SGU Episode 880

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SGU Episode 880
May 21st 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 879                      SGU 881
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
This image is a testament to what we can accomplish, when as a global research community, we bring our brightest minds together to make the seemingly impossible, possible. Language, continents, and even the galaxy can't stand in the way of what humanity can accomplish when we come together for the greater good of all.
Sethuraman Panchanathan, Director of the National Science Foundation
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Intro, "Blood Moon", Eclipse 2024, Door on Mars

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

S: ... Did you guys see the door on Mars?

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

S: ... All right, guys, let's go on with our news items.

Health Benefits of Clean Energy (8:42)

• Health Benefits of Clean Energy

SIDS Study Hype (24:04)

• SIDS study shows the risks of science hype

Growing Plants In Lunar Soil (36:32)

• Scientists Grow Plants in Lunar Soil

Milky Way Black Hole (48:01)

• Astronomers Reveal First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy

Gullible Acupuncture Article (55:23)

• Why Acupuncture Is Going Mainstream in Medicine

Who's That Noisy? (1:06:06)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Bird whistle

New Noisy (1:10:25)

[perhaps an oscillating, long, taut cable making strumming, chirping vibrations]

J: ... So if you think you know what this week's Noisy is or if you heard something cool, you have to email that to me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

Email #1: Language and AI (1:12:48)

I'm a new listener to the podcast, and I appreciate the time and hard work you've put in creating this content and doing research. Currently, I work for an AI company that helps the largest companies (the Googles, Facebooks, Amazons of the world) create and deploy their machine learning solutions. It is a groundbreaking industry, which I think you know well enough and highlight on your show. One thing that I specifically appreciated was that you, unlike most other commentators, touched on the fact that there is prevalent bias in these large models. This brings me to my main point, which is that there was a huge emphasis in the latest episode placed on the idea that DALL-E "understands" and "knows" things about the image and contexts within. This is actually a super dangerous idea to perpetuate. While GPT-2/3 is a different technology, I believe that the research outlined in Dr. Timnit Gebru's paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big", is relevant and can speak to the issue better than I ever could, specifically: "However, no actual language understanding is taking place in LM-driven approaches to these tasks, as can be shown by careful manipulation of the test data to remove spurious cues the systems are leveraging [21, 93]. Furthermore, as Bender and Koller [14] argue from a theoretical perspective, languages are systems of signs [37], i.e. pairings of form and meaning. But the training data for LMs is only form; they do not have access to meaning. Therefore, claims about model abilities must be carefully characterized.

I appreciate the consideration and hope that you will be able to find some free time at some point to review Dr. Gebru's paper who, if you are not familiar, was ousted from Google's AI ethics division for bringing up bias issues. [Here is] her full paper.

– Cheers, Noah

Email #2: Eating Raw Foods (1:18:01)

I recently came across this Instagram post of a person just eating raw foods for over a hundred days. Curious as to how much raw food is humanly acceptable to consume?
Cheers from Singapore too!

– Chuan Hao

Science or Fiction (1:21:23)

Theme: Which is bigger? Item #1: The world-wide gaming industry grossed 9.4 times as much revenue in 2021 as the world-wide film industry. Item #2: The largest adult tardigrades are larger than the smallest adult fleas. Item #3: The largest known star in the Universe is UY Scuti, with a radius larger than the average distance of Pluto from the sun.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Largest star
Science	Gaming > film
Science	Tardigrade > flea

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Tardigrade > flea
Jay	Tardigrade > flea
Evan	Largest star
Bob	Largest star

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

Bob's Response

B: ... the Ant-Man [movie], remember when the older guy was shrinking down? ...

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:35:18)

This image is a testament to what we can accomplish, when as a global research community, we bring our brightest minds together to make the seemingly impossible, possible. Language, continents, and even the galaxy can't stand in the way of what humanity can accomplish when we come together for the greater good of all.
– Sethuraman Panchanathan, Director of the National Science Foundation

Signoff/Announcements

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
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary