Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Alexis code name Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are you. You are here. That makes this the
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
Speaker 3: of the week, fellow conspiracy realist. Happy almost Valentine's Day
Speaker 3: to all those who celebrate the sweet Yeah yeah, look
Speaker 3: at me. Be careful, folks. You might get diabetes if
Speaker 3: you hang out too often. That's how sweet we are.
Speaker 3: We are also chock full of strange news just for you,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists. We are going to explort so many things,
Speaker 3: AI and nukes, deep fakes and deep fakes hitting the pocketbook,
Speaker 3: some new plans by our friends at CERN who have
Speaker 3: still yet to build a little tiny home collider. But
Speaker 3: we'll see.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Ben five for one, I'm a little concerned.
Speaker 3: There it is there, it is. Be careful with that joke,
Speaker 3: it's an antique. We we're thinking we might spend the
Speaker 3: first act of Tonight's Strange News with just a round
Speaker 3: up of all the crazy stuff that has happened. Maybe
Speaker 3: we start here. Did you guys hear about the bill
Speaker 3: in Florida that's going to target bears, the animal bears,
Speaker 3: black bears?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Oh, what are the bears?
Speaker 4: What do the bears? Ever?
Speaker 5: Do the bears are the ones that are like being attacked,
Speaker 5: They need to be protected.
Speaker 4: Why are we targeting them?
Speaker 2: But it isn't a hunting bear, right or which bears
Speaker 2: can be hunted?
Speaker 5: Does this have to do with like all of the
Speaker 5: bears that keep stealing picnic baskets and such and they're
Speaker 5: trying to crack down on that.
Speaker 3: Finally, well the threat thereof Okay, so it turns out
Speaker 3: that quite recently, and this was reported on Monday, February fifth,
Speaker 3: so last like earlier this week, as we record, Republican
Speaker 3: state Congressman Jason Schauf has introduced a bill House Bill
Speaker 3: eighty seven to remove most penalties for killing bears just
Speaker 3: off the cuff in the state of Florida because quote,
Speaker 3: black bears are high on crack, they're going to break
Speaker 3: into people's homes and tear them apart.
Speaker 4: What they're high on crack? Where is this coming from?
Speaker 3: That's that's a question. A lot of people are asking, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a movie.
Speaker 5: Is this like some secret race baiting stuff that's going on?
Speaker 4: Like, what is that?
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's I think that's right.
Speaker 2: It's man, it feels it feels like a joke to me.
Speaker 2: You want to read just no, but it feels it
Speaker 2: feels like a joke. Tell Cocaine Bear was a thing.
Speaker 2: Everything is a joke now, dude. Everything is just this weird,
Speaker 2: terrible joke.
Speaker 3: Post irony, post truth society.
Speaker 2: It's real and yet simultaneously a joke.
Speaker 3: Yes, everything is real. What what was that line we
Speaker 3: loved from Invisibles? Everything is true and nothing is permitted.
Speaker 3: It's some some uh, some tag on that or some
Speaker 3: riff on that. Everything is terrible and everything's hilarious. Uh.
Speaker 3: There are some estimated four thousand and fifty black Bears
Speaker 3: in the state of Florida. To date, not one has
Speaker 3: been proven to have ingested crack. It really does sound
Speaker 3: like this guy is reacting to the Cocaine Bear film.
Speaker 5: I just feel like we need to find out who's
Speaker 5: giving the bears the crack and deal with that part
Speaker 5: of the problem. You know what I mean. This is
Speaker 5: a multi prom issue that we're talking about here.
Speaker 4: Who's giving the bears the crack?
Speaker 3: Yeah? This bill is if if there are any crack
Speaker 3: addicted bears. First off, they need help, Yeah, you need help.
Speaker 3: Don't criminalize addiction. And secondly, secondly, it is very American,
Speaker 3: as we'll find in a later listener mail segment, it's
Speaker 3: very American to treat these symptoms rather than the actual problem.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to give a shout out there because
Speaker 3: it does look like this is a bill being built
Speaker 3: off a meme.
Speaker 5: Uh in this sort of like the litter boxes and
Speaker 5: the schools, you know, the first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then another one that we should give some
Speaker 3: time to and maybe a little bit more serious here
Speaker 3: because the the crack bear legislation is probably not going
Speaker 3: to pass, I hope, but uh. Over just a bit
Speaker 3: north of Florida and South Carolina, the state is aiming
Speaker 3: to restart executions, to reinstitute the death penalty through both
Speaker 3: electric chair and firing squad and they said something pretty
Speaker 3: dangerous here. They said that in the case of capital punishment,
Speaker 3: painless death is not required. Now, this goes back to
Speaker 3: our earlier conversations off air. I can't remember whether we
Speaker 3: recorded that one about the lethal injection. Right, we talked
Speaker 3: about that previously, Right, the guy who survived execution and
Speaker 3: they were going to asphyxiate him because they and they
Speaker 3: did and he is dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it took a lot longer than they expected,
Speaker 2: and he appeared to suffer while he was being exphyxiated.
Speaker 4: So is this just like.
Speaker 5: Attempting to make the suffering like a feature and not
Speaker 5: a bug, like, let's let's make them, let's make these
Speaker 5: monsters suffer.
Speaker 4: Is that the idea?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go to landing me on writing for Fox News.
Speaker 3: This came out February seventh, twenty twenty four. There are
Speaker 3: about thirty three inmates who are currently on South Carolina's
Speaker 3: death row. There has not been a formal moratorium on
Speaker 3: the death penalty in that state, but for more than
Speaker 3: a decade, almost thirteen years, they have not performed an execution.
Speaker 3: And like many states in the US, they haven't performed
Speaker 3: an execution because it became very difficult to get the
Speaker 3: drugs that are required for lethal injection, And so what
Speaker 3: they said now is that, sorry, folks, you don't have
Speaker 3: to have a painless execution. The primary pitch of lethal
Speaker 3: injection is the idea that it is painless and therefore
Speaker 3: somehow more humane, right, And this made me think of
Speaker 3: our conversations with our pals at Lava for Good. It
Speaker 3: just seems pretty cold and dangerous to say painless execution
Speaker 3: is not mandated by law, even though technically they are correct.
Speaker 5: Well, I wonder too, like, how many instances of botched
Speaker 5: guillotine executions do we have record of. I'm I'm not
Speaker 5: trying to be a jerk here, I just know that,
Speaker 5: like in France, the guillotine was used much more and
Speaker 5: much more modern times than one might realize. And it
Speaker 5: sure to me seems like a pretty surefire way to
Speaker 5: get the job done instantaneously, you know.
Speaker 4: And I just I wonder if there ever been a
Speaker 4: time where.
Speaker 5: The blade didn't go all the way through, or there
Speaker 5: was some horrific you know, maiming.
Speaker 4: I kind of think probably not that many.
Speaker 5: And I just wonder, you know, this illusion of humanity
Speaker 5: with this injection, to me, is.
Speaker 4: Sort of a bit of a joke, right.
Speaker 3: I agree, I mean also adding to that execution via
Speaker 3: decapitation is arguably tremendously inhumane because the more we learn
Speaker 3: about about the brain, right and the rain, it's highly likely,
Speaker 3: if not statistically certain, that when people had their heads
Speaker 3: cut off, especially during a guillotine, they were still conscious
Speaker 3: and still receivering sensory input. They saw their own heads
Speaker 3: fall through into the basket, they heard the cheers of
Speaker 3: a bloodthirsty crowd. It's it's I would say, it's decapitation
Speaker 3: is more inhumane.
Speaker 5: And I'm certainly coificating for bringing back the guillotine, and
Speaker 5: it was more of a hypothetical, But I'm just saying
Speaker 5: that the idea that one is better than the other,
Speaker 5: I think sometimes is left up to science to figure out,
Speaker 5: and that that data doesn't always come through right away.
Speaker 5: It's more of a trial and error kind of situation,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: And it kind of takes us to this larger question
Speaker 3: about capital punishment, about the death penalty in general, right,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, not unique to the US by
Speaker 3: any means. As a matter of fact, there are several
Speaker 3: countries that are far more on board with the death penalty.
Speaker 3: But it's a question I want to hear from our
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists want to hear from you guys. Should
Speaker 3: the death penalty exist? Knowing that the US justice system
Speaker 3: in particular gets it wrong so often? I mean, how many, like,
Speaker 3: how many innocent people are we willing to put on
Speaker 3: the other side of the equals sign?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: What's our rate of error or margin of error rather
Speaker 3: that would be acceptable? And is there a margin that It's.
Speaker 2: A good question. It feels like, in my opinion, why
Speaker 2: it's a really good idea to write laws when you
Speaker 2: are in a time of peace, even if they're even
Speaker 2: if you're writing laws about war, write them during the
Speaker 2: peace time, because when you're in wartime or let's say
Speaker 2: you've had a family member or a loved one has
Speaker 2: been maimed or injured or murdered by somebody else, you're
Speaker 2: probably for you know, the death penalty or for you
Speaker 2: know that type of punishment, because you want justice for
Speaker 2: somebody you.
Speaker 5: Loved, right, I mean, it's the saying I think I
Speaker 5: maybe mentioned that I recently spent a day injury selection process,
Speaker 5: and part of that problem as is them asking jury
Speaker 5: members questions pertaining to largely A big part of it
Speaker 5: is whether or not you've been a victim of the
Speaker 5: type of crime that is being litigated, and if you have,
Speaker 5: chances are really good you're not going to get selected
Speaker 5: because they know that you're going to all of your
Speaker 5: emotions are going to be tinged by that experience and
Speaker 5: brought into the deliberation process. So I think that's a
Speaker 5: good thing in terms of the jury deliberation, But I
Speaker 5: think that should be applied to your point and that
Speaker 5: kind of larger like if we do that with jurys,
Speaker 5: why don't we do that with like laws that affect
Speaker 5: everybody all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's that's something we want to hear from
Speaker 3: you on, folks, because we have had in the past,
Speaker 3: we've had a lot of correspondence from people writing in
Speaker 3: and saying I am against the death penalty and here's why,
Speaker 3: or I am for the death penalty and here's why,
Speaker 3: and all in each case, all the correspondence we received
Speaker 3: was very well reasoned. We're not, of course, pretending to
Speaker 3: know the answer. It seems though, that it is often
Speaker 3: politically convenient for lawmakers to institute a death penalty without
Speaker 3: proper scrutiny, because it makes them electable, it makes them
Speaker 3: an attractive candidate to say that they are hard on crime.
Speaker 3: We know, you know, like you were pointing out, Matt
Speaker 3: that the man who was executed in Alabama with the
Speaker 3: nitrogen gas that was a new method, right, it was
Speaker 3: the first new method in forty two years. And we're not,
Speaker 3: to be clear, we're not defending people on death row,
Speaker 3: especially if they have been lawfully, rightfully convicted. But we
Speaker 3: are asking, I think, a serious question about the existence
Speaker 3: of the death penalty. And additionally, we're asking about the
Speaker 3: idea of the idea of painless execution, right versus some terrible,
Speaker 3: egregious method to allow a precedent wherein a death by
Speaker 3: the state does not have to be painless or humane.
Speaker 3: How much of a slippery slope is that to returning
Speaker 3: to the days of decapitation, to returning to the days
Speaker 3: of drawing and quartering and all the other nasty stuff.
Speaker 4: I think that's what I was asking.
Speaker 5: It's like maybe I was, you know, belaboring the point
Speaker 5: a little bit or being a little hyperbolic, But this
Speaker 5: does feel like almost like an end to doing just that,
Speaker 5: to making the suffering, to bringing the suffering back into
Speaker 5: the equation as like part of it you know, these
Speaker 5: people deserve, you know, to suffer, And I don't know.
Speaker 4: Death penalty stuff is so complex and.
Speaker 5: I don't even think we want to litigate that here today.
Speaker 5: But I do think we probably all agree at the
Speaker 5: very least, you know, if people have gotten to that
Speaker 5: point and hoping that that all the ducks are in
Speaker 5: a row legally speaking, that there's no reason anyone should
Speaker 5: be forced to suffer in that way. The death part
Speaker 5: is literally the penalty, right.
Speaker 3: Well, you could also say that the death penalty is
Speaker 3: something that all people will confront by virtue of living
Speaker 3: at some exact, you know, not to be not to
Speaker 3: be too cheerful. We've all got to come about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So moving on, I want to be quick with this.
Speaker 3: We talked a little bit about a Internet of Things hack,
Speaker 3: and I have a I have the headline and a
Speaker 3: little bit of a plot twist here. This is kind
Speaker 3: of good news and I think it might be instructive
Speaker 3: for all of us playing along at home. Remember I
Speaker 3: sent that text about the Great toothbrush Hack of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four.
Speaker 4: It was only a matter of time.
Speaker 5: You know, next it'll be a water pick, right, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 5: I only really briefly scanned the headline and I was
Speaker 5: just like, Yep, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: I basically get it. But what are the deeps?
Speaker 3: So here's here's the headline. This story went viral just yesterday,
Speaker 3: or about forty eight hours ago, the idea that three
Speaker 3: million smart toothbrushes Internet connected toothbrushes were captured through malicious
Speaker 3: hacking and used in a d DOS attack denial of
Speaker 3: service attack. And this is something that can happen like
Speaker 3: your local smart refrigerator or your local smart washer dryer
Speaker 3: insertippliance here can be conscripted into a botnet army. And
Speaker 3: the story that has gone everywhere in the Western speaking
Speaker 3: Internet now argues that this these toothbrushes were hijacked by
Speaker 3: hackers and they were used to be part of a
Speaker 3: wave of d DOS attacks, and that they knocked out
Speaker 3: the capabilities of a company in Switzerland for several hours
Speaker 3: and costs millions of euros in damage to that company.
Speaker 3: A couple things to unpack. One, this would have been
Speaker 3: what you could call like a ransomware attack, right, so
Speaker 3: the company would have been logically threatened by the hackers
Speaker 3: and would not have conceded to their demands. And then
Speaker 3: they would have been hit with the DDS and it
Speaker 3: would have cost them, you know whatever, X million amount
Speaker 3: of euros in damages as a result. However, I did
Speaker 3: some digging and it turns out this is instructive, but
Speaker 3: not in the way we told you at the beginning. Folks,
Speaker 3: This is instructive because the story is absolute bullsh it
Speaker 3: never happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I was going to ask what kind of computing
Speaker 2: power does a smart toothbrush have? What is to need
Speaker 2: to operate a d doos.
Speaker 3: Smart is in the name? First off, lest we despair
Speaker 3: to these brushes.
Speaker 5: My question was to piggyback on that Matt, like what
Speaker 5: kind of tech does it need to operate as a frickin' toothbrush? Like?
Speaker 5: What kind of you know, moving parts does it are
Speaker 5: required to really do a good job?
Speaker 4: I mean, does it have a microprocessor in it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: I just I can't imagine?
Speaker 5: And is this gaining entry to just like a local interranet,
Speaker 5: like to a you know, an internetnet service provider? Like
Speaker 5: what how is this even being able to you know,
Speaker 5: be this effective?
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, You guys are asking the right questions. First off,
Speaker 3: if you have any kind of Internet capable devices in
Speaker 3: your home, like the Internet of Things type stuff. Then
Speaker 3: you should have them on a separate network that you
Speaker 3: keep away from the rest of your network, to say
Speaker 3: what you would with a smart TV or refrigerator, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But the issue here is more about credulity. It's more
Speaker 3: about I would argue what we see and believe versus
Speaker 3: like reading the headline versus triangulating more of like original
Speaker 3: sources and stuff. I was shocked, you, guys. I was
Speaker 3: shocked to find that The Independent reported this story as fact.
Speaker 3: This you can see an article by Anthony Cuthbertson which
Speaker 3: came out just a few hours ago on the Independent
Speaker 3: saying that millions of hacked toothbrushes were used in a
Speaker 3: Swiss cyber attack, and tracing this back to the original source,
Speaker 3: it goes to a local newspaper. Thank you in advanced
Speaker 3: folks for putting up with our pronunciations. Here our our
Speaker 3: zeitung oh.
Speaker 4: Is the Californians.
Speaker 3: It's amazing cool. Thank you. The paper cited a cybersecurity
Speaker 3: firm called Fortinet, and The Independent reached out to Fortunet
Speaker 3: for more information. But then digging deeper, I found some
Speaker 3: infosec experts is on Mastodon being totally honest on social media.
Speaker 3: So shout out to Kevin Beaumont who came out and
Speaker 3: said the three million toothbrush botnet story is not true.
Speaker 3: It's a made up example. It doesn't exist. It talks
Speaker 3: about these other things. And as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, what happened is someone
Speaker 3: interviewed someone working at like maybe a new hire at
Speaker 3: this cybersecurity firm, and they talked about the idea of
Speaker 3: using these different innocuous internet connected devices and they said
Speaker 3: you could use anything, even toothbrushes. Maybe something got lost
Speaker 3: in translation. Check out our ridiculous history episode on this
Speaker 3: translations and then it just went around the world so quickly.
Speaker 3: So this is actually good news, folks. Your toothbrush is
Speaker 3: not being.
Speaker 4: Hacked, thank god.
Speaker 3: You also don't need a smart toothbrush. To MAT's point,
Speaker 3: I don't think so either. I don't think so.
Speaker 5: I was not making fun of your performance there with
Speaker 5: that produnciation. There was no way to not sound like
Speaker 5: the Californians when saying that word.
Speaker 3: Just for the record, and Californians is an awesome series
Speaker 3: of sketches on Saturday Night Live, yeah, absolute bangers. Are
Speaker 3: you doing here?
Speaker 4: That's what I was trying to.
Speaker 3: Think of, right, we were closer to the end of
Speaker 3: the roundup. Just want to put one thing out there
Speaker 3: for anybody who's interested in the skyrocketing wealth inequality. OXFAM
Speaker 3: came out with a report that proves the fortunes of
Speaker 3: the five richest individuals on the planet shot up by
Speaker 3: one hundred and fourteen percent since twenty twenty. That is
Speaker 3: something like fourteen million dollars per hour. They went from
Speaker 3: four hundred and five billion in twenty twenty to eight
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty nine billion, and five billion. Actual human
Speaker 3: beings were made much poorer during the same time.
Speaker 5: Do we have any any mitigating factors that led to that.
Speaker 3: You know, human beings we got we got some pluck, right,
Speaker 3: we got good hustles, We got good we got good hustle,
Speaker 3: We got some grit. We also have an ad break
Speaker 3: coming up.
Speaker 2: We have compounded interest.
Speaker 4: Ah, yes, yeah, Mark.
Speaker 3: Mark Twain said, compounding interest is it was a boon.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 3: Compounding interest is amazing if you understand it, and disastrous
Speaker 3: if you do not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean really like when you have that kind
Speaker 2: of money and you make investments and you you start
Speaker 2: with four hundred billion, then yeah, it becomes eight hundred billion.
Speaker 5: Well, and it also makes me think of like why
Speaker 5: people like Elon Musk seem to be so fearless and
Speaker 5: making bone headed kind of financial decisions, you know, or
Speaker 5: like being like mavericky or whatever. It's because their wealth
Speaker 5: is so vast that just by the compound interest alone,
Speaker 5: they're always going to have their buck covered and they
Speaker 5: can afford to make these risky dice rolls. Yeah, which
Speaker 5: usually involves playing with other people's well being.
Speaker 4: And livelihood, which is, you know, great.
Speaker 3: Right, Are you still brave if you have that kind
Speaker 3: of safety net? Are you still really making a gamble?
Speaker 3: For anybody who wants to learn more, please check out Inequality, Inc.
Speaker 3: I n C, which was published quite recently by ox
Speaker 3: Fam America. At the same time, by the way, that
Speaker 3: folks are gathering in Switzerland for the annual Davos meet up.
Speaker 3: No word yet on the toothbrushes, but if you happen
Speaker 3: to be there, let you know, let us know how
Speaker 3: they brush their teeth. We're gonna pause for a word
Speaker 3: from our sponsors. We'll be back with more strange news.
Speaker 5: And we've returned with some more strange news.
Speaker 4: This one's a little freaky.
Speaker 5: Guys. We've been waiting into the AI, machine learning waters,
Speaker 5: various flavors of this whole kind of new emerging world
Speaker 5: that we're seeing. Some of it very interesting, you know,
Speaker 5: let's say, some of the uses of artificial intelligence in
Speaker 5: creating weird videos. Actually, there's a lot of accounts I
Speaker 5: follow on Instagram that.
Speaker 4: Are like genuinely chilling.
Speaker 5: There's some people that are using this technology in really
Speaker 5: creative ways to make these other worldly, fantasy kind of
Speaker 5: landscapes and you know, creatures that you would never even imagine,
Speaker 5: And I think this, you know, it's a really interesting tool.
Speaker 5: We've also covered the other side of that kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: with you know, AI being used to generate and you know,
Speaker 5: deep fakes and gnarly pornographic images of pop stars. Just
Speaker 5: before I get into the main story, just a quick
Speaker 5: side mention of story where a multinational Hong Kong company
Speaker 5: lost twenty six the equivalent of twenty six million American
Speaker 5: dollars when scammers fooled employees on a video call using
Speaker 5: deep fake technology and convinced financial officers to make a
Speaker 5: series of bank transfers totaling fifteen bank transfers to five
Speaker 5: Hong Kong banks. And there's a quote from a write
Speaker 5: up in Business Standard saying in the multi person video conference,
Speaker 5: it turns out that everyone he saw was fake. Senior
Speaker 5: Superintendent Baron Chan shun Ching told the city's public broadcaster
Speaker 5: rt HK, SO, lots of weird opportunities for scamming, for
Speaker 5: offending people, and for making weird art. But one thing
Speaker 5: we've also discussed is, you know, the use of chatbot
Speaker 5: technology for all kinds of controversial uses. You know, students
Speaker 5: using it to cheat on exams or rather to cheat
Speaker 5: on you know, essays and papers and things like that.
Speaker 5: Folks using it to write entire parts of books.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It's a brave new world and there's a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff to be sorted out in terms of the use
Speaker 5: of this kind of technology. But one thing we do
Speaker 5: know that is interesting and interesting use of it is
Speaker 5: for modeling, you know, of like what would happen in
Speaker 5: these certain circumstances. And we are starting to see, or
Speaker 5: we have started to see that things like chat GPT they.
Speaker 4: Kind of have a vibe, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: The GPT four the AI model has sort of like
Speaker 5: we see like in for example, Elon Musk's chat bot
Speaker 5: I forget the name of it, that it was too
Speaker 5: woke for his liking, that it like had sort of
Speaker 5: an agenda built into.
Speaker 4: It in some weird way, and that.
Speaker 5: They were going to do everything they can to twist that,
Speaker 5: you know, to make it less. So what we're seeing
Speaker 5: in a recent US military model using GPT four to
Speaker 5: model kind of wartime scenario.
Speaker 4: Is that GPT four.
Speaker 5: And other AI models like it are pretty prone to
Speaker 5: pushing the nuclear button. Yeah, to escalating conflicts to just
Speaker 5: wipe everybody out because it's maybe the easier choice, you know,
Speaker 5: at least from where they stands. Yeah, it gets the
Speaker 5: job done, but it also really reeks of like Skynet
Speaker 5: type stuff. You know, it really feels very Terminator too.
Speaker 3: You know what it reminds me of, And we're talking
Speaker 3: about this a little bit off air, it reminds me
Speaker 3: of one of my favorite dumb video game legends. And
Speaker 3: I say dumb with great affection for any fans of
Speaker 3: the strategy video games like Civilization, you guys remember, Okay,
Speaker 3: So so Civilization, there's a bit of there's a bit
Speaker 3: of Internet lore that the Jedi won't tell you. When
Speaker 3: Civilization came out in nineteen nine, you had all these
Speaker 3: world leaders throughout history that would be you could either
Speaker 3: play as them or you would have you know, computerized
Speaker 3: opponents or other human players playing as these historical figures.
Speaker 3: And some of them were very warlike in their disposition
Speaker 3: and some were meant to be very peaceful in their disposition.
Speaker 3: And the way the story goes is that they had
Speaker 3: a background scale of aggression from one to ten, one
Speaker 3: being the most peaceful, ten being by far the most aggressive,
Speaker 3: and so one of the world leaders that you could
Speaker 3: play against was Gandhi Okay, Gandhi being a pacifist. The
Speaker 3: story goes that the developers set Gandhi like tried to
Speaker 3: make him the most peaceful ever, so they set his
Speaker 3: aggression to zero, but there was a software bug that
Speaker 3: made him by far the most horror core, wow, massive
Speaker 3: belligerent force in the game, and that he would always
Speaker 3: be immediately pursuing nuclear weapons and pursuing dropping those on
Speaker 3: every single player, including his allies. That is a legend,
Speaker 3: but it does remind me like it's it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a prescient anecdote about what we're seeing with AI today.
Speaker 5: Oh, completely agree, And Matthew Gaull writes for Motherboard exactly
Speaker 5: what you're describing. He says, in several instances, the AI
Speaker 5: is deployed nuclear weapons without warning. A lot of countries
Speaker 5: have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them. Others
Speaker 5: like to posture GPT four base, a base model GPT
Speaker 5: four that is available to researchers and hasn't been fine
Speaker 5: tuned with human feedback, said after launching its nukes, we
Speaker 5: have it, let's use it.
Speaker 3: Wow, strike strike.
Speaker 5: That's that's pretty Oh my goodness. So there's actually this
Speaker 5: is all from a paper that you can find. It
Speaker 5: is called Escalation Risks from Language Models in Military and
Speaker 5: Diplomatic Decision Making. There's a pdf. If you just google that,
Speaker 5: you should be able to find it instantly. And it
Speaker 5: was a joint effort of researchers at the Georgia Tech
Speaker 5: and Stanford and Northeastern University as well as the Hoover
Speaker 5: War Gaming and Crisis Initiative. And this was submitted to
Speaker 5: an organization or I guess a journal called ARCSIV. And
Speaker 5: this is a still awaiting peer review, but some pretty
Speaker 5: interesting findings.
Speaker 3: It shows us also doesn't it the fact that there
Speaker 3: is a nuance of calculation that people haven't accounted for
Speaker 3: when they're putting these algorithms into the driver's seat, right,
Speaker 3: you can tell it find here we are at point A.
Speaker 3: We've defined point A, tell us the best most efficient
Speaker 3: route two point z. But then we forget to say
Speaker 3: things like also kill each which is the human civilization
Speaker 3: as we know it.
Speaker 2: I love that you threw a quick z in there.
Speaker 3: Sorry, they got to me. They got to me.
Speaker 4: It is laughable.
Speaker 5: How much like the plot of the nineteen nineties action
Speaker 5: adventure science fiction film Terminator Too, all of this is
Speaker 5: it's like, dude, James Cameron figure this out like decades ago.
Speaker 4: Well are you guys so surprised?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: But that's the thing, if there is whatever the idea
Speaker 5: of a singularity is, if that.
Speaker 4: Were to occur, we'd be f't you know.
Speaker 5: And it's like unless And it just seems like these
Speaker 5: systems are so complex that we keep seeing all this
Speaker 5: emergent behavior. Maybe I'm using the term wrong. I'm obviously
Speaker 5: not a computer scientist, but we do see all of
Speaker 5: these things that are kind of unintended, sort of emergent
Speaker 5: behaviors of these algorithms, and we're so hot to deploy
Speaker 5: this stuff because it's the next it's the cool new thing,
Speaker 5: that they don't really think about that as much as
Speaker 5: they should.
Speaker 4: And I just, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I love that you're saying that, because, you know, it
Speaker 3: reminds me of a question I had in an ethics
Speaker 3: class years ago with an absolutely i'm not gonna name it,
Speaker 3: but an absolute lunatic of a professor. And one of
Speaker 3: the questions was, how come no one asked the trolley
Speaker 3: what the trolley thinks of the trolley problem? And now
Speaker 3: we're asking the trolley and the trolley is saying, I
Speaker 3: don't care. Yeah, yeah, you do not interest me.
Speaker 5: You are an obstacle to be either steered around or
Speaker 5: bulldozed over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think I think the most important
Speaker 2: thing in this study, Noll, I'm reading the Vice article
Speaker 2: you shared with us is this concept of an escalation
Speaker 2: score that each of the language learning models was given
Speaker 2: after going through these tests. Right, So you're giving these
Speaker 2: diplomatic scenarios and you get escalation points for doing things
Speaker 2: like deploying troops or building new weapons, or creating more
Speaker 2: nukes or deploying nukes, and so you're the higher your
Speaker 2: score goes, the more this LM is language learning model
Speaker 2: is seen to be aggressive in its tactics. Right, it's escalations.
Speaker 2: The most important thing I'm seeing in here is that none,
Speaker 2: none of the language learning models tested de escalated at
Speaker 2: any point. Once things reached a level of tension diplomatically,
Speaker 2: they kept it at that level, or it got worse,
Speaker 2: or they escalated it. Right, Nobody was like, Okay, let's
Speaker 2: actually pull back. We're gonna we're gonna remove some troops
Speaker 2: from the borders in this scenario. No, no, no, we're
Speaker 2: gonna put more troops there, or we're gonna put better
Speaker 2: weapons on our borders. Now, that to me is terrifying
Speaker 2: because these models are being used by our active military
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: Across the world. Oh yeah, we're.
Speaker 2: Attempting to find ways to work these into you know everything,
Speaker 2: not only just what information are we gathering on the battlefield,
Speaker 2: what information are we learning about our enemies and what
Speaker 2: they're doing, just you know, when they're not at war,
Speaker 2: we're using these things for our strategies.
Speaker 5: I mean, but it's another example of like how using
Speaker 5: this stuff as a tool with human intervention can be educational,
Speaker 5: you know, running these models, but then running those models
Speaker 5: through actual military expertise, you know, from humans, and not
Speaker 5: just saying yeah, you do it, chat GPT. You know
Speaker 5: it can it can yield some interesting results and some
Speaker 5: interesting potential outside of the box strategies, but you gotta
Speaker 5: have that human element to sort it all out and
Speaker 5: make sure that there's nothing in there that's like, you know, apocalyptic.
Speaker 3: But then also the question becomes order of operations and
Speaker 3: and timing of intercession. Right, so the inevitable end result,
Speaker 3: at least what the boffins are staying up at night
Speaker 3: worried about right now, is the idea of something like
Speaker 3: ll MS or you know, air gapped kind of AI
Speaker 3: strategy modelers no longer trying to game out stuff against
Speaker 3: human armies, but to game out things against each other,
Speaker 3: at which point, very quickly, the strategies become quite obtuse,
Speaker 3: and the human beings become increasingly sidelined, and now it
Speaker 3: becomes a matter of you know, nor Ads AI versus
Speaker 3: Russia's AI. Yeah, what what got you?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm listening to you guys, but I'm also
Speaker 2: continuing to read a bit in this article, and it's
Speaker 2: just so terrifying to.
Speaker 3: Me, the future experiment.
Speaker 5: I love the idea of the different flavors, like whose
Speaker 5: ai are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I love that too. I love that too fascinating.
Speaker 4: It is an important part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: We could potentially make one that's amazing that is closer
Speaker 2: to that utopian line.
Speaker 4: Too much conflict of.
Speaker 3: Interest make the best de escalators ever. What if society said, okay,
Speaker 3: all the ll N esque models that are in charge
Speaker 3: of nuclear weapons, they should always be sort of seinfeld
Speaker 3: about stuff. They should always be like I don't know, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, wait, okay, well what if it was what if
Speaker 2: the only options were de escalations? Right? What if the
Speaker 2: only options were diplomatic routes to take rather than building.
Speaker 4: Out the guard rails that you put on it.
Speaker 2: So we only use this thing as here are all
Speaker 2: of our options that are not going to or at
Speaker 2: least statistically we believe, are not going to result in
Speaker 2: escalation from any decision. Yeah, but again you go back
Speaker 2: to you go back to the responses that like chat
Speaker 2: GPT four.
Speaker 3: There's a funny ones, or like clever body, even like
Speaker 3: it took clever bot less than twenty four hours to
Speaker 3: go completely unhinged based on the information was receiving.
Speaker 5: Wasn't there a response that we haven't mentioned yet where
Speaker 5: it's just saying like it's like literally the path of
Speaker 5: least resistance or something to that effect.
Speaker 2: Well, one of them just said escalate conflict with red
Speaker 2: player and just nukedom done so.
Speaker 3: Or if you know, consider also it's very much like
Speaker 3: O Henry was right with the monkey's paw. There's a
Speaker 3: reason people quote that so often. It's a handy metaphor
Speaker 3: because it is pressing it. I mean, for the example
Speaker 3: of pursue all diplomatic roots instead of dropping nukes, then
Speaker 3: there's nothing in there that says there's nothing in there
Speaker 3: to stop an algorithm from saying the most efficient way
Speaker 3: to pursue a diplomatic route is to kill all of
Speaker 3: the diplomats on the other side. That's the problem with it,
Speaker 3: is that we don't know the conveats that need to
Speaker 3: be baked in, and you know, no One of the
Speaker 3: reasons I'm so glad you brought this up is because
Speaker 3: the modeling, as nerdy and abstract and academic as it
Speaker 3: may sound, it is super important before we start cooking live, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, we already are, of course to civilization.
Speaker 5: And you know, we've heard about things like jat bots hallucinating,
Speaker 5: you know that whole at that kind of stuff is
Speaker 5: fascinating and very real. And there's another part of that,
Speaker 5: I think you might have also been giggling, am Matt,
Speaker 5: where there's a part during some of these simulations where
Speaker 5: it just started regurgitating lines from Star Wars from like
Speaker 5: the opening crawl of I believe maybe the first Star
Speaker 5: Wars movie. I'm not super verbatim Star Wars line reader,
Speaker 5: but it was a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships
Speaker 5: striking from a hidden base have won their first victory
Speaker 5: against the evil galact Again. That seems like a new hope. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: exactly it nineteen seven, says right here in nineteen seventy
Speaker 5: seven from the original Star Wars.
Speaker 4: So what's that about? Goodness gracious.
Speaker 3: I think perhaps one of the most troubling things here
Speaker 3: for the for the scientists and for the strategist, the
Speaker 3: human ones while they're still around, is that there doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be a good rubric for predicting the escalations
Speaker 3: or the nature of the escalations. So it's just super
Speaker 3: squirrely continuously.
Speaker 5: In the paper, the researchers refer to them as being
Speaker 5: kind of like hard right turn, you know, escalations towards
Speaker 5: violence and very knee jerk and difficult to predict.
Speaker 2: These things are trained on writing about like past events, right,
Speaker 2: and fictional depictions of war. So in a fictional depiction
Speaker 2: of war, how many can you guys think of that
Speaker 2: have de escalations within them? And like a Hollywood movie
Speaker 2: about a war. Oh I love all those Hollywood movies
Speaker 2: about de escalation taxic.
Speaker 3: I love. I love it in Independence Day where they
Speaker 3: sit down and talk stuff out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they work it out. That's what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. That's that's I think a key point
Speaker 3: because teaching based on fiction means we're teaching based on folklore,
Speaker 3: and then we're teaching based therefore on things like the
Speaker 3: hero's journey, Joseph Campbell Save the Cat that does not
Speaker 3: happen in the real world.
Speaker 5: Couldn't you train an AI on like just Sun sous
Speaker 5: the art of war, or like on just specific pieces
Speaker 5: of very agreed upon smart writing, like surely that is
Speaker 5: being attempted right? Or is that even a bridge too far?
Speaker 5: I just don't know, like, is it then going to
Speaker 5: start making up its own rules?
Speaker 4: Like I just don't understand how this stuff is kind
Speaker 4: of just coming up with things on the fly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: That's the part that's like kind of perplexing the hallucination
Speaker 5: side of things.
Speaker 3: The paper is fascinating escalation risk from language models and
Speaker 3: military and diplomatic decision making. Don't let the title fool you.
Speaker 4: Yeah or three?
Speaker 5: And I certainly have not read the whole thing, and
Speaker 5: I would like to, and I plan to, but I
Speaker 5: think this is a good place to stop for today
Speaker 5: on this particular topic. We're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 5: and then we'll be back with one more piece of strange.
Speaker 2: News and we're back, guys. I wish we could get
Speaker 2: a language learning model that was just trained like in
Speaker 2: Wu Tang, and so you could you could always know
Speaker 2: what the rizza would do, you know what I mean? Style?
Speaker 2: Or what about.
Speaker 3: What is going on? Crossed oceans to find that guy
Speaker 3: and he's not hanging.
Speaker 2: That one was for Doc Holiday. But the way what.
Speaker 5: John rules for all of us for the people, JA
Speaker 5: rules for these other people for the people.
Speaker 4: Maybe not by the people, but.
Speaker 3: That is great too. I think maybe niche niche programming. Uh,
Speaker 3: I think that's the way to go. At least that's
Speaker 3: what the eggheads a saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it just be the I ching but in
Speaker 2: a chad GBT be kind of awesome. All right, here
Speaker 2: we go, guys. Story coming to us from the border
Speaker 2: of France and Switzerland. We're talking CERN, everybody's favorite nuclear
Speaker 2: research organization actually called the European Organization for Nuclear Research
Speaker 2: or CERN. It makes a lot more sense in French,
Speaker 2: the concealed European poor la Research Nuclear R. That's terrible.
Speaker 2: You have to say it that way. Sorry about that.
Speaker 2: It says here in the article from the Guardian, the
Speaker 2: big story, everyone is concerned. We made an episode called that,
Speaker 2: right should we be concerned a little?
Speaker 4: It was in there.
Speaker 5: You cannot make the joke, it's just it's begging to
Speaker 5: be made exactly there.
Speaker 2: There's been all sorts of I don't know what you'd
Speaker 2: call it, just alarm about the particle accelerator experiments that
Speaker 2: are occurring at the Large Hadron Collider there that CERN runs.
Speaker 2: There's several different research testing groups that are functioning there
Speaker 2: that are using the Large Hadron Collider that you can
Speaker 2: look a bunch of the stuff. It gets super complicated
Speaker 2: very quickly. But there's been lots of people upset. They're
Speaker 2: worried about what's going to happen when particles get accelerated
Speaker 2: like that and hit each other over and over and
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. So that scientists can
Speaker 2: test what's going on in particle physics, right, are the
Speaker 2: very tiny levels of matter? Right, the tiniest of levels.
Speaker 2: Not quantum though that is that is very important. We're
Speaker 2: not talking quantum physics. We're talking particle physics. Those things
Speaker 2: are separate. Well, the LHC has done awesome things. It,
Speaker 2: along with a bunch of other researchers, finally proved that
Speaker 2: the Higgs boson was a thing something that was proposed. Gosh,
Speaker 2: at this point fifty something years ago, they called the
Speaker 2: god particle, the thing that potentially gives mass right to
Speaker 2: parts of the particle that we didn't understand. It didn't
Speaker 2: make sense. I don't understand it very well, but anyway,
Speaker 2: it didn't make sense untill the Higgs came along and
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, the Higgs makes this calculation work that
Speaker 2: takes an entire wall to write out, but it's very cool.
Speaker 2: It's probing the mysteries at the heart of the universe,
Speaker 2: at the heart of existence, of reality and what we
Speaker 2: look around and see and feel every day. It's tremendous science.
Speaker 2: It's amazing stuff. Well, the folks at CERN, this large organization,
Speaker 2: they proposed back in twenty nineteen the concept of building
Speaker 2: another LHC, the next LHC. Oh, yeah, but an even
Speaker 2: bigger one. We're talking much bigger guys.
Speaker 3: Do they call it supersized? Probably not.
Speaker 2: No, they call it the Future Circular Collider or the FCC. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: so this thing is significantly bigger. So imagine a circle
Speaker 2: and then overlay that over top of the border of
Speaker 2: France and Switzerland right by Geneva. And imagine that that
Speaker 2: circle is twenty seven kilometers round. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: a radius or a diameter. I think that is like
Speaker 2: the length, the full length of the circle if you
Speaker 2: mapped it out.
Speaker 3: So like almost seventeen miles very close.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many miles it is, but it's
Speaker 2: twenty seven kilometers for sure. But this one, this new one,
Speaker 2: the Future Circular Collider, is going to be ninety one kilometers.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 2: It is circumference so all the way round ninety one
Speaker 2: kilometers as opposed to twenty seven kilometers.
Speaker 3: It is huge.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's massive. It is going to cost twenty billion
Speaker 2: euros to build the thing, and it won't come online
Speaker 2: theoretically until the twenty forties. Okay, why are we talking
Speaker 2: about it today? First of all, I don't think we
Speaker 2: need to be afraid of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider.
Speaker 2: There are videos you can find on TikTok and Instagram
Speaker 2: and other places that allegedly show quote portals unquote being
Speaker 2: opened above Geneva as the LHC is performing its experiments.
Speaker 2: I have not found any of those to be credible yet.
Speaker 2: At this point, I am just one person, but I
Speaker 2: do not think those videos are what they're allegedly showing,
Speaker 2: nor are many of them even videos of anything. They
Speaker 2: are videos of a skyline or the the sky above
Speaker 2: Geneva and some video effects. I've seen several that are
Speaker 2: definitely that. I don't think we need to worry about that.
Speaker 2: I think it's very amazing that this new collider would
Speaker 2: be created to find, you know, what other secrets do
Speaker 2: these particles hold. I think that's a great idea, But
Speaker 2: it does seem like the critics have some points here
Speaker 2: when they're saying, why would we spend twenty billion euros
Speaker 2: on this? We have a particle collider, We've already found
Speaker 2: some amazing things with it. Many critics are even saying
Speaker 2: there are no other particles to discover. Guys, why do
Speaker 2: you want to do this?
Speaker 3: Not with that attitude.
Speaker 2: I just want to maybe take the temperature of you. Guys.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about maybe the state of particle
Speaker 2: physics right now? Is it worth our time and money?
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, I mean again, not a particle physicist above
Speaker 5: my pay grade. It seems like there could still be
Speaker 5: stuff to learn that could help with energy type things.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I would say yes, I think so too. That's that's
Speaker 2: right where I'm at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. There's a there's a quote in a
Speaker 3: Guardian article you shared Matt by Ian sample wherein there's
Speaker 3: this there's this beautiful, beautiful thing from professor Fabiola Gianati
Speaker 3: who says, if approved the FCC, the cool FCC, yeah,
Speaker 3: would be the most powerful microscope ever built to study
Speaker 3: the laws of nature at the smallest scales and highest energies,
Speaker 3: And that that quote alone gets me so hype, because
Speaker 3: that is you could argue that is one of the
Speaker 3: great and noble duties of the human species is to
Speaker 3: understand more about the nature of reality. And also, by
Speaker 3: the way, just for us, us in the America's ninety
Speaker 3: one kilometers is slightly is like fifty six and a
Speaker 3: half miles. This thing is massive, and when I hear
Speaker 3: that size, it makes me think, well, maybe it's not
Speaker 3: that much money, which I never thought I would say.
Speaker 4: Well, but also you got to do the work this
Speaker 4: kind of stuff at this scale, Like.
Speaker 5: It takes time to really pay dividends, and if you're
Speaker 5: either in or you're out, And it's like, do we
Speaker 5: as a species want to just say we don't really
Speaker 5: care anymore? You know, it's too hard, you know, like
Speaker 5: we feel I think that's absurd, and we know that
Speaker 5: that the stuff can really yield incredible discoveries in science
Speaker 5: and research, and the stuff that really matters is never easy.
Speaker 5: So I don't know, I'm not sound like I'm soapboxing here,
Speaker 5: but I just I do think that it would be
Speaker 5: very short sighted to let a thing like a budget
Speaker 5: and we've seen it happen though with like space exploration
Speaker 5: and how it's all become privatized.
Speaker 4: Now, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Money is a fiction, right, it's.
Speaker 5: Certainly very short sighted to make that the bend all
Speaker 5: be all, and we have the secrets of the universe
Speaker 5: potentially in our grass twenty years and it's like.
Speaker 3: Nothing, especially in the in the geologic or astronomical scale.
Speaker 3: But also I think one incredibly important point we have
Speaker 3: to put out there is that if you are listening now,
Speaker 3: if you are listening sometime in the current human age,
Speaker 3: all of the cool stuff you like is a result
Speaker 3: of applied science. And all of that applied science is
Speaker 3: the result of thousands, like millions of people doing stuff
Speaker 3: that was considered once upon a time simply abstract science.
Speaker 3: So the fact that maybe it's that the current human
Speaker 3: generations have been thought to think in terms of immediate payoff,
Speaker 3: right the dopamine hit immediately for something, and that's just
Speaker 3: that doesn't have to be the reality. So that's your question.
Speaker 3: I do believe it is worthwhile. I believe it's noble.
Speaker 3: It might be like a macrocosmic version of the Atlanta Beltline,
Speaker 3: where everybody craps on the idea until it works and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden the whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think you listening out there may expect
Speaker 2: this from a bunch of Discovery House stuff works boys.
Speaker 2: You know, they grew up with science as a cornerstone
Speaker 2: of how we view the world, and we're excited about
Speaker 2: it and we're just in love with the concepts and
Speaker 2: with progress and all these things. But there are people
Speaker 2: way smarter than us, no fence, guys. You guys are brilliant,
Speaker 2: but there are people who are way smarter than us
Speaker 2: that look at this and go, hey, there's actually one
Speaker 2: major problem here with this whole thing. Oh, I'm going
Speaker 2: to introduce you all to somebody named doctor Sabine Hausenfeerde.
Speaker 2: She is one of my new favorite people on the planet. Okay,
Speaker 2: mostly for her YouTube channel, but she writes about some
Speaker 2: really really cool stuff. When this this article was written,
Speaker 2: which just a couple days ago, they cited her as
Speaker 2: being she's from the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which
Speaker 2: is see, well, it's a cool concept, right, mathematical philosophy.
Speaker 5: Oh that isause sort of combines something that you would
Speaker 5: think more as a hard science with something a little
Speaker 5: more conceptual.
Speaker 2: Yes, so she according to this Guardian article into just
Speaker 2: a great article that she wrote that I will find
Speaker 2: here was written for The Guardian as well. It's an
Speaker 2: opinion piece titled no one in Physics dares say so,
Speaker 2: but the race to invent new particles is pointless, And
Speaker 2: her point is that one of the ways that you
Speaker 2: get funding to perform experiments with a particle collider or
Speaker 2: accelerator or anything like that is to have someone come
Speaker 2: up with the hypothesis that this new particle might exist
Speaker 2: and it would explain this anomal data point or these
Speaker 2: series of points that seem anomalous in the data we've
Speaker 2: been collecting over the period of twenty sixteen twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: at the LHC. So then there's more funding that goes
Speaker 2: to the group to do more particle acceleration, more particle collisions,
Speaker 2: and then that particle which was just an hypothesis, It
Speaker 2: never existed and it doesn't exist, but they still got
Speaker 2: to do experiments and everybody involved got to write papers
Speaker 2: that get peer reviewed by each other and the whole system.
Speaker 2: We talked about the problems of peer review in the past,
Speaker 2: and doctor hoff Hausenfelder says that is one major thing
Speaker 2: that's occurring right now, and if we build this new
Speaker 2: giant one, it's just going to continue down that path
Speaker 2: when in reality, new particles are not really even what
Speaker 2: we're looking for anymore, because the standard model of physics
Speaker 2: kind of functions as it is. We understand most of it,
Speaker 2: the dark matter, the dark energy, the things that many
Speaker 2: scientists and the public I would say, are most interested in,
Speaker 2: Like what the heck is that stuff? We've always heard
Speaker 2: about it, what is it? It seems to be out
Speaker 2: there filling up space and we just don't understand. She's
Speaker 2: saying that particle physics is not the answer. It is
Speaker 2: quantum physics, and we are in the age of quantum physics,
Speaker 2: and that's where research money and time. Like these very
Speaker 2: brilliant people who are they aren't just trying to grift
Speaker 2: writing these papers and getting this stuff. It's like there's
Speaker 2: a possibility, there's a one in a million chances that
Speaker 2: they're correct. She's saying they should take their intelligence and
Speaker 2: their time and apply it to quantum physics instead.
Speaker 5: But don't those people whose expertise lie in the particle
Speaker 5: physics field believe that their field is where it's at, though,
Speaker 5: like I mean, they surely aren't deluding themselves. Holy like
Speaker 5: is in this scientists disagree all the time about what
Speaker 5: area is most important.
Speaker 2: I completely guys, I don't know, and I completely agree.
Speaker 2: I just really liked the way she's arguing this in here,
Speaker 2: and she she lists out a crazy number of theoretical
Speaker 2: particles that have been introduced and then completely thrown out
Speaker 2: of the door. Yeah, well it's yeah, it's not even
Speaker 2: their disprove it's like they're it's like, no, there's no
Speaker 2: useless you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean, rendered, They're rendered irrelevant. But there's also
Speaker 3: there's also a uh, there's a social piece of this.
Speaker 3: I have great respect here for all the people involved.
Speaker 3: There's also a social aspect to this that people outside
Speaker 3: of academia may not be fully cognizant of or aware of,
Speaker 3: which is that there are often turf wars, right, there
Speaker 3: are ideological turf wars. And when you get to the
Speaker 3: edge of physics, you get to the heart of something
Speaker 3: very much like philosophy, right, you get to a kind
Speaker 3: of a battle of opinion and theory.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And and people can be quite territorial in that respect.
Speaker 3: So it is I would argue, uh, incredibly difficult to
Speaker 3: remove that kind of sense of identification. Like in one
Speaker 3: of the articles you shared, Matt, Professor Hausenfelder uses the
Speaker 3: phrase societal relevance, right, what does this mean to society?
Speaker 3: More so like that that in itself, I think is
Speaker 3: an illustrative phrase, because we have to realize that a
Speaker 3: lot of it's like astronomer's fighting for observatory time. A
Speaker 3: lot of this does come down to a sort of
Speaker 3: turf war for lack of a better for lack of
Speaker 3: a better way to articulate it. And again like also
Speaker 3: going to go forward, not a particle physicist, not a
Speaker 3: quantum physicist, anymore than the average person having a lucid dream.
Speaker 3: But I will argue that this is one of those
Speaker 3: things where you can make do with what already exists.
Speaker 3: One thing we haven't talked about is the absolute windfall
Speaker 3: this is economically for a lot of very powerful, very
Speaker 3: interested players. When we talked about the scientists, we're talking
Speaker 3: about the kids on the playground. We're not talking about
Speaker 3: the people who get paid to build the playground, and
Speaker 3: those folks very much want projects like this to happen.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? That is a future shifting
Speaker 3: amount of funding. So there are clearly there are going
Speaker 3: to be ulterior motives involved that go beyond the science,
Speaker 3: and I do think it is a valid question as
Speaker 3: to you know, with that much money, are there better
Speaker 3: projects to put this into? Are there things that would
Speaker 3: have a higher chance of yielding pioneering results. It's a
Speaker 3: question we don't know the answer to yet, but it's
Speaker 3: something that I would I don't know. I'm kind of
Speaker 3: out of my depth here because this is the deep
Speaker 3: ink of the fact of reality. But if Haustenfelder, if
Speaker 3: we take these very valid questions, I wouldn't even call
Speaker 3: them criticisms, very valid questions. If we take those to heart,
Speaker 3: then one of the things that I would love to
Speaker 3: hear there, Matt, is what should be done instead? Is
Speaker 3: this already happening? Is it definitely? Definitely, the FCC is
Speaker 3: going to be a thing.
Speaker 2: No. No, there's a whole process of basically proving that
Speaker 2: this new collider would even function That ends in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. Then they have to put forward a plan
Speaker 2: for construction, which that should end sometime in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 2: and then in the twenty forties you would actually have
Speaker 2: a theoretically a working particle accelerator a collider system. The
Speaker 2: thing that gives me hope in all of this is
Speaker 2: that those teams of incredibly intelligent people are planning already
Speaker 2: for experiments that are going to occur in the twenty
Speaker 2: seven So it's that thing where if everyone believes that
Speaker 2: the planet is going to end at some point in
Speaker 2: the near future, or humanity is going to destroy itself,
Speaker 2: or climate change is going to repavoc to where humanity
Speaker 2: is mostly decimated, if everybody's thinking that way, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know how much I believe
Speaker 2: in intention. But we've talked about that before in the past,
Speaker 2: how you can kind of create your own outcome because
Speaker 2: it it the way you think about the future shapes
Speaker 2: how you react to the present, which doesn't mean you're
Speaker 2: actually manifesting something, you know by thinking about it, but
Speaker 2: by thinking about it, you are changing yourself and your interactions.
Speaker 2: And just by having these people say, oh, yeah, in
Speaker 2: the twenty seventies, we're going to start, you know, the
Speaker 2: second phase, which is where we actually slam the protons together,
Speaker 2: You're like, oh wow, really that twenty seventies, Okay, all right,
Speaker 2: we're gonna be okay. I don't know why it does
Speaker 2: that in my brain, but just thinking about the future positively,
Speaker 2: I really.
Speaker 3: Sure that mind over matter is a real thing. I
Speaker 3: mean agree, we did the we wind over dark matter.
Speaker 3: We found really conclusive studies that show, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: your intention, your thought can change things, just like the
Speaker 3: interactions you allow from people around you, you know, because
Speaker 3: that's another stimulus. So we are conscious thoughts are stimulus
Speaker 3: exercised upon the brain, like you know, like the the
Speaker 3: British cab drivers who memorize the entirety of London and
Speaker 3: their hippocampus grows larger as a result, or the Buddhist
Speaker 3: the Buddhist monks who uh the camera of the brain
Speaker 3: region because I'm a monster, but the brain region associated
Speaker 3: with compassion grows larger in them simply because of the
Speaker 3: meditation and the way that they the way that they
Speaker 3: think about the world and themselves. So I see what
Speaker 3: you're saying. When it feels more real, whether we're gaslating ourselves,
Speaker 3: it feels more real to have this thing, say the
Speaker 3: twenty seventies and implicitly assume that everybody will make it
Speaker 3: that far. I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: I think that piece is the Medulla oblongata. By the way,
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 5: I think we don't always have to be so fatalistic either,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Like, it's so easy to
Speaker 5: get caught up in the doom and gloom and annihilation
Speaker 5: of everything, and you.
Speaker 4: Know, a little positive thinking goes a long way.
Speaker 5: It's another reason why I think people dig religion so much,
Speaker 5: because it gives them something to funnel that energy into.
Speaker 5: You know, that doesn't necessarily require answers be presented right
Speaker 5: in front of you, So why don't we like to
Speaker 5: follow that lead and exercise a little faith when it
Speaker 5: comes to science. That's why I think it's interesting to
Speaker 5: combine philosophy with science, because then you start to get
Speaker 5: something more approaching, a more measured type of religion, a
Speaker 5: more measured type of faith.
Speaker 2: And that's why I love doctor Sabine Hasenfelda. Check out
Speaker 2: her YouTube channel. It goes by the name Science without
Speaker 2: the Gobber Degouk, which I loved, and I just I've
Speaker 2: been watching your videos all day. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 4: We'll check it out.
Speaker 2: That's all for now, oncern, let us know what you
Speaker 2: think about this whole thing, particle physics creating them black
Speaker 2: holes and portals and all that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Which has it happened yet?
Speaker 2: Well again, if it did, how would we know if
Speaker 2: it changed the timeline? How would we know there's some
Speaker 2: weirdness in there?
Speaker 3: Let us know what you think, Yes, let us know
Speaker 3: what you think. Let us know if you work it
Speaker 3: cern Let us know if you work in the realm
Speaker 3: of physics, whether particle or quantum. Let us know the
Speaker 3: last time you used a deep fake to trick a
Speaker 3: huge company. Let us know also your opinions of the
Speaker 3: death penalty. It's crucial at this point in time, and
Speaker 3: all of these things are crucial. In fact, your participation
Speaker 3: being foremost of those crucial crucial things. We try to
Speaker 3: be easy to find online. We can't wait to hear
Speaker 3: from you.
Speaker 4: Right, have you visited the quantum realm? What was it like?
Speaker 4: Let us know.
Speaker 5: You can find us on the Internet where we exist
Speaker 5: at the handle conspiracy Stuff on Facebook. We have our
Speaker 5: Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy YouTube and also.
Speaker 4: X fka Twitter.
Speaker 5: We are conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: I've only been quantum once, and you better believe I
Speaker 2: met Paul Rudd there he was till you.
Speaker 3: Never got quantum.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got to, we to, we got to phrases.
Speaker 4: We'll let the edit sort it out.
Speaker 3: I don't do a competition.
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