Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert glam and I'm Julie Douglas. Tell me, Julie,
Speaker 1: what does your cat do all day when you're not
Speaker 1: at it hide out? Well, I think I've told you
Speaker 1: before that he is working allah inception to plant thoughts
Speaker 1: into my mind. Okay, yeah, so he's just working on
Speaker 1: mathematical models basically. Okay, Yeah, that's your that's your theory, right. Uh, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's what my webcam is telling. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: what your webcams. Yeah, we got a little blackboard office
Speaker 1: and see I knew I should see. We don't have
Speaker 1: a webcam set up. So it's all a mystery to
Speaker 1: me what the cat may or may not be doing
Speaker 1: in the house or outside the house while I'm away.
Speaker 1: She could be sleeping on the pillows all day where
Speaker 1: she's not allowed. She could be, uh, you know, turning
Speaker 1: on the Xbox. I have no idea. Huh. This is
Speaker 1: sort of like that proverb. Yeah, if tree falls in
Speaker 1: the forest and no one is around here, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make a sound. Yeah, it's a it's a this is
Speaker 1: an old philosophical question. The idea. The idea is not
Speaker 1: necessary to answer the question. Um. You know, of course
Speaker 1: some people listening this probably have that kind of mind
Speaker 1: where they're like, this is something we can test, we
Speaker 1: can do this, but but it's more about training the
Speaker 1: mind and and uh and you know, throwing a good
Speaker 1: paradox at it to beef it up, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's like a thought sandwich that we can chew on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a big chewy thought sandwich. It's a double decker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have a sandwich. You can soften it up if you
Speaker 1: put in the microwave a little bit, but straight up,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be it's gonna be pretty tough, should we
Speaker 1: talk about I mean, just like the bones of it
Speaker 1: like that. The fact that the sound is sound is
Speaker 1: vibration that's carried through a medium at a frequency range
Speaker 1: capable of being heard by the humanity here. So there's
Speaker 1: there's that, But there's the sound that's out there. So
Speaker 1: regardless of whether or not you're here to listen to it,
Speaker 1: I'm here to listen to it. Sound is going to exist, right, yes,
Speaker 1: But if the sound is that seeve though, that's that
Speaker 1: kind of gets into the question like if the sound
Speaker 1: is not received by by a listener by an observer,
Speaker 1: then did it take place? What's it really sound? See?
Speaker 1: And I think there are multiple multiple answers to this,
Speaker 1: right right, because you could say, well that you know,
Speaker 1: other organisms are listening first of all, but I guess
Speaker 1: this is just concerning us Homeo sapiens. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: really comes down to what it says about our perception
Speaker 1: and how it affects our understanding of the universe. Okay,
Speaker 1: so um, I'm thinking right now, like patterns that we
Speaker 1: tend to pick up on, right right. So, um, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll notice something that's happening in the world and I'll
Speaker 1: start think, oh, my goodness, armageddon is is It's just
Speaker 1: around the corner. Yeah, there's always something like, you know,
Speaker 1: especially if teenagers do something like suddenly everybody's paying attention
Speaker 1: to what these teenagers are doing and it's oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: the end of the world isn't here, right, Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're all listening to this horrible music or they're wearing
Speaker 1: these gene shorts that are that are going to bring
Speaker 1: about the end times and and and people have been
Speaker 1: saying this for you know, for ages. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that Jeane Shorts was the queue for the four Horsemen
Speaker 1: of the Apocalypse. Well, no, it's the Antichrist. The Antichrist
Speaker 1: will will come in the form of Yeah Shorts, Gane Shorts.
Speaker 1: I've been rereading the Name of the Rose recently, so
Speaker 1: I have a lot of this like apocalyptic stuff in
Speaker 1: my mind. So I can imagine like an old monk
Speaker 1: talking about, like explaining very detailed why teenagers and Geane
Speaker 1: Shorts are the sign of the Antichrist is walking among us.
Speaker 1: So but anyway, but but at any rate, we've been
Speaker 1: reading too much into data for a long time, and
Speaker 1: we continue to do it um even though it might
Speaker 1: relate more to say, geothermal events than it does to
Speaker 1: the you know, the you know, the arrival of the
Speaker 1: Antichrist on Earth. Okay, So if I'm looking at the weather,
Speaker 1: for instance, and I noticed that there have been a
Speaker 1: ton of floods or hurricanes or tornadoes, and I start
Speaker 1: to think to myself, you know, oh my goodness, look
Speaker 1: what's going on. There seems to be more activity and
Speaker 1: whether than ever before. Couldn't be true, And you can
Speaker 1: you can totally freak out like that on like an
Speaker 1: individual level, but you also see it in like broadly
Speaker 1: and scientific studies, where it's called a reporting effect. Now,
Speaker 1: a great example of this, uh is something that I
Speaker 1: came across when I was writing an article titled all
Speaker 1: our Volcanic Eruptions Increasing for Discovering News, and it's I've
Speaker 1: done a number of these at all tackle seemingly simplistic questions,
Speaker 1: and uh and I was really delighted with how how
Speaker 1: interesting this one was. The short answer is is no.
Speaker 1: And and I didn't just look this up. I talked
Speaker 1: to some experts. I talked to uh Lee Siebert, the
Speaker 1: director of the Smithsonian Global Vote of Volcanism Program, or
Speaker 1: the g v P as the kids call it in
Speaker 1: their gene shorts, and uh and and he broke it
Speaker 1: down for me, the great guy. He said that basically,
Speaker 1: we've been he they've been looking at the g VP
Speaker 1: has been looking at volcanic eruption for forty years. And
Speaker 1: if you you really start digging, you have about two
Speaker 1: hundred years worth of data to look at. So if
Speaker 1: you plot those last two hundred years, there's a clear
Speaker 1: increase in the number of eruptions over time. Look at
Speaker 1: the data and you're like oh, well there, you know,
Speaker 1: and this is totally the numbers are totally off, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, there's five this year, and then next
Speaker 1: year there's two, and then there's fifteen. Volcanic activity is
Speaker 1: clearly going up. But that's but it's not the case.
Speaker 1: This is this is the reporting effect in an action,
Speaker 1: because what does that mean? Like why why would we
Speaker 1: see that pattern and why wouldn't it be true. Well,
Speaker 1: you take this apparent increase in volcanic eruptions and you
Speaker 1: can compare it to other data, and things start making
Speaker 1: a whole lot more sense. For instance, the apparent increase
Speaker 1: in volcanic eruptions parallels the rise in global population. It
Speaker 1: parallels human encroachment into areas of volcanic activity. There's suddenly
Speaker 1: more people around to observe volcanoes erupting. There are more
Speaker 1: people of living in the vicinity of volcanoes to report
Speaker 1: on it. You see the number increase with the evolution
Speaker 1: of our telecommunication systems Suddenly, not only can more people,
Speaker 1: more people in a position to observe volcanic activity, but
Speaker 1: they're in a better position to report it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: tweeting what's going on? Tweeting about it? You know, you know,
Speaker 1: emailing call. I mean just as simple as like being
Speaker 1: able to call somebody or instead of just writing a
Speaker 1: letter or just marking in your journal. So that means
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden we have an avalanche of data. Right.
Speaker 1: And then another interesting aspect that they encountered is that
Speaker 1: if you you look at the apparent of volcanic activity,
Speaker 1: just based on reports, you see two really curious depths
Speaker 1: in volcanic activity in the twentieth century, once during the
Speaker 1: First World War and then again during the Second World War. Now,
Speaker 1: you could make the argument that that the that these
Speaker 1: world wars caused volcanic activity around the world to decrease,
Speaker 1: but of course you would be and that would be insane, right.
Speaker 1: I'm raising my eyebrows right now at you. That's kind
Speaker 1: of like, um, I mean, it comes down to the
Speaker 1: fact that we were pretty distracted during those times. We
Speaker 1: had world wars going on, and we just didn't have
Speaker 1: time to really focus on what the volcanoes were doing
Speaker 1: for the most part. Again, it's kind of like the cat.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been been really busy and you don't
Speaker 1: notice the cat doing anything. Don't mean the cat is
Speaker 1: not doing anything in fact, it may result in the
Speaker 1: cat doing all sorts of horrible things to get your attention,
Speaker 1: depending on the cat. Uh, it's it's just where your
Speaker 1: attention is at. Likewise, they found that the following, uh,
Speaker 1: the really dramatic eruptions of Krakatoa in eighteen eighty three
Speaker 1: and Mount Pele in nineteen o two, you saw an
Speaker 1: apparent increase in volcanic volcanic activity following those events. Now,
Speaker 1: it would be a lot easier in this case to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's just a huge volcanic events, so there you know,
Speaker 1: these other volcanoes were acting up to. No, it's just
Speaker 1: that you have this huge event and people were suddenly
Speaker 1: paying a lot more attention to what all the other
Speaker 1: volcanoes are up to. It's kind of like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some some it hits the news for you know, for
Speaker 1: for something. Uh, like you know, if somebody robs a
Speaker 1: bank while wearing tight jean shorts, right, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: everybody's focused on geene shorts or more people wearing jeene shorts,
Speaker 1: or more crimes being committed with jeane shorts. No, it's
Speaker 1: just suddenly our our mind is focused on It was
Speaker 1: that one monk right, Ye, should we go back and
Speaker 1: look at this seriously? Yeah? Really? Yeah? Alright, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm seeing so the pattern isn't necessarily telling the whole truth.
Speaker 1: When you really peel back the layers, you see that
Speaker 1: we just have more access to more data. So even
Speaker 1: like with hurricanes, right, this is the same right hurricane
Speaker 1: you see reporting effects in hurt with with hurricanes, other
Speaker 1: kind of atmospheric anomalis, you see it in like economic studies,
Speaker 1: you see it in health reports, And it just underlines
Speaker 1: that no matter what we're looking at and trying to understand,
Speaker 1: we can we can look at to the point where
Speaker 1: we we don't really have a good understanding of it.
Speaker 1: We've we've analyzed it too much, we've over analyzed it,
Speaker 1: and we we were not were We have to take
Speaker 1: that information that we've gathered and gathered and put it
Speaker 1: in perspective with pretty everything else in the universe to
Speaker 1: to make complete sense of it. Yeah, And I'm even
Speaker 1: thinking about Slate. Don't they have a feature that's sort
Speaker 1: of the bogus trend of the week. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think they do that. They sort of debunked the myth
Speaker 1: I think they have. One was like rompers, like everybody's
Speaker 1: wearing rompers now refreshment my memory. What is a romper?
Speaker 1: Romper is how to explain this. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: sort of onesie for grown ups. Um and and it's
Speaker 1: like first person outfit or like big feetie pajamas. No, no,
Speaker 1: I should say that it's like shorts, like shorts onesie.
Speaker 1: And uh so there are a lot of magazines that
Speaker 1: we're saying that, you know, it's come back and it's
Speaker 1: the sexiest thing ever and men love it like cut
Speaker 1: off overalls. Yeah, but with sleeves sometimes. Yeah, you see,
Speaker 1: you're getting the idea. It's kind of sounds like a snead,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh right, this is the blanket the that's
Speaker 1: the snug snuggy. But then the sneed was the thing
Speaker 1: that everyone needs that the the one sler in the
Speaker 1: Lorax made. There was some sort of horrible garment that
Speaker 1: appeared to have no function but became really popular because
Speaker 1: the one Sler was telling everybody that they needed it.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly, Yes, that's right. So there you get.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're there's pattern recognition everywhere, even when
Speaker 1: patterns don't exist. I think is what we're saying, So
Speaker 1: whether or not it's an increase in volcanic activity or
Speaker 1: um the onslaught of the romper onto American women's bodies,
Speaker 1: or more trees falling all over the world, Yes, because
Speaker 1: we're paying attention to them, that's right. Going back to
Speaker 1: the lorax. Actually, yes, a lot of trees fall on that.
Speaker 1: It all comes together, that's right. So I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: quantum inter indeterminacy and how this relates back to that,
Speaker 1: because you know, we always have to take on a
Speaker 1: little quantum in each podcast. Quantum indetermacy, and this is
Speaker 1: the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system.
Speaker 1: It has become one of the characteristics standard description of
Speaker 1: quantum physics, right, and that the stuffy description, right stuff
Speaker 1: in The important part of that is the apparent necessary
Speaker 1: and completeness. So before this, prior to quantum physics, it
Speaker 1: was thought that a physical system had a determinate state
Speaker 1: which uniquely determined all the values of its measurable properties,
Speaker 1: and conversely, be the values of its measurable properties uniquely
Speaker 1: determine the state. But the quantum into the mix, and
Speaker 1: essentially quantum in determinacy is saying actually there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of outcomes, and in fact, we could be wrong. We
Speaker 1: could you know, this is this is a sort of
Speaker 1: placeholder and um, what we're trying to determine, and it
Speaker 1: is We'll just go ahead and say right off the
Speaker 1: bat that it is incomplete. It is not the end
Speaker 1: all of the be all. We don't know if a
Speaker 1: tree is falling in the forest with quantum indeterminacy, but
Speaker 1: we know the possibility is there, right, all right, So
Speaker 1: it's the game of possibilities. Well, of course it instantly
Speaker 1: brings to mind, especially since we mentioned cats earlier, the
Speaker 1: idea of Schrodinger's cat, which of course the ideas of
Speaker 1: the cats in a box. And you have this sort
Speaker 1: of elaborate system set up with with the decaying radioactive
Speaker 1: substance and tomic particle writer. It has like an hour
Speaker 1: and it there's a chance of decaying, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and chance of nutcaing, and there's a Geiger counter, and
Speaker 1: if it decays and a hammer hits a flask and
Speaker 1: poison or it fires a gun, they're very I think
Speaker 1: they're very various ways to kill the cat. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: but it basically comes down to the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a box kind of like your home, and there's a
Speaker 1: cat in it, and you cannot be sure exactly what
Speaker 1: state the cat is in. And since you can't be sure,
Speaker 1: in the case of Shroudinger, if the cat is alive
Speaker 1: or dead, the cat is there in a what it's
Speaker 1: called a superposition, meaning that it is both alive and dead.
Speaker 1: You don't know for sure. It's just a complete uncertainty. Likewise,
Speaker 1: right now, what's my cat Biscuit doing? She laying on
Speaker 1: a pillow? Is she playing the xbox? I don't know.
Speaker 1: My mind don't know. Mine has just broken through the
Speaker 1: theory of everything. Well, that's because you get the webcam.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I just saw it. I saw Wow.
Speaker 1: Let's see, the box is open for you because of
Speaker 1: the webcamp webcam. For me, the box is closed. So
Speaker 1: anything is possible. Right. So what I think is cool
Speaker 1: about this concept is that it really is a driving
Speaker 1: force in science. When we think about science, we think
Speaker 1: about um than what we know, and we think about
Speaker 1: this sort of infaillible like you know A is A
Speaker 1: and B, S B and c SC and that's that's
Speaker 1: the story, folks, When in fact, science is just a
Speaker 1: murky murky field UM with all sorts of spooky things happening.
Speaker 1: And there's a neuroscientist named David Eagleman who gave a
Speaker 1: talk at the School of Life about this uncertainty, this
Speaker 1: this quality in our universe that we've come to understand
Speaker 1: is the limits of our knowledge essentially. Right. He's a
Speaker 1: he's he has a kind of a rock star personas
Speaker 1: I remember, he's pretty a pretty hip dude. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He He starts out this conversation by saying, hey, do
Speaker 1: you guys know about deep field observation? The host, the audience,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know this is in the UK s
Speaker 1: of course, like you half of them now And he says,
Speaker 1: all right, well cool, let me let me just blow
Speaker 1: your mind, you know, right off the bat. And he says, okay,
Speaker 1: there's the Hubble telescope went up, but you know, two
Speaker 1: thousand and three and it's been orbiting UM and a
Speaker 1: geosynchronus synchronous orbit and they just decided to point their
Speaker 1: lens a little tiny spot in space. And what did
Speaker 1: they find? After millions of seconds of data, They thought
Speaker 1: maybe I'd find a star or something. They ended up
Speaker 1: finding ten thousand galaxies, which is thousands of billions of
Speaker 1: sons observed in a tiny, tiny patch. Um. And to
Speaker 1: me that was the ultimate example of the vastness of
Speaker 1: what we don't know, right, especially he in this he
Speaker 1: mentions that, you know, people are like, well, why don't
Speaker 1: you we just do analyze everything to that extent, And
Speaker 1: we could, but it would take like millions and millions
Speaker 1: a yeah, yeah, if you pointed that lens, if you
Speaker 1: tried to map out the entire space, there's no way
Speaker 1: we could do it. But we can that tiny little spot.
Speaker 1: We can gather data. Yeah, just a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: focus on one portion of the sky. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: he uses this as a jumping off point to say,
Speaker 1: you know, everything that we thought was true, we we
Speaker 1: kind of have to back up and and look at
Speaker 1: and and then he goes into this concept of possibilionism,
Speaker 1: which he he used actually as a joke term um
Speaker 1: a while back, and it's actually gained some legs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sounds like something Jack donaghe would make up on
Speaker 1: thirty rocks. That's right, possibillionism, lemon, it's the new when
Speaker 1: you're writing your Reaganism like that. Um. But basically what
Speaker 1: he's saying, is it's the act of exploration of new ideas,
Speaker 1: which is trying to understand the structure of that possibility space.
Speaker 1: So he's saying, basically, everybody is welcome at the table,
Speaker 1: but we're going to use science to try to cut
Speaker 1: away the parts that don't make sense to us, and
Speaker 1: we're going to acknowledge real the real limits of knowledge
Speaker 1: that we have um and and then he kind of
Speaker 1: talks about all the different puzzle parts that we have
Speaker 1: that we know about right now, but what we don't
Speaker 1: know about, and quantum theory is basically when those things
Speaker 1: that he talks about, he says like it's given us
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of information, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: we still are kind of stuck even in that mode
Speaker 1: of well, what's what's right the Copenhagen interpretation or the
Speaker 1: many worlds theory? Right, so so you know, time collapse theory,
Speaker 1: which one of them is right? Are there are many
Speaker 1: many worlds that we can observe or is there just
Speaker 1: this one world that we can observe because nothing beyond
Speaker 1: that exists, which goes back to that tree in the
Speaker 1: forest you know, now you mentioned when we were prepping
Speaker 1: for this we want to relativity a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and about how the original theory relativity is the idea
Speaker 1: of it. It's it's you can sort of compare that
Speaker 1: to a tree following in the forest right right with
Speaker 1: Einstein and basically saying, Okay, this is this is my
Speaker 1: projection based on mathematics, but this is still just a thought, right,
Speaker 1: this is still a thought experiment in a sense, and
Speaker 1: and and and it was something that subsequently we had
Speaker 1: to prove. We had to prove the things like you know,
Speaker 1: observable time dilation uh uh and and also like gravitational
Speaker 1: lensing with stars of observing how you know this this
Speaker 1: interesting relationship between time and space and it's reality at
Speaker 1: space time. This presentation is brought to you by Intel
Speaker 1: sponsors of Tomorrow. So yeah, basically when Einstein was looking
Speaker 1: at that, this was just the seeds for for what
Speaker 1: we now can apply to different disciplines. Um to breakthroughs
Speaker 1: that we've had in science. But still we have this
Speaker 1: unknown quantity. And I think about dark matter as an example. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we we definitely underestimated the gravitational pool and
Speaker 1: now we found out that or we think of the
Speaker 1: matter of uh of the universe that we don't know
Speaker 1: what it is or where it's coming from. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like there was a one particular Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: story and I forget the title of it, but they're
Speaker 1: investigating a house and Sherlock was able to determine that
Speaker 1: there's not enough based on the visible space. There's a
Speaker 1: secret room here somewhere and uh, and dark matter is
Speaker 1: kind of a similar situation based on how much matter
Speaker 1: there should be the universe or something missing for dark matter, right,
Speaker 1: then that's a great example or a great technology because
Speaker 1: we can't see it, but we know that based on
Speaker 1: our models that there has to be something there. There's
Speaker 1: a there's a hidden room and it's filled with dark matter,
Speaker 1: and we just have to figure out exactly what that means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then if you take it down to even just uh,
Speaker 1: the level of what's available to us now, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: you've got photography, which high speed photography now which we
Speaker 1: can slow down mundane events. Um, even like a dog
Speaker 1: lapping up water, Oh yes, or a cat. They're recently
Speaker 1: studying on exactly how a cat's drinking. It's completely different
Speaker 1: than we ever thought. I mean, especially with a dog
Speaker 1: if you look at it. I used to think that
Speaker 1: the dog was using its tongue is a sort of
Speaker 1: cup and bringing all that water up into him. But
Speaker 1: now we understand that it's actually curling its tongue under
Speaker 1: and getting the water in that way. So you begin
Speaker 1: to think to yourself, how many things am I actually
Speaker 1: missing on a day to day basis because I'm not
Speaker 1: quite equipped to perceive things like We slow it down
Speaker 1: even more and we see that when the tongue curls
Speaker 1: like a tiny doghead comes out of a hole in
Speaker 1: the tongue and then drinks the water. That's not true.
Speaker 1: That's it might be true. We just don't know yet.
Speaker 1: We don't know yet. We just can't be certain. I
Speaker 1: really wish that word here, but it does make me
Speaker 1: think about like Another example, which David Eagleman gives, is
Speaker 1: that we've got photo receptors at the back of our
Speaker 1: eyes picking up signals and picking up a tiny slice
Speaker 1: of electromagnetic radiation spectrum, which is what we call visible light.
Speaker 1: The same stuff is passing through us via cell phones, right,
Speaker 1: But the difference is that cell phone signals we can't
Speaker 1: decode them because we don't have the specialized receptors for it.
Speaker 1: So again it brings us back to that question of
Speaker 1: maybe we're just ill equipped to be able to do
Speaker 1: more at this point in time. Evolution kind of end
Speaker 1: up thinking of the visible world. The world is visible
Speaker 1: to humans as being reality, but in but it actually
Speaker 1: may work out to where the version of reality we're
Speaker 1: just seeing like a slim slice of reality. The rest
Speaker 1: is like we've got blinders like a horse. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: David Eagleman had this really great point. He was sort
Speaker 1: of talking about all the where we are history really
Speaker 1: in terms of breakthroughs and saying, you know, can you
Speaker 1: imagine being able to even understand a computer lit alone
Speaker 1: quantum computing if you didn't even have electricity to plug
Speaker 1: in that computer? Yeah, I can't even imagine understanding one
Speaker 1: with electrics, right, It still breaks my brain. But but
Speaker 1: so we think about where we're going to be on
Speaker 1: that timeline a hundred years from now, our thousand years
Speaker 1: from now, and we essentially might look like Caveman. And
Speaker 1: then all the things that we think right now may
Speaker 1: just be some sort of guessing game um that you know,
Speaker 1: probability half of it turns out to be correct, the
Speaker 1: other half not correct and this is I think when
Speaker 1: the most important points that David Eagleman makes, which is
Speaker 1: that science really is a guessing game. Um, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look Science does not move in a linear fashion. Uh.
Speaker 1: It takes great creative leaps and then it tries to
Speaker 1: backfill to substantiate those leaps. Yeah. So that's another reason
Speaker 1: why science scientists are rock stars. And well it's it
Speaker 1: goes back to take it into cosmology. The idea of
Speaker 1: um geocentricism and heliocentricism, like the idea that, okay, the
Speaker 1: Earth's center of the universe, let's throw some math at that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that didn't work out. Sons the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: That didn't work out either. You know. It's like they
Speaker 1: you know, they take this leap, and sometimes the leap
Speaker 1: is based on things that aren't science. But then by
Speaker 1: through scientific evaluation, they are able to determine whether that
Speaker 1: was a leap that's going to land us on a
Speaker 1: solid ground or not. All right, Yeah, I'm liking this
Speaker 1: because you know this, this concept of scientists has stayed
Speaker 1: pipe smoking, plaid vest wherein men and women because you know,
Speaker 1: but with mustaches. I'll just go that far um is
Speaker 1: completely wrong. I mean they're they're sort of like the
Speaker 1: graffiti artists, you know, trying to put things together on
Speaker 1: a graffiti artist sounded kind of cool, but as you said,
Speaker 1: they're just throwing things, the throwing darts at the at
Speaker 1: the dart boards of ideas and just trying to get there.
Speaker 1: And one day they'll look back and they'll say, I
Speaker 1: can't believe that they thought that dark matter was a thing.
Speaker 1: And they didn't know that dog tongues had a little
Speaker 1: bit of doghead that came out right exactly, totally didn't
Speaker 1: understand even their own pets and Jeane Shorts what was
Speaker 1: that all about. But examples I think of this of
Speaker 1: this creative leap is with relativity, as you had brought
Speaker 1: up before with Einstein. That was just a little seedon
Speaker 1: idea before, but then it actually had some real time applications. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we were later able to observe gravitational lensing too,
Speaker 1: to see how light traveling near a huge, a very
Speaker 1: large star actually warps around it, being able to observe
Speaker 1: how the the the the clocks in an orbiting satellite,
Speaker 1: how time passes a little differently in orbit than it
Speaker 1: doesn't earth, right, and so that's that's the geosynchronous satellites, right,
Speaker 1: and so that's what that's how we keep time aboard
Speaker 1: spacecraft by being aware of the change, right, Okay, and
Speaker 1: then we've got atomic energy and atomic warfare. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are huge things that we're just predicated on a thought.
Speaker 1: Of course a lot of math too, but but turned
Speaker 1: out to be on the right part of the board there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like we're pawing our way blindly through
Speaker 1: a fog, and the fog is the universe, you know,
Speaker 1: when we can never really see the whole picture, but
Speaker 1: we can sort of you know, reach ahead and sort
Speaker 1: of feel our way through it and h and figure
Speaker 1: out what's going to be solid ground and what's going
Speaker 1: to be you know, a plummet into an abyss. We
Speaker 1: can't see the trees for the forest there you go,
Speaker 1: all right, Well that helps explain a little bit. But
Speaker 1: I think that the coolest thing is that it helps
Speaker 1: us to understand the uncertainty is okay, right, and uncertainty
Speaker 1: is a huge part of it, right, is the building
Speaker 1: block of our knowledge. Right. Yeah. The second you have
Speaker 1: everything figured out, that's that's where the problem you're in
Speaker 1: big trouble. In fact, Voltaire said, doubt is an uncomfortable position,
Speaker 1: but certainty is an absurd position. I always come back
Speaker 1: to the Book of Job, where Job's in a miserable time.
Speaker 1: I've probably mentioned this before, but but then you know,
Speaker 1: God is basically when he decides to know, mouth off
Speaker 1: to God. God's like, you know, who are you to
Speaker 1: ask questions? You're never gonna understand anything? And it's a
Speaker 1: very it's it's it's probably my favorite chapter in the
Speaker 1: Bible because it's got the Book of the Bible, because
Speaker 1: it comes down to uncertainty, cosmic uncertainty, theological uncertainty, everything philosophical.
Speaker 1: I like that chapter two and the one on gene shorts.
Speaker 1: The other one on gene shorts is pretty good, but
Speaker 1: it's a cautionary tale. Of course. You don't see any
Speaker 1: on me. So if you want to learn more about
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Speaker 1: search bar and we have a plethora of articles for
Speaker 1: you to look over. And don't forget to check out
Speaker 1: David Eagleman's Talking Uncertainty, which is on school Life Dot com,
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