SGU Episode 925

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SGU Episode 925
April 1st 2023
"A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals. The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis."
SGU 924                      SGU 926
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
BL: Blake Lemoine, software engineer
Quote of the Week
The best science communication invites you to consider the complexity of the world, and the worst invites you to ignore the complexity.
Michael Hobbes, journalist & podcaster
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Steve's senate committee hearing

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, March 30^th, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone!

S: How's everyone doing?

J: All right man.

B: Doing good, doing good.

S: So I had an interesting week this week.

B: Ah, yes.

J: I know what you're going to talk about.

E: And if you had an interesting week, then it's very interesting.

S: On very short notice, I was formally invited to participate in a round table discussion for a Senate committee in Washington, D.C.

C: Oh, cool. On what?

E: Oh, federal senate?

S: Yeah, federal. Yeah, on health care, obviously. What else would it be?

C: But like what aspect?

S: I don't have explicit permission to talk about what happened.

C: Oh, OK.

E: You don't not have.

B: What a tease you are.

C: So it was not on [inaudible]. Come on man.

S: It was no cameras, no press. Because they wanted people to feel free to speak their mind. And it was kind of an exploratory kind of thing.

E: Can you tell us which committee?

S: It was the health committee, health care education, labor and pensions.

E: Okay.

S: So I'll just say, I just want to make some observations. It was about, to some extent, about alternative medicine. And I'll be writing it up for science-based medicine in more detail. But I'll just say, make some general observations at this point until I get more explicit permission of what I cannot say. But there was no surprises for me. It was the kind of things that were said where maybe it was just like, it was good for me to sort of get a feel for, okay, this is what they're doing now. This is where they are in terms of how they're promoting their brand. And essentially, one of the primary mechanisms that they're using for that is to equate all complementary, all integrative medicine with preventive medicine, right? As if those two things are exactly the same thing. Which of course is like, once you frame it that way, then the game is already over, right? So my primary function was to try to separate those things as much as possible. And then everything else, there was no surprises. Their reliance on anecdotal evidence, mixing variables in order to obscure which really going on, etc. So I thought it was all in all it was very good. There were some interesting aspects of what happened there that I hopefully I'll be able to talk about at some point. But-

E: Can you tell us which congressperson's office invited you specifically?

S: I was invited by Senator Cassidy, who is the-

E: Louisiana?

S: Yep, Louisiana, the minority leader on the committee.

C: Wow, Evan, you're good.

E: I know my senators.

C: Yeah you do.

S: Who's a physician.

E: Right.

S: Yeah.

E: That's right.

S: So I had to look up all the senators beforehand just so I knew who I was talking to. But it's interesting. I always find it interesting to step into a completely different culture. You know what I mean?

C: Adapt to it, yeah.

S: I've lived my life in academia. And you get used to the language and the people and the dress. You pick up on so many social signals within your subculture. And then when you're suddenly thrown into a completely different subculture, you realize how alien it is. It's the same, but it's different. You know what I mean?

E: Is it designed to be intimidating?

S: No. I mean, so, all right. So just walking around, it's a couple of observations. First of all, the level of fashion and dress is way higher than academia.

B: Really?

C: Of course, yeah.

S: Everyone looked fabulous. Hair perfectly coiffed just nice. And almost ubiquitous was the lapel pin. The lapel pin. You have to wear a pin that shows that you care about whatever it is you're supposed to care about.

C: I got you.

S: It's got to be there.

C: [inaudible]

J: [inaudible] pin on your uniform. (laughter)

B: Nice.

E: Good, Jay.

C: Were they mostly wearing American flags or caduceus?

S: No neither. I didn't get up close enough because it was small to see what it was, but they were all different.

C: Oh cool.

S: They were just all whatever they're-

E: Had a little shiny thing.

S: They all had some pin that was together, would it to promote whatever it is that they're supposed to be aligned with.

E: Is it like those colored rubber bands you wear around your wrist sort of?

C: What would Jesus do bracelets? Oh no, like the live strong ones.

E: Well, there was like a thousand different colors that meant a thousand different things.

S: Super clean cut.

C: Of course. That military influence.

S: Whereas like with corporate, it's similar. Like occasionally I intersect with the corporate world and it's also like nicer suits and cologne and perfect hair. But there's something, I don't know, just something subtly different about the corporate world. It's more slick. It's more, I don't want to say sleazy, but you know what I mean? It's less clean cut. It's less clean cut than-

C: It sounds very much like you're describing a room full of men.

S: Well, no, it was both.

C: Okay. But was it like equivalent?

S: Well, I'm not even talking about the committee meeting. I'm not, because I was actually more women than men in that room.

C: Oh, you're just talking about like the halls.

S: I'm talking about walking around Washington DC. I was more in the locations where there were almost no tourists and there was all staff and senators. All people who work there, I was behind the capital building. And yeah, so you're just going to see like this is the dress code. This is the way you're supposed to look. Anyway, it's just interesting. It was like anthropological observation of the culture and everyone feels like they need to conform to those standards.

E: Steve, were you one of several who gave testimony?

S: Let me just say this. I was the only person there explicitly defending science based medicine. I emailed his staff afterwards that people I was actually emailing with and sent them sort of my summary of the talking points that came out of that meeting.

C: Oh, smart.

S: So hopefully they'll be able, I don't know if you'll get it or-

B: That's a good idea.

S: -to committee, but I did what I could.

J: Steve, you goddamn shill. (laughter)

S: I know.

E: Oh, no kidding.

C: You shill for science based medicine.

E: Oh my gosh.

C: Okay.

E: Yeah.

S: It was very... it was an interesting day. I had to fly down in the morning, fly down in the evening, long, freaking day. I had to wear dress shoes and walk around on them all day and it killed me.

C: Oh, that sucks.

S: Because it was the first time I traveled with nothing. You think about it. You ever get on a plane?

C: I've done it before. I've gone to San Francisco and back and it feel like-

B: What do you mean with nothing? You've had a backpack or something, right?

S: No.

C: You don't need it. I traveled before with just a purse.

S: The only thing I had was my iPad.

C: It's the weirdest feeling. You're like, they're going to know. I'm going to get in trouble. It doesn't feel right.

S: You wonder, like, is this guy terrorist because he [inaudible]?

C: Yeah, exactly.

S: But I could only bring what I had to carry with me everywhere, including into this meeting, including through security. And I would have had to go through special security if I brought a backpack. So I literally had what was in my pockets and my iPad and that was it.

E: You need a lackey handler's Sherpa kind of person.

C: Like in Veep, a bag man.

S: A bag man, yeah.

C: Oh my god, I love Veep.

S: All right. We have a really good interview coming up with Blake Lemoine, who is the AI specialist who claims that Google's Lambda is sentient. And it was a good interview. It's fascinating. I really don't think I can abridge it and have it be coherent. We really have to include the whole interview. And so we're going to do that, which means we're going to only do some quick news items so that we can leave enough time for the full interview, the uncut interview.

Quickie with Steve (8:08)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

S: So I'm going to start just a very quick one because this is actually going to also tease another interview that we're doing either next week or the week after a battery announcement. I know this is, there's battery announcements. It seems like every week. But this one rose so far above the background. We had to at least mention it. A ton of people emailed us about this. The company Amprius announced their new 500 watt hour per kilogram battery platform. They're actually in production. This is not like future thing.

B: In production.

S: In production. It was the news is it was independently tested by an outside company to verify that it was a 500 watt hour per kilogram battery. Now what does that mean? Guys, that's twice the energy density of the batteries that are currently in Tesla vehicles.

B: Twice?

S: Yes, twice.

E: Is it four times the size?

S: No, twice the density means it's half the size. It's also twice the specific density, which means it's half the weight. Half the weight. Half the size.

E: What did they uncover?

S: Well, it's just the I looked into it as much as I could and it's basically seemed like it's kind of using the technology that we've been talking about for the last five to 10 years. This is now coming through the pipeline and into production. The only thing I couldn't find out was how much it's going to cost. They're going to first use them in the aerospace industry like for drones and stuff and then electric vehicles and they're also building a plant in Colorado. I think they'll probably that will should be I think cranking out batteries in 2025. So maybe that will be their electric vehicle factory.

B: Cell phones.

S: And then also portable devices. This is their third category that they're going to use it for. But there's a lot of questions I have. So we're going to get somebody from the company to go to answer all of our technical questions because this seems like a huge deal. I couldn't find any.

B: This is not incremental man.

S: This is not incremental. I couldn't find anything anywhere that was a deal killer or a gotcha or whatever. The experts are saying, holy crap, this is a big deal. And so I feel like we really have to wrap our heads around this. We'll go into far more detail when we do the interview with the technical person from the company. But yeah, I'm almost thinking, should I wait a year to buy my next electric car until these things are coming out? You know, because now we're talking about 500 tile range cars with smaller, cheaper batteries. I don't know. It could be amazing. There's a lot of stuff happening in battery technology. This was just the biggest.

Quick News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

Mammoth Meatball (10:49)

• Meatball from long-extinct mammoth created by food firm

meatball

Lunar Ice (17:03)

• Water is trapped in glass beads on the moon’s surface, lunar samples show

First Blitzar Observed (19:15)

• Did we already observe our first “blitzar”?

England Allows Gene-Edited Crops (27:35)

• England Allows Gene-Edited Crops

Who's That Noisy? (31:24)

Answer to previous Noisy:

First recorded sound

New Noisy (35:21)

[Grinding background with a light clanging in the foreground ]

short_text_from_transcript

Announcements (36:00)

[top]                        

Interview with Blake Lemoine (40:05)

• Talking about LaMDA, Lemoine's firing by Google and AI sentience

[top]                        

Science or Fiction (1:33:09)

Item #1: A large survey of life on Earth finds that total biomass remains fairly consistent (within one order of magnitude) across the entire range of body size for all living things. Item #2: Researchers find that plants under stress emit recordable sound, about as loud as a normal speaking voice. Item #3: Researchers created intracellular sensors that use nanodiamond quantum sensing.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Total biomass consistent
Science	Plants emit sound
Science	Intracellular sensors

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Bob	Total biomass consistent
Cara	Total biomass consistent
Evan	Total biomass consistent
Jay	Total biomass consistent

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:44:45)

The best science communication invites you to consider the complexity of the world, and the worst invites you to ignore the complexity.  – Michael Hobbes, journalist & podcaster

Signoff

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

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

[top]                        

Today I Learned

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

References