American Scientists in the year nineteen ninety two 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:38.360 by Dennis L. Rousseau. This article is great because it 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:42.840 provides a historical overview of the polywater affair, a short one, 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:45.439 but from the point of view of someone who was 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.280 actually involved in it. Rousseau was initially very interested in 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:52.560 the possibilities of polywater, as he talks about in the article. 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.079 He's like, he and a collaborator of his, we're like, oh, 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:58.920 could it be the fountain of youth? Could it unlock 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:03.280 you know, longevity. But he eventually becomes very skeptical about it. 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.600 He becomes a polywater skeptic, and he leads some experiments 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.760 showing how it is almost certainly just caused by impurities. 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.520 Another big source I wanted to mention is an excellent 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.600 chapter in a book called H two O. A Biography 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.480 of Water by the British science writer Philip Ball, first 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:23.760 published in nineteen ninety nine. And to kick things off today, 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:26.840 I wanted to mention another article I was reading. Actually 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.160 I was reading this one in between when we recorded 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:33.680 the two episodes. This was a piece in Distillations magazine 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.120 from February twenty twenty called the Rise and Fall of 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:40.839 Polywater by the material scientist and science communicator Anissa Ramirez. 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.959 And this piece raised a few details about the story 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:46.839 that we didn't talk much about last time, but I 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:49.000 think would be good to dwell on for a moment 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:51.760 because they might inform the rest of our discussion today. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:58.120 So one thing that Ramirez's account brings up is how 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:02.160 a lot of the early obsess about the weird properties 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:07.680 of polywater were visual observations made through a microscope. So 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.640 not getting a sample of this stuff, putting it in 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:15.800 a machine and getting a numerical readout on it, it 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.400 would be people looking through a microscope. So fed Yakin's 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.880 original experiments. They generated only a tiny amount of the 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.800 anomalous water. It was far less than a droplet, and 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.199 he had to study it through a relatively low resolution 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:35.000 optical microscope. When he made the original observations of properties 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.560 like the alleged greater density than normal water that was 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.560 like an inference made based on looking at how it 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.320 behaved through a microscope. And then once der Yoggan's team 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:50.200 took over, they also used microscope observation rather than bult 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:52.560 measurement to note a lot of things. They used that 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.760 to find that it allegedly expanded more than regular water 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.960 when it was heated, that it had a different pattern 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:04.480 of light refraction than normal water, and because of how 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.920 tiny the quantities of available anomalous water were, these were 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:14.800 visual observations of behavior through the optical microscopes in strange conditions, 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:19.680 like in these extremely tiny glass containers. So that's something 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:21.760 to remember for later. We'll come back to that later 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:35.040 in the episode. Another thing that we should dwell on 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:36.960 for a minute. We did sort of mention this in 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:41.040 the last episode, but it's worth revisiting is the strange 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.600 fact that while all of this frenzy was going on 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:48.600 in the late sixties, nobody had ever published a high 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:53.120 quality chemical analysis of a polywater sample to prove that 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:57.000 it was actually one hundred percent water. Philip Ball highlights 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.600 this in his chapter. Ramirez highlights this in the article too, 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.160 that this was in part due to how little polywater 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.040 could be made you're making these microscopic amounts of it 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:11.920 at a time, and so some researchers reported that they 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.560 just couldn't make enough of it that a reliable chemical 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:19.720 analysis was possible with their instruments. You know, as we 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.040 know from a lot of different domains, like you need 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.640 a reasonable sample size in order to have a reliable result. 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.440 You know, we often think about this in the context 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.320 of much higher levels of abstraction in the sciences, like 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.720 psychology studies. You know, if you have a psychology study 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:41.000 that's got twenty participants, that's usually not going to be 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:43.400 a very powerful result. You don't have a lot of 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.360 confidence that the same patterns would show up in the 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:50.600 general population. And you can say, in a way the 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:54.120 same thing about physical sciences, though obviously you're dealing with 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:58.080 different types of quantities there, but like extremely tiny quantities 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:02.440 are harder to measure reliable. Ramirez writes in our article, 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.600 quote chemicals, like humans, have unique fingerprints, and instruments called 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:10.920 spectrometers can identify the elements and molecules from a chemical 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.760 fingerprint or spectrum. Yet success hinges on the size of 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.640 the sample, where bigger is better. In published papers, anomalous 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.360 water believers lamented that there just wasn't enough of it, 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:26.360 certainly not enough to identify its molecular makeup. And I 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.120 think in the last episode we talked about the quote 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:31.800 from one of the guys who was working on polywater 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:34.920 at the time, one of the students of John Desmond Bernal, 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:40.960 who said, if only we had a thimbleful. So, while 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.720 this polywater research project was going on, because you couldn't 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.120 make enough of it to really get a good answer 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:51.760 to these core questions about it, the core questions like 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:56.120 is this really water, scientists kept nibbling around the edges. 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.440 They would measure what they could with the amounts available, 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:04.680 including physical characteristics like boiling point and viscosity, but even 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.359 these results were probably hampered in reliability by the tiny 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.919 amounts that could be tested at a time. Some skeptics 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.840 of polywater were sort of brought around to believing in 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.600 it by a paper that we mentioned last time. This 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:21.800 was the one published in the journal Science in June 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:25.359 nineteen sixty nine, which showed the work of scientists named 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.320 Robert Stromberg, Elis Lippencott, and Warren Grant, and they had 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:35.480 produced what looked like a high quality spectrometry result that 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:39.840 showed the absorption spectrum of polywater did not match that 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:43.520 of normal water or they claimed of any known substance. 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.040 But this was taken to indicate not that the sample 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:50.879 was not water, but that the water had a different 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.159 molecular structure than normal water, hence the idea of polywater. 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:57.600 Funny thing here is they also tried to do a 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:01.359 chemical analysis of polywater and they found some contaminants. They 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:04.560 found like sodium and silicon, but they were like, those 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.840 are there in the quantities observed are too small for 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:09.840 it to matter, so we don't have to worry about that. 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.480 And this is when you get that letter from Donahoe 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.080 to Nature writing about the dangers of polywater. Ramirez mentions 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.200 a detail here that I didn't encounter in any of 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.560 the other sources I was reading, where she says that 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.000 Robert Stromberg, you know, one of the authors of the 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.840 sixty nine paper, started getting angry letters from people who 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.800 said he was bringing about the end of the world. 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.320 So that's the public engagement we crave, you know. And 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.280 also I think this is maybe important. We didn't talk 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.560 about this enough last time. Ramirez mentions briefly how this 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.720 was affected by the Cold War context. We talked about 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.760 the Cold War context in the idea of the exchange 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.800 of information between East and West being limited in some ways, 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:55.800 not to say that there was no exchange of information, 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.399 because clearly the ideas were making it across. There were 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.239 international conferences, journals to get translated back and forth, but 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.320 there were, you know, just awkward things about how information 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:07.639 was shared around the world at the time because of 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:12.880 the Cold War context. Ramirez mentions that there are indications 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:16.040 that by nineteen sixty nine, the CIA was trying to 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.439 keep a close eye on polywater research in the Soviet Union, 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.040 and according to reports published in the Wall Street Journal, 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:27.560 the Pentagon started trying to fund polywater research. So it's 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.120 you know, it's like Doctor Strangelove, like, we cannot allow 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:34.639 a polywater gap. And people made this joke at the time, 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:36.679 you know, playing up on the idea of a missile 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.200 gap from the nuclear arms race. Now it's like, well, 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:42.480 if this is maybe going to be the most important 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:46.000 technology in the world, whether that's for good or for ill, 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:48.159 and the people were saying it could be for both, 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:49.679 we better get it first. 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.600 Yeah, yeah, I mean, hindsight is twenty twenty. We can 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.680 look back and see this as the race to become 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.520 the masters of sweaty water. But again, at the time, 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:05.080 if it's seemed like an adversary would have mastery over 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.240 some sort of new form of water that had all 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:13.200 these applications, then yeah, it was worth keeping an eye on. Yeah, 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.080 even though we know how it ended up. 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.480 Right, So we know now for multiple reasons that polywater 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.240 was not actually dangerous. First of all, it didn't exist, 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:24.920 and even at the time people who thought it did 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.000 exist had good arguments against the idea that it was dangerous. 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.719 But if you strip yourself of hindsight, and you strip 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.520 yourself of access to the good arguments against the danger, 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:41.000 if you allow yourself to inhabit the vasilyne apocalypse mindset, 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:45.160 it creates, at least for me, a very familiar feeling, actually, 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:51.199 the feeling that people somewhere are doing something obscure that 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.159 could be very dangerous. It could even be the end 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:56.840 of the world, and I have no power to stop it, 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:01.000 except like trying to write letters or you know. Yeah, 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.879 And add to that the knowledge that there's pressure operating 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.840 in the opposite direction that's like driving toward this result 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.400 that you're now afraid of and that you don't have 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:13.840 power to stop that pressure, Like there's some amount of 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:18.520 international great power competition that is making people think, even 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:20.840 if this stuff is dangerous, we've got to have it first. 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:24.119 They can't have it first. Feel similar to the nuclear 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:27.800 arms race, of course, and also feel similar to if 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:30.120 people have talked about this a lot where we might 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.600 be with AI. You know, there are I'm constantly struck 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:36.200 by the idea that there are a lot of people 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:39.440 in the United States who used to argue that AI 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.200 is potentially very dangerous. We might need to make absolutely 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:45.639 sure it's safe before developing it, and it might not 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.000 be possible to make sure that it's absolutely safe. And 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.119 now some of the same people are saying, well, you 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.359 can't let China build it first. We've got to build 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.920 it first. So that consciousness we have of these pressures 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.320 pushing in the opposite direction against caution in these scenarios 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:05.159 where we don't know exactly how dangerous something could be. 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.240 You know, you've got these international competitive pressures, You've got 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:14.280 money making pressures. Money making incentives, of course, are leading 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:18.400 people down trails that we don't know could turn out 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.440 to be okay, could turn out to be disastrous and 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.600 we can't really know in advance. It's a maddening feeling. 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:29.600 Absolutely yeah, this is this is going to be at 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:33.240 times fun to reflect on, at times maybe concerning, but 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:38.679 it is absolutely you know, a reality of our modern 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:42.400 age and our technological anxiety, and some of our anxiety 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.440 is about about science. A lot of it does come 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:51.280 down to this idea of containment, Like, if something is 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:54.080 we create something that is pidentially dangerous, how do we 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.160 keep it from getting out and getting places it shouldn't 0:22:57.160 --> 0:22:58.919 be and falling into the hands of people who shouldn't 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.080 have it right? And then there's that added realization that, 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:06.560 no matter what, containment might not be possible for these things, 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:09.359 certainly not in the long run or in the short run. 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:14.080 And I keep coming across examples of this, you know, 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:18.320 the idea that you could look at a new technology 0:23:18.359 --> 0:23:21.520 and think about like the absolute realization of the thing, 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:25.280 and how that could present some sort of existential risk 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:29.639 and some sort of huge danger to everything that we know. 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:32.520 But then there are also these short term possibilities where 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:35.320 the thing is not very advanced at all, It is 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.760 just advanced enough to get out of our hands and 0:23:39.640 --> 0:23:44.919 quickly get out of control. So we'll look at some 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:46.840 examples of some of these, and a lot of it 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:49.520 also just comes back to the I think it's impossible 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:51.800 not to think of the tale of Pandora's Box in 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:55.480 all of this that there is there's except in the 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:58.280 sense that there's almost this certainty that these boxes will 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:01.159 be opened, and then once they are opened, we know 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:05.199 how it goes. Then the the the ill factors that 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:07.879 were contained within cannot be put back in the box. 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:10.480 The only thing that remains in the box is hope, 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:16.320 or at least we hope that's the case. Yeah, So, yeah, 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:18.359 I wanted to roll through some of these. We can 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:22.000 we can chat about these. A number of these involves 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:27.159 some form of runaway reaction, much like the hypothetical polywater 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:31.879 reaction or the fictional Ice nine reaction. We'll get to 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:34.720