WEBVTT - 2021 Ig Nobel Prize Grab Bag, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.520 My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.239 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:21.480 And today we're finally getting around to it. We wanted 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.680 to talk about a few of the ig Nobel Prize 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:27.520 winners from this year. Yes, we're a little late. The 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.960 awards ceremony was in September of this year and we're 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.159 just now getting to it. But you know, a lot 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.800 of things are happening around the September October. It's a 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:38.800 busy time for us. Yeah. I think we've covered the 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:42.760 ig Nobels every year since we started covering them, and 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:44.360 I'm not sure when that year was. Maybe it was 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:46.720 like two thousand seven, two eight or something. I don't know, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.519 it's pretty early on. Um, we almost never cover them 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:52.440 right away because, like you said, there's there's generally a 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.320 lot going on. The awards usually come out during September 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:59.040 or very early October, and so we're either wrapped up 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:01.280 in Halloween stuff I then, or we're getting ready to 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:05.120 do Halloween stuff or something like that. Uh, So we 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:09.280 generally come in like late November or part of sometime 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.720 in November or in this case, very early December. But 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:14.920 I guess it's better late than never. And uh, I 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.000 guess one of the cool things about this is is 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.200 we kind of come in after the initial coverage and 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:22.440 chew on them a bit more. So, if you're waiting 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.360 on these episodes and you and you're inclined to complain, 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.959 just don't stop. But if you're not familiar, the ig 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.479 no Bells are a series of awards given out once 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:38.000 a year by a scientific humor journal called the Annals 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:42.000 of Improbable Research that's been edited for many years now 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.800 by somebody named Mark Abraham's and the stated purpose of 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.480 this of these awards is to quote honor achievements that 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.920 first make people laugh and then make them think. So 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:54.840 to give you an idea if if you haven't heard 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:56.920 one of these episodes before and you've never read about 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.160 the ig Nobels. Among the awards we covered last or 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.880 there was a prize in the material science category for 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.360 research into whether you could make a knife blade out 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:11.160 of frozen feces. What was the verdict on that? I 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:13.600 think it was no right that no matter how hard 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.639 you freeze them, they just don't really cut. I believe 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.440 so um, you know, it reminds me of Yeah. I 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:22.440 think they think that the research ended up saying, yeah, 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:24.720 like you, no matter how hard it gets, uh, you're 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:26.600 still gonna have a certain amount of melting that's going 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.200 to take place, right because the friction on the sharp 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.639 end will will pretty quickly wear it away and then 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:34.000 it's then it's blunt. Yeah, better to make it like 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.480 a frozen poop warhammer, I think, so that could shatter. 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.320 I don't know, we'll look into that in the future. Um, 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:43.760 but then let's see what was One of the other 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:45.680 ones we did last year was there was a prize 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:50.079 in the acoustics category for a study that made alligators 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.200 huff helium to see if it made their voices higher pitched. 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.280 I remember that. Yeah. So occasionally the papers that get 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:02.239 selected for these prizes are I think originally themselves intended 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.920 to be satirical or funny. One example like that that 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.080 comes to mind is, uh, there was a rayology study 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:12.520 one year about whether cats should be considered a solid 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:14.960 or a liquid. That that was a good one, but 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.520 clearly there was a good bit of jokiness about the 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:22.000 paper itself most of the time. Actually, this the research 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:25.560 covered in in these prizes, is it's just straightforward research. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.720 They're they're straightforward experiments published in real scientific journals that 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:35.400 happened to have some weirdly hilarious methodology or finding. Yeah. 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.080 Either you know, it varies, but you know, sometimes it's 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:44.920 it's just a particular experiment that is hilarious or giggle inducing. Um. 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.360 Other times it's just the minutia of it, you know, 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:49.400 one of those kind of a shrimp on a treadmill 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.800 situation where it may it's still important work. It's all 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:57.520 part of the general um, you know, expansion of scientific 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.440 knowledge of of the universe, but it just in an 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:04.800 area that we might not think about. Or sometimes it's 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.680 just an important study that involves like pooper vomit or something, 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.560 and therefore just by ver orteese or something, you know, 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:16.240 just by virtue of the subject, kissing, yeah, is inherently funny. Now, 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.719 in these episodes we're doing on on the Igno Bells, 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.359 we're just going to pick out a few of the 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:23.800 prizes to highlight because there was something about them that 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:25.640 we wanted to talk about. We're not gonna have a 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:27.680 chance to cover all of the winners, but if you 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.479 want to read about those. You can go to the 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.640 Annals of Improbable Research website at Improbable dot com and 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:36.440 you can see the full list of the awards and 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:39.000 click on links to to read about them. I mean, 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:41.080 and not only the most recent awards, but you can 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.200 go back through the entire history of the Igno Bells 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:47.880 and just and explore them all. It's a very simple, 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.320 easy to use website. Well, I am ready to get 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.920 started if you are, Uh, let's do it, okay, Well, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.680 the first area I wanted to get into was actually 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.839 this will be a pair of thematically linked prizes from this. 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:06.680 The first is the Physics Prize, which went to Alessandro Corbetta, 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:11.560 Jasper Mayu, Sen Chung Min Lee, Roberto Benzi, and Federico 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.320 Tashi quote for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.480 not constantly collide with other pedestrians. And then the second 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:25.200 here is the Kinetics Prize, which went to his Sashimurakami, 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:30.919 Claudio Feliciani, Utah Nishi Yama, and katsu Hero Nishi Nari. 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:33.960 And this is quote for conducting experiments to learn why 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:39.000 pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians. Uh, Rob, have 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.520 you ever had a really memorable, just bodily head on 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:44.880 with somebody. I was trying to remember if I had, 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:47.920 and I could not bring any instances to mind. Though 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:49.640 I have run into plenty of things in my life. 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.440 I run into tree branches and sliding glass doors, but 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:56.880 I can't really think of any head ons with humans 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:02.760 except maybe while playing soccer. Yeah, thinking back, yes, certainly, 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:04.760 I there have been more than a few low hanging 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.520 branches that have have clipped the top of my head 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:09.400 or tried to stab me in the eye, that sort 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:11.920 of thing. But in terms of of running into people, 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.440 um even in crowded cities, and like I was just 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.360 in um in New Orleans, and you know, those are 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.599 some crowded streets at times, and those are also some 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.920 drunken streets at times. You know they're folks wandering around 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:28.480 in various states of inebriation, and yet you don't see 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:32.480 people just colliding with each other. I feel like I've 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.520 had I can think maybe to some close calls in 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:37.520 the past where you have that moment where you almost 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:39.520 run into somebody and you both kind of acknowledge it 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.960 and it's a little bit awkward, but still it's not 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:43.880 like you see. I guess in a lot of like 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:48.440 comedy films where people just plow into each other, knock 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.200 their groceries down, and then they have a romantic moment 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:53.680 as they pick up each other's groceries, that sort of thing. Yes, 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.920 why is it romantic comedies where people plow into each other? 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:59.800 I guess there's something metaphorical about that, about you know, 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.400 the oh you came into my life like a like 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:06.480 a large, massive meat slamming me in the face. Yeah. 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.480 Because Yeah, in general, you don't see like fights breaking 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.760 out because people ran into each other, or at least 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.160 I don't think I've ever seen that occur. I mean 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.880 it probably has occurred, but not with the regularity you 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:22.320 might expect, given just how intense uh streets and sidewalks 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.320 are at times. Yeah, and I think this is something 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:26.480 we should keep in mind as we discussed this research. 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:31.360 It's interesting how rare collisions are given how often huge 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.160 masses of people are just criss crossing with each other 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.400 all day. So to actually reference the two papers here, 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:40.760 the first one was Corbetta at all. This was in 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.600 Physical Review E in eighteen and it was called Physics 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:48.880 based Modeling and Data Representation of pair wise interactions among pedestrians. 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.559 And then the second paper the Kinetics Prize was called 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.880 Mutual anticipation can contribute to self organization and human crowds. 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.320 This was by more commy at all in one in 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:04.240 Science Advances. Now, I was interested in this pair of 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.600 findings not only because I was obviously amused by the 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:11.040 image of people just absolutely eating each other's teeth in 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:15.280 in high speed sidewalk collisions, but because this is one 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.280 of those ignoble subjects where once you get beyond the 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:23.040 mildly funny image it conjures, it actually raises quite i think, 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:29.120 quite deep, mysterious, fascinating questions about the emergent mathematical properties 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.640 of human behavior in groups. And it's also a subject 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.680 that goes way beyond mere curiosity. Understanding the flow of 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:39.840 crowds is a matter of life and death. It is 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:44.000 a vitally important subject for all kinds of reasons. So 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.760 this involves questions like how do masses of people move 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.880 through space on foot? What rules govern their behavior both 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:55.720 as individuals and as as a group, How can that 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:59.760 behavior be influenced, and especially how does the built environment 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.720 shape that behavior? Uh, you know, as you were alluding 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:05.560 to a minute ago. I think it's actually kind of 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:11.000 amazing how pedestrians can navigate through crowds without running into 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.400 each other. It's one of those, you know, thousand little 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.880 miracles of human human brain capacity that we don't usually 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:21.920 notice or appreciate. But you can have huge crowds moving 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:25.800 quickly and bi directionally mean running at cross directions, past 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.880 each other, straight through each other, and uh and most 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.839 of the time people are able to avoid human crashes. Yeah, 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.360 and it it seems to be the case no matter 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:37.559 where you go, even though I will say, and this 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.520 is just uh my my observation. I don't know to 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.160 what extent this this holds up to research, but it 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.520 feels like in in some parts of the world, the 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.439 the energy of love, say, the movement of crowds on 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.280 a sidewalk can feel different, can a little bit different, 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.360 you know, but it's still maintaining, you know, the same 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:02.320 collision free experience. You know, like like maybe there's there's 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:05.280 something slightly different going on there, there's some sort of 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.600 there are different cultural norms in place regarding say, like 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.320 what side of the sidewalk people moving this way should 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.920 be on, or or so or so forth, or or 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:16.839 even maybe you know how much space is permittable between 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.720 you and the next person, but still people are managing 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.600 not to blow into each other. Yeah. So to discuss 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.760 a few of the details of these two studies, regarding 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.200 the first one, Corbetta at all from from eighteen. I 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.719 was reading about this uh in an article that had 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.320 a few interview clips um from in l Times, and 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:41.199 this was looking at Technical University Eindhoven researchers Federico Tashi 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:47.480 and Alessandro Corbetta and uh so their study in particular 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.480 was looking at the question of how pedestrians avoid running 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.440 into each other when moving through the Eindhoven train station, 0:10:56.360 --> 0:11:00.120 and they did this by installing sensors under the plow 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.400 forms of the train station which they used to track 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.640 the movements of pedestrians across the platform. So this was 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:09.840 an area of like twenty seven square meters and they 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:13.840 tracked pedestrian movement within it for six months. This came 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:17.560 out to measuring the movements about five million pedestrians total, 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.360 and they found a few measurable quantities. So first of all, 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.320 they said that people keep an average distance of about 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.120 seventy five centimeters away from other people while moving through crowds, 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.839 so that's about two and a half feet. And they 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:34.720 said that about one out of every thousand people quote 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:37.280 will turn around and go back the way they came 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:42.120 to avoid bumping into somebody else. According to Alessandro Corbetta, quote, 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:46.360 about eighty of the pedestrians actually collided with each other. 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:49.480 The other pedestrians adjusted their walking route when they were 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.040 at least a hundred and forty centimeters which is about 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.800 four ft and seven inches apart, and thus managed to 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.960 avoid a collision. And though I was wondering about that, 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.520 so he gives the number eighty eight pedestrians collided. Does 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:07.160 that mean eighty pedestrians total, meaning roughly forty collisions or 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.480 is that like, uh, there were eighty collisions, which would 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:12.080 make you think they'd be like at least a hundred 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.200 and sixty people involved. I'm not sure. Well, it raises 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.120 the question how many people are necessary to create a collision? 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:21.400 Is it one? Or is it too it's at least two, 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.280 I mean you could have more, I guess, But is 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:26.200 it I guess it depends on like is it is 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.800 it negligence on one person's part that leads to collision? 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:34.719 Or negligence or distraction whatever on two people's parts. You know, Ah, 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:36.440 well that will I will actually come up in the 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:40.080 other study, I think. But what this study found is that, yeah, 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:45.719 people are constantly monitoring for upcoming collisions and then adjusting 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:51.079 their walking trajectories accordingly several meters in advance. So ultimately, 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:54.320 the question here is it's not really relevant exactly how 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:58.640 many people slammed faces, but how on average pedestrians adjust 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.560 their courses to avoid collisions. What rules do they use 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:06.880 to make those those evasions? And this just apparently happens constantly. 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:08.840 We're usually not even aware of it. But you know, 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:12.040 I can recall, like moving through an airport or something, 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.560 you are just doing a delicate dance for for several 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:17.720 minutes of a time at a time, often you know, 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.680 just dodging dodging, dodging, dodging, and you don't even really 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.720 think about it. It's a process that can be be 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:27.320 oddly captivating, I find, you know, especially if I'm on 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:29.240 my own, I don't have to worry about anyone else, 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.440 you know, traveling with me. Uh, you know, cutting a 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.760 swath for them to travel through, you know, checking back 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:39.280 on how they're doing it. It's just me cutting through, um, 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:43.040 like a reasonable sized crowd or a reasonable flow of 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.040 pedestrian traffic. Uh, it feels kind of empowering. Well, yeah 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:49.000 it is, and I think that highlights one of the 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.800 interesting features there, which is that, um, so when you're 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:57.560 moving through a crowd, you are making individual decisions, like 0:13:57.679 --> 0:13:59.960 and those decisions are being driven by different things. Like, 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.079 on one hand, you've got your basic propulsive drive, like 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:05.480 you have where you need to be and the course 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.000 you think you need to take to get there. And 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.600 then probably the second main thing governing your movement is 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:15.320 what these researchers would refer to as social forces, which 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.760 would be things like the taboo against touching other people 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.560 while you're walking, or basically the force that keeps you 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.240 separate from other people and makes you want to avoid 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.000 running into them or touching them in some other way. Yeah, 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.480 because there's a physical risk to actually running into somebody, 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:34.680 and there is like a social risk to not only 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:38.040 running into somebody, but even almost running into somebody, yeah, 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:42.440 even getting too close exactly. But so while those forces 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.760 are are guiding your decision making as an individual, you 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.000 are a thinking person and you you know there are 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.240 cognitive inputs, like you are moving through this crowd as 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:55.240 an individual. It's strange that take thousands of people and 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.080 they're all making these individual decisions based on these types 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.000 of forces, you know, their drive forces, and their and 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.920 their restrictive social forces. And yet when you look at 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.960 them as a group, they seem to behave in ways 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.960 that are predictable. Even though they're making in these individual decisions, 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:16.680 they behave in ways that can quite well be modeled 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.360 and predicted and understood by things that are that are 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.400 like physics models the way the same way that you 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.200 would model, say, the movements of a fluid, you know, 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:34.400 a gas or a liquid through a container than and 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:36.520 so the authors of this first study you're saying, well, 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:40.120 by studying the natural movement patterns of pedestrians and trying 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.480 to model them in in terms of the language of 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:46.040 physics on a large scale, Uh, this can be useful 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.440 in terms of things like architecture and design. You know, 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.600 you can design better spaces for people to walk, both 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.680 in terms of efficiency the throughput how many people can 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.520 move through them quickly, but also in terms of safety 0:15:57.640 --> 0:15:59.680 because as we know, and as I'll talk about in 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:02.880 a bit, UH, crowds can become quite dangerous when when 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.760 density gets too high. Now, I was also reading an 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:09.720 article that that had a few uh quotes from these researchers, 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:13.200 And this was an article for Physics, the magazine of 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:18.280 the American Physical Society by Michael scherber Uh. And this 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.000 one also discussed the second winner, the winner of the 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.120 Kinetics Prize, the paper that was by Murakami at all. 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.360 And this study was interesting too. So it instead of measuring, 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.800 you know, putting sensors under a floor and measuring natural movement, 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:37.920 it's staged experiments. So this study asked volunteers to walk 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:43.080 by directionally, so imagine people crossing each other, walking in 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.800 opposite directions the way they would say, like a crowded 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:49.440 crosswalk in the street. And then it tried to see 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:54.640 what happens when when people walk by directionally under normal circumstances, 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:59.320 and then what happens when some of those people are distracted, specifically, 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:03.080 what happens when they're trying to do calculations on their phones. 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.639 And the purpose of this experiment was to interfere with 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:10.800 people's ability to see collisions coming and avoid them. Now, 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:13.440 it probably won't come as a big surprise that pedestrians 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.840 who were distracted by phones made more navigation mistakes, leading 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:22.320 to a number of near collisions. But even when not distracted, 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:26.919 people sometimes had difficulty and uh. One of the implications 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:33.040 of this experiment is that avoiding collisions is a collaborative effort. 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:38.720 It requires awareness and coordination of multiple parties, both looking 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.440 at each other and trying to assess what paths they're 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:47.640 about to take, and then adjusting their own paths in accordingly. 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.400 And this becomes difficult when even just one of these 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:55.000 parties is distracted, especially if multiple parties are distracted. I 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.160 was also reading an interview with one of the researchers 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.119 from the second study, the coninectics ees UM. This was 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:04.040 on a Swiss news site swiss Info dot c H 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.800 and it was an interview by Zeno Soccatelli with a 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.280 researcher named Claudio Feliciani who works at the University of 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.600 Tokyo but who originally hails from Switzerland. And so Feliciani 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:19.600 mentioned a few interesting things in this interview. One is that, okay, 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.800 so when you when you have people not distracted, UM, 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.320 how do they tend to move in groups when they're 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.400 moving by directionally, like you imagine people crossing each two 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.320 crowds at at a busy crosswalk trying to go past 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:35.960 each other. How do they normally move? And Feliciani says 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:40.000 that what tends to happen is people automatically self organize 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:45.240 into lines. People tend to naturally follow the person directly 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.600 in front of them, and simply by obeying this rule, 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.840 the moving crowd naturally forms into lanes or lines of people. 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:56.359 And so they were trying to understand the mechanisms that 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.200 make these lines form and how they work. Of course, 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.760 you know one way understand how something works is to 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:05.360 see if you can break it. Um So, Feliciani says, 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.080 quote specifically, we caused some of the pedestrians to be distracted, 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.280 asking them to walk while solving simple calculations on their phones. 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.080 With just three out of fifty four people focused on 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:20.439 something else, rows formed much less quickly, especially if the 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.240 distracted people were at the front of the group, and 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:27.119 the increased attention of the non distractors is not enough 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.720 to make up for the lack of attention of the 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.600 three who are distracted. And then on this website there 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.200 is actually video I could watch maybe you want to 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.120 take a look, rob But there's video that shows how 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.160 people move in these lines under normal conditions, and then 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.679 what it looks like when just a few of them 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.960 are distracted. So not everybody is trying to do math 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:50.600 on their phone. Just a few people, just a few 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.280 people out of the fifty four completely screw things up 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.440 and everybody gets jammed up. The lanes stone form naturally. 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.639 Uh So it seems like its navigating through crowds by directionally. 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:04.760 It has this tendency to for you know, self organizing 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:09.760 emergent structures to form, but that requires everybody to be 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.720 paying attention and monitoring each other and sort of communicating 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:18.120 nonverbally about where they're headed. This is interesting. I mean, 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.360 of course, this has huge ramifications on a are already 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:25.040 you know, near ubiquitous use of smartphones and the fact 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.439 that people will have them out while they're walking around. 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:29.600 But it also makes me wonder about, you know, the 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.679 more we push into this idea of augmented reality, of 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.480 of having some sort of you know, a metaverse that 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.560 is digitally imposed on the world around us. Uh, you know, 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:42.639 what's what's that going to do? Or does it make 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:44.560 it easier? I don't know like I can. Maybe you 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:46.840 imagine the case being made that like, well, you're not 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.320 looking at your screen, You're looking at the world around 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.680 you for this information, which you were probably already doing 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:57.120 and potentially distracted by, just as a normal pedestrian pre smartphone. Well, 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:59.720 I mean it is yet another one of those things 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:05.639 are we have surprisingly powerful capacities, you know, like we 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:07.919 can do things that are kind of amazing if you 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:10.600 sit and think about them, like walking through crowds without 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:14.399 collisions or driving a car, but we also fail to 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:18.879 have the metacognitive recognition of how much attention it takes 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.400 to do that correctly. So you have people not realizing 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:26.400 how impaired they are when they're texting while driving, or uh, 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:30.320 not quite appreciating how quickly this entire crosswalk will get 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.280 jammed up if just a couple of people are distracted 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.400 while they're walking. But anyway, I just got really interested 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.280 in the subject of the the modeling of the flow 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:43.600 of human crowds. Um uh. Like one idea that that 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:46.359 I found very sticky is I was looking at a 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:49.560 paper from two thousand three in the Annual Review of 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.240 Fluid Mechanics by Roger L. Hughes, who is who worked 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:55.600 in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:59.160 University of Melbourne, and the paper is called the Flow 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:01.879 of Human Crowds, and he was discussing the idea that 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:06.720 human movements could be modeled like like the flow of 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:09.960 of non human substances, you know, just like molasses flowing 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.520 out of a jar, or like the way particles of 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.640 gas move around in a container. But of course it's 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.760 complicated by the fact that there are social inputs on 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:21.400 the movement, even if the movement can be modeled like 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.880 the movement of a physical substance at the large scale. Uh. 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:30.080 And he ended up characterizing crowds as the field of 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:35.600 quote thinking fluids, which is just wonderful. Uh. And so 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.080 this isn't related to either of the prize winners I 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:40.120 was just talking about, but I was also I ended 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:43.199 up reading another really interesting article on the subject of 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:46.840 physical and mathematical modeling of crowdflow. And this was an 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:52.800 article in Smithsonian Magazine from January by Evelyn Lamb. It 0:22:52.920 --> 0:22:56.280 was called how fluid dynamics can help You Navigate crowds 0:22:56.720 --> 0:22:59.600 And so the premise of this article is that because 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:02.600