SGU Episode 919

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SGU Episode 919
February 18th 2023
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SGU 918                      SGU 920
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
QUOTE
AUTHOR, _short_description_
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Show Notes
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Introduction

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. Today is Wednesday, February 15^th, 2023, 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: Good evening folks!

S: We're recording a date early back to our usual Wednesday recording because Cara you're going out of town this weekend. Where are you going?

C: I am. So this weekend I am headed to Portland, Oregon for the conference for the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying. It's actually called the National Clinicians Conference on Medical Aid and Dying. However creative. So NCCMAID is going to be in Portland Oregon this weekend. It's sponsored by the American Clinicians Academy on MAID and also Death with Dignity. And I'm going because of course, I think I've mentioned on the show before, my dissertation topic is an existential... Do you guys want to know the actual title of my dissertation?

B: Yeah, yeah.

S: Sure.

E: Absolutely.

C: It is: Choice and dignity in death. An existential hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry into the psychological experience of Medical Aid in dying.

J: What is hermeneutic?

B: Hermeneutic? I know that word.

E: Who's Herman Nudick?

C: Who's Herman? Herman Nudick?

B: I know that's a great word. I learned that couple of years ago.

C: It is a great word. So hermeneutics is a, it's a discipline, it's a process, it's a methodology but also a theory of interpreting text. So you'll often read about it with respect to like biblical texts or like old philosophical texts. So it comes from philosophy but it's often applied in qualitative psychological research as well. So it's existential hermeneutic and phenomenological. These are just different approaches to doing a qualitative as opposed to a quantitative inquiry. Which is something that I did not know existed before I started my PhD. Every study I've done in the past my undergrad thesis, my master's thesis. Any papers that I've ever been a co-author on they were all quantity creative. Classic quantitative science. This degree or this PhD thesis is very different for me. It's qualitative, so I'm not looking at population level data I'm doing deep dives with individual people to try and get the gist, the qualia, the meat out of their experience. Because Medical Aid in Dying is right now, it's just rare. It's only legal in 11 jurisdictions. 10 states and DC and just not that many people utilize it. So yes there are some population level statistics. We can look at the data and go this many people use it and this many people who use it have this type of cancer but to really get into the why of it all and how of it all, a qualitative investigation is a little bit more meaningful given the landscape, so that's what I'm doing.

J: Cool. That sounds awesome Cara.

C: Yeah yeah, I'm excited.

B: You want to know where I heard of hermeneutics?

C: Where?

B: One of my favorite super short stories by Ted Chiang, Catching crumbs from the table. It actually had to do with metahumans in human society that were creating these amazing inventions and discoveries but they were so far advanced that they really couldn't explain the science to normal people. So normal scientists who were almost out of a job at that point because of all these discoveries that the metahumans were making, they created the hermeneutics interpreting the scientific works of metahumans to try to understand what they can from these metahumans that were beyond comprehension. Fascinating short story. Highly, highly recommended. Very very short by the way, five minute read.

C: And what a great use of that term.

B: Yes.

C: Turning it on its ear but also it's exactly what it is. I love that. And I didn't mention to you guys. We had mentioned before we started rolling. Next week I am leaving to do a trip to the Middle East with a group of psychologists, post-docs and trainees at the University where I am doing my internship right now. So we're going to be traveling to Jordan and spending some time in a university there to help train some students. We're going to be spending time in a shelter for women and children who are victims of violence and then we're also going to be spending I'm assuming the bulk of our time is going to be in a Syrian refugee camp. And we don't know yet about the influx of displaced individuals post earthquake. So there may be, obviously we just have to be kind of light on our feet and there may be some changes to our schedule. But we're going to be there mostly offering assessments and interventions like psychological assessments and interventions for these sensitive populations because they just really don't get nearly enough mental health support. So I will tell you guys obviously all about it when I get back. And I think I will be missing one recording.

S: Right right.

C: While I'm away.

S: So this is like Psychologists Without Borders, that sort of thing?

C: A little bit. Well you know that Doctors Without Borders has a psychologist section and that my hope is that once I'm licensed that's kind of one thing I would like to do with my career is spend some time working for Doctors Without Borders.

S: Yeah we'll definitely look forward to a full report when you get back.

C: Yeah.

Quickie with Jay (5:23)

• US shooting down UFOs is a 'deadly mistake' - Uri Geller 

S: Jay you're going to start us off with a quickie. We're going to give a little bit of an update about all these UFOs the government is shooting down.

E: Boom boom boom like Space Invaders, right?

J: So as you guys know, UFOs have been in the news again and oddly and sadly and and with a huge head of frustration they're growing in interest again. We've seen a lot of things change in the last 20 years since the internet. You get a couple of air balloons up there and the next thing you know the whole world is going nuts like thinking that they're from another planet or whatever. So what has happened recently if you haven't been reading the news is that there was a Chinese balloon, they claimed that it was a weather balloon but the U.S claims that it was a spy balloon. And the U.S shot it down and then there were three other. We can't call them balloons. I'm calling them airships. Three other things that the U.S has recently shot down. People are talking about it. There's been a lot of talk about whether or not these are alien spacecraft for Christ's sake. So what's going on here? So there's a little history behind actually the modern sentiment towards UFOs/UAPs whatever the hell you want to call them. This goes back to a U.S senator named Harry Reid about 15 years ago. Reid was very interested in UFOs and he started allocating budget so the Pentagon would have more more money to spend studying the "issue".

C: Really?

J: Yeah.

C: So that is Harry Reid?

E: Yeah Harry Reid.

S: Yeah, that's true.

E: He has been a long proponent of the extraterrestrial.

C: And it was from an extraterrestrial perspective, not like a we need military like I'm very concerned other you know, this is a-

J: It was kind of like a pet project of his, he was interested-

C: But he was interested because he thought they were aliens?

E: Because of alien, right. Aliens.

C: Not because it's a national security issue.

J: Yes.

E: Right.

J: Good clarification.

J: That's good. It was good, that's a good point. I didn't realize that it was unclear there. Yes this guy seems to be a UFO nut. Okay so in 2020 the U.S Navy released several videos that showed footage of UAPs. You guys remember this? We talked about this on the show. UAP means unidentified anomalous phenomenon-menonenon. So that happened in 2020 and then in 2021 the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is in the United States, released an assessment of the government's files on UAPs. And in short this report didn't give the true believers the smoking gun that they wanted causing even more suspicion that the US government was hiding something. So there's this massive belief that the US is hiding all of this proof. And it's all coming out now, right Steve?

S: It's all coming in. I did hear an interview with with someone who was representing the government who said about the three, not the Chinese spy balloon but the three subsequent balloons that they shot down or whatever they are. They said that you know we're still investigated, at this point we only know one thing they're not aliens. That's the only thing she was willing to commit to.

J: So now you fast forward to today. US Government, they shutdown the Chinese spy balloon. They shot down these three other unidentified airships and there's a lack of information from the government on all these things because that's what they have to do. Anybody that's reasonable isn't going to be like how can they not tell us every single detail about all this stuff. It's very likely that there's something sensitive when it comes to national security with all this stuff. So they're not going to come out giving all their information which is a ridiculous idea to begin with. Because they're not being incredibly open about everything that there has, and there's any reason to think that probably the most unlikely thing that could happen in the world of physics would be an alien finding Earth, traveling to Earth and then remarkably and ridiculously letting balloons. Is this the height of alien technology? Is balloon technology?

B: Remarkable.

J: Right Bob? I mean if they came here they wouldn't be sending balloons into our atmosphere guys. It would be something cool.

S: But the thing is for the last 50 years or more they've been saying that why haven't they revealed themselves to us. Well they're biding their time. They're softening us up and letting us get used to the idea for 50 years. Of course they always think like they're just about to come out but it never ever happens because they don't exist.

E: See the pattern? See?

J: And as much as I would be horrified if aliens did visit the Earth there would be something extraordinarily remarkable about it and I'm not, I can't say I'm like, I mean am I against it? I don't know. I mean I guess in the big scheme of things I'd rather have it not happen because of the potential threat to the earth.

S: This it would it would either be the best or worst thing that ever happened to us.

E: As Carl Sagan said though. When it happens you'll have no doubt about what is going on.

S: Right.

E: It will not be mistaken for a balloon.

B: No subtle anal probes.

E: No blobsquatch. Right it's not gonna be anything like that. It's gonna be something more like maybe Independence Day for example. In which you have these 15 mile long ships overhead.

B: Although they won't be doing what those ships did because that was really stupid.

E: We hope not.

C: Because it was stupid.

E: We hope not. We hope not.

S: More like Arrival I would say.

J: And then, not that I want to talk about this schmuck but Uri Geller then opens up his mouth and is, I can't even understand what his point is.

B: He's still alive?

J: Yeah he's still alive.

S: But Jay he is a self-professed UFO expert.

J: Yeah.

S: So there you go.

J: I know it, yeah, don't doubt what he says.

C: This is the psychic surgery guy, right?

S: No not psychic surgery.

E: Spoon bender.

S: Spoon bender.

E: And the metal bender.

E: The mediocre close-up magician who presents himself as a psychic.

C: Gotcha gotcha gotcha.

J: Yeah. So what we have here is a very interesting situation where there's a lot of hardware up in the sky. That's basically it. That's what we're dealing with.

S: Yeah but the reports are that at any given moment there are thousands of balloons high altitude balloons with scientific experiments and other civilian stuff going on. As well as government stuff going on but totally benign. At any given time there's thousands up there.

E: Not to mention the runner away party balloon which does happen and does get mistaken as alien craft. Mick West did a video recently on just that in which this, someone was shooting video out of a, someone on a commercial airline. So they what, they traveled about 35-38 000 feet?

B: Something like that.

E: And something went, they had their phone on. They were recording out the window. Something went zipping by, oh my gosh, what was that at 38 000 feet? Well Mick West and his people were able to basically analyze the video and it was a party balloon. In fact they found the website in which the cells that exact party balloon "Happy graduation" or whatever it said on it. But when you're up at that altitude, you're going that fast and you're passing something at those speeds of 400-500 miles per hour and it goes zipping by-yeah you could mistake something like that easily as some sort of alien craft that's zipped by your plane.

C: Right because when you hear hooves think aliens.

E: But my point is even these party balloons can get up to the altitudes, cruising altitudes for commercial planes which approaches not quite but up to 40 000 feet.

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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

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References

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