WEBVTT - Part One: The Fake Bomb Detector Grift That Killed Hundreds 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.200 Also media. 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:09.640 Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the very podcast about 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:12.680 wait shit, bad people podcast, the worst in all of history. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:15.600 I'm the host of the show and also bad at 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:19.720 introducing it. Let's distract everyone from me being yet again 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.560 incompetent at the one thing I have to do other 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.880 than redescript, and bring on our guest, Ed zitron ed, 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:28.000 How you doing today? 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:30.520 What's up? I'm great, You're great. 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.920 That's good. That's better than bad. Ed your podcast called 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:35.000 better Offline, don't you? 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:36.040 I do? 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:39.240 And you talk about a number of things on that show, 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:41.720 But you've kind of you've gained a great deal of 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:45.400 fame and notoriety lately by repeatedly calling out a lot 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.800 of the grifty and Connie aspects of what some people 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:51.280 call the AI Revolution. I think that would be that 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:53.080 would be fair to say. And you you're working on 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:55.480 a book right now, aren't you. You want to give 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.560 us the audience the title of that book. 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.320 It's called Why Everything Stopped Working, and it's about how 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:04.160 everything stopped working due to technology and how we got 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:06.920 to where we are today, which kind of fucking sucks. 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.800 That is a great premise, and I can't wait for 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:11.920 the book, and I wanted to help you out with 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:15.399 some research ed on something that's kind of off the 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:20.000 beaten path and not directly involved with the tech industry 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.080 that you've reported on, but in terms of like how 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:28.680 people fall for cons and specifically con technology products, it's 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:31.360 a really important story and so I think you might 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:34.280 get some value in hearing it, even though it's technically 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.160 set in an industry that's not your immediate industry. This 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:42.679 is a defense industry technology story. Hey have you ever 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:46.400 heard the story about the bomb detectors that didn't work 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:51.000 that everyone, particularly I RAQ bought. Okay, great ed, We're 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:52.680 going to have a really good time today. 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:58.240 Oh boy, speaking of things that explode, remember when bezos 0:01:58.320 --> 0:01:59.840 Is rocket exploded yesterday. 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.880 It sure just did it sure just didn't. And anytime 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:06.880 something explodes, I'm happy, unless it's like a bad explosion that. 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:10.399 Nobody nobody, nobody died, nobody dies. And so the videos 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.239 were really fun. Yeah that was a big boom. 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.519 Yeah it is. It is amazing how just knowing like 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.960 no one was hurt can make the two different equally 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.160 nightmarish explosions one of them just be really funny. Like 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.000 you watch the video that explosion when that the town 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.880 of West in Texas blew up a few years back, 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.600 and it's not fun at all. It's just terrifying. But 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:34.960 the Blue Origin rocket blowing up pretty funny. 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:37.640 We looked at every angle. 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.240 It made the sound that Rats Terrell did in Phantom 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:45.200 Menace when he crashed, right. It's the same explosion, the 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.120 same sound. But I was much sadder about Rats Terrell. 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:57.320 I love that you know his name, man, of course. Yeah, 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.280 so as you know, ed, and it's everyone who listens 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:03.799 to your show knows. The US tech industry is currently 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.840 dealing with a teen C issue of its entire economic foundation, 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.960 increasingly resting on a bed of fraudulent claims about what 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:13.120 AI can do. And every week you break down some 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:15.720 new lie or set of lies about how this new 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.480 AI update or whatever works, or which giant fantasy data 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.840 centers are actually being constructed in which aren't. And for 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.000 those of us who care about objective reality and what 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.240 companies to sell products that actually do something, this is 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.000 a distressing state of affairs. And I wanted to give 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:36.000 you a story about kind of how dumb that process 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.480 can get, and how really easy it is to trick 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:43.160 even very serious people into buying absolute nonsense as long 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.600 as they feel like though they're dummies who are missing 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.440 out if they don't buy it. That's the story. And 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.520 ultimately it's going to take us to a rack and 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.720 a fake bomb detecting device that got so many people killed, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:59.400 a startling number of people killed. Yea, but first, first dead. 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.760 We got to start in prehistory and in the far 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:07.280 reaches of time with a psychological phenomenon that we now 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.760 call the idio motor effect. You've heard of this, right? 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:12.240 Have you heard of the ideo motor effect? 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:12.400 No? 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.480 Okay, this is may you may just not remember the name, 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:18.760 because this is like a like this is basically when 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:21.839 your thoughts or you're like mental images of something cause 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:26.520 a reflexive and generally unconscious automatic muscle movement. Right, So 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:29.039 you and your friends are around a weija board and 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:31.320 none of you think that you're moving the little like 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.320 glass that picks the letters, but all of you are 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:36.800 a little bit right like you're just not kind of 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.120 aware of the micro movements, and that moves the thing 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.360 around the board and creates the illusion that some spirit 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.320 is moving your hands. Right, That's that I think people 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:49.440 are generally aware of that concept, yes, and the ideo 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.760 motor effect is it explains actually a lot specifically of 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.599 things in early human like religious history, but not just that. 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.800 And one interesting thing to me, you ever heard of dowsing? No, 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:03.840 this is still a thing today. It's not a thing 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.080 I think most regular people know about in the twenty 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.080 first century, but it's still something that's done all over 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:10.680 the world, and it's a thing that has kind of 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.800 been repeatedly invented in cultures around the world. And the 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.080 idea behind dowsing is you've got this usually a forked 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.080 wooden stick, and you like walk around with it because 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.560 you're looking for water or you're looking for like an 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:26.680 underground mine, right, you think there's gold undergrounding. And as 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.920 you're walking, if like the fork kind of dips in 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:34.440 a direction, that's the dowsing rod finding water or whateverything 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:39.159 you're looking for underground or underwater, right. And again it's 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.360 the idea is that like there's some magnetic force that's 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:43.400 pulling it down and tells you where you should dig. 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:45.919 Like the people who claim this is real tend to 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:48.240 now say that there's a basis in science, there's not, 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:50.800 and people have just been doing this for forever because 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:52.320 it seems like it should work. 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:54.599 An should think this works. 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.080 Yes, my dad did this professionally when he was a 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:00.839 young man. Like they were talking like the early eighties, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:03.960 you know. Yeah, so yes, people still. 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.120 Do doubt very cool, very cool. 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.120 And what's when because one thing dowsers will point out, 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:12.119 because there are dowsers who like have a great record 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:13.960 of like, well, this guy is using a dowsing rod 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.800 and he's found water all these times. Generally, what people 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:18.760 tend to think is actually happening is that like these 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.680 folks are also have just been traveling around and like 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:23.800 looking for water long enough and have enough of an 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.720 understanding of geology that kind of unconsciously when they suspect 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:31.039 that somewhere is right their their hand is moving, you know, 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:37.000 in favor of yes, yes, of just pseudoscience, very much 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.880 of crediting the stick. Yes, very we'll talk more about 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:42.640 that like later. But dowsing goes back surprisingly far. We 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.240 have ancient Chinese texts from about two thousand BCE or so, 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.280 uh that depict Emperor you of Hasia of using a 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:54.400 dowsing rod in something approaching the modern fashion. And there 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:56.600 are even some archaeologists who will argue that a set 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.680 of cave paintings in Algeria from about six thousand BCE 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.240 also depict dowsing. That's highly debated. These guys might have 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:05.520 just had bows and arrows. It's a cave painting, so 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:09.359 there's some room for debate. But Herodotus described a similar 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.280 tool in use by the Scythians in the fifth century BCE. 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:14.640 And there are a number of others suspected or confirmed 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:19.320 cases of dowsing and dowsing adjacent behavior in civilizations around 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.040 the world. And sometimes, you know, with the Scithians, I 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.160 wouldn't be surprised if it traveled out of China. But 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.160 there's evidence that different peoples have kind of figured out 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.960 this basic idea independently, sort of like the bow and 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.560 arrow right. For whatever reason, this is just something that 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:38.680 it seems natural to people. The practice was well known 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:40.520 enough in the days of the Roman Empire that the 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:44.080 New Testament even has a passage denouncing dowsing. From an 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.960 article on the Archaeology Review blog by Carl Figans quote, 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:51.480 my people consult their wooden idol, and their diviner's rod 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:53.800 informs them for a spirit of Harley Tree has led 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.120 them astray and they have played the harlot departing from 0:07:56.160 --> 0:08:01.520 their God. And that's Hosea four twelve. So you're uh using. 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:07.200 Is stizing the Bible? Hey, whoa? 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:12.960 If we're comparing dowsing to ai, this is the first, 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:17.800 Like this is an early pope encyclical against dowsing. It's 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:22.160 Harlet's behavior sticks so people think about ladies. I don't 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:23.600 think that's actually what it was saying, but in the 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.920 funny wording, I just like the word harlot. So this 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.120 is probably part of why dowsing rods became increasingly known 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:32.600 as witching rods in the Western world. If you've heard 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:34.480 of a witching rod, it's the same idea, and they 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.559 call it that because people thought it was the devil sometimes. 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.400 And while the practice was banned at times in the 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:44.040 Christian world during this period as a result, and even persecuted, 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:47.000 this did not overly inhibit it spread. By the fifteenth 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.720 century CE, Germans were using forked branches they called wishing 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.920 rods to find ore veins in mountains. Or again, they're 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.400 not actually finding stuff with the sticks. The sticks don't work. 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.040 That's just what they think is going on. In fifteen 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.679 fifty six and a scholar and a mineralogist named Georgius 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:06.800 Agricola wrote the earliest surviving illustrated account of dowsing as 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.240 a professional practice. Now by this point, but the time 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.400 old Georgie puts that down, we've had a documented history 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.439 of about thirty five hundred years of humans using dowsing, 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.679 maybe more, and enough people believe dowsing works, that it's 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.200 a common practice. But even in the fifteen hundreds, which 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.720 is not an advanced era for scientific understanding, this guy, 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.440 agrikaa is like, there's no way this is real, right, 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.679 and he writes there are many great contentions between minors 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.160 concerning the forked twig. For some say that it is 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.120 of the greatest use of discovering veins, and others deny it. 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:42.160 So we're already starting to like do some evidence base, 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:44.960 you know, with shedding of doubts on this practice. 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:48.439 Well, they like guides like how to downce and like 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:53.079 step two when it wiggles. I don't really know what is. 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.160 He he's the first one to write it down. We 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:58.680 have to assume just given the nature of the way 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:01.200 things were spread back then, mos dowsers would have been 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:04.120 taught how to dows You're not getting like a guidebook 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.000 with your first rod. You're an apprentice and you're being taught, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.480 you know. So Georgias was kind of the first person 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:14.520 to document what was probably already standard wisdom within the field, 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:19.280 if that makes sense, wisdom of the rod, the rod 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:20.240 holding a stick and. 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:22.280 Saying the wisdom of the stick. 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:24.800 There was some of the stick beautiful. 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:26.240 I love it now. 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.240 I found all the information, most of the information about 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:31.640 dowsing that I've read for you on a website called 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.400 plus Value India, which had an article on the history 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:42.000 of dowsing that seemed a lot less shady before. Yeah, 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:44.880 so if he's going to show you the website, if 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:46.640 you want to look at how reputable this source is. 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:51.280 The pages three steps energize, three to five day delivery, 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.840 transform your home's energy without breaking a single wall. Perfect, 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:58.360 and it's it's about healing crystals. It's about healing crystals. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.040 As that should make clear. The fact that this history 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.359 of dowsing is on the website selling you magic crystals. 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.720 Dowsing is wo right, This isn't real science. Dowsing rods 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.640 don't identify gold or iron or water and pull in 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:16.120 their direction. People unconsciously decide a particular area seems likely, 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:20.160 and their hand moves unconsciously. If someone's intuition is good 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.000 or they're lucky, they find what they're looking for. And 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.800 this process works often enough throughout history that it's kept alive, 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:30.280 not just alive, but shockingly influential. In his article, Vegans 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:34.080 notes that quote. Archaeologist and skeptic Jebcard writes in his 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.880 Spooky Archaeology, which is a book, that one in eight 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.360 archaeology instructors in the nineteen eighties were favorable to dowsing. 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.360 This is initially hard to accept. Dowsing is the kind 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:45.800 of nonsense that was popular before people understood the ideo 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:47.959 motor effect. But surely by the nineteen eighties we knew 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.000 the practice was bupkiss and we did in the same 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:53.839 way we know vaccines work. But the world at large 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.400 has not always accepted that knowledge. Right, So the fact 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.679 that like that many archaeology instructors in the eighties one 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.080 and eight. It's not most, but it's more than you'd guess, 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.400 right believing in dowsing, she'd show you how hard it 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.360 is to convince people even when there's never been and 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.480 there's never been any good evidence dowsing works. Even despite 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:17.600 that fact, despite how long we've known its nonsense, people 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.400 were still buying it then and still today by people 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:22.120 by the way. 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:24.640 Like the idea of a god like the years and 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.560 you're like, okay, step one, hold the stick too, it 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:29.800 wiggle like I'm just like step two is where a 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.840 kid stuck? It moves? Wait until it moves? Is it 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:34.520 like using the. 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:37.840 Around I think you're supposed to just kind of walk 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.760 past the area and if it dips down, that's like 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:42.240 the sign that something's there. 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:46.079 Right, there's some variance to this to your hand dipping. 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:49.400 You couldn't do it with a hand, that's just silly ed. 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:53.560 Yeah, okay, cool, right you. 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:57.560 I mentioned earlier that the wija board works by way 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.160 of the idiomotor effect too, and it does. But the 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:02.920 wija board is a new product. Any claims of ancient 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.000 providence or just marketing. It is, however, based on an 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:08.720 older idea, in quite in fact, a very old idea, 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.760 which is the magic or exploring pendulum. And if you 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:13.920 were to if you were to get transported back in 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.000 time to the days of ancient Rome and meet like 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.320 someone claiming to be a fortune teller, they would probably 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.600 do there's a good chance they'd do this where basically, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.160 you've got like a plate or a bowl that's engraved 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.920 with pictures or letters or words or symbols that stand 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.200 for something, and you hold this pendulum sometimes it's just 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:34.880 like a metal ring on a string, and you hold 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.280 it above that and as the ideo motor effect makes 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.160 it swing in a certain direction, you're saying, oh, the 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.120 spirit is picking out different symbols or letters, and it's 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.840 spelling out, you know, your fortune or whatever. It's answering 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:49.360 whatever question it's been asked to you. We have documentation 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.160 of this practice dating back at least two three seventy 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.040 one BC in Europe or BCE in Europe, according to 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.360 an article on quack Watch quote, a question would be 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:01.480 put to the priest, The movements of the ring would 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:03.360 then be observed. When the ring was set in motion, 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:05.240 it would swing towards one of the letters. This letter 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:07.160 would be recorded, and the same process would be used 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.480 to select another letter. Right, And that's you know, basically 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.960 how these things work. So how did dowsing stay relevant 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:17.960 and seemingly credible up until the modern era, Whereas like 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.400 the magic pendulum became a board game for children, right, 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.520 even though it's the same amount of legitimacy. That is interesting, 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:26.880 isn't it right that like one of these is a 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:29.640 Parker Brothers game, and the others cut people pay for it, 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:30.080 you know. 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:33.200 Is it because is it? Is it the client base? 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.520 Because for the for the dowsing, it's the ore and 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:38.840 the and the war. And I guess that there are 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:41.480 those people and the others are seeking to communicate with 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.000 the debt, right right, kids. 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.480 Right, and it But it is interesting that a bunch 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:51.320 of like hard nosed oil and gas investors over the 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.600 years have been fooled by something that, like most kids know, 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.920 isn't really real, just because it's in a different it's 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.640 it's presented to them in a different standard like situation. Right. 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:04.520 I do think that's kind of telling. 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.360 Yeah, yeah, And I can kinnes see where you're going 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:13.000 with this too, if it just does the appearance. Yeah's interesting. 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.560 I sure hardly don't use this logic for bombs. 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:17.800 No, no, no, you see, you don't want to see 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:19.960 this logic used for bombs. But if you want to 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.160 know how this logic went from, you know, stuff that 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:27.440 like fortune tellers and wizards would use and wound up 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.480 in a bomb detector. The answer that starts with the 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.880 spiritism movement of the mid nineteenth century we talked about. 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.240 Jamie Loft has talked about this a lot on the show, 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:40.960 one of the shows that she did for us. This 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:43.720 is like around the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.800 you suddenly have seances become a big thing. Right, there's 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:50.040 this burr explosion in all these different weird occult movements. 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.240 Some of this does feed into the Nazis, some of 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.040 it feeds into what's going to become the New Age 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.000 movement over here. But it's starting in like the eighteen 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.320 forties and fifties with people trying to communicate with the dead, 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.080 and in that period of time often believing that there 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.000 might have been actual science to allowing people to communicate 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.000 with spirits or the dead, because it's like eighteen forty eight, right, 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:11.520 it's not a crazy thing to believe in eighteen forty 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:13.320 eight based on the science of the times. 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.040 Yeah, we got into that at length on Ghost Church. 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:19.600 Ghost Church. Yes, Yes, that was Jamie show. So the 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:23.440 first scientist to actually bust the magic pendulum and thus 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:27.600 explain the ideomotor effect and bust all ideomotor related magical 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.840 phenomena was a French dude named Chevrouel. Right, he's a scientist. 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:34.880 In eighteen oh eight, he'd trained as a chemist and 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.400 had thus read a standard textbook for the field written 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.360 by a Strasburg professor who advocated using a magic pendulum 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.440 to do chemical analysis. That's where science is at this 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.520 point in the early eighteen hundreds. If you're trying to analyze, 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:50.800 like what different chemicals or anything, before you do like 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.080 a chemical experiment, like where you're mixing shit together, you 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.640 use like a fucking ring on a on a chain 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.320 and the way it swings tells you what the innerals are. Right, 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.840 so right and shiverwell. To his credit, he's one of 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:07.240 these guys. He just seems to have kind of a 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.160 naturally scientific mind. So once he's his instructors tell him, 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:13.400 and this is how you analyze what chemicals are in things. 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:18.679 He's like, really, I don't that that's sure? Believe this right? Like, 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:21.800 this isn't what we're doing, is it? This can't be right? 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.359 So he he uses. But that said, when he uses 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:27.639 the pendulum for the first time, it works, like he 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:29.520 gets a chemical compound and he knows what it is, 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:32.840 and somehow the pendulum swings the way it's supposed to 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:34.960 when it's over that in order to identify it as 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.400 like mercury. Right, So he's given a plate to mercury, 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.480 he knows it's mercury. Unconsciously, his hand makes the motion 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:44.600 that is supposed to indicate that it's mercury. 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:44.960 Right. 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:47.400 So at first he's like, oh, fuck, maybe it does work, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.640 maybe I'm wrong, But again, being having a good scientific mind, 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:53.399 he decides, I'm going to do some actual testing and 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.880 I'm going to actually try to do kind of an 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.920 early version of double blind testing. So he like puts 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.720 a plate beneath the pitulum and the mercury and that 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:05.000 stops it, like the thing from swinging. And he also 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.199 tests putting his arm on a support, which reduces the 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.399 movements and kind of provides evidence that like, no, no, 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:12.280 these are unconscious muscle movements. 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:14.720 I was thinking about that with the divining rod, you 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.000 could test if it zero by having lack of cost or. 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.080 Something exactly exactly. And that's what he does, right, because 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:22.880 he's a smart guy. Now, this prompts him to conduct 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:26.119 the first double blind test on the IDEO motor effect 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.080 and I'm going to quote again from that Quackwatch article. 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.240 He blindfolded himself and then he had an assistant interpose 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:33.480 to remove the glass plate between the pendulum and the 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:38.720 mercury without his knowledge. Under these conditions, nothing happened. Chevrouell concluded, 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:41.720 so long as I believed the movement possible, it took place, 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.479 but after discovering the cause, I could not reproduce it. 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.080 His experiments with the pendulum show how easy it is 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.840 to mistake illusions for realities whenever we are confronted by 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.080 phenomena in which the human sense organs are involved under 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:58.600 conditions imperfectly analyzed. Interesting quote to think about when you 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.880 read about like aich hat pods passing like turning tests 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.520 and stuff. Yeah yeah, kind of an interesting yeah, thing 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:09.480 to think on. So again, I do like stories about 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:11.159 this guy because it gives you it's just one of 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.400 these like you can really see a brilliant mind shining 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.240 through history. This man was just too smart to believe 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.840 what literally everyone else in his field said was true 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:21.320 and was like, well, I'm just going to literally do 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.399 a basic test. No, everyone's wrong. 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.240 Yeah, this makes this does make me think of my work, 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:31.000 which like fifty percent of the things I do are like, Okay, 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:34.720 you keep saying this, did you look? Did you look? 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.159 Did you look? Even once? And then you check and 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:39.640 there's no proof, and they like, hey, job lost, really 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:44.159 no proof of that. It's the businesses makes sense, time 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:46.040 make that makes sense to all if you add up 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:49.080 the numbers. History is so beautiful. 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:51.119 It's beautiful. It's that's why I was calling him in 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:58.439 my head, chev rued Zitron. That didn't really work, chef Zitron. There, 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:00.920 I could have tried so many different things work better 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.320 than what I went with anyway, So Chevroell has correctly 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:08.119 generalized that this same explanation illuminates what's really behind dowsing. 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.000 He doesn't just call out, you know, the pendulum chemical analysis. 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:13.359 He's like, by the way people are using the same 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.720 Dowsing's the same thing, obviously, But his findings did not 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.240 initially spread widely, neither among the general populace, nor even 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.320 among a lot of educated people. By the eighteen fifties, 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.600 grifters and gurus were hosting regular seances and talking to 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.560 the dead parties where magic pendulums were used to communicate 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.080 with ghosts. The whole spiritist movement relied heavily on the 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:37.760 idio motor effect. Table turning was another common practice, and 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.800 this was a Victorian era parlor game that took off 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.800 after the famous Fox Sisters of Hydesville started claiming to 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.240 communicate with spirits through knocks and taps on tables. In 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.200 just a few years, the practice had evolved to table flipping, 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.160