SGU Episode 871

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SGU Episode 871
March 19th 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 870                      SGU 872
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
MCL: Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, Executive Director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education
Quote of the Week
But my experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.
Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. president
Links
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Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Ides, Smells, Caffeine OD

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. (applause) Today is Tuesday, March 15^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Is today the Ides of march is that what?

J: Yes it sure is.

S: We are recording on the Ides of March.

E: So what does that mean like something bad is going to happen?

S: No, it means no absolutely nothing.

J: It does sound a little foreboding though doesn't it Evan?

C: It's the day after pie day, that's a thing.

S: It's a good time to remember that every breath you take has molecules from Caesar's last fart as well.

E: Is that what I'm tasting?

B: I love that could.

J: Could you imagine if your sense of smell was so good that you could detect everything.

S: It would just be overwhelming because you're breathing.

C: Mine's pretty good and my life kind of sucks because of it. I don't wanna say my life sucks, my life's awesome.

E: Nose of a dog, you know nose dog.

S: You can smell a lot of stuff.

C: I smell a lot of stuff and I'm constantly like "oh, what is that?" and people are like "really Cara?".

E: Are you a super-smeller?

C: It's horrible, I can't even, I don't like the way people's refrigerators smelled, it freaks me out. Opening refrigerator doors.

S: Refrigerators, they can smell a little rank.

E: Oh yeah absolutely, you have to clean them.

C: They can, and I like, I notice the first little change. I'm always like oh what is that, what is that.

S: Yeah, I'm fairly sensitive as well. Usually like I will detect rancidity in food way before my wife does. Like no, no, I don't think so. She's like, that's fine.

E: All right, question for you guys does this tie into your super taster sensations?

C: Probably separate but I'm sure they play off of each other.

S: It's distinct. My "supertasting" it's not so super by the way, it sucks, but I just basically taste bitter a lot of stuff. That's it. I just taste a lot more things are bitter to me than people who don't have those.

C: Yeah.

B: That's the lamest superpower.

S: It is.

C: It's horrible. It just makes food not as good.

J: But it means you're less likely to get poisoned that's good.

E: Maybe.

C: Maybe in the past probably.

B: It's a huge concern these days.

C: If we were hunter gatherers maybe.

E: Or more false positives, right? Like mm-hmm poison, no not poison.

S: In modern society it's basically all false positives. Like a lot of things taste like poison to me that are perfectly fine.

C: Kale!

B: I like my superpowers so much better. I could drink a pot of coffee at midnight and go right to bed.

C: Bob! Did you see, did you see the guy OD'd on caffeine and died?

B: What!?

C: Yeah that that news article has been been cycling around─

B: No way.

C: I don't think, I think it was like caffeine tablets or something.

B: Yeah oh yeah man yeah then like two cups of, two cups of caffeine you know per pill. I remember from the old days when I actually thought they helped me. But yeah if you pop like 30 of those, that'll mess you up if you're not a superhuman like me.

C: He drank, actually, so it was drinks. It was a caffeine powder. And he drank the equivalent of 200 cups of coffee.

B: Oh!

S: 200. That will do it.

B: 200!

C: He miscalculated the dosage.

S: Like two orders of magnitude?

C: So sad.

J: That is, what did that person think, like what what was going through their mind. Like I'm drinking 200 cups of coffee.

C: No no no, he didn't realize that, I think he was trying to drink 20 cups. But even that seems a bit intense.

E: But how did you not know upon the first taste that was wrong?

S: See, math illiteracy will kill you.

C: It's sad.

B: There you go.

S: Math will save your life.

J: So Cara, did he have a heart attack?

S: That'd be my guess.

C: I would assume so. I know he had to be, they attempted resuscitation but couldn't.

S: You can get a heart attack due to spasm of the muscle.

C: That's probably what happens.

S: Spasm of the artery, you get like arterial vasospasm in the heart. I had a patient that that happened to them because they were taking a supplement that they weren't aware had a caffeine analog in it. And they took a massive dose of this stimulant. And they had a heart attack you know. They went to the emergency room and they were fine and everything, but it was again, they have no atherosclerosis, it wasn't a pardoning of the artery or a clot. It was just the vessel went into vasospasm.

C: Yeah, that's what it sounds like. He, his chest, he had really immediate chest pain and tachycardia. And then it says he sadly started foaming at the mouth. She called the ambulance. But get this, the coroner found that his, the caffeine level in his blood was 392 mg/L. And the typical level after a cup of coffee is 2-4 mg/L.

B: Oh!

S: Hundred times.

E: So 100 times, 100x.

B: Killed by coffee man.

E: Death by coffee.

C: Careful with that dosage.

J: Bob, at least he died doing something that he loves, you know. (Bob laughs)

C: Is that how you want to go Bob?

S: Small comfort.

J: Death by coffee?

B: I want to go when I'm bored with life after many millennia. Then, then I'll just pilot a ship into the sun.

J: Bob doesn't want to die until he's universe-weary. (Cara laughs)

B: Yeah. But even better, even better. Try that, just fly at ultra relativistic speeds for so far and so long, that you basically see that the end of the universe in trillions of years.

E: Die of boredom?

B: I'm working on that, I'm working on that.

Announcements: Arizona Live Shows, other shows (5:42)

S: So guys, July 15^th and 16^th, July 15^th and 16^th of this year, 2022. The SGU is coming to Arizona.

E: We are going to raise Arizona.

S: Yep. We have booked two extravaganzas.

J: Phoenix and Tucson.

S: Phoenix and Tucson. And we'll be building that out with some private shows as well. So the details to follow. But that is confirmed, those dates are confirmed.

B: Wait a second, July 15^th and 16^th?

S: Yeah.

J: Yeah.

B: That's too close to my birthday, man. You know, I'm not going to be recovered from my birthday.

S: Yeah, you'll be fine.

E: We'll give you some coffee. (Cara laughs)

S: It's halfway between your birthday and my birthday Bob, so we're good. And, since we're talking about our extravaganzas. This is I think the last show to come out, for all night, yeah whatever, the next show will be coming out, yeah during, it'll be coming out on Saturday. This is the last show to come out prior to our next extravaganza weekend.

C: New York City!

S: New York City on March 26^th. Boston on March 27^th. For the extravaganzas. The private show, Friday March 25^th and, they're both on on Sunday.

C: Also yeah March 27^th.

S: And Sunday, March 27^th in Boston. So, still time to get tickets.

J: Steve, where can they go to get more information about these? These shows?

S: Now Jay, you're supposed to be with that information. (Cara laughs)

J: Oh that's right, I just asked myself. You can go to the skepticsguide.org/events. It has all the details.

C: That's convenient.

J: And we probably will not be doing New York or Boston at least, at the very least, two to three years before we'll be back. So this is your chance, if you live in those areas, please come see us.

E: We want to see you.

Daylight Savings Time to be permanent in the USA (7:22)

S: Did you guys hear, that the US senate passed a bill to make daylight savings time permanent?

C: Yes.

B: No way.

S: We actually did something that makes sense.

E: Wow.

C: Yeah we're not gonna spring forward again, I mean fall back. We're not going to fall back next time.

S: It has to pass the house. Now it's, now it's going to.

B: It'll never happen.

C: I don't know.

J: Steve, Steve, are they proposing that we go forward an hour every year? Is that what they're saying?

S: I mean yes, never have to change the the time again, which would be nice.

C: Yeah Jay, they're just gonna make it like the north pole. (laughter)

S: Where there's no time. Time is suspended.

E: Pole time.

C: Pole time. (laughs) Bob like I know that you're, you're skeptical. Which is fair.

B: No I'm not, oh wait, about what.

C: You know, that this will pass.

B: Yes, I am.

C: But the truth is, I think this is universally hated. I think this is a very non-partisan.

B: Al the more reason why they won't make it happen. (Cara laughs)

E: Wow.

S: I think now that it's gone this far, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't just pass.

J: I mean they've tried to pass it a couple of times.

B: It won't because it makes sense.

C: It won't because it makes sense? (laughter)

S: Bob the nihilist.

J: I mean think about how f'd up that is guys, think about it. Something like very reasonable has been submitted to the senate, for them to pass, you know. It's like, it's a no-brainer at this point, right? Most most logical people agree.

C: Yeah what's the argument against it?

J: But Cara we are sitting here legitimately not sure if it's going to pass. You know what I mean? That's how f'd up it is right now.

E: It's the lobby who make the dials on clocks you know, that turn. That's a very strong lobby in Washington. And they have an interest in this.

S: I know it's like we're so programmed not to think of something like just a good rational law passing congress. Like this, it's always got to be political or screwed up in some way. Or some really crazy trade-off.

B: Somebody's going to throw pork into this.

S: Yeah just a common sense thing, can we just make it permanent and get rid of the whole changing time thing?

C: Not without a without, a not about an infusion of cash. A defense contract here in my hometown.

E: Let's tack on a rider for 15 billion dollars for whatever.

S: Let's make digital clocks illegal. (laughter) Well that'll be nice. If that happens. Maybe that'll happen in time for our visit to Arizona.

C: Doesn't Arizona not do it?

E: But Arizona doesn't recognize it, yeah. Arizona leading the way.

C: So we will be less confused when we're in Arizona. (laughter)

E: Or more so.

J: I want to prepare you guys. I don't know if you guys have been to Arizona in the middle of the summer. But. Oh. My. God. You could you, could cook eggs on your dashboard. In your car.

C: I grew up in Texas Jay.

J: Yeah you know it.

C: I know what's up.

J: But it is fantastically hot in the summer there.

S: Yeah but they have air conditioning so.

C: But it's also kind of cold at night which is cool.

J: Yeah actually, let's go to the desert guys.

C: Yeah.

E: Oh we're gonna go to the desert.

C: It is kind of the desert. Oh, we should go to Lowell Observatory, oh we should go to Meteor Crater while we're there.

B: No way.

S: Definitely.

B: No way. How far away will it be?

S: Three hours. From Phoenix.

C: Three hours from Phoenix? Okay.

E: We can make. I think we can make that work.

C: Figure it out.

E: Maybe some listeners want to join us on a trip too.

C: Anybody got a helicopter?

E: With air conditioning.

B: That'd be so cool.

J: I mean honestly guys we wouldn't be able to do that. That's half a day.

C: Shhh, shhh. (laughter)

S: It's four hours and 36 minutes from Tucson. Phoenix is closer. Yeah three hours from Phoenix is as close as we're gonna get.

C: Is it halfway between Phoenix and Tucson?

S: No. How could it be? (Cara laughs) Tucson's farther away.

C: I don't know.

S: Tucson's farther south. You go north to phoenix and then further north to meteor crater.

C: It is beautiful though, I've done the a hike around the entire rim and it's really.

B: No way.

C: Yeah.

S: We got gotta, we gotta schedule it around a day trip to meteor creator. Why don't we do one of our live shows from meteor crater?

E: Absolutely.

B: Done.

J: So Steve you want me to book a show, where I have to get hundreds of chairs.

S: I want Cara to do it.

C: (laughs) We'll go into the meteor and we'll have really loud microphones and everybody can stand on the outside.

B: Oh man.

E: We'll just be on the shady side of it.

B: I want to do this, meee.

C: Meee. It is a cool hike for sure.

S: It's funny to be so close and yet so far. (Evan laughs)

C: I know.

S: Something that I've always wanted to see. I got to check that box, I want to see the media creator.

B: Let's just not sleep one night, we'll just not sleep.

S: We'll have to figure out how we're gonna make that happen.

C: Hear it's beautiful in the middle of the night. (laughter)

B: We could use our...

E: Just walk along, lalala-aaaaa. (Cara laughs)

S: All right let's move on to some news items.

News Items

Why Is Life Symmetrical (12:21)

• Why Is Life Symmetrical

S: Let me ask you guys a question.

B: No! Yes.

S: Why are living things, why is life symmetrical?

E: Gravity.

S: Where does symmetry in living things come from? That's an, it's an interesting question and of course.

E: Gravity, if you didn't have symmetry you keep falling over to one side.

B: Is it locomotion and beauty?

E: No it's gravity.

C: Do you mean, sorry, when you say "where does it come from", you're not talking about developmentally but you're talking about evolutionarily?

S: Yeah, evolutionary, yeah. Why, why are we symmetrical?

C: Not, not how are we symmetrical.

E: It must be the most efficient design. Evolutionary speaking.

C: It's conserved.

S: You guys are hitting on a lot of things that are definitely related. And this is, this is an active area of research. And the big question is, how much of it is adaptive, and how much of it is not adaptive, right? That's one one way to look at it. So what I mean, what I mean by this is that you know like vertebrates tend to be bilaterally symmetrical, right? Our right side looks like our left side. We talked last week, Cara about radial symmetry. Although you were incorrect in that cephalopods do not have radial symmetry.

C: I know, I thought they did, I didn't realize they had the two fancy arms.

S: Yeah but a good example of radial symmetry would be a sea star, right? They have like the five arms. But why is that? Why does that happen? So let's talk about a little bit about the adaptive reasons. And this is a little bit of you know, adaptationist, hand waving. But, there's, it's easy to think of reasons why certain structures would need to be symmetrical. Think of a bird's wings, right? How would they function if they were not symmetrical? They were not symmetrically placed on the bird, like what if one was a lot far farther forward than the other, or what if one wing was bigger, or what if they had different aerodynamics. Or whatever. Flying would obviously be much more difficult if the birds didn't have symmetrical wings. And same thing with, you know, their body being streamlined or the hydrodynamics of fish. Or Evan you brought up walking. If we were not basically symmetrical, you know, would that mean that we would tend to fall over one side or the other?

E: We would.

S: Not necessarily. We are not symmetrical front to back, and that's not a problem.

C: We're also not perfectly symmetrical.

S: Not, of course not perfectly symmetrical. But there's, so but I think we could say that physics plays a role. Forces having to balance. And one way to balance forces is with symmetry. So I think that, that's sure, to some extent, there's probably adaptive reasons for some symmetry in morphology. And you know again the obvious I think reason in some cases being the you know balancing forces. Like lift from wings or galloping or whatever, you know, it's a lot easier if you're symmetrical. But that probably doesn't explain all of symmetry in nature. And also it's important to note that the symmetry exists at every level. You know all the way down to proteins. Like it's not just at the macroscopic level or the overall organism. And so you know again we the, it's a sort of an open question is, why is there so much symmetry in nature. It seems to be more, than what you could explain with purely adaptive explanations. So is there any non-adaptive reason? Just we're more likely to see symmetry than than not symmetry. So if you think about it this way, if you look at all the possible designs out there in nature, there are many more that are asymmetrical that are symmetrical. And so clearly there's some reason why, you know, the you know, at least some level of symmetry, it predominates over asymmetrical forms even though there are many more options in the asymmetrical space than in the symmetrical space.

C: And even in asymmetry you see balance a lot, if that makes sense.

S: Well yeah you could be, you could be asymmetrical with balance, sure.

C: Yeah like spirals and things like that in nature. That aren't actually symmetrical, like they're not they don't have that chirality but they, they are balanced. If that makes sense.

S: Yes, you could, yes, exactly. Our organs are kind of asymmetrical but balances. We have symmetrical organs and asymmetrical organs. And there are developmental reasons for that as well. All right so there's a new study which is trying to look at possible non-adaptive reasons for the predominance of symmetry at all levels of living structures, right? And this is something I've thought about before, like even before I read this article when, I just sort of read the headline. I'm like, yeah my my gut instinct answer's, it probably has something to do with math, right? I mean doesn't it? Intuitively it's like yeah there's got to be something. And also on the background is, you know, my understanding that, and this is important to this, is DNA is not a blueprint, right? And I know we've discussed this before on the show. Like your DNA molecule that makes up the design of you is not a blueprint of you, it doesn't have all the details of where all the cells are in your body. It's more like a recipe or a formula, right? Or an algorithm. Probably the best word. And, it's a set of rules. And when you follow those rules the organization of your body unfolds. Another example of that kind of idea is a bee's nest. Like the honeycomb pattern of a bee's nest is, there's no blueprint for that. The bees don't know what the shape of their honeycomb nest is. They're just following a really simple algorithm. And doing it over and over again.

B: Right, it's an emerging property.

S: And then they shape the symmetry and everything emerges from that. The authors of the article I'm about to discuss use like, if you're explaining to somebody, how to lay tile. Like different colored tile on a floor. You're not going to tell them where every single tile goes, right? You're not going to label the tiles with a number and go "this is c28 and this goes exactly here". No, you just say "you just go white, black, white, black and just keep repeating that" and then the pattern unfolds.

E: Yeah, simple sequence.

B: Much more efficient, right? Much less information.

S: Much more, exactly. It's very information efficient. If you had to tell them where every single tile went, that would take a lot of information. But if you could give them a simple rule or two, and then they follow that rule, and then the pattern unfolds. So what, then that's obviously much more efficient. Now if you do that, if you follow a very simple rule repetitively, that tends to lead to symmetry. Think about it again, this gets to now information theory, which I know again we've talked about on the show but very very quickly. Information theory deals with, you know, the mathematics of information. What is information, how do we define it, how do we quantify it, how do we think about it. And just one type of information that, there's actually different types of information. You know so-called Shannon information. It has to do with how compressible information is. This may seem a little counter-intuitive at first when you think about it. The least compressible information is a completely random sequence. So if you had a completely random sequence of a hundred numbers, nothing less than those hundred numbers would fully describe that sequence. There'd be no way for you to describe that exact sequence with anything less. But if you, at the other end of the spectrum, if there was a hundred ones, you could just say a hundred ones, right? You can compress it all the way down to just saying 100 ones.

B: Right, even if it was a million Yottabytes of a file.

E: Oh Bob.

B: You could, you could compress that into next to nothing.

S: One times a million whatever. Right so, the very very simple pattern, highly compressible. Completely random, not compressible at all. So you know, how compressible information is one way to think about it. So if you're following a simple set of rules, that information's highly compressible. It's highly efficient. And so DNA for example can code for a lot of complexity if it's following simple algorithms that then unfold into that complexity. And, like our brain, like our brain follow when, the DNA doesn't code for all of the details like where every neuron goes. It's just following simple rules over and over and over again. You know like, here's a column, now make a billion of them, you know. So that's, that's basically what it's doing.

B: So how does compressibility manifest itself as symmetry then?

S: Yeah so that's because the simple algorithms, when repeated over and over, spontaneously produce symmetry. And asymmetry takes more information to encode than the same way that a random─

B: That's, that's what I was looking for, yes.

S: ─sequence of numbers takes more information to code. Now there's a subset of information theory called, one is called algorithmic information theory where it's looking at the amount of information contained in a in an algorithm, right? In a set of rules. And so that theory tells you basically that symmetry would spontaneously emerge from simple algorithms. The more simple the algorithm, the more likely that is to happen. More simple algorithms are more information efficient. And life is all about efficiency, right? If you could do something with less then that is going to be, that is going to be favored. And that will predominate. But there's another, we don't take that for granted, there's another concept here, that relates to that, and that is the, that is a concept called the arrival of the frequent, the arrival of the frequent. That was, that term was coined in a 2014 paper which elaborated on the math. Basically, if you look at a system, simpler algorithms are easier and therefore would occur more frequently by chance. And therefore by random chance alone, simpler algorithms should predominate over more complex algorithms. And therefore symmetry should, more symmetry should predominate because simple algorithms equal symmetry. Asymmetry equals more complicated algorithms but more complicated algorithms are harder to occur spontaneously. So the authors appealed to the old monkeys and typewriters analogy to explain that. So imagine, I've never liked this analogy, but imagine if you have, you know an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters eventually would squeeze out the full works of William Shakespeare. Yes, fine. But, let's apply that now to evolution. It's not infinite, it's just a lot of monkeys. On a lot of typewriters. But the thing is it's not a good, it's not a good analogy to evolution because you have a predetermined output, right? The works of Shakespeare. And it's also a predetermined, and also very very large you know output. That's not how evolution works. If rather, you said we're going to, we're going to, the monkeys are going to be typing randomly. And we have a set of rules by which what they're typing is converted into some formula for building stuff. And then we're going to look at all the stuff that the monkeys are typing at random, for patterns, that could be formulas for building stuff. The probability that you're going to get a simple formula out of that random typing of monkeys is a lot greater than a really long complicated formula. And so there's just going to be a lot more simple formulas than long complicated formulas. That's the arrival of the frequent. And so, and then in an evolutionary setting the probability of a simple algorithm becoming evolutionarily fixed is a lot greater than a complicated one. Even if a complicated one may occasionally emerge, the chance of it becoming established within an evolutionary line is really low. It's not zero, it will happen, it's just really low. So, if you combine that mathematical concept,the arrival of the frequent, if you combine that with algorithmic information theory, and you you get to this notion that in evolution simple algorithms should predominate. And simple algorithms lead to symmetry. And therefore symmetry should predominate in evolution. Even though it's a small subset of all possible morphology, it still is likely to be fixed in an evolutionary sense, right? So all that makes sense?

B: Right so any aliens we come across will likely to be very symmetrical as well then?

E: Yeah.

S: That's, that would be one thing you can infer from this, yes, that it wouldn't be limited to earth life. If it is, if we find that it is limited to earth life then that tells us that it was just historically contingent. It was evolutionarily contingent. It just so happens that our early ancestors like back in the Cambrian explosion happened to settle on some symmetrical body plans and they predominated by chance alone. And in another, on another planet, asymmetrical body plans predominated. So that would be a way to test all of this.

B: But we need a lot of data points though.

S: We can't do that until you know we have other.

B: Or maybe not necessarily a lot.

C: And with n more than one.

S: But we do have an n of more than one in that we have, you know there there are 30 different─

B: Independent.

S: ─something like that phyla are pretty independent. I mean in terms of multi-cellular life, they've pretty much independently evolved multicellular life with their own body plans not really related to anything else. Two other completely distinct files. I think there's 16 extant phylums and then almost as many extinct phylums. They all tend to have some symmetry.

B: Phylums?

S: Yeah, phyla. And they all tend to have some kind of symmetry whether it's bilateral symmetry or whatever. And so you know if you consider that 30 data points, symmetry predominates.

B: Yeah but but they, but they evolved from single cell organisms, so there's no connection then between the symmetry of the single cell organism into multicellularity, so is that a valid?

S: That's a good question, I've not encountered any even discussion or speculation about that.

B: It sounds reasonable but I don't know.

S: Yeah I mean, I don't know.

B: It's not necessarily an appropriate extrapolation.

S: Yeah or by the other, the other answer is maybe all phyla do have a common ancestor. If you go back to the precambrian─

B: Oh yeah.

S: ─the ediacaran fauna. And maybe like the very very first multicellular creatures had some baked in symmetry that continued through everything─

C: That just bottlenecked everything else.

S: ─yeah so that's also possible, that's what, that's where other planets with other evolutionary examples would come in. But I think, given the all the information that we have, you know it's probably not a coincidence that there's so much symmetry in life. And you know the fact that there are adaptive and non-adaptive just like basically purely mathematical reasons for it supports that. I don't think this you know, I think this is sort of an independent line of evidence. It sort of not only explains, it supports the fact that we should predict symmetry, should be common not just that it happens to be common in life on Earth.

B: What do you think the balance is between life that is symmetrical because it's easier and more common and more prevalent, and life that is symmetrical because it's it's more efficient? You know, what's the balance between those two? Because you seem, you seem to be stressing more now the whole idea that some symmetry is just because it's so much more likely to happen, than something that's asymmetrical.

S: I mean, I think those two things are related, I think those two things are related, right? It's more prevalent because it is more efficient. So it's not only more likely, it's also to occur it's also more likely to survive and predominate. Because it does, it does work efficiently. And also I think it could also be related to adaption because you know the sim, if the symmetry were there initially because of just probability. Then we would evolve adaptations that take advantage of that symmetry. And if, and if for some reason math favored asymmetrical morphologies, then adaption would find asymmetrical solutions to problems. But we found symmetry dependent solutions because we had the symmetry to begin with. So it's hard to separate them as well.

C: Yeah.

J: If life were to happen all over again, do you think that this would be there as well, right? Like would, would this symmetry, or leaning towards symmetry be there? Is it like cooked into the reality?

S: Yeah, that's what we're saying, right ? So that's, that's the same thing as saying "would life on another planet have the symmetry?". But that, this article argues for yes, that this is math. This is just what we would expect, what we would predict based on probability alone, without being contingent on a particular evolutionary history. Or a particular particular adaptive strategy. It's just going to spontaneously emerge because of math.

B: So those damn asymmetrical aliens in science fiction are bull crap.

S: Maybe the asymmetry is superficial, maybe it's you know.

B: Maybe they were engineered that way?

E: [inaudible] had this massive wobble so they had to adjust you know, asymmetrical.

C: Everyone's, like their left leg is just shorter across the globe, yeah.

S: Right right right.

Evolution of Language (29:45)

• Language was born in the hands

S: All right Cara, you have an evolutionary item as well. You're going to talk about the evolution, a little bit one aspect of the evolution of language,.

C: Yeah and I think that in some ways that that thing that you were just grappling with, about sort of the chicken versus the egg. Of the pressures versus the capabilities, I think it's sort of echoed and mirrored in this story. It's a really interesting one. So there has been a long debate about the evolutionary origins of language. What came first? Was it vocalization or was it manual or gestural language? Because very often we think in our, I think in the kind of popular literature, or maybe not the popular literature but the popular media, we always envision cave people grunting a lot, right? Like grh, grh.

J: Yeah of course.

C: We don't, we don't often see them portrayed as like pantomiming to one another.

B: Yeah.

E: Right.

C: Yet, there's a lot of good evidence to support the notion that that might have been a little bit more effective. And so there's an interesting study that was published recently in the Royal Society Proceedings B, so that's biology. Where these researchers in Western Australia, they said okay, I want to do something experimental that will not in any way prove whether language evolved gesturally or, in terms of vocalizations. But may, maybe give us some insight. And so I think the big caveat here, and they talk about it in the in the study, is that there's no way to do a modern experiment without already being exposed to modern language. So we have to just take that with a grain of salt, all of us are not naive to language, right? We already speak and so what they did, is they took two groups and they said, I'm curious if if we compare two groups cross culturally, and we have some of them communicate word prompts using only vocalizations. And we have others communicate word prompts using only gestures. Who will be more effective in communicating the meaning of these words? So getting a group of undergrads basically, who are sitting there watching or listening, to guess what words they're, they're actually representing. Now I struggled with this from the beginning, because I cannot imagine, and maybe this is my own bias, communicating any words through vocalizations. Except maybe the word sing. Do you guys like, do you have that same bias with me? Like when you actually think about the experimental design, how would you, if they asked you, you know, communicate the word table using only vocalizations but not words, not language.

B: Oh jeez.

J: So give me an example.

C: That's what I'm saying. (laughter)

J: Like, like you want, like don't use words but just use sounds?

C: Yes.

E: Like fall would be uuuuuu.

C: Yeah like onomatopoeia kind of makes sense.

B: Onomatopoeia.

J: What would a table be?

C: I know.

J: That's crazy.

C: So, I'm kind of not surprised when the outcome was that the, "the producers" as they call them, were about twice as successful in using gestures to communicate meaning than they were in using vocalization─

E: Sure.

C: ─non-language vocalization. That actually doesn't really surprise me. But the kicker and the really interesting part of the study was a two-parter. In the first part is that they used individuals from Australia and individuals from Vanuatu which is a Pacific island nation about a thousand miles from Australia. And so these are individuals who have very different cultures. So Australia very kind of western democratic, you know, uh middle to high income culture. And the Vanuatu culture is more agrarian. And you know very different cultural exposures and cultural norms. And so they gave them both the list of words and had them communicate. And they found that both groups were better at communicating using gesture than non-linguistic vocalization. They compared Australian to Australian, Vanuatu to Vanuatu and then Australian to Vanuatu pairs. And they found that gestured signals were more similar, both within cultures and across cultures. But verbal signals didn't necessarily follow that, that organization. So basically the, the one of the examples that they used was this idea of a chain, so in many of the Australian individuals would show a chain like they were hauling something. Whereas the the knee Vanuatu would show the chain like they were dropping it over the side of a boat, like dropping anchor. And so there were some cultural differences, in how they were communicating that, but they still found that across group and within group, the pantomime was significantly more successful a strategy than the the non-verbal vocalizations. But then they said okay, let's take this up a notch. Now I want to know what about people who don't rely on vision to navigate the world, right? So we're going to look at sighted people and individuals who are visually impaired. And they had some pretty intense cut offs, like some of the some of the individuals had no light perception, some of them did have light perception but were considered to have less than 10 percent visual acuity. So for all intents and purposes, you know, we can put them in the visual impairment/blindness category. And they asked them to do the same thing. And they found that even in this group individuals pantomimed more effectively, than vocalized. And so even though many of these people who were congenitally blind or they had gone blind I think within the first year or two of life, they still were utilizing similar pantomimes to communicate different nouns and verbs. And so the researchers kind of made the, in their discussion, the comment that this probably has a lot more to do with our own body map. It has to do more with the concept of embodied cognition, which we've talked about a lot on the show, right? This idea that our proprioception, where we are in space was so fundamental to language development, that even individuals who don't see other individuals pantomiming to them or gesturing to them have an innate ability to gesture certain types of words and communicate their meaning. And so for that reason they also believed that perhaps it is the case that gestural language predated vocalized language. Now that said, at the very end they also say, none of this is to say that these things didn't like co-develop. There's no reason to believe that we only used our hands in our bodies or we only used grunts. It's very likely that we use both because they help each other. Actually weirdly studies have shown that pantomimes can help verbalization where there's a communication breakdown. But but verbalizations don't often help pantomimes when there's a communication breakdown. So that's kind of interesting, that was in the in the introduction, so based on their literature review. So they think it's very likely that both probably evolve together. And when grappling with the how or the why of it all, it's interesting because we often think, okay, well speech is just more efficient, right? We're just talking about this idea of kind of evolution towards efficiency. Well development of a really important cultural phenomenon, really kind of fundamental to the human experience, like language, of course we often think okay well that increases efficiency. But one of the researchers mentioned you know, if we were pantomiming just fine, why would we need language? Well perhaps it's because we needed to free up our hands.

B: Ah, that makes sense.

C: Perhaps you know, caring children, caring you know, hunting, gathering, doing these things that, that we needed to do to survive was intensive. And language evolved so that we could do those things at the same time. As opposed to needing to do one or the other with our with our bodies. And so kind of some interesting, obviously these are speculatory, there's no way to ever really know that. Is speculatory a word?

S: Speculation?

C: Yeah, they are speculation, are they speculatory?

B: Maybe, it sounds like, it sounds right it sounds like it should work.

J: Good to me.

B: But I never heard of it.

J: I understand what you mean, it's a word.

C: Yeah, exactly, there you go.

S: Cara, the other thing is that you can ,that they're very complimentary, because you can communicate vocally without line of sight. But with gestures you need line of sight.

C: Absolutely, so yeah it could be a cross.

S: If you're cooperative hunting and whatever, you might need to like give a communication to a bunch of your compatriots, that may not all be within your visual range. And so yeah I think it makes sense and also you could you can augment the complexity and the nuance of your hand gestures with sounds. There's a related theory here that's from neuroscience, that you know there's a very strong correlation between handed dominant handedness and the dominant hemisphere for language. And it's probably not a coincidence, right? So yeah most of us are right-handed in our left hemisphere dominant for language. And in fact the more right-hand dominant you are, the greater the probability that your language dominance is on the left hemisphere. So there's a pretty, pretty good correlation there. And the thinking is, well that's because you know we're communicating with our right hand the same part of the brain, is can you, you're, right, we're going to use the same part of the brain to communicate, whether it's manually or verbally.

C: Yeah that does make sense. It's interesting because I've always known, and I don't know if the numbers hold from like gosh my memory from ages ago. That whatever the lower percentage of left-hand dominant individuals it's, obviously there's a significant difference there because most people are right-hand dominant. But that within that left-hand dominant group something like 10% of them have flipped brains.

S: No it's more than that. So but it's and it's also, it's a continuum. So if you look at it's like from right-handed to ambidextrous, to left-handed, just the farther you are along that spectrum to right-handedness, the more likely you are. The 100% left-handers are still 20% left hemisphere.

C: Oh it's 20%, okay. It's not 10%, gotcha.

S: Yeah yeah yeah, 27%.

C: Interesting.

S: Yeah but yeah it's very, it's fascinating. I do think you know, you know a lot of people talk with their hands too. I mean there's still a lot of, not even not even counting like American sign language. There is a lot of non-verbal cues in communication and that does include hand gestures. So they're very intimately tied together.

C: Yeah and of course it's it, to some extent it is a highly culture bound some you know, we kind of stereotyped like Italians that's talking more with their hands and other cultures as as using their hands less. But what this interesting experiment granted, is a relatively low end, it was done kind of on a college campus, but, but what this interesting experiment shows is that even when there are pretty significant cultural differences, we can bridge that culture gap. And of course they even cite some early philosophers and writers who you know were traveling the globe and saying if you want to communicate with an you know an indigenous person from a culture very different from your own, the best way you're going to do it is with your hands.

S: That is interesting.

C: Yeah.

Moon Rocks (41:32)

• NASA Studies 50-Year-Old Lunar Sample to Prep for Return to Moon

Plasma Lens (51:43)

• Holographic plasma lenses for ultra-high-power lasers

International Paranormal Conference (1:02:37)

• Rice hosts conference on paranomal [sic] phenomena

Who's That Noisy? (1:08:45)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Pair of Tasmanian devils

New Noisy (1:13:41)

[building up and loud, echoey cracking and popping]

J:... If you have any ideas what that noise is, or if you heard something cool – it could have happened at home, at work, while you were shopping, I actually don't care – but if you heard something cool, you send it in, and I'll play it.

Interview with Michelle Ciulla Lipkin (1:14:40)

• Michelle Ciulla Lipkin is the Executive Director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)

Science or Fiction (1:38:14)

Item #1: Researchers identify two genes that allow people to have full sleep benefits from only 4-6 hours of sleep a night, and as a bonus, protect against the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Item #2: Scientists have developed a tiny EMP protection device that can shunt electricity at up to 6,400 volts in a few billionths of a second. Item #3: A reexamination of data demonstrates that as many as 20% of exoplanets previously validated through the transmit method are instead small stars.

Answer	Item
Fiction	20% of exoplanets are stars!
Science	Tiny E.M.P. protection device
Science	Genes for full sleep benefits

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Bob	20% of exoplanets are stars!
Jay	20% of exoplanets are stars!
Cara	20% of exoplanets are stars!
Evan	20% of exoplanets are stars!

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:50:27)

But my experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.
– Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), 18th president of USA

Signoff (1:51:24)

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
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References

Vocabulary