SGU Episode 355
Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
This Day in Skepticism (2:40)
May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space. SGU 7 Year Anniversary
News Items
Capturing Rogue Planets (6:57)
http://phys.org/news/2012-04-stars-capture-rogue-planets.html
Machine Monkey Interface (15:51)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419104629.htm
Finding ET with Robots (23:31)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120418162300.htm
God Spot in the Brain (34:24)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/god-spot-in-brain-is-not-_n_1440518.html
S: Well, Rebecca, tell us if scientists have found god in the brain.
R: Nope.
E: Next!
S: OK, now...
(laughter)
JR: Next question!
E: I could have told you that.
R: Yeah...
S: A little more detail please.
R: Aw, fine. It's late, Steve.
B: All right, hell no.
(laughter)
R: We've talked about this topic before on the show, the idea of a god spot in the brain.
E: G-spot.
R: Yeah, thank you Evan.
E: You're welcome.
B: Did he steal your joke too?
R: No, I would never make that joke.
B: OK.
J: (laughs)
B: Just checking.
R: You can have it. Yeah, the idea is that there's one particular spot in your brain that is responsible for belief in god.
S: It's called the cortex.
(laughter)
R: It's called the entire brain.
JR: Now this is an evolved spot is it?
R: That's the idea.
S: No, it's created.
(laughter)
R: It depends how big your god spot it. Well, there was recently a study that apparently found that there was no god spot in the brain and that spirituality is linked to the right parietal lobe. And so this is an interesting study, there have been other studies in the past like I mentioned.
J: Where is the right parietal lobe?
R: It's this side.
E: On the left side of the...
(laughter)
R: It's like right above your ear, yeah.
J: Above your ear.
E: God spot, come on.
B: Steve, how does this relate, I've heard that there are people that have seizures, certain seizures in certain parts of the brain that gives them this god-like experience, it's like oh my god I'm in the presence of god because...
(laughter)
B: Yeah, I'm not lying.
R: It's called an orgasm.
(laughter)
B: No, no.
E: Oh god, oh god!
J: That's like Bob, you're going to die and and you're going to see god and you'll go god damn!
(laughter)
B: No, some people have seizures, their body shakes but other people have a seizure in a part of the brain that gives them like this god-like epiphany.
J: They have a religious experience, yeah we know about that research.
B: Right, because it's the location that the seizure takes place.
R: Yes, this is Steve's profession but I just want to mention, before Steve launches into a full explanation that like a lot of studies on the brain, this study in particular involves people who have had damage to one specific part of their brain that these researchers were checking to see if that's where the god spot is. So people with brain damage are very useful to brain scientists because it allows you to isolate certain part of the brain and figure out.
B: Where's the damage and what's missing?
J: All right so what's the answer here?
S: Well, what Bob was referring to, so yeah, what those people experience is a profound connection to the universe and that gets culturally interpreted as whatever your religious belief is. So, you're a Hindu you have a profound Hindu experience, right. If you're a Christian you have a profound Christian experience, but the core experience is feeling that you're connected to the universe.
E: What if you're an atheist?
S: You still feel that, but you just feel a profound connection to the universe rather than...
Audience: You turn into Carl Sagan?
S: ...and you don't personify that as a deity.
E: You can't call it a god spot.
J: Somebody in the audience said you're...
Audience: You turn into Carl Sagan.
J: ...thank you it was DJ.
S: But here's the thing: the reason why you experience that is because that's the part of the brain that makes you feel separate from the universe. So when you turn off that part of the brain, that separation is what goes away. But the separation is what's actively neurologically happening.
J: Are you saying spatially or emotionally? Like I'm not...
S: So your whole reality is constructed by your brain. Everything that you, you know your whole concept of yourself and your universe and that you're in your body and your body is separate from the universe but in the universe. These are all constructs in the brain. One thing that your brain constructs is that at some point you end and the rest of the universe begins. Now you take that away and what are you going to feel? That you are one with the universe.
JR: Like a republican.
(laughter)
S: That's a very profound experience.
J: Yeah, but when you say that, I just think like you just feel like you're one big blob.
S: Sometimes.
J: Like you're the chair, you're the walls, all of that.
E: No boundaries.
S: You might feel like you physically become huge.
J: Like are you having sensation from something far away?
S: No, it's not anything as concrete as that, but it's just... So anyway so people will interpret this sensation, again whatever their religious belief is or cultural belief, so they may experience that as being in the presence of god. But it really is just a breakdown in their mental construct of reality.
B: I hate when that happens.
J: Yeah, OK.
E: I love it.
S: People pay a lot of money for drugs to make that happen.
E: Well there you go.
R: I'm on some of them right now, and let me tell you it's beautiful, I love you all.
(laughter)
J: Rebecca, can you feel my ass?
B: Does that mean you love (inaudible)?
R: Right now? I'm there.
(laughter)
S: Is that a question or a request?
(laughter)
R: So this study in particular looked at people who had brain damage to the right parietal lobe. It specifically looked at 20 people which isn't a lot but from what I understand in studies like this they tend to be fairly small.
S: It's hard to find a lot of people with specific brain damage.
R: Yeah, but also and this is one of the flaws I think in this study is that there's no control. So everybody in the study has the damage. And what they claim to have found is that they surveyed the participants asking them about spirituality, general spirituality topics and how close they felt to a higher power. And what the researchers claim to have found is that people with more damage to the right parietal lobe claim to have more connection to a higher power. So now I'm going to read you a quote from one of the researchers though, that really, it made my skeptic alarm go of, that it made me think that maybe the conclusions the researchers draw might not necessarily be valid based on the evidence. So you can decide for yourself. "Neuropsychology researchers consistently have shown that impairment on the right side of the brain decreases one's focus on the self. Since our research shows that people with this impairment are more spiritual, this suggests spiritual experiences are associated with a decreased focus on the self. This is consistent with many religious texts that suggest people should concentrate on the well-being of others rather than on themselves." Does that, is it just me or does that sound sketchy?
S: It's a little sketchy, but also it's, even if that's one factor, there's probably a dozen other factors that also contribute to religiosity that have nothing to do with that. It's too complicated a phenomenon to say it's due to a decreased focus on the self.
R: And I know a lot of atheists who don't, who do focus on the well-being of others, is that some artificial, you know are they outliers? I don't...
S: Then I suppose, how do you define spirituality? Maybe they're humanists who tend to be spiritual in a non-religious sense. It's way too complicated to boil down to that.
R: It's messy.
S: Yeah, it's messy.
R: Yeah, as Ben Goldachre says, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.
S: Yeah, and you've got to put this into the context of other research that showed that there are definitely parts of the brain that correlate with religious experiences or profound experiences or spiritual. Again it's always hard to interpret that because it's always being filtered through the specific cultural manifestation of underlying neurological processes that are all interacting with each other in very complicated ways. And it's like that earlier article that showed that there is a god spot, like an opposite conclusion but basically the same data. And they had a map of the brain showing where the god spot is and it was like 90% of the cortex.
(laughter)
S: It's like the frontal lobes, the temporal loves, yeah it's everything. Except for the parts of the brain that are like your motor cortex and your visual cortex. OK, every thinking part of your brain is involved in some way to your religious experience. Yeah, because it's a very complicated phenomenon.
J: So would you say that it's just all over the place, it all depends on who you are, number one? Or...
S: It's not a localisable, specific phenomenon, neurologically.
B: It's a brain phenomenon.
E: It's not a spot, that's for sure.
S: There is no spot, I mean yeah the term spot is such a misnomer. You know, it's like saying what's the part of your brain that's involved in, you know, in love. You know, well there is no one part of your brain, it's a complicated phenomenon that's going to involve lots of your brain.
B: Maybe the part of your DNA?
R: It reminds me of the search for the gene for blah blah blah. You know, in popular media. It's like oh, there's a gene for this...
S: Yeah, like the gay gene.
R: But it's never that s... the gay gene, yeah. Right.
S: There's not going to be a god spot. Yeah, it doesn't fit.
JR: Well what kind of damage are we talking about here, physical damage to that area of the brain or disconnect?
R: I think it's usually strokes, I think.
S: Mostly, or statistically yeah.
R: Or collisions to the head, because yeah it's right there so it's hittable.
Special Report
SETI Update (43:37)
with SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak
S: Well Seth, while we've got you here, get us up to date on how SETI is doing. I mean you guys had some funding problems earlier, has that sort of settled down a little bit?
SS: Well, it has a bit Steven. About a year ago, our partner with the Allen Telescope Array which is the instrument that we use for our studies up in northern California, the University of California at Berkeley lost most of their funding and consequently they had to withdraw from the project. So suddenly we had to find the money not only to do the science but also to maintain and run the array. And we have found another partner, SRI, they're working with the air force. So they use the array part of the time for mapping space junk, stuff like that. We also went out and we had a fund-raising campaign where we just asked the public, hey look, you know if you like this program, send some money, so we raised some money that way, so we're back on the air. The instrument which had been shut down on tax day in 2011 is observing as we sit here, and we also have all these planets being discovered by NASA's Kepler telescope, several thousand, you know there are several thousand candidates, not all of them will turn out to be planets but probably 90% of them will be. So we're looking at those, because at least those are star systems again, where we know that there are some worlds.
S: So funding, just to break it up into categories, a few of the possible sources. One is that you partner with other people and you share the array with them.
SS: Yes.
S: So that you can just cover costs. Two would be just, like Allen, just billionaire.
SS: Somebody just writing you a cheque.
S: Benefactors, yeah. And then, just going to the people, just going to the, you know crowd-sourcing the money I guess. What do you think about the idea of shifting more towards just like micro-donations from millions people, that kind of funding, with social networking and the internet and whatnot, is that something you guys are looking into?
SS: I hope that we are, I think we should be because, you know I think a lot of people, I've often been of the opinion that if your form 1040, if your tax form had a little check box at the end, would you like to lower, you know your refund by one dollar, but giving one dollar to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, if 10% of the population did that, well we'd have, I mean there'd be plenty of SETI research being done.
S: Right.
B: Yeah, but how many check boxes would be on that form?
SS: Well that's the problem. And in fact, but you know the NASA SETI program, it was a NASA program when I joined the SETI institute, that was killed in 1993 by a congressman who was trying to prove to his constituency that he was saving the tax payers money. And I remember driving home, my next-door neighbour was washing his car and he'd read the headlines that NASA SETI had been cancelled and he said, well Seth I guess you've lost your job, but at least I'm saving three cents per year, which is what it was costing him.
S: Right.
SS: So he was saving three cents per year. He went out and bought a BMW the next week. So yeah. That check box wouldn't have to be dollar if it were a dime and enough people checked it.
S: All right well, definitely keep us updated, I mean SETI is something that I believe very, you know firmly in, I definitely think it's worth the amount of money that we're spending on it, I think. I mean you know, so...
SS: I hope it's worth more than that, Steve.
(laughter)
S: Well yeah, you know I, it should be worth a lot more.
SS: Let me just say something in that regard. The whole idea was cooked up more than 50 years ago.
S: Yeah.
SS: You know, point antennas toward the sky. And then we only had guesses as to whether the stars had planets, or how many planets there were, or if any of them might have life and that sort of thing. And we've learned something about some of the questions that were formulated a half century ago. And they've all come up thumbs up in the sense that they're all pointing to the idea that our situation here on Earth is nothing special. We're not special. And it could have gone the other way. There could have been show-stoppers. It could have been that planets were rare or that kind of thing. And none of that has turned out to be the case. Every time you learn something new about the universe, it seems even more attractive for life, so you know, from that point of view it's like being on a desert island, you begin to see boot prints from pirates.
E: Arrr.
S: Do you think that public interest...
R: Do you want to meet the pirates though?
(laughter)
SS: I don't know, they might have some good grub.
S: Do you think public interest is increasing because of all the exoplanets that are being discovered?
SS: Well, that's hard to say. Probably it is, I mean it's very difficult to judge what excites the public about this sort of work. The only real bump in interest from the media that I ever saw was when the X-Files was popular.
S: Is that right?
SS: Yeah.
J: Well, maybe when Neil deGrasse Tyson comes out with the Cosmos series that will inspire people to get more involved.
B: That's a good idea.
E: Let's hope, let's hope.
B: It could.
S: When is that coming out?
E: No, 2013, about a year from now.
J: Oh, OK.
S: About a year?
R: The audience thinks it's 2014.
E: Is it 2014?
R: They sound really sure of themselves.
E: Oh, they pushed it, I heard originally 2013, but I'm not surprised.
S: Wow, it's a long time. All right.
E: They're doing a good job I'm sure.
Audience Q&A
The Coming Singularity (48:26)
Should we, and how can we, hasten the coming the singularity?
S: Well, before we go on to science or fiction we're going to take some questions from our live studio audience.
JD: Hi my name is Jared Dickman.
R&E: Hi Jared!
JD: So I had this whole spiel worked out about what I wanted to say to you guys and let me just start off with Hi.
R: It's a good start.
JD: You mentioned some guy who had been listening since he 14 and that's nothing. I have been listening for six and a half years since I was around 12 years old.
R: My god.
JD: Yeah, right? And I don't have a great...
R: Get out!
(laughter)
JD: I didn't have the best family life growing up which is you know whatever. What I did have each week was you guys.
R: Aww.
JD: Talking to me about what I did want to hear and I just wanted to say I love you guys.
R: You can stay, you can stay.
(applause)
JD: Thank you so much for everything that you do and keep doing it because it is making a difference.
R: Awww.
E: Thank you. Wow.
B: Wait, you can't even legally drink, can you?
JD: Nope. That being said, what I do want to do is, I want to change the world. And I want to do that with the tools that you guys have given me, of science and critical thinking.
S: Whoa whoa wait, whoa wait. You want to say that, you've got to say it the right way.
JD: I want to change the world!
(laughter)
S: Now I believe you, go ahead.
E: For good or for evil?
JD: I'll let that part out later... (inaudible) But how I want to do it, and no thanks to Bob of all people, I'm currently studying computer engineering and physics. I want to go on to quantum computing or quantum engineering or something like that, and just go crazy with that and see what that has to offer.
B: Awesome.
JD: So my question for you guys is this. The technological singularity, you know imminent in my humble opinion, is arguably the end game for humanity, you know that's what we've been working towards, that's what it is. What do you think the most important or maybe most three important scientific fields are for getting us there as quickly as possible.
S: Um.
B: Artificial intelligence, that's key. I mean there's classics. Artificial intelligence, there's genetic engineering and there's.
S: Nano technology.
E: Nano technology.
B: Nano technology. Those three are like, and they can all enhance each other.
E: The holy trinity.
B: If you... yeah right. I mean if you've got mature nanotechnology, it just helps with so many other fields, but...
S: I would say...
B: But hey, the classic definition I think of the singularity I think is AI because then you've got a human-level intelligence, and once you reach that you just make it a little faster and that's super human. So that's one of the ways. There's lots of ways to define the singularity. Being unable to predict what this thing is going to do is a key aspect of it. So once we have AI then that's the singularity in my mind.
JD: Yeah. Somebody was arguing to me to actually stop studying quantum computing and go into artificial intelligence hard core because once you can beat the Turing test, that's it. And then we could just have a computer build a smarter computer and cascade.
S: The Turing test is not the be all and end all of artificial intelligence for a lot of reasons.
B: It'd be impressive, but...
JD: And I was trying to counter-argue that, and I couldn't think of any great reasons as to why we need anything...
SS: Jared, what I want to know is why do you want to hurry up the singularity? I mean why do you want this to happen? I mean you lose control of the planet. Is there some reason you want to lose control? That's one way to change the world, I mean I agree with you.
R: Well he already said he identifies with Bob who we've already established is a sociopath, so...
(laughter)
JD: I don't know if I agree with that...
B: Sociopath?
J: But Seth, your statement implies that we have control now, and I don't really...
SS: Well, I mean from the dogs' point of view we do.
(laughter)
E: Yeah, right?
SS: Yeah, we have control. But I mean the singularity is where in fact all this rapid improvement in the ability of machines suddenly, it's becoming, I mean it's exponential and then it reaches a point where it just trumps everything that we do. Now why is it that you look forward to this?
JD: Well, what I think is going to happen and I could be totally wrong of course here, but I think that humans and robots are going to merge as the singularity comes closer and it's not going to be homo sapiens and robots, it's going to be homo robotica and we are going to move forward and expand out from there...
SS: You know, I'd like to think you're right but what will happen between now and then of course, is we'll be doing things like putting chips in your brain and all that sort of thing.
JR: Who's going to be working for who, that's what I want to know.
SS: Yeah, exactly.
B: Who's signing the cheque?
SS: And the point is that you can do that, but to me that's like putting a four cylinder engine in a horse, you get a faster horse for a while, but eventually you decide the heck with the horse part, we'll just build the Maserati.
S: But the difference is...
SS: But the idea that we're going to be sympatico with the machines, I mean it's like, don't worry dinos, we might get wiped out but we're going to merge with the mammals.
B: (laughs) that's a great analogy.
S: But the difference though Seth, though is that, you're right a horse and a car, why merge them, just build the car but that's because those are both tools for us. But we're the people that we're trying to merge with the machines. I do that that changes the nature of the game a little bit because when we can be as, whatever, as smart as our artificial intelligences because we have mature brain/machine interface, I think first of all it will make us more willing to embrace that technology if it's us and not just tools that we're building. And it also changes, you know it has the potential to change our potential in terms of what we can do and how long we can live and all of these sorts of things. I don't know, that's just another wrinkle in all of this, because it's changing humanity.
B: All right, but don't forget though...
S: It's not just improving our own tools.
B: But machine intelligence evolves differently than biological/cyborg intelligence and you've got a very small window there, I mean the machine intelligence can evolve so much quicker and faster than we could upgrading ourselves and that's a big difference.
S: What if we become the machine intelligence? I mean just imagine...
B: That's the key, we might need to make sure that happens.
S: Having, for all intents and purposes an AI but that's designed to be a symbiotic relationship with your own brain so that it is you, but it's interfacing with your brain because you're your brain too.
JR: But who makes the contract?
S: Right.
J: Yeah.
JR: I want to know who.
E: Good question.
B: What will your brain evolve into with these mechanisms? Yeah it's dicey and it's very risky but I still want to do it.
SS: I'm with Bob on this, I mean you can say you're going to keep up but we haven't changed much since the time of the Ancient Greeks, the machines are doubling in speed every 18 months. There's a completely different rate of improvement there. I think the interesting question is what James is asking, and that is who's in charge of whom? Right?
S: Right.
SS: And if you go to AI conferences, they talk about instilling moral behaviours into the machines. Which is just code for how can we be sure to be able to pull the plug?
S: Right, how do we control them.
SS: Right. And the point is that you can pull the plug for a while. The first generation of thinking machines you can put all the moral codes in there. You can put in Asimov's rules of robotics, you can just tell them, play nice and maybe the first generation will. But there's no reason to think that the fifth generation that's been designed by generations two, three and four will care anything about that. It isn't to say that they're inimical. They may not white them out. I mean I have goldfish at home but I don't wipe them out.
E: They'll enslave us.
SS: So you know I don't know if they'd enslave you, but the point is that you've created an intelligence that's almost orthogonal to yours very quickly.
S: Right.
J: What does that mean?
SS: It means there's no overlap.
J: Well, OK so look at it like this. First of all I think it is inevitable and we need to talk about it right. It's one of those things...
B: Yeah, I agree, I agree.
J: ...that we have to take very seriously and discuss, and I don't necessarily disagree with Seth, I've been reading a lot about the singularity lately and it's becoming a much more scary concept to me now than ever before. I think it is something that absolutely could easily take over humanity and wipe us out. That being said, if it's inevitable, we have to do our magic now to deal with it. We have to talk about it, we have to figure out how we're going to handle it and what we want it to be, shape it now. And why are you laughing at me, what's going on over there.
SS: It's just you're looking forward to it, that's why I was laughing.
J: Well, I mean look, look forward to it, I get where he's coming from too...
B: Yeah.
J: ...because, you know I'm looking at, like I think of the singularity like, oh my we're going to have so much information, you know so much incredible stuff that we could use, you know all this research, thousands of years or human research could be done.
B: Yeah, of research, in a week, right.
J: And then you know I have this little fixation on not dying which would be very lovely to happen. Right, so that would hopefully happen as well, and all these good things and all that. But yeah, I see where you're coming from too. I want more people to have your, like hey guys, you know don't just put this thing up like it's the best thing since sliced bread, let's frikkin' talk about it because it's scary and it's dangerous.
SS: Yep. I'm not sure that's my attitude, but I...
JD: I think it's either going to be utopian or dystopian, and it's either going to be the greatest thing that humanity has ever known or the worst. And let's try to embrace it and make it the best. If it's probably inevitable.
J: Yeah, I agree with that.
E: Take our chances.
SS: There's a science fiction story by Stanislaw Lem, which I mispronounce his name but... what is it Golem 14 or Golem 13 or something like that where the military designs a thinking machine for their own purposes and the machine does its thing for the military but of course that machine designs the next generation which is a little bitter, still works for the military, but by the third generation it's not interested in working for the military, you know I'm not into that gig any more, right? And very shortly thereafter it closes itself off from humanity. It's not that it wipes us out, it only wipes you out if you try to cut off the power to the thing. Then it'll wipe you out, but otherwise it has no interest in you.
B: Interesting.
SS: It's like your attitude to the ants in the backyard. You're a lot smarter than they are but you're not going to wipe them out. And this machine is doing something, nobody knows what.
B: That's scary.
J: That's cool, that's really...
B: That's really scary.
E: Ooh. I don't like where this is going.
J: Well, so clarify your position because you just said you weren't...
SS: I'm all with Jared, let's develop the thinking machines, I think it would be interesting but hey, après moi le déluge.
JR: Wow.
R: Did he just become the classiest person here?
Science or Fiction (58:16)
S: All right then, well let's move on to Science or Fiction.
Iszi Lawrence: It's time for Science or Fiction.
S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts
R: But not this week!
S: But not this week because Rebecca, you're going to take over.
R: That's right.
B: Is this your first one?
R: No I've done it before.
E: She's done it before.
S: No, she's done a couple. She's done a couple before.
E: We've each done it before.
R: Yeah, this was a terrible decision on my part.
B: Wasn't it? It's harder than it looks, isn't it?
E: A lot of work.
R: Especially when you're prepping for a live show and a trip.
S: You saying I make it look easy?
B: Er, no.
R: No the reason why I was really inspired to take this on though is because two weeks ago in podcasting time, Steve did a Science or Fiction that, he likes to do themes, and usually when he does a theme, he specifically picks a theme that I hate and know nothing about. So, that one was I believe carbon nanotubes.
B: Nanotubes.
S: Carbon nanotubes.
R: I could not care less about it. I care, no I care, I care. I just don't... they do everything OK I get it, they're magic.
B: You're disinterested in nanotubes?
R: Right, yes I'm completely disin... no.
E: Disinterested.
R: So I wanted to get back at Steve, basically.
S: Right.
R: So today's science or fiction, there is a theme. And the theme...
B: Is unicorns!
R: Close.
E: Rainbows.
R: Close. Sloths.
B: Ooh, I like sloths.
R: The humble sloth. OK so I, normally when we do this on line, we have the ability to send each other the items so we can read them. So in this case, so we can't do that, I'm going to read them and then I'm going to pass around my iPad so you guys can take a look at them.
J: OK.
E: Or other things on there, yeah.
R: Don't look through my porn please. My iPad porn.
E: iPorn.
R: Has that happened, has anybody? No. Maybe.
J: Somehow I think it's all unicorn stuff, isn't it?
(laughter)
R: It's mostly uniporn.
J: (laughs) Uniporn.
B: Unicorn porn.
S: Redundant, but yeah.
R: OK, and also because Steve did it, there are four items this week.
E: Awww.
J: Oh gosh.
B: I'm surprised you didn't go to five.
R: There are twelve items! No, if I had more time, totally. If the internet hadn't been so spotty. So here they are, again one of these is the fiction. Number one. Recent phylogenetic analyses suggest an extremely recent common ancestor between two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths, which occupy the same territory, subsist on the same diet, and even have the same number of toes despite the name difference. Number two. Sloths move so slowly that a blue-green algae grows on them, living symbiotically within its hollow hairs and providing sustenance for dozens of varieties of arthropods. Number three. Despite the fact that they are incapable of walking, sloths climb down from the trees, poop in a small hole at the foot of the tree, and then climb back up. And number four. Sloths are graceful swimmers who can perform a breast stroke and are descended from an aquatic sloth ancestor. Those are your items. Uuhhh, Bob.
B: Thank you.
(laughter)
E: We love Bob.
R: You just look so pleased right now, you just can't believe your luck.
B: I knew I should have sat over there.
J: Poll the audience, Bob.
S: Are we going to poll the audience?
R: Oh, yeah yeah yeah, OK.
S: All right, let's do it.
B: Good.
R: Let me see them again so I remember which one's which.
E: Give them a quick shot, yeah.
R: OK, who thinks the first item is fictional, about two-toed slots and three-toed sloths having a recent common ancestor?
(silence)
R: All right.
E: Whoa, that's a first.
J: Whoa, that is stone cold.
R: Yeah. Number two, the blue green algae, growing on sloths. Who thinks that's fiction?
(silence)
R: I think they're just scared. OK, number three. That sloths are incapable of walking but still climb down the tree to poop in a hole.
(clapping)
J: That was the only one I thought was...
(laughter)
R: OK. And number four, that sloths are forceful swimmers.
(clapping)
R: OK, so it sounds like number three and then number four are the audience favourites.
J: For fiction.
R: For fiction.
B: Uh, the first one, the phylogenetic analyses. Yeah, I can kind of see that, I don't have a problem with that one. The blue green algae for number two. Yeah, I mean how slow do you have to move for the algae to grow on you? I mean I think I've got some over... no. But uh, yeah I don't have a problem with that. They move slowly, but that wasn't bothering me either. The third one. Their hands are kind of freaky, they're really curved. I could really see them having trouble walking.
JR: Like Silvia Brown.
(laughter)
B: That boy's dead.
R: Please do not besmirch the good name of sloths by comparing them to Silvia Brown.
(laughter)
B: I've never seen them actually walking. Hmmm... how could I not know that? The swimmer one though, is just kind of freaking me out. How could sloths and graceful swimming, just don't go together for me, so I'm just going to, what the hell, I'll pick that one. Who's next?
R: All right, let's just head over to Steve.
S: Yeah I had the same reaction as Bob when I heard the swimming one, I'm like wow that sounds so crazy fiction.
B: That would be too obvious, right?
S: That would be incredible, yeah it's almost too obvious, like was that the one that inspired the whole theme?
B: Maybe that's what she wants you to believe.
R: Excuse me, my great love of sloths inspired the theme.
S: An aquatic sloth ancestor. The whole thing just sounds so crazy. The other ones all sound fine. I was trying to remember, yeah there's something about the phylogenetic relationship between two-toed and three-toed sloths that's counter-intuitive. I can't remember what it is.
B: (inaudible)
S: So that might be... no there is, there is something I can't remember, it's one of those things, there's something about that that is not what you would think it is, like they're not quite as closely related as the names might imply, both being sloths. But I don't know, I don't remember. The blue-green algae, fine, sure. The walking yeah, I mean you know sloths climb along trees in the branches I don't know if they go down to poop but they could certainly do that. I think I have to go with the swimming one too. If that's true that's amazing but that one just struck me as so obvious that I'm just going to go with that because that was my first reaction.
B: GWB.
R: All right, GWB. Evan.
S: Incidentally.
E: Yeah I'll just get right to it. I was thinking the swimming one first, the poop one second. But the audience thinks the poop one is f... a few more people were thinking that one was fiction.
JR: We've been doing a lot of poop this evening.
E: It's been a very earthy podcast.
R: Is that a new medicine you're on?
(laughter)
E: They're incapable of walking, also graceful swimmers. Swimmers. I'll go with gang, what the heck. Swimmers. Fiction!
R: All right, Jay.
J: Yeah I mean I, the think I thought of about the swimming is like if you have hooks for hands, like how the hell can you swim? Like their hands are just like Bob was saying.
E: Catch a lot of fish on the way.
J: They're like remember those monkey toys we had when we were kids?
B: Yes.
E: Yes, you hang them all together.
J: The hooked hands, you could slide them down something.
S: They didn't swim very well.
J: No, but I can't imagine sloths... it's like they can't move but they get in the water and they're like doing Olympic swimming. Like they can barely move. I saw a sloth crawl across the street. It took him like 15 minutes to crawl and there's people like blocking. And then you get them in the pool and they take off like rockets?
E: He was thinking if only I was swimming.
J: I can't imagine that being true, and this is going to be like such an amazing win for you Rebecca, because I have to say the swimming thing.
R: All right, what do you say Seth?
SS: I have to say I don't know anything about sloths except for the guys who are supposedly responsible for maintenance in our hight school so I'm not sure. The only one that I can, I mean to say and are descended from an aquatic sloth ancestor. Aren't we all descended from aquatic sloth ancestors? I found it a little bit bizarre that they would climb down from the trees and poop into a hole because I can't think of any evolutionary benefit for them doing that. And it sounds like an awful lot of work. So I'd say that's the one.
R: So you're going with...
B: If you're in a tree, why not just crap from the branch right, and just let it drop?
JR: Well, I'm going to poop on the poop one. Yeah, I can't see them climbing out of trees and digging holes, that's a little too civilised for me so I'm going to turn that one down, I think that's a loser.
R: You're going with the poop.
J: OK, there we go.
R: All right, shall we poll the audience?
J: Yes, let's poll the audience again.
R: All right, let's see if they swayed you guys at all. Who thinks that the fiction is the two-toed sloths and the three-toed sloths having an extremely recent common ancestor?
(silence)
R: Still no one, OK. Who thinks that the fiction is the sloths getting a blue-green algae?
(silence)
R: All right. Uh, poop!
(clapping)
J: Wait, we just said, people clap for poop! That was the whole point for the past two hours.
R: The only reason I (inaudible). And sloths as graceful swimmers.
(clapping)
R: It's still pretty even between the two. All right, I'm going to take them in seeming random order. Let's start with the algae, everybody seemed to buy into that pretty quickly. Sloths move so slowly that a blue-green algae grows on them, living symbiotically within its hollow hairs and providing sustenance for dozens of varieties of arthropods. That is in fact... science, so well done. Yeah, it's kind of cool, they do in fact move that slowly and the algae helps protect them because one of sloths biggest predators are raptors, not veloci- but you know, flying.
S: Birds with talons.
R: Yeah, and when the sloth is covered in the algae...
B: Camouflaged?
R: ...and just hanging there they look exactly like a big clump of leaves.
B: Cool, symbiotic relationship.
R: And yeah they have this incredible almost ecosystem of bugs all over them, it's really pretty.
S: That's what happens when you don't move.
JR: Sounds yummy.
B: Which is another good reason why they wouldn't swim. All right. I'm just throwing that out there.
J: Oh, sh...
E: Oh wow.
R: All right, let's go to the other one that everybody thought was science, which is recent phylogenetic analyses suggest an extremely recent common ancestor between two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths which occupy the same territory, subsist on the same diet and even have the same number of toes despite the name distance. That one is in fact... fiction! You all lose!
B: Oh, no way!
R: You all lose! Yeah, I thought Steve was going to get it.
S: Yeah, I was, I argh.
R: I really thought you were going to do it.
S: I knew if I remembered what I was supposed to remember about that I probably would have gotten that one.
R: The science part of that is that two- and three-toed sloths do in fact share the same territory that they have the same diet, the only real difference between them is size difference, but that's the really fascinating thing about them. They're so similar but their common ancestor is incredibly distant, incredibly distant. They've just...
B: Convergent evolution.
R: Yeah, it's a beautiful example of convergent evolution.
B: I hate convergent evolution.
(laughter)
R: Damn you convergent evolution!
E: Damn you, god!
R: Yeah, because they occupied that same area, they were under the same pressures and they evolved in pretty much exactly the same way, and actually, let me pull this note up.
J: You're really passionate about these guys.
R: I love sloths!
B: How could you not know that?
J: So do they have hooks for hands?
R: Like Captain Hook, that's what you're picturing?
E: Arrr.
J: I mean, I can't...
S: They have curved claws, yeah.
R: They have claws.
B: You see them on branches, they just kind of hang upside down.
R: Oh yeah and that's the other thing. Despite the name, all sloths have three toes, but their claws, which are technically on their sloth-hands, two-toed have two claws, and three-toed have three claws.
S: Have you ever held one?
R: No, I would die, I would melt.
B: Yeah, from all that algae and stuff.
E: Yeah, and the bugs and whatever else.
R: Uh, here's a cool thing about sloth evolution I found this quote from a researcher. Even the animals they are most closely related to, ant eaters and armadillos, are as different from sloths as whales are from bats.
J: Wow.
E: Sweet.
JR: That's a big difference.
R: Yeah, I thought that was really cool.
B: Different genetically?
R: So let's go and do the other two, even though you all lost and it's pretty much, you know. It's done now. The poop thing, so despite the fact that they are incapable of walking, sloths climb down from the trees, poop in a small hole at the foot of the tree, and then they climb back up. That's science.
J: But they are so slow, they have to actually think, I'm going to need to poop in about four hours.
(laughter)
R: Here's what that... I almost put this as the item which is, sloths, this is true, sloths poop once a week.
J: Wow.
B: That's awesome.
R: Sloths have such incredibly slow metabolisms.
E: Incredibly constipated.
JR: That's one hell of a poop!
(laughter)
R: Actually, you are absolutely correct, I read a paper that said that 30% of their body weight in one evacuation was not unheard of.
B: Wow, Jay you've done that, you've done that.
R: Again, why do you know so much about Jay and his poop?
B: He posts it on Facebook.
R: So yeah sloths do not poop in the trees and there are a number of guesses for why they do this, there's no solid evidence but some of the...
E: Ew.
JR: I got it, I got it.
R: Thank you.
S: You don't crap where you eat.
B: But they're in a tree, just let it drop.
S: But they're upside down.
B: Yeah, OK.
R: Faeces dropping from the tree are a signal to predators, like the birds that are hunting them...
J: Oh, right.
JR: They get out of the way.
B: Yeah, right but they've got the algae to protect them, they're cool.
R: Exactly though, the algae does until the sound happens and then the birds are very good at swooping, and there's video if you can stomach it, there's actually video of a bird swooping in and flipping upside down and grabbing a sloth right off of a tree branch and carrying it away.
B: Aren't they big though? I mean aren't...
R: You know, they can be like, they're I figure like a cat size, large cat sometimes.
B: Really? I thought they were a little bigger.
R: Well, two-toed are small, three-toed are a little bigger but there are some large birds that can easily snatch them.
JR: You're really fascinated with these, aren't you Rebecca.
R: (laughs) A little bit, a little bit.
B: Tell me, no.
R: There's another possible reason for not pooping from the tree and actually going down and burying it, and this is a bit more difficult to believe, but it is interesting. The poop fertilises the tree, burying it right under the tree fertilises it and produces better food for the sloth to go eat.
E: Ooh, nice.
JR: So they're farmers.
R: Yeah, they're basically farmers.
B: Hey, tell me about extinct giant slots. Weren't they like huge at one point, like bears?
R: We talked about it.
E: Mammoth.
R: I did a this day in history a few weeks ago about Jefferson discovering what he thought was a lion. Or he didn't discover it, but he delivered a paper on it.
B: Oh yeah.
R: He thought it was a lion and asked Lewis and Clark to find it on their expedition.
S: Yeah, it was a giant sloth.
R: They didn't because it was an extinct giant sloth.
B: Cool.
R: And that was another potential item, was that like bigfoot in the US in South America there's a common myth of a giant, a living giant sloth, only it's not just a giant sloth, it's terrifying. It's still very slow.
B: If you stand still for 8 hours you're in deep shit.
(laughter)
R: But like, you know zombies, very slow, very scary. It can happen.
J: What movie was that from? There's a steam roller coming at a guy and it's moving like a half a mile and he's like aaaaargh!
S: A Fish Called Wanda.
(general agreement)
S: He was cemented in, that's why he couldn't move.
J: Holy shit, I just realised something, they can swim like crazy.
R: They can swim, they can swim.
B: Oh come on I want to see a youtube video.
R: There are tons of youtube videos on it and they are amazing.
E: There is a sloth channel on youtube.
R: So they do have an ancestor that was probably a mostly aquatic sloth. There's really good evidence to suggest. They found these fossils and they looked particularly at the teeth and they found that older versions of the sloth, this is technical language, it's very late. Aquatic sloth 1.0 had teeth that were really nicked up and what they figure happened was that it lived in a desert area that ran into some water and the only plants around were by the water so the wear on the teeth they think came from sand that they scooped up as they were grabbing plants on the edge of the water but later versions of the sloth, they found that the sand was beginning to disappear and the only explanation they can come up with is that the sloth was moving further and further and further into the water until it was completely in the water and just foraging on aquatic plant life. So they do have that ancestor and right now there are sloths that live in areas that can be flooded and when that happens they literally can just drop out of the tree and immediately start swimming and they do this breast stroke. I found one thing that I could not verify was that depending on which way they land they will do either a breast stroke or a back stroke.
B: Or a back stroke, awesome.
(laughter)
R: Because the internet connection was so low I couldn't find a video of the backstroke so I didn't include that. But I thought that that was pretty cool. They are very good swimmers and you can find it on youtube.
J: Good job Rebecca, that was good.
B: Good job, nice.
(applause)
J: And Rebecca, you've stumped more people at one time than anybody else ever.
R: Awesome, I'll take it.
J: That's pretty cool.
R: This has been sloth facts with Rebecca. There was actually one other thing that I wanted to mention that I thought was really interesting but I tried, I could not verify this. But in Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams' book, Douglas Adams says that his favourite fact is that young sloths are so inept at climbing that they often mistake their own arms and legs for tree limbs and they fall.
(laughter)
B: Oh my god, I don't remember that part.
R: The best I could confirm was that there is evidence to suggest that climbing amongst sloths is a learned behaviour and so that could suggest that yeah, maybe baby sloths are morons at climbing.
(laughter)
R: But yeah, I couldn't find any, no video evidence of baby sloth like rrrrr, falling down. So yeah.
S: OK, good job Rebecca.
R: Thank you.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (77:46)
S: Um, Jay do you have a quote to end our live show with?
J: I have a quote from the incredible Carl Sagan. This was actually from his Cosmos TV show. And the quote is: "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources." Carl Sagan!
(laughter)
R: Thank you.
(applause)
S: Thank you for joining us everyone, Randi thanks again for joining us, Seth it was a pleasure to have you on the show.
J: Thanks guys.
S: Thank you guys for joining me this week, and thanks to our live audience.
E: Great week, great week guys.
R: Thank you. Good night!
S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.