SGU Episode 736
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| SGU Episode 736 |
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| August 17th 2019 |
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"Vibrant green bananas, fresh from the tree, ready for harvest and enjoyment!" |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
"Scientific thinking is being inquisitive, skeptical, and taking nothing for granted. Prestige, fame, success are irrelevant. Perfect theories are irrelevant. The smallest piece of contradictory evidence can refute your grand unifying theory. And science encompasses all that. It is an emergent concept. And this is what is self-correcting." |
Sam Schwarzkopf, cognitive and systems neuroscientist, blogger (NeuroNeurotic Blog) |
| Links |
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| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro[edit]
Voiceover:You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 14th, 2019, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, Hey everybody! Jay Novella, Hey guys! and Evan Bernstein. Good evening folks! No Cara this week because she just moved into a new home and she has no internets yet.
US#01:So I talked to Cara today. She called me with a very funny story. She's like, Jay, you got to hear this. She wants me to tell you guys tonight.
S:So she ends up calling the LADWP, which is the Department of Water and Power. No way. Really? Oh, that wasn't it? All right, keep going. This guy, Elmer Romero, ends up helping her on the phone. She's creating the account, and he finally gets to the point where he's like, so what's your name? And she says, Cara Santa Maria.
J:And he's like, what? Aren't you on that podcast? That's my favorite podcast. So the guy tells her that he listens to the show, and he's been listening for 10 years. And Cara just thought that was awesome. It was really adorable hearing her tell me the story back because she just got off the phone with the guy. Yeah, the random encounters were always fun.
S:Totally out of context, completely random. Definitely.
J:So I'll give you guys a quick follow-up. So I was away on a family vacation, and I told you guys I was going to go indoor skydiving. Do you remember this? I do remember that. It didn't happen. All lies. Lies. It was outdoor skydiving. Apparently, that was the distraction, so I was off the trail because it was my birthday last week. It turns out that they took me to go see... That's cruel.
S:I know, because I was really looking forward to it, but what we ended up doing was even better.
J:They took me to go see Billy Joel in concert. Oh, shit. I had so much fun.
E:It was really awesome. He is 70 years old, and this guy can still do it all. All of it. Singing, playing, everything.
J:He was awesome. He's funny. He's really, really charming and self-deprecating in a really familiar kind of northeastern kind of way. He's very New York-y. You know what I mean? So very quick, before we go on to—we have a new segment that Bob is going to be trying this week. Before we go on to that, last week we were talking about food origins, and I jokingly said that pizza was invented in New Haven, and I got a couple emails about that. Obviously, it wasn't serious, but it did end up inspiring me to investigate what the actual history of pizza was. It went down the pizza hole. I went down the pizza rabbit hole. So just very quickly, because pizza is a very important food.
S:I mean, come on, let's face it. So I always find this interesting that there's no clean answer because there's no clear definition of where you draw the line as to what counts as pizza, right? True. So, if you include any flatbread with stuff on top, then who knows, right?
E:Maybe it was Greece, it was probably multiple places.
S:That's the kind of thing that's hard to track down. But if you say, all right, what about, you know, flatbread with cheese and sauce? That probably was invented in Naples. And that's called a Pizza Napolitano, right? Pizza, a Neapolitan pizza. That was brought to the United States by Italian Americans. The New Haven Pizza was opened in 1925 by Pepe, Pepe's Pizza, and he was from Naples, but he innovated New Haven-style pizza Napolitano. It's the Neapolitan pizza with sauce and cheese, but with a very crunchy, thin crust. Thanks for watching. The New York style and New Haven style pizza are very similar. I actually have to say I prefer New York style pizza. I don't know about you guys. New Haven style is great. It's fantastic, but New York I think is a little bit better. What's the subtle difference between the two?
E:It's the New York is less crunchy.
S:The crust is less. If you go if you go to Pepe's Pizza is still open. I've been there. You go to Pepe's Pizza today. It's a great pizza, but the crust is really crunchy. Oh, yeah. Pepe's is amazing. I mean, you know, Steve, when you get into that league. Yeah. It's like, you know, they're both so awesome. You know, I've had tons and tons of amazing pizza in lots of different places in New England, but. Peppe's, we go every month. Peppe's is just ridiculously good. But you like it to be a little bit more bready.
E:Yeah, I like it bready.
S:I like it bready. But not deep dish. I'm not crazy about deep dish, Chicago style pizza. But I have to say, we were at Nexus a couple of years ago.
J:And it was late at night. We were looking for something to eat. We walked into some random pizza place, and I had the best freaking slice of pizza in my life. This was just, you know, random New York pizza. Sure, man. Pizza Manhattan. It was fantastic. I know. It was just so—it was epic. It was absolutely epic.
S:The joke is, and it's probably true, like, if you're in New York City and you're selling freaking pizza, Like, think about how many pizza joints there are in New York. If you're going to be anywhere that people are going to find you with foot traffic, you have to be serving good pizza. Yes. You can't serve crappy pizza and survive in Manhattan. You can't survive.
US#02:True.
S:Yeah. Absolutely. I've had some amazing pizza in Brooklyn as well. Oh, my God. It was almost life-changing. So I have an interesting thing that, you know, I go to Colorado, you know, maybe once a year or twice a year to go see my sister and brother-in-law and their family.
J:How's their pizza out there? Well, it's not good and everybody knows it. And a big part of it is last year, as an example, I made homemade pasta and meatballs, right?
B:And I make homemade sauce. It took me over a day to cook the sauce.
J:Because of what?
B:The air pressure. The air pressure is different. Oh, yeah. Cooking temperatures are different at the altitude.
J:So me and my brother-in-law, Scott, both have the same tea kettle that we use to make pour-over coffee. I can get mine easily up to 212 degrees.
E:His doesn't go above 204.
J:Yeah, because of the air pressure. That's funny. Because of the air pressure. So you can't get food as hot. That is definitely a factor in all sorts of cooking. Pressure cookers, baby. Interesting. I just think there's differences that change the chemistry.
E:You know, when you're cooking, you're essentially just changing the chemistry of the food.
J:The other thing is the water. The minerals and whatever you would find in the water that changes the properties of the water, I think has a big effect as well. Yeah, like New York bagels probably has something to do with the water. I don't know, but they're great. But every now and then you find somebody who learned how to make some quintessential dish from their region, and then they move somewhere else and export. Like we found a place once, remember, these guys that could make New York bagels in Florida? And they were great. They were New York bagels. They were great. I've had some New York cuisine in Las Vegas, which has been excellent.
S:Yeah, but it's still not as good as New York, though. For whatever reason, it's still not as good. It's worth a trip. If you haven't been to the Big Apple, you got to go there. Go there just to eat the bagels and the pizza. Go to Arthur Avenue. Go to Arthur Avenue. Oh, boy. And bring the big pants, right, Jay? The ones with the extra ... That extra inch around there. Go in knowing that you're just going to be blowing yourself out.
E:All right, let's go on. So Bob, your number's up, kid.
Your Numbers Up (07:56)[edit]
Graham’s Number None
E:So Bob, your number's up, kid.
S:What is this? That's a tentative name of Bob's new segment. Bob's new segment is your number's up? Bob, your number's up. Okay, what is this about? So I'll tell you, Jay, this new segment is about numbers.
E:I love numbers. One specific number for each time I do it.
S:So these numbers will usually be historically iconic, immensely useful and important to mathematics, physics, chemistry, or perhaps meaningful only to me. Hopefully they'll all be fascinating and informative, or at least entertaining.
J:So for my premiere episode, I will say, so what's your favorite number, guys?
B:What's your favorite number? And be quick about it. Twelve.
E:Thirteen. Five.
B:OK, so you see, most everyone has one, right? They didn't really even have to think. There's usually some personal reason why it resonates with you. Now, I love the macabre and I'm also amused and frustrated with silly fears that people have about some numbers. So therefore, I love the numbers 13 and 666. They are my go to top five favorite numbers of all time. Thank you for joining us. This number, it's a number that's very specific. It has a name, and it was actually used seriously in a mathematical proof, so that would distinguish it from a lot of other numbers that you could throw out. I think, you know, it's kind of an important distinction for a number that's on your favorite list. This is called Graham's number. It's so big and fascinating. I think it will actually surprise you in a lot of ways. Graham's number is named after mathematician Ronald Graham. He is the chief scientist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. Graham's number itself was calculated by Graham as the upper bound answer related to a problem in a branch of mathematics called Ramsey's theory. Now, Ramsey theory is a branch of mathematics concerning the conditions when order has to appear in a system. So, for example, problems in Ramsey's theory often ask questions like, how many elements of some structure must be there to be guaranteed that a particular property will hold? So, for example, show that any party with at least six people will contain a group of three mutual friends or a group of three mutual non-friends. That's kind of like what you would encounter in this theory. Now Graham wasn't concerned with this party problem necessarily. He was concerned with bichromatic hypercubes, higher dimensional cubes that are colored with different colors and the order that's related to that. So I won't go into details about that. It's pretty heady stuff. But at the time of its introduction by famous mathematician Martin Gardner, it was the largest specific positive integer ever used in a published mathematical proof. This number was also published in the 1980 version of the Guinness Book of World Records, which brought it to a lot of people's attention. So, I was trying to think of ways, you know, how do you even imagine this number? It's so beyond gargantuan that it really, you can never be fully appreciated. And you can't even, you can't even write this number down. It's so big that you have to use a specific notation to even write it. You just can't like throw in exponents or anything like that to try to Thank you for joining us today. They know that, they know that. But the number itself is so gargantuan that you need a special, you need a way to communicate it, a concise way.
E:So they have a scientist named Knuth came up with an arrow called, it's arrow up notation.
B:It's just an arrow pointing up. That's pretty much it right there. So this is how it works. It's kind of like... us exponents, but on megasteroids beyond all imagination. So you got the up arrow. So for example, three up arrow three. So that equals three to the third power. Very simple, right? Three times three times three, 27. So now let's throw in another up arrow. So three up arrow up arrow three. So we got two arrows in the middle. That's three to the third power To the third power, so three to the third is 27, and three to the 27th power is 7.6 trillion, a little bit more than 7.6 trillion. So we've gone up, we've added one arrow, and we've gone from 27 to 7.6 trillion. So that's kind of the progression that you need to kind of embrace when you're adding arrows to this notation, okay? So how about three, arrow, arrow, arrow? The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria, Well, that's a long podcast, but okay.
E:So we know now how big of a leap. Just by adding one up arrow, we know what kind of leaps we're talking about.
B:So now we go to three with four up arrows, three. Okay? You got two threes and in between them, you got four up arrows. That number is the first step that you need to have when calculating Gram's number. That's called G1 for, I guess, Gram's number one. That's the first step. So, three, four up arrows, three.
E:We know that's a number that's beyond comprehension already. That's G1.
B:But then when you go to the next step, what you have is three and then a G1 number of arrows, three. So, do you follow that one? Yeah, sure. So the number of arrows is so big that it's the G1 number of arrows, which is a number that we still, we probably can't really express hardly very well at all anyway. And then, so you keep going up. Then you take the next level, you take three G2 number of arrows, three. And then you keep going that way until it's G3, G4. And finally, when you get to G64, that's Graham's number right there. It's so beyond immense that it's... Alright, let me see if I can explain it this way. How big is that? You couldn't fit it into the universe. So I heard one mathematician describe it this way, and I like this description. If you wrote that number down on a piece of paper, you would literally fill the observable universe with paper and you still wouldn't even be close. Yeah, but what about recycling? You know, like that would be... Yeah, that's a huge recycling issue. You might need to use other multiverses. All right, here's one more. This one I love. This one I love. Because there's a maximum amount of entropy that can be stored in your head, if you pictured Gram's number in your head, it would collapse into a black hole. Thanks for watching! Thanks for watching! Of course there are.
J:Of course there are. Jay, if you remember earlier in my talk, these numbers are specific and they have a name and they've been used in a proof. So infinity plus three is not in anybody's proof.
B:So that's why those numbers are boring. They're just boring. So here's another one that I'm just going to throw out and I'll quickly describe. This is called tree three. Look it up. It's fascinating. It's tree and then three in parentheses.
J:So this is so big that Graham's number is essentially zero next to it.
B:And this has also been used in a mathematical proof. I'll give one description of it. It's so big compared to Graham's number. How big is it? How big is it that if you had a Graham's number number of people and all of them had a piece of tree three in their heads, all of their heads would collapse into a black hole. That's how big that number is. How could numbers collapse into a black hole? In other words, if your brain were big enough that it had enough processing power to hold that number in their head, it would be so big it would collapse into a black hole. Okay, that I get. That's what I said. That's what I basically said.
S:Evan, check on this number.
B:Evan, check this number out. Seahorse 7. How about that? Uh, rook to kings, bishop three, and, uh, you know, square root of negative one. Bob, I have one question for you. Yeah, Jay.
E:Why do we need numbers that are so big that we can't even think about them?
S:Well, I mean, we don't, Jay, this is a, like I said, this isn't a random arbitrary number. This is a number that was used in a proof to give the upper bound.
B:Now, this problem in Ramsey's theory that they're trying to
S:To have the solution to, the number is this.
J:The number, the answer, they know what the answer is.
E:The answer is between 11 and Graham's number.
J:So that's why Graham came up with this number, because he gave, he determined, he calculated in a very elegant way that the solution to this hard problem has got to be between 11 and Graham's number.
B:So they've got to really narrow it down then. Well, it's... They've eliminated 1 through 10. Yes, it's a huge range, it's beyond huge, but the interesting thing is that he knows, he showed in a proof that it could not be one digit greater than Graham's number, and that's an accomplishment, and it's just a fascinating thing that he came up with, one of the biggest numbers, and it was the biggest number ever used in a proof like that until Tree3 came around and took the prize. Yeah, but Bob, Seahorse 7, man. Seahorse 7.
E:That number is so, it's crazy.
B:Yeah, you must describe how that nomenclature works for me, Jay, because I'm skeptical that it's bigger than James' number. Oh, here's how it works, Bob. You take a word and you throw a number in the back of it, and you come up with a new number. All right, I must stop these inane comments with my closer. This was Bob, your number's up. I hope you enjoy it more than when your number's up. What? Oh my God.
US#11:That closer might change. It's a work in progress.
B:Bob, now I can see why you're no longer doing quickie with Bobs, because you've lost your cool factor and you're just not having sex anymore.
E:It's quickies with Bob, not a quickie with Bobs.
B:Good point, Steven. Jay, say that again, but say it in a funny way. Okay, sick. I love that voice.
J:I like Graham's number. Alright Jay, how much longer am I going to be able to enjoy my bananas?
News Item #1 - Banana Fungus (19:34)[edit]
J:Alright Jay, how much longer am I going to be able to enjoy my bananas? Only for Seahorse 7. I know that's depressing. I clearly remember Steve predicting that the Cavendish banana has a questionable future, and this is due to a fungus, and I didn't believe him.
B:I didn't believe it meaning like, oh, that'll never happen, or that's like 100 years away.
S:Nope. This is called Panama disease, tropical race four, or TR4 for short. Jay, what is a Cavendish banana? What is it? The Cavendish banana, well, it's this, Bob, you know, I can't just answer that question.
J:It's complicated. We've talked about this. Well, Cavendish is a specific variety of banana that we currently, you know, the vast majority of people on the earth are eating the Cavendish banana because of a lot of properties that it has. But let me get into it because I have to unravel this a little bit. I know a lot of listeners know all about our banana talk and Steve trying to and epically failing at growing bananas in New England, but let me unravel this a little bit that we can get into that. So the fungus has been hitting plantations in the eastern hemisphere, and even though banana growers have been doing everything they can to prevent the spread, the fungus has finally found its way to the Americas, and this is really bad news. So, the fungus was identified in the early 1990s in Taiwan, and they were able to confine it to Southeast Asia and Australia until 2013, where it was found in both the Middle East and Africa. Which, you know, like you think about like they're trying to contain a fungus. This is complicated. You know, they don't want to ship a banana that has fungus spores on it, right? They don't want to like have the plant infest the rest of the planet. But, you know, we have a problem with this type of thing with lots of different products, not just bananas. But let me continue. So as as of this summer, the Colombian Agriculture and Livestock Authority have confirmed through laboratory testing that they have positively identified TR4 on banana farms in the Caribbean coastal region. They even declared a national state of emergency because of how serious this could be for their economy, and I did not know this. I didn't know that their economy- Is there an antifungal that they have to treat- No, nope. No. The core problem here- Oh, wow. Now, listen to this, guys. I didn't know this next thing, and this is important. The real problem that we're seeing here is that bananas are not just an export commodity, but that employs a ton of people. It's a staple crop. Millions of people. It is a primary source of nutrition for a vast amount of people around the world. And you know, once they've spotted this fungus on a plant, it's already too late. Once the farmers go up, there's the fungus.
US#06:It's too late. The tree has got it and you can't get rid of it.
J:In this circumstance, the fruits are still edible all the way up until the plant just stops producing fruit. And that's what happens. The plants stop producing fruit. And that's the problem here. Steve, is that what happened to all your banana plants all these years? No. No, my cats peed on my banana plants. They peed on a hell of a lot more than Steve's freaking banana plants, but you don't have to get into that. Scientists have been working on a fungicide. Would you say fungicide, fungicide, Steve? Anti-fungicide. Fungicide. They've been working on it for a long time, and they haven't found anything that's effective. The only thing that's helped was containing the fungus. But they don't think that they're ever going to be able to eradicate it, which is really sad.
S:Now, I know that Steve knows the answer to this next question, but why do you guys think one fungus is so damn effective at destroying the Cavendish... The monoculture, right?
J:Exactly, Bob. Right on the nose. Evan, I'm disappointed. Totally disappointed. The Gros Michel. What about the Gros Michel?
S:Let me get to that.
J:Yeah, just kidding. The answer is simple, though. The Cavendish banana is exclusively from one clonal variety. And this means that every banana that you eat, every Cavendish banana that you've ever ate in your entire life is a clone of every single other one that you've ever eaten in your entire life. So their genetics are identical, which means that they're also susceptible to the same freaking diseases. And this is the problem. And as Bob said, this is called a monoculture.
E:So why did big banana agriculture... Is there a big banana, Steve?
J:Yeah, sure.
E:Why did they decide to do this?
J:Well, this is a fun and interesting reason behind this. The Cavendish was a fantastic replacement for the banana that came before it, which is the Gros Michel, right? So this same thing happened to that banana. That banana died of something called race one fungus. And they were like, what are we going to do? And they're like, well, we have the Cavendish. It's not as delicious and it's not as good, but the Cavendish will actually meet all of our requirements. And those requirements are pretty hefty like that. The banana has to be able to be mass grown. It has to be able to be transported without spoiling. It has to ripen when it gets to market. It has to be hardy enough to withstand different regional places for it to grow. There's lots of reasons when they pick a fruit to do a specific thing, or maybe they even selectively breed a fruit to have certain properties. But the Cavendish was able to replace the Gros Michel, but now since the TR4 has taken root, this new fungus, it's starting to wipe out the Cavendish. And there are thousands of varieties of bananas out there, but none of them, maybe a handful, have a lot of good properties that would be able to meet some of the requirements that we need. But there isn't a simple one to pop over to now that's going to satisfy all the things. And one of the things, of course, is the palette of the people who eat it. Now, we've been eating Cavendish bananas for so long, some of us, maybe that's the only banana they've ever had. That is banana. That's banana. You know, it's like you can't You can't change that. And I'll tell you what, the other thing is it's not like, you know, when you eat an apple, there's so many varieties of apples and you can get your hands on a lot of variety of apples. I like apples. I do too. In New England, you can get lots of different apples. You know, they can go to local farms and you can get your hands on apples that you can't even get in the supermarket. Yeah, we're going this Saturday, by the way, guys. Oh, I'll go with you, Steve. Yeah, then we can pick the Golden Crisp. Thanks for watching! Every banana you've had tastes just like every other banana, like there is no, the variability in the flavor is, if there is... Well, Cavendish, when you say banana, you mean Cavendish.
S:Yeah, the Cavendish. Just to be clear, there's like, there's plenty of, there's many, many different cultivars of banana around the world, and most of the staple, you know, bananas that people are eating are not Cavendish, and they're not even dessert bananas, they're, there's more like starchy, plantain type bananas.
J:Yeah, so, but the Cavendish banana is super consistent in its flavor and texture and everything. Like you could just go through, you can go to a banana in any place, like just, you know, because I live in the United States, I'm familiar with the United States, of course.
S:So you could buy a banana in New York, you could buy a banana in L.A. or somewhere in the Midwest, and they're going to taste the same. Unlike pizza, yeah. Right. That's right. What's sad is that we're not going to be able to get an easy replacement for this.
J:They're saying that it's a blight and it's really hitting bananas hard. But the first thing we're going to see is that prices are going to start to go up. And man, bananas are super cheap. Do you realize how cheap bananas are for how far they have to ship these things and the work that it takes? This is something that has to be sold in a massive amount in order for it to be a worthy crop. If bananas went up to be like two bucks a pop, forget about it. I'm not going to spend $20 on bananas when I go to the store. And then there is an obvious question here. What about genetically modifying them? From what I'm reading here, They're not doing it because they are assuming that the global population is not going to want to eat a GMO banana. Well, hold on. They've already done it, Jay. There are researchers in Australia who have already made a GMO Cavendish banana that looks to be pretty much 100% resistant to the Fusarium fungus, which is the one that's causing the Panama disease. So, yeah, it's just a matter of approving it and marketing it. They tweaked that banana to be resistant to the fungus, and that's it. Yeah. Well, there's two different kinds. There's one, they borrowed genes from other banana varieties that are resistant to the fungus.
S:And then in the other one, they took genes from a nematode. What's that? A nematode. Parasite. Oh, great, Steve. So these bananas are now going to be like sucking the brains out of the people that eat them. The jiggling brains, Jay. Alright, that's great. I'm glad that you see this. Of course Steve knows more about this.
E:I didn't find anything about that. He subscribes to Banana Weekly, Jay.
S:We've talked about that before. Why don't they genetically engineer Gros Michel? That's my question. That's exactly right. They should. Partly, I think, because the industry now is geared around the Cavendish, but you're right, Bob.
J:Why the hell, if you could make a GMO Cavendish that's resistant to the Panama disease, then make a freaking GMO Gros Michel.
E:Thank you.
J:Listen, if City of Heroes can come back, they can come back and grow a Michel, and that's it. I'm done talking about this. So look, guys, please go to the supermarket, buy some bananas, and enjoy them because, you know, legit, we could have a problem with bananas.
E:Yeah.
S:You got any of you guys watching that show on HBO years and years? No. Nope. No. It's interesting, you know, it goes through like the next 10 years. I think it ends around 2030, and it's a pretty dark look at our near future. Great.
J:Not much of an extrapolation. It's just extrapolating from what's going on now, but not in a good way. But as an offhand comment, it's like 2028, and somebody's mentioning that, yeah, well, we don't have bananas anymore. So yeah, that's probably a reasonable timeline, you know?
S:If this keeps going the way it is, now that it's in South America, that's it. We're screwed. That's where all of our bananas come from, guys. Yep, I know. It's really weird. We just take so much for granted. I don't want my kids to not enjoy bananas. Bananas? This could happen to any crop. Steve, get to work on your New England variety of bananas. Any monoculture crop, for sure. Well, that's the other thing is that we shouldn't just replace the Cavendish with another monoculture because that's not sustainable. We really need to diversify the dessert banana for export, you know, infrastructure. So we have Gros Michel and Cavendish.
J:And let's make another dozen varieties that are, you know, I don't care, red ones, little ones, the apple bananas, like all kinds of bananas, make them so that they're good for transport.
B:But there's a lot of variety. We can't have this monoculture. It's not sustainable.
S:All right, Evan. Yeah. Man, the Epstein conspiracies are flying.
News Item #2 - Epstein Conspiracies (30:39)[edit]
S:Man, the Epstein conspiracies are flying. Flying. What's going on here? They're flying, all right. Yeah, it's a person I've been aware of for a very long time, 10 years or more. I've kind of been following the story of him. Although, ironically, if you ask people, most people, a couple months ago, I'm not sure that many of them even knew who he was. Once you get arrested by federal agents for sex trafficking charges in two states, that will make people pay attention, and that is exactly certainly what happened.
E:The problem with the Jeffrey Epstein saga is that it is a saga. It has origins that go back to Details of how he amassed his fortune are sketchy. It's being investigated, but he was worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, or at least billions of dollars at one point. He was not only rich, he was what you could, I think, generously call a person who had passions for very specific things, and science was one of them. Before he got into the world of finance, he was a teacher in the mid-1970s. He taught physics and mathematics. Now his eventual rise in wealth, which came after that, along with the social status that came along with it, because he was not born into wealth, he became wealthy on his own. He worked his way into circles with some of the top names in science popularization He was a very generous philanthropist to scientific institutions, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars over the past two decades. His Jeffrey Epstein Virgin Island Foundation was the vehicle he established to help fund scientists, their research, and their institutions. Now, he also had a passion for politics as well. He hosted parties, fundraisers, donated to politicians, political figures across party lines. In the United States, that means both Democrats and Republicans. And he ran in the circle of friends in what could be considered the cultural elite, movie stars, major musical artists, royal family members, among others. But his most infamous and certainly lurid and criminal passion was his affection and lust for girls, teenage girls. And that's why in April, 2005, It was when the investigations began into him. A parent complained that he molested their 14-year-old daughter. Long, lengthy investigation, it led to his eventual pleading guilty to a charge of procuring an underage girl for prostitution. That came down in 2008, and he served 13 months in custody with work release as part of a plea deal. We've heard some stories about that as well, how it was kind of a sweet plum deal he got. Unbelievable. It should not have happened. Unprecedented. Suspiciously sweet. Suspiciously sweet. It's part of the long story. Even though at the time federal officials had identified 36 girls, 14 years old or underage, 14 to 17 years old, and they claimed that they were molested. That's what happened. Within these allegations lie the seeds of the conspiracy. There you have the background. There's a lot more, but that's just the very broad, broad strokes, so you kind of know where we are. Now, come to current times. July 6, 2019, Epstein gets arrested on the federal charges for sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. This is a federal case. He's being held without bail in Manhattan Correctional Center, or the MCC. And it was suspected that he tried to kill himself in there on July 23rd. There are unsubstantiated reports that Epstein claims he was attacked by another inmate, but that's in direct conflict to other reports that he tried to take his own life. There's been no official determination to what happened on July 23rd. But he was treated for his injuries and placed for six days on suicide watch. He was taken off of suicide watch on July 29th and then moved to a wing within the MCC, a housing unit, and he was put in there with another inmate on August 9th. The day before his death, the other inmate was removed, so Epstein was alone in his cell overnight from August 9 to the morning of August 10, and the people at the MCC facility were assigned to monitor the unit's prisoners, Epstein among them. The facility people, the guards or whomever was in charge of watching him, supposedly fell asleep. Huge, huge, huge mistake. They were supposed to be checking on Epstein every 30 minutes, but it's now come out that They were asleep and for several hours he went unmonitored. That's when they found him, just after six in the morning, August 10th. He was unconscious in his cell. They attempted to revive him in the cell. It was unsuccessful. They brought him to the hospital. They couldn't revive him there. He was pronounced dead by apparent suicide. There it is, the news breaks, and then I learned about it sort of as the news broke. I got a little blurb on it that came up in Alert. So I went right to my computer and I started looking around and I would say within an hour or two, not even, less than one hour, out come the conspiracy theories. They were ready to go with this one. It's almost, in a way, that they were just waiting for the moment to happen so that they could let these things fly. So of course, the one I saw first, The Clintons got him, right? For those of us unfamiliar with it, there's a set of political conspiracies all revolving around the Clintons. It's so-called the Clinton body count, which is a running list of associates of Bill and Hillary Clinton who have supposedly died under mysterious circumstances over the past couple decades. Each of them taking disturbing political secrets and knowledge of crimes with them to their graves. Of course, because of Epstein's prior dealings or associations with Bill Clinton, he automatically becomes part of that list, and that continues the Clinton body count. It's not going to end with Jeffrey Epstein, so this just adds fuel to that fire. But right on the heels of that one, no, Clinton didn't get him. Trump got him. The most powerful man in the world. His Attorney General's office was the one who okayed Epstein's removal from the suicide watch and so basically set him up so that he could either take his life or his life could be taken. But somehow Trump was the one who orchestrated this one. So that's another conspiracy that's out there. Oh, here's another one. Epstein was an FBI informant or a CIA asset, maybe both. Perhaps it was the reason why he, back in 2008, got such a sweet deal because of cooperation in some capacity. And if anyone has the means to see someone dead, wouldn't it be the FBI or CIA? So that one's out there. Oh, here's another one, guys. Mossad. That's the Israeli version, Israel's equivalent of the CIA. Epstein's accused of being a Mossad asset, a Jewish man, former ties to the Israeli political class and the Israeli scientific community. There's pictures of him with politicians from Israel, and he's given money to scientists and scientific organizations in Israel. If you The word of Epstein's death made it to the message board 30 to 40 minutes before an official announcement was made, and that is being investigated to see if a first responder may have leaked some information ahead of time or so on from the MCC. But it's more than that because they're suggesting that someone witnessed that someone in military uniforms came in at four in the morning, wheeled him out of there in chains on a gurney, and replaced him with a look-alike cadaver. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Like Stranger Things. But Steve, it's on 4chan. Season one. Stranger Things. Yeah, Bob, exactly. Yeah. So I mean, there's actually an interesting discussion, because I did write about this as well. And in the comments, there's a lot of people asking, so how crazy is it to speculate that there may be a hidden story going on here to not believe the official version of what we're being told? Because, you know, it's not a grand conspiracy. It's, you know, literally, you know, a few people would have had to have been involved.
S:Somebody paid one of the guards to look the other way, you know, or whatever. So it's not inherently implausible that something untoward could have happened. But at the same time, there's absolutely no reason to think that there was any conspiracy or anything going on. So the story that we're being told is the simplest explanation of the facts that we do have. He was found hanged, apparently. Autopsy said he died of hanging. There was no evidence of foul play on the autopsy. The official version is pending, interviewing the guards and stuff like that, which is a stand-up procedure. The guards were overworked. One of the guards was on his fifth straight night of overtime. Another guard was a substitute. There's a question about whether or not they were properly trained. They basically just fell asleep on the job because they were overworked. And the jail is understaffed for various reasons. And so it's, you know, yeah, this is what happens. It's a series of unfortunate events that – It does not require any extraordinary explanation. Great show. It really doesn't. There's certainly no evidence for any of these specific conspiracies, and I do think it is absurd to think that the president or the Clintons were involved. That's just silly. So, until anyone can produce anything specific, you know, the fact that, and of course, this guy had every reason to commit suicide, and when people are waiting to be arraigned, statistically is when they're at the highest risk for suicide. They haven't yet acclimated to the idea that they're going to be in prison. This guy, you know, could certainly be thinking that the lifestyle, you know, to which he had grown accustomed was certainly never going to be his again. And this seemed to be the quick way out. So I think all we could say is at this point in time, There is no need for a conspiracy theory. The explanation makes perfect sense. But it wouldn't be impossible if there was more to this story and that there was something, you know, it is possible that Epstein had dirt on people that he preferred to take to the grave or somebody wanted him to take to the grave. That's not in and of itself crazy. We have no reason to think that that's actually what happened. But if we focus on the death, It doesn't require anything crazy to speculate on.
E:So have you guys ever heard of Weber's Law?
News Item #3 - Weber’s Law (43:06)[edit]
E:So have you guys ever heard of Weber's Law?
E:Yeah, I think so. Is that like Avogadro's number? No. Weber's Law. I had not heard of it until recently. It's actually pronounced Weber, so I'll pronounce it correctly from this point forward. It's W-E-B-E-R, but it's pronounced Weber. Oh yeah, I read your blog, Steve.
S:Yeah, yeah. Prior to reading my blog, you probably hadn't heard of Weber's Law, though. So, this is the law of just noticeable differences. So let's say, for example, I put a weight in your left hand and a very similar weight in your right hand, and your task is to decide which one is heavier. How much heavier would one of those weights need to be before you would be able to notice the difference? An eighth of a pound.
J:There's a lot of factors that go into that.
S:I think it depends on the weight.
E:Let's say that you establish that you can tell a difference between a one-pound weight and a 1.1-pound weight, so a 10% difference. I don't think I can.
S:That 10% difference would hold out linearly throughout any weight.
E:Fascinating.
S:So 100 pounds and 110 pounds, or 20 pounds and 22 pounds. Is it 10%? Is that the number? Are you telling us? No, I'm making that up. The ratio is different for each task, but for that task, once you establish the ratio, then that ratio holds regardless of intensity. That's Weber's law. Does that make sense? So it could be which light is brighter than the other light, or it could be which line is longer than the other line. Or which sound is louder, or which pitch is higher, or which smell is stronger, or whatever. It doesn't matter. It's any sensory intensity that your ability to perceive the just noticeable difference, the ratio will be consistent regardless of the absolute intensity. That's Weber's Law. So it's an interesting observation. It suggests, it's so considerate, the other thing is it's massively consistent. It's one of the most replicated and universal laws in neuroscience. It holds for pretty much any sensor modality and pretty much any animal species, including invertebrates like bees. It holds through almost any experimental paradigm. I was able to find only one paper that had a test where a population of subjects For whom Weber's law did not hold. And if you read my blog, you would know it was people with autism. And they famously process sensory information differently, and interestingly, maybe Weber's law does not hold for them, but that's an aside. Other than that, so pretty much, you know, any species, any sensory modality, Weber's law holds. So that doesn't, it doesn't apply. It suggests That it's not just this interesting, quirky observation, it's telling us something fundamental about how brains process information. Of course, neuroscientists would love to reverse engineer what that lesson is. What is it telling us? It's a puzzle piece. It's a puzzle piece that we're holding. It's a clue. Yeah. So, there have been multiple, multiple hypotheses to explain Weber's Law. The problem is that they're all consistent with the evidence. There's no way to distinguish among all the different hypotheses. These hypotheses are basically models, right? You come up with a model of how sensory information is processed, and you see if that model is consistent with Weber's law, if it predicts Weber's law. And there's many different ones that all are consistent with Weber's Law. The models produce outcomes which are in line with Weber's Law. But there's no way to tell the difference among them. So we've been stuck in this position for a couple of hundred years, which is how old Weber's Law is. So this is now we're getting to the new bit, right, the science news item here in that there was recently a study in which scientists for the first time discovered a new aspect to Weber's law that gives us a second puzzle piece. And what they looked at, which was a very, very good thing to do, they looked at how long did it take the subjects to decide which stimulus was more intense, the time factor. So they first did rats. Rats, like humans, will orient their head automatically to a sound. So if you give a rat an audio stimulus in both ears, they will orient to the louder of the two sounds, right? They will turn their head to the right if their right ear is getting a louder sound, they'll turn their head to the left if the left ear is getting a louder sound. So you could use that to test Weber's Law. You give them like little headphones, you give them different They must be the cutest headphones ever. Dr. Dre beats Bob. And then they said, they calculated how long did it take before the rats, listening to the two sounds, were able to turn their head to notice which one was louder. And they found that there was a linear relationship. Again, they found there was a very specific relationship, which they said was the Time Intensity Equivalence Indiscrimination, or TIED, rule, T-I-E-D. So that's now a second puzzle piece. What this enables us to do then is go back to all of those models that predict Weber's law and say, do they also predict this time intensity equivalence law, right? So it's like triangulation. You know how you triangulate. If you have one line, what you're detecting could be anywhere along the line. You have a second line, and suddenly you have it narrowed down to one point. So even though you're just adding a second piece of information, this is just an analogy, right? When you're triangulating, it could narrow many, many, many possibilities down to very few and maybe even one. And that's what happened here. When they plugged in Ty to this new observation into the previous models, only very few of them were consistent with both Weber's law and the time intensity equivalence. And so that could therefore be an experimental way to distinguish among the many models. It doesn't get us there yet. So, first of all, they replicated the study in humans and it held out, so now it's true for rats and for humans. And then they went back and looked at data that other people had collected, but they looked at olfactory stimulation in rats and found that the same time intensity rule applied there as well. So that's two sensory modalities, two species. So that suggests that maybe it is a universal law. So obviously lots of replication has to happen here. We have to be tested in lots of different species, lots of different sensor modalities to see if it's a general rule, like Weber's law is a general rule. And then if it is, then we have to have neuroscientists take a crack at it to see, all right, does this get us to a much shorter list of possible models? And these models are basically mathematical models about information processing, which are way over my head. I can't get into the details of what those models would be. They're mathematical. It's kind of like Graham's number, right, Bob? That mathematician is going to understand it. But in any case, we'll see. This could be a very, very useful step forward. And obviously, being able to reverse engineer exactly how neurons process sensory information or other kinds of information is critical to understanding consciousness and will be critical to our attempts at replicating consciousness in silicon, in computers. I suspect at some point these models will become actual simulations with neural networks, right? If you design a neural network one way, is Weber's Law going to apply to neural networks and computer simulations? And if so, then any other aspect of Weber's Law that researchers discover, will it predict them as well? And that will give us the ability to triangulate to how our brains actually function. So that's pretty cool. I like the fact that they were thinking outside the box. Hopefully it will spur other researchers to also think outside the box in other ways. Okay, well, if there's this time factor with Weber's Law, what else? What other questions could be asked about it? What other parameters, what other dimensions might there be to this phenomenon that will help us triangulate even further? That's where the brilliance of science is in being able to think about how to test something. Obviously, people have been able to come up with all kinds of hypotheses. That's actually not the hardest thing to do in science. What is hard is coming up with a testable hypothesis, a way to test it. And that's what these researchers did, so that's really interesting. Okay, Weber's Law, add that to your Lexicon. Weber's Law, got it. Got it, Steve. It's a law. Next, you know what's next, Jay? I do. Who's that noisy?
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (53:50)[edit]
S:Who's that noisy? Noisy time. Okay, last week I played this noisy. All right, so what do you think, boys? A listener named Evil Eye, who you've heard many, many times.
E:He's a good guy right here.
J:He said, it sounds sped up, but I'm guessing that it's our sun ringing like a bell, the singing sun. I like it.
E:That's a really, really awesome guess.
J:I think that was my favorite guess. Is that called solar seismology?
U:Oh, wait. Yeah. Something like that, yeah. Yeah, I think so. That is not correct, but that was a fun and interesting guess. Next guesser is Charlie Ross.
J:Charlie is a friend of the show, and I love this man. And he said, was this week's noisy the ringing of a Bond show? You guys know what a Bond show is? No. Charlie provides. Charlie says there are these giant bells they have in Buddhist temples that they ring using a big tree trunk suspended by ropes.
US#09:Now, can you picture them? Oh sure, yeah, they pull them back. As soon as you hear the description.
J:He said, uh, if that was not a bonsho, well then maybe look it up and use it as a noisy some other time. Too late! Thanks Charlie. It wasn't Charlie, but you are on the right track. And we have a good guess here. I think this is about as close as we get to a winner. This was Timothy Blahout. And Timothy says, hi guys, this week's noisy sounds like the TARDIS's cloister bell. Almost certainly not the right answer, but hopefully a fun one. So it's not the cloister bell, but I decided to get this audio because I figured Steve would want me to. Here it is. Do you Doctor Who fans recognize this? Yeah. Yeah, it's the sound of the TARDIS, isn't it? Yeah. It's kind of scary. That's not it. But it is indeed a bell. It sounds like a bell. It is. It is a bell. And it's a very, very cool bell sound because here it is. So I'll cut right to it. No one has ever heard the Liberty Bell ring. That's alive, of course, right? Oh. It hasn't been rung in over 100 years.
U:So this is what this is what John Farquhar. Farquhar!
J:Lord Farquhar. John Farquhar. John says in 1999, well, he's quoting something now, the graduate students from Pennsylvania State University were able to digitally create a structural model of the Liberty Bell from the computer model. They were able to mathematically equate the vibration of the bell and add sound. Oh, my God. Knowing that the tone of the bell was E-flat, they were able to come up with a fairly close approximation of the original sound of the Liberty Bell. Come on. Now, listen to this. Listen to it again. This is probably what the Liberty Bell sounded like. How cool is that? OK. How are they? How do they know that that's close to how the Liberty Bell sound? So historically, they knew that it was an E flat. So they know what note that is. Then what they did was they they were able to create the finished bell and using the computer model that they had. And then they were able to ring that bell with a computer simulation that was able to determine what the different vibrations they would put out.
US#05:Now the thing is, when you play a cymbal or a bell, especially when you get into these super large ones, they have lots of different tones that they're putting out.
J:That sound very different like you could if you could tease out all the different tones that a thing like this makes it's making a lot you know like a a train whistle has four four different notes that it's playing at the same time but collectively they make a very particular sound. Right? Well, bells work that way, too. Like, there's lots of different noises in there that all kind of together make this sound. And they were able to use the computer model to simulate all of that. And plus, you know, Evan, it's not like we don't know what bells like the Liberty Bell sound like. You know what I mean? There's other bells out there that are like the Liberty Bell. I get that. I get that. Wouldn't there be some variances, though, in the actual crafting of the bell itself that would be different from other bells, the actual material or the alloy that it's That's right.
E:You need to make another Liberty Bell. Now, also, obviously, the Liberty Bell is cracked. Are we talking about the cracked Liberty Bell, what it would sound like, or when it was intact? When it was intact. Okay, so there's that. You could duplicate it, I would think.
J:Well, I guess so.
E:I mean, we could laser scan it, right? So we could laser scan the interior. 3D print it and call it a day.
J:No, you'd have to look for it. Yeah, so you've got to figure out exactly what alloy they were using. Right, it was probably a lot of lead, among other things. Who knows?
E:I'm sure they could. We have the technology to do that. Aren't they brass? I would imagine that it's mostly brass. Was it entirely brass? I thought it was. I imagine there's some impurities in there and some other things. Anyway, thank you all for everybody that wrote in. Again, another great week. I got some really cool ideas.
J:What's fun is I get a lot of things I can't use, but they're still fun sounds.
E:I've had a few people ask me, it would be great if you made just a list or
J:Put them all online or something.
E:Well, of course that would take a phenomenal amount of work.
J:But I am now starting to make a collection every week of the fun stuff that comes through that I know is not good for the show but might be fun for people to see. And maybe eventually I'll release that out there. Apparently the Liberty Bell is 25% tin, 70% copper. That's right, copper. Tin and copper, brass and bronze are both tin and copper. They're just different ratios. I forget what that ratio would be, but it is sort of in the brass-bronze family then. Thanks Steve, that's cool. So, before I continue, if you're going to be at Dragon Con this year and you'd like to see the SGU at a private show, we're going to have a great one this year. We're going to be using the same hotel we used last year with an upgraded room, which will be more comfortable and see a few more people.
S:And that is all found at skepticsguide.eventbrite.com. You can find out all the information you want there. Less than two weeks. Yeah, I know. It's coming up. I can't wait. We're really psyched about this one.
J:We have a lot of great things. Evan and Which Game First is going to be doing four or five panels with varying people on those panels from the group. The SGU will be doing three different shows. We're going to be doing one about our book, we're going to be doing a regular live stage show, and of course the private show. And if you haven't heard of our science fiction review show, me, Bob, and Steve do a pure science fiction for the sake and love of science fiction. It's called Alpha Quadrant 6. That's Alpha Quadrant and the number 6. You can find us on YouTube and you can go to our website. We're on Facebook. We do live streaming. We cover a lot of Star Trek, like, Discovery. We've been doing after show for that, but we do a lot of general science fiction. We just did one of the boys. Yeah, the boys from Amazon Prime. I hear it's great. Oh, the guy, Evan. It's so good. I am going to watch it soon, soon, soon. Yeah, it's my new favorite TV show. Wow. The review was a lot of fun. We do a really deep dive into the show and talk about pretty much everything that we could possibly think of. So you can go check us out on our YouTube page. All right, you can go to conference.skeptics.nz. This will give you all the information you need about the conference coming up in New Zealand. But if you happen to want to know the dates, the dates are what, Steve? They are November 29th to December 1st. The SGU will be there, and we are then, after that conference, going to fly over to Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne. I said it every way I can think of. That is the way you pronounce it, and that's it. It's all those ways. We'll get no more emails on that. That's the final word on that one. That's December 6th through 8th. And it's in Melbourne.
S:And all the information is found where, Evan?
J:Find out all the information at www.skeptics.com.au. The AU stands for Australia. Oh, is that what it's for? And we'll be there. Spoiler alert. Yeah, spoiler alert. We'll be at both. All right, guys, here's this week's New Noisy.
E:All right, guys, if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you've heard something so cool that you can't believe it, send it to me at WTN at the Skeptic's Guide dot org.
J:Thank you, Jay. So, Jay, you sent this, this video, a special report.
Segment 4. Special Report (1:02:51)[edit]
Changing the CalendarCotsworth or International Fixed Calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
J:So, Jay, you sent this, this video, a special report.
U:This is just an interesting discussion. You sent this around, Jay, and it sparked so much discussion. I thought we'd bring it onto the show. You guys have heard of the Cotsworth International Fixed Calendar. Yes. Let's give a nice description.
J:So this is what a 13 month calendar that every single month is identical, right? Yeah, 28 days. 28 days. The first day of the month is always Sunday. The last day of the month is always Saturday.
S:If you by any chance wanted to know if like something happens on the 19th, it's always on a Thursday. The 19th is always on a Thursday forever. That's it. And the thing about it is, without thinking of all the things that would make this, you know, incredible Herculean effort globally, it just cleans up all of the ridiculous things about the modern calendar, because every month is identical.
J:13 months, 28 days, starting on Sunday, ending on Saturday. Right, and at the end of the last month, I liked that at the end of the last month, there's one day that's New Year's Day. It's not a month. It's one day in between the calendars, and then if it's leap year, you get two of them, two days that are totally free, and then you jump back into your Sunday the 1st, you know, Monday the 2nd for the first month of the year. So it's just so clean and interesting, but I'm sure... It's never going to happen.
B:Tell us why, Steve. Because I know software is a problem, but there's got to be other reasons. Well, first of all, if your birthday's on a Tuesday, it's going to be on a Tuesday for the rest of your life. That kind of sucks. Are you waiting for that finally a weekend day for your birthday? That's never going to happen. Yeah, but who cares? Because invariably, you were always like, okay, fine, my birthday's on Wednesday, let's do Saturday, the Saturday before, the Saturday after. Who cares? Yeah, that's the adjustment you could make, but the actual day would be on the same day of the week.
S:Also, the transition would be painful, not just because of all the forms and then all the history books and everything.
J:When you switch over dates, man, it causes a lot of downstream problems. But also, your birthday would be different, and you'd have to read. You grew up your whole life with your birthday, that number emblazoned in your brain. What if you get the 13th month, Smarch or whatever the hell it is?
S:That's the other cool thing is, they would have to come up with another month name, which I just think is so cool. It's like coming up with another color name. Monty McMuthface. Yeah. I would love to see the process of trying to develop another month name. Would it be named after a god? What would they do? Steve, I hear you, right?
E:Well, Jay, when was this calendar first proposed? Oh, good question.
U:1902.
E:Yes, but using, wait, what calendar date?
J:This exact one, the Cotsworth calendar, 1902. Okay. So, yes, so it hasn't caught fire in the last 117 years. You'd think when computers were starting, they'd be like, whoa, whoa, let's talk about calendars. You know what I mean? Before we start programming. I mean, the time to do this would have been about 500 years ago. You know, they, they kind of like the Gregorian calendar. What would this do to the seasons?
S:I mean, we'd have our months, we'd have the dead of winter for some of our, eventually we would have the middle of the summer would be our month end date. Wouldn't this shift the seasons drastically? No, because it's still 365 days in the year, just that they won't cleanly divide into three months. Oh, of course. Right. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Right. All right. So let me give you my personal opinion. These are the types of things that I would think Vulcans would be doing. Yeah. Because they're like, yup, this is logical. Let's just do it. We will suffer through and the next generations can thank us.
E:But humans would never do. I am totally for this. It makes sense, it's easy, it's so easy, it's ridiculous. It just seems like a no-brainer.
S:I get it. It would probably cost tens of billions of dollars for humanity to fix this.
J:But what you'd need to do, Steve, I think would be is you'd have to run the calendars Mm-hmm like side-by-side for five years or 15 years, whatever it would take, you know, so like, okay It's you know, it's August 14th as we record this show and in this new calendar It is actually September something Jay. We haven't been able to switch over to fully metric in this country Steve I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying if we were if we if the humanity had its shit together Yeah, which we don't if the United States had its shit together. We would simply would have to get on this and But also, there is something to be said for history, right? Again, the fact that everything that was recorded and written up to that changeover would now be obsolete, right? When did everything happen?
S:You'd have to translate the dates of everything. It may not be worth it.
J:It's never going to happen because the alleged benefits are slight and the pain of the transition is huge.
E:I expect more from you, Steve.
S:Let me give you another analogy, the Dvorak keyboard. The Dabura keyboard is superior to the QWERTY keyboard, and yet that change is never going to happen. It's too entrenched. It's too entrenched. I've been typing my whole life on a QWERTY keyboard. I'm pretty good at it. Would I want to learn a different setup of keys because it's mathematically slightly advantageous?
J:No, I don't want to do that. That's not a fair assessment of the advantage.
S:It's much more efficient. It's definitely much more efficient. You know, I mean, it's a little bit more than slightly mathematically better. It's definitely a much more logical arrangement of keys. So if it was 150 years ago or whatever, and we were deciding what keyboard layout we should have, the Dvorak should have been out over the QWERTY, absolutely. Just like a thousand years ago when we were deciding what calendar, you could make a good argument for the 13-month, 28-day calendar, absolutely.
B:But now that these things are culturally entrenched, it's too late. That's my point. Yeah, just suck it up and deal with it. Well, I mean, fine then. I guess, you know, we just won't talk about it anymore.
S:Okay, but we could all, we could have dreams, right? But I do, it's an interesting thought experiment, like living in a world with that calendar, what would it be like? How big would the advantages be? I do get it. I like the fact that knowing that if it's the sixth day of the month, that would be a Friday, right? Like knowing what the day of the week is automatically just from the date and being able to calculate. Like sometimes you're thinking like how many weeks is it between now and then you kind of fudge it you say well it's four weeks sort of per month but then there's like a little bit extra so it would be easier to do those kind of calculations because four weeks is exactly a month. And it would make things easier like paycheck, et cetera. So if you get paid every two weeks, it's twice a month. Yeah, I totally get it. It all adds up evenly and everything. I would probably go for that calendar if we weren't already stuck with the one we got. You know what I'm saying? I do. Yep. Thanks for watching. And get rid of that Celsius crap, Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit's good for the environment, Celsius for everything else. Okay, we'll do one quick name-not-logical fallacy.
Name That Logical Fallacy (1:10:40)[edit]
Topic: Been a listener since late 2016, when attending Scoopfest an event hosted by the Improv podcast Matt and Mattingly's Ice Cream Social your podcast came up from a few attendees as one I should check out. Anyway my question, I had shared an article about Saudi Arabia declaring all Atheists terrorists. A friend commented "this isn't any more ridiculous than "all Muslims are terrorists"" I wasn't sure which Logical Fallacy this was, because a few seem to fit, but I am not confident on how well. Thank you all for what you do, MaxTheGinger
S:Okay, we'll do one quick name-not-logical fallacy. This comes from Max The Ginger. Max writes, been a listener since late 2016 when attending Scoopfest, an event hosted by the improv podcast Matt and Mattingly's Ice Cream, Social. Your podcast came up from a few attendees as one I should check out. Anyway, my question.
E:I had shared an article about Saudi Arabia declaring all atheists terrorists.
S:A friend commented, this isn't any more ridiculous than all Muslims are terrorists. I wasn't sure which logical fallacy this was because a few seemed to fit, but I am not confident on how well. Thank you for all what you do, Max the Ginger. Okay, Max, I think the first question to ask is, is there a logical fallacy in there? I think he's saying the logical fallacy is equating the claim that all Muslims are terrorists with – well, this is where it gets tricky. So let me say this to start out. If there is a logical fallacy in here, it's a false analogy, right? That's the only one that I think that fits. Is there a false analogy between these two claims? But it depends on what claim you're talking about. So, on the one side, there is just the claim, all Muslims are terrorists. On the other side, you have Saudi Arabia declaring all atheists are terrorists. So, if you're just talking about those two things as claims, the claim that all atheists are terrorists is a pretty reasonable analogy to the claim that all Muslims are terrorists, right? I think that that's, yeah, they're both equally stupid, but I think that that's a perfectly cromulent analogy. I don't see that that's a false analogy. But if their point was it's no more, you know, that Saudi Arabia, like a government declaring officially that atheists are automatically designated terrorists, That certainly is not analogous to just the belief or the claim that all Muslims are terrorists. One is actually the official action of a government. Now, if the United States government declared that we're going to treat all Muslims as if they're automatically terrorists, then we're back to a reasonable analogy, right? Does that all make sense? So far, yes. I think that's it. I mean, there isn't necessarily a fallacy there. It depends on what exactly you're trying to say is analogous. But if anything, there could be a false analogy, depending on how far you're taking it. Does that make sense? False analogies could sometimes be subtle. And oftentimes, probably more often than not, when somebody is saying that something is a false analogy, they're over-calling it, in my experience. The most common error I see people make is when they dismiss an analogy because the two things are not the same in every way, or they're not the same in a specific way that they decide is important. But that's not what an analogy is, right? So oftentimes we can say that these two things are analogous in this one way, even though they may be completely different in other ways. That still is a perfectly reasonable analogy. But I often see people try to dismiss the analogy by saying, well, it's not the same in this other way. Well, who cares? I didn't say they're identically the same thing. I said they're analogous in this one way. It's a good question, though. Yeah, yeah, interesting question. Thank you, Max the ginger. Yeah, gingers. Alright guys, let's move on with science or fiction. It's time for science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:14:28)[edit]
Theme: None
Item #1: A study of investment decisions made by non-experts finds that they intuitively pick more risky portfolios and would be better off picking stocks at random.[4]
Item #2: The most accurate estimate to date indicates that Earth-like planets orbiting around sun-like stars in the goldilocks zone should occur on average in one out of every 10,000 stars.[5]
Item #3: Scientists have discovered a way to make some existing antibiotics hundreds of times more effective against resistant strains of bacteria.[6]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Item #2 |
| Science | Item #1 |
| Science | Item #3 |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|
S:It's time for science or fiction. Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Just three regular news items this week, no theme. I know you guys are still smarting from the sweep last week, so I just gave you three regular news items. Too brutal. You guys ready?
US#01:Okay, item number one, a study of investment decisions made by non-experts finds that they intuitively pick more risky portfolios and would be better off picking stocks at random.
S:Item number two, the most accurate estimate to date indicates that Earth-like planets orbiting around Sun-like stars in the Goldilocks zone should occur on average in one out of every 10,000 stars. And item number three, scientists have discovered a way to make some existing antibiotics hundreds of times more effective against resistant strains of bacteria. Jay, go first. Yeah, so this first one, a study of investment decisions made by non-experts finds that they intuitively pick more risky portfolios and would be better off picking stocks at random. Yeah, so, you know, investment decisions made by non-experts. You had me right there. Okay, whatever comes after that, if it sounds ridiculous, I would believe it. I seem to think that this one makes sense, that they would be better off picking stocks at random.
J:Okay, so the second one here where you're saying that Earth-like planets would occur about in one out of every 10,000 stars, where a planet like Earth is in the right zone to the Sun, but I would argue that there really isn't a Goldilocks zone from things that I've read and hearing people like talk about Why that's more of a science fictiony thing than it is science. I don't know the ultimate truth there, but it does seem to make a lot of sense that a planet like the Earth with the relative size of the Earth and its relative position to the Sun, like what would happen to our atmosphere if we were in a closer orbit? All right, this is complicated as hell, but I would say that this one is between the first and the second. This one's a fake so far. In the second, I'm sorry, in the final one, scientists have discovered a way to make some existing antibiotics hundreds of times more effective against resistant strains of bacteria. OK, now you could say that, but you didn't tell us the mechanism. So therefore, this is literally like throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded. Like, sure, eventually they'll probably be able to come up with something, but you haven't told us anything meaty that I can actually dissect other than the fact that they've done this. Hundreds of times more effective. I mean, I think it's possible that they've discovered a way to make some existing antibiotics. And I hope it's true, but there's not enough information here. I don't like that. I'm going to go with the second one about the Goldilocks as the fake because of my incredible knowledge of planeteering. Okay, Bob. The investment one, yeah, I mean, it just makes sense that they, that the non-experts would pick more risky portfolios, that they would be attracted to them. Yeah, picking them at random, sure, I mean, that seems possible. It's sort of the third one here. Some existing antibiotics hundreds of times more effective. Sure. I mean, yeah, I hope that's true. I really, really do. That's 100 times more effective. It's amazing. And I could see some sort of tweak to the antibiotic to make it much more effective against the resistant strains of bacteria.
B:So that seems plausible as well. Let's go to the one that Jay thinks is fiction. Earth-like suns in the Goldilocks zone. Hmm, I was trying to run some numbers in my head of what are, I don't know how many Earth-like planets we've found. And if I knew that, then multiply that by 10,000 and the result would, would that be a reasonable number of stars to have searched through already to come up with this average. But I don't know how many Earth-like planets we've found. But I think, ah screw it, these, these are, this is a tough one. I'll, I'll go, I'll go with the, with Jay, the Earth-like planets. I'll say that's fiction as well. It could, it could very well be. And Evan. That's only one small piece of the puzzle, the most accurate estimate to date. You have to extrapolate that based on how many stars have they observed of the 100 billion, 200 billion that we have in our galaxy compared to the 4,000 exoplanets that we've discovered.
E:Some of those are multiple planets around the same star. A lot of different variables in that equation. It's kind of just guessing sort of at that point if this one to ten thousand ratio is going to wind up being correct. I have a feeling, guys, that it will be, and therefore I'm going to say that I think the fiction is the stocks one, only because I've got these old ideas in my head from old articles I've read about the randomness of stocks and, you know, people, children, monkeys, Thank you for watching. I don't know that people's tendencies go in that direction when non-blinded in this particular situation. So I have a feeling that the investment decision one is going to be the fiction of this group. Okay, striking out on your own again, Evan. So let's start with number three. Scientists have discovered a way to make some existing antibiotics hundreds of times more effective against resistant strains of bacteria. You guys all think and hope that this one is science, and this one is science. So the antibiotics in question are aminoglycosides, such as class of antibiotics, aminoglycosides.
S:The main mechanism of resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics is inhibition of uptake. So bacteria become resistant by inhibiting the ability of the antibiotic to be transported into the bacteria. So it blocks uptake. So what they found was that if you add a rhamnolipid, if you add that to the mix, to the antibiotic, it induces the uptake of the antibiotic into Staph aureus, which is the particular bacteria that they were studying in this study. So, this is a way of targeting resistant bacteria populations and basically rescuing the efficacy of immunoglycoside antibiotics by overcoming the mechanism of the resistance, the blocking of the uptake of the antibiotic into the cell. They also suspect, I mean, I find that this is often what they say, but that it would be very difficult for bacteria to evolve resistance to this mechanism. Doesn't mean they're not going to find a way, but this could get us at least another generation of use out of these antibiotics against resistant strains. Well, Bob, that's all we need is about one more generation, right? We're good? Yeah, that we're good, yeah. Our kids, our grandkids. One, two, whatever it takes. All right, let's go back to number one, a study of investment decisions made by non-experts finds that they intuitively pick more risky portfolios and would be better off picking stocks at random. Evan, you think this one is the fiction. Jay and Bob, you think this one is science. And this one is... Science to you, Evan.
E:Aha.
S:I just thought this would be fun to talk about.
E:So here's the layer here.
S:So why is it? What is it? What's going on? What is the intuition that's going awry here? So Evan, they're not intending to pick risky portfolios. When they're trying to pick a safe portfolio, they intuitively pick a risky portfolio. You know, their picks have the opposite effect. So they would actually be better off just picking stocks at random. Which means they're not interpreting correctly what they're looking at. It's not a matter of interpretation. Again, the exact mental error is very interesting. So, if you ask people to pick a safe, low-risk portfolio, if the experts would pick a diversified portfolio, right? And how do you diversify a portfolio? You pick items, you pick stocks that are in different sectors that tend to either not be independent of each other We'll be right back. To diversify your portfolio knowing how the different types of stocks are likely to behave to changes in the market, you can average them out so that your entire investment won't plummet all at once, right? But what people who don't know how to pick stocks do is they actually tend to pick stocks that track together. And the thinking is that if you're looking at the history of stocks, they pick stocks that all go up and down together. Too many of the same eggs in the same basket. Yeah, which is an inherently risky portfolio, because even though they might be different, they will tend to go up and go down together, so that means their entire investment could crash. Thank you for joining us today. It's like, how am I going to make money if my stock goes up, this other one's going to go down? But they don't realize that that's a hedge, that's what you want. If you have that, then your stocks will slowly rise with the increase of the market, but it'll average out. But if you are trying to make money by having everything go up at once, you're also creating the probability that everything will go down at once. So, the risk versus benefit isn't there. The potential for making a lot of money is a lot less than the potential for losing all your money. So, that's why you're better off having a balanced portfolio, but people intuitively do not do that. So, in fact, if you picked your stocks at random, it would be more balanced than what people, untrained, non-experts would intuitively do. Okay, all of this means that the most accurate estimate to date indicates that Earth-like planets orbiting around Sun-like stars in the Goldilocks zone should occur on average in one out of every 10,000 stars is the fiction. So that's three criteria here, right? It has to be an Earth-like planet. Well, what's Earth like? So they had to operationally define that. It had to be within certain parameters of size and mass. And then in the Goldilocks zone, it had to be within a certain distance of the star and have a year between so many days and so many other days. So all the things had to average out. So it was in specific parameters, Earth-like, not identical, but just within reasonable parameters of Earth. And also be orbiting around a Sun-like star, right? So that eliminates all of the red dwarfs, right? All the stars that are not like our own Sun. So I was hoping you got it, but I think with all of those criteria, maybe you're whittling it down to that many. But actually, it's one in every four stars. Whoa, that's way more common. How could it be that common? Because that's what they calculated. It would be one in every four stars would be an Earth-like planet around it, or a Sun-like star.
US#04:Well, how much are they extrapolating?
S:I mean, is it pure extrapolation? It's the best estimate to date. It's the best estimate to date based on all of the exoplanets that we've gathered so far. Wow. One in four. Yeah, I was surprised. Wow, yeah, the universe must be teeming with life. They should plug that into the Drake equation to see what comes out.
J:Yeah, right, and you get some fat number at the end.
S:So 1 in 4 was the best estimate, but they also give the error bars, you know, the range. It could be anywhere from 1 in every 2 stars to 1 in every 33 stars. Well, 33 is the extreme, huh? Yeah. So, two to 33, but they said four would be the peak of that statistical curve. Yeah, that's really good. So, yeah, my mind was going the other direction, thinking it's going to be a much higher number.
B:That's funny. That's higher than I was.
S:I was thinking it'd be like 1%, 2%, you know, like one or two per hundred. Ten thousand would have surprised me, too. I mean, I really lowballed it to make sure it was clearly fiction. Yeah, but I would have thought maybe around something like 1 to 2%.
E:But yeah, 1 in 4, that's pretty darn good, 25%.
S:That's amazing. I hope that's true. Jesus. Incredible. I never would have imagined. So yeah, but as we gather more data, that estimate gets more and more accurate, but I doubt it's going to change by an order of magnitude. I mean, I think that's probably pretty close to where it's going to settle in. Yeah, it's cool. What's great is that we've collected enough data on exoplanets that we could start to do these kind of statistical analyses, you know? When we first started discovering hot Jupiters, I was getting a little worried.
B:Because, you know, a hot Jupiter is like, imagine if Jupiter slowly moved in towards the Sun because of the gravitational interaction between them.
S:Thanks for watching. But then it turned out that only like 1% of stellar systems have a hot Jupiter like that, and it was just we were finding them first because those are the easiest planets to find. You know, because they're big and they're close, they have a short period. It's a low-hanging fruit, exactly. So I was like, when I read that... That's the drunk looking for the keys under the light, right? Yeah, so I was happy when the first estimates came, I was like, yeah, it's maybe 1%, or I'm like, oh great, only 1%, whew, good, I thought it was gonna be like 90%.
US#02:So that was great.
S:Wow. So yeah, these estimates now, it's like, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of Earth-like planets, that is awesome. So that, we gotta plug that shit into the Drake equation. Done, I just did it. And what'd you come up with, Jay? Definitely Sea Horse 7.
B:I mean, that's Sea Horse 7.
S:Oh, Sea Horse 7? Cool.
B:Three up arrows.
S:So these are three items, two of which were pretty clearly good news, and the other one is good advice. Don't invest if you have no idea what you're doing. Just get a portfolio. Get a mutual fund. Let somebody else balance it for you, somebody who knows what they're doing. I'll bet you there's a great course teaching people how to make some good stock things.
E:Probably.
S:All right, Evan, give us a quote.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:30:52)[edit]
"Scientific thinking is being inquisitive, skeptical, and taking nothing for granted. Prestige, fame, success are irrelevant. Perfect theories are irrelevant. The smallest piece of contradictory evidence can refute your grand unifying theory. And science encompasses all that. It is an emergent concept. And this is what is self-correcting."
– Sam Schwarzkopf, cognitive and systems neuroscientist, blogger (NeuroNeurotic Blog), (description of author)
S:All right, Evan, give us a quote.
E:Scientific thinking is being inquisitive, skeptical, and taking nothing for granted.
S:Prestige, fame, success are irrelevant. Perfect theories are irrelevant. The smallest piece of contradictory evidence can refute your grand unifying theory. And science encompasses all that.
E:It's an emergent concept.
S:And this is what is self-correcting.
E:That was written by Sam Schwarzkopf, who's a cognitive and systems neuroscientist who blogs at Neuro Neurotic, which is a pretty cool blog. And he was talking there about the self-correcting nature of science. Nice quote. I like it. Very nice. All right, guys. Thank you all for joining me this week. Sure, man. Thanks, Steve. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Thanks for watching! Skeptic's 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 at theskepticsguide.org.
S:And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com slash skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible. you
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- ↑ www.nationalgeographic.com: Banana fungus arrives in Colombia, threatening the fruit
- ↑ theness.com: The Epstein Conspiracies - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ theness.com: Weber’s Law - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ www.sciencedirect.com: None
- ↑ phys.org: How many Earth-like planets are around sun-like stars?
- ↑ www.cell.com: None