SGU Episode 1042

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SGU Episode 1042
June 28th 2025
"Endless wonders of the universe, filled with galaxies and cosmic mysteries."
SGU 1041                      SGU 1043
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
- Werner Heisenberg
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, June 25th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, Everybody. Cara, Santa Maria. Howdy, J Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

What's the Word? (00:26)

• Eco

S: Just want to say as I record this two days I have.

E: 2 days.

S: Left of work.

C: Oh wow.

S: Basically, Steve, when people are listening to this, you'll be in bed, Yeah.

E: I want I want to know Steve, what what takes place in the last two days of.

S: Work, I think full days. I have two full days of patients.

E: But.

C: Do they know?

E: They haven't transitioned yet to another doctor, I mean.

S: No, a lot of my patients have transitioned, but they I've scheduled patients to my last day, right. So and they just stop scheduling patients for me. They're just they're making use of my open. Let me put it that way.

E: Whoa, how?

C: Sad that somebody you're doing coverage for like the patient sees you and it's like you're amazing. Finally, I have this doctor. I'm so and you're like, sorry it.

S: Happens every time.

E: Steve, has anyone, has anyone said yet? Well, will you still be my doctor? Retire.

S: One or two people sort of asked in that direction, like, you know, you don't get it. I am fully retiring.

J: I'm out of here. So, Steve, are you gonna tell your very last patient that they are your very last patient?

S: Guess so.

C: Cool. Yeah. Are you gonna like you're gonna live stream load a streamer or something? Example.

J: That you know, Cara, what I've come to realize after grilling Steve for the past couple of months is there is virtually 0 drama coming from his office. There's no one to to like, yell at or say something nasty to on the way out. There's he doesn't want, he doesn't want to steal any stethoscopes.

E: You're not going to defenestrate anything.

J: You know, yeah. Like, he doesn't like gonna tell any boss off. He's just gonna like, OK, Goodbye, Steve.

E: Not gonna. Burn any bridges.

S: You think they'll have cake? I had my cake already, just gonna comment.

E: And stuff your pockets with a bunch of medicine. I'm out of here so long.

J: I'm happy to to have finally realized that Steve is like super, super happy about this. There is no like I'm going to miss this or that. He's just happy he's done.

S: I mean, I am going to miss aspects of my career and it's sad and it's to a certain extent, but I have something very exciting I'm moving into.

C: Well, here's an interesting question.

E: You're not going to play golf, right?

C: Are you going to maintain your license?

S: At least for the first year. Because there's no reason not to and I've met all my requirements. But but it would take work for me to maintain my requirements going forward. Beyond that, and I probably won't.

C: Yeah, it's a lot of probably just for them.

B: Definitely not.

C: Yeah, I guess the ability to to step in an emergency, which you can do anyway because of Good Samaritan. Oh. Yeah, yeah.

S: This is only about me working and getting paid. Like if I wanted to do locum tenants I would need a license.

C: Yeah, and that would be fun.

S: Yeah, but I'm going to be too busy. I'm going to be too busy doing too busy SGU.

E: Work busy, looking good.

S: All right, what movie is that from Evan?

E: No, I don't know it. Don't.

S: Cara has no chance. I'm trying.

C: I thought that was just Bob being clever. What is that, Bob? Now you're it goes. Deep.

S: I'll be too busy looking good. That's from to the dragon. To the dragon.

E: Hell, why don't I know?

S: That which we we just saw with a childhood friend of ours that we saw it with like when it was in the theaters, you know?

B: Yeah. Yeah, my, my old friend, best friend growing up, we were like Bruce Lee fanatics. So yeah, we of course watched Into the Dragon and yeah, that's one of this is one of those quotes that you just. There's 100 quotes that are. Hardwired into our brains.

S: Lasered into our brains, anyway.

B: I have to found the perfect time to use it you.

S: Did you did in context, I want to keep everyone updated on the shenanigans of RFK Junior. So very quickly now he he's withdrawing funding, the funding pledge from GAVI, which is an international organization that vaccinates poor kids.

Voice-over: Under the Biden so.

S: Every four years, you know, they have to get their funding for the next cycle. And last time around, the Biden administration pledged 1.2 billion for this cycle. And RFK Junior wants to claw that back.

C: So they probably already spent some of it.

S: I think it's for the it's 26 to 30 cycle is what the money is for. And guess how he's justifying it?

C: He's saying vaccines don't work.

E: They're not transparent or they're not, you know, they're they're in violation of some crap.

S: Yeah, basically he basically said that they quote UN quote, ignored the science. And so he's weaponizing. And we got a question about this too, but we've talked about it on the show. He's weaponizing the language of scientific medicine, right? The gold standard Science.

C: Yeah, we did a whole deep dive on. I know.

S: That's exactly what he's doing. So he's saying that they're just rubber stamping vaccines and they're not. They're ignoring the signs and they're not considering the side effects and the.

B: Who's ignoring science? Who is ignoring science? Right the.

S: World vaccine experts, you know, who are following the the guidelines of the World Health Organization. It's total nonsense. It's like they don't believe my bullshit conspiracy theories. Therefore they're quote UN quote ignoring the science. You wouldn't know science if it hit him in the ass. This guy, it's just this is bullshit.

B: Him in the ass with it. Let's just do it.

S: You should. This is this is what he's doing. He is weaponizing this notion of scientific standards. He's using it as a weapon, not as a way of genuinely finding the truth, which has been his life. This is what he has done his whole life.

E: To say it's predictable as an understatement.

S: And again, we have loosely keeping track of how many millions of people he's going to kill in his career. This funding shortfall will probably in the next cycle it the estimate is it will save 8 million lives. So it's some big chunk of those 8 million lives that should have been saved by 20-30 will will be lost because of RFK Junior.

E: I hope some benefactor comes along and does the right thing and fills the gap that the United States is about to.

S: Bill Gates funds this organization too, so.

B: I just want karma to come along and do some justice. How about? That no, I get karma.

E: Yeah, that would be satisfying. But also, you know, let's hope it doesn't become this possible worst case scenario and that he's thrown us all into.

S: Yeah, but we're talking when we're talking when we're talking about his death toll. We are. It's in the 1,000,000. That's what we're talking about. How many millions of people? Yeah, it's crazy.

C: It's already worst case scenario, it's just going to be worser.

E: Right. And then the play and then the play catch up later on after all this stuff is out there and people are, Oh my gosh, it's gonna it it, this will last long beyond those four years.

C: This is generational, generational horror.

S: Is happening. Yeah. I mean, we'll probably do it, but we can to reverse as much of this as as possible. If we, you know, replace him, replace the current administration. But it did, Yeah. The the damp, so much damage will have been done, right. Like, you can't go back and vaccinate those kids who weren't vaccinated and died, you know? And it's whatever. It's hard. It's just a tiny little sliver of the horribleness.

E: OK, right. Shame.

S: Let's move on with The Regular Show. Carrie, you're going to start us off with a What's the word?

C: Yeah, it's been a bit. I am going to dive into a word that was suggested by Adam from Louisiana. He said, hi, a word etymology, research or discussion possibility for the SGU Eco as in ecosystem and economy. Thank you, long time listener. Thanks, Adam. So yeah, those two words sound like they they're pretty far apart, ecosystem and economy, but they both start with eco. Maybe everyone but Steve, any of you, do you see a similarity between the eco of economy and the eco of ecosystem or ecology?

US#02: Have to do with systems.

C: OK, systems.

US#02: Like like how would it, How would you put it?

C: I think what we might be looking at there though is the relationship between the suffixes, not the prefixes. So system or onomy or ology. And those, yes, do have to do with schools of thought, but the prefix eco. What is it Eco?

S: It's Greek, not Latin.

E: Peace or something? It's like, oh, what is it?

C: It's Latin from the Greek.

E: What not to, not to hurt, do no harm, something like that.

C: It actually means home.

E: Yeah, home economics.

B: I remember home economics class decades ago. They still even have that.

C: They do. It comes from the Greek oikos, which means home or house or habitation or dwelling. And really the first use of the word economy that I could find is from home economics, household management. So the word economy would not have been called home economics back then because that would have been redundant. Yeah, it would have just been economy back in the 1500s. So economy would have been household management back then. And then eventually it became used to kind of describe resource management and frugality. And then later it kind of evolved to become a larger system of political economy. That didn't actually happen until the mid 1600s, even into the 1700s. Apparently, you know, the founders of the United States only use the word economy once in The Federalist. Like they actually use the word frugality over and over instead of the word economy. And then they described a political economy as a noun only once in those early recorded documents. So it's pretty interesting that it's a relatively new word to describe the economy of a nation. But really economy goes back to the home. And it's the same thing with eco being ecology or ecosystems. So when we talk about home, we're talking about our home, right? So the living things in their environment, that would be the ecology coming from that, that habitation, that dwelling place, that home. And then same thing with ecosystems. So the entire system or the organized whole of home. So it's interesting that we don't, we think of those things as being quite separate, quite far apart, but they do come from that same route. And I couldn't really find any other examples of the the term eco except for sort of branches of ecology or ecosystem, kind of that planetary usage versus economy that usage. All of the different kind of related words that I could find were just variations on that theme, Eco disaster, eco housing, econometrics. I couldn't find another kind of branched term there. So it seems like there was a bit of a fork in the road, but they both lead back to home. Interesting.

S: Nice home.

C: Yeah.

S: All right. Thank you, Cara. I like that. Jay, you're also going to talk about vaccines.

News Items

Vaccinating the World (11:41)

• Life-saving childhood vaccination coverage has stalled in recent decades, leaving millions of children at risk 

S: This has nothing to do with RFK Junior, but vaccinating the world is challenging.

J: Steve, this, this has to do with him a little bit because he is the person that is, is currently driving things in the US. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty grim things going on here, guys. Like so after 50 years of vaccine progress, you know, I'm talking about childhood vaccination coverage. It's now slowing and in some cases it's slipping backwards. So vaccines of course have prevented an estimated what, 154,000,000 saved lives basically over the past few decades. Their their safety and efficacy are extremely well documented. And of course, none of this is up for debate. It is it is that and there is no information to the contrary. I mean, sure, there's edge cases, but the vast, vast majority of people have a net benefit for taking vaccines. So we made in the United States, we made pretty decent gains between the 1980s and the 2000 tens. But now we've hit a plateau and we are starting to really see the consequences of the progress stopping and slipping backwards. So from 1980 to 2023, vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, measles, polio, tuberculosis, these helped drive the global coverage from under 25% to over 80%. That's, you know, that's a huge increase. In 1980, nearly 59 children did not receive a single dose of a routine childhood vaccine. But by 2019, that number dropped to about 15,000,000. And many people, of course, consider this a public health victory when you when you really do understand and appreciate the power of vaccines, knowing that those numbers were increasing that dramatically. You know, not only can we track the success and see, you know, see the changes in in people's quality of life, but, you know, the save lives and the overall savings on, on medical costs and everything, you know, because if you're going vaccinated and you need to be hospitalized for a few weeks because of something, you know, that that raises medical costs. So since 2010, though, all of that momentum has completely flatlined. Measles vaccine coverage fell in over 100 nations. Even in 29 high income countries, coverage for at least one vaccine decreased. And this is not a developing world problem alone. It's a global backslide. That's what the data is showing. When COVID hit, routine vaccines, sadly, they were all disrupted. And during lockdowns and resource reallocations, you know, millions of children missed their scheduled vaccines, including vaccines for measles, polio and DTP, which is diphtheria, you know, pertussis and tetanus. So it's all serious, you know. And and you know, the big hit hitting of the breaks happened during COVID. So in 2023, the number of 0 dose children, now these are kids who had not received even a single vaccine. So in 2023, the number of these zero dose children had risen to 14.5 million and that was up from 12.8 million in 2019. So, you know, that's a lot of a lot of kids not getting vaccinated. Also, the percentage of vaccinated kids has completely plateaued. Like I said, staying the same way for 10 years. Now if you consider that we've had, we've had the, the percentage roughly be 84% for the last 10 years. Now the problem with that is population has gone up, which means if the if the percentage plateaus, that means more kids because more kids are alive, more kids are actually going unvaccinated. The the numbers are higher because the population increase. So about 53% of all 0 dose children live in sub-Saharan Africa. South Asia holds 13%. Nigeria leads the world in unvaccinated children with 2.5 million, followed by India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. And the problem that they're dealing with is they have fragile health systems and they're the programs are significantly under invested. Now, the typical problem with vaccine levels staying at the same percentage is that the population increase means, like I said, that as the population increases, there's a lot of things going on. 1st off, with more people means more likely to spread because you have more vectors, which is, which is definitely a problem. And then of course, you know, you have the, the, as the percentage stays the same, you're not going to have no more people. You're going to have less people being vaccinated. And now we're seeing the consequences and they're pretty significant. So measle, measle cases are spiking. We have over 100 countries reported with outbreaks last year. There is an estimated 35,000,000 children that lack full measles protection. Polio, which we almost had completely eradicated, it resurfaced in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and even in Europe. In the United States, vaccine preventable diseases are showing signs of returning. And this pattern is, it's crystal clear. It's, it's very easy to track and it, the numbers are going in the wrong direction. So what's causing all this? It's super complicated. You know, we could say things like vaccine confidence is a problem and misinformation and disinformation, particularly around COVID-19, you know, that we, there has been an erosion of public trust in vaccines across the board. The disinformation is, is routine and it's it's significantly affecting childhood immunizations. And we're seeing a growing number of parents who are delaying and refusing to vaccinate all together. And this ties into RFK because he's all about, you know, you got to make your choice. You got to do your own research. You know, that's all patent bullshit. Another factor that came in was high income countries are not immune to this. Australia happens to rank 6th worth worse among developed nations in routine childhood vaccine coverage. the United States, we have measles outbreaks and they've claimed the lives of people living in communities with declining vaccine or vaccination rates. UK funding for Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, is being slashed by nearly 40%. And meanwhile, the political meant momentum for vaccines is faltering and it's it's failing. You know, like, you know, again, I can, I can point to one man in the US government who is, who is changing the, out the, the vaccine outcome in our country. And it hasn't even really, you know, he's doing it, but we haven't even seen like direct results yet. It's going to take a while for it to, to play out, but we will see it. We will see kids die because of that man. I assembled a list of all the reasons that are going on here. And it's a huge complicated list of reasons. But I'll just give you the headers, right? So we have the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, which disrupted the routine vaccines. You know, that there was a health worker crisis, which is, which is a huge, huge problem, very difficult to deal with, lack of resources. Then we have rising vaccine misinformation and the public distrust. You know, we have false claims that are widely spread on social media. We have people who are are, you know, a lot, a lot more people today who are, who are, you know, essentially fighting against vaccine and vaccine information. It's not just misinformation like, you know, we, we have a lot more people who are pushing hard against it because they have zero trust in any of it. We have political undermining of scientific institutions, right? We can go into this for, we could talk about this for hours, you know, but everything that's going on in the US with Kennedy Junior, you know, he removed the CDC recommendations, removed the panel of the advisory panel. You know, he's, he's right now he's linked to 13% of all vaccine misinformation retweets on Twitter more than any other individual source in the global, global health systems and funding cuts. You know, that's another big thing because the governments are choosing to not put the money into it anymore, which I, I just don't understand now. Just look at it like this. This is the single most effective medical intervention ever created and it's orders of magnitude more effective than anything else that we've ever done. This is this is if anything has has proof behind it, if anything that we've ever done medically has, has been the massive success, it's vaccines, right? It's unequivors.

S: Also very cost effective. Extremely cost effective.

J: It saves tons of money. Not only are you saving lives, not only are you improving people's quality of life. Right, 'cause you could get the measles and it can do bad things to you and it literally changed the rest of your life, right? So you're literally keeping people healthy and happy. We could see how much money it saves. It's easy to track that. And then, you know, we're talking about the the amount of data because think about the number of people who historically we're getting vaccinated. We have the statistics and it's a massive body of statistics that shows the effectiveness. And if that's not good enough, nothing ever will be and it isn't good enough. It it. And that's the sad state that we're in, You know, So what do we have? We have a bunch of skeptics out there and critical thinkers who, who fully understand this. We have a strong medical community that understand this. And then we have, you know, people out there that that are, that are reading misinformation, can't tell the difference between the truth and lies. You know, we have people being appointed to government positions who don't have the skill sets and they're being, they're being trusted over experts, right? They'll trust RFK over Fauci. You know, we actually, you know, the smear campaign against Fauci is an is another thing that we have to be aware of that happen that's happening here. It's not just the misinformation, it's the disassembling of medical professionals who who have been lifetime contributors to vaccines and to well, the well-being of a population. So it's really concerning. And this whole thing that I just said begs the question, what can we do? And unfortunately we can't do any big brush stroke stuff as a community here. What we can do is try to be as common polite as you can with the people in your life that are buying some of this misinformation. You know, try to talk to them, try to find some common ground. You know, you could show them statistics, you could talk to them a little bit about that, but it's difficult. Well, because once people get that idea in their head that they can't trust it, they don't even trust the statistics, and there's just no way to reach them. I'm not saying don't try, but it's, you know, that's what we're faced with. And unfortunately, there is no panacea for this.

S: Yeah, obviously we need to spread critical thinking skills, scientific literacy for individuals. I think informing yourself, it's, it's you have to do more than just say, yeah, I'm pro vaccine, I'll vaccinate my kids. But also, you know, we need to arm ourselves so that we can deal with the spread of misinformation or disinformation. You know what I mean by being informed enough to promote vaccines, not just do the right thing for yourself. Part of the problem is, is like, if you are just a rational science based person, there's 1000 issues that we deal with. Whereas like the anti vaxxers have one issue, right? Like they can dedicate their life to destroying vaccines, whereas we're trying to defend 100 things, you know, all at the same time. But that means, you know, we need everyone who's on the side of science and reason, etcetera to be involved. You know, professionals, the public, you can't look the other way anymore.

J: Yeah, and the scary thing is, as an example, I know this is an anecdote, but it happened and it's worth repeating. For example, there was a family in Texas who whose child died from measles and they were so anti vax that they literally lost their child, could have easily prevented their child's death. And they said even though we lost our child, we still don't want you to go out and get the vaccine. Like that's how.

S: Deep in the woods they are well that's that's complicated too, because otherwise they have to admit they killed their kid right and like that may just be unemotionally unattainable to them. So they kind of have to think that although not some people do like after a family death because they those vaccines or opposed medicine, they will come around. But then usually they portray themselves as a victim, right? So that's like we have to get to one of those two places. Either I was victimized by misinformation or I was right all along. Very few people can say I was wrong. It was my mistake, and I killed somebody I love. You know what I mean? That's just a little bit too much for most people to bite off.

J: Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, it's it's it's a hard thing to look at. A family that could have easily prevented the death of another family member by giving them something that was incredibly inexpensive and easy. You know, we're not talking about surgery here. We're talking about a shot that takes 2 minutes. I can see it. Yeah, I don't want to come out swinging and go, you know, I want those parents to, you know, to have a horrible rest of their life. They'll have that anyway. But the point being, you know, we have to hold them accountable, but we also have to give them an out because it's a terrible situation there. They are thinking that they're choosing what's best for their children. You know, they're not trying to neglect their children and that they're not being neglectful in that way. It's not laziness with a lot of these people, it's more they're just in the wrong information bubble and there's no way to get them out.

S: It's always complicated, you know, to to some extent they failed, right? They they came to a bad decision and but at the same time, they're also victims because again, as you say, they are living in an information ecosystem that sort of led them down that road. It's not as if our society, our government, our medical establishment, whatever that we're doing such a good job of educating the public that they have no one to blame but themselves. We can't say that they it's, it's tough. It is a tough information environment to live in, to raise kids in. It's very hard on individuals. So it's not surprising when they fail individually, but they did fail at the same time. So it's a combination.

B: It's a triple failure. I mean, they could, they would they, and I understand the psychology to an extent behind this, but they, they are in an amazing position, a horrible position. But also, there's an opportunity they could prevent other kids. I'm dying if they just picked up that mantle and said, yeah, we screwed up big, of course we did. But maybe we can save at least one kid that imagine the power of that voice.

S: And some people do go there, too. That is one of the psychological mechanisms is that it turned it into something good. Yeah. All right, let's move on.

How Children vs AI Acquire Language (26:10)

• https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(25)00142-1 

S: This is an interesting, this is a bit complicated, but this is an interesting. It's not really a study. It is a proposal in a way, talking about how researchers can move, can move forward. Trying to answer the question of how children acquire language. It is an amazing feat when you think about it, is that toddlers go from no language essentially. Not that they're a blank slate. They definitely are not. They have a brain prepared to learn language, but they don't really have any language. And they go from that to being fluent, like fully fluent by the time they're seven or eight years old. And it really is an amazing acquisition of knowledge, scale and information.

B: Yeah, it's a hell of a window, man.

S: Yeah, so and so researchers have been trying to understand that process in detail and the the last 10 years has seen an explosion in research in this area because we have a lot of tools at our disposal now that we didn't have in the past like infant EEG, head mounted eye tracking and other things. Other technologies are have really accelerated this research. Now, one other thing that caught my interest with this paper is the comparison that sort of strewn throughout between how babies acquire language versus how AI large language models acquire language. And they're very different. I do want to say that.

B: Makes sense?

S: One of the things that caught my eye, which as far as I could tell I cannot source this claim. It's not in the article, it's only in the press release. But the press release says that quote, UN quote, if a human learned language at the same rate as ChatGPT, it would take them 92,000 years. So that means that they're, they're basically saying that people acquire language 10,000 times the speed is ChatGPT. I have no idea how they quantified that. And I had no idea where that number comes from and I couldn't find it. All references point to that press release and it's not in the study. So I have no idea where they, where they, where they came up with that.

B: Is there something in the study that could give you the no the data that to at least calculate that no?

E: Did you ask an LLM?

S: I did and they all point to this study that.

E: Press. Release. It's circular.

S: No, everything points to this press release. So. But it's funny anyway. I don't think it's true. I can't even source it. Yeah, but, and again, I'm not really, you know, there's no even explanation for how they would quantify. But the core idea, the.

E: Point is that yeah.

S: That point, the point is valid again, just that I don't know where that number's coming from. But the point is that humans are way more efficient at acquiring language fluency than LLMS are.

E: At the moment.

S: At the moment.

B: Wait, wait wait. When does the when does the clock start for an LLM to acquire language and they talk talking about what? The beginning of research decades ago? What are they talking about? What's the start?

S: No, no, just training, training in LLM to acquire language they're.

C: Talking about an individual one.

S: Yeah, my best guess is that they're talking about processing power. Training in LLM uses orders of magnitude more processing power than the human brain uses. So I guess one way to interpret it is if you trained in LLM on the processing power of a single human brain, it would take 90,000 years. So that that is probably it. But I don't, I just they didn't show me their work.

E: Is it too much comparing apples to oranges?

S: Yes, but that aside, that's just, I wanted to point it out because it's like this press science press release thing. Like I don't know where they pulled that number out of. But anyway, and Cara, I don't know how much you've ever delved into this research as a psychologist as well. It's very, it's fascinating.

C: Yeah, because I think not only is it fascinating from a evolutionary, the developmental, genetic, psychological, neurological perspective, there are like huge camps within many of those fields who, like, wildly disagree. Absolutely.

S: And what this opinion piece really is trying to do is to pull it all together because what they said was there's many different theories. They're basically each looking at a piece of language and they're not. There's really no way to compare them and they're they're trying to bring it all together. So what they said is that if you just look at all of the theories of language development that are constructivist, and by that what they mean is that children construct language, That's pretty much all that that means. Language is not just representational, for example, right? So it's not just this word represents that the true fluency requires that you construct language to have like abstract meaning and.

C: And you use grammar. To use that. Yeah, exactly. Little kids do interesting things. Yeah, with their grammar.

S: Complicated process for constructing language, but they said that all of the theories, the constructivist theories of language have the same 4 components. They don't all have all four components, but these 4 components are part of every constructivist theory. So they they said looking at all of that, they think that these four are the core ideas of how we learn language. So 1 is that children, this is they focus on this as the key difference between kids and AI. Kids engage in active adaptive learning. They are not passive learners, right? So what the, what the research shows is that children are engaging with people, they're engaging with their parents, they're engaging with other people in their environment. They're engaging with their environment, not just the people in that environment. They will point at things they find interesting. For example, just to give a simple example, they're actually actively seeking data and there's evidence to show that they optimize their data acquisition efficiency. So they will seek out data that is at the perfect level of complexity for their current learning needs. Right? That makes sense. So they are attracted to things that are not so simple that they're not going to learn anything and not so complicated that'll overwhelm them. They're kind of seeking out things that are just beyond their conceptual grasp and then adding that to their knowledge.

B: Cool man.

S: Yeah, it's it's neat and you think about all.

B: Things in handy. It's like baby steps, just taking the appropriate baby steps over and over and over.

S: And it's meant, you know, humans evolved this really adaptive process for learning in general and learning language specifically. They're they're, they're, I guess there must have been a bunch of of language papers coming out at the same time, because I saw a couple of other papers as well that relate to this. One was had to do with the fact that humans engage in baby talk with babies and most of our primate relatives do not like baby talk is a fairly unique human thing. And what is baby talk? It's humans, adults adapting their vocal interaction with infants to the infants level to optimize their learning. Right.

J: Yeah.

S: We we kind of instinctively will talk at the level that the child needs to learn. And if you're a parent, for those of us who have been parents, which is basically everybody but care, when you you really, you know, obviously live every day with your child, you become Cara. 'S got killer intimately.

C: Can't talk. I do talk to him differently though.

S: You do be you become intimately familiar with their precise level of ability, linguistic ability and cognitive ability, like even day-to-day. And if and if somebody else like tries to interact with your child, they never get it exactly right out of the gate. You know what I mean? If we've all had this experiment, right, how could they? They either undershoot or overshoot. And same thing. You do that with other people's kids. You don't feel as comfortable with them because you don't know exactly where their level is. But with your own kids, you kind of know exactly what they need guys, what the the adaptation goes both ways. Not not just cool with the kids, but with with the the adults in their environment as well.

C: And that's just a function, right? Of just like constant exposure.

S: Yeah. But The thing is we but somehow big again, we instinctively do this and other species don't do this. So this is, I think part of the brains prepared to learn language thing, but also to teach language. All right. Another one is we the children engage and this is very different than AI in multimodal input. So they are physically interacting with their environment. They're touching, smelling, tasting, mouthing. We know kids mouth everything at a certain stage. They're they are exploring their environment and and they are using all of that information visual as it's not just written. So LLMS are trained on trained on written words.

C: Kids don't even, yeah, kids don't even use written language. In a way, that's right. Can you imagine trying to teach a kid their colors without having access to physical with?

S: Colors.

C: Color. Yeah, exactly.

S: They learn words through to doing, through interacting, through context, through. You know how if being in the world and using all of their senses to acquire this information. So again, that's very different than how LLMS operate. The third one is structure building. And they use this information to construct, to build language structures that get increasingly complicated as they learn. And the fourth thing is that the children themselves are developmentally dynamic. Their brain is not done maturing. So it would be as if the neural network on which an LLM is being is training right is actually adding new nodes and new connections and adapting its physical structure to the learning process. As we learn, our brains are physically adapting to our needs and our.

B: It's like their brains are like, like literally wrapping around the language.

S: Yes.

B: Right.

C: And not only are they physically adapting, like are they highly plastic? Because maybe you could sort of model that with an LLM, but they're physically growing like they are metabolizing, you know, and an increasing like their glucose consumption. Like that's a huge difference. The LLM's aren't getting older and larger.

S: Right. Exactly. So that what they're suggesting is that you recognize that these 4 components seem to be core to any constructivist model of how kids acquire language. And but also this could really help model language acquisition in computers. And maybe we want to completely rethink how we develop large language models in order to incorporate this constructivist framework because it seems to be way more efficient. Again, I don't know that it's 93 now, whatever, 1000 times efficient, but it seems to be way more powerful and efficient than the current method that we're using, which is really just brute. I hate to use the term brute force. I know that programmers don't like when I do that. But we're training. We're training it in a limited way on a massive amount of data.

C: True, but also it's it's easier said than done that these researchers are like, you know, just kind of do it the way we do it. Like we don't even understand how we.

S: Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. But we talked about this, this one aspect of it before, the fact that AI in order to really get to like human level functionality, may need to be embodied, you know?

B: Oh yeah, There's no conception of interacting with the physical world. That's why I like the idea of training models in a computer, in in silico, if you will. And so to mimic like a 3D environment that people can then log on and interact, I mean that I think that's going to be a critical component. Otherwise, how could it even relate, you know, to a interacting with the physical world?

C: Or maybe it's OK that they just stay in the digital. Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world, that we don't embody the AI.

B: I was wondering, I was wondering when language is emerging in humanity, how much selective pressure do you think there was? Like, were there bands of people? I mean, but were there bands of people that just were not hardwired for language at all and they just died out because they just could not even.

C: Remove all our brains are the same. Like there weren't like whole actions of people that had none of the architecture necessary.

S: To I think Bob is talking like Homo habilis versus Australopithecus or whatever.

C: Yeah, but we've got like who were contemporaries, right? Yeah, I think if you're talking about actual selection pressure temporally, of course there's going to be if you have different groups of let's say, early Homo sapiens spread out across the globe and some groups are able to communicate verbally, they have way more efficient capability to stay alive.

S: Totally for cooperation and hunter gathering. I mean, just for one, just an it's.

C: Going to be way better at reproducing and and maintaining fitness of the species than those who don't have language I mean.

B: When did language emerge in terms of dispersal of humanity?

S: I'm trying to remember like so there was that's a that's a that's a hard question to answer, that's.

C: Yeah, how do we even know?

S: Well, what I know there's one piece of evidence is when did the hyoid bone move into the modern?

B: Location and I'm.

S: Trying to remember what species that was. It was in the Homo line genus, whether it was habilis or erectus. I don't remember which one. But at some point we could say, Oh yeah, this is like a now a modern vocal cord where they had probably elaborate speech like humans do. So somewhere along that line, but it's it's hard to know. Like how language doesn't fossilize.

E: According to National Institutes, National Institutes of Health, they say Homo sapiens around 150 to 200,000 years ago. That's when the anatomically modern yes features.

C: Came, but then you don't know what follows. What?

S: Yeah, but we don't. Language predates humans, modern humans, and there's different, you know, pretty inferential lines of evidence in terms of like when and in what group. You know, language really took off to like modern human levels, so.

C: And also it's it's also a fuzzy delineation like what is language? Yeah, right. You know, grunting and pointing or using like higher level or lower level inflections to question versus.

E: Proto languages may have been earlier with Homo habilis.

C: Well, that my assumption is that it was proto language, then the and then the kind of more dialed in anatomy necessary for for oral language to fully evolve. But they're going to be happening in lockstep. You can't have the words without the architecture, and you can't really. You don't really have the pressure to develop the architecture without trying to make the words.

S: And the architecture is there. I mean, did you know that children can distinguish even infants who only Babble? They will pay attention to forward speech more than backward speech, speech versus non speech, and they will pay more attention to sign language than non language gestures. Of how do they know sweetie? How do they know they? This is the eye tracking.

C: Yeah, this is the really interesting, like this is the Noam Chomsky of an opera. Like what is intuitive there? I love. Have you guys seen the really like lovely videos of I think there's one in particular I'm thinking of. It's a dad and his baby and the baby is babbling and the dad just kind of responds and he says something and then the baby looks at him and then they Babble back and it looks like they're having a fluid conversation. Absolutely love it. And I love it so much, it's like.

S: All kids went through, you know, went through that phase where they're babbling. I remember like Olivia Jay's younger daughter really did this a lot when she was 100% babbling but she was having a conversation.

B: Oh my God.

S: Every other aspect of the of, you know, the physical physicality of speech was there there. And the also kids will take turns even when they're just babbling. Yeah.

C: It's OK. It's like they're asking you a question, then they're like yeah, totally blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they add to it. It's so good.

B: Mommy and dad make those noises and I can. I could do it too.

S: Absolutely. That's part of the dynamic process. OK, let's move on.

Vera Rubin Observatory (42:47)

• Vera C Rubin Observatory reveals 1st stunning images of the cosmos. Scientists are 'beyond excited about what's coming' 

S: Bob, tell us about the Vera Rubin Observatory.

B: Yes, the new observatory hearing about it all over the news, all over. It's ubiquitous. The Verity Rubin Observatory has finally seen its first light published astonishing images on for us Astro geeks to drool over. So pause the show right now if you haven't, check them out. Check them out the images and come back. I'll wait. Ready. OK, let's drill down to the juicy details. First, of course, we need to describe the observatory's namesake, Verisi Rubin, who I talked about back way back in episode 520 in 20 in 2015. So yeah, 10 years ago. What is happening right now? Ruben was the first scientist to provide solid enough observational dark matter evidence for the scientific community to take it seriously. Look her up. She is a superhero of science, OK? The observatory itself is located in Sedo Pachon, a mountain in Chile. It was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, Department of Energies, Office of Science. The instrument is incredible. Wow. I was. So it's just really taken aback by how wonderful this is. It's a Tour de force of astronomy. It's a Tour de force. It's a Tour de force of astronomical observation, as Douglas Adams might have called it. It is a ballet of technology. It's it's camera. The LSST Cam Imager is the largest digital camera in the world. Steve, what did your digital camera cost?

S: My most recent one I just purchased was Yes, $800 eight.

B: 100 bucks, that's nice, that's nice, but what could 168,000,000 USD do? The LSST Cam weighs 3 tons, 3 tons and captures images that are get this 3200 megapixels, 3200 megapixels if you're interested. That's 3.2 gigapixels or .003 terapixels, which I think I've never said before. Steve, how many Tera pixels is your camera? Never mind, I'm only kidding. Each full size image. Each full size image would fill. This blew me away. 3784K screens 370. This is 1 image. That's amazing. The full-sized image, the uncompressed BAM 374K screens.

C: Well, I hope they have a big display there so you can look at their images that way.

B: Right that. Would be amazing. Each exposure, each of these exposures covers 45 full moons worth of the sky. That's 9.6 square degree field of view Astonishing that that's just immense. All right, so what's cool as as that is we're we're really just still getting started. These huge images can be taken fast, essentially every 30 seconds. Then then it moves to the next location in a couple of seconds and bam, it's ready for the next image. So like basically 3232 seconds and it's taking an image and it's ready for the second, for the next one. In this way, Reuben can image the entire southern night sky in three nights, three nights for the to do the entire sky. That's pretty slick. So now researchers say that they describe this observatory as being built for the era of big data and automation. And so why do they say that? They say that because each of these huge images are sent over fiber optics to supercomputers in California, where systems where the systems use AI to compare the images to the to previous images. And if anything's changed, like, you know, for example, brightness or position, those are the two big ones, right? If they if that changes, an alert is then sent out to the interested parties. They actually, they actually going to have these, what do they call them, like image brokers where people will sign up for different types of of these alerts that they're going to get. Hey, this thing changed, this thing that you're interested in this in the night sky, it has changed. Here's your alert. So give me a guess. How many alerts do you do you think that they anticipate every night?

S: I mean it doesn't depend on the threshold.

B: No, they, they, they have no, they, they don't mention anything about what the threshold is. But I mean, hard to say, but whatever. Just throw out a number. How many each night?

S: 1001.

E: 10000 that's one more than I said.

B: 10 million.

E: 10 million.

B: That's their anticipation, 10 million alerts are going to be sent out to these that. Kind of makes the alerts. Point image mode, doesn't it No, no, not at all because The thing is nobody's going to subscribe to to every alert. You know they're going to they're going to say this area of the sky or this this Galaxy. I want alerts that apply to this so that it's going to be fantastic for for those people that, that, that can be granular enough. And how many, most of them are going to be interested in specific areas where specific things like like send me all alerts about supernovae. I, I assume that that's what you'll be able to do. So yeah, no one's going to get drowned in every and every damn alert because, yeah, what's the point? So now all of this, as amazing as all this is, of course, this is this allows the observatory to fulfill its primary mission, right? And this mission is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. For 10 years, this, this observatory will be taking an, an evolving time lapse of the cosmos. And, and this has never been possible before because you've they've never, we've never been able to have us, you know, an observatory, A telescope that can take such high resolution pictures so fast and then move to the next one, then move to the next one and then send those incredible files over to be analyzed and then have those, all those alerts sent that infrastructure was just not in place. So, and then to do that so fast that you could actually string together these movies. So you're going to be seeing movies of the evolution of like anything you could imagine in, in the in the universe that and how it has changed over time. I mean, I would love to go if I had, you know, if I could get some relativistic time dilation going on, go 1010 years into the future, one of the top 10 or maybe top 20 things I would do is look at the these videos because it's that is going to be amazing. Never been done before. This is the first time we've ever been able to really do this type of thing. Now, what are they going to detect? They're expected to detect over the course of ten years, 20 million supernovas. And that of course, includes the supernovae, supernovae 1A, the ones that we use as a standard that, that basically showed us the, the, the expansion of the universe is accelerating. So that those of course as well, plus all the other types of supernovae, the core collapse, the, my favorites, the core collapse supernovas and every, every flavor, also 20 billion galaxies and, and so much more. I like also that it's Vera, the Vera Rubin Observatory is going to essentially be taking an inventory of our solar system. It's it's going to catalog essentially every planet, every dwarf planet, every moon, every asteroid, every comets in the vicinity over and over until it has basically just filled up. Here's the contents. Here's the latest and greatest.

E: Will it find rogue planets?

B: Yeah, I did see some mention of rogue planets, but that's I'm talking mainly right now about our solar system. But yeah, rogue planets that also can be identified. They said that they're going to identify 90% of the possibly hazardous asteroids over 140 meters. So that's encouraging, although 90% was kind of a bummer to me. I mean, I'm thinking, oh, with this, with this observed, this new observatory, you can't get that a little bit higher, maybe 95%, whatever, whatever. I'll be happy with 90% of that's the best they can do because it's that last 10% that that's a little scary. And of course, this is the, the, the Vera Rubin Observatory. So they've got to honor her legacy. So they're also, of course, going to be mapping dark matter and also poking at dark energy while they're at it as two, of course. So please check out the images online. They're a real treat. I, I was just mesmerized looking at these immense images that they, they've already taken zooming in, zooming out, just finding these awesome, awesome pinwheel galaxies. It's just amazing. So, and I've only also scratched the surface of the technology here. There's so much going on here. I just, it would have taken me 1/2 hour to even to really cover it. So I'll go to rubenobservatory.org. There's a huge website ready to go, ready for you to go into any little nook and cranny of this, of this technology that you'd be interested in. Looks. It looks like a really cool side. I want to dig in deeper later on. But one other thing I wanted to cover, I'm sure many of you are wondering about the funding for the Vera Rubin Observatory given the current decimation we're seeing in science funding. So here's what I found out. The current administration's proposed budget for 2026 cuts the overall NSF budget by a ridiculous 56%. So I'm going to say that again, the proposal is to cut our National Science Foundation's budget by 56 FN percent. That's just 56% the National Science Foundation. All right, the the little sliver of good news. I think from what I could tell right now, it seems that that Reuben might not have a huge budget cut specifically for it in 2026, at least for that for next year, it might not have a huge cut, although it might, it'll probably see a little, some of it, but many projects are going to be absolutely destroyed. And I got so mad. I just found out that LIGO, you know, the gravitational wave detectors detectors, they could see in the United States because we have two LIGO detectors. I believe at this point we could see 40% cut, a 40% cut. And the NSF has already said that one of our two LIGO observatories will have to be shut down. Shutting down. I just, I was just so livid when I, when I read that these machines are our only way to look into the cosmos that doesn't involve some type of electromagnetic radiation. You know, this is, this is part of multi messenger astronomy. It was, it's revolutionary. It's already won Nobel prizes. And no, let's just shut it down. OK, Let's just do that. And, and this is just, and this is just one, I haven't talked about it that much, but this is just one of the many disasters that's happening right now for science research in this country. And I'm just talking about science research. I'm not even talking about anything else. So that's where we are people. This is awesome, right?

Visible Nova (53:14)

• A 'new star' has exploded into the night sky — and you can see it from North America 

B: So let's just let's just go to the next news item. I think I'm just going to get some coffee right now.

S: All right, that's all right. Evan. Tell us about this new star in the sky.

E: Now we reserve our predictions that we made early in the year back in January. We we save that until December every year. But however, one of my 100% money back guaranteed predictions has to do with my news item this week. And as Steve said, a new star has exploded into the night sky.

B: Wait, who? What? Where, When? Details.

E: Oh yeah.

C: That's what he's about to give.

E: I'm about to give you but before I give you the details I want to know if anyone knows what the word for new star is? What? What do we call a? Nova Star Nova. Nova Very good, Bob and this one.

C: And Cara.

E: And Cara.

C: Thank you.

E: Nova Loopy 2025, designated V462 Loopy, located in the constellation Lupus. And here's the story. About two weeks ago, astronomers with the All Sky Automated Survey for supernova, also known as the ASASSN survey, spotted something strange. It was a faint star in the southern sky that suddenly started to get brighter. So Fast forward a few days and boom, you've got yourself a classic Nova. This happened on June 12th. That's when it was. That was when the star was so faint you you could not see it with the naked eye. It was faint. But within about 6 days, June 18th, its intensity rose to the point of becoming visible. Barely visible, but still visible. And since then, in these last few days, boom, it is now peaking at about four million times its original brightness. That is turning the dial way up if you.

B: Where is it exactly?

E: It is in the constellation Lupus, which is in the southern sky but is still visible from the northern hemisphere. If you're in a, you know, if you're, if you're at the right part of the Northern hemisphere and looking to the South and a couple of degrees above horizon at sunset, you can see it. But people in the Southern Hemisphere, how far away? Bob, excellent question. I was going to say that to the end, but since you asked, let's ask, let's talk about it. They don't know. They do not know how far this is away. They're, they're guessing right now. And guesses range from 1500 light years away to almost 3000 light years away. And I don't know why they can't pinpoint it that I didn't get that deep into the research.

B: This is big, though, for one main reason, of course, is that this is in our Galaxy. That is, that's kind of huge because, you know, we've been experiencing for quite a long time a dearth of supernovae. They they estimate that that each Galaxy sees about 1 supernova a century.

E: OK, So what they're saying is that no Nova, OK, so different and we're going to talk about this too. Nova appear roughly once a year or like once every 14 months. But a supernova is much more rare. In fact, the the most recent visible eye Nova was 2013 going back. But the most recent supernova, supernova visible. Yeah, 1987. You have to go back there. So it's quite a big difference. And what is the difference between Nova and supernova, Bob? You probably know Steve. You might, you know, or Jay Cara.

C: Size, brightness. I'm sure there's a mean threshold, right?

B: Well. There's there's the classic is the the core collapse supernova. So you got a. Giant. That's the supernova. Giant start. But then there's but there's also many different types of classifications, like supernovae, like 1A. That's the, you know, the, the, the white dwarf that that collects matter from like an orbiting star, it reaches critical mass and then that's so that's recurring, you know, because, because they don't it.

E: Can recur.

B: Yes, it can recur, but there's there are lots of different types. So how would they? Did they have a specific classification so.

E: This this particular Nova Bob, this one is a white dwarf in a binary system that accumulates its hydrogen from its companion star.

B: This is a. This is A1A1A.

E: Yep, classic, they said. Classic Nova. So what happens is the white dwarf star is, and this is described as in a tight cosmic tango with its companion star, the white draw. The white dwarf siphons off gas from its partner until it reaches A tipping point and then kaboom. A thermonuclear explosion erupts on its surface, blasting out energy and light, and that is the Nova that we can see.

S: So to clarify, this is not A1A supernova, this is a classical Nova. They both involve a white dwarf that which is why they're confusion. But in a classical Nova, a white dwarf accumulates hydrogen on its surface, and then the hydrogen experiences runaway fusion, causing the Nova for one a supernova. It's different. The white dwarf accumulates enough matter to reach the Chandra secor limit, and then you get a core collapse. You get oxygen, carbon fusion at the core, and in the 1A supernova the white dwarf is destroyed with no remnant. In a classical Nova, it's just the surface hydrogen that explodes. It's much less bright and it's not destructive. And these things can happen over and over again. So this is a classical Nova, not A1A supernova, which is why they don't know how far away it is.

E: Yeah, so I suppose they're still going to analyze it more and try to make a better determination. The range is pretty wide, right? You know, too wide right now to make a definitive statement on the on the distance. The star does not explode though, right? It's it's, they said ANOVA is like a stellar burp, violent but not fatal. So it just burped, you know, basically outsourced its gas, its energy and it's light does not destroy the star. But the supernova Bob, on the other hand, that's the death of the star, and that's an enormous release of energy.

B: Core collapses. Yeah, Core. Collapses, life changing it's yeah, it's the end of the life you got you end up with a neutron star or black hole or you know some flavor of neutron star could like a magnetar would be very cool, but they're kind of they're relatively kind of rare, but they're deadly 600 miles away was it 600 miles away? A magnetar would kill you. The magnetic field is so strong. Don't get the. Stars.

E: So don't get don't get too close to one of those if you.

B: Can help it? Please don't.

E: Plenty of plenty of cameras capturing the action telescopes as well. The GOTO or telescope, Yep, caught it, has caught the entire process in the act. They're still watching it and it's like watching a magic night in slow motion in space. Very, very cool. It's most visible in the southern hemisphere. It can be seen in the Northern hemisphere if you're at the right, if you're at the right place. I can't see it from my house. I'm just, I think I'm too far north. But they're saying Arizona, California, other places like that will have a much better opportunity to see it because it's going to be around for a little, little while longer the rest of this week, they say, probably next week as well. But then it will start to to disappear from our visual view and go back to the way it was. So, yeah, very cool. And they're hoping, you know, So again, this is remarkable, they say, for three reasons. It's visible to the unaided eye, and that's a occurrence that is rare and unpredictable. Second, they say it came with little or no warning, showcasing the volatile nature of binary systems. And 3rd, it adds 2A growing catalog of transient sky events. So we can that under score how dynamic the night sky really is. And I wonder what the Vera Rubin Observatory might have seen in all of this as well. To be continued. But very cool. And part of my prediction again for the year has already come true. Oh yeah. So. Yay me, but you didn't.

S: You would just say 3 or something.

E: I did say three.

S: Yeah, I did say. 31 down to to go.

B: Exactly, I know.

E: I'm very excited. I was, I was really hoping I wouldn't be a total washout this year and be 0, so at least have one under.

S: My that's true partial.

B: Still have? What is it? Is it Beetlejuice? Beetlejuice. Yep, they're still keeping an eye on that and they're awesome.

E: There are also a few others they say that have that are quote any day now which mean right.

S: Which could mean 10,000 years.

E: It would prove my psychic powers are awesome and I'll be able to charge a lot of money per hour.

S: Prove something.

E: All right.

Effects of Chat GPT on the Brain (1:02:01)

• MIT researchers say using ChatGPT can rot your brain. The truth is a little more complicated 

S: Cara, is ChatGPT rotting our brains?

C: Oh, I'm glad you asked. I'm so glad you asked just like that. So I want to talk about three things for this news item. The first one is the actual study, which was recently, I don't even want to say publish. It was published in the archive, but it is not peer reviewed yet. So we have to keep that in mind. The second thing is, you know, well, the first thing is what the study found. The second thing is what the authors of the study are projecting, I guess is good way to put it, are preliminarily claiming. And then the third thing is how the media is covering this, because those are very, very.

E: Three very different things, yeah.

C: So here is the actual paper. It is called Your Brain on ChatGPT. Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task. This was submitted June 10th, 2025 to the archive under Computer Science and it is not yet peer reviewed as of a write up by the study authors on their website. One thing that was like I got to say like I don't like this. And this is just me personally, I don't know how you guys feel about it, but they have a website dedicated to this study. It's getting a lot of buzz and the website is it's kind of clean, easy. You know, it's not over the top or anything, but underneath one of the images from the article, it literally says as seen on Salon, New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, CNN, like like it's a product on Shark Tank or something.

US#02: Advertisements for it.

C: I don't like that. But yeah, it is getting a lot of write ups. So let's let's talk about because you're, you're probably going to read about this. It's quite a trending topic right now. But some of those write ups do say things like ChatGPT is rotting your brain, which in no way is what the authors say. So what did they actually do? Well, they took participants, not that many, 54 participants. And they did a study utilizing EEG where they divided the participants into three different groups. And over the course of four months, they had them write an essay, like an SAT style essay. In one group, they were able to use ChatGPT, they called that the LLM or large language model group. In another group, they were able to use a regular search engine like Google. And in the last group, they could only use their brains. They called that the brain only group. So they were given a tool, Chat GPTA search engine or no tool, they're brain only to write this essay. And then they did three different sessions over the course of three months. In the fourth month they took some of the brain only people, some of the LLM people, 18 in total, and they had them switch. So the brain only people wrote an essay using an LLM, and the LLM people wrote an essay using only their brains.

S: But Karen, did they write their essay?

C: They did. That's a deep cut South Park reference. I definitely remember that one. And so during the experience, they used EEG electroencephalography to look at brain activity. They describe this as an assessment of their cognitive engagement and their cognitive load. We have to remember that these are constructs, right? They can use the term cognitive engagement. They can use the term cognitive load. What they're actually looking at are brain waves and they, they analyzed it to sort of see neural connectivity. They also asked them questions after they wrote the essays, and they had both a human teacher and an AI judge, which was like a specially built AI agent, score their essays. And so collecting all of that data, let's see what they found, what they actually found. They found that the brain only group exhibited what they're calling the strongest brain connectivity with the widest ranging networks. So they were finding that more disparate parts of the brain were active together during the brain only group, whereas the brain was less connected with less wide-ranging networks in the LLM group. So they had what they called the weakest overall coupling and in the middle, the search engine group kind of was like intermediate to that. They also found a couple of other interesting findings. They found that when they asked, you know, how well they felt like they owned the essay, Like was that my work? Did I feel, you know, good about that? Did I feel strong about that? Obviously the ownership was low in the LLM group. They found that both the search engine group and the brain only group had high senses of ownership over their essays. They also found that in just minutes after they completed their essays, when they asked them to quote things that they had written. The LLM group was significantly worse at that. But that all makes sense, right?

Voice-over: Yeah, yes, OK.

C: So they then, oh and then of course, as I mentioned, that was across three months doing the same essay three different times. On the 4th month they took 18. So very small sample and they did a SWIP swap and the brain only group used the LLM. The LLM group used only their brain. They found that the LLM two brain. So the ones that started by doing 3 essays using ChatGPT and then they could only rely on their brain for the 4th essay. They showed as they said weaker neural connectivity and under engagement, engagement of alpha and beta networks. Whereas on the flip side, the brain to LLM participants had higher memory recall and re engagement of large groups of the brain like a cross kind of a lot of architecture. So it looked more similar to the search engine group. These were their kind of findings, but they also draw some conclusions and and to be fair to the authors. OK, first of all, if you guys have lots of questions, I would love to field them. I may direct you to the 206 page study because I can promise you I did not read it in full. But there is one section on page 141 where the authors talk about a finding that they consider preliminary, but a lot of people are are citing it. They say perhaps one of the more concerning findings is that participants in the LLM to Brain group repeatedly focused on a narrower set of ideas, as evidenced by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This repetition suggests that many participants may not have engaged deeply with the topics or critically examine the material provided by the LLM. OK, to be expected then, they said when individuals fail to critically engage with the subject, their writing might become biased and superficial. This pattern reflects the accumulation of cognitive debt, a condition in which repeated reliance on external systems like LLMS replaces the effortful cognitive processes required for independent thinking. And then they talk more about cognitive debt, saying that it defers mental effort in the short term but results in long term costs like diminished critical inquiry and increase vulnerability to manipulation, decrease creativity, all things that we in the skeptic community do not want to see.

S: Right.

C: The problem is their study doesn't show that.

S: Yeah.

C: But a lot of people wrote that their study shows that and that's really disconcerting. If you do like a cursory search for MIT ChatGPT study, you will find headlight headlines like MIT researchers say using ChatGPT can rot your brain. MIT study finds ChatGPT can harm critical thinking overtime. ChatGPT use linked to cognitive decline. Researcher scanned the brains of ChatGPT users and found something deeply alarming. Is ChatGPT making us dumb? But when you look at the actual press release that they put out, there's an FF, an FAQ section, and literally the first thing in the FAQ says, is it safe to say that LLMS are in essence making us Dumber? And then the authors wrote, no, please do not use words like stupid, dumb, brain, rot, harm, damage, passivity, trimming and so on. It does a huge disservice to this work as we did not use this vocabulary in the paper, especially if you are a journalist reporting on it. They specifically asked journalists not to do that. And there's so many write ups that do just that. So there is a good, but it actually bumps me out because they put brain rot in the title. But there is a an interesting kind of hot take in the conversation written by some researchers from SA, Unfortunately, yeah, their their headline is MIT researchers say using ChatGPT can rot your brain. They did not say that. The truth is a little more complicated. And they argue that of course there's going to be limited engagement when using ChatGPT compared to when only using your own brain. But they were saying that's not how you should use ChatGPT. And they sort of use a an analogy to when calculators first came on the scene. They were saying early on, when calculators first came on the scene, pedagogy had to change, right? And the way that we tested had to change because math teachers were like, if I want to test somebody's calculation abilities and they have a calculator, I'm not going to know if they're doing it themselves or if the machine is doing it for them. But what they started to learn is that we can just ask more complex questions that require the ability to use a calculator, right? And So what they're saying is that this study basically asked people A basic calculation question and then said, how do you do it with or without a calculator instead of asking a more complex question and saying, how do you do that with and without a calculator? And that's really the difference. And that's really their argument here. And I think it's one that that we all kind of echo. They say, you know, current and future generations need to be able to think critically and creatively to solve problems. And AI is changing what these things mean. But producing essays with pen in paper is no longer a demonstration of critical thinking ability, just as doing long division is no longer a demonstration of numeracy. Knowing when, where and how to use AI is the key to long term success and skill development. But they argue our educational system has to catch up, and it's not so right now. It's a hack that a lot of students are using to offload the cognitive effort that is required to do a lot of the tasks that they've been given. But when used correctly, I do think that that ChatGPT could be beneficial. But we do have to be careful because the one thing that's different here is that where their analogy breaks down is that graphing calculators always give you the right answer if you use them correctly, right? You know, where it's like ChatGPT, you can't always trust what it's telling you is true. And so I think we have to think about that as well.

B: Well, that's why you have to use them correctly as well. True, true. But the problem. Is are a thing man, You got to be aware of that.

C: But the problem is even the best computer scientists out there are probably not in agreement about how to use ChatGPT correctly. Right? I mean, a lot of people are saying use your brain 1st and use chat GP as like a validation tool, but don't go in first saying answer me this or write me this paper and then go from there. But I can see the concern, right? I think I'm really sitting on both sides of this conversation that's happening online right now. I don't like how over the top a lot of the coverage is, but I do understand the alarm bells ringing. I didn't have this when I was in school. But Jay, for example, your kids are right at that age where this is going to be the tool that they use in school. How are they going to be able to use it appropriately and how will it affect their cognitive development? That's an important question I'd be asking. And we need a lot more research into that. And I think this is one of the early studies to tell us how thinking is affected when we have tools like this at our disposal.

S: Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, clearly people are lazy, but like from an evolutionary point of view, meaning that we're we have a huge motivation to for efficiency.

C: Yeah, I was going to say, let's say efficient, not lazy.

S: No, I mean, but for it's lazy in that evolutionary, you know, in a good way, I guess, in that we do crave efficiency. We will try to get things done with the least amount of effort, shortcuts. And we, yeah, we have a desire for simplicity. All these things, these are adaptive. They don't really work perfectly well in a complicated civilization that we have. And so you almost have to consciously do things the hard way just to do it just to keep your skills up, just to, you know what I mean? We could you could spend your entire life sitting on a couch letting machines do everything for you. You know what I mean? But we like, do things like exercise, which is, I mean, when you think about it, that's 100% inefficient in terms of getting something accomplished, right? It's just for the physical activity.

C: Yeah.

S: So we have to do like, we do puzzles. We'd have ChatGPT to your homework and then do puzzles and play video games. You know what I mean? It's like.

C: Yeah. And what is that? And I think that's really the main question is like, what is that balance? Because I see the sort of OK boomer argument on the other side too. I see it with my parents where they're like never using a GPS and they're like, I don't want to forget how to get there. And I'm like, you are describing. Yeah. I'm like, you are describing a skill you will need in a zombie apocalypse. I get it. If there is a big outage of all GPS, you will be ahead of the curve. That's great. But all of my adult life that has never applied, and I'm more than happy to rely. I'm going to push, yes. I'm going to push back a little bit on. That interesting?

S: Right now, because like occasionally I will drive somewhere and deliberately not use GPS because it's not just that you need to be able to do it when you don't have GPS like a zombie apocalypse. It's also I just want to exercise my understanding of the terrain, of the, of the location of the streets. I don't want to be completely dependent on GPS and have like no idea where things are in relation to each other, which is what happens when all you do is just completely follow GPS and are not.

C: Yeah. But again, that's also, I think kind of those are extremes. I often have my GPS up because I want to know if there's traffic and I want to know if there's a better route. But that doesn't mean I'm staring at my GPS the whole time I'm driving. When I'm going to work, my GPS is always up. I know how to get to work, you know what I mean? I'm not looking.

S: At you, so you're using it for other reasons.

C: Exactly.

E: Kerry there used to be a time though when we would say, you know, how do I get it from here to there? Oh you go down, go to the main road past the red brick house and it's 3 buildings beyond. That horrible.

C: Right.

E: And you were and that was good enough. You could navigate using that that would that could never happen.

C: Now, right, But then the argument here is. Am I somehow less capable of navigating my world? And am I cognitively dulled or slowed because of my dependence on GPS? Or as you said, Steve, am I offloading that cognitive task so that I can focus on other cognitive tasks? And I think for a lot of people, that's the question. The problem with talking about ChatGPT in an academic setting is that that's where we're learning how to learn.

S: Right, right.

C: That's totally different than navigating the world after we've learned those.

S: Like going to the gym and having a robot exercise for.

C: You exactly. So how do we then go to the gym and use the nice machine so that we can do the exercise we wouldn't have been able to do with just free weights, Use the free weights when they're appropriate, use the machine so that we can get to even better muscle groups where we couldn't maybe do that specific thing without the with the free weights so that we're doing both. And that's going to be something that our our teachers, our professors, our researchers really need to prioritize for this next generation of children.

S: Hey, if the end result of this is that education focuses on critical thinking rather than memorizing facts, I'm all for it.

C: Me too, 100%.

B: And Steve, I'll just throw out there that you can do fitness that's not essentially not getting anything done. It's. It's rare, I know. Like I hear it like. Yesterday, there's no, there's no. I got you.

S: Mow the lawn you're doing.

B: I mow the lawn with a 16 LB pound weight vest on and it was a hell of a workout, especially in this heat. Man it was rough but man it felt good after when that was done. So if you can do that, that's great, but it does.

S: Not Oh yeah, I do yard work as my exercise often. Yeah, you know, like in the summers.

C: But you're right, yeah, we are efficiency machines. So we've just got to make sure that we're not that becoming so efficient that we're forgetting how to do the things that are actually foundational skills for all the other things we need to do in life.

S: Right, got to go analog sometimes.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:19:29)

S: All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

J: All right, guys. Hello.

S: Yep.

J: You guys want to hear last week's noisy? Here please. Here it is. What do you think guys?

S: So.

J: I know what.

S: I know exactly what that is. Is there another layer to this that we're supposed to get, or is it just the thing that it obviously is?

J: I'm not telling you all right?

C: Yeah, I don't know what that.

E: Is game Space Invaders the arcade?

J: It is. I mean this one. I did this one to make people of, of our generation smile because it's such a cool, like the, the, the soundscape of that game was genius. It is genius because it, it has like a heartbeat and it gets faster and it, and it causes tension. And I, you know, it's so funny. Like when it in the beginning, it's like, oh, this is so easy. And then like 30 seconds later you're like, Oh my. God so. So I had some fun guesses. I mean lots of people knew this. I got This is one of those times where I got a a tsunami of emails. I finally know it. So Brad Beam wrote in and said, what's up, Jay? Oh my God, is this noisy from Math Blaster zapping the trash to fill up the spaceship gas tank to catch the bad guy that hates math or something? So I had to look it up because Math Blaster rang a bell. And Math Blaster is a 1983 educational video game and it was put out by a company called Learning Systems and created by Davidson and his associates. Very cool. I did check the game out. I absolutely played it, I think because it looked very familiar to me. But it is not that. Of course, you know, we did a reveal early, but it doesn't matter because everybody knows what it is. Another listener named Russell Moverly said Yodel, JEO. Yodel, JEO. OK, I see what he did there. This week's Noisy I can only be one of two things. Either it is the original sound effects for the demo version of Frogger or one of the stems from a new Skrillex song. Yeah. So this, this has, there is a little bit of a Frogger sound in here if you know the game, like, yeah, it has a little, maybe a little bit of that. I mean, to me, it's so crystal clear what it is. But what I found was I got a lot of emails from people who were just referencing other games of that era, which is funny because you know, your, your memory is very faulty and and the wires can get crossed. So another listener named TomTom Howard wrote in, I'm pretty sure this week's noisy is the old Tron game where they throw discs. The arcade cabinet makes you stand up at weird angles and it's very fun. It is not Tron. Tron. The two drones to Tron games, the first one and discs of Tron were two of my favorite video games as a kid, by the way. But anyway, this all, of course, is leading to the liner, the winner, Joe Lanandrea. And Joe said is this week's noisy not just Space Invaders. And I said, well, look, he guessed it. It was Space Invaders. I think he did what you did, Steve. Is it just, you know, we just got his guest, Space Invaders. It was funny because a lot of people guessed like, right when the show dropped. So Joe got on the jump there. So let me tell you about Space Invaders guys. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, we had a unbelievably awesome thing happened. Cabinet video games with game rooms like took over, particularly here in the United States. There was so many games to play and they all cost 1/4. And you, you know, you begged money off your parents and you went and you, you basically got to play video games for 1/2 hour or an hour until your money ran out. But man was it fun. So Space Invaders was released in. Anybody want to guess the year?

E: 1977.

J: 78 I think it was created in 77 Star Wars. It was released in 78 in Japan, published by a company called Tato TAITO, and then it was released overseas later that year by Midway. Right. Midway is a name of many people should recognize that.

B: Game was huge.

E: Midway was an enormous arcade company, yeah. Video game arcade company.

J: I'm not going to pretend like I knew this, I'm just going to ask a question that after doing some reading. Do you guys know what Space Invaders did that was unique and formative for video games?

C: A joystick.

J: That's a great guest, Cara. Space Invaders ready. It was the first video game color.

B: In terms of like money, how much money it it made, there's a blockbuster video game.

J: All good guesses it it was a blockbuster video game, meaning it was highly loved and it was everywhere. I mean.

S: Everywhere it transformed the arcade video game console video game.

J: It was the beginning of it. Pretty much it.

S: Wasn't the first one. The first cabinet video game was Computer Space in 1971, but how many? People, no. This was like no but space. In here was the first popular. Space and Videos was the first massively populator, yeah.

J: I think it was the first video game I played like arcade style I think it was.

S: Probably the same for me.

C: So wait, wait, I'm on pins and needles. What is?

J: It Jay all right, this is I'm gonna I really want you to understand this. It was the first game that had endless gameplay and it was the first fixed shooter. So the endless gameplay idea is that the game will continue to let you play forever if you're still can get that high.

E: Does that agree? With Space Invaders, because there were limits on other games.

C: Yeah, there was a limit on Tetris, I remember.

E: Screen right, all that stuff let. Me take.

J: This is what the Wikipedia page said. I'm trusting it. Let me tell you that I never got past the third freaking screen ever. You know what I mean?

C: I love it.

J: And they said it was the first fixed shooter and I wasn't 100% sure what that is. I can actually click this link here and see. Wikipedia says shoot em UPS, also known as schmucks. Oh my God, our subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which the design elements compose a shoot them up. Some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement. OK, so I get it.

C: Oh yeah, it's it. It's. The screen is usually fixed. It doesn't scroll.

J: OK, yeah, the screen is the screen.

C: It's Yeah, right.

J: It doesn't ever change. It's just a new group of bad guys shows up on.

C: This like Galaga?

J: Yeah.

C: Oh. Yeah.

E: Yeah, Jay, I can. According to what I'm seeing here, the the game does not have a quote kill screen. In other words, where some other arcade games do have an end, even though they do, generally you can't usually get play to the end. But apparently Space Invaders doesn't have it. You can go infinitely with it.

J: Yeah, There are actually console games that you can win. You can actually. The game will say you won, you know?

C: Yeah. There's a lot like that, yeah.

J: So I'm going to say something to to the people out there, if you are of my generation or not, find a local, find a local retro arcade near you. And it's very likely that there's one within an hour of your house and go spend a few hours at the arcade because the smell of those machines and the the, the just the whole ergonomic experience to me is just freaking amazing As to this day, whenever I get behind one of the old arcade machines and I get to play, I'm like riveted, you know, we.

C: Got to do that in Arizona, you guys remember.

J: Yes, of course.

C: To that. Bar.

J: Yeah, that bar was awesome, Yeah.

C: Super fun.

J: All right, I have a new noisy for you guys. Good job, everybody, and I mean everybody, my God, so many people. I'm like I I got to the point where I just had to stop looking at the emails. OK, I got a new noisy for you guys this day. Well, how about? What about?

B: That's what you get, man. You knew. You knew you'd be inundated with that one.

J: I got to throw 1 one of those out there every once in a while. I want people to feel like, you know, that they're not listening everybody. My God damn Steve. Holy Christ. OK, here we go guys. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Bradford West and check this out. I will tell you that the the noises that start and end the video, you should pay attention to those as well. If you guys think you you know what that noisy is or you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Also guys, if you if you enjoy the work that we do and you want to support us going forward, you know, we have our new projects and we plan to increase the size of the SG use footprint and it's a great time to become a patron and to give us some support, even a tiny bit can help. Go to patreon.com/skeptics guide. You could also join our mailing list. We have consistently been sending out a weekly Mailer. Lots of fun. We yes, absolutely. We spike out the things that we did here at the SGU over the last week. There's other fun things going on in there. Ian and I might be working on a secret project that I'll tell you all about because it's not a secret. I basically I'm trying to create a weekly SGU puzzle game that is going to go in the e-mail. So I'm coming up with ideas. If you have any ideas, you can e-mail me at info at the skeptics guide org. I do have a couple of things I'm narrowing down to, but I'm still completely open. You know, if you have any cool ideas, just e-mail me and if you, if we use your ID, I'll give you credit. And also, we will be in Kansas on September 20th of this year, and during that day we will be doing 2 shows. We'll be doing a live SGU recording probably sometime around noon, and we will be doing a skeptical extravaganza of special significance. This is our stage show. Both of those shows will include George Robb. The stage show is an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes of lots of different things. We talked about essentially it has a science backbone to it. The entire show does. We talked about how your brain can fool you and then everything else is improv by the SGU. We have all these different things that we do and it's a ton of fun. We get amazing feedback on this show and we deserve it because we've been, we've been shaping this show for over a decade, so we've refined the hell out of it. We know exactly what we're doing and it's a ton of fun. If you want to come check us out, you can go to theskepticsguide.org and there will be buttons on the homepage.

S: All right, thank you, Jay.

Name That Logical Fallacy (1:29:38)

Topic: I’m currently attempting a thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, and I’m in the Sierras currently and it is recommended that people car try an ice axe for the snowy areas so people can self arrest if they fall. I have heard a lot of people say they won’t bring an ice ax into the Sierras because they “don’t know how to use it anyways”. This feels like they are mostly trying to convince themselves that they don’t need to spend the money on an ice axe and they don’t need to carry the extra weight. But this argument of “I don’t want to bring it because I don’t know how to use it” feels like a logical fallacy to me. Though it is true that there are more effective ways to use an ice ax than others, it does feel like its main use is relatively simple in its design. The best analogy I can think of for this argument is like if you were in a boat and someone didn’t know how to swim well and had never been shown how to use a personal flotation device (PFD). So you hand them a PFD without any explanation on how to use it. The person then looks at the PFD and looks at you and says, no thanks, because I don’t know how to use the PFD perfectly I would just rather not have it with me. What logical fallacy do you think this would be? Alex Smith

S: We're going to do a name that logical fallacy haven't done one of those in a while. This comes from a question come from Alex Smith and Alex writes. I'm currently attempting a through hike of the Pacific Crest Trail and I'm in the Sierras currently and it is recommended that people can try an ice axe for the snowy areas so people can self arrest if they fall. I have heard a lot of people say they won't bring in ice axe into the Sierras because they don't know how to use it. Anyways this feels like they are mostly trying to convince themselves that they don't need to spend the money on an ice axe and they don't need to carry the extra weight. But this argument of I don't want to bring it because I don't know how to use it feels like a logical fallacy to me. Though it is true that there are more effective ways to use an ice axe than others, it does feel like its main use is relatively simple in its design. Then it comes up with an analogy about a personal flotation device and people are not trained how to use it. They would rather not use it at all if they can't use it perfectly. And he wants to know what logical fallacy this is. So I definitely think there's a logical fallacy in there. Although remember, these are informal logical fallacies. They're totally context dependent, and you can come up with examples where it's reasonable to say that you don't want to use something because you don't know how to use it. And there are situations where it is a logical fallacy. So if this is a logical fallacy, which one do you think it is?

C: I don't want to go because I haven't learned how to use the thing, or I don't want to bring the thing because I haven't learned how to use the thing.

S: Yeah, or like, I can't use this perfectly, so I'm not going to use it at all.

C: The perfect, the enemy of the good, whatever.

S: That's called yeah, that kind of sets it up a little bit easier. So that's the Nirvana fallacy, Yeah, Which is the perfect is the enemy of the good or the good enough? The idea that why I can't use this perfectly so why should I use it at all? And I think he may be right in that yeah, OK, sure you may not know how to use an ice axe. I guess the idea is that if you're slipping on the ice, you can use it to slow your fall, right. You jam it into the ice and it slows your fall does seem pretty straightforward. But I would I would point out that this can be a legitimate argument in certain contexts because sometimes not knowing how to use a device might mean that you're actually would will hurt yourself if you use it. You're more likely yeah, like yeah, to cause a. Bazooka.

C: Yeah, like like being armed in a school.

S: So what we, we, we actually, there was a study we, we talked about on this show where people who confronted a brown bear with a gun were more likely to be killed than people who didn't have a gun. And again, not that there aren't some people who like are hunters and have the right kind of gun and know what they're doing, but for a lot of people, if you don't know how to use a gun or you don't have the right kind of gun, having it actually increases your chance of getting killed because you're just going to piss it off.

C: Well, it's two things there, Evan. I think you're right, too. It can give you a false sense of security, and you may engage in riskier behavior. There's that, too. You may get closer to the bear than you should because you're like, I have a gun. I'll be fine. Yeah, right.

S: So I guess I don't know. I mean, I I would need to talk to an expert. You need topic expertise to know. Would using a an ice axe without training, does that have come with the risk of hurting yourself or making the situation worse? Or will people be engaged in more risky behaviors because hey, I got the ice axe if I do fall? It's not doesn't seem totally implausible that that might be the case. But you would need either, you know, some topic expertise or we would need specific evidence to really know. But if you are saying this isn't perfect, so I'm not going to do it at all, even when that's not the the correct formulation of risk versus benefit, that is the Nirvana fallacy. Or this doesn't this is useless because it's not perfect. You know, like vaccines don't save 100% of people, so they're worthless. Why get them? Yeah, that's the Nirvana fallacy. All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:33:50)

Item #1: Scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells they are calling the hemifusome. Item #2: Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV. Item #3: A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline.

Answer	Item
Fiction	A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline.
Science	Scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells they are calling the hemifusome.
Science	Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV.

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Bob	Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV.
Cara	A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline.
Jay	Scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells they are calling the hemifusome.
Evan	Scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells they are calling the hemifusome.

E: It's time for science or fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real, one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We just got three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready? Yep. All right, item number one. Scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells they are calling the hemifusome I #2. Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV and I #3. A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline Bob go first.

B: New organelle. That's a fascinating possibility and I would think quite rare at this day and age, but just too cool. I hope it's true and I hope it's amazing. We're two, let's see, genetic engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV. I mean, it seems reasonable to think that we would be if we that would be doable at this point. They made so many amazing advances with drugs for HIV, I mean, and now with genetic engineering, we're just becoming so good at it. So this is it seems reasonable. Just look at this last one here. Marine biomass, total biomass is stable interesting over geological geological time and then mass extinctions and later return to I mean. So that does.

S: This is a little bit wordy.

B: So what do? You want to say.

S: So they looked, it's 500 million years, right? So basically, over the last 500,000,000 years, if not the number of species or the number of whatever, it's just a total biomass of things in the ocean, right? The marine biomass has been roughly stable, not, you know, punctuated by the mass extinctions.

B: I mean, superficially that sounds reasonable that that all the niches would have burb basically filled without dramatic changes. I mean, it sounds reasonable, but PLA they all sound pretty decent. Something dropping me wrong. I though about this biomass 1 though I could ease. I could kind of see that this is just like, Oh no, this is all baloney. It's it's not you know, it's not stable over over geologic time and and change. So I'll just I'm just going to say that that one friction.

S: OK, Cara.

B: Biomass Fiction.

C: Yeah. I mean, I think that the new organelle, I mean, it's really interesting that in, I mean, I don't know if it was this year or last year, but that we have to like make new models for all the classrooms. Oh yeah, the same since like the 70s. So I mean, it's pretty cool. I don't know what a hemi fusome would do. Something about half blood. Yeah, like I don't know, but we'll see. So that's cool then. So it's kind of between the HIV long term dormancy, which I guess I think that there are dormancy proteins. And I mean part of me is like, why would they engineer, of course they would engineer them for people because it like most of our treatments aren't really like most of the research it looks like right now is about prevention. You know, I think that there was just a twice annual shot that was released. Like, how cool is that, right, to prevent contracting HIV? But of course, a lot of people already have HIV, and so how can we ensure longer, healthier lives? That would make sense. That's pretty cool. And then the marine biomass mostly staying stable. That's such a hard one. Like was there a time when it exploded because of like, like the Cambrian explosion or something? I mean, 500 million, it's not that long ago, though. Or was there a time? Well, I guess mass extinctions don't count here because you're saying it's punctuated by mass or like has it been getting, has it been dwindling because of overfishing lately? I don't know. I feel like there's probably some sort of trend that I don't know about. So yeah, it just seems the least likely to me or the other two seem more likely. So I'll, I'll go with Bob. Go with Bob. Go with Bob.

S: OK, Jay.

J: Yeah, it's funny. You guys are, you know, in referencing the biomass one in the ocean, that one seems like science to me. I mean, you know, Bob, you said it like once all of those nooks and crannies in the ocean have been filled. You know, it's I look at the ocean almost like it's a singular living Organism, right. And there's just certain amount of of creatures that live there. You know, the ocean has a robust ecosystem and food chain. And also, like, you know, crazy stuff, in my opinion, doesn't happen in the ocean like it happens on land. I just think it's more stable. I don't know that for some. I want to take a walk out on the ledge here guys and say that one is science. The new organelle to me. I agreed with what Bob said. Like, you know, really like today they found that I, I would more think that if they, if they, they discovered a new organelle, it might mean that they figured out how the system works better inside the cell. And they're like, oh, actually these three things are should be considered one organ. Maybe you know what I mean that I'm just throwing that idea out there as what, what that could be. Being able to genetically engineer the immune cells to produce the protein that's pretty much puts HIV to sleep. That seems legit. I mean, we have CRISPR guys, you know, so I think that's science and I think the the Ocean 1 is science. I'm going to go with the organelle as the fiction, OK.

S: And Devin?

E: Oh, the organelle. I don't know. What I thought maybe is that it's not so much that maybe they discovered a new organelle, but rather they've identified something in a cell that they used to think was part of something else. But it actually turns out it's its own thing, a redefinition. I don't know. You know, they'd all of a sudden, hey, we didn't notice this before and all of a sudden this is here. So maybe a kind of a reclassification. Is that considered a discovery of a new organelle? It might technically qualify for that. The one about the HIVI agree with everyone that that one is going to be science. Sure, genetically engineering immune cells. Why not? That tends to be science more often than not when we talk about that incredible. And the last one about the biomass, no idea, right. How do you quantify it? You have. How do you really know and? Yeah, geez, that's a specialty unto itself. That one gives me the least bit of confidence that I'll join Cara and Bob and say that that one's the fiction.

S: OK, so you guys all agree on the middle 1, so we'll start there. Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long term dormancy in HIV. You all think this one is science and this one is science.

J: All right.

S: Cool, that's a good. So far good. Why would they want to do this? Didn't we just talk about the fact that they were trying to bring HIV out of dormancy so that we could then target it with anti HIV like antiretroviral drugs?

B: Well, they try all sorts of things, Steve. You know they. Yeah. But if it's like a like a permanent dormancy, then hey.

C: Man, then if it's not going to affect you, it's not going to affect you.

S: Yeah, yeah, kind of works both ways, right?

C: Yeah.

S: So, and that's the idea. But it would have to like really put it into it like it's out of Commission now for the rest of your life sort of thing would be would be very effective because when it's dormant, it's not reproducing, it's not transmissible, right? So it's basically who cares? But the only thing is it could be reactivated at some point in the future. And the, the advantage here is that because they're basically engineering the hosts immune cells to make the protein, it's not like you have to take drugs for the rest of your life, as long as the guess it would survive for as long as those immune cells survive. But if you can get, these are the CD 4, you know, positive cells, or if you could, I guess, get, you know, make these changes into the stem cells so that from that point forward you're going to be producing cells that make the protein. The this is a proof of concept. Obviously, this is not like a treatment. They just wanted to say, hey, you know, would this work like if we made this specific protein, which is, you know, which they know has been associated with, you know, dormancy and HIV, It's, it's actually made by the HIV itself. It's the AST is the name of the protein HIV anti scent transcript is it? But what if we make it ectopically, like make it outside like the HIV isn't producing it, just the immune cells that the HIV is infecting or are making it. Would that work? And they showed that it does work.

C: That's interesting. I feel like that could be another a different approach to shingles too, right? Because isn't that what happens with chicken pox? It's dormant.

S: Then it becomes activated.

C: And then it becomes activated.

S: So again, basic science. Interesting. See if it leads to anything, but it seems very plausible that it could. All right, let's go to #3 A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline. Bob Cara and Evan, you think this one is fiction? J You think this one is science? So this is the very interesting question, isn't it? What you know, you could kind of make sense of it both ways. And you know, Jay, I think had some really good points. So you once you fill up the oceans, that's it, right? Why what, how would you why would it change except something big happening like a mass extinction? And this is interesting that this is the first time we've really been able to do this because it's a, this was a Herculean study to do. You have to think about, you have to find some way to quantitatively estimate the total biomass, marine biomass over different points of geological history. They basically had to count shells and stuff in different strata and try to estimate the biomass based upon that. Well, this one is the fiction. It is a fiction. What do you think The study did find?

B: There was a?

C: Change or more? Yeah.

S: But what was what was the trend? What was the trend?

C: Over 500,000,000 years.

B: Yeah, a slow increase overtime.

C: Yeah, I would say if it's slow, increase, if it was fast, decrease, if it was only like within the last.

S: That's 500 million years. It's basically since multicellular life was established.

C: Yeah, it was probably an increase. If there's a huge change in the last 500 years, I think increase.

S: It's been steadily increasing over geological time, which is really interesting. And they think that's why do you think that's happening? They don't. They don't know from this study. This is just showing that that's what was happening. But what would they?

C: More some sort of gas.

S: More food available.

C: Yeah, or gas, like oxygen or something in the water.

S: They think it's because of evolution that life is just becoming more efficient, right? The, as it's, it's able to fill up this, the, the, the resources, the space more effectively, more efficiently, right? The ecosystems are getting more complex. And that's cool. Yeah, that's just, they think it's just an epiphenomenon of evolution. It's just a greater sort of overall efficiency in the ecosystem. Yeah, which is really fascinating. Which means that scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells. They are calling the hemifusome is science.

B: Cool, man. What?

S: Was it, was it like a work of things or well? We're going to call it meta Chlorians, but that was taken.

E: All Yes. No, only by a bad movie.

C: So so it fuses. Things it does. Oh, OK.

S: Yeah.

C: It fuses half of things and then.

S: First of all, they say that the reason that this was recently discovered is because when you think about it, we're looking at cells, We're using mainly electron microscopy. We're seeing slices of cells that are static, right? We're not seeing them necessarily in life. You there are other forms of microscopy where you can do that, but you know, not in not as much detail. And so they were just missing stuff that was happening like the activity of these hemifusomes. So it was really they were identified by their activity, right? Which it's hard to see.

C: But then they were able to find them.

S: Yeah. But they were able to. They were able to see enough of them that they were able to identify them and what they do. So basically what they do is there at the recycling center in the cell, they are involved in sorting, recycling and disposing of debris of like protein debris.

C: Are they free floating or are they attached to another organelle?

S: No, I think they're just in the cytoplasm there.

C: So whereas like a what's it called, like a lysosome would like take in stuff and just get rid of it, these reuse. The stuff.

S: So yeah, it's like this protein, got to get rid of it. This one over here, we need to recycle it, you know, put it back into, into the cycle there and this one needs to go over there for to do whatever it's going to do. So it's basically just this recycling center inside the cell. We're just sorting through the different bits of debris and figuring out what to do with them.

C: That's interesting.

S: So it connects to a lot of other parts of the cell. You know, it's like a this transfer station.

C: Oh, and now it now it makes that. I'm just Googling it too. It's characterized by hemi, the hemi fusion of two different vesicles.

S: Right, so.

C: It forms a structure with a membrane between. That's cool because I was like, why would?

S: You need and they also, they didn't know this step was necessary, right? So they thought that just things just went to where they were supposed to go to. They realized it was like all being managed by this organelle.

C: Yeah, that's interesting because we've, we've known about lysosomes for a long time. Yeah, that's just like, that's like throwing it away.

S: So the other thing is that this may be the cause of some diseases, right? And so if you don't know something exists, you can't possibly know that it's the cause of a disease. And so now, you know, we can say ask this question of is this disease of in which we know is a protein problem in cells? Is this a problem with the hemifusomes? Is this something that we could now figure out and treat? So obviously, this is very basic science, but this is what creates the potential for translation into some kind of a treatment. And there's already diseases on the shortlist that they think this might be playing a role in. So. Pretty cool. Yeah. That caught my getting caught my eye. Like, really? We're discovering.

J: Yeah, Right.

S: You know, now, like those things that happen much later than you think. You haven't discovered all these already. It's like, yeah, we discovered a new planet within our solar system, you know, within, you know, within the Kuiper Belt. That would be surprising. All right, well, good job, guys.

J: Hey, Steve. Yeah, Steve. I just played a game of Space Invaders, yeah.

E: Yeah. How'd you do?

J: I am worse now than I was when I was a kid, sure.

E: It's. Not like, right?

S: You're playing on your like an emulator.

J: Yeah, I just found one. I just thought, hey, why don't I check it out? And it's I'm like, I'm telling you, like, what the hell happened to my reflexes?

C: I actually think sometimes, and maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong here, but I have an emulator for NES and I play NES games a lot, and I wonder if the reason it feels like I'm off sometimes when I'm playing Tetris or Doctor Mario is actually because we've gotten better at matching our motions to our eyes. And back then there was a lag, but we were so used to the lag that that felt normal to us. Does that make sense? Video games now are faster than video games were back then.

S: They're also three-dimensional.

C: That's. True, yes, but I am I am curious if that's the case even with an emulator. Like is the reason that it feels like, wait I why isn't it working is because we're actually ahead instead of the behind that we were used to being in the 80s and 90s?

S: Yeah, I mean, you're still a little bit young, Cara, at 60. Yeah, our reflexes are objectively slower than they were when we were 20. I mean, that's just a fact of life.

C: Yeah, well, and also Jay, you haven't played it in a while.

S: Yeah, yeah.

J: But again, I wasn't good then either.

C: Good call. Cost you 1/4.

S: Then, but I still feel pretty like I could play a video game extremely well and keep up with kids. Although it's always hard to know because like we were talking about this this past weekend, like I, I play a game called Overwatch, which is player on player, right? And it's 100% skill. Like there's everybody could play the same characters, but there's inside the game, everyone is a level playing field. So the only difference is the player's skill. There are some players who are so much better than I am. It's amazing.

E: Professional.

J: Over but but is that because they're pretty they're sinking thousands of hours into this game or yes it's everything Steve it's kids I'm not thousands of hours it's Steve don't forget people cheat at these games too.

S: Maybe they also have really good gear like I'm just using my.

E: Keyboard to be optimized.

S: But at the same time, I can hold my own. I could totally hold my own with with most players, you know, anyway. But unfortunately, yeah, if you look at the research, our nerves are literally. Slower.

J: Good news though Steve, in two days you will have so much time to get better at that game.

S: Right.

US#02: Oh my gosh, you'll have Overwatch all day.

E: All night.

J: You know that Stevens fully in when he starts wearing Overwatch T-shirts, you know?

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:51:34)

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”  – - Werner Heisenberg, (description of author)

S: Alright, Evan, give us a quote.

E: What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

S: Ohh yes love that quote.

E: Verner, Heisenberg.

S: Yeah, Eisenberg, he's the best person probably to come out with that quote.

E: I mean, right? Is that not Heisenberg in a sentence? Right, right, right there.

B: You know, is it a particle or is it a wave? It depends how you interact with it my friend.

J: I'm tired of hearing that.

E: It's a good reminder.

J: Though I'm so sick of quantum mechanics.

E: That's right. Oh that that quote was from Einstein. I'm so sick of this stuff.

J: Come on now, can we talk about Space Invaders or something?

E: Not that Eisenberg guy.

S: Well, let's say congratulations man.

J: Congratulations dude.

E: I'm so. Proud to finish line.

J: SGU version 2 man.

S: Looking forward to it and guys, especially those of us on the East Coast, stay cool out there. We're in the middle of an epic heat wave.

E: Yeah, it's supposed to break soon, but yes, definitely.

S: We don't get triple digits in Connecticut.

J: Yeah, it's just, but it's trending up, you know, I mean, we're just waiting for the world to end and nobody's doing anything.

E: This summer is only a couple days old.

S: All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

J: You too, brother.

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