Speaker 1: Are you a Stuff to Blow your Mind fan? Are
Speaker 1: you a New Yorker? Do you plan to attend this
Speaker 1: year's New York Comic Con. If so, then you've got
Speaker 1: to check out our exclusive live show NYCC presents Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind Live Stranger Science. Join all three
Speaker 1: of us as we record a live podcast about the
Speaker 1: exciting science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix
Speaker 1: show Stranger Things. It all goes down Friday October six,
Speaker 1: from seven pm to eight thirty pm at the Hudson
Speaker 1: Mercantile in Manhattan. Stuff you missed in history class has
Speaker 1: a show right before us, so you can really double down,
Speaker 1: learn more and buy your tickets today at New York
Speaker 1: Comic Con dot com slash NYCC hyphen presents Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Christian Seger, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And hey, it is time for another listener
Speaker 1: Maile episode. It's been a while since we did one, right, guys, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since Carney has come out of
Speaker 1: his layer to greet us. With various bits of listener
Speaker 1: mail from our our our listeners all over the world.
Speaker 1: Carney's has some life changes recently, though, right guys, Well,
Speaker 1: Carney I believe has a crush Carney the mail Bot,
Speaker 1: of course, if you're not familiar, Formerly Arnie the mail Bot.
Speaker 1: With the addition of Cartesian doubt, we became Carney. And
Speaker 1: now I think he has learned to love because I've
Speaker 1: seen him writing the name of another machine here in
Speaker 1: the office, if y'all, if you'll notice, I noticed somebody
Speaker 1: etched a serial number really long, went into the wall
Speaker 1: with a saw of some sort. That would be Carney.
Speaker 1: I get a big heart around it, Honestly, I try
Speaker 1: to stay out of the whole thing. They both tried
Speaker 1: to get me into a room to mitigate the whole
Speaker 1: situation the other day, and I just you know, I'm
Speaker 1: busy to a podcast. Sorry, Carney, you don't want to
Speaker 1: get into machine politics. Well, maybe by the end of
Speaker 1: today's episode he and the coffee machine can work it out.
Speaker 1: I hope so, I hope so. But for now he
Speaker 1: needs to do his job, that's right, and that is
Speaker 1: to spit out listener mail for us. And it's and
Speaker 1: we need a note here that we receive a great
Speaker 1: deal of listener mail. We we get it in on
Speaker 1: the email, we get it through the various social media accounts.
Speaker 1: We get it lots of cool feedback on the discussion
Speaker 1: module our group on Facebook. These are all tremendous ways
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us. Occasionally, even some snail
Speaker 1: mail comes in, but not a lot. Uh, no reason
Speaker 1: you should stop. Actually do some stuff from Twitter this time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, cool, I know we see stuff on tumbler
Speaker 1: even so. The bottom line is we receive a great
Speaker 1: deal of cool stuff. We try to respond to to
Speaker 1: a lot of it, but there's a lot that we
Speaker 1: can't even you know, we don't have time to respond to.
Speaker 1: But we do like to have Carney bring us some
Speaker 1: choice bits of listener mail so that we can read
Speaker 1: them on the air and and discuss the questions. The
Speaker 1: answers are just sort of basking, you know, the the
Speaker 1: glory of the moment. Well, time is precious, so let's
Speaker 1: get right into it. I can see he's spitting one
Speaker 1: out right now. All right, what's it look like? This
Speaker 1: came in on the discussion module that group on Facebook
Speaker 1: that we were talking about that all of you are
Speaker 1: welcome to to join in on uh. Darwin writes in
Speaker 1: and says you mentioned on the podcast last week that
Speaker 1: perhaps the living in a simulation trope might someday replace
Speaker 1: the alien abduction narrative. Last week on BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage,
Speaker 1: Brian Cox, this is the the younger scientists, Brian Cox,
Speaker 1: This isn't the classic character actoran not Manhunter anyway, Cox
Speaker 1: and his panel discussed this very topic, even submitting that
Speaker 1: such a belief bordered on the same leap of faith
Speaker 1: that is required for religious beliefs. I think it is fascinating,
Speaker 1: even though I doubt that you would be able to
Speaker 1: create certain physical phenomena as we observe them using digital methods,
Speaker 1: the problem of pseudo random versus truly random physical events.
Speaker 1: Of course, maybe with highly advanced technology is required to
Speaker 1: recreate a universe such limitations and uh maybe surmountable. It
Speaker 1: is endlessly fascinating topic and I would love to hear
Speaker 1: you guys weigh in on it at some point. Well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Cartesian doubt, this is actually a good point
Speaker 1: for it, because we talked about this during the Mandela
Speaker 1: Effect episode. This is where I believe this This came up,
Speaker 1: and then you guys also did it in a what
Speaker 1: was Your Computer Simulated? Episode? Was that the created universe
Speaker 1: is one yes. In the episode where we talked about
Speaker 1: creating a universe in the lab, we also talked about
Speaker 1: the idea of creating a universe and a computer simulation
Speaker 1: and how you could know that. I'm skeptical about this idea.
Speaker 1: I voiced some of my skepticism in that episode, and
Speaker 1: we actually got some replies about that. We several people
Speaker 1: send us really interesting emails about that. I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to read at least one of those today. And
Speaker 1: Darwin here mentions the alien abduction episode, and yeah, in
Speaker 1: that one, we were talking about this, this trope of
Speaker 1: of alien abduction being the narrative that you draw in
Speaker 1: when trying to make sense of some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: paranormal sensory experience, and to what degree we might replace
Speaker 1: that in the future with something like the idea that
Speaker 1: our reality is a computer simulation, Like, at what point
Speaker 1: would there be a tipping point at which this would
Speaker 1: become the default or one of the default narratives for
Speaker 1: some people understanding what happened? Syndia being that like the
Speaker 1: matrix would sort of replace alien abduction as these the
Speaker 1: narrative of explanation for these things that we have no
Speaker 1: scientific explanation for. Well, wait a minute, then what is
Speaker 1: the experience narrative there? So if an alien abduction, it's
Speaker 1: you know, there's certain patterns of like I woke up,
Speaker 1: I was in a room surrounded by beings, I was
Speaker 1: taken up into another place, X, Y, and Z happened
Speaker 1: to me. What what's the simulated universe version of that? Well, Joe,
Speaker 1: I was. I was coming back from from the joint
Speaker 1: uptown a few nights back, and suddenly everything got a
Speaker 1: little flashy, and the next thing I knew, these uh,
Speaker 1: these people were come infor me. I think what had
Speaker 1: happened is that I had I had glitched out of
Speaker 1: the computer simulation for a moment. The anti virus software
Speaker 1: is on your case, Yeah, they're on my case. I
Speaker 1: think I might have flopped out of the future tank
Speaker 1: that I'm that my actual body is positioned in. So
Speaker 1: they put me back in and they've done something to
Speaker 1: my memory. But I did get to see through the
Speaker 1: veil and see through the computer simulation that we all
Speaker 1: buy into every day. This is an actual argument that
Speaker 1: a few people have have proposed as an explanation for
Speaker 1: the Mandela effect, that we exist within a kind of
Speaker 1: like hollow deck simulation, and that when the Mandela effect
Speaker 1: is observed by people, it's because there's some glitch in
Speaker 1: the software. We do not buy it. Our episode strongly
Speaker 1: argues that the Mandela effect is just a false memory
Speaker 1: and false memory shared false memory. The amazing part about
Speaker 1: it is what it reveals about the inner working of memory. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't we get at least one email from someone who
Speaker 1: is fairly angry arguing that it's more likely that we
Speaker 1: live in parallel universes or a glitchy simulation then that
Speaker 1: people misremember things. I thought that was just you, you're
Speaker 1: trolling Probert and me, but it maybe it was a
Speaker 1: real person. I don't know. I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: likely that people really often misremember things. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that we make a strong case for that, and
Speaker 1: it's it's connected to the alien abduction episode two. We've
Speaker 1: had kind of like a false memory theme going for
Speaker 1: the last month. Okay, well, I've got at least one
Speaker 1: more email about the idea of living in a computer simulation.
Speaker 1: I mentioned that we this came up in our episode
Speaker 1: about how to create a universe in the Lab. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of that episode was on the physics idea.
Speaker 1: It was that we talked about one book in particular,
Speaker 1: but the work of cosmologists like Alan Gooth over the
Speaker 1: years about how it might hypothetically be possible. It seems
Speaker 1: like kind of a stretch, but there are plausible physical
Speaker 1: hypotheses about how you might be able to do an
Speaker 1: experiment in high energy particle collider that could create a
Speaker 1: universe in the lab. But we also talked about the
Speaker 1: idea of creating a universe as a simulation on software,
Speaker 1: and I talked about multiple reasons I don't think this
Speaker 1: is likely that our universe is a simulation. Uh number one,
Speaker 1: It would just require so much energy to simulate a
Speaker 1: realistic universe. Why is that something that we think future
Speaker 1: civilizations would spend their limited resources on. Well, well, because
Speaker 1: well yeah, but also a lot of people spend their
Speaker 1: limited resources now on simulated worlds. You just you have
Speaker 1: to extrapolate it to like a global economy where just batteries, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just taking our energy right back. Just
Speaker 1: thinking about the information density of simulating an actual world
Speaker 1: with actual physics that works. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: problems is you can do science experiments and the laws
Speaker 1: of physics always seem to hold. So that means at
Speaker 1: some level they're simulating everything all the way down. It's
Speaker 1: not just like a low res simulation with some kind
Speaker 1: of put together sprites. At the higher level, they're simulating
Speaker 1: every physical interaction of every atom and molecule. Well, that
Speaker 1: just seems like that would be so energy intensive, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna I'm just playing defl's advocate here. I
Speaker 1: agree with you, But like I immediately think of like
Speaker 1: rag doll physics in like the video games I play,
Speaker 1: like like sky Rim or Fallout or something like that. Right, right,
Speaker 1: that's a very limited version of what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which are just orders of magnitude simpler than simulating real physics.
Speaker 1: And what I was saying is the easiest way to
Speaker 1: simulate real physics would just be to have a real universe. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we brought up in that episode,
Speaker 1: I think was was the issue of mirrors and video games.
Speaker 1: If you see a working mirror in a video game,
Speaker 1: you're probably you're seeing a great deal of work place
Speaker 1: and all, and some of the times you're actually seeing
Speaker 1: some trickery to you know, to because there's no light
Speaker 1: in a video game. You don't have photons in a
Speaker 1: video game. But to have this kind of simulation that
Speaker 1: Joe is talking about, you would need to have that.
Speaker 1: I had another objection to the idea of that, that
Speaker 1: we're living in a simulated universe, and it went sort
Speaker 1: of like this, Um, if we are living in a
Speaker 1: simulated universe that perfectly mirrors a real universe, we should
Speaker 1: be able to create a simulated universe within our simulated universe,
Speaker 1: and then within the created simulated universe, they should be
Speaker 1: able to create a universe within the simulated universe. If
Speaker 1: this is all running on hardware that is upstream of
Speaker 1: the simulations that go all the way down, you'd eventually
Speaker 1: reach a sort of peak information density that the hardware
Speaker 1: at the top could no longer sustain. And that's where
Speaker 1: this next email comes in. So this comes from our
Speaker 1: listener Jared, who says, Hi, guys, love the show. I
Speaker 1: was listening to your Out of Chaos podcast and had
Speaker 1: a few thoughts pertaining to the computational requirements of complex
Speaker 1: simulation UM and he calls the section relative relativity of
Speaker 1: our programmer God's time. I work on virtually prototyping satellite
Speaker 1: imaging systems by simulating photo realistic imagery, taking into account
Speaker 1: the physics of the imaging system and the lights interaction
Speaker 1: with the observed scene. Now I can do a pretty
Speaker 1: darn good job simulating imagery with any computer. It just
Speaker 1: takes longer given a less powerful computer. Maybe the being
Speaker 1: simulating us have a lot more time, so an hour
Speaker 1: in their time is a second in hours, Or they
Speaker 1: have us turn off for the night and start us
Speaker 1: back up in the morning for maintenance. My simulations don't
Speaker 1: notice any or my temporal discontinuity. Also, now the beings
Speaker 1: want to create a simulation inside their simulation, sure, but
Speaker 1: they have finite computing power too, so it will go
Speaker 1: extremely slow relative to the original programmer gods, and the
Speaker 1: embedded simulations will asymptotically approach some constant computational requirement. I
Speaker 1: thought that was really interesting, but he goes on. Another
Speaker 1: solution is to give your world some natural equalizer, like
Speaker 1: an ego. I'd argue the past three years, as humans
Speaker 1: have gotten way more computationally complex, the loss of biodiversity
Speaker 1: has made the earth as a whole way less computationally complex.
Speaker 1: Someday we'll have some computationally tricky doomsday device which will
Speaker 1: solve its own computational problem. Uh. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to just say some very nice things about our
Speaker 1: show and and all that, and we appreciate the flattery,
Speaker 1: but really especially appreciate these ideas. I think I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced by them that we do live in a computer simulation,
Speaker 1: but I think that is a reasonable objection to my
Speaker 1: time of computation and information density objection. I have another
Speaker 1: one too. They just came to mind hearing just just
Speaker 1: just a spring off of this fantastic response, is that
Speaker 1: you know, we we can. We can easily think of
Speaker 1: like a whole world simulation and all the inherent problems there,
Speaker 1: a multi user situation and all the problems there. But
Speaker 1: how about this. The next time you're in a small windowless,
Speaker 1: mirror less bathroom, I think, what if this is the
Speaker 1: simulation and it began basically the moment I walked in here. Yes,
Speaker 1: like this is when the simulation kicked on. Everything else
Speaker 1: is just you know, false memory essentially, and the simul
Speaker 1: nation is going to end when I flush the toilet.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like if you're filming a TV
Speaker 1: series and you don't have a lot of money for
Speaker 1: an episode to do what a bottle episode? Right? So
Speaker 1: that's maybe that's how the our far future selves are
Speaker 1: dealing with this, Like we can't actually recreate the twenty
Speaker 1: one century, but let's just do a bathroom scene because
Speaker 1: bathrooms from the twenty one century were pretty cool, and
Speaker 1: that will immerse the single user in that world, and
Speaker 1: giving the entire world full of people false memories actually
Speaker 1: would help, because this goes right along with what y'all
Speaker 1: were saying about the failures of memory related to the
Speaker 1: Mandela effect. Memory is very low resolution compared to reality.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly low resolution. It's you know, so you It
Speaker 1: would not be all that computationally difficult to supply somebody
Speaker 1: with the vague kind of memories people actually have, but
Speaker 1: they have the illusion that their memories are vivid. This
Speaker 1: may explain why sometimes when I go into the bathroom,
Speaker 1: I imagine what life would be like if I was
Speaker 1: stuck in there forever, Like like how would I sleep
Speaker 1: on the floor? Would I drink water from the sink?
Speaker 1: Would I bathe? In the toilet, et cetera. I would say,
Speaker 1: next time you are in a work meeting that seems
Speaker 1: to go on forever, you should contemplate the possibility that
Speaker 1: the universe actually began at the beginning of this meeting,
Speaker 1: and the rest of your life up until this point
Speaker 1: is just an inserted false memory at low resolution to
Speaker 1: justify you listening to this pitch about how you're going
Speaker 1: to optimize your new whatever your seo. Dude. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then then you get to snap back into it and
Speaker 1: try and remember what the person was telling you. Sounds good.
Speaker 1: All right? We got another one related to uh, I
Speaker 1: think Carney's hand in one do you Oh hey, oh
Speaker 1: this is sharp okay. Oh, this is one about our
Speaker 1: samurai swords episode. Oh no, wonder okay. So this is
Speaker 1: from Steve and he says, enjoyed your program on Japanese
Speaker 1: katana swords. Thanks. I think the development that you skipped
Speaker 1: over was the reintroduction of swords as standard equipment for
Speaker 1: officers and sergeants during the period just before World War Two.
Speaker 1: Most of these individuals were not samurai class and did
Speaker 1: not own swords, so mass produced pieces were issued to them.
Speaker 1: These so called showato were distinguished by minuki of three
Speaker 1: imperial chrysanthemums rather than the traditional heraldic manuki of older swords.
Speaker 1: Most were destroyed during the occupation, but many survive. So
Speaker 1: what Steve's referring to here is a study that we
Speaker 1: looked at during our Samurai Swords episode that took a
Speaker 1: sword that was recovered from presumably some battle during World
Speaker 1: War Two, so this was the nineteen forties. The U.
Speaker 1: S Army commissioned a metallurgical composition composition study of the
Speaker 1: sword to determine how it was smith and they found
Speaker 1: that the sword that they had recovered was actually significantly
Speaker 1: lower in quality than they had been led to believe
Speaker 1: from the history of sword smith things specifically for katanas,
Speaker 1: like if I remember correctly, like the carbon composition was
Speaker 1: off by percentages, the angle of the sword wasn't right way,
Speaker 1: things like that. So it seems like Steve is telling
Speaker 1: us here why that's the case. They had this entire
Speaker 1: other line of swords that were made specifically for the
Speaker 1: Big War. That's interesting. Yeah, that did not come up
Speaker 1: in in our episode, but that adds a little more
Speaker 1: background to what they were observing here. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: like let's let's try to apply this to a fictional example. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we talked about kill Bill in the Samura Swords
Speaker 1: episode when uh the Bride is fighting the Crazy eighty
Speaker 1: eight with her like super awesome samurai sword that is
Speaker 1: is smithed in the very traditional way, so it's both
Speaker 1: sharp and flexible and has a has a solid core. Right,
Speaker 1: she's able to cut in half. Other warriors swords from
Speaker 1: the Crazy eight eighty eight attack her. So maybe they've
Speaker 1: got these mass manufactured showato swords, but she's got the
Speaker 1: real deal. She's got hottri Hanzo steel. Crazy eight eight
Speaker 1: should have really paid more attention to their true gear,
Speaker 1: but it's probably exactly. Yeah, each sword is priceless, so
Speaker 1: that's priceless times eight. Yeah. And I guess the argument
Speaker 1: too is it's like, if you're whaling on someone with
Speaker 1: the A eight Samurai swords, they don't they really don't
Speaker 1: even need to be sharp. They can you don't even
Speaker 1: take to take them out of the sheath. Yep. But
Speaker 1: thank you, Steve, I really appreciate that that clarifies that
Speaker 1: way we assumed, I think in that episode that there
Speaker 1: was something along those lines that probably like late uh,
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and early twenty century katanas were not of
Speaker 1: the same Make all right, We're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we will get some
Speaker 1: more listener mail from Carney and share it with the
Speaker 1: rest of you. All Right, we're back. We have a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener mail here dealing with the episode
Speaker 1: that Joe and I recorded, The buddhais a Mountain, which
Speaker 1: was a pretty pretty fun episode about the Lashawn Buddha,
Speaker 1: the giant Buddha uh at one of fines in China,
Speaker 1: this enormous humanoid structure that has been carved into the
Speaker 1: mountain itself, lording over the river below, kind of like
Speaker 1: Stone Mountain here in Georgia. Well we we do. I
Speaker 1: think Stone Mountain came up in that. Actually, that was
Speaker 1: a very interest less racist Well that this was a
Speaker 1: very interesting episode because it did come out ahead of
Speaker 1: a lot of the a lot of the political discussions
Speaker 1: have been going on regarding monuments and statues here in
Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, I guess I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about that really, but maybe we did get a little
Speaker 1: listener mail about that. But yeah, we talked in the
Speaker 1: episode about the idea of statuary being a type of
Speaker 1: depiction that inherently carries like a like a moral valence
Speaker 1: to it. It's like if you were to have a
Speaker 1: photograph of somebody or have well maybe not a photograph,
Speaker 1: I don't know, But if you like write a book
Speaker 1: about somebody, it's not assumed that you think that person
Speaker 1: was a good person. You might write a book about
Speaker 1: a serial killer or a horrible dictator. But if you
Speaker 1: put up a statue of a person, it is just
Speaker 1: part of our cultural uh language, that that is a
Speaker 1: thing of honor. You never put up a statue of
Speaker 1: somebody you don't like. Yeah, you know, we I think
Speaker 1: we we barely if it all discussed Confederate monuments in
Speaker 1: that episode, because again it was before it really picked
Speaker 1: up as a topic here. But I do encourage anyone
Speaker 1: out there who's interested in that topic to listen to
Speaker 1: that episode because it's kind of an interesting way to
Speaker 1: think about it about a controversial topic free of the actual, um,
Speaker 1: you know, current events. But the bit of listener, may
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read here doesn't concern anything happening here in America.
Speaker 1: It concerns something happening in China and concerns some of
Speaker 1: the local accounts of the Leshan Buddha. We heard from
Speaker 1: a listener by the name of Danny. He's an American
Speaker 1: with a with a company in Shandu, and they he
Speaker 1: has his staff listen to our podcast to improve their English.
Speaker 1: Oh no, sorry, sorry staff, No no, he says. He says,
Speaker 1: they get a lot of a lot of great stuff
Speaker 1: out of it, out of it and they enjoy They
Speaker 1: really enjoyed the episode. Uh, since it related to something
Speaker 1: local to uh. So he said that he had they
Speaker 1: had no corrections aside from the fact that, uh, the
Speaker 1: mountain itself it is you may Shawn Shawn mining mountains,
Speaker 1: so you you may mountain if you will. But then
Speaker 1: he he went on to share some various tidbits from
Speaker 1: a local inhabitants about basically bits of folklore related to
Speaker 1: the Lashan Buddha. Uh. And he he adds that we
Speaker 1: don't actually believe any of these points, but a lot
Speaker 1: of sexilantees do, and they are relatively well known things
Speaker 1: that are said of the Buddha. Um. He said. They
Speaker 1: also give a little insight into how even modern day
Speaker 1: Chinese mythology bends up the line between the animate and
Speaker 1: the inanimate. So I'm just gonna run through these. I
Speaker 1: found these tremendously fascinating. Apparently the Buddhist facial expression changes
Speaker 1: in reaction to tragic events in China. First, he points
Speaker 1: to the lashaan Giant Buddha closed tears event. That's that's
Speaker 1: a translation from Chinese, where apparently the Buddha closed his
Speaker 1: eyes and shed tears for all the lost souls as
Speaker 1: a result of the nineteen fifty nine through sixty one famine,
Speaker 1: which killed between fifteen and thirty million people. Uh. He
Speaker 1: says the Buddha was seen to look very angry in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, in the year when mal Zadong died.
Speaker 1: In the same year, the same year that Tangshan earthquake
Speaker 1: killed thousands of people, says, the Buddha also apparently expresses
Speaker 1: joy or pride for China as well. His head started
Speaker 1: to glow with a pulsating light in the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: when China joined the w t O and made the
Speaker 1: bid to host the two thousand eight to Beijing Olympic Games.
Speaker 1: Another one that they found this kind of a random
Speaker 1: thing that they found on the internet in Chinese. He
Speaker 1: points to an event that supposedly happened on May seventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand two, in the morning when there's suddenly there
Speaker 1: were dark clouds around the Buddha and suddenly there appeared
Speaker 1: at a halo like phenomenon. The rising sun flashed around
Speaker 1: the statue with a diameter of about three creating a
Speaker 1: colorful halo of light. He says. In two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: after the earthquake, the Buddha was seen crying. Uh. It
Speaker 1: says this one a lot of people believe, and there
Speaker 1: are even pictures online. So this is kind of like
Speaker 1: when we get um like like stigmata effects on like
Speaker 1: statues or something like that. Or I'm thinking also of like, um,
Speaker 1: have you guys ever heard of like manifestations of Jesus
Speaker 1: and like everyday objects. When I was living in a
Speaker 1: Massachusetts there was one of these that happened in I
Speaker 1: think it was Malden, Massachusetts, and uh, it was in
Speaker 1: a Catholic hospital window. There was like a manifestation that
Speaker 1: looked like it was Jesus, but it was like some
Speaker 1: kind of smoke damage or something to the window. Well,
Speaker 1: I said, I would definitely say that with Lashawn Buddha.
Speaker 1: Given the irrigation system that's worked out around it. I
Speaker 1: mean it would make sense that it would appear to
Speaker 1: weep certain sometimes. Uh. He also points out he says, quote,
Speaker 1: it's often said that there is also a treasure built
Speaker 1: into the statue behind his heart, ears and eyes. No
Speaker 1: one can tell me what the treasure is supposed to be,
Speaker 1: but I would not be all too surprised if something
Speaker 1: was there because of the mystical powers that Chinese myth
Speaker 1: gives to many minerals, such as Jade's ability to transcend
Speaker 1: the realm of the living sometimes something I think you
Speaker 1: guys have covered before in a previous episode. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about that in the Jade Burial Suit episode. We
Speaker 1: sure did. So. I love these tidbits. They really they
Speaker 1: really had to add a little more depth than a little,
Speaker 1: you know, local intel to our episode. And I had
Speaker 1: to read this one too. After he shared the following,
Speaker 1: Please feel free to read any of this on the podcast,
Speaker 1: in whole or in part, including my name. If you do,
Speaker 1: I will take the whole company out for a day
Speaker 1: to go visit the Buddha and we will bring you
Speaker 1: back some pictures. Awesome. Yeah, do it so? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: want to see some pictures. Yeah, it's always great, because
Speaker 1: you know, we can sit here in in Atlanta, Georgia
Speaker 1: and do research until our eyes bleed and pull up
Speaker 1: a bunch of facts and then present them to you
Speaker 1: the audience. But if you're actually physically close to some
Speaker 1: of these things, like academ Gora doc, we received a
Speaker 1: bunch of mail from people who who have visited there before.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's especially helpful for us to hear
Speaker 1: these firsthand accounts. All right, what do you have next
Speaker 1: for us there, Karney? So we got one coming in
Speaker 1: from Allison about science communication. This is going back to
Speaker 1: our episode about science communication from after Robert went to
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival in New York. Oh, yes, science
Speaker 1: communication breakdown. Wait is that a led Zeppelin reference? I
Speaker 1: think it may have been an accidental led Zeppelin reference.
Speaker 1: Communication breakdown, but that was what the episode was about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, breakdowns in the communication of science and scientific
Speaker 1: news scientific topics to yeah public, especially as it relates
Speaker 1: to climate change. Uh, let's see what else vaccines? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it was related into the
Speaker 1: idea that people are not necessarily convinced by facts and evidence,
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of psychology about what actually causes
Speaker 1: people to make their minds up about controversial issues, and
Speaker 1: that it's there's a lot of social aspects and cultural
Speaker 1: identity wrapped up, and how we take sides on issues
Speaker 1: that there appears to be some controversy about, and about
Speaker 1: how how we can deal with that in science communication.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Allison has a fantastic question and something we
Speaker 1: actually deal with a good bit, i'd say, She says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed your show for a long time, but only
Speaker 1: recently had a good excuse to send an email. You
Speaker 1: recently did an episode on the science communication breakdown, and
Speaker 1: I was wondering if in your research you came across
Speaker 1: any good idea or theories about how science communicators should
Speaker 1: address the way that scientific facts change as our understanding evolves.
Speaker 1: For example, for a very long time, nutritional scientists have
Speaker 1: pushed the idea that carbohydrates are a good energy source
Speaker 1: for humans, while fat was associated with a bunch of
Speaker 1: different health problems. Recently, though, our understanding of nutritional science
Speaker 1: has begun to change. Perhaps fat won't kill you, and
Speaker 1: perhaps carbs are more detrimental to health than anybody wanted
Speaker 1: to admit. I've seen a lot of people express a
Speaker 1: sense of betrayal over this reversal of sentiments. How are
Speaker 1: you supposed to trust anything these scientists say? They wonder
Speaker 1: if a few decades down the line, they're going to
Speaker 1: do a one eight on their position? How are science
Speaker 1: communicators supposed to convince the public to walk back from
Speaker 1: positions they have long been considered solid theory? Also, she says,
Speaker 1: if you guys haven't done an episode on ketosis, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear your take on it. I've been living
Speaker 1: on fewer than twenty grams of carbs a day for
Speaker 1: two years, contrary to what the dietitians tell me, I've
Speaker 1: never felt better. Thanks so much for your educational entertainment, Allison.
Speaker 1: So what she's talking about here reminds me of this
Speaker 1: Lewis Black bit that you guys have probably heard before,
Speaker 1: and I've even referenced it on the show before, where
Speaker 1: he's like, So, when I was growing up, there were
Speaker 1: these studies and they said milk is good for you.
Speaker 1: You gotta drink milk. Drink milk. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden there are studies and they said milk is
Speaker 1: bad for you. Don't drink so much milk. You gotta
Speaker 1: take the fat out of the milk, right, And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it turns around again, milk is
Speaker 1: good for you. Right. So these science studies seem to
Speaker 1: contradict one another back and forth, and this is essentially
Speaker 1: what she's getting at. Yeah, so I actually have several
Speaker 1: thoughts about this, one of the one of them is
Speaker 1: that this is partially an artifact of problems in science
Speaker 1: communication more so than science itself, though there are problems
Speaker 1: with some aspects of the science. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times what will happen is there will be a new
Speaker 1: study that says, on lab rats, we found that if
Speaker 1: you give them this extremely high dosage of milk proteins
Speaker 1: over this many months, they have a sixty percent higher
Speaker 1: chance of having this effect than if you don't. And
Speaker 1: so then the people who are running like newspapers are
Speaker 1: doing the nightly news. I guess if this back in
Speaker 1: the nineties or the eighties or whatever, would say scientists
Speaker 1: have discovered that milk will give you cancer. It is
Speaker 1: bad for you. Uh, And so they take this highly nuanced,
Speaker 1: kind of subtle effect that's been demonstrated in one experiment
Speaker 1: and turn that into an incredibly simple pronounced statement about
Speaker 1: what is good for you or what is bad for you,
Speaker 1: not really noting that maybe the effect was subtle, that
Speaker 1: the experiment was done on a certain number of animals
Speaker 1: that weren't even humans, you know, stuff like this. Let
Speaker 1: me see if I can try to reverse engineer this too,
Speaker 1: from like a media literacy standpoint, because I think even
Speaker 1: for some members of our audience who might actually be
Speaker 1: scientists themselves, they don't uh necessarily know how that information
Speaker 1: comes to us science communicators in the media. Right. So
Speaker 1: for instance, we get these press releases and it will say, uh,
Speaker 1: what was her example, Well, she brings up a fat
Speaker 1: versus carbs and the health effects there, Right, So we'll
Speaker 1: get a press release and it will say that and
Speaker 1: will have a link where you can go and you
Speaker 1: can read the full twenty page report. But sometimes just
Speaker 1: behind the paywall, yeah exactly. And sometimes your organization doesn't
Speaker 1: supply you with you know, the access to the databases
Speaker 1: behind these paywalls. Sometimes you have to go to the
Speaker 1: researchers home, yes, or call them right, yeah, And not
Speaker 1: every journalist is actually going to do the work to
Speaker 1: go get primary resources, especially in this era of mass
Speaker 1: content creation, right, so usually what ends up happening is
Speaker 1: they just grab the information right out of the press release,
Speaker 1: rewrite it a little bit, and focus on that one
Speaker 1: thesis statement. Right. What doesn't happen is they don't look
Speaker 1: at the literature review inside the actual paper that sets
Speaker 1: up the study, within the context of all the other
Speaker 1: studies that are done on this topic. Right. Another problem
Speaker 1: is that within the world of journalism, especially on the Internet,
Speaker 1: but it was probably true on TV and stuff like
Speaker 1: that too, that there's very little incentive to accurately unicate
Speaker 1: the subtleties and the nuances of scientific results, put everything
Speaker 1: in context, communicate, you know, some caveats that that it
Speaker 1: might not be as clear cut as it first seemed
Speaker 1: from your headline, because what people want to click on
Speaker 1: is something that says, I have the new answer for you.
Speaker 1: Milk is going to kill you. You will never believe
Speaker 1: this fact about milk, you know. And here's the other
Speaker 1: thing too, is that so we have that we have
Speaker 1: the the journalist, we have the scientists, but then of
Speaker 1: course we also have a consumer in and I can't
Speaker 1: help but think about what we know all the all
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about with false NT memories, and misattribution,
Speaker 1: as well as just the the idea that once a
Speaker 1: particular narrative gets out there, take lose black pri instance. Now,
Speaker 1: I know it's a bit, so I don't I don't
Speaker 1: really mean to dissect a comedic bit too much. But
Speaker 1: in this example, like, did was he actually like reading
Speaker 1: a lot of literature about milk or is it just
Speaker 1: in the background of his mind he picks up on
Speaker 1: this narrative that milk is is good, and then it's ad.
Speaker 1: I think he's specifically talking about seeing headlines on either
Speaker 1: nightly cable news or in a newspaper. So on one level,
Speaker 1: it's it's to what degree a certain bit of research
Speaker 1: makes a splash and the headlines, and then to what
Speaker 1: extent it's picked up on and and and sticks with
Speaker 1: the individual. Again, the low resolution of your memory is
Speaker 1: contributing to this. I can't help but be reminded of
Speaker 1: the episode we did on Only Children and the psychology
Speaker 1: behind it, and the fact that you had one you know,
Speaker 1: decades and decades old though in like the late nineteenth century, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but basically over a century old, this horrible psychological methodology, Yeah,
Speaker 1: making the case that that only children were monsters. And
Speaker 1: plenty of studies have come along, just one after the other,
Speaker 1: disproving that and showing that only children are not monster,
Speaker 1: they're not lonely, they're not you know, craven or spoiled, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But we keep sticking to this previously established narrative just
Speaker 1: because it made such a media splash and nothing after
Speaker 1: that was able to achieve as much residence. And because
Speaker 1: it's easy to remember, You've got to think, like the
Speaker 1: access theory of memory, that things that are simple statements
Speaker 1: that are easy to remember are going to have much
Speaker 1: more purchase in your memory than things that are complicated
Speaker 1: and nuanced and hard to explain and have some conflicting results,
Speaker 1: and that you've got to put it in a lot
Speaker 1: of context. So yeah, that's one thing. Part of this
Speaker 1: is an artifact of how science journalism gets done. Part
Speaker 1: of it is an artifact of our low resolution memories.
Speaker 1: But there's another thing that has to do with the
Speaker 1: science itself, which is that some subjects are as it
Speaker 1: stands today, more unstable than others regarding the scientific consensus.
Speaker 1: And if you read scientific literature critically, you can usually
Speaker 1: start to get a sense of which subject areas are
Speaker 1: producing more solid, dependable results in which ones are still
Speaker 1: mired in some kind of legitimate controversy. Experimental design plays
Speaker 1: a big role in this. Nutrition is a classic example
Speaker 1: of an area that can be extremely difficult to properly control.
Speaker 1: Experiments like studies need to take place over a long
Speaker 1: period of time to see long term effects. They often
Speaker 1: rely on people to accurately report what they eat. You
Speaker 1: can kind of imagine what some problems with that might
Speaker 1: be um and add that to the fact that that
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of financial interest in the
Speaker 1: production of certain results in nutrition science. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff you might have heard in the history
Speaker 1: of science isn't necessarily being done by some independently funded
Speaker 1: university experiment, but it's done by some research group that's
Speaker 1: funded by the sugar industry, and what do you know,
Speaker 1: they find out that fats are bad for you and
Speaker 1: sugar is good. We actually have a one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things that's ever been done at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: was created by one of our video producers, Paul Decan,
Speaker 1: and it is a in depth look at the sugar
Speaker 1: industry's influence on academic papers about the nutritional effects of
Speaker 1: sugar over the last like fifty years, so, so there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things to take into consideration. Some
Speaker 1: subject areas are just they're just swampy, or than others
Speaker 1: they've got more problems. I mean, you'll notice that in
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, you know, very like material science areas,
Speaker 1: there's just not going to be a lot of controversy
Speaker 1: about whether this new alloy is actually as strong as
Speaker 1: they say it is um, but there might be if
Speaker 1: there's somebody who's got a financial interest in it and
Speaker 1: they're publishing the you know, in studies that they've funded. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it's an excellent question you ask Allison. It's
Speaker 1: something that we wrestle with all the time, and and
Speaker 1: the answer is difficult. There's no silver bullet on how
Speaker 1: to fix this. I think it has to do with
Speaker 1: helping people understand the complexities of science and understand the
Speaker 1: meta complexity of how other people come to believe in
Speaker 1: the ideas about scientific consensus and where they get their
Speaker 1: impressions about what scientists say. Yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: like this is a difficult problem to solve of but
Speaker 1: I think like two steps that could be taken to
Speaker 1: help it, which probably, let's be honest, won't happen in
Speaker 1: the near future. Are that media organizations need to be
Speaker 1: more thorough in their research and their depiction of these studies.
Speaker 1: But then also the consumers themselves need to have media
Speaker 1: literacy skills that they can rely on to understand these
Speaker 1: studies better, or to look at multiple sources and kind
Speaker 1: of triangulate what's actually going on here? All right, what
Speaker 1: it looks like Carney is coming at you, Christian with
Speaker 1: another piece of listener mail. What what's he got there
Speaker 1: for you? Well, this one is great. This is actually
Speaker 1: a letter from a listener named Lindsay telling us about
Speaker 1: her personal alien abduction experience based on our two alien
Speaker 1: abduction episodes. Lindsay says, when I was growing up, about
Speaker 1: ten years old, I had a clubhouse outside of my
Speaker 1: house and would camp out and sleep inside of it
Speaker 1: on some summer nights. It was sturdy and constructed by hand,
Speaker 1: lofted on wooden posts acted as stilts, about eight feet
Speaker 1: off the ground. One night, I climbed up the ladder
Speaker 1: with my sleeping bag, pulled up the ladder so nothing
Speaker 1: else could come up. I read some comic books and
Speaker 1: fell asleep. This is, by the way, like my ideal
Speaker 1: way to go to bed. Lindsay. The clubhouse had one
Speaker 1: side of double paned windows, one side that had a
Speaker 1: doorless doorway through which you could see my neighbor's yard,
Speaker 1: and the other two were solid wood walls. I slept
Speaker 1: facing out the doorway. I woke up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night one night and was frozen in fear
Speaker 1: because in my neighbor's yard I saw a saucer about
Speaker 1: the size of an average circular above ground pool, hovering
Speaker 1: over their yard, absolutely still about a hundred feet into
Speaker 1: the air. It was large and very cinematically stereotypical, a
Speaker 1: green glow metallic saucer, a beam coming down from the saucer,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. I couldn't see anything inside of
Speaker 1: it because it was oriented above me. I sat still,
Speaker 1: thinking that whatever was inside could possibly sense movement, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I was having trouble breathing. It was
Speaker 1: silent at first, and then I started to hear something
Speaker 1: that was difficult to describe. It was quiet, but in
Speaker 1: a way that felt loud and overwhelming. I could hear
Speaker 1: a ring in my ears, and I think it felt
Speaker 1: louder than it was because the world was quiet, but
Speaker 1: the inside of my head, wasn't. I remember being terrified,
Speaker 1: but not that I was going to be hurt, just
Speaker 1: that I didn't know what was going to happen. I
Speaker 1: believe I forced myself to close my eyes, thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe the saucer couldn't move while I was looking at it,
Speaker 1: and I either fell asleep or I woke up again
Speaker 1: and it was gone. I didn't tell anybody because the
Speaker 1: whole situation felt fishy to me, and while I believe
Speaker 1: in aliens, I don't believe we've had any contact with them,
Speaker 1: nor they with us. Years later, after keeping better track
Speaker 1: of my sleep habits and dreams, I learned about sleep
Speaker 1: paralysis and had experienced it a couple of other times
Speaker 1: throughout high school. When i'd wake up with it in
Speaker 1: my room, I could hear something that sounded like tribal
Speaker 1: percussion from the living room, though nobody you was in there,
Speaker 1: and I could see that the lights were not on.
Speaker 1: In these moments, it was the scariest that I couldn't move.
Speaker 1: It felt the same way an arm does when you
Speaker 1: wake up in the middle of the night with your
Speaker 1: arm behind you and you need to use your other
Speaker 1: arm to pick it up and put it back to
Speaker 1: get the blood flowing again. The difference is that none
Speaker 1: of your body parts are able to move the other
Speaker 1: ones back into place or shake them out. Though I
Speaker 1: never again had visual hallucinations from sleep paralysis, only auditory sensations,
Speaker 1: I am thoroughly convinced that what I experienced with the
Speaker 1: saucer in my neighbor's yard was indeed sleep paralysis. Being
Speaker 1: frozen in fear was probably physically being frozen and unable
Speaker 1: to move due to this. And it all went away
Speaker 1: when I went back to sleep and somehow broke the cycle.
Speaker 1: H Well, that's interesting, and that does line up with
Speaker 1: a lot of what we talked about, uh, because what
Speaker 1: Luke just think of the elements, they're not only the
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, but uh, the reading of the comic book
Speaker 1: before one goes to bed, potentially contributing to some of
Speaker 1: the like the narrative information you have on hand for
Speaker 1: the interpretation of of stimuli within that that murky period
Speaker 1: of waking and which certain hallucinations can occur, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what Lindsay experienced is what we
Speaker 1: described in those episodes as being sort of like the
Speaker 1: first stage of the alien abduction experience, right, you have
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis or some other kind of event that is
Speaker 1: difficult to explain, and then it sounds like lindsay didn't
Speaker 1: go on to the next phase, which was going to
Speaker 1: a therapist or a hypnotist and having false memories created
Speaker 1: that then somehow are extrapolated outward into something worse, right,
Speaker 1: like actually being taken aboard the ship, right, or just
Speaker 1: any kind of like repeated self analysis of the memory
Speaker 1: that props up the supernatural explanation. Yeah, but again, this
Speaker 1: is a great example of like, we read lots of
Speaker 1: studies that were about sleep paralysis connected to the idea
Speaker 1: of alien abduction, but to have a firsthand account like
Speaker 1: this is really nice. I think like the closest thing
Speaker 1: we had to that was we talked about that documentary
Speaker 1: That Nightmare, and how there are many people in that
Speaker 1: documentary who thought that their sleep paralysis events were alien abductions.
Speaker 1: You know, something I think might be interesting would be
Speaker 1: to sort of come up with standard narratives about how
Speaker 1: people get from having an experience like this to one
Speaker 1: of two end points. You know, the path diverges, it
Speaker 1: forks off, and you can end up in the place
Speaker 1: where you say I think I had a strange experience
Speaker 1: and I would explain it through sleep paralysis or I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened or something like that, and then
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you have it was absolutely real
Speaker 1: and people won't believe me, Like, how do you get
Speaker 1: what determines which path you follow? Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there are a number of different factors there, but
Speaker 1: I mean one of them is just like, what do
Speaker 1: you need in your life? Do you? Is there a
Speaker 1: part of you that needs an experience great than yourselves
Speaker 1: that no one else is going to be able to
Speaker 1: understand or only a select inviting community is going to
Speaker 1: understand it. So you know, it's a desire for religious experience,
Speaker 1: a desire to see God. This is why a number
Speaker 1: of abductees report that their experience, even though scary, is
Speaker 1: ultimately a positive experience for them because they come away
Speaker 1: from it feeling like, oh, I now know my place
Speaker 1: in the universe and that there's something above me that
Speaker 1: could be taking care of me. It almost makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if this is parallel to what we're talking about
Speaker 1: with the science communication episode, where something that should be
Speaker 1: a question of you making judgments based on like facts
Speaker 1: and reading evidence and stuff like that is really more
Speaker 1: determined about your social environment. Yeah, absolutely, And I mean
Speaker 1: I think both of these things I meant to say
Speaker 1: this when we were talking about science communication. They both
Speaker 1: come back to a fact that we hit over and
Speaker 1: over and over again on the show, which is just
Speaker 1: that like human beings as social animals, just are prone
Speaker 1: to making mistakes like this, you know, and how we
Speaker 1: interpret our events and and especially how we build culture
Speaker 1: around things that happened to us so that we can
Speaker 1: explain the world around us. Alright, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take one more quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: Carney will dish out the final trio of listener mail
Speaker 1: for us here today, Thank you, thank you. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back. There's another piece of listener mail brought to
Speaker 1: us by Carney, and this one is from listener Allison.
Speaker 1: Allison writes in and says Mara Hart might be one
Speaker 1: of the coolest people out there, although that may be
Speaker 1: a bit biased, as I am also a fellow marine biologist,
Speaker 1: a theologist to be exact. I love your podcast and
Speaker 1: listen every day while conducting my many hours of lab work.
Speaker 1: Among my favorite episodes are the ones where you had
Speaker 1: Mara Heart as a guest speaker, so I was beyond
Speaker 1: excited when I had the opportunity to meet Dr Hart
Speaker 1: this past week at the American Fisheries Society Symposium in
Speaker 1: the Bay, Florida, where she was one of the planary speakers.
Speaker 1: I was able to find her after her talk and
Speaker 1: have a quick conversation with her one on one, where
Speaker 1: I asked her for her for some advice and commented
Speaker 1: on how much I love your podcast. Just like you guys.
Speaker 1: Dr Hart is an amazing communicator of science, breaking down
Speaker 1: the barriers of the ivory tower that is often scientific
Speaker 1: research and laying it out in a way that is interesting, engaging,
Speaker 1: and most importantly fun. It was really inspiring to listen
Speaker 1: to her speak, especially as a female scientist in the
Speaker 1: early stages of my career as a researcher. Seeing how
Speaker 1: confident and engaging she was gave me some serious hashtag
Speaker 1: science goals. And I hope that I can quote unquote
Speaker 1: grow up to be just like her. Oh that's so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't wait for your next episode. What a wonderful email.
Speaker 1: She's got one up on us. We've never met Mara
Speaker 1: in real life. We've only just been able to talk
Speaker 1: to Morrow on the phone before. But you're right, she
Speaker 1: is delightful. She is one of my favorite guests to
Speaker 1: have on the show. What I love about having Mara
Speaker 1: on the show is that she's so down to earth
Speaker 1: about the science that she's involved in, but also how
Speaker 1: she this gets back to science communication, how she communicates
Speaker 1: it to the public, and how she she really expresses
Speaker 1: her wonder and awe over the things that she's studying.
Speaker 1: You know. It's yeah, always fun to have her. So
Speaker 1: let's see what episodes the Osadas boneworm episode, she was on,
Speaker 1: the Coral Reef episode, and then we just recently had
Speaker 1: her on again for our our Shark reproduction episode earlier
Speaker 1: this summer. Alright, well, our next email comes in in
Speaker 1: reference to the episode that Robert and I did about
Speaker 1: the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages. This
Speaker 1: was a fun one, wasn't it, Robert? Oh? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was This one was great because you had that wonderful
Speaker 1: convergence of history, mythology, science, linguistics. It all came together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so we talked about the idea of or one
Speaker 1: of the things we discussed in the episode was the
Speaker 1: idea of the confusion of languages. In the biblical story
Speaker 1: of the Tower Babble, it's the confusion of tongues. You know,
Speaker 1: God gets threatened by the Tower project and says, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make everybody speak different languages. But instead we
Speaker 1: talked about how languages actually diverge, and one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about was the the possible idea of
Speaker 1: language barriers around the world being a kind of cultural
Speaker 1: immunity barrier that helps prevent harmful memes from spreading as
Speaker 1: quickly as they could if everybody in the world spoke
Speaker 1: the same language, essentially like a like a firewall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like if you've got a language, you've got
Speaker 1: some horrible meme, Like I think the obvious example would
Speaker 1: be Nazism. But you know things like that that catch
Speaker 1: on really quickly with a bunch of people and are
Speaker 1: very destructive, they do seem to be very rooted to
Speaker 1: the language system in which they emerged very often, and
Speaker 1: so they don't spread quite as easily across language barriers.
Speaker 1: So this is why like I can't as cheeseburger isn't
Speaker 1: that big, and like I don't know Papua New Guinea
Speaker 1: that's exactly where we're going with this. Well, it's like
Speaker 1: I read the I didn't, but it's like I read
Speaker 1: the letter. So this is from Chris. Chris says, Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Chris, and I was really fascinated by
Speaker 1: your Tower of Babel episode from last month. I love
Speaker 1: thinking about the great global flow of ideas and how
Speaker 1: languages play into the movement of philosophies and cultural norms.
Speaker 1: There were two things from your episode that really stood
Speaker 1: out to me. The first was your brief acknowledgement that
Speaker 1: Japanese as a language has not drastically evolved over time.
Speaker 1: I studied Japanese for about six years and have traveled
Speaker 1: there twice for about a month each. I have a
Speaker 1: theory that Japanese has not evolved very drastically because they
Speaker 1: actually have two phonetic alphabets and a symbol based method
Speaker 1: of writing. Here a Ghana is their phonetic alphabet used
Speaker 1: for vocabulary that originated in Japan. Kata Kana is their
Speaker 1: phonetic alphabet used for all foreign words or expressions that
Speaker 1: were introduced to Japanese culture. Because foreign concepts are isolated
Speaker 1: to a separate system of expression, the original Hiragana is
Speaker 1: very rarely forced to adapt or evolve. I guess it
Speaker 1: would maybe be more accurate to say that one of
Speaker 1: the Japanese alphabets is constantly adapting and taking in new
Speaker 1: words and concepts, while the core original method of writing
Speaker 1: remains comparatively unchanged. I thought that was really interesting that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a fascist It's true too. I studied Japanese
Speaker 1: in college, but yeah, I never thought of it that
Speaker 1: way before. It's kind of a way to enforce cultural tradition. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's certainly true that loan concepts and loan words
Speaker 1: from other languages is one of the main ways that
Speaker 1: languages seem to evolve in the modern day, or you know,
Speaker 1: relatively modern day. I mean, you think about the way
Speaker 1: English came to it came to us as it is.
Speaker 1: You know, it's this crazy fusion of German and Old
Speaker 1: Norse and Spanish and all the Latin derived languages French, um,
Speaker 1: and the way those cultures came together. But so, yeah,
Speaker 1: really interesting. I love the how you brought up uh.
Speaker 1: I can I can has cheeseburger earlier, because I think
Speaker 1: humor is a key way to look at at how
Speaker 1: memes travel like not physical humor, because everybody can get
Speaker 1: into the idea of like slapsticks. Slapstick tends to like
Speaker 1: if you're if you're trying to check out comedy from
Speaker 1: other cultures and cultures with a foreign language. Uh, the
Speaker 1: slapstick is going to be the easiest to understand or
Speaker 1: the outright like silly, goofy clowney behavior. But when it
Speaker 1: has a linguistic quality to it and you're having to
Speaker 1: deal with the barrier of translation, I think that's where
Speaker 1: you a lot of the stuff ends up falling flat. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you'll be really interested to see where Chris
Speaker 1: goes next. So Chris says, the other thing I was
Speaker 1: really inspired by was the section towards the end in
Speaker 1: regards to snow Crash, and Chris says, I love that book.
Speaker 1: Um and the notion of a universal language actually being
Speaker 1: detrimental to global human consciousness as it would allow the
Speaker 1: spread of potentially evil belief systems. I firmly believe that
Speaker 1: we are already witnessing the growth of a new global language.
Speaker 1: The kernel of this growth is modern meme culture. Memes
Speaker 1: as a language or a combination of non technical English
Speaker 1: and images or symbols, images are universally understood and very simplistic.
Speaker 1: English is as close as you can get to a
Speaker 1: global language at this moment. When you combine the two,
Speaker 1: you end up with a type of messaging that can
Speaker 1: be understood and recreated on a global scale. Combined with
Speaker 1: the preferred method of distributing memes the Internet and social media,
Speaker 1: you have a way to very cheaply communicate ideas on
Speaker 1: a global scale with rapid fire quickness, and not have
Speaker 1: those ideas particularly hampered by translation. A scary part of
Speaker 1: this is that memes allowed for the global spread of
Speaker 1: anti democratic political ideals. It's a fact, a fact that
Speaker 1: we witnessed in Brexit, in the U s presidential election
Speaker 1: and the French election. We witness non English and non
Speaker 1: French speaking actors communicating anti democratic ideas to English and
Speaker 1: French speaking American, British, and French said. Since Russia has
Speaker 1: been known to weaponize thought viruses as a comic wo nerd,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to write that phrase and spread them through
Speaker 1: memes and massive disinformation dumps. What really irks me is
Speaker 1: that it's a one way flow because countries like Russia
Speaker 1: and China maintain such stringent censorship laws and control over
Speaker 1: the Internet. They can keep their population somewhat inoculated from
Speaker 1: pro democratic ideas that could potentially flow from us to
Speaker 1: them in meme form. Meanwhile, we hold freedom of speech
Speaker 1: as a core value of ours, so that we lack
Speaker 1: the kind of isolation inoculation that would prevent Russian anti
Speaker 1: democratic memes from infecting us. And that's pretty much what
Speaker 1: I've got. Sorry, it's so long. Thanks for reading. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear back. Keep up the great work on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Thanks again, Chris. I have so many things
Speaker 1: I want to talk about related to this. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is a really and this is something
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about a fair bit off off, Mike.
Speaker 1: Is the idea of the ways new forms of communication
Speaker 1: allow ideas to spread over the Internet so much more easily,
Speaker 1: but I've never put it in words like this. I
Speaker 1: think Chris has got a really interesting idea about the
Speaker 1: role memes play and you can absolutely see it for
Speaker 1: yourself if you watch say, disinformation bots operating on Twitter.
Speaker 1: They love memes, right, Yeah, So to his point about
Speaker 1: this being very comic, Bookie, there is a classic issue
Speaker 1: of of a book called Global frequency. The uh warren
Speaker 1: Ellis who I end up referencing on the show all
Speaker 1: the time, wrote and it was drawn by the late
Speaker 1: Steve Dylan, and the premise was that a signal was
Speaker 1: intercepted by set and translated and then subsequently broadcast as
Speaker 1: a mimetic information to the entire world. Because it was
Speaker 1: in meme format, it starts infecting people. Uh, it's designed
Speaker 1: it's to infect people essentially, so that like memes are
Speaker 1: the best carrier for this virus, right, So that is
Speaker 1: a really interesting concept on a sci fi level. But
Speaker 1: then also I think it's interesting to step back and
Speaker 1: remember like the difference between the term meme that we
Speaker 1: used to describe JPEG's with the fun impact on them
Speaker 1: on the Internet versus what like people like Richard Dawkins
Speaker 1: and Susan Blackmore had in mind when we first came
Speaker 1: up with the terminology. So maybe we should do a
Speaker 1: memetics episode. I mean, we've definitely touched on the medics
Speaker 1: and lots of episodes in the past, but maybe we
Speaker 1: could devote something to the core idea. I mean, the
Speaker 1: basic concept scept of a meme originally is just the
Speaker 1: idea of a self reproducing bit of cultural information. So
Speaker 1: it could be a song, it could be a political belief,
Speaker 1: it could be anything that tends to make copies of
Speaker 1: itself in the minds of people who share some kind
Speaker 1: of language or cult cultural Well, I guess between anybody
Speaker 1: really um in the same way that genes make copies
Speaker 1: of themselves in the gene pool, right. Yeah, and then again,
Speaker 1: it's funny there's a theme for this listener meal that
Speaker 1: seems to be coming around. Or maybe it's just I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with this topic again, it seems to me media
Speaker 1: literacy is super important here, right, and that like what
Speaker 1: you see if you're if you see some of these
Speaker 1: memes that are designed specifically as a persuasive tools right there,
Speaker 1: like rhetorical weapons almost that go out there, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you don't stop and try to judge them based
Speaker 1: on their merit, how they were created, who they were
Speaker 1: designed for, etcetera, then you're more likely to be susceptible
Speaker 1: to them and subsequently fooled by them, which brings us
Speaker 1: to the emoji movie right exactly hit of the summer.
Speaker 1: You know, when we talk about issues like this, uh
Speaker 1: that the you know, they involve global politics, interaction between
Speaker 1: governments around the world. One thing that I helped that
Speaker 1: I think helps in how we we use language carefully
Speaker 1: in describing problems like this is to correctly identify the culprits.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about something like this, I think
Speaker 1: it is undeniably true. There have been, you know, enough
Speaker 1: report there's really no question that the Russian government does
Speaker 1: operate tons of disinformation campaigns on the Internet and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But I like to think of those as
Speaker 1: Crimlin disinformation product products, not Russian disinformation products, such that
Speaker 1: you don't identify them with the Russian people's being responsible
Speaker 1: for the same thing is accusing us of some similar
Speaker 1: kind of disinformation mation campaign or hacking campaign that our
Speaker 1: government might be up to behind the scenes. Right, yeah, exactly. Alright,
Speaker 1: it looks like we have one more bit of listener mail.
Speaker 1: When last scrap here from Carney looks like it's for
Speaker 1: you to read here, Christian. Yeah, this last one comes
Speaker 1: to us from Duncan. And I kind of struggled with
Speaker 1: whether or not I for we got it about a
Speaker 1: week and a half ago, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to respond to this. And so the
Speaker 1: fact that we were doing a listener mail episode seems
Speaker 1: like a great place for us to address it because
Speaker 1: it's a complicated topic. He touches on two episodes that
Speaker 1: we've covered, the first being Wicked Problems episode that Robert
Speaker 1: and I did about a year ago maybe, and then
Speaker 1: Cleo Dynamics, which we covered in the last two weeks now.
Speaker 1: Duncan says, Hi, guys, in two separate podcasts, you have
Speaker 1: referred to poverty and social inequality as wicked problems, and
Speaker 1: I feel that this is not only inaccurate, but also dangerous.
Speaker 1: It is hard to act from a place of pessimism
Speaker 1: and feeling that these problems are too complicated, and that
Speaker 1: makes most people throw up their hands and go what
Speaker 1: is the point in trying definitions? One of the features
Speaker 1: of wicked problems is the difficulty of defining them. Poverty
Speaker 1: has a fairly clear, those scalar definition, although different people
Speaker 1: will draw the line at different points on the scale,
Speaker 1: the measurable features of poverty are fairly clearly defined. Similarly,
Speaker 1: defining the success of a solution is simply a measure
Speaker 1: of whether people move up the scale in a meaningful way. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there are some complexities in ways to subdivide the concepts,
Speaker 1: but in general definition is not a problem solutions. Here again,
Speaker 1: a primary feature of wicked problems falls down. There are
Speaker 1: solutions to the majority of poverty situations, not a magic
Speaker 1: bullet for all of them, but a portfolio of policy
Speaker 1: measures that can have drastic effects if used together. In
Speaker 1: the repeating history episode, this is the Cleo dynamics one.
Speaker 1: You quoted Cleo dynamics historians who said that reducing inequality
Speaker 1: is critical. These historians would, I am sure, be able
Speaker 1: to provide a series of policies that would achieve this
Speaker 1: based on fairly reliable historical data. Most economists that favor
Speaker 1: reducing inequality should be able to if asked. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: most of these solutions do not have major cyclical or
Speaker 1: intermeshed knock on effects, which make them impossible to implement.
Speaker 1: In most cases, well thought out equality policy improves a
Speaker 1: lot of nearby issues like crime and drug addiction, but
Speaker 1: rarely do they result in any major detrimental eye effects.
Speaker 1: So uh, he says. Finally, in fact, poverty and inequality
Speaker 1: are among the most well behaved, predictable social problems we have.
Speaker 1: He gives a number of examples here for US that
Speaker 1: are their weblinks, So I'm not going to read you
Speaker 1: U r L s over our listener mail episode. Then
Speaker 1: he he ends by saying, I am not an expert,
Speaker 1: but I am sure there are hundreds of clever ideas
Speaker 1: for improving social equality among those that are. The reason
Speaker 1: we are not working to solve poverty is a lack
Speaker 1: of political will to do so, not because the problem
Speaker 1: is inherently difficult to solve. In my opinion, the reason
Speaker 1: there is a lack of political will is because inequality
Speaker 1: is a driving force of our current financial and political
Speaker 1: systems and the mechanism by which those who have power
Speaker 1: hold onto it. Why would the ruling class want to
Speaker 1: change it? Please give people hope. Regards Duncan, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think he makes some good points here. Um I
Speaker 1: do want to agree that first of all, that that
Speaker 1: I think pessimism uh is an area of inactivity, and
Speaker 1: it is difficult to act from a place of pessimism.
Speaker 1: We have to act as optimists uh and uh on.
Speaker 1: I would also like to return to the topic at
Speaker 1: some point in the future and and do an episode
Speaker 1: on the idea of a post scarcity world, like what
Speaker 1: what are what are some of the possible road maps
Speaker 1: to a post scarcity world, What would it look like?
Speaker 1: What are the you know, what are the ideals that
Speaker 1: are wrapped up there? And how long have we've been
Speaker 1: we've been uh dreaming of it and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get there. Um. In terms of Wicked Problems,
Speaker 1: I know that when we did that episode, and it's
Speaker 1: been a little while, we weren't so much trying to
Speaker 1: get people to focus on objectives like this, but it
Speaker 1: was more like, Okay, when someone comes at you, particularly
Speaker 1: the politician comes to you, and they have a solution
Speaker 1: to a complex problem in society, Uh, question what they
Speaker 1: are saying. Question the validity of this so called solution
Speaker 1: comes down to critical thinking. Again. Yeah, I actually pulled
Speaker 1: some of our notes from that Wicked Problems episode so
Speaker 1: that I could reference them back. And I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting actually because when you turn back and you
Speaker 1: look at the guys who phrased this riddle and Weber,
Speaker 1: they really dove into this in the nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: paper Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. They specifically
Speaker 1: used poverty as an example. Uh, and they said, uh, poverty,
Speaker 1: it's like tugging a loose string on a garment. What
Speaker 1: causes poverty? What is it? If it's merely low income,
Speaker 1: then that alone explodes out into concerns of both national
Speaker 1: and regional issues. But what about the economic aspects, the
Speaker 1: health and psychological aspects, and the cultural issues. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in regards to what Duncan was just saying to us, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy. Like if you look at it
Speaker 1: on a scalar level, especially like an economic one, you
Speaker 1: can say, oh, yeah, this is a very easily solvable problem.
Speaker 1: But Duncan himself at the end talks about how the
Speaker 1: real difficulty that makes it inherently difficult to solve is
Speaker 1: political will inequality and how that leads to our political
Speaker 1: systems and our financial systems, right, and ultimately the the
Speaker 1: ideas that those who have the power to change it
Speaker 1: aren't willing to do so. Right, That is the wicked
Speaker 1: problem nature of poverty in my mind. I mean, one
Speaker 1: obvious response that occurs to me is that saying a
Speaker 1: problem is difficult to eradicate with a simple solution is
Speaker 1: very different than saying a problem cannot be improved upon. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think wicked problems are more how do how do
Speaker 1: we put this, Like, are something that you should be
Speaker 1: on the lookout for in terms of the rhetoric that
Speaker 1: is being pushed your way, right, in terms of how
Speaker 1: easy and or difficult something is to solve, for instance,
Speaker 1: right now, and I think this debate is only become
Speaker 1: even stronger since we recorded that wicked episode, Wicked problems episode.
Speaker 1: But healthcare, how many people in the last year, how
Speaker 1: many politicians in the last year said, oh, healthcare so
Speaker 1: easy to solve, right, Uh, We've got a perfect plan,
Speaker 1: This is so easy to solve. Then you see in
Speaker 1: action how difficult it actually is. Right, Like, if someone
Speaker 1: makes the argument, this would be easy to solve, but politics,
Speaker 1: you're missing the point, Like politics and the political system.
Speaker 1: That's part of addressing the problem, That the problem is
Speaker 1: wrapped around there, that's where the thread is tangled. Like
Speaker 1: it would be so easy to lose weight if not
Speaker 1: for my willpower. Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah. Now I want
Speaker 1: to go back to the notes here for just one
Speaker 1: last bit here on wicked problems. Wicked problems can't be solved,
Speaker 1: they can only be mitigated, right Uh. And one proposal
Speaker 1: for this is strategic design using empathy and favoring abductive
Speaker 1: reasoning and rapid prototyping. So essentially the idea here for
Speaker 1: abductive reasoning is that the premise doesn't guarantee a solution.
Speaker 1: Rather that is uh, that's deductive or logic reasoning. So
Speaker 1: this is essentially inferring the best, most simple solution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: abductive the search for the best explanation. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: Duncan your letter because it really did make me think
Speaker 1: for a good long week about like how do we
Speaker 1: respond to this? But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I do think that poverty can be defined as a
Speaker 1: wicked problem. I don't disagree with you though, that we
Speaker 1: need to give people hope and we do need to
Speaker 1: think from an optimistic place, and I don't see defining
Speaker 1: things as a wicked problem is necessarily pessimistic. No, I
Speaker 1: mean another side of that coin is you don't want
Speaker 1: to discourage people, but you also want to help give
Speaker 1: people reasonable expectations. Um Like, if you promise somebody the
Speaker 1: moon and then you can't quite deliver it, they're going
Speaker 1: to get disillusioned with whatever mechanism or system tried to
Speaker 1: deliver them the moon and failed. Instead, if you. If
Speaker 1: you promise people reasonably attainable goals and you do attain those,
Speaker 1: that actually has a positive knock on effect that gives
Speaker 1: people confidence in the the ability of or system of
Speaker 1: problem solving to succeed again in the future. Anyways, if
Speaker 1: you have more information that you want to relate to us,
Speaker 1: either about Wicked Problems, Cleo dynamics, poverty, or any of
Speaker 1: the other topics that we talked about here today, you
Speaker 1: can send them to Carney the Robot. How do they
Speaker 1: get in touch with Carney the Robot? Oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different ways to go about that.
Speaker 1: You can head on over to our various social media accounts.
Speaker 1: So we're on Facebook. That's where you'll find the Discussion
Speaker 1: Module group if you want to join that and interact
Speaker 1: with other listeners as well as as us. UH. You
Speaker 1: can also find us on Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, The mothership
Speaker 1: is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: where you'll find everything you need to know. That's where
Speaker 1: all the podcast episodes are, as well as links out
Speaker 1: to those other accounts, And if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly, as always, you can email
Speaker 1: us at Blow the mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it How stuff works dot Com