Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Mankind in its present state has been
Speaker 1: around for a quarter of a million years, yet only
Speaker 1: the last four thousand have been of any significance. So
Speaker 1: what did we do? For nearly two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years? We huddled in cades and around small fires,
Speaker 1: fearful of things that we didn't understand. It was more
Speaker 1: than explaining why the sun came up. It was the
Speaker 1: mystery of enormous birds with heads of men and rocks
Speaker 1: that came to life. So we called them gods and demons,
Speaker 1: begged them to spare us, and prayed for salvation. In time,
Speaker 1: their numbers dwindled in ours rose. The world began to
Speaker 1: make more sense when there were fewer things to fear.
Speaker 1: Yet the unexplained can never truly go away, as if
Speaker 1: the universe demands the absurd and impossible. Mankind must not
Speaker 1: go back to hiding in fear. No one else will
Speaker 1: protect us, and we must stand up for ourselves. While
Speaker 1: the rest of mankind dwells in the light, we must
Speaker 1: stand in the darkness to fight it, contain it, and
Speaker 1: shield it from the eyes of the public, so that
Speaker 1: others may live in a sane and normal world. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Bloil Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I am Christian Sager, and we are
Speaker 1: on our third episode about creepy pastas. This uh, I
Speaker 1: want to say it was this time last year that
Speaker 1: we did the first one and people really liked it,
Speaker 1: so we did a second one, and then I would say,
Speaker 1: especially this time of year, we get about an email
Speaker 1: or two a week suggesting different creepy pastas that we
Speaker 1: read and possibly do on the show. And the one
Speaker 1: that we have been hearing about the most is called SCP,
Speaker 1: and we looked into it and it fit the show perfectly.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they designed it just for us. So
Speaker 1: I hope that the creators of SCP, the writers of
Speaker 1: these various creepy pastas, are out there listening. We love
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Yeah, SCP Foundation. SCP stands for Special
Speaker 1: Containment Procedures. Uh. It's uh. And you can find this
Speaker 1: by the way at SCP slash wiki dot wiki dot
Speaker 1: dot com, or just do a web search for u
Speaker 1: SEP Foundation or will also include a link to it
Speaker 1: on the landing bach for this episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your mind dot com. It's a fabulous uh, just
Speaker 1: a catalog encyclopedia of all these weird specimens that are
Speaker 1: presented presented as if they are under scientific scrutiny. Is
Speaker 1: if these specimens are being uh investigated very cautiously by
Speaker 1: by by individuals who have scientific curiosity about the specimens
Speaker 1: but also the best interests of mankind and its sanity
Speaker 1: at heart. Yeah, they pitched it as being kind of
Speaker 1: like that TV show Warehouse thirteen, but what I thought
Speaker 1: more of was spoilers Cabin in the Woods, uh, and
Speaker 1: and what's going on behind the scenes in that movie. Um. So, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you have never heard one of our Creepy Pasta
Speaker 1: episodes before, so we're gonna give you a real quick
Speaker 1: intro to it, although I recommend that you go check
Speaker 1: out the ones that we've done previously. Creepy Pastas are
Speaker 1: viral copy and paste text in the form of horror stories.
Speaker 1: They evolved from copy pasta, which is another sort of
Speaker 1: viral copy and paste text thing. They take the shape
Speaker 1: of urban legends, mainly appearing as if there's something that
Speaker 1: actually happened, uh, and they mimic first person accounts, especially
Speaker 1: scientific ones, which is why we're attracted to them because
Speaker 1: we like to on these episodes take the scientific ones
Speaker 1: and kind of extrapolate out what's actually going on here
Speaker 1: science wise. Uh. So we have a penchant for this genre.
Speaker 1: The most popular one that you've probably heard of is
Speaker 1: slender Man. Then the genre really seems to have hit
Speaker 1: its peak into one ten, but it is still chugging
Speaker 1: along as SCP is total evidence. Oh yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: new television series that's right. Yeah. In fact, Robert and
Speaker 1: I jested an interview with Playboy magazine of all places,
Speaker 1: about this upcoming sci fi TV show, Channel zero that's
Speaker 1: all about different creepy pastas, and I guess the first
Speaker 1: one that they're gonna do is Candle Cove. They're basically
Speaker 1: gonna take some of these creepypastas and adapt them for television. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it myself yet, but I've heard great things.
Speaker 1: Yeah me neither. Um. But back to SCP. So, the
Speaker 1: basic idea here is that it's a foundation that is
Speaker 1: trying to contain and protect us from all these various
Speaker 1: entities that are sort of weird horror abstractions. Right, it's
Speaker 1: not fair, Yeah, and it's I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: I see SCP Foundation is kind of an evolution of
Speaker 1: the form because the more classic examples of pasta and
Speaker 1: creepy pasta, they're they're such I mean, they straddle fiction
Speaker 1: and reality in such a way to supposed to misinterpret them.
Speaker 1: Like it's the kind of thing where someone is pasting
Speaker 1: it onto a message board, like an individual saying, hey,
Speaker 1: has anyone ever had a bad experience with this medication?
Speaker 1: And then someone pace as in copy and paste pasta,
Speaker 1: they paste this this, uh, this ridiculous story of something
Speaker 1: that happened to somebody, and then you're supposed to potentially
Speaker 1: think it's real. Whereas SCP STP Foundation, it's not so
Speaker 1: much they're not really pushing the these this is real,
Speaker 1: this really happened angle but they're playing with the genre.
Speaker 1: There's still I believe anonymous entries. I think so yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: they basically are cataloging all of these creatures, entities, whatever
Speaker 1: they are, as if they're all in containment. And so
Speaker 1: the guidelines for writing one of these is that the
Speaker 1: articles should have an interesting idea, a reasonable containment procedure
Speaker 1: for whatever it is it's being contained, and a clear
Speaker 1: description of each entry They also operate on a rating system,
Speaker 1: which was really nice for us to be able to
Speaker 1: get like a good dive in UM. If the page
Speaker 1: is low rated, they're deleted from the site if they
Speaker 1: receive a negative nine rating or lower UM. So these
Speaker 1: people are very focused on quality, more so than a
Speaker 1: lot of the creepy pasta sites that we've been to before.
Speaker 1: There's also a spinoff game. I haven't had a chance
Speaker 1: to play it yet, but it's called Containment Breach, where
Speaker 1: you play a disposable human guinea pig that's stuck in
Speaker 1: the facility and the it undergoes a containment breach, so
Speaker 1: you're alone with all the escaped entities. I I just
Speaker 1: really liked a lot of these. They play to the
Speaker 1: weirdness of horror rather than to the gore of some
Speaker 1: of the creepy pastas, and I that appealed to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I. I I also love the emphasis on humor
Speaker 1: and absurdity. There's still plenty of unsettling aspects to the
Speaker 1: various specimens, but more often than not, the entries put
Speaker 1: a smile on my face or even elect a giggle. UM. Plus,
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of a variety in the style.
Speaker 1: Most of the top entries retain that case report format,
Speaker 1: but but there are tones shifts here and there, and uh,
Speaker 1: and some rely on visuals more so than others. There's
Speaker 1: even one entry at least STP that's entirely it's told
Speaker 1: entirely through visuals, through the sequential use of like industrial
Speaker 1: hazard signs to tell the story of a deadly but
Speaker 1: perhaps loving shadow entity that creeps in and and terrifies
Speaker 1: and potentially consumes one of the researchers. Yeah, I really
Speaker 1: love the creativity on this site. Definitely recommend that you
Speaker 1: go visit it. So our mission today and on this
Speaker 1: episode is we each took three of our favorite specimens
Speaker 1: and then we extrapolated out scientific lessons that we can
Speaker 1: learn from them. Yeah, so view it as a celebration
Speaker 1: of step foundation materials, but also using different examples from
Speaker 1: SEP as a as a stepping stone to then discuss
Speaker 1: some equally fascinating and weird science, real world science behind
Speaker 1: the fiction. Okay, so we're gonna start off with one
Speaker 1: of Roberts and this one is called the Sculpture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one's pretty cool because it not only is the
Speaker 1: idea interesting, it's also the original specimen. This was the
Speaker 1: first CP Foundation specimen to have a ride up. And
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read from the description quote move to
Speaker 1: site nineteen. Origin is of yet unknown. It is constructed
Speaker 1: from concrete and rebar with faces of Crylon brand spray paint.
Speaker 1: SEP one seventy three. Is an is animate and extremely hostile.
Speaker 1: The object cannot move while within a direct line of sight.
Speaker 1: Line of sight must not be broken at any time.
Speaker 1: With SCP one seventy three, personnel assigned to inter container
Speaker 1: are instructed to alert one other before blinking object is
Speaker 1: reported to attack by snapping the neck at the base
Speaker 1: of the skull or by strangulation. In the event of
Speaker 1: an attack, personnel are to observe Class four hazardous object
Speaker 1: containment procedures. So uh. A lot of these remind me
Speaker 1: of like the premises for Doctor Who episodes, and this
Speaker 1: one immediately made me think of the weeping Angels, which
Speaker 1: are sort of a favorite on the newer Doctor Who episodes. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: like this is the trope, right, the the entity that
Speaker 1: cannot move as long as you're looking at it, but
Speaker 1: if you look away, it's going to creep in with
Speaker 1: alarming speed. Another big example of this are the hedge
Speaker 1: creatures from Stephen King's novel The Shine. Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: But one of the things The Shining movie is my
Speaker 1: favorite movie of all time. But that is the one
Speaker 1: thing from the novel I really wish had made it
Speaker 1: in there. That's right, because in the in the in
Speaker 1: the movie, the original Kubrick film, we we got this hedgemazed,
Speaker 1: and certainly that works very well within the the you know,
Speaker 1: the that adaptation. But in the original novel, they're these
Speaker 1: hedge animals and if you look away, then you look back,
Speaker 1: and they moved closer, and they get closer and closer.
Speaker 1: And I haven't seen it yet, but you know, Stephen
Speaker 1: King made his own adaptation of it, and I believe
Speaker 1: the hedge creatures are in that. I think so. I
Speaker 1: think they kept it, but I've not seen one of
Speaker 1: these days, I'll get to it now. SCP One three,
Speaker 1: as the picture seems to illustrate, is kind of this
Speaker 1: giant space baby from a Young smunk Meyer film. At
Speaker 1: the image is pretty crazy. Yeah, it's it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's a little bit bad, but it's also it's it's
Speaker 1: creepy to look at because you're trying to imagine this
Speaker 1: thing moving when your eyes are adverted. And they believe
Speaker 1: this is also the most popular one, right or one
Speaker 1: of the most pop's. It's right up there on the
Speaker 1: top of the list, if not the most popular, and
Speaker 1: certainly it's been around the longest, and it is a
Speaker 1: good it's a really good like template for other U
Speaker 1: imagine for anyone creating one of these now. In addition
Speaker 1: to the head creatures from Stephen King's The Shining and
Speaker 1: the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, which which, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out, these are these on the show where ancient
Speaker 1: alien predators who resemble winged humans and they make use
Speaker 1: of time paradoxes. They move swiftly, but only if nothing
Speaker 1: is looking at them, and apparently if two weeping angels
Speaker 1: look at each other at the same time, they get
Speaker 1: trapped in their stone forms. But then, on top of
Speaker 1: these sational examples, there's Ninja Cat from YouTube. It's exactly
Speaker 1: the same premise. It's it's uh, somebody pointing their camera
Speaker 1: at this cat is peeking around a corner at them
Speaker 1: down the hall, and then the camera moves away for
Speaker 1: a second, moves back, and the cat is peeking around
Speaker 1: a closer corner, and they move away, and then when
Speaker 1: they come back, the cat is even closer. But just
Speaker 1: like the hedge creatures of the Weeping Angels or this
Speaker 1: particular SEP specimen, you never actually see it move. It
Speaker 1: just gets closer and closer and closer to much right
Speaker 1: on you. No, I haven't seen that one, but that
Speaker 1: sounds like it would be very amusing. Yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's wonderful. But this last example, ninja cat. Uh,
Speaker 1: given that it's a natural world predator as opposed to
Speaker 1: another worldly when it raises, the question, does direct line
Speaker 1: of sight, direct eyesight even protect a prey animal such
Speaker 1: as a human from a predator such as a tiger
Speaker 1: or a jumping angel or a hedge monster. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a wonderful question. And uh, and indeed we
Speaker 1: have some answers to that. So eye contact is of
Speaker 1: course something that creepily transcends species. And and I mean
Speaker 1: it's creepy enough with with humans, right, it's weird to
Speaker 1: humans lot gazes and there's this sense of connection, sense
Speaker 1: of openness for an attempt to dominate. Numerous studies have
Speaker 1: revealed that that it that it has various influences over
Speaker 1: trust persuasion. A two thousand eleven study even show that
Speaker 1: eye contact can serve as an invitation to mimicry, which
Speaker 1: which has an impact on the way we learn, but
Speaker 1: also potentially on how people with autism struggle to grasp
Speaker 1: when they're expected to copy the actions of another person.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, certainly. I mainly think of the sort
Speaker 1: of quote science of eye contact because I used to
Speaker 1: teach public speaking, and it's a big part of that,
Speaker 1: like how much eye contact should you have with your audience? Um,
Speaker 1: where should you be moving your eyes through the audience?
Speaker 1: Would you just stare at one person? Obviously not. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of rules to
Speaker 1: it to be an effective public speaker, right. But but
Speaker 1: related to that, there's there's also this mix of a
Speaker 1: continuing study into how uh, direct eye contact influences are
Speaker 1: are speaking abilities, but also there's a fair amount of
Speaker 1: sort of folk mythology about yeah. Well, for instance, the
Speaker 1: whole idea that you should make direct eye contact when
Speaker 1: trying to convince somebody of something you see it in
Speaker 1: a speech or whatever. There was actually a two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen University of Freiburg study that found that direct eye
Speaker 1: contact makes skeptical listeners less likely to change their minds.
Speaker 1: I believe it. So it's just it's like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: you're boring into me with your with your ideas and
Speaker 1: your creepy eyes. I'm just gonna shut you out. I remember,
Speaker 1: I don't have them in the notes here, but I
Speaker 1: remember reading studies that like have quantified the exact amount
Speaker 1: of seconds that human beings can look at each other
Speaker 1: in the eyes before it becomes so uncomfortable that they
Speaker 1: just immediately shut down. Yeah. But the crazy part though, right,
Speaker 1: is that that if you've ever made eye contact with
Speaker 1: a dog or a cat or a zoo animal, then
Speaker 1: you felt that inner species connection as well. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I look, that's funny that you you bring that up,
Speaker 1: because you know, I have two dogs. I hang out
Speaker 1: with them all the time, and uh look them in
Speaker 1: the eyes all the time, a lot longer than a
Speaker 1: human and I would be able to look each other
Speaker 1: in the eyes. But I think it's because the dogs
Speaker 1: are connecting differently, but it still means something to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have the same experience with our cat, who like
Speaker 1: who I know, you know, I do not this cat, especially,
Speaker 1: I do not anthropomorphizes too much, like she's she's a
Speaker 1: monster who attacks my feet, and uh, it just came
Speaker 1: around at the long wrong point in our lives. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love her, she's wonderful, but she's kind of kind
Speaker 1: of right. Both my cats are similar, but you make
Speaker 1: eye contact with them and it's like, oh, it's like,
Speaker 1: I know that we have totally different minds and totally
Speaker 1: different brains, totally different views of the world, and yet
Speaker 1: right now we're sharing this profound activity. You're staring into
Speaker 1: eyes and you have no word for eyes. All right,
Speaker 1: you can just go down the rabbit hole on it.
Speaker 1: But at at the basic right, like the bedrock here,
Speaker 1: is that when you when two creatures make eye contact,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that one has been seen, that one
Speaker 1: is being seen, that one is your you're know, not
Speaker 1: hiding from that other creature, the other creature is aware.
Speaker 1: And then what comes next. So there are two main
Speaker 1: distinctions in what should come next? First matching up the
Speaker 1: with with the idea of the weeping angels and uh
Speaker 1: and topiary animals and sep one. See, there's this reality
Speaker 1: that certain creatures depend on stealth to acquire their prey.
Speaker 1: And if if they know that you see them, that
Speaker 1: is going to take away their advantage. They they are
Speaker 1: stealth hunters, they are surprised um predators, and if they
Speaker 1: don't have that surprise, then they may back off. And
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of these attacks in um
Speaker 1: an x COOM terms video games. That was I was
Speaker 1: immediately thinking of video game. Different video game. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're trying to sneak up on somebody, Yeah, or
Speaker 1: d n D as well, where you have a bonus. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a damage bonus or an attack bonus to a
Speaker 1: sneak attack, like in video games. Like Yeah, if it's
Speaker 1: a video games role playing, if the stakes are high enough,
Speaker 1: that surprise attack can make all the difference. Uh. But
Speaker 1: but but you know, within the game it's still a game, right, Well,
Speaker 1: for predators it's uh, it's even more important because first
Speaker 1: of all, nothing beats a sure thing, right or even
Speaker 1: a near sure thing. If an attack, but if an
Speaker 1: attack does not go as exactly planned, a number of
Speaker 1: consequences can occur. So the prey might get away, in
Speaker 1: which case you've lost energy, you've lost time. Other prey
Speaker 1: in the area might be alerted to your presence and
Speaker 1: they're frightened away, We're still an alert prey animal could
Speaker 1: have the chance to counterattack and inflict damage, and that
Speaker 1: kind of injury can prove deadly. Cheatahs, for instance, rarely
Speaker 1: go after larger prey like an austria. There are some
Speaker 1: very interesting examples where they do develop strategies to to
Speaker 1: do that, but for the most part they don't because
Speaker 1: while to pay off for catching that off striach is
Speaker 1: wonderful if you get if they get injured, it basically
Speaker 1: can mean starvation because they are a high speed predator
Speaker 1: and a limping cheetah is not going to eat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of a video that I shot here
Speaker 1: for work a couple of weeks ago about killer whales
Speaker 1: and humpback whales. There's a similar thing going on, and
Speaker 1: that killer whales trying to sneak up and take out
Speaker 1: humpback whale calves. But now humpback whales have started to
Speaker 1: fight back. Uh, to the point that humpback whales will
Speaker 1: actually interfere with killer whale attacks on other animals, like
Speaker 1: they're saving seals from killer whale attacks. Uh, and go
Speaker 1: watch the video. But there's a lot of science to it,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's going on there exactly to
Speaker 1: this point. The killer whales are expending all this energy
Speaker 1: and then the humpbacks just basically pummel them down to
Speaker 1: make sure that they stay away, and they're basically teaching
Speaker 1: them a lesson like don't go after our children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and certainly I have a hard time sympathizing with the
Speaker 1: mammal eating killer whales. They got to eat somehow. But
Speaker 1: but then you have the fish eating killer whales where
Speaker 1: in my household, my four year old is very is
Speaker 1: very into into nature right now, and he likes killer whales,
Speaker 1: but he's very firm that he only likes fish eating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the there's a particular to tie
Speaker 1: back into viewing prey killer whales that that prey on
Speaker 1: seals will do this thing called spy hopping, and my
Speaker 1: son's very intrigued by that. And this is where they
Speaker 1: will they'll they'll they're they'll poke their heads out of
Speaker 1: the water kind of like peek over the top and
Speaker 1: see what their prey is up to. Well, maybe if
Speaker 1: that seal just made direct eye contact with the killer whale,
Speaker 1: it would swim away. Yeah, that's right. Now, that's one possibility, right,
Speaker 1: if you know, if you know that the predators after
Speaker 1: you just make eye contact with it at all times,
Speaker 1: it's great, but you're that's going to be quite a
Speaker 1: resource drain. You can't constantly be on the lookout for predators.
Speaker 1: So the next best tactic, of perhaps the better tactic,
Speaker 1: is to fool your enemies into thinking someone's watching you
Speaker 1: all the time. And we actually see countless examples of
Speaker 1: this uh in the evolution of eye spots across various species.
Speaker 1: So these are just you know, dots on a creature
Speaker 1: that look like eyes. Now, to be clear, not all
Speaker 1: eye spots are there to mimic watching eyes. Sometimes they're
Speaker 1: there to fool a predator and attacking a less vulnerable
Speaker 1: part of the animal. You know, don't attack my head,
Speaker 1: attack my rump, or they play into mate selection. But
Speaker 1: in some cases, yes, eye spots definitely serve as anti
Speaker 1: predator adaptations. And we also see examples of the strategy's
Speaker 1: effectiveness outside of natural adaptation. For instance, in India, you
Speaker 1: have individuals who happen to live and work in Bengal
Speaker 1: Ti tiger country and they've long reported success with these
Speaker 1: wooden human masks that they wear in the back of
Speaker 1: their heads with wide open eyes. That the idea here
Speaker 1: is that the tiger will try and self attack them,
Speaker 1: but it sees this face staring back at them, and
Speaker 1: so they realize, oh, well, my percentage, my percentage to
Speaker 1: hit is less, I'm not going to take the risk. Um.
Speaker 1: And and you know, various animal species have evolved eye
Speaker 1: spots that in many cases they serve to protect them
Speaker 1: from creeping predators, as I already mentioned. Uh. Currently there's
Speaker 1: this really cool project Australian conservation biologist Dr Neil Jordan's
Speaker 1: is experimenting with the use of painted on eye spots
Speaker 1: painted and then just black paint into grazing cattle. And
Speaker 1: the idea here is to protect them from lion attacks,
Speaker 1: because lions end up attacking cattle uh. And then the
Speaker 1: humans counterattack at least all this violence, and then the
Speaker 1: lions are already endangered anyway. It's a bad situation for everyone.
Speaker 1: But so far he has reported a fair out of
Speaker 1: success with this. Say he holds a position with the
Speaker 1: Botswana Predator Conservation Trust and he recently held a ten
Speaker 1: week trial of the strategy painting eyes on one third
Speaker 1: of the sixty two cattle herd, three unpainted cows wild
Speaker 1: wound up as lion chow, but none of the eye
Speaker 1: cows fell to bradation. So, uh, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: But didn't we do it? Now we do? And this
Speaker 1: was it? You? Who? Yeah? So why it's in your mind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember this from a couple of weeks ago. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a small video out there that you can
Speaker 1: go check out at how stuff works. Now they're going
Speaker 1: to do a follow up on it. Hopefully we'll see
Speaker 1: the results of that in the the weeks and months ahead.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know they're gonna use GPS, cattle trackers,
Speaker 1: etcetera to really see how effective this, uh, this strategy is.
Speaker 1: But it does drive on the fact that, yes, there
Speaker 1: are predatory creatures where they know that you're watching, they
Speaker 1: will back they will back off where they will they
Speaker 1: will they will hold off their attack. However, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean the direct icon atack with your specimen is always
Speaker 1: a good thing. There are also plenty of examples where
Speaker 1: it will force violent actions out of the other species.
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially, you're making eye contact with another animal
Speaker 1: if they are if if if they might see you
Speaker 1: as prey, they're going to hold off their attack. But
Speaker 1: if they think that you were the predator, they think
Speaker 1: you might be the aggressor, they may just go ahead
Speaker 1: and counter attack. So dogs, for instance, they key into
Speaker 1: human eye movements. Have been a number of studies about this.
Speaker 1: They're able to track our eye movements and infer intent.
Speaker 1: And this has also been documented in in other species primates, goats, dolphins, seals,
Speaker 1: even some tortoises. But of course dogs that are that
Speaker 1: feel especially threatened can actually be provoked into attacking the
Speaker 1: eye contact. UM and I imagine anyone who's ever spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time around dogs, especially around a dog
Speaker 1: that is nervous, is already feels threatened. Like you most adults,
Speaker 1: I think, no not to just go and like get
Speaker 1: in its face and stare at it. However, according to
Speaker 1: a two thousand seven New Zealand Medical Journal report, UM
Speaker 1: this I have. This actually can also be one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that the young children are the ones who
Speaker 1: are often victims of dog attacks. When you have one
Speaker 1: of these threatened animals. I mean, on one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: the child is going to be smaller more on the
Speaker 1: dog's scale. There's more of a possibility for for for
Speaker 1: more grievous injuries because of the attack. But also they
Speaker 1: say that a child is going to be less likely
Speaker 1: to avert their gates. So this is like the Kujo
Speaker 1: lesson of science, right, Like Kujo is a different situation.
Speaker 1: But I can't remember back to that book or the
Speaker 1: movie if there's points where they just make direct eye
Speaker 1: contact with it. Yeah. Now, but there's a kid, right,
Speaker 1: it's the mom and the kid. Yeah, they're like stuck
Speaker 1: in a car. I think I never read or saw it,
Speaker 1: so I can't. I can't comment too much on Kujo. However,
Speaker 1: I did see the movie Congo, in which they're a
Speaker 1: number of human guerrilla interactions, and that's of course in
Speaker 1: a well known case as well, like if you encounter
Speaker 1: a guerrilla in the wild, don't make direct eye contact
Speaker 1: with it because you're going to enrage it. And uh,
Speaker 1: and this is this is actually you know, pretty well
Speaker 1: proven in fact back in two thousand seven, Uh, the
Speaker 1: Rotterdam Zoo engage in a wonderful reversal of the aforementioned
Speaker 1: tiger fooling masks. They they gave all these these visitors
Speaker 1: to the zoo shades like little paper shades that look
Speaker 1: like averted eyes, so they're they're super goofy looking because
Speaker 1: oh yeah, there's pictures here that notes wow. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it looks like you're looking the other direction, but you're
Speaker 1: looking straight at the gorilla, so that the gorilla doesn't
Speaker 1: want like run towards the because because people were you know,
Speaker 1: you're there to see the gorilla. You stare at the
Speaker 1: gorilla and at the stair guerrilla stares back sees you staring.
Speaker 1: Then then it's gonna enrage the gorilla. It's gonna upset
Speaker 1: the animal, et cetera. Uh So, even discounting actual human
Speaker 1: guerrilla physical interaction, you don't want these creatures to be
Speaker 1: disrupted more than than they already are artificial environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in the wake of the whole Harambe incident, this
Speaker 1: seems like something that would make a lot of sense
Speaker 1: for most suits to implement. Yeah, but I will to
Speaker 1: go back to SCP one seventy three would not make sense,
Speaker 1: I think, to where these in the presence of that specimen,
Speaker 1: because that would mean even though you are making direct
Speaker 1: eye contact with it, it thinks you are not, and
Speaker 1: it might attack and strangle you. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: what you should do with SCP one seventy three is
Speaker 1: paint your body or your clothes with eyeballs all over
Speaker 1: it that's pointing directly forward, so just in case you blink,
Speaker 1: it still thinks that you're looking at it. Yeah, I would.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that would be a decent addition to
Speaker 1: the containment procedures procedures. Yeah cool, all right. Well, the
Speaker 1: first one that I have is SCP eight seven, and
Speaker 1: it is also referred to as the stairwell. The entity
Speaker 1: itself is just a platform staircase of thirteen steps that
Speaker 1: has a platform in the middle that rotates a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty degrees to another staircase. Right, So it's two
Speaker 1: staircases like we we know from the apartment buildings, but
Speaker 1: the bottom one just leads into total darkness, and after
Speaker 1: one point five flights of stairs, the staircase limits your
Speaker 1: visual range. Even if you bring a light source with you,
Speaker 1: it won't always work. In fact, any light source that's
Speaker 1: over seventy five watts has its excess light absorbed by
Speaker 1: the stairwell. Subjects have reported hearing distressed children uh when
Speaker 1: they're on the stairs below the initial platform and on
Speaker 1: into the darkness, and the staircases depth seems to be
Speaker 1: unmeasurable and infinite, so it reminds me of House of Leaves.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, Uh, sometimes however, explorers who have gone,
Speaker 1: you know, very far down the stairs, they all of
Speaker 1: a sudden run into a face with no pupil, no nostrils,
Speaker 1: and no mouth. So it just kind of pops up.
Speaker 1: It's like the jump scare of this of the stairwell.
Speaker 1: Um doesn't seem to hurt people. It just goes and
Speaker 1: then it sounds like something he would encounter the Miyazaki films. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It looks like it too. Yeah. They have
Speaker 1: a little image on the on the Sep. Eight seven page.
Speaker 1: So all right, this one fascinated me and made me
Speaker 1: think about light absorbtion and want to understand a little
Speaker 1: bit more about how it worked, so I could try
Speaker 1: to extrapolate out maybe what's going on with a staircase,
Speaker 1: because again, it is a staircase that goes to a
Speaker 1: lightless darkness that may be haunted and possibly inhabited by
Speaker 1: a weird Miyazaki exactly. Yeah, yeah, so what's the deal.
Speaker 1: How is light absorbed? Well, Uh, the way that light
Speaker 1: is absorbed can be used to identify different types of
Speaker 1: gas in space because atoms and molecules absorb it at
Speaker 1: specific wavelengths. So how the spectra of light is absorbed
Speaker 1: can tell us a lot about the energy levels of
Speaker 1: the atoms and molecules that were observing, or about the
Speaker 1: number that are present. So perhaps this staircase has a
Speaker 1: some unique attributes regarding its atomic structure. Let's consider atoms
Speaker 1: for a second to try to figure this out. They've
Speaker 1: got a positively charged nucleus that's made up of protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons, and they're orbited by negatively charged electrons. Usually
Speaker 1: the number of protons and electrons are equal, so the
Speaker 1: atom has a neutral charge. Now I'm going to skip
Speaker 1: a lot of physics here. Okay, there was a lot
Speaker 1: to read about this, and I think it's it's over
Speaker 1: my head and I don't want to bore our audience.
Speaker 1: But if an atom has energy added to it, that
Speaker 1: can excite it by removing an electron, This is a
Speaker 1: process called ionization, and excitation is temporary though. When the
Speaker 1: atom drops back to its ground state, it gives off
Speaker 1: excess energy, which is usually like Okay, so this is
Speaker 1: how light can be generated. Each atom emits a unique
Speaker 1: fingerprint on the light spectrum, and so that's how we're
Speaker 1: able to identify these different gases based on their atomic
Speaker 1: structure what elements they might be. Now, visible light is
Speaker 1: a type of electromagnetic radiation. Light is composed of photons,
Speaker 1: and photons are just packets of energy that move at
Speaker 1: the speed of light. But if they're stopped, they cease
Speaker 1: to exist. So if a photon strikes an atom, it
Speaker 1: can give up its energy under the right circumstances, and
Speaker 1: in this process, the photon ceases to exist and the
Speaker 1: electron gets excited. This is absorption. This is when light
Speaker 1: gets absorbed. Okay, absorption occurs at specific energies in specific wavelengths,
Speaker 1: and this is how we identify these gases that light
Speaker 1: is passing through in space. Depending on what they are,
Speaker 1: certain wavelengths will be removed from the light, which results
Speaker 1: in dark lines. That's what they're referred to within the spectrum.
Speaker 1: So let's apply this to s c P seven. Again,
Speaker 1: this feels like a doctor who episode to me, like
Speaker 1: like this creeping darkness and they're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get past it. So I looked into the
Speaker 1: math of figuring out how many photons are admitted per
Speaker 1: second by a seventy five watt bulb. It's possible to
Speaker 1: figure this out as a chemistry problem. That's beyond our
Speaker 1: scope here. I'm not gonna walk all the way through
Speaker 1: the math, but I found someone else who did the
Speaker 1: answer for us, and I think it's three point one
Speaker 1: one four eight six e plus nineteen photons per second. So,
Speaker 1: based on what we know about light absorption on the
Speaker 1: atomic level, it sounds like the stairwell has some kind
Speaker 1: of element and it maybe it's a gas that absorbs photons.
Speaker 1: Above that level of three point one one four eight
Speaker 1: six e plus nineteen, then something changes about the stairwells
Speaker 1: atoms so they no longer absorb light and they create
Speaker 1: dark lines in the spectrum. Maybe the electrons in this
Speaker 1: darkness area are just returning to their ground state, or
Speaker 1: is there something altering the wavelength of light as it's
Speaker 1: entering this area. So another possibility is the Doppler effect.
Speaker 1: This is the phenomenon of a shift in the frequency
Speaker 1: or wavelength of light caused by motion at its source right,
Speaker 1: So this can shift the spectrum towards blue or red ends,
Speaker 1: creating different hues within light. It doesn't seem likely to
Speaker 1: me that this is the case, because it would mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, that there's something in the stairwell that
Speaker 1: would be moving the light source. You'd think you'd be
Speaker 1: aware of that. Maybe it's maybe it's the distressed children
Speaker 1: or the Miyazaki monster, but but you don't seem to
Speaker 1: see it at that point. The other reason is, even
Speaker 1: if blue and red war shifted, you'd still have visible
Speaker 1: light from the remaining photons. This seems to create total darkness.
Speaker 1: So so, based on what you've said so far, it
Speaker 1: sounds like the best case here is some sort of
Speaker 1: gas combined with maybe some sort of meta material that's
Speaker 1: coding the just the structures it's themselves. I think so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's my best guess that was at what
Speaker 1: is going on here with the stairwell now, regarding the
Speaker 1: weird face and the sound of the distress child and
Speaker 1: the infinite stairwell, I'm I'm at a total loss. My
Speaker 1: My best guest there is maybe because the stairwell is infinite,
Speaker 1: the generated photons from the light source can't reach its
Speaker 1: end even at light speed because it's infinite. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure My best guess though, is what you just
Speaker 1: said that there's there's something going on with the amount
Speaker 1: of photons that are generated per second, uh, and how
Speaker 1: much can be absorbed by whatever material is in there.
Speaker 1: So the stairwell is is generating something a field, some
Speaker 1: kind of gas. Okay, Robert's got another one here. And
Speaker 1: if you have also listened to our Frankenstein episode that's
Speaker 1: been released this week, this will be familiar. It is
Speaker 1: the homunculous, yes, and I'm gonna try not to repeat
Speaker 1: myself on the two episodes too much here, So if
Speaker 1: you have any questions from any about Homunculi, tune into
Speaker 1: our Frankenstein episode as well. So this is SEP thirty
Speaker 1: and here's the description. Sep thirty appears as a hairless, genderless,
Speaker 1: grave toned humans, seventy one centimeter in height and weighing
Speaker 1: twelve to British stones in antiquated measure. It's solid blue eyes,
Speaker 1: lacked discernible irises or pupils, and remember and resemble small
Speaker 1: cut sapphires. SEP thirty possesses an androgynous voice with a
Speaker 1: pronounced English accident, not currently identifiable as specific to any
Speaker 1: modern region. It is able to converse, read, and write
Speaker 1: in Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, as
Speaker 1: well as two additional languages that have not yet been identified,
Speaker 1: despite SEP thirties insistence that they should be quote common knowledge.
Speaker 1: STP thirty also demonstrated knowledge of physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics,
Speaker 1: and horticulture roughly equivalent to that of a seventeenth century academic.
Speaker 1: In addition, SEP thirty has demonstrated knowledge of these topics
Speaker 1: along research lines that do not appear in the historical record.
Speaker 1: These alternative or entirely unknown approaches to research in the
Speaker 1: natural sciences are one source of SEP thirties utility and consultation. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this immediately reminds me. You know the hell Boy
Speaker 1: universe right? Oh? Yes, what Norman Roger Roger. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: immediately makes me think of Roger the homunculus. Uh uh.
Speaker 1: If anybody out there is not familiar with hell Boy.
Speaker 1: In that universe, there's the bpr D, which is very
Speaker 1: much like the SCP actually uh and uh. Roger is
Speaker 1: one of their discoveries, but he's also an agent. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's he's a homunculous yeah, and that's that is Uh,
Speaker 1: that's what we have here in Sep. Thirty an ammunculus homunculus. Uh,
Speaker 1: that does seem to have a level intellivigence and alchemical
Speaker 1: understanding that surpasses what typically passes for an amunculus in
Speaker 1: most texts. Again more in common with with rod Or,
Speaker 1: who is very much an intelligent individual. Well, I like
Speaker 1: the idea that these things are built and then they're
Speaker 1: effectively immortal, so they're hanging around for a long time.
Speaker 1: They're just absorbing knowledge like a sponge. So of course
Speaker 1: they'd be smart. Yeah, if you let one one live
Speaker 1: long enough. So homuncular are one of my favorite subjects.
Speaker 1: They're mean, creepy, weird little goblinoids that are made by wizards.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's not to love. Um, it's an artificial
Speaker 1: humanoid created through alchemy, which again is that sixte through
Speaker 1: eighteen century hodgepodge of occultist lower superstition and pre scientific chemistry.
Speaker 1: So it's not quite a human. Uh, the creature is
Speaker 1: a rational animal as it as it often was described.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, another fictional page and humanity's dream
Speaker 1: of mastering life and death. But one of the cool
Speaker 1: things is that you when you start getting into the text.
Speaker 1: Of course, you get into any alchemical text, and there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of weirdness and absurdity um and as well
Speaker 1: as stuff that seems to be code for for other secrets.
Speaker 1: It gets, you know, very byzantine. But the one one
Speaker 1: that I was looking at in particular is the liberal
Speaker 1: of the Libra of a cad the Book of the Cow,
Speaker 1: and it lays out some rather grotesque and confusing instructions
Speaker 1: in the art of do it yourself, homuncula brewing and
Speaker 1: m Makey van der Gluck's Abominable Mixtures, the liber Vock
Speaker 1: in the Medieval West, or the Dangers and Attractions of
Speaker 1: Natural Magic really lays out some excellent commentary on what
Speaker 1: it all means. That sounds like the kind of book
Speaker 1: that you would find at Hogwarts Academy in the library. Indeed,
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna briefly roll through, uh the recipe
Speaker 1: that is presented for the creation of a moncula. Do
Speaker 1: not attempt this at home. You can, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: reach the point where the ingredients do not exist, so
Speaker 1: good luck with it. Uh So, yeah, you're gonna create
Speaker 1: one homunculi. You're gonna need a magicians semen. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: gonna need animal blood. You're gonna need need a cow,
Speaker 1: you can need us. You need some sulfur, a magnet.
Speaker 1: But here's where it starts getting complicated. First, a large
Speaker 1: glass or lead vessel, all right, it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: little expensive. Then you're gonna need green tutuia tutilla, which
Speaker 1: is a sulfite of iron. Right, you're gonna hunt around
Speaker 1: for that. And oh yeah, you're gonna need the sunstone,
Speaker 1: which is a mystical phosphorescent elicks sir. This is always
Speaker 1: the case with alchemists, Right, It's like, here's a bunch
Speaker 1: of like stuff that you put in this casserole. And
Speaker 1: then oh yeah, you need this magical item that nobody
Speaker 1: knows where it is yet, like a philosopher's by the way,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need the Philosopher's stone, or you know what,
Speaker 1: or some other magical album that doesn't quite exist. Right.
Speaker 1: See it mixed the semen in the sunstone, and you
Speaker 1: inseminate a cow. You carefully plug the animal up with
Speaker 1: the sunstone, You smear the animal with with the blood
Speaker 1: of another animal. You place the artificially inseminated animal. Then
Speaker 1: inside a dark house where the sun never shines. Makes sense.
Speaker 1: Then you feed the cow exclusively on the blood of
Speaker 1: another animal. Then you prepare a powder of the ground sunstone,
Speaker 1: sulfur magnet, and green tutilla, and then you stir with
Speaker 1: the sap of a wide willow. Now at this point
Speaker 1: the text indicates that the cow should give birth and
Speaker 1: resulting unformed substance should be placed in the powder that
Speaker 1: you just prepared, which will cause the amorphous blob to
Speaker 1: grow human skin. And then you have a newborn humunculus
Speaker 1: and a large glass or lead container, depending on which
Speaker 1: one you used, and the creature will become crazy hungry
Speaker 1: in this time. So you need to feed the blood
Speaker 1: of its decapitated mother for seven days, and in this
Speaker 1: time it should develop into a fully grown, tiny, grotesque
Speaker 1: humanoid with some fragment of a human soul. All right,
Speaker 1: I think I think I just got the idea for
Speaker 1: a season five of Monster Science. How Dr Anton Jessup
Speaker 1: can introduce the homunculous. You gotta do it like a
Speaker 1: cooking show. It's like as if a Guy Fieri is
Speaker 1: making a homunculous. Oh, I bet he has. I bet
Speaker 1: he has made one before. Uh. The crazy thing though,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we get wrapped up in these
Speaker 1: ideas of the creation of life, you know, the Frankenstein
Speaker 1: myth that we uh we we discussed at length in
Speaker 1: our in our other episode this week. But the creation
Speaker 1: of the homunculi is not necessarily a means, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily the end product. The idea then, is
Speaker 1: that now that you have this homunculi, you're gonna use
Speaker 1: it to create other things. So you're essentially going to
Speaker 1: render it down and and use it in other recipes.
Speaker 1: So in the in the text that I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they say, quote, if it is placed on a white
Speaker 1: cloth with a mirror in its hands, uh and uh,
Speaker 1: and suffumigated with a mixture of human blood and other ingredients,
Speaker 1: the moon will appear to be full on the last
Speaker 1: day of the month if you need to get around
Speaker 1: at night, like maybe you need that for another spell.
Speaker 1: I don't know. If it is decapitated and it's blood
Speaker 1: is given to a man to drink, the man will
Speaker 1: assume the form of a bovine or a sheep. But
Speaker 1: if he is anointed with it, he will have the
Speaker 1: form of an ape. So this is like some searcy
Speaker 1: one oh one stuff right here. Now, this is where
Speaker 1: it starts getting potentially useful. If the homunculus is fed
Speaker 1: for forty days in a dark house on a diet
Speaker 1: of blood and milk, and then it's guts are extracted
Speaker 1: from its belly and rubbed onto someone's hands and feet,
Speaker 1: he may walk on water or travel around the world.
Speaker 1: And the winking of an eye kept alive for a
Speaker 1: year and then placed in a bath of milk and rainwater,
Speaker 1: the homunculi will tell things that happened far away. Now
Speaker 1: that that's your Homunculi horror movie right there, Like you
Speaker 1: base it around that premise, and then somebody stumbles across
Speaker 1: the dark house and they mess up this experiment. It
Speaker 1: does create an even more horrific view of alchemy, like
Speaker 1: not only are they creating horrible little abominations, but then
Speaker 1: you're tormenting the abomination to pull off various other sorceress schemes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well it gets back to what we talked
Speaker 1: about in the Frankenstein episode, the ethics of creating life
Speaker 1: from nothing. So yeah, it is we've discussed in that
Speaker 1: Like we have this base the idea, you know, the
Speaker 1: basic human ability to to imbue on living things with life.
Speaker 1: You know, you paint a picture and then that picture
Speaker 1: becomes the thing to a certain extent. So we kind
Speaker 1: of create communcula every day, but it takes something like
Speaker 1: the true mythic communculus or SCP thirty to drive home
Speaker 1: just how weird that really is. All right, So my
Speaker 1: next one is a far step from a homunculi, although
Speaker 1: well we just don't know, because this is SCP fifty one,
Speaker 1: which is cataloged as unknown because no one knows what
Speaker 1: it is, and in fact, no one can remember that
Speaker 1: it even exists. Half the time, no one can describe
Speaker 1: what it is or its appearance. Somehow it erases any
Speaker 1: memory of itself from a subject's mind. They can't describe it.
Speaker 1: Even those who try to sketch a copy of a
Speaker 1: photograph are unable to remember what it looks like. Watching
Speaker 1: it on closed circuit cameras causes amnesia, and it's basically
Speaker 1: called the self keeping secret. No one remembers how it
Speaker 1: was brought to SCP or who built its containment room.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in the in the file on it
Speaker 1: on the containment unit in the very particular ways it
Speaker 1: has to be contained. But the most important thing is
Speaker 1: that all personnel have to stay at least fifty meters
Speaker 1: from the center of the room. Otherwise they just forget
Speaker 1: that it exists. Oh I, I love this. It's very
Speaker 1: It sounds like something Borhees would have come up. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a paradox. It's the thought experiment. Even
Speaker 1: those who talk about it, just the act of talking
Speaker 1: about it seemed to forget that it existed shortly thereafter. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's the possible scientific tieing. Well, we can look
Speaker 1: at amnesia or how to erase memories, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of ways to erase human memories, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we're making a lot of headway with it right now
Speaker 1: in modern science. But let's do a quick look at amnesia.
Speaker 1: What is it. Well, it's a loss of memory from
Speaker 1: physical or psychological conditions. Usually we're talking about a head trauma,
Speaker 1: but sometimes disease or emotional trauma contributes to it as well. Now,
Speaker 1: given the circumstances of SCP fifty five, I'm assuming it
Speaker 1: has to do with emotional trauma, Like it's so emotionally
Speaker 1: traumatizing to look at it or even talk about it
Speaker 1: or think about it that your brain just just erases it.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, UM, or could also be reaching
Speaker 1: in with spores or something. They don't mention any traces
Speaker 1: of physical signs, but that is possible as well. It
Speaker 1: could be a disease, or maybe it's some kind of
Speaker 1: physical manifestation that's localized to a fifty meteor radius. I
Speaker 1: don't know, UM, But SCP fifty five doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be causing what's known as anterior grade amnesia because people
Speaker 1: can form new memories. People with anterior grade amnesia cannot
Speaker 1: form new memories. Retrograde amnesia seems to be what's going
Speaker 1: on here. That's when you're impeded from retrieving your previous memories.
Speaker 1: If it's any kind of psychogenic amnesia, then it could
Speaker 1: be dissociative or it could be like a fugue state,
Speaker 1: possibly as a result of post traumatic stress disorder. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking again, it's causing such emotional stress that people
Speaker 1: just completely forget about it. The reported symptoms, however, don't
Speaker 1: seem to indicate that the creation of a dissociative identity
Speaker 1: is going on here, So it's not like you go
Speaker 1: in and you see it, and you create an entire
Speaker 1: identity while you're seeing it, and then you're unable to
Speaker 1: recall the memories of your identity that interacts with SCP
Speaker 1: fifty five. It's probably not ahead trauma like I was saying,
Speaker 1: because we think there would be Yeah, there'd be evidence
Speaker 1: unless it's electric. But even electro convulsive treatments usually lead
Speaker 1: to interrograde amnesia and not retrograde. So okay, you could
Speaker 1: possibly treat this as memory loss with drugs that use
Speaker 1: active neuroep and nephron, But would the subject recall immediately
Speaker 1: shut down their memories? Again, I don't know what if
Speaker 1: they took the drugs though. What if they took drugs
Speaker 1: that limited their perception skills while they were in contact
Speaker 1: with SCPT, so maybe then they'd be able to remember it.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Um. I looked to an article called
Speaker 1: wiping the slate? Is playing with memory humane or is
Speaker 1: it just wrong? From psychology today? And it's it covers
Speaker 1: the the broad spectrum of ways in which we're able
Speaker 1: to start erasing memories. Today, scientists have been using behavioral
Speaker 1: conditioning and drugs that alter memory consolidation on the molecular
Speaker 1: level to erase memories. They can delete memories and rats,
Speaker 1: but we haven't really figured out how to target specific
Speaker 1: memories yet. And there's three ways that they're doing it.
Speaker 1: Propran and All is a beta blocker that they use,
Speaker 1: and it can weaken the link between the facts of
Speaker 1: a memory and its emotional impact by blocking adrenaline and
Speaker 1: other substances that ignite our fear response. Another possibility is
Speaker 1: zeta inhibitor peptides. So what happens with these is they
Speaker 1: inhibit our p k M zeta enzymes so that they
Speaker 1: can't maintain or strengthen long term memories in our brains. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, rats that are injected with this will walk
Speaker 1: right into shock rigged obstacles that they've previously learned to avoid. Uh.
Speaker 1: The last one is that our amygdala's seem to be
Speaker 1: able to be overwritten by genetically disarmed herpes. UH. It
Speaker 1: infiltrates and cripples the neural networks and a human brain,
Speaker 1: but the current human application seems very far fetched to
Speaker 1: be able to like isolate specific memories such as SCPT.
Speaker 1: Could be an alien with some sort of space herpes maybe,
Speaker 1: or or maybe it's just emitting propaninal or zeta inhibitors.
Speaker 1: Who knows. Uh, let's look a little bit more at us.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show before, especially with
Speaker 1: relation to PTSD and the use of m d m
Speaker 1: A to treat it. Because PTSD memories remain horribly intense,
Speaker 1: they're considered a disease of how memory works and in
Speaker 1: the sense that they can't be forgotten. So PTSD subjects
Speaker 1: are actually often counseled to share their memories to try
Speaker 1: to help in the act of forgetting. But this actually
Speaker 1: rarely seems to help. However, I will acknowledge through our
Speaker 1: m d m A episodes that does seem to help
Speaker 1: them if they take m d M A and then
Speaker 1: they go through counseling. Uh, because the m d m
Speaker 1: A helps them forget by associating those memories with trust
Speaker 1: and a lack of fear. As we've talked about in
Speaker 1: that if you haven't listened to it, I highly recommended
Speaker 1: our our two parter on m d M A and
Speaker 1: the science behind it. This would you know thinking of it?
Speaker 1: Of of this entity the specimen SPC fifty five as
Speaker 1: an as a potential alien creature that emits some sort
Speaker 1: of psychoactive substance. Yeah, like clearly it's it's not emitting
Speaker 1: m D M A. But that would be a wonderful
Speaker 1: set out for some sort of science fiction. And maybe
Speaker 1: it's before and alien just to be in its presence
Speaker 1: without like a containment suit used to know, pure euphoria
Speaker 1: and bliss. Right. Well, yeah, it automatic, it's like a
Speaker 1: like like using pharama. Oh you know what it's like.
Speaker 1: It's like um, David Tennant's character on Jessica Jones. It
Speaker 1: creates trust and yeah, the Purple Man, I believe Killgrave.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's like he's emitting uh something that makes
Speaker 1: you trust him and have a lack of fear, total
Speaker 1: lack of fear. But I don't know if that's what's
Speaker 1: going on with that. CP fifty five could be uh,
Speaker 1: memories themselves. Let's remember this. No, I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: do that as a pun. They're not packets of data,
Speaker 1: they're not constant. The very act of remembering changes a
Speaker 1: memory itself. This model has been shown at a molecular
Speaker 1: level by neuroscientists, so therefore, memories can be altered by
Speaker 1: other chemicals, specifically that those that inhibit proteins sin the cysts.
Speaker 1: So if new proteins can't be created during the act
Speaker 1: of remembering, the original memory ceases to exist. So maybe
Speaker 1: a SCP fifty five is suppressing protein creation. This would
Speaker 1: make sense because based on what I've covered in the
Speaker 1: past on potential memory erasure, like memories become susceptible to
Speaker 1: to tweaking, to treating, or erasure when they are recalled.
Speaker 1: Like if everyone I always think of memories is like
Speaker 1: a clay sculpture. It's in a drawer, and anytime you
Speaker 1: get it out, that's when you end up changing the
Speaker 1: shape with your hands just by remembering it, and then
Speaker 1: you put it back in the drawer. If it's in
Speaker 1: the drawer, it's harder to get to. But if you
Speaker 1: retrieve it, if you're retrieving the memory, if you're engaged
Speaker 1: with the memory, then it's susceptible. Well, the thing about
Speaker 1: SCP fifty five that makes it difficult to quantify this
Speaker 1: way is it somehow mimetic, because even the very mention
Speaker 1: of it like that somehow passes on this possible protein
Speaker 1: inhibition to other people, so they forget it too, Like
Speaker 1: if you've never even encountered it and I tell you
Speaker 1: about it, you'll forget about it. Uh So, perhaps the
Speaker 1: act of speaking about it somehow is passing along the
Speaker 1: protein suppression. I don't know, like you get infected with
Speaker 1: this protein suppression and then speaking passes that along to
Speaker 1: another person. Not sure what's going on. If you couple
Speaker 1: the drugs mentioned that I mentioned above U with what's
Speaker 1: known as reconsolidation memory therapy, you can get very specific
Speaker 1: about which memories you want to erase. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you inject a protein synthesis inhibitor in rats before they're
Speaker 1: exposed to reconsolidation, they can be trained to forget all
Speaker 1: their fear associations with something. So maybe what's going on
Speaker 1: is SCP fifty five reconsolidates your memories about it while
Speaker 1: it's also emitting either protein inhibitors or one of these chemicals.
Speaker 1: It's basically providing you with therapy about it while you're
Speaker 1: interacting with it. And depending on the ultimate nature of it,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a beneficial thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like
Speaker 1: it's like, I know I'm horrible and you can't really
Speaker 1: comprehend me without going mad. So I'm gonna meet you
Speaker 1: halfway here, right here, I'll give you some drugs, and
Speaker 1: I'll also talk you through it. Uh. There's a study
Speaker 1: where a team at Ricken m i t S. Center
Speaker 1: for Neural Circuit Genetics. They were able to alter bad
Speaker 1: memories in mice using something called optogenetics. They inserted genetically
Speaker 1: encoded light responsive proteins into cells so they could pinpoint
Speaker 1: where in the mouse's brain a negative memory was formed.
Speaker 1: Then they used lasers to manipulate the neurons in the
Speaker 1: mouse brain so it forgot that memory completely. Another team
Speaker 1: in ten use xenon gas as an anesthetic on mice
Speaker 1: to modify their memory consolidation, and that inhibited their n
Speaker 1: m d A receptor brain activity in their brains, again
Speaker 1: reducing fear reactions. So this is something that science is
Speaker 1: playing around with a lot right now. And every article
Speaker 1: I wrote read about it was like, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, YadA, YadA YadA, But
Speaker 1: it seems like lasers, drugs, protein inhibitors, zenon gas, you
Speaker 1: name it. There are a lot of ways to biologically
Speaker 1: alter our brains so we forget things. So SCP fifty
Speaker 1: five could be any combination of things. Uh that you
Speaker 1: could either use chemicals or lasers or whatever. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go though with that, it causes such emotional trauma that
Speaker 1: you don't remember it. The big question is how is
Speaker 1: it transmittable? Like, how does anybody out there? I'd love
Speaker 1: to know, how could something like this be a transmittable
Speaker 1: um memory erasure? How about this? Maybe it's not so
Speaker 1: much transmitted. What if this is this entity you is
Speaker 1: is something that has already been experienced by everyone, and
Speaker 1: therefore it's not so much that you're introducing me to
Speaker 1: the idea of it, but you're reintroducing it. And and
Speaker 1: any reintroduction to the specimen either it's it's actually now
Speaker 1: you're either an actual encounter or just discussion of it
Speaker 1: of course ends up self deleting. So like what if
Speaker 1: it you know, what if it's God and you see
Speaker 1: this God right before you're born and then then you
Speaker 1: enter this world, so everyone has a as a as
Speaker 1: an existing memory, or maybe if you want to go
Speaker 1: even more fanciful and psychedelic, like everyone has like a
Speaker 1: race memory of this entity. Right, yeah, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: make sense as well. Well, it's currently under containment, although
Speaker 1: probably thirty seconds after Robert and I uh finished talking
Speaker 1: about this We'll completely forget about SCP fifty five. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about SCP to five eight four. Yes,
Speaker 1: SCP to five eight four. And this one, like like
Speaker 1: the last specimen we looked at, it's interesting because it
Speaker 1: represents a paradox. Here's the description. SCP to five eight
Speaker 1: four is a species of snake that has been classified
Speaker 1: oxy Uranus or a boris. SCP four has no head
Speaker 1: or tail, as its body forms a continuous closed loop. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: SCP fours tissue and anatomy is completely normal, safe for
Speaker 1: its circular spine, circulatory system, and digestive track. SCPO S
Speaker 1: four is able to achieve locomotion, but has no brain
Speaker 1: sense of sight, hearing, taste, or smell, and thus is
Speaker 1: only capable of reflective movements to flee from danger after
Speaker 1: injury or move towards warmer areas. Otherwise, instances tend to
Speaker 1: remain still or spin in place. So I'm just imagining
Speaker 1: it's a circular snake body with no head, no tail,
Speaker 1: but when it moves it is just kind of rolling
Speaker 1: around like a hula hoop on the ground. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine a snake who hoop, Yeah, and that's what this
Speaker 1: thing is. So the description goes into state that it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't breathe, It depends on an unknown energy source. Again,
Speaker 1: it has no brain. Yeah, and uh, the detective it's
Speaker 1: digestive tracks seems to cycle the same matter continuously, but
Speaker 1: it's somehow able to gain metabolic energy with each cycle
Speaker 1: without without expending any of the nutrients. And it reproduces
Speaker 1: via as osmosis into two hoops. So, uh, what we
Speaker 1: have here is they've actually got a room full of
Speaker 1: these things. It's not just one, I guess, or at
Speaker 1: least they have, you know, and given point, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they sell them in the SEP gifts. Maybe
Speaker 1: the SEP employees use them as hula hoops for their kids.
Speaker 1: They only keep one in the containment solid a time
Speaker 1: because they're kind of like troubles right in that sense.
Speaker 1: They seem to have no they lack the necessary openings,
Speaker 1: right Yeah. Yeah, there's no obvious reproductive capabilities. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so what we have here, and one of this is
Speaker 1: I think interesting, is that you basically have an imaginative
Speaker 1: sci Fi send up of the mythical or a boris
Speaker 1: the tail consuming serpent, which has been a potent symbol
Speaker 1: since ancient times. I mean, you see examples of it
Speaker 1: from you know, neolithic cultures, you see it in ancient Egypt. Um.
Speaker 1: It kind of it basically emerged in ancient times as
Speaker 1: basically a symbol or a motif, and then as human
Speaker 1: culture advances, we end up applying all sorts of different
Speaker 1: reads to what it might mean. Uh. Plutarch, for instance,
Speaker 1: when when it came around his time, he described it
Speaker 1: as like this, he said, quote it feeds upon its
Speaker 1: own body. Even so all things spring from God and
Speaker 1: will be resolved into the Deity. Again, so interpretations vary,
Speaker 1: they get increasingly more complex and spiritual. UM in Hinduism
Speaker 1: or a boras symbolism is sometimes ties in to Kundalini
Speaker 1: energy with the Kundalini serpent um. You see it in
Speaker 1: South American art um. You see it in the a
Speaker 1: Gnostic beliefs. The aura borus is the soul of the world.
Speaker 1: It's um. So it goes from just being this idea,
Speaker 1: almost this kind of primitive childlike idea of like what
Speaker 1: if a snake bit its own tail, where the snake
Speaker 1: try to eat its own tail, and then it evolves
Speaker 1: into this paradoxical idea of something without beginning or end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. I've always thought of it as being both
Speaker 1: like a symbol of the circle of life, which I
Speaker 1: guess you could see SCP two five eight four is
Speaker 1: being a perfect representation of. But but it's also like
Speaker 1: representative of just like the quixotic nature of doing things
Speaker 1: over and over again and expecting different results. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends what your your take on infinity
Speaker 1: is because you can look at the oora borus, Oh,
Speaker 1: that poor snake, it's constantly being eaten eaten, or you
Speaker 1: can say, oh, that's snake, he's really got it made.
Speaker 1: It always has a meals never hungry, because it also
Speaker 1: never the glass half full kind of situation. Because I
Speaker 1: guess you can look at it too and say that
Speaker 1: the ara borus never vanishes in the araborus doesn't blink
Speaker 1: out of existence because it cannot digest itself. Fun fact
Speaker 1: from our X Files episode Agent Scully has one tattoo
Speaker 1: and it is the Ora boros. Oh where does she
Speaker 1: have the tattoo. It's on the back of her neck,
Speaker 1: I think, And there's some implication that she may be
Speaker 1: immortal because she has it. Really well that that again
Speaker 1: there are ties to undying nature. Uh, as we saw
Speaker 1: in that Plutarch quote. Um. You you also see other
Speaker 1: sort of mythical and folklore creatures that coming from time
Speaker 1: to time. There's the hoop snake, which was a creature
Speaker 1: from the lumberjack folklore of Wisconsin and Minnesota during the
Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentieth century, the centuries the fearsome critters as
Speaker 1: they were called, and this was a snake that would
Speaker 1: bite its own tail and roll around on ground like
Speaker 1: a like a who um. But we also see some
Speaker 1: interesting scientific examples, so you'll you'll obviously you'll occasionally run
Speaker 1: across tails of auto cannibalism and snakes of snakes actually
Speaker 1: biting or trying to eat their tail, particularly when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with snakes in captivity. But you but you also
Speaker 1: have a few animals that engage in or a boris
Speaker 1: like actions. So there's the South African armadillo girdled lizard
Speaker 1: that actually bites its own tail, curls up and uses
Speaker 1: the bite to keep hold of its tail. So it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful little creature. It doesn't roll around like this,
Speaker 1: but it just uses its way to protect itself. But
Speaker 1: bite onto its own tail, like maximizes its defensive capabilities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you'll find other lizards and animals that curl
Speaker 1: up and sometimes even roll, but don't actually bite under
Speaker 1: their tail. For instance, mount Lyle salamanders, they'll curl up
Speaker 1: and roll downhill, but there's no biting or But back
Speaker 1: to the specimen here. So it becomes difficult to try
Speaker 1: and imagine how this creature could actually exist because it's
Speaker 1: um it's an impossibility. It's a self sustaining system, a
Speaker 1: perpetual motion a machine. Uh, And of course perpetual motion
Speaker 1: design machines cannot exist because of friction and energy dissipation.
Speaker 1: Like you can't make a machine that will work forever
Speaker 1: without having some energy input coming along and and charging
Speaker 1: it back up again. Likewise, even if you took out
Speaker 1: breathing concerns lack of a brain, if you just had
Speaker 1: this hoop snake creature like this specimen, and it had
Speaker 1: a meal in its belly going round and round like how,
Speaker 1: you couldn't draw on that meal forever. I mean, even
Speaker 1: if it were an everlasting god stopper, right, it would
Speaker 1: could not sustain itself unless the meal and its belly
Speaker 1: was like a wormhole opening up to a like a
Speaker 1: food world. But no, these are similar questions, like you
Speaker 1: can't have the same meal digestive eternally it's right, and
Speaker 1: they're diminishing returns and uh. And likewise, spur if it
Speaker 1: just says that one thing and it's belly, it's not,
Speaker 1: I mean, how would that possibly work? Yeah, some kind
Speaker 1: of food is being teleported into its belly from somewhere. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're faced with maybe another SCP is responsible for there
Speaker 1: you go. If there's some sort of an SCP mouse
Speaker 1: that is eternally regenerating, perhaps through a wormhole, then this
Speaker 1: creature eats it at some point. But then how does
Speaker 1: how does it eat? It doesn't have a mouth it
Speaker 1: would have. That's the wonderful nature of it. Is just
Speaker 1: a complete paradox. Yeah yeah, um, well, it's certainly worth
Speaker 1: thinking about as an exercise and understanding anatomy, and and
Speaker 1: definitely energy consumption to that's for sure. I guess the
Speaker 1: only the only answer I can get for SP eight
Speaker 1: four is that it might be God to go back
Speaker 1: to polutar. This might be a manifestation of the mystery
Speaker 1: of the divine. Mmmm. That is worth chewing on literally.
Speaker 1: I wonder what SCP for tastes like chicken. Probably probably Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of the ethics of science, that leads us to
Speaker 1: our last s CP specimen to thirty one, which is
Speaker 1: referred to as Special Personnel Requirements. I really like this
Speaker 1: one because it leads us to talking about the Millgrim
Speaker 1: experiment and a lot about the ethics and sort of
Speaker 1: point of scientific experimentation. Here's the description of SCP two
Speaker 1: thirty one. It's a it's a girl, possibly a baby,
Speaker 1: that has to be subjected to something called the mon
Speaker 1: Talk procedure. Now we're never told what the details of
Speaker 1: this are, but it sounds awful. Uh. Most of the
Speaker 1: detail in the description goes into the requirements for the
Speaker 1: personnel that are attending to s C. They have to
Speaker 1: undergo heavy psychological testing. They have to be unmarried, have
Speaker 1: no children, and express total loyalty to the SCP, and
Speaker 1: if they express any sympathy to the subject, they're immediately
Speaker 1: transferred off the project. When they're on site, they wear
Speaker 1: helmets to conceal their identity and voice, and basically STP
Speaker 1: two thirte whatever it is, is strapped down all the
Speaker 1: time except for when they're subjected to this horrible procedure
Speaker 1: once every twenty four hours. The subject doesn't actually seem
Speaker 1: to be that important to the entry. The story goes
Speaker 1: that they're the seventh child born out of some kind
Speaker 1: of cult organization, that the first six subjects were its siblings,
Speaker 1: and they were killed in various results from this procedure
Speaker 1: or the containment this mon Tauk procedure. The personnel that
Speaker 1: work on this are told that if they don't subject
Speaker 1: SCP two one to this horrible mont talk procedure, it
Speaker 1: will result in the end of the world. So some
Speaker 1: of the personnel also have their memory is altered, maybe
Speaker 1: by SCP fift We're not sure. Uh, but they basically
Speaker 1: forget that they ever performed their duties in relation to
Speaker 1: this project. This pop culture wise, immediately made me think
Speaker 1: of Stranger Things. Now. I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to spoil Stranger Things at all, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the original title for the show was montalk Um, So
Speaker 1: I wonder I don't know which came first, s CP
Speaker 1: to thirty one or the TV show, or maybe they're
Speaker 1: somehow connected, like maybe the anonymous author is one of
Speaker 1: the people behind Stranger things. But um, yeah, the show
Speaker 1: was originally called Montalk and Uh, the idea of this
Speaker 1: secret project that's working, you know, doing terrible unethical things
Speaker 1: to a girl, it's interesting. It brings us right around
Speaker 1: to the Millgrim experiment. The reason why is one of
Speaker 1: the things they say about this SCP is that all
Speaker 1: of the personnel have to pass the Milgram experiment, meaning
Speaker 1: that they have to take it all the way. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you are unfamiliar with the Milgram experiment, it is
Speaker 1: one of the most controversial and highly publicized psychological studies
Speaker 1: ever conducted. I would say, yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: up there. We've we've touched on it in past episodes before. Um,
Speaker 1: it's anytime you see a list of like the the
Speaker 1: most the weirdest, most unethical experiments, it tends to show
Speaker 1: upright at the top. Yeah. So if you've never heard
Speaker 1: of it, this is how it goes. It was performed
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty two, and it
Speaker 1: was designed to measure the extent to which ordinary people
Speaker 1: would inflict pain on other people when they are instructed
Speaker 1: to do so by an authoritative figure. It was very
Speaker 1: controversial because the people were putting these situations without informed consent,
Speaker 1: and it was influenced by accounts Milgram heard of Nazi atrocities.
Speaker 1: He wanted to measure how willing the average person would
Speaker 1: be to obey institutionalized authority, and he actually received a
Speaker 1: grant from the National Science Foundation to do this. Conducted
Speaker 1: the experiments at Yale from sixty one to sixty two.
Speaker 1: Now you may have heard of this in relation to
Speaker 1: the phrase the banality of evil. It's often attributed to
Speaker 1: this study, but it was actually coined by Hannah Arrant
Speaker 1: in her book Aikman in Jerusalem. She was reporting on
Speaker 1: Adolph Aikman's trial in nineteen sixty one. Aikman was a
Speaker 1: Nazi commander who helped orchestrate the Holocaust. Now, Arrant's theory
Speaker 1: was that Aikman was an associopath. He was just an
Speaker 1: average person following orders. Milgram speaks to these ideas in
Speaker 1: his book Obedience to Authority, which is sort of the
Speaker 1: publication of his his results, but he published it much later,
Speaker 1: I let's say, like ten years later. So basically, the
Speaker 1: question raised by the experiment is could basically any office
Speaker 1: uh be a part of some atrocity chain who were
Speaker 1: just in the in the position to to receive those
Speaker 1: orders exactly. And this is how the experiment worked. There
Speaker 1: were three people in each situation, a supervisor, a learner,
Speaker 1: and a teacher. However, the only subject that was actually
Speaker 1: under scrutiny was the teacher. The other two people were
Speaker 1: just actors. The teacher was uninformed about the true nature
Speaker 1: of the experiment, and the supervisor would tell them that
Speaker 1: what they were doing was determining whether punishment in the
Speaker 1: form of electric shocks would promote learning. So usually the
Speaker 1: person playing the role of the learner was in another
Speaker 1: room and the teacher was seated in front of an
Speaker 1: apparatus that would pretend to shock the learner with somewhere
Speaker 1: between fifteen and four hundred and fifty volts. The teacher
Speaker 1: was then instructed to give a long multiple choice test
Speaker 1: to the learner, and every time they had an incorrect answer,
Speaker 1: the teacher was supposed to administer the shock, upping the
Speaker 1: voltage fifteen volts each time. No one was actually shocked
Speaker 1: in this experiment. The learner just pretended that they were
Speaker 1: being shocked until it reached three fifteen volts. They would
Speaker 1: scream and you know, pretend like they're in agony at
Speaker 1: volts though, they would just stop making sounds like presumably
Speaker 1: they passed out or something. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of these instances they were in a separate room and
Speaker 1: they couldn't see each other if they refused. If the
Speaker 1: if the learner refused, the experiments stopped, but the supervisor
Speaker 1: usually would direct them to just keep continuing. Otherwise they
Speaker 1: would keep going until they reached four hundred and fifty volts. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: let's be clear, the truth was always revealed to the
Speaker 1: teacher afterwards. They always told them what was actually going
Speaker 1: on um And the results were as such, sixty five
Speaker 1: of the participants kept going all the way to four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty volts. None of them insisted on stopping
Speaker 1: before three hundred volts. Whether or not Milgram used women
Speaker 1: or men in this experiment did not change the results.
Speaker 1: But when the physical proximity increase, the obedience factor decreased slightly,
Speaker 1: meaning when the teacher and the learner were closer to
Speaker 1: each other, they were less likely to go all the
Speaker 1: way with the shocks. This one is where it gets
Speaker 1: really scary. When a teacher was joined by actors posing
Speaker 1: as other teachers, their conformity rose all the way to
Speaker 1: n So. Okay, the reason why we all know about
Speaker 1: this experiment is it's been highly criticized for its ethics,
Speaker 1: specifically that it did not supply the subjects with informed
Speaker 1: consent and it exposed them to overly stressful and embarrassing situations. Milgram, however,
Speaker 1: defended it, and he said, look, we've got this survey.
Speaker 1: It's an exit survey that we do with with everybody
Speaker 1: that's done it, of those people were glad to have participated.
Speaker 1: Some of them even said by doing the experiment it
Speaker 1: made them more ethically sensitive. Now, we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the Frankenstein episode. We were sort of pretending what
Speaker 1: if Frankenstein had to apply for an i RB. This
Speaker 1: is one of those studies that led to the Belmont
Speaker 1: Report and having to have IRB approval before you do
Speaker 1: any kind of scientific experiment in an institutional stucause, you
Speaker 1: don't want to conduct an experiment that is putting people
Speaker 1: through the emotional ringer. Yeah, unless that mean, unless there's
Speaker 1: full uh you know, knowledge of it going in, which
Speaker 1: which is part of the experiment is that they did
Speaker 1: not have that noted exactly. Uh. This is why the
Speaker 1: American Psychological Association formulated its principles for research with humans.
Speaker 1: This is why it requires all research to receive approval
Speaker 1: by RBS. UH. In fact, uh an I RB did
Speaker 1: approve social psychologist Jerry M. Berger to obtain permission to
Speaker 1: partially replicate the experiment, but he stopped at a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty volts when the actor began to scream. However,
Speaker 1: his results up until that point were similar to millgrooms.
Speaker 1: So this is something that's worth considering. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I want, once upon a time pitched a show here
Speaker 1: at out stuff works that would would be entirely about
Speaker 1: studies like this. This study could never be done legally today,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a good thing. I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree on that. And yet it is incredibly influential
Speaker 1: on our understanding of human psychology. Our overall knowledge of
Speaker 1: things has has uh improved, I think you could say
Speaker 1: based on this study. So what other lessons have we
Speaker 1: learned from unethical science? And what lessons are we missing?
Speaker 1: And then let's get back to this SCP, like, what
Speaker 1: is it ultimately about? I don't think it's about the girl.
Speaker 1: It's more about the personnel, right, It's about the horror
Speaker 1: that is this great social significance of what human beings
Speaker 1: are capable of. Well, and supposedly they're saving the world. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's what they're told. Yeah, and that's where it gets
Speaker 1: really interesting. There's there's a couple of studies here I
Speaker 1: want to get into. Uh. I have two studies I
Speaker 1: want to talk about that are related to Millgram that
Speaker 1: have recently been published. The first is called why People Kill,
Speaker 1: and it was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Uh.
Speaker 1: It reminds us as well of another infamous case, the
Speaker 1: Stanford Prison Experiment. In nineteen Yeah, if you're unfamiliar with that,
Speaker 1: one psychologist Philip G. S Embardo randomly assigned Stanford University
Speaker 1: students to play roles as prisoners and guards. Within days,
Speaker 1: the people who are playing guards were abusing the prisoners.
Speaker 1: The prisoners themselves became passive. The study actually had to
Speaker 1: be called off. There's another study as well that I
Speaker 1: was unfamiliar with. Its referenced in here Muzafar Sheriff's nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four study on how competition can escalate into conflict.
Speaker 1: He divided adolescent boys into two teams, and he pitted
Speaker 1: them against each other at certain tasks. Uh, it also
Speaker 1: had to be called off because violence started between the boys.
Speaker 1: So what's going on here? Why are we circling around
Speaker 1: back to these projects? Because it feels like this, and
Speaker 1: this is the argument of this paper, it feels like
Speaker 1: we're at a time where we're very concerned about violence
Speaker 1: and the possibility that good people will do bad things. Right, So,
Speaker 1: think of the presidential election right now, and like the
Speaker 1: rhetoric that's being tossed around about what people are capable
Speaker 1: of and how we have to defend ourselves against them.
Speaker 1: So this kind of stuff is in the air. People
Speaker 1: are thinking about it a lot. There's very apocalyptic thoughts
Speaker 1: in people's minds about what we're all capable of doing
Speaker 1: to one another. I mean, I would say that that
Speaker 1: is generally more of the like the standard human experience,
Speaker 1: and we in this country and in other countries, we've
Speaker 1: just been lucky to not have that being unconscious us.
Speaker 1: I think, I think you're probably right. Yeah, it's only
Speaker 1: now that we're we're having to come to grips with
Speaker 1: this reality. Um, the studies themselves presume that people aren't
Speaker 1: born bad necessarily, but that we're all coerced or seduced,
Speaker 1: or otherwise lead into violent behavior. Now, the author of
Speaker 1: this article, not Milgram, but the author of this one.
Speaker 1: He argues this is out of date thinking as well
Speaker 1: as the idea of any kind of pure nature oriented view.
Speaker 1: So that's worth thinking about. In conjunction with this SCP,
Speaker 1: I want to give you a Millgrim quote though, to
Speaker 1: to pause and sort of think about here. Milgrim himself said,
Speaker 1: ordinary people simply doing their jobs and without any particular
Speaker 1: hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible
Speaker 1: destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their
Speaker 1: work become patently clear and they are asked to carry
Speaker 1: out actions incompatible with the fundamental standards of morality, relatively
Speaker 1: few people have the resources needed to resist authority. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting to think about. I mean think about it,
Speaker 1: not not just from this level of like Nazis committing atrocities,
Speaker 1: but like your jobs, like think about the like hierarchical
Speaker 1: structure in a job, workplace or whatever. Because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to imagine Nazis and have your your idea colored
Speaker 1: by all these story worry about portrayals of Nazis, and
Speaker 1: you can easily think oh, I would stand up for that.
Speaker 1: I would be one of the good people. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think of all the smaller, mundane actions of authority. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really worth thinking about. And that brought me
Speaker 1: to um. This article called just Obeying Orders out of
Speaker 1: New Scientists. It was published in and they took the point,
Speaker 1: they said. Milgram later developed his idea of a mundane
Speaker 1: inclination to obey orders of authority into something he called
Speaker 1: a gentic state theory. This was in his nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four book Obedience to Authority, the same one where he
Speaker 1: talks about Hannah Aaron's finality of evil. And according to Milgram,
Speaker 1: the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a
Speaker 1: person comes to view themselves as the instrument for carrying
Speaker 1: out another person's wishes, and they therefore no longer see
Speaker 1: themselves as responsible for their actions. Once this critical shift
Speaker 1: of viewpoint has occurred in a person, all of the
Speaker 1: essential features of obedience follow. So when you go back
Speaker 1: to this SCP, right, we've got this I don't know
Speaker 1: cultist child strapped down to a gurney and she has
Speaker 1: to be tortured with the Montauk experiment once a day
Speaker 1: basically gets back to it that the reason why is
Speaker 1: because the personnel are all willing to shift viewpoints like
Speaker 1: this right now. The authors of this article and new scientists,
Speaker 1: they argue against Milgram's theory actually, and they cite recent
Speaker 1: historical studies that question Errant's interpretation of Aikman as well
Speaker 1: as Milgram's claim that human beings are programmed to obey authority.
Speaker 1: I just want to pause here for I never took
Speaker 1: that to be his claim. I always thought, um that
Speaker 1: the fact that they recognize that he saw these as
Speaker 1: studies as disobedience as much as obedience, his argument to
Speaker 1: me doesn't seem to be deterministic about human nature, right that.
Speaker 1: I mean, he makes the point like at least ten
Speaker 1: percent of people, even when there's these actors involved, are
Speaker 1: going to disobey authority. Right, So it's not necessarily like
Speaker 1: he's saying this is this is it, this is exactly
Speaker 1: what humanity is. No. Yeah, he's saying that, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's it is a silver lining, and that a certain
Speaker 1: percentage of individuals would seemingly always stand up to some
Speaker 1: sort of injustice like this. Yeah, I guess the the
Speaker 1: depressing part is when you have to ask, well, is
Speaker 1: that percentage high enough to make a difference? And even
Speaker 1: a very democratic process much less you know the inner
Speaker 1: workings of a shadowy organization that tends to weird alien Exactly, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And that's why I love this one. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: when you really think about it, beyond just like you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of this mysterious cultists, uh, with a experiment
Speaker 1: performed against their will every twenty four hours, there's like
Speaker 1: a lot of meat on the bone, like ethically thematically
Speaker 1: going on with just the short, little creepy pasta yeah,
Speaker 1: and and asking basic ethical questions, does like this is
Speaker 1: saving the world worth this? This one individual injustice? Does
Speaker 1: we do do the rights of all outweigh the rights
Speaker 1: of one? Well, let's factor this in because I think
Speaker 1: this is where it gets even more complicated. Uh. Has
Speaker 1: Leam and Rich are the authors of this study from
Speaker 1: They argue, what's really going on is a balance between
Speaker 1: obedience and disobedience that's based on whether or not the
Speaker 1: person in the teacher role prioritizes the voice of the
Speaker 1: supervisor over the voice of the learner. And to them,
Speaker 1: this reflects whether the person identifies with the cause of
Speaker 1: science or more with the plight of the ordinary citizens.
Speaker 1: So this is really interesting to me. It's like it
Speaker 1: puts them in in one of two camps, right that
Speaker 1: the in this case with the SCP, that this science
Speaker 1: is going to save the world, right at least that's
Speaker 1: what they're told, or the plight of this ordinary girl
Speaker 1: who is being tortured by the Montauk experiment, in which case,
Speaker 1: if that's it, the order's position the experiment as being
Speaker 1: a worthy cause that must be pursued. So the level
Speaker 1: of identification between the supervisor and the learner is really important,
Speaker 1: but so too is how much they identify with the
Speaker 1: cause of capital s science. It's very interesting, especially like
Speaker 1: I think from our our shows sort of viewpoint. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what what ultimately is driving the research and
Speaker 1: the researchers this idea that that science is this thing
Speaker 1: beyond us and then we're just near vessels for its
Speaker 1: inquisitive nature, or are we individuals engaging in a collective
Speaker 1: effort to better the human experience and human knowledge? Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes I think that this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that like we can pull out and it's applicable
Speaker 1: to almost every episode we've done, right, Like, what, what's
Speaker 1: the goal of this project? What's the what's the reason
Speaker 1: are we doing this for sciences? SACA? It brings us
Speaker 1: back to cargo cult science, right or is it you know,
Speaker 1: is it somehow affecting the ordinary man somehow? So to
Speaker 1: this end, these authors did three studies and one they
Speaker 1: used virtual reality to replicate millgram set up, and another
Speaker 1: they asked people to describe groups of other people using
Speaker 1: pejorative terms, and this range from the KKK to a
Speaker 1: family walking in the park. In their final study, they
Speaker 1: had actors perform all of Milgram's set up, so even
Speaker 1: the teacher role was performed by an actor. When they
Speaker 1: recorded the reactions as if the actors were inhabiting these characters,
Speaker 1: and they found, once again, Milgram's results were almost exactly
Speaker 1: reproduced with these actors. So they basically found an increase
Speaker 1: in identification with science leads people to persist longer in
Speaker 1: these unpleasant tasks. Uh. And the last thing I want
Speaker 1: to say about this, there's a researcher named Matthew Hollander,
Speaker 1: and he took the audio tapes from Milgram's study and
Speaker 1: he researched all He listened to the whole thing, like
Speaker 1: a year and a half worth of these studies, and
Speaker 1: he identified six types of resistance that were shown by
Speaker 1: the people involved with them, three of which were implicit
Speaker 1: and three were explicit. The implicit ones were silence or hesitation, imprecations,
Speaker 1: or laughter. And some people who have listened to these
Speaker 1: tapes they interpret the laughter as being sadism, but he said, no,
Speaker 1: the laughter is just this like uncomfortablelity of obeying the orders.
Speaker 1: The explicit ones were when they addressed the learner and
Speaker 1: they would say things like are you sure you want
Speaker 1: me to continue with this? Or when they prompted the
Speaker 1: supervisor and would say is it really necessary for me
Speaker 1: to continue doing this? Uh? And the last one was
Speaker 1: when they would just stop and they'd say, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to continue doing this. I'm done. Here's the
Speaker 1: really interesting thing from his study. Those who participated all
Speaker 1: the way to the end, the four fifty volts, they
Speaker 1: all used the implicit strategy is the silence, laughter, etcetera.
Speaker 1: The participants who actually addressed the learners and tried to
Speaker 1: have a dialogue with them, they were the only people
Speaker 1: who stopped in Milgram's experiment, So that speaks something to
Speaker 1: our again the identification do you identify with the person
Speaker 1: or do you identify with the cause? Right? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: to what degree is there going to be any kind
Speaker 1: of back and forth communication over any of this? Is
Speaker 1: it just becoming a vessel for the orders? So this
Speaker 1: is to wrap it up, my one of my favorite
Speaker 1: creepy pastas I've ever looked at. Whoever out there wrote
Speaker 1: it anonymously, bravo. Uh it really made me think pretty
Speaker 1: deeply about the ethics of what what the goals of
Speaker 1: science are, not just in terms of like, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact based stuff of like well I got to
Speaker 1: fill out this i RB protocol, you know, but more
Speaker 1: along the lines of like what's the point and what
Speaker 1: are we willing to do to get to it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I think in this this is another example of
Speaker 1: how SEP foundation entries are kind of enough relation evolution
Speaker 1: of the form. Uh So instead of them just being
Speaker 1: like individual creepy bits of you know, semi wicky type material,
Speaker 1: they are little thought experiments, little paradoxes um that are
Speaker 1: flavored with sci fi intrigue. And so I would I
Speaker 1: would definitely recommend anyone who who found these interesting to
Speaker 1: check out That website will include links on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode of Stuff to About Your Mind
Speaker 1: dot Com to the individual entries that we profiled here.
Speaker 1: So check those out, explore some more and if you
Speaker 1: find some then and you think to yourself, oh well
Speaker 1: these are these are perfect. If you guys do another
Speaker 1: STP episode, you should do these. You should let us
Speaker 1: know about that. Yeah, definitely keep the messages coming about
Speaker 1: Creepy Pasta's we you know, if you keep wanting to
Speaker 1: hear them, we'll keep doing them. Uh So, let us know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an STP, maybe it's another creepy Pasta, but
Speaker 1: point out stuff to us and we'll look into it
Speaker 1: and maybe Creepy Pasta for the Revenge will be coming
Speaker 1: up down the road. Uh So, if you want to
Speaker 1: reach out to us, well some of the best ways
Speaker 1: or to just go to stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where we've got all our articles, our
Speaker 1: videos or podcasts, as well as links to all of
Speaker 1: our social media. Yeah, and if you're listening to your
Speaker 1: in Halloween, we also have the new episodes of Monster
Speaker 1: Science there for you. Explorations of the connections between fictional
Speaker 1: monsters and real world Science. Yeah, absolutely, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: Monster Science. My favorite thing that we do here at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works. It's uh this is a treat to me.
Speaker 1: This is my Christmas. Uh So, if you want to
Speaker 1: write us the old fashioned way, though, and you want
Speaker 1: to tell us about creepy pastas, maybe praise Robert for
Speaker 1: his performance and Monster Science, or you've got some experiments
Speaker 1: that you'd like us to conduct, you can always write
Speaker 1: to us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Well more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works dot com. The f