Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. This is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're bringing you some of the messages that you've
Speaker 1: sent us over the past couple of weeks. Uh, Rob,
Speaker 1: if you're ready, do you want to jump right in
Speaker 1: reading this message from Ian about our Punish the Machine episodes?
Speaker 1: All right, Ian Rights, Dear Robin, Joe, I'm still way behind,
Speaker 1: still working to catch up. I went for a weeklong vacation,
Speaker 1: which was wonderful, but one side effect was that I
Speaker 1: lost some of the ground I had been making up.
Speaker 1: Say sorry, I say LEVI say LEVI? What do is say?
Speaker 1: LEVI mean? I think that's life. That's life, Okay, um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that is life. It's hard to keep up
Speaker 1: with all these podcasts. I can't keep up with all
Speaker 1: these podcasts. We can't keep up with all these polks.
Speaker 1: It's listening to us really should be a full time job.
Speaker 1: You're not taking it seriously. If you're not doing eight
Speaker 1: hours a day anyway, and continues in your Punish the
Speaker 1: Machine episode, you spend a decent amount of time discussing
Speaker 1: who would be held responsible if an intelligent machine, such
Speaker 1: as a self driving car, injured someone, you didn't mention
Speaker 1: what to me as an attorney seems like the obvious
Speaker 1: avenue no pun intended product liability law. This is obviously
Speaker 1: a gross over simplification of a complicated area of law,
Speaker 1: but the basic idea is if a product is defective
Speaker 1: or malfunctions in a way that harms someone, the manufacturer
Speaker 1: is responsible. A problem caused by the decision making of
Speaker 1: a smart device just seems to me like another form
Speaker 1: of malfunction or defect. Rather than trying to develop novel
Speaker 1: but legal mechanisms to modify the behavior of the machines themselves,
Speaker 1: you simply apply the coercive pressure, because all law is
Speaker 1: fundamentally coercive in some way to the manufacturer, usually a
Speaker 1: corporate entity, in order to motivate them to try to
Speaker 1: avoid problems and to try to correct them when they
Speaker 1: do arise. In fact, there is at least one real
Speaker 1: world example that is strikingly similar to the self driving
Speaker 1: car situation, the recent crashes of the Boeing seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven Max Airliner. Those crashes were caused by the autopilot
Speaker 1: which is a smart system, mistakenly concluding the plane was
Speaker 1: nearing a stall condition when the air speed drops too
Speaker 1: low for the wings to maintain lift, and attempting to
Speaker 1: force the nose of the plane down to correct the
Speaker 1: perceived problem. In this situation, Boeing has been held responsible
Speaker 1: for the malfunctions and the ensuing deaths. Imposing monetary penalties
Speaker 1: and possible criminal prosecution to Boeing rather than the plane
Speaker 1: allows the law to focus its efforts on the entity it,
Speaker 1: at least in theory, has the ability to influence. This
Speaker 1: also sidesteps the problem you discussed in trying to determine
Speaker 1: which specific person is responsible. Even if there is no
Speaker 1: identifiable individual, the business entity can be held accountable. How
Speaker 1: effective modern law is that. Holding corporations accountable is a
Speaker 1: different discussion. Individuals are only sponsible for their parts of
Speaker 1: the process, but the company is responsible for the whole.
Speaker 1: Thank you again for your wonderful discussions. I hope one
Speaker 1: day to catch up. I yes, we too, We too
Speaker 1: hope one day to catch up. Yeah. Well, thanks for
Speaker 1: your input, I and well so Ian. Obviously, I agree
Speaker 1: with a lot of what you say there, except the
Speaker 1: well I agree in the sense that. Um, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what you say seems like probably in
Speaker 1: many cases, what the law should be. But but I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the complications that are raised by
Speaker 1: the main paper that we talked about in that episode,
Speaker 1: the Remedies for Robots paper, is about what kinds of avenues,
Speaker 1: of sort of appeals to the court systems that corporations
Speaker 1: who make these machines will be able to use in
Speaker 1: order to evade responsibility. Uh. And they might sound plausible
Speaker 1: to some people. They might say that, Um, with a
Speaker 1: certain level of complexity and certain kinds of machines, it
Speaker 1: actually becomes increasingly difficult to identify whether what happened is
Speaker 1: a result of manufacturer defect, you know, a problem with
Speaker 1: the machine itself as it left the factory versus how
Speaker 1: it was being used by the user, and and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And then of course as you as
Speaker 1: you raise there are some difficulties with getting actual, you know,
Speaker 1: the the effect that you want of the law by
Speaker 1: trying to enforce penalties on corporations rather than on individuals.
Speaker 1: Because I remember one of the things we talked about
Speaker 1: in the episode is like, well, does a you know
Speaker 1: where they're going to be situations where a corporation says,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna make a lot of money off this.
Speaker 1: If at some point we have to pay some damages
Speaker 1: on it, that's just the cost of doing business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I believe we also discussed how that that can
Speaker 1: potentially be the AIS approach as well, that can be
Speaker 1: the machines approach. Well like that, well, that's the operating
Speaker 1: cost of doing what I'm doing. I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to pay fines on, you know, whatever it is I'm
Speaker 1: doing that is out of line. Right, And that also
Speaker 1: comes into when you're trying to program a robot not
Speaker 1: to do something that is considered in some way prohibited,
Speaker 1: something that is bad. Uh. There are these differences in
Speaker 1: the philosophy of how you encode prohibitions, right. Uh, this
Speaker 1: was a big theme we talked about in these episodes.
Speaker 1: Do you encode the prohibitions as inviolable rules or do
Speaker 1: you encode them as like, uh, sort of disincentives with
Speaker 1: a certain numerical value that's hard to overcome. And there
Speaker 1: there are good arguments on both sides of that. So anyway, Ian,
Speaker 1: since you are a lawyer, I might recommend if you
Speaker 1: want to send us any more thoughts on this that
Speaker 1: you actually just read the full Remedies for Robots paper
Speaker 1: and tell us more about what you think about their
Speaker 1: complete argument, which you know, we we just discussed some
Speaker 1: parts of. All right, when I've got the you've got
Speaker 1: the mail bot, Carnie all hot and bothered over this,
Speaker 1: Uh this taco? What else do we have in the
Speaker 1: mail bag? Joe? Oh? Okay. So next, I wanted to
Speaker 1: get into a number of responses to the most recent
Speaker 1: artifact episode I did, which was called the Sugar Light. Now,
Speaker 1: this was an artifact act in which I talked about uh,
Speaker 1: mentions of anomalous sources of cold light. In Sir Francis
Speaker 1: Bacon's sixteen twenty work Novum Organum and rob I assume
Speaker 1: you haven't had a chance to listen to my artifact
Speaker 1: episode yet, but I'll try to summarize for you so
Speaker 1: we can talk about it. The Novum Organum was a
Speaker 1: book in which Bacon was trying to lay out a
Speaker 1: new method for logical investigation of the world, and in
Speaker 1: many ways this the method described in this book could
Speaker 1: be considered proto scientific, since his method is in essence
Speaker 1: empirical and inductive. So, for example, It says, if you
Speaker 1: want to understand something, you should try to use, you know,
Speaker 1: use observation from the real world to list every instance
Speaker 1: you can of the phenomenon you're trying to understand, and
Speaker 1: then you should list properties that are associated with it.
Speaker 1: So in the example of heat, that would be stuff
Speaker 1: like light. And then you can list a bunch of
Speaker 1: examples of things that have that associated property, but not
Speaker 1: the property you're studying, so occurrences of light without heat
Speaker 1: and so forth. And he thinks that this ultimately can
Speaker 1: help you understand nature better. But so this leads to
Speaker 1: a section of the book where he's just listing a
Speaker 1: bunch of examples of cold light, light that doesn't actually burn,
Speaker 1: like the hot light from the sun or from a fire.
Speaker 1: And so I talked about some of the examples that
Speaker 1: he lists in this artifact episode. He lists the appearances
Speaker 1: of fire around the heads of of children, sometimes like
Speaker 1: fire around the head or the hair that appears to
Speaker 1: be not hot and not burning, just a kind of
Speaker 1: halo effect. Uh. I'm not sure what to make that,
Speaker 1: except it maybe just a general you know, it may
Speaker 1: tie into some of the lore that we discussed in
Speaker 1: our episodes on the history of halos and halo imagery.
Speaker 1: But then he also talked about some really strange stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: One was the idea that a flash without any evident
Speaker 1: heat quote has sometimes been seen about a horse when
Speaker 1: sweating at night. So I was like, what is the
Speaker 1: deal with the flashes of light from a sweaty horse? Light? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then also I mentioned a few others, but for
Speaker 1: for the rest of the Artifact episode, I talked about
Speaker 1: the claim of light being emitted from scraped or crushed sugar,
Speaker 1: which is in fact entirely real as a phenomenon something
Speaker 1: you can see for yourself by crushing sugarcubes in a
Speaker 1: darkened room. Um. But I mentioned that I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to make of a few of the other things
Speaker 1: he talks about, especially the sweaty horse. But another one,
Speaker 1: which is that he says that light sometimes flashes from
Speaker 1: an oar slapping in seawater at night, and listeners got
Speaker 1: in touch about these with some ideas about what he
Speaker 1: might have been talking about. The one with the oar
Speaker 1: slapping water turned out to be relatively easy. I think
Speaker 1: several listeners suggested that this might be a result of
Speaker 1: bioluminescent plankton so as an example of this type of message,
Speaker 1: Eric got in touch to say, Robert and Joe, longtime listener,
Speaker 1: first time emailer, the glow caused by an oar slapping
Speaker 1: the water sounds like by luminescent plankton to me, love
Speaker 1: the show. Eric and John also got in touch to
Speaker 1: say you mentioned light being emitted when an oar strikes
Speaker 1: the water. This is actually a common example of bioluminescence
Speaker 1: in the ocean, caused by micro organisms in the water.
Speaker 1: This can also occur in rolling waves when the agitation
Speaker 1: is enough to stir them up, and sometimes even in
Speaker 1: calm water. So obviously we've talked about all kinds of
Speaker 1: bioluminescent marine organisms on the show before. But I suppose
Speaker 1: I didn't connect Bacon's claim to bioluminescent organisms because I
Speaker 1: was focused on the detail of the glow occurring when
Speaker 1: the ore slaps the water, Like, why would an ore
Speaker 1: striking the water have anything to do with the onset
Speaker 1: of the light. I'd never heard of this, but I
Speaker 1: did some more digging, and I think the listeners probably
Speaker 1: are correct here that actually hitting the water or mechanically
Speaker 1: disturbing it in some way can sometimes cause the plankton
Speaker 1: to light up, and as one very easy to consume
Speaker 1: example of this, I found a q A on the
Speaker 1: a s U website by a marine biologist named Amy
Speaker 1: Hanson that connects plankton bioluminescence to mechanical disturbance uh and so.
Speaker 1: Hansen writes that one example of bioluminescent algae is a
Speaker 1: dinoflagellate called noct to luca or see sparklenc To Luca
Speaker 1: are so small that thousands of them can fit in
Speaker 1: a single drop of water in places like Bioluminescent Bay
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico see sparkle are so abundant that the
Speaker 1: water sparkles and neon bleu at night when you run
Speaker 1: your hand or a kayak paddle through it. So there
Speaker 1: is actually associating the disturbance of the water with the
Speaker 1: light coming on. And and she actually also cites a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons that might be the cause of the
Speaker 1: light coming on due to mechanical disturbance. One is the
Speaker 1: idea that okay, a predator swims through the water and
Speaker 1: then the light comes on to startle or scare the
Speaker 1: predator away. Another possible explanation is that these dinoflagellates use
Speaker 1: the light to attract bigger predators that would eat their
Speaker 1: own predators. So I'm handing it to the listeners who
Speaker 1: got in touch on that one. I'd say I'm fairly
Speaker 1: confident that this is exactly what Bacon was talking about
Speaker 1: with the oar slapping the water. But the sweaty horse,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I feel like that one is
Speaker 1: still a lot more mysterious. Though we did get one
Speaker 1: response taking a stab at the sweaty horse, Rob, do
Speaker 1: you want to read this one? Sure? There's the one
Speaker 1: from Stephen Hi Robin Joe. I've been a fan of
Speaker 1: your show for quite some time, and I'm probably more
Speaker 1: excited than I should be that I might be able
Speaker 1: to contribute in some small fashion. The glowing sweaty horse
Speaker 1: all caps in the recent Artifact episode about sugar light
Speaker 1: may be much simpler than it sounds. Horses tend to
Speaker 1: sweat profusely when working hard, so much so that their
Speaker 1: entire body becomes drenched. A hot, sweaty horse in cool,
Speaker 1: dry air can create what looks like a cloud of
Speaker 1: mist around its body as the sweat evaporates. I live
Speaker 1: in an area with a large Amish population, and it
Speaker 1: is not uncommon on dry winter day to see a
Speaker 1: sweaty horse doing a decent impression of a fog machine,
Speaker 1: simply due to the evaporating sweat. A steamy horse may
Speaker 1: not look special under the bright light of the sun,
Speaker 1: but perhaps a wisp of vapor catching moonlight directly or
Speaker 1: via reflection from a pond or stream may look like
Speaker 1: a brief flash of light from a short distance. I
Speaker 1: was unable to find any good photos of this. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the market for sweaty horse pictures is underserved, but I've
Speaker 1: included a link to a stock photo that shows the
Speaker 1: general idea, but is likely edited to look much more
Speaker 1: dramatic than it is in reality. This is just a
Speaker 1: wild guess, but old riding tends to portray things in
Speaker 1: a much more fantastic way than we might today. And
Speaker 1: they include this wonderful photo of a sweaty horse. It's
Speaker 1: with this mist coming off of it, or what you know,
Speaker 1: it looks to be a mist coming off it looks
Speaker 1: it looks like it is a magical horse that has
Speaker 1: come out of some misty realm and is therefore emitting
Speaker 1: the mist. It's quite beautiful. I feel like I'm about
Speaker 1: to see it flanked by a hopping vampire at any moment.
Speaker 1: I love it. Stephen. Anyways, so I think this is
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're right, but this is a
Speaker 1: fantastic attempt at an answer. Thank you so much to
Speaker 1: all the listeners who got in touch with the ideas
Speaker 1: about the glowing the glowing oar slaps and the sweaty horses.
Speaker 1: This is just great, all right. This next message comes
Speaker 1: from Daniel. This when just seems general. Daniel says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, first off, love the show. Thanks for
Speaker 1: all you guys do. I don't understand people who listen
Speaker 1: to music while driving. I love the way you guys
Speaker 1: engage my brain. Um, there are two topics I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about recently, and I wondered if you guys had
Speaker 1: either already done something about them in the past or
Speaker 1: might in the future. One. A number of times I've
Speaker 1: come across mentions of different types of ice, both in
Speaker 1: your shows and in science fiction I read. Most recently,
Speaker 1: I picked the episode on Pie Create out of the
Speaker 1: show History, and you mentioned there that we have one
Speaker 1: specific type of ice naturally occurring here on Earth. So
Speaker 1: what are the others, Where can they be found or
Speaker 1: how can they be made? And how are they different
Speaker 1: from what we already know? Second, glass elevators make me nauseous.
Speaker 1: My work recently moved into a new building that has
Speaker 1: glass elevators, and every time I ride one down, I
Speaker 1: have to close my eyes to avoid nausea. No one
Speaker 1: else I know has this problem. What's going on here?
Speaker 1: Going up doesn't cause any issue, and normally closed elevators
Speaker 1: don't bother me at all. Thanks well to take your
Speaker 1: second question first. I don't know, but I wonder if
Speaker 1: it has anything to do with uh with I don't know,
Speaker 1: something akin to simulator sickness, which we've talked about in
Speaker 1: previous episodes. But maybe this will be worth coming back
Speaker 1: to in another episode, because I can imagine that's not
Speaker 1: too uncommon of a feeling. I likewise don't have any
Speaker 1: problem in regular closed elevators, but I feel like when
Speaker 1: I've been in transparent elevators before, I've gotten I don't
Speaker 1: know about nauseous, but definitely a little woozy. But but
Speaker 1: as for ice, rob I know we have talked about
Speaker 1: different types of ice before. I can't remember what the
Speaker 1: scientific term for the different ice configurations is but I
Speaker 1: think it has to do with the the different crystalline
Speaker 1: structure of ice. Is that right? Like ice? You know,
Speaker 1: the different numbers applied to ice one, two, three, four
Speaker 1: and so forth. Yeah. I mean I thought we got
Speaker 1: into it maybe a little bit in pie crete and
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit more as well on our episode
Speaker 1: on heavy Water. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. So, uh, Daniel,
Speaker 1: you might want to go check out that that episode
Speaker 1: on heavy Water if you haven't heard that. I think
Speaker 1: we talked about it in there. But I'm doing this
Speaker 1: from memory, so I'm sorry if I'm wrong, But I
Speaker 1: think the issue is just that the different phases of
Speaker 1: ice have different crystalline structures, usually because they're formed under
Speaker 1: very extreme conditions that are not present on Earth, say,
Speaker 1: is like really high pressure or something. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, we'll have to look at it. It's
Speaker 1: possible that we could do in an episode on alternative waters,
Speaker 1: I mean alternative ices rather, but I don't I love
Speaker 1: to see. All right, Well, let's close it out with
Speaker 1: one bit of weird house cinema listener mail. This one
Speaker 1: comes to us from Charles Hi, Robert, and Joe. I
Speaker 1: hope this email finds you healthy and well. I came
Speaker 1: across your podcast last year and just got to your
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episode on Gunhead. Had it not been
Speaker 1: for the fact that I'm able to listen to podcasts
Speaker 1: at work, I'd probably still be very far behind. The
Speaker 1: added effort to answer listener mail is nice because everyone
Speaker 1: writing in has such interesting information to share. As a
Speaker 1: first time writer, I hope I can add to that
Speaker 1: as well. Anyway, during the Gunhead episode, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: there were one or two scenes where one of the
Speaker 1: characters was waving or pointing their gun at another character
Speaker 1: when they were told to stop. You both were a
Speaker 1: bit confused as to the reasoning the character gave, and
Speaker 1: just concluded it was likely because it was dangerous. Although
Speaker 1: this is inherently true for safety, I believe that there
Speaker 1: is also a cultural significance, and I hope to shed
Speaker 1: some light on it. Growing up in an East Asian
Speaker 1: family my parents, it's always emphasized the idea of karma.
Speaker 1: This not only included physical actions, but also extended to
Speaker 1: acts such as gossiping about others or in this case,
Speaker 1: pointing a weapon at someone, even in jest, the idea
Speaker 1: being that even a benign gesture is still looked at
Speaker 1: as you wishing ill fortune on that person and will
Speaker 1: count as bad karma. Although this doesn't follow the traditional
Speaker 1: definition of karma, which focuses on you being the recipient
Speaker 1: of your own actions coming back to you later in life.
Speaker 1: It revolves around the karma you wish on others. I
Speaker 1: haven't watched Gunheads, so I don't know the nuance of
Speaker 1: the scene, but this is my best guest based on
Speaker 1: your description. Thank you for all the recent topics you're
Speaker 1: covering your podcast. I always know I'm in for a
Speaker 1: knowledge expansion when I turn on your podcast. Many thanks, Charles. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Charles. To be honest, I do not remember
Speaker 1: what scene you're talking about. Oh no, no, I remember it.
Speaker 1: There's so we have. We have the old guy, the
Speaker 1: one who is played by the cool prog rock dude.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, yes, yes, yes, yeah, and um I'm
Speaker 1: blinking on his name him off hand, but anyway, he's
Speaker 1: the wise member of the crew that's gonna run this
Speaker 1: uh uh, this gig that's gonna try and steal the
Speaker 1: stuff from the the Robot place, you know, the Robot Island.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there horse the gun yeah, club mach Um,
Speaker 1: and he's he's like, what are you doing? Don't point
Speaker 1: that at people? You're you know, that's you know, there's
Speaker 1: no good. You know, he's he's, he's shutting him down
Speaker 1: every time he does it. And we were like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. You shouldn't point guns at people. That's
Speaker 1: not safe. But it does seem like, yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like Charles is making a fair point here. It sounds
Speaker 1: like maybe it is verse two in um in an
Speaker 1: idea of of of of ild karma and you know
Speaker 1: the superstuit that would that would track with some some
Speaker 1: other stuff I think I've heard before. So Charles, thank
Speaker 1: you for writing in and um and illuminating gun Head further.
Speaker 1: It is it is, It is a text that deserves
Speaker 1: more illumination. Yes, sincere. Thanks. All right, Well we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and close up the mail bag for today,
Speaker 1: but we thank we thank everybody for writing in. We
Speaker 1: read everything that comes in. We don't always have time
Speaker 1: to respond, and we don't have time to include everything
Speaker 1: on listener mail, but keep it coming. We love hearing
Speaker 1: on these topics. We love hearing about everyone's experiences UH
Speaker 1: with these topics and UH and and your insight. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, If you want to listen to other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, listener mail Well, that
Speaker 1: happens every Monday. We have core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesday is the Artifact,
Speaker 1: Friday is is Weird how Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 1: cut loose and enjoy a weird film. And then we
Speaker 1: have a rerun on the weekend. And then on Sunday,
Speaker 1: the seventh day, we rest or we run a promo
Speaker 1: for some other show. That's depends what what's what's required
Speaker 1: of us frantically get ready for the first day again, yes,
Speaker 1: um yeah, so huge, Thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other uh to uh to uh suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, that's what you can do, or you
Speaker 1: can just say hello. You can email us at contact
Speaker 1: and Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio.
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