SGU Episode 1069
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| SGU Episode 1069 |
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| January 3rd 2026 |
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"Exploring the fusion of technology and the human mind in a digital landscape." |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." |
-- Galileo Galilei |
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| 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 Thursday, January 1st, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
E: Hey everybody.
S: Cara Santa Maria, Howdy J Novella, Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good afternoon, everyone.
S: So guys, I don't know, have we ever recorded on January 1st? I was about to ask that. Yeah, I don't.
E: Think so we. Have.
S: Not we basically had to this week just because of our schedules. We were all like, are we going to do like everyone going to be awake and conscious on the day after New Year's Eve? Yeah, well.
E: One of those, not necessarily both. Our schedule is such that we had to record today, yeah.
C: Sounds like you guys.
E: Other commitments.
C: Had a more intense New Year's Eve than I did well.
S: We did go.
C: We did.
S: We went out to, we all went out to the same friend's house, you know, for a get together. But we were up past midnight.
C: We were. Social.
E: Yeah. Yeah, we were social.
C: I barely made it past midnight and I was completely antisocial last night but it was great. Sometimes in at home years is just what a.
E: Lot of people did that.
C: Yeah.
E: I had one person told me tell me that I think I'm just going to go hang out in the living room tonight, but maybe I'll change my mind and just hang out in bed, right? So that that was their choice.
B: Good to have options. Good to have options, yeah?
S: But none of us are drinkers. It's not like we're hungover, correct? It's just we're up late.
B: Yeah, so. It's late for you, Steve.
S: That is sort. Of early that is very late for me.
E: Normal, but there were. Games being played and you know, games help move the night along.
J: Look, look, I'm going to say it. 2025 sucked. It was.
E: So yesterday.
S: It was a stressful.
J: Year. Yeah, it was just.
B: Fuck yeah.
J: Stressed, however, every day.
S: It was the year that I retired, so it wasn't all that's.
J: True.
E: No, it wasn't all that.
S: So guys, let me tell you something. I just bought my second EV. So I got rid of my gas car. So now I'm fully EV in my household. We were just yesterday, my wife and I were picking up the car and signing all the paperwork and you know, you have to like sit there for 20 minutes while you sign kind of million pieces of paper. It's just one of those things you got to get through. So we're sitting there the, the guy that's that's doing it with us, he's only been working at the car dealership for two weeks, right?
J: Two weeks. If that's true.
S: So he's not, not, not not to say that he wasn't fully competent. He was everything went smoothly, but he was very interested, you know, in what was going on. So we asked if we already had an EV, which of course we've had, you know, our Tesla for like 6 years now. And.
C: When you say R like it's it's shared or that's your wifes car.
S: Well, we share our cars and like both of our cars are in both of our names, but that's her primary car and the new one is going to be my primary car.
C: So your old car was all gas or hybrid?
S: My most recent car was a gas car.
C: So that's a big change, yeah.
S: Yeah, so now we're no more gasoline cars. So anyway, so the guy asked me like, So what do you think about EVs, you know? So of course I give him a much longer answer. Than well sit. Back then he was probably expecting my wife was like, oh God, we have to get through this. Now I have to listen to a lecture on technology lecture from Steve. So I told them they're great, the best car I ever owned. You know, the handling is great, the acceleration is off the hook. You know, it's so nice to like not even look at gas stations. Just plug it in when you get it home and it's great. And then he said, you know, a few minutes go by, we're doing more paper. He's like, let me ask you another question. What do you think about hydrogen fuel cell cars? So so.
E: There's another 80 minute.
S: Car and yeah, and then my again, my wife's like, oh guy, here we go. So I do not like hydrogen fuel cell cars because for multiple reasons actually went down. The reason, you know, first of all, it's never going to be as efficient as EVs. That's just physics, right? EVs are always going to be more energy efficient than hydrogen fuel cell cars. Plus the big problem with the E with the EVs right now. So here's the here's the reason why he was asking. I mean, let me back up a little bit.
J: Right, start over.
S: He's he not going to start off? Back up because. He just went through all of the the training right? This is why the him being new is relevant and the impression that sort of filtered down to the rank and file, right. This is what he was just taught by the car company is that EV sales in the US are softening, which is true. They're they're still because the robust, but in 2025 they decreased by 2.1% or something from from 2024.
C: Our leadership is not promoting this.
S: Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's 100% because of uncertainty about federal incentives and.
C: Yeah, and just the culture.
S: Just the mood and the culture in the US So it's not surprising, but at the same time, worldwide EV sales grew tremendously and, you know, breaking 20 million, you know, in 2025.
C: Damn, that should have been my psychic prediction.
S: Yeah, led by China, led by China, then the EU and then Southeast Asia and Africa with the US again softening. So like, apparently because of that, some car companies are panicking a little bit because they thought that there was going to be this EV boom. And like they're gearing up to completely transfer their, you know, their, their fleet over to, to electric vehicles.
C: So I was like you. Know have to eventually.
S: So now they're saying what, what are we going to do? You know, maybe we need to shift into hydrogen. Maybe that's going to work better. That was sort of the impression that this guy was. So stupid. I know I'm like, oh.
C: God, it's like, just hold your horses. I know. Just with the administration. Just relax.
S: First of all, even without the political aspect of it, there's always a hype and a bubble and then it settles down. There's no reason to panic. It's always going to take longer than you think it does, but it's the EVs are inevitable. Just continue to make them better and continue to invest in infrastructure. Those are the two big issues.
C: And it's not like the market's not there. It's not really robust it. Is robust, Yeah.
S: And I said hydrogen is absolutely not the way to go, you know, because they're not going to be as efficient. The hydrogen you think the EV infrastructure is is soft. The hydrogen infrastructure is way less and much harder to develop because hydrogen's a very tricky gas to deal with, I said. Also, the deal killer right now is that only 1% of hydrogen in the world that's produced is green hydrogen, right? The rest is basically made from fossil fuel.
C: Which is like having a natural gas car.
S: It's worse than just burning the fuel, burning fossil fuel. So there's no real environmental incentive to do that. There's no advantage to going to hydrogen at this point in time. And it's like, well, that's because that's why they're thinking of having they're make the hydrogen in the car from water. So then that was my turn to roll my eyes. I'm like, dude, that is a 50 year old scam. That is a complete scam. It takes more energy to get to split the hydrogen from the water. Then you get back when you burn the hydrogen, where's the energy coming from to to to make the hydrogen from the water? Just use that to drive the car. It makes absolutely no sense. Although he then he said, well, Oh yeah, they want to use the hydrogen to to recharge the battery, like to extend the range like, OK, maybe there's a system where that might be useful. Not if you're splitting it from the water, though. That makes no sense. But I said then The thing is, even if like we develop this robust hydrogen infrastructure or we find tons of hydrogen under the Earth, which is possible, we're far better off using that in industry than we are to drive cars.
E: Yeah, right. Not. Not, yeah.
S: Use it for steel, you know, not and for agriculture.
E: Yeah, right.
S: Not for cars. And if we do need it for transportation, it's going to be trains, maybe trucks, you.
C: Know, yeah, places where there's like giant stations where they can safely house this fuel source like it's just not going to be a consumer product.
S: Yeah, it's just not. So it's disappointing. I mean this. Again, this is anecdotal from 1 salesman at one car company, but this is what is filtering down.
J: Well then he asked Steve, what do you think about these rubber band engine cars?
S: You got squirrels running in there on Cajun.
B: Balsa would.
S: Yeah, but but he but he did say you'd listen to our podcast.
E: I better.
B: Direct them to your blog and. Give them give them the 50 you. Know Articles?
C: So, Steve, I'm curious, So you bought this car, you didn't lease it? Yeah, so I'm driving a hybrid truck now and the reason I purchased the truck instead of leasing is because I know it's going to like rag it out. It's like tricked out with a camper and stuff like that. You can't really do that to a lease. But prior to that, I leased electric vehicles for like 12 years. Granted, I was a very early adopter. So my reasoning was every three years when your lease is up my range. I think my first electric car was a it was a spark. It had an 80 mile 80. Yeah, but I mean.
E: For a lot of commuters. Though yeah, for in LA it was there. And 40 miles back.
C: Yeah, I mean, I live in LA. It wasn't a big deal. And back then they had cool incentives. It would be like in your three-year lease you get, you know, 5 different rental car vouchers for your longer haul drives. You know, they would like work around it with you. And like I think I got a free charger installed in my garage back in the day. But by the end of it, I think it went from like 80 to maybe like 1/21/40. And by the end, when I had a Bolt, I think my range was like 260, which was perfect. I mean, that's definitely all that I needed. Where are they at now?
S: Over, I mean for over 300.
C: That's good. OK.
S: So there are I looked at a lot of a lot of research before I obviously made this purchase. They at the high end 4:50 you can get you can get SUV's for 450. Most of them come out are coming in in the three hundreds. OK, they still need more choices and more. It was hard to find like the exact perfect combination of everything because at the SUV end. But I think because especially when the silicone nanolithium ion batteries which are going to go into production in 2026 for cars that those are the basically the batteries that have twice the the range, you know, twice.
C: The energy twice the cost.
S: Yes, they're also twice the cost. But The thing is, yeah, they're half the weight. They're half the size or twice the cost, but I don't know that it's that different per range. You know what I mean? You might be paying twice as much for the battery, but you get twice the range out of it or you have it half the size and it's get the same range. So there's still going to be a premium. So there's two things happening in the battery market that's going to affect cars this year. 1 is that, you know, the like the the amprius, the silicon anode battery at the high end where you're going to be able to get more easily get 400 plus range vehicles, especially the larger vehicles like SUV's at the low end. In December, a company started, you know, started production of a sodium ion battery. So they are, are the advantage there is they're half the price of the lithium ion batteries because they're not using any of the, you know, any of the more limited elements, right? They're using sodium. So those are going to be like, if you want a car that has like a range of 280 miles or 250 miles, which again, for most people is way more than enough, you you'll be able to get it at half the price of the battery, right? Whatever the battery cost is for that car will be half the price, half. So at the high end and at the low end, there's those two big innovations, you know, that are happening this year for for EVs. And then down the road, if you look like 5 years down the road, there's lots of other things happening like solid-state batteries and Oh yeah, yeah. So.
B: That looks promising too.
S: Yeah. I think that's why I think the EV market is pretty inevitable. I mean, it's, I think EVs are better than gas cars right now, but they're, they're still on the steep part of the curve getting better and better and better, right where there's no massive innovation going to happen with the internal combustion engine in the next 5 years. But the, you know, EVs are going to get, they're already cheaper to own than a gas car, but they're going to get even cheaper to buy.
B: Yeah, that's what they need.
S: Yeah, which is, which is which will be Hughes and I think the range anxiety will go away. There's the last bit though, with the range anxiety in the country as big as the US is the infrastructure, you know, and that's again, that's the other big piece that was very disappointing about the Trump administration is sort of canceling all of the EV infrastructure projects, you know, 'cause you just need to know that there's always going to be a charging station on your route that you want to go you.
C: Know yeah I'm curious sometimes on the show our perspectives are narrow because we are who we are and we have the life experience we have sometimes we have this sort of balanced like I'm way over here in California you guys are over on the East Coast I'm much more you guys are more rural right I'm in LA like in the middle of Los Angeles both city and county the infrastructure in California is phenomenal like nobody has a problem with EVs you live not in big cities in Connecticut but nearish to them yeah so the.
S: The EV infrastructure is awesome if you're like between Boston and Washington, right So along the Eastern seaboard, if you when you start to get out into the sticks, then it you can find them, but it becomes increasingly challenging and especially if you're finding like the particular kind that you want. But although that's getting better too, because now Tesla is opening up their chargers to other vehicles, they.
E: Finally have the correct connections, right? Yeah, well.
S: You get the adapter, but they also have to be able to use their chargers, you know, and so there, so that's good. It's like the car I got. It's not a Tesla, but I could use Tesla chargers. Yeah, it's going.
C: The other direction, yeah, that's the North.
S: American standard, I mean, that must just decide I'm going to call it the North American standard. But then by Fiat it happened, right? So now everyone's signing on to which is fine because it actually is a better connector. It's.
C: Faster, yeah, than the J whatever. So it's all.
S: It's going in the right direction. You know, again, every time they add even one more sort of EV recharging station somewhere that we drive, it's great. And I usually get, we take these on long trips all the time. So I'm very familiar with the experience of driving all day on an EV and it's fine, It's fine. It just takes the slightest amount of planning. But it all happens in the computer, right? You just say, I want to go on this route. It tells you, OK, you're going to stop here and recharge. Stop there and recharge. And you could alter it if you want to. There's almost always something to do there. Like we always just do it over lunch or do it over a stop or there's shopping there or whatever. So it's fine. Like sometimes it even takes less time than filling up your tank because it's charging while you're doing something else as opposed to just sitting there and filling up your car. Also.
C: If you're using your car in that way, like this kind of Great American road trip style, right, driving all day, I would hope that there would be some planning involved anyway, right?
S: Like.
C: You're not. Just like aimlessly driving, let's go for a drive.
S: It's what? You're used to right If I think if the reality were flipped and we were spent the last 100 years driving EVs and somebody was introducing internal combustion engines and you're like, you have to change the oil every so often and you have to change your filters and blah, blah, blah, and you have to stop.
C: And get gas. You have to stop it.
S: Yes, grew that. Yeah, you can't. Fill up at home. Like if you're out of gas at home, you're out of luck. You know that people would be.
C: Like that's not reasonable. Not going to go crazy. I'm going to be.
S: Driving around with a tank full of explosive gas and.
J: Well, I'm always driving around with explosive gas. It's.
E: Jay, when you. Grew up though your dad had a gas tank at the at the house, right? Yeah. He had a busy. You got any stories? About that for another time, another time now, you guys.
C: Are rural. Wow, it's not that.
S: Mean, you say that that's compared to you, but somebody like an actual rural America would laugh like we're suburban. Gosh, yeah.
C: It's funny, but yeah, we went to Kansas last year.
E: We're Connecticut. Rural. Yeah, Connecticut.
C: Rural because even like calling that suburban is really funny too, because I grew up in the suburbs in Texas and it's like very different, you know, strip mall city, all concrete. Like definitely. I think of suburbs as just more city outside the big city, whereas you guys have like woods behind your. I know you.
S: Were cute when you visit us like you guys live in the woods. This is a fairy tale. Yeah. It's. We're Connecticut, rural, whatever that means. It's a continuum. All right, So this is the first episode of the year. Yes.
Psychic Predictions (16:39)
From 2025Steve –1 – The Russia Ukraine war with enter a new dangerous phase.2 - New technosignature discovered not explained in 2025.3 – Generative AI will cross the uncanny valley and create video indistinguishable from real video.4 – 2025 will not be the warmest year on record, but will be in the top 5. (https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/2025-set-be-second-or-third-warmest-year-record-continuing-exceptionally-high-warming-trend)Cara –1 – A stable democracy will fall when an elected leader removes term limits2 - H5N1 will mutate to be transmissible from person to person3 - 2025 will be the hottest year on record.Evan –1 - A bridge on an interstate highway system will collapse causing zero fatalities2 – A computer will achieve 1.99 peta(exa)flops.3 – Three supernova explosions will be visible to the naked eye.Bob –1 – Chat GPT 5 won’t be released until mid 2025, even more lackluster than anticipated, but not create the AI winter.2 – Bird flu epidemic.3 – Nos Feratu will win more academy awards than any other horror movie.Jay -1 – Prices of groceries won’t go down in the US.2 – No company will achieve general AI.3 – The war between Ukraine and Russia will end.4 – The world will have another pandemic.For 2026Steve1 – A major tech company will claim to have produced sentient AI, but these claims will be met with extreme skepticism.2 – The US will see the largest measles outbreak this century.3 – Astronomers will discover the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered.Jay1 - I will get sick in December and miss at least one show.2 – The Democrats will win the House and the Senate in the mid-terms.3 – There will be a massive measles outbreak in the US and lose their eliminated status.Cara1 – A piece of AI generated content will be used as evidence in a murder trial leading to a conviction2 – A crypto scandal will wipe out many wallets, and people will have no recourse.3 – Donald Trump will suffer a major cardiac event.Evan1 – Piece of the Amber Room will be discovered.2 – The first major public data breach caused by agentic AI.3 – Morocco stuns Argentina to win the 2026 FIFA cup.Bob1 – Major satellite collisions in low Earth orbit caused by a solar storm2 – An even will happen involving Sagittarius A star.3 – Guillermo del Torro’s Frankenstein will win major academy awards. None
S: As always, we are going to do our psychic predictions. So we're just going to quickly go through the experience of psychic predictions for for 2025, see how they did. So I did kind of more of an overview rather than going through just cherry picking specific predictions. First of all, let me say no psychic made any amazing prediction for 2025, right? Nobody called. Yeah, it's always the the same basic formula, right? They predictions, predicting things that are already happening, predicting things that are unfalsifiable but the fewer sprinkled in that are low.
B: Very low probability but if they hit it, it would make their career right but.
S: None of them hit, right. So there's no like amazing prediction or anybody that's doing beyond chance, right And.
U: It.
E: Steve. That doesn't stop these psychics from claiming that they made of course accurate. Predictions. Right that's the other side of this coin is that they think or they're selling to their customers yeah I I predicted a whole bunch of stuff that happened even though they didn't but that's what they're going to say anyways so here's.
S: The overview of the most like, if you just, you know, combine all the psychic predictions for 2025, these are the major themes that emerged. So a lot of psychics predicted global conflict and upheaval. Again, predicting something that's already happening. Yeah. The second one, here's one where they predicted something that's very likely. They just happened to get it wrong. Many, there were many psychic predictions about a COVID like pandemic or plague hitting the world again, and that did not happen. There are always going to be epidemics, right? So but nothing COVID like happened in 2025 and then this is the one that's unfalsifiable spiritual shifts. Oh I love.
B: That you know.
S: Focus on karmic payouts and deeply transformative phase that's meaningless cultural changes. You know, this is again, this is kind of vague and unfalsifiable. Increased respect and transparency in the workplaces. Really, this year was not characterized by increased respect and transparency. Major wins for women in sports. Cara, do you know anything about I?
C: Don't know, maybe, but yeah, I don't. I don't really follow sports. Yeah, when they.
E: Say wins like team, like the actual wins on the field. Like something tells me they're not making the whole more.
C: Money or Yeah. Pretty vague. Yeah.
S: Yeah. And of course that, you know, psychics don't predict the unexpected things that actually happen, right? Never.
J: Yeah, Yeah.
S: They always miss the big stuff. And then they just predict things that are already happening or that are very likely to happen or are so vague you can't say if it happened or not.
U: But.
S: But I think Bob and Evan, you have some specific ones you wanted to bring up. I tracked.
B: Nikki Pizarro. And she's been, you know, making predictions for years. Some of them she loves repeating. For example, a giant gorilla will be will be found kind of like a real life King Kong. So she said that they would find a giant gorilla or real life King Kong on a remote island. Have been heard about 1. I don't think that's happened. So whatever. Let's see. Oh, here's a good one. She foretold several major cities would experience Penguin invasions. Penguin invasions? That as well. Never. I haven't heard about that happening. Don't think that happened. She predicted that the Loch Ness Monster would finally be caught. Finally. Oh.
S: My.
B: Gosh, and also the cloning of AT Rex. So it's just like. Oh man. Just throw this crap out there man.
S: So that's not She's just watching sci-fi movies, Yeah.
B: Yeah, right, right.
E: So, all right everyone.
S: You got boy.
E: Let's try this one. Kelly Sutliffe, you know, one of one of many out there, the the greatest and most accurate psychic, blah, blah, blah, whatever, but they she categorized some of her predictions for 2025. Here's a category called environment, Food and Drug administrations. Robert Kennedy is going to rock this world.
U: That's.
E: Wow, how great. To revisit why all these toxic chemicals have been allowed in our food and land and air, you're going to see some radical shakedowns with the EPA and FDA in the United States. Good. Who doesn't want all this cleaned up? That's what she said. I mean, I guess Robbie Kennedy did rock the world, but maybe not in the way. Not a good way. She. She. Predicted Here's a oh, cancer cure here and I'm I'm reading this. This is verbatim cures for the lymph systems, the lymph, the lymph systems, an audio immune cancer discovery audio.
B: Audio.
E: It says audio not even.
S: Auto right?
E: Not audio now. Okay, maybe it's a typo, it's hard to know. Like what is this?
S: I was watching Star Trek Enterprise six months ago, and multiple times the the doctor referred to the autoimmune system. It's like, come on, you've got to have some, some tech people, you know. Wow. Consulting for your show. Yeah.
E: That would be helpful. Yeah, that would be helpful. Prediction of a new light therapy discovered for healing electrical current to heal natural ingredients, common sense drugs and the Earth drugs will be the new pulse for humanity, whatever that means and I don't recall there being a new light therapy there's always.
S: Light therapy that's like one that's a common alternative medicine scams. The light therapy thing. There are some legitimate light therapies, you know, but not just like general healing, not like the sci-fi. You go under the light and your wounds close up.
E: Zelensky would be, would not be the leader of Ukraine anymore, that is. It correct happened. Correct.
C: Incorrect.
E: P Diddy will sing like a Canary, and everyone knows what happens to Canaries when put into an underground coal mine. In other words, she's saying that he would have flipped on a whole bunch of people and got killed. Whacked. Yeah, and that did not happen either. Let's see what else we've got. King Charles health issues. OK. Well, I mean, but he was sick to begin with. She didn't outright said he was going to die. But she says, you know, oh, and the Detroit Lions will win the Super Bowl. And this is back in January and the Detroit Lions did not win it in February of 20/20/25. And unlikely that they'll even try to win it this, you know, be able to win it this year. So those are just some of the wonderful predictions from Kelly Sutliffe. As wrong as any other psychic. Yeah.
S: They're pretty representative of how they do. They're meant to titillate, they're often stupid or they're just like some old guys gonna have health issues. Like, okay, it's.
E: Ridiculous. Don't bash.
C: On all these styles of psychic predictions because.
E: Ours are good though.
C: Mine are great. But we come up with.
E: Real, tangible, you know, something you can sink your teeth into, at least whether we're incorrect or correct All right, so you.
S: Want to see how we did for 2025? Yes.
E: Yeah, let's go back. And see it just turned out, I guess I can.
S: Go first. I'm giving myself a three out of four, but you tell me how you guys OK 4I.
E: Thought we did three, I know, but I.
S: Did four.
E: Yeah, Steve. Did a four hedge bonus. He had a bonus, not a hedge. I just.
S: Wanted to do more.
C: All right, the.
S: First one was the Russia Ukraine war will enter a new dangerous phase. That's so vague.
C: That's 100% correct.
S: That's not true, but that could have been wrong. It could could have eased off or it could have stopped or whatever. But the the expert consensus is that in 2025, the Ukraine war has entered a more dangerous, critical and potentially decisive phase marked by increased Russian attacks. And you know, all the other stuff that's happening. What a nightmare. So I think that that was accurate. I'd give myself a win on that one. 2A new techno signature discovered, not explained in 2025. So that's my one complete failure. There was no techno signatures discovered in 2025, let alone going unsplained. Unless you include three I Atlas, which we don't.
E: Oh. Look at which we don't, which we do not.
S: Not a.
E: Techno signature, right?
S: But you know, Avilo, Avilo would include that and so According to him, I got that one right. But according to to.
E: Reality NASA and. Going to Harvard. Crank, you were right. All right.
S: Just one, all right, I could see where this one might be a little bit iffy, but I think this is reasonable. Generative AI will cross the uncanny valley and create video indistinguishable from real video. That's a win.
E: No, I'd say that's a.
C: Win.
E: Yeah, that's also. Was a that's also was a. It would definitely. Relatively. Easy. Yeah, we.
S: Crossed the line and there were there multiple companies like that came out with updated apps or better apps that can create AI video. Awesome. So there was amazing. I was watching 1 today again just seeing just a reasonable statement to make and there's still 1 area where the AI video came is still in the uncanny valley. And so I noticed that in this video showing off how great it could be, they did not show this thing. Do you know what this thing is? A bow? No no, that's a picture. This is video. What's the one thing in A in a video that always gives it away If it's AI? Well I would say the A.
J: Human. A human. Face up, close the lip sync.
S: It's speaking. Watching a human speak is the one thing they cannot do, and this video cleverly never showed anybody speak. You know, they were always like you were hearing their voice in their head or they were, you were seeing them from behind when they were speaking. But otherwise it is pretty indistinguishable. As long as you don't try to do that one thing. That's going to be the last thing to leave the uncanny valley, in my opinion.
U: I'm. Proud of you.
J: Thank you.
S: So that's two out of three. The 4th one is 100%. Home run 2025 will not be the warmest year on record, but will be in the top five. It was the either the 2nd or the 3rd. It's probably going to be the third warmest year on record. So that was 100%. So 3 out of four.
B: Wrong. Well, what were what were 2024 and 3 and two in terms of they were the warmest.
S: Years the hottest.
C: Years of record, yeah. We were trending, yeah.
S: But I said last year why I made that predictions because we were shifting from an El Nino to a La Nina. Oh. That'll do it.
B: And that did.
S: Research and that gives you a. Little bit of temporary, there's a little bit of cooling on the background of the warming. So usually when we do that, you end up with a top ten year, but not a most, not a warmest year. So yeah, that's Cheat A.
C: 100% psychic. I was a psychic. I said it will be the hottest on record, but you.
S: Say that psychics don't cheat, Cara, is that your premise? No my.
C: Premise is that psychics don't do any research. I disagree. I disagree, they're just not good. Psychic.
S: Yeah, they're just cheat.
E: I'm.
C: Joking, but clearly when we talk about psychics on the show you we've got 2 camps. We've got the people who just look at trends and then they predict based on trends and they're often right because of that and we've got the people who just make wild and that's what I did All right, so go. So I said that a stable democracy will fall when an elected leader successfully abolish his term limits. That's probably my most specific 1. And so because of that, I'm giving myself like, I don't know, 1/4 of a point because there was no specific instance where a stable democracy collapsed simply because the leader removed term limits. But there are two examples and maybe even more but two notable examples, where term limits were dismantled due to constitutional changes. So in El Salvador, the Legislative Assembly approved an amendment to abolish presidential term limits. And in Chad in October, their parliament approved a revised constitution that removed term limits in order to keep both of those leaders in in, in office. So even though the democracies haven't quote UN quote, collapsed or fallen, I mean, I guess we shall see the beat the the thread started to be pulled. They took a hit.
S: Yeah, yeah, all.
C: Right. Yeah, I'll give.
S: You partial, yeah, I'll.
C: Take partial for that. The next one, H5 N one will mutate to become transmissible from person to person. That hasn't happened yet, but researchers are very concerned that it will. So, So as of right now, there are mutations that have been identified. We covered some of them on the show that could increase the risk. But so far every human case has been successfully linked to an animal spillover event. So here now.
S: This is my recommendation for transforming this into more of a typical psychic prediction. You say H5 N one will will have mutations that will move it in the direction of person to person.
C: Transmission which?
S: Did happen and then you could take full credit if it goes.
C: Person to.
S: Person, but you still can claim victory even if the thing that we know is going to happen happens. I need to.
C: Edit the language of my my 3 for this next year and then the last one I said it'll be the hottest year of on record. So that's a fail. So you need to.
S: Go one level deeper in your research care, Yeah.
C: Yeah, in your cheating care. Damn it, I'm just cheating wrong.
S: OK, Evan.
E: All right, I made 3 predictions #1A bridge on an Interstate highway system will collapse, causing 0 fatalities and that turned out to be correct. This took place in June 2025, Interstate I-20 overpass in Aiken County, South Carolina. A gasoline tanker crash and subsequent fire caused an overpass above I-22 collapse. The bridge collapse was directly tied to the Interstate Highway System and only minor injuries, no fatalities. Correct number one #2 numbers 2 and #3 I have to tweak a little bit. Here's what I see. Here's what I said. OK, I know what.
S: Peter said because I wrote it down.
E: You did, damn you. A computer will achieve 1.99 pedaflops, becoming the new champion of supercomputers. 1.74 was tops in 2024. I got my terminology incorrect and actually a few listeners corrected me on this. It's not pedaflops, it was. Exo exo. Exo flops how did I?
B: Miss that man? I don't know. I don't.
E: Know so it's 1000 times more. So I basically used the wrong what term prefix. Yeah, yeah.
S: So you meant?
E: Exo flops. I meant exo flops and that but peda flops came out. I don't know if it was something like copied and pasted or just failed to verify on my own so. So let's say it was EXO. Let's say it was.
S: Exo flops and if it.
E: Was then I was off, but maybe not by too much. The world's fastest supercomputer in 2025 remained El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was measured at about in 20251.809 exoflops, the highest performance on record for the year. One point still short of 1.99. Yeah. So, so that's a no. I'll give myself a no one now and then this third one I said, and I probably I should have qualified this one. Supernova explosions, not one but three of them will be visible to the naked. I I, I really meant to say Nova and supernova would have been part of the category, right? Yeah. A broader definition of Nova is supernova. Supernova is more specific so I should have said Nova. Now had I said Nova I wouldn't correct for 1/3 of it because there was a Nova that was bright enough to see with the naked eye in June of 2025 V 462 loopy LUPI. That 1 was definitely visible. Wait.
B: Naked eye naked.
E: Eye. Yep, bright enough to see with the naked eye in June 2025. Yeah. However, there were not three of them. So you. There were There were other supernovas observed by scientists, but they needed instrumentation to see.
S: Them and they were probably in other galaxies.
E: Yeah, they were absolutely. In other galaxies, I'll take 1/3 of one point for that one. You'll take a.
S: With an asterisk because you said supernova when you meant Nova, yes.
E: Exactly. So I'll be, I'm going to be a little bit more careful in going forward on that please. Otherwise I'm embarrassing the whole show, you know?
U: All right.
S: What about you, Bob, last year?
B: I predicted for 2025 check GPT 5 will be released a year later than initially anticipated in mid 2025. It will be even more lackluster than anticipated. However, this will not start a third AI winter. So I think I pretty much got that one right. I mean it was released yeah. It was really kind of, you know, kind of lackluster, Not, you know, what I had hoped, especially what I had hoped a couple of years ago, like after like 3 came out and four, like, damn. And what's 5 going to do was like, no finishing returns here. And, you know, I, I use it, it's, it's helpful in specific scenarios, but it did not create a third day. I went there. But that's not to say that that won't be coming in the near future anyway. All right, let's go to #2 I said Nosratu will win more Academy Awards than any other horror movie. Yeah. I think that's like, after I had recently seen it and really enjoyed the crap out of it. And it's an utter failure. There were 4 Academy Award nominations and as usual for technical achievements, best See Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hair styling. It didn't win anything and some people felt that it got snubbed, especially for acting in picture categories. But yeah, it didn't. But it was, it was still a really solid movie that I need to watch again. Damn, I may need to re Oh, I, I think I'll do that. Oh, crap. I might need to go with four predictions this year because I just thought of another one. My third prediction was a full on bird flu epidemic. Did not happen. Did not happen.
S: So.
B: Thank good. One out of three, whatever. Good.
S: That's not bad. It's better than 33%.
B: Yeah.
E: More accurate than any other psychic I know, I'm.
B: Just not impressed with my predictions alright.
S: Jay, what do you got? OK.
J: So the first thing I said was that prices of groceries won't go down in the US That was correct.
S: Yeah.
J: I mean that was.
E: Mixed. I would say probably no.
C: Groceries broke on up.
E: Prices. Never go down.
S: I mean, the price of eggs went down, but that's because eggs were in a bubble because slated. Yeah, but across.
C: The board groceries are more expensive now, yeah, I mean the.
J: Reason why I had this prediction was because Trump was saying that on day one he's going to lower the prices. And I knew that was complete nonsense. Of course, the next one is no company will achieve general AI. I mean, that was another one where I felt like it was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to happen. But, you know, I said I brought it up because so many people are saying that, you know, we're going to have general AI right away and blah, blah, blah, that we already have it. And I just think it's a good point to make that we do not have it. And it is a lot more, you know, elusive. And it's just not going to happen, I think, in the near future. I think it's quite a ways away. I'm sad. I'm wrong about this next one. The war between Ukraine and Russia will end. Yeah.
E: We're all hoping for that. Yeah, a year.
J: Ago, I really felt like, you know, it was, it was on the precipice, but I don't think so. It's awful. And then I'm happy that I got this one wrong as well. The world will have another pandemic, you know, definitely, definitely nothing on pandemic level, but you know it'll be true.
S: Eventually, Yep.
J: It's going to happen and I and you can do what the.
E: Other psychics do and say I was right go back, you know, years to.
S: If not next year, then definitely soon after that. Yeah.
E: All right.
S: So I think overall we did pretty good, yeah.
E: Again, better than the pros.
S: Better the people who make a living doing it right. The people.
E: Who charge $800.00 an hour to talk to people on the phone about this stuff? Steve, can I?
J: Start with my new predictions. Go right ahead. All right, So, oh, new predictions. I predict that I will get sick in December and miss at least one show. Yeah.
C: 20. 26 Oh, you're saying for next? Yeah, No 20.
E: 26 yeah, someone pointed.
J: Out I read it that every year at Christmas Jay's sick and that person is correct and then someone else wrote to that person in response yeah, Jay has kids so.
US#00: So yeah, duh. Yeah. So it is a.
J: 100% related to the fact that I have, you know, two kids in school. My daughter's the the patient zero in my house always. And I did catch this flu from her. So that is it is very likely that I will be sick this time of year next year. Next prediction. The Democrats will win the House and the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections in the US and Senate.
B: Yeah, I mean.
J: I know that that's a lot less likely, but I just wanted to put myself out. I didn't want to, you know, just do a, A, an easy guess, but I think it's unlikely. But I that's my prediction. Another one here. the US will lose its measles elimination status in 2026 and there will be a massive measles outbreak. I think these two things are very likely, didn't we?
C: Already lose our eliminations? No, we didn't.
J: Lose the Oh, we haven't.
C: Yet no.
J: But we will. And you know, as things are trending, I mean there was like what a 14? AM I remembering this correctly guys, that we've had a 14,000% increase in measle infections?
E: Something like that, Yeah, it's.
J: An absurd. It's absurd. Well, I mean it's.
C: Going to look like that when the numbers were so low before. Yeah, now they're not low numbers.
E: Right, my final.
J: Prediction for 2026 is that Steve will love his new car and not let his wife drive it.
S: That's not going to happen.
U: I'll go.
S: I had a we have one overlapping prediction, but so number one, I said, a major tech company will claim to have produced sentient AI, but these claims will be met with extreme skepticism by us. By us. Yeah, the US will see the largest measles outbreak this century. So we got a little bit more specific, not just massive, but the biggest one this century. Yeah, and #3 astronomers will discover the most Earth like exoplanet yet discovered. Cool. Who wants to go next? OK, so.
C: I've got mine go from specific to vague, but I vagged up my second one per your recommendation. So the first one is a piece of AI generated content will be used as evidence in a criminal trial leading to a conviction. Upon this discovery, the defendant will seek a new trial #2A cryptocurrency scam will wipe out the wallets of many victims. Before, I had numbers, Now I do not, leaving them with no recourse. And #3 because we don't do deaths, Donald Trump will will suffer a major cardiac event.
J: Yeah, yeah.
E: OK, I like the.
J: Way you your mind works, Cara, I think.
C: These things are going to happen.
E: Yeah, otherwise you wouldn't have. Predicted. Them I don't know.
C: Sometimes I just predict crazy stuff and you don't.
E: Cheat. No.
C: Cheating, whatever that means.
E: You mean?
S: Knowing something about reality, right?
E: I mean, when a psychic says they're using the Akashic file, right, or something to get there, couldn't that be called cheating in a way, right? Wouldn't it be? I think you could make an argument that it would be yeah if there was an Akashic file I used.
S: The Google files does.
E: That work.
S: Works as well.
E: Is any of the other set of file Evan?
S: What do you got?
E: 3 predictions for 2026 Number one pieces of the Amber Room will be discovered. Do we know what the Amber Room was?
C: I don't the amber.
E: Room was a magnificent Chamber of amber panels, gold leaf and mirrors originally built in Prussia and gifted to Peter the Great of Russia, becoming a symbol of imperial wealth at the cat the Catherine Palace. It was looted by the Nazis in 1941 and it's panels disappeared during World War 2. It's fate remains one of the one of history's great unsolved mystery. Good.
S: Prediction like that, that's a very.
E: Good prediction. I'd like that there was.
S: A A hall near where we grew up that was called the Amber Room. That's where we had all of our big events growing up. Oh.
E: So in in honor of I guess. So of that. Room. Yeah, yeah. So.
S: Like any wedding, any whatever, like that, any anniversary. People rented a hall. It was the Amber Room, Yeah.
E: The opulence and, you know, high class and all that stuff #2 the the first major public data breach caused by AI, agentic AI, in fact, first major public data breach caused by AI. How's that OK?
B: I like that one and.
E: #3 Morocco stuns Argentina to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Now, those are very, very specific predictions. No wiggle room there. These will either happen or they won't happen. Take that, psychics.
U: All right.
S: And Bob, what do you got? All right.
B: Predictions for 2026 I predict major satellite collisions, multiple in low Earth orbit caused by a solar storm in 2026, and you'll learn more about why I'm saying this later in the episode. Oh gosh.
E: Foreshadowing.
U: Let's.
B: See second one. An event will happen involving Sagittarius A * are 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Something is going to happen.
E: Something wonderful. Something.
U: I don't know.
B: It's going to be wonderful, but you want to be real close there when this happens. Going to movies and #3 Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein will win major Academy Awards 'cause I think this is even cool. I love that. Better than nose for a tattoo, I think. Such a love that you go.
E: Back to that to that theme for you. Such a.
B: Right, such a wonderful such a wonderful movie. I kind of thought this when I read that at the Venice Film Festival earlier in the year at this during this is the world premiere. He there was a like a 15 minute massive standing ovation, which is the longest ovation at the festival. And it just, and these are people that are, you know, they're just kind of like totally hardcore, like they've seen it all type of thing. And they would loved it so much. And I loved it for so many reasons. It was so it's so wonderful. All practical effects. No, you know, no AI effects anywhere to be seen. Everything was handcrafted. It was just like such a wonder. And the acting and everything about it, I just, I really enjoyed it and I would love to see a real horror movie, a graphic horror movie. This thing pulls no punches. I would love to see something like that win some major awards. And so let's see if it happens. It was good.
S: Yeah, and some of the scenes with the practical effects were amazing.
B: They really were good. Yep, especially that one. And towards the beginning. Yep, the homeboy. Oh boy.
S: Worth. Seeing all right, I think we have some good predictions for next year. We'll obviously check back and see how we do. But let's go on with some news items.
News Items
Psychology Intervention for ADHD (44:01)
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/role-of-psychological-strengths-in-positive-life-outcomes-in-adults-with-adhd/69B7CE4D4D9F370214929ABF53701567 [1]
S: Jay, you're going to start us off with intervention for adult ADHD. So guys.
J: What percentage of adults do you think have have been diagnosed with ADHD? 5%.
S: Diagnosed.
E: 1010. Percent.
J: Yeah, it's about 5%. You know, there's different numbers that that people come up with, but 6-7, it's about 6-7 I came up.
E: With six 7. Yes, 2020. 6-7 is off to a great start, right?
J: Now more interestingly though, what percentage of of people are suspected to have ADHD? Right, because everyone doesn't get diagnosed 2 to 3.
E: Times that number, it's 20.
J: 25. Percent.
S: Totally where you put. Where that is two or three times that number. What is where you are about the cut off? Yeah, of.
J: Course this, you know, this isn't like, you know, there's no real precision here because it all has to be guesstimated. But roughly one in four people, one in four people. So people with ADHD frequently have traits, of course, that can be hard to deal with. You know, I have it, my kids have ADHD. Trouble focusing, impulsivity, disorganization, emotional regulation problems. You know, these are pretty, pretty common with people that have ADHD. The vast majority of talk about ADHD, though, focuses on all the negative aspects, right? Because these are the things that we're that we're trying to give people help with. This new study that was recently published in Psychological Medicine questions if some of the same traits associated with ADHD can also function as strengths, right? This is something that my wife and I tell our kids that, you know, there are, there's things that you have to learn to, to deal with it having ADHD. And we try not to make them oppressive for the kids, right? But we tell them. But ADHD also gives you some superpowers. You know, of course, I'm talking to children here. This isn't the way I would talk to an adult about it. But we want them to, to see a positive angle to the whole thing because actually there is some things that can be positive about it. So this is what the this study is, is looking at is, you know, what are some of the traits that come with ADHD that are actually beneficial to people and then what you know and how to deal with that after that. The study is actually titled The Role of Psychological Strengths and Positive Life Outcomes in Adults with ADHD. They looked at adults with and without an ADHD diagnosis, and they compared how they view their own strengths and how these strains have have affected their lives. Now, it's important to note here that the study doesn't claim that ADHD is secretly a gift or that the you know that it's the challenges that people have with it will disappear. If you just look on the bright side. That's all nonsense. What the study does, though, it asks A narrower question. It's more of a testable question. Do adults with ADHD report certain positive traits more strongly? And does awareness and use of those traits relate to better outcomes? I think that's an incredible question and an incredible topic for this study, and This is why I really wanted to talk about it. So the researchers surveyed 400 adults. Half of them reported having been diagnosed with ADHD, the other half not, and the participants were asked to rate 25 psychological strengths commonly associated with AD ADHD in popular and clinical discussions. So these people were including traits like creativity, humor, spontaneity, imaginative thinking, hyper focus, intuition and having broad interests. These are all things that could actually be positive that people have like, meaning like people with ADHD tend to have more creativity or, you know, advanced humor or more spontaneity. Are they testing?
C: For whether people have those things in the study or are they assuming that they already do because that is not well documented? No, they're just.
J: Asking them of these 25 psychological strengths commonly associated with ADHD, which of them do you do you say that you have and then it it goes further than that this is just the first step sure I.
C: Guess I'm my question is where are they getting the information that these things are commonly associated with ADHD? Like having broad interests? Yeah, I don't.
J: Know I mean because that is not.
C: Part of the diagnostic criteria so unless there are multiple studies that show that these are like concurrent, you know strengths, I don't like that they're just shooting from the hip well, they they.
J: Said that these were 25 psychological strengths that have been deemed commonly associated with ADHD. Now I don't know where they're interesting they got that information from.
C: Maybe they. Have like a pool of their own research, but that's a separate. Deep dive. Yeah, Yeah.
J: Yeah.
S: I mean, so there is, there is at least preliminary evidence for these things. I don't know how solid they are, but then that require a separate really exploration. Yeah, yeah.
J: Yeah, they also had them complete a questionnaire measuring how well they understood their own strengths, how often they use them, their overall well-being, quality of life and mental health symptoms. Right. So they're getting a profile on each of these 400 people. And then they were able to pull information from from those questions. So the 1st result of of this is that it's probably the least controversial. What they found was adults with ADHD were more likely to strongly endorse a specific subset of strengths, right? So the top 10 strengths that people with ADHD reported that they have were creativity, humor, spontaneity, imaginative thinking, intuition, image based thinking, seeing opportunities, being up for anything, broad interests, and hyper focus. And now all of these traits had a stronger endorsement by those in the ADHD group. And for the other strengths, there was no difference between the two groups, people with and people without ADHD. They kind of were, you know, on par with each other. And this is important because it cuts against the idea that people with ADHD are universally more or less strong across the board. The difference is that they pointed out or that they discovered are specific and not global, right? And it like if you focus on those, those 10 things, for example that I listed, those were the most common ones that they, they said that they had a a stronger connection to now that's.
S: How to fits the the growing trend in neuroscience to think of these conditions that were previously thought of as just disorders as being neurodiversity, right that yeah, a different.
C: Type, Yeah.
S: Like even like autism in the mild to moderate end of the spectrum, like not like the non verbal autistic children, but people who have what might previously have been called Asperger's syndrome is now, you know, considered to be like either type one or mild autism. They have they have challenges absolutely, but they also have strengths as well. And it's just that their brains just operate differently than is typical. And it's just, they're just a different neurodiversity, ADHD. Previously, we thought it was just a pure deficit, but maybe it isn't. Maybe it's a tradeoff, like everything in evolution is tradeoffs, right? Yes. Yeah, you do have challenges, but but you have other areas where you have strength. And what usually determines like the impact of those strengths and weaknesses is often your culture, right? If you live in a culture where you have to go to school and be, be pay attention in a, in a controlled environment for many hours a day, that's sort of magnifying the, the challenges of ADHD. Whereas if you know, as adults, people with ADHD generally find their way to careers that lean into their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses, whether they're. Conscious of it or not, Whether they're conscious of it or not.
C: Yeah, I. Think, the thing that that I don't like about the study and I get that it's preliminary, is that similar to an autism diagnosis, A robust ADHD diagnosis can't be made just based on self report, right? You have to take neuropsyche tests and also you really should, in an autism setting, at least get corroborating information from other people that know you, like your parents or your peers. Well, Cara, I.
J: Think you'll understand what they were going for here a little better once I described the next two findings. OK, I mean, I think you're right. You're right. Because it's.
C: Very easy to be like. I'm creative. This was. More. This was more.
J: Exploratory and just trying to get a sense of a couple of things that I haven't even discussed yet. Like everything I said was more of the setup. So, so remember I said the 1st result was that the people were more likely to endorse a certain subset of strengths, right? So people with ADHD had like these 10 typical common subsets of strengths that seem to come with ADHD. The second finding, which was more surprising, is that even though adults with ADHD were more likely to say they had these certain strengths, they were no better than adults without ADHD at recognizing those strengths or using them in daily life. And that's very important here because the awareness of those strengths is a very important factor here, right? It's like, you know, without knowing what your strengths are, you can't leverage them. And, and that was the thing that they found here was that it seems like people with ADHD simply are not, you know, fully aware of what the strengths are and certainly not using them. And the 3rd and most important finding has to do with real life outcomes. They said in both groups, people who were more aware of their strengths tended to feel better overall. They reported a higher quality of life and they have fewer mental health symptoms. So using those strengths showed a similar pattern, though that there was a weaker link there. So this was true whether or not someone had ADHD. While ADHD adults on average reported lower well-being and quality of life, those who were better, who better understood their strengths and made use of their strengths tended to do better than those who did not. Let me make a couple more quick points here. It's crucial to be clear about what this does and doesn't show. So this is a cross section study. It can't prove that knowing your strengths causes better mental health. It's entirely possible, of course, that people who are doing better mentally find it easier to recognize and use their strengths. There also may be unmeasured factors like like Steve was saying, like their social support, education, workplace flexibility, influence influencing these results. And the the authors acknowledge these limits. However, that said, the implications are, are actually a little hard to ignore here because much of ADAADHD treatment focuses on managing the impairments, right? So there's medication, there's behavioral strategies, there's accommodations, you know, this is critical to helping people with ADHD. But, but, and this is the, this is the most important thing I'm going to say, this study suggests that that a strengths based based approach is not just a feel good add on that strength awareness appears to be a legitimate factor with how people are doing in their lives. So what they recommend is changing or having a shift in how ADHD is discussed and supported, right. So therapy, coaching, education, and workplace accommodations should also include helping people identify where they function well and how to use those abilities deliberately, not just treating the symptoms. And I think it makes perfect sense when you think of it in this context. Listen, you're going to have some things that are very hard to deal with, or most people with ADHD, you know, you're going to identify the problems that you're having. You know, I know exactly what my ADHD symptoms are and I know exactly how hard they are to deal with and I know exactly what impact they're having on my life. And, and I am a part of this because I have not recognized and fully embraced the strengths that I'm getting from my ADHD. And I find this so provocative that, you know, there's untapped potential and people that have ADHD and all what they need to do alongside, you know, dealing with their deficits is leaning into those strengths. Now, of course, this applies to everybody. It's not just people with ADHD, but it's a little bit more pronounced with people with ADHD because they they seem to, on average, have certain deficits and more likely bonuses. Yeah.
C: And I think it makes sense too that this is a study on adults because I think where things get hairy and I'm not saying we shouldn't be using a strength based approach to with children. Of course we should. And hopefully like good therapists and psychiatrists are already doing that. But with adults, oftentimes the difficulties that come with ADHD are self carried, right? Like a person identifies I'm struggling at work or this is causing problems in my relationship with kids. A lot of times those difficulties are identified by teachers and parents.
S: Yeah.
C: So the deficits are causing like difficulty in school for example, and so a solely strength based approach, while it sounds amazing and ideal, it just doesn't seem that feasible in like a standard educational setting unfortunately to.
J: Summarize this. I think anybody with ADHD should consider the any deficits that they've identified and try to get support with them. Go to therapy. You might need medication, you might need different accommodations or whatever. But, you know, try to raise your awareness of those things. And at the same time, you'll lean into the idea that there are probably some traits that you have that are enhanced because of your ADHD. And those are the things that you should be focusing on and leaning into. And we need to, we need to have the positives be, you know, be working for us and mitigating the negatives instead of just focusing obviously on the negatives, which I think, you know, modern medicine is, is putting 99% of their eggs in that basket.
S: Yeah, but that's usually that's people present with an identified problem, right. I'm having this problem. Help me fix it. So that's kind of the medical model. But yeah, psychologists need to be aware of to get into this more holistic view of how does this affect all the aspects of your life and how do we leverage all of that for to have the best outcome. And I think.
C: Most psychologists are aware, Yeah, I think. I think, yeah, I think kind of big changes happening this. Is people should. Also be seeking psychological support and not just medicinal support for their symptoms.
S: Yes, and also not be afraid of medicinal support. There's a huge anti medication bias in in the culture. Yeah, that's. True.
C: And, and we know that ADHD almost by definition, like it's diagnosable when we see relief when they get medication, Yeah, it's dramatic. Yeah, yeah. And the.
J: Medication, it can be incredibly helpful. I mean, you know, I, I started taking my medication again and it gives me like 6 hours of more clarity and, and you know, more drive and all, you know, lots of positives. So I recommend if you have ADHD, talk to your doctor. Yeah, talk to your.
S: Doctor, just don't be so afraid of it that you don't listen to good advice about it. Yeah.
B: Yeah.
S: All right, let's move on.
Biological vs Artificial Consciousness (59:11)
S: All right, guys, I want to talk about the difference between biological versus artificial consciousness. We had a couple of our items were about predicting whether AI will become sentient and or you know, the more general concept of like a self aware consciousness. I think we could all agree current AIS are nowhere near that. They're not programmed to be that way. They're not necessarily even on a path to becoming conscious. But the question is how will we? Can we, and how, if so, how will we create artificial consciousness? So there was a recent paper that to, you know, hoping to push this conversation forward. The paper is on biological and artificial consciousness, a case for biological computationalism. They they review the the two existing schools of thought as to what it would take to create consciousness or what you know, which relates to what's the nature of consciousness. Anybody have an idea what those are? No.
US#00: No any summary?
S: I can give is going to be a massive oversimplification, but these are the the basic ideas. So one is computationalism, right? Computationalists say that consciousness is a function of the basically the software it's the the program, it's the information and the information processing and the substrate does not matter, doesn't is irrelevant. Does that make sense? Yeah, but.
C: I mean, do they have some sort of threshold?
S: What do you mean that?
C: Well then a. Calculator is conscious no no.
S: Not it's not just that any information is if you if I had all the information in your brain and all of the information processing networks, etcetera and I ran that on silicon, it would be and then by.
C: Definition, that would be conscious, yes. OK, it's just the.
S: Information that the substrate doesn't matter. You still need the complexity in all you know. You need that complexity of information processing to be conscious, but it doesn't matter that it's only the processing of the information itself that is responsible for consciousness. The other school of thought is that it's all about the hardware, right? That it's all about the physical processes. That's the biological naturalism side, right? Insists that consciousness is inseparable from the distinctive properties of living brains and bodies. So biology isn't a vehicle for cognition. It is cognition, right? It is part of cognition. So computational functionalism versus biological naturalism. All right. So they're saying we need a new, a third way, right? A new way called biological computationalism, which kind of combines those two. So hybrid. It's, it is a bit of a hybrid, right? So there's one thing I disagree with them about. But the authors of this paper they they. So here's a quote from the paper from their discussion of their paper. For decades, it has been tempting to assume that brains compute in roughly the same way conventional computers do, as if cognition were essentially software running a top neural hardware. But brains do not resemble von Neumann machines, and treating them as though they do forces us into awkward metaphors and brittle explanations. If we want a serious theory of how brains compute and what it would take to build minds in other substrates, we need to widen what we mean by computation in the first place. So my problem is that they're writing as if this is a new idea, which to me, it's like, well, I already assumed that was what we were doing, right? That was the standard of, of the neuroscientific consensus. And I look back, I knew I had written about this. So I I the earliest instance of me writing about this was in 2017 where I wrote. For starters, the brain is either hardware or software. It is both simultaneously, sometimes called wetware. Information is not stored in neurons. The neurons and their connections are the information. Further processing and receiving information transforms those neurons, resulting in memory and learning. The earliest reference to this idea I found goes back to the 1970s. So this is a seriously old idea that the brain is neither software nor hardware, but both simultaneously. So I don't know if that's just because they're just not as aware of the history of this field or if they're just trying to overemphasize their own contributions. Does it? Does this is kind of an aside, but I do think it's it is interesting that antecedents, especially conceptually, always go far deeper than you think. You know what I mean? Like, if you've had a new idea, chances are pretty good someone's had it already, you know? And good scholarship always is a involves A thorough exploration of the history of the idea that you're discussing. But in any case, I do think that they formulate it in a way that does maybe push things forward. So here is their formulation of biological computationalism. Again, it's not. Consciousness is not software running on hardware. But the two things are inseparable, right? So their first they said to biological consciousness, they say requires 3 things. First, that biological consciousness is a hybrid between discrete events and continuous dynamics. So what does that mean? A discrete event would be something like a neuron firing, right? But you can't sort of understand the phenomenon of neurons firing in isolation. You can only understand them if you understand how the continuous dynamics of the brain influences those firing, and how that firing influences the continuous dynamics of the brain, such as hormone levels, neurotransmitter levels, and the synaptic connections, etc etc. Right? So all of that influences the firing of neurons, and the firing of neurons influences those dynamics. So it's a hybrid between the two. So trying to make a computer that duplicates the neuronal firing isn't going to get you to consciousness, right? This is what they're saying. Unless you are also accounting for this this more continuous dynamics of the brain itself. The second is that they the brain is what we call scale inseparable. Which is just another way of saying you can't separate it into hardware and software, right? There's not an algorithm running on brain hardware. The brain is the algorithm. Does that make sense?
U: Yeah.
B: Yeah.
S: The same neurons that are firing are also making the connections, you know? Yeah. So then third, the brain, brain function is constrained by the availability of energy and resources. What they call metabolically grounded is that this effects every aspect of how the brain functions because, you know, we evolved, the brain evolved to be very energy efficient, metabolically efficient. You know, it's a massively powerful processing machine. If we tried to duplicate it in our current computer technology, you would you would take a massive amount of energy. And yet our brains are able to do it with orders of magnitude, you know, less energy than computers do and part. And so it's just intrinsic to its functioning that, you know, it is designed to optimize it's metabolic efficiency and energy efficiency. All right. So The thing is like the first two points, I agree with that, meaning that these are things that relate to the way in which the brain creates consciousness. The third thing about being metabolically grounded that I find that my sense is that that's incidental. It may be have a tremendous effect on how the brain functions, but I don't necessarily I can't see how that affects how the brain creates consciousness. You know what I mean? No, I think.
C: That's just like a it's, it's like an indicator that separate. It's basically saying it's got to have wet Ware. Like it's got to be biological to be biological. Yeah, but.
S: Yeah, but doesn't that doesn't mean that you couldn't create consciousness in a machine that mimicked the first two things, just used a lot of energy. Well, I think.
C: That's the thing, right? Because it's like the more reductionist we get, we always get down to that argument. Yeah, Which is if it's not in a biological entity, can we call it consciousness? And then it's like now we're just defining ourselves with our own definition, right? We're just.
S: Defining what our biology is like, yeah.
C: So you see, it has to be.
S: Like that. Yeah. So I, this is they, they didn't, they're just presenting a thought experiment here. They're saying, hey, this is how we should think about consciousness. And I, I think they're, they make a lot of good points. They're not presenting evidence, right. They're not saying that here's a reason why we wouldn't expect to generate consciousness unless we are mimicking this particular aspect of biology. I think they're saying that if this is 1 pathway to consciousness, if we're, if our goal is to mimic biology, we've got to consider these things. And if we don't consider these things, we're not mimicking biology and that's probably going to fail. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to generate consciousness, right? I mean, exactly. We could maybe be able to have a thinking machine, a sentient machine that has that follows a completely different set of rules, right? And evolution tells us this all the time. Is many ways to skin a cat, right? There's many ways to achieve the same functional outcome it it.
C: Makes you think that like these kind of computer scientists who are interested in in psychology and neuroscience, they've got to go talk to the astrobiologists who are grappling with similar questions. It's like, will we recognize life elsewhere in the universe since we're only looking at it through our own lens? Exactly.
S: It's like saying life has to be Earth life. Yeah, right.
C: Yeah.
S: Conscious has to be human to be human life.
C: Yeah, exactly.
S: It doesn't have to be, but again, if we're if we are trying to create consciousness, it is something to keep in mind. So what what is happening, which is I think a good thing is that neuroscientists and computer scientists are kind of playing off of each other. Whereas the more we learn about how the brain works, this gives ideas to computer scientists about how to design their computers. And then when they and then what we learn from information processing, etcetera, etcetera, on the computer end, informs are thinking about how the brain works. And then in the middle, it's when we use computers to simulate actual brain function. Like we built a cortical column virtually in a computer and then we turned it on and saw what happened. You know, we will get to the point where we have a complete vertebrate brain that we could then run in in a computer. Either, you know, there's another another layer here and that is like how much is virtual and how much is is hardware, right? So like, you can have a human brain simulated on a regular computer entirely virtually, right? Or you could build the computer to mimic the functionality of like a neural network, where it's trying to mimic some of the aspects of how brains work. And one interesting question is, does that even matter, right? Would a virtual brain, virtual human brain be a human consciousness? I don't see any reason why not, right?
B: I mean, we got it. We. Got at least try man that's like and if it.
S: Is then regular silicon can be conscious if then that kind of supports the computationalist perspective. If you think about it, she's like, as long as you have the information running in the right way. But I think the caveat there is like, yeah, but you're sort of mimicking the hardware of the brain, not just the software of the brain virtually, right. The virtual brain is mimicking both the hardware and software, the wetware of the brain. So it kind of doesn't necessarily support the computationalist view. That makes sense. You know, then I'm not the first one. Again, these antecedents go back decades. Don't the first one to ask this question is like, if that's true, if we built a big enough computer out of vacuum tubes that we could virtually simulate a human brain, would that be conscious? And if that's true, like, how primitive can you get? Can the mechanical computer be conscious if it's this again, the maximalist computationalist view, which I I think breaks down at some point, right? Yeah, because you need to have emergent properties that require a certain amount of, I think speed and interactiveness and robustness of the interconnectedness, etcetera, etcetera. Or maybe you know, it just may be just a a flicker of conscious. I don't know. It's a super slow.
B: Thinker.
S: Yeah, this is, I think what's fascinating about this is that it gives us the ability to actually ask and answer some of these questions as we develop this technology. But of course, we rapidly run into ethical considerations like would it be ethical to create a virtual human brain in a computer or even a hardware brain? You know, like build the human brain and on a neural network increasingly designed to mimic all of these aspects that these authors are talking about in terms of how the human brain works and also have the networks and the algorithms, etcetera, etcetera, to have all the aspects of a human brain. Would, would it be ethical to do that? And yes, we're creating a consciousness. It would be ethical.
B: Just how you treat it is where the ethics comes in well.
S: So then, but then what you're saying is, is that we better have all of the regulations in place before we do it right, but also.
C: I don't know if that's true that it's ethical to create it either. It's an.
S: Interesting question, yeah.
C: I don't think that's a given. Yeah, it's.
S: Not something that we should take as a given. I agree this is something we need to thoroughly explore. And if it is ethical, under what conditions? And can we guarantee those conditions? The thing is the.
B: Regulations will never be in place until we do it, but that's a.
S: Bad thing that's I disagree with that, that that's a foregone. I don't. I mean, that may be likely given your sin overwhelmingly.
B: Likely, Yeah. Come on.
S: That doesn't. That doesn't mean it has to be true. Yeah, it doesn't.
C: Have to be that way. And that's like, yeah.
B: It doesn't happen to be, but come on not to take this.
C: On like, on a huge aside, but I watched a documentary last night about this huge building fire in London that like killed a lot of people and it had to do with like the cladding. It's called the Grenfell Tower fire, if you didn't hear about it in 2017. And a big part of what they were talking about is that all of these, like politicians were basically saying we don't need to change regulation until there are deaths. And then, of course, there were deaths. And that's like a very common way that we write policy is it's all reactionary instead of preventive.
S: Yeah.
B: But a lot of that is foreseeable. I mean, there's not a lot, a lot of people that say, yes, we definitely can create a thinking entity within within, you know, it's like, I think that's what it's going to take. It's evidence that that's what we're.
C: Doing right now is we're foreseeing it. I mean, there are people who dedicate their whole careers to foreseeing stuff like this and Bob there.
S: Are regulations about things like cloning humans that predate our ability to do so so it's not true that we can't do it like we.
C: Just did a story like 2 weeks ago. I just covered the thing about growing organs in animals. Yeah.
S: I do think regulations can't get ahead of technology if you have people raising the question in this case.
B: I don't I don't think it will. I think it's going to take some some scientists to create it and and even and as you know, even once they create it, a lot of people may probably most people, even with good evidence, still won't believe it. They still won't believe that it's you know, it's a duck. You know that it's talks like I hear you but.
S: That's that's a separate issues. How will we know if something is acting sentient and we're already running into this problem with even just a narrow AI that we're developing now. It's just showing you how good you could get at mimicking conscious behavior without being conscious. So if we made something that we think this could have the emergent property of self aware consciousness, how would we really, really know other than just saying, well, it acts conscious, but that's not enough and that's never going to be enough. I would say that the the best way to know is, well, if it's mimicking the human brain, we have to assume it's conscious, right? That's how I know you're conscious. Otherwise I can't really really know. But right for other things, if it's different enough from a human brain, then we may not really know. But I think anything that this is where the where the experts have to get together and say if it has these qualities to it, which is where this kind of paper comes into is very helpful. If it has these qualities to it, we may not know for sure, but we have to assume it is because it could be conscious and therefore that gives it certain rights and and puts responsibilities on anybody interfacing with it.
C: And I'd rather have a bunch of false positives than false negatives in this case. And I think the part that's so scary is that because we are people and we recognize that people are people. If a person looks at you and says I am conscious, we believe that, right? Like, or if they say this is my name or this is how I identify or this is who I am, it's like we will affirm that and we will believe them. But if a machine says I am conscious, what do we do? Yeah.
B: Well, there's no precedent. It took entirely, yeah. Different. Beast right at that point until and that's until they're until I hope we get to the point where we can create reasonable regulations. I'm just not I'm not confident that we will before it's actually created. When will they?
E: Start self replicating.
S: Well, that yeah, that I think we should be very careful before that happened, before we give the sentient AI the ability to self replicate. Well, we already.
C: Have viruses that can self replicate right? That's the.
S: Point that that's a dangerous thing then. That's what that's what resulted in the Borg, right? Basically, you don't want technology that self replicates and takes on a life of its own without a outside of our control.
B: B.
Fentanyl Vaccine (1:17:13)
S: All right, Cara, tell us about this fentanyl vaccine. Sounds good. Yeah, I mean.
C: It's, it's interesting and I'm doing a little bit of digging and I, you know, I am not an investigative journalist, so I'm going to caveat this at the very beginning that a lot of what we know about this fentanyl vaccine is based on press releases by the company developing it. That said, we do know that there's a clinical trial that's going to happen and we know that there is a quite a bit of funding for this company. Now, the company's called Armor Sciences, and this is another one of those annoying things, but I looked it up. You guys like NVIDIA, NVIDIA, NVIDIA? Here we go. No, no. I know, but armor sciences. It's spelled ARMR, All capital, but at least that one looks like armor. I guess they are a. See this is. The part where I get so skeptical they are couching their entire company as like a bio defense company now. It's hard to tell when you look at their website and when you look at their marketing materials if this is because they are almost completely funded by the Department of War. And so because of that, they're having to sort of twist everything into a very like bio defense language. Should we just frame it? Yeah, it could just be framing because the interesting thing is most of the scientific coverage of this does not frame it this way. But their website is like next generation bio defense countermeasures to protect against bio weapons starting with fentanyl. And you're like, what? And then so all the coverage that you read about is like fentanyl is a huge global killer. This is a huge problem. How can we prevent deaths from fentanyl? But of course, their framing a lot is like, this could be a bio weapon and we need to shield against it. And actually, when you look at their R&D, they're developing vaccines not just against fentanyl, but also against nitazines. So these are like sedatives. Most of these are opiates. Metatomidine is not an opiate, but the others are opiates. They also have carfentanil. These are just like synthetic, very, very powerful opiates that they're trying to explore other than metatomidine. That's a that's a sedative, that's a non opiate sedative. But let's focus on on fentanyl because that's what all of the coverage is about right now. So basically we know that fentanyl is a massive, massive problem. When we look at different coverage of what's going on with the fentanyl crisis, like the DEA website claims that in 2024, they seized more than 60 million fentanyl laced counterfeit pills and nearly 8000 lbs of fentanyl powder. So they're they're saying this is equivalent to more than 380 million lethal doses of fentanyl. And part of the reason that they can make that claim is that a lethal dose of fentanyl can be as small a pure fentanyl can be as small as 2 milligrams. And like think about what 2 milligrams is, that's what like 20 grains of salt. It's very. Potent.
S: Yeah, Yeah.
C: It's very potent. It's 50 times stronger than heroin. It's 100 times stronger than morphine. Fentanyl does have medicinal uses though, and I want to get back to that in a minute. But it is used right to treat super pain. It's it's used during surgery like it's used to.
S: Anesthesia, absolutely. Yeah, it's part.
C: Of the anesthesia cocktail that a lot of people get and for extreme.
S: Pain relief, yeah, and for.
C: Extreme pain relief immediately after. And we also see it, of course, in, you know, my line of work. A lot of the patients that I work with who have advanced cancer take fentanyl. They often use fentanyl patches to relieve some of that pain. But the problem is it is very addictive. And it's very easy to die when you take fentanyl because it's a very, very strong drug that causes depressive reactions, right, like respiratory depression and sedation. And so people just stop breathing when they're on this drug, which can cause them to die. Now we do have treatment, we have naloxone which can or Narcan is the brand name which is a a nasal spray that's often used which can reverse the overdose because it's an opioid antagonist. So it basically bumps the fentanyl out of the opioid receptor and replaces it. And so the person who receives the Narcan treatment, if they get it soon enough will it'll reverse not just the high but also the side effects and hopefully that person will live. There are also drugs that can be taken 1 drug like Suboxone, which is a mix of Narcan or naloxone. So there's there are also drugs that people can take as part of their treatment for opioid use disorder. So like 1 Suboxone is a common one that you'll hear about where it's a mix of naloxone, which is the opioid agonist. That's something that like bumps the opiates, you know, out of the receptor and also buprenorphine, which is a partial agonist. The buprenorphine is important here because it prevents people from getting that high when they take it, but it also helps with withdrawal symptoms, right? So it's like partially activating those opioid receptors so that the person, when they take it, they don't feel as sick as they would if they just clean came off of opiates. But they also don't get high like they would have if they were to take fentanyl, for example. And so these drugs are around, there are obviously issues with these things too. You know, there are side effects with these because they are partial agonists. There are a lot of interactions. There's even the potential to misuse Suboxone. So this reminds me of what what's the old school one that people used for heroin? I mean, they still use it methadone, right? So yeah, there there were problems with methadone clinics where people would become addicted to methadone after they kicked heroin or when they couldn't find heroin. And so, you know, nothing is a perfect system. But of course, this is a harm reduction approach. But what the folks over at Armor Sciences are claiming and working towards is a vaccine. And so this idea is that the vaccine actually blocks the effects of fentanyl altogether, including overdose, so including all the negative things. So not only does it prevent you from getting high when you take fentanyl, it prevents you from having respiratory depression and all of the other side effects that can lead to death. And it's about to go into clinical trials, phase one clinical trials in January or February of this year in the Netherlands. So Phase 1 is very, very early. As we often talk about. They're only looking at safety, but they have looked at this drug or this vaccine, I should say, in rats. And they did find, you know, positive outcomes. And what's really interesting about the vaccine is that it's different than Narcan. It's different than Suboxone. And the reason it's different is because those drugs bind to opioid receptors, but this drug actually circulates in the blood as a vaccine and prevents the drug from ever binding to begin with. So how would it do that? How would it prevent a drug from binding? Well, what they did is they found compounds that are often used in vaccines already. So one of them is a compound called CRM 197, which is a deactivated diphtheria toxin. So it's, it's not toxic, it doesn't cause diphtheria, but it does cause an immune response. And then they added a second compound that does something similar called DMLT. That is a compound that's made from E coli bacteria. Again, it's not toxic on its own, but it has been used in previous drug trials to induce an immune response. And they combine those two components to a synthetic piece of the fentanyl molecule which does not induce a high and does not cause pain relief and does not 'cause respiratory depression. So they found kind of a, a, a section of the fentanyl molecule that's inactive, but that the immune system recognizes and they combined it with with two different non-toxic portions of toxins that induce an immune response. So the idea here is that when the immune system sees this combination, antibodies bind to the opioid and the opioid never crosses the blood brain barrier. And it's a really interesting way to approach this, right? So are there other?
E: Vaccinations that also work this way there are.
C: Vaccine vaccines that have been in trial but that have not yet been approved, but this is kind of a new approach to there. There is actually the the CRM 197 compound is used in some vaccines that are already on the market as as a partial immune kind of responder. But the E coli one, the DMLT, it's been tested, but it's in not yet approved vaccines. And so they've done rat studies on this called an immunoconjugate vaccine alters distribution and reduces the antinosuceptive, behavioral and physiologic effects of fentanyl in male and female rats. And they found, you know that it worked. It prevented changes to oxygen saturation to heart rate, It prevented pain blocking. So herein comes the other issue, right Risk benefit analysis. Obviously fentanyl drug seeking behavior is very, very dangerous. If you can block the fentanyl from having any effect when somebody who is struggling with opioid use disorder takes it, it's going to help them get through that withdrawal and hopefully no longer have those physiologic urges and need what feels like a need to use the drug. That's huge because their risk of death goes down. And we know that the risk of death is very high in people who are struggling with fentanyl addiction. The problem is what happens if they need an opioid.
E: Yeah, because. All it it this works against all opioids, it does.
C: Not bind to morphine or methadone or oxycodone.
E: Oh, OK, so you. Can still but the.
C: Problem is, is morphine good enough in anaesthesia? Yeah.
S: It would limit your choices. It means and but that also means you probably need to wear a medical bracelet. So you get, you know for sure if it doesn't give you fentanyl as a as you're anesthetic and not knowing that you're immune to it basically because, yeah.
C: Because they think that the vaccine would last like a year, a year and a half. And that's, that's a cool thing too. At least it's not like a a lifetime vaccine, you know? And your risk of needing kind of intense medical intervention requiring fentanyl over the course of a year and a half is probably significantly lower than your risk of dying of a fentanyl overdose if you're actively dealing with that. Well, yeah.
S: So we wouldn't put it in the water. We wouldn't do this to everybody. This would be people who are at high risk for relapse. Essentially. We're already addicted to opioids, and that's a lot.
C: Of people, I mean 48,000 people or more likely died of opioid overdoses in 2024 just here in the US. You know that that's all opioids. But fentanyl is a huge problem. And I think part of the issue here, and this is where I'm, I'm interested in how they could see giving this vaccine. It's one thing if somebody knows that they have an active opioid addiction and that they're seeking out fentanyl. It's another thing to prevent against all of the preventable deaths that are caused by drugs being cut with fentanyl. So that's a huge problem, is that a lot of, like, stimulants and painkillers that people buy on the street are cut with fentanyl, so they don't know what they're taking. And the dose can be, yeah, the dose can be high enough to cause real problems, but a lot of people aren't seeking those drugs out when they accidentally take them. So would they want to take a vaccine against fentanyl? Maybe, maybe if they're actively, you know, enjoying taking kind of recreational drugs or they know that they're struggling with another type of substance use disorder and proactively this could be beneficial downstream. You know, maybe it's something that they could work with their addiction specialists on. But first they've got to see if it even works and if it causes any sort of harm, because the concepts.
E: Fascinating it is.
C: It's a really interesting idea and I think this is the only, I don't want to say that, but this is the company that's getting all of the press. There's not.
S: The only company there that there's, there are other companies, maybe they're.
C: Just the closest, yeah, yeah, it'll.
S: Be a few years before we're at the point where it could either get FDA approval or not. And it'll it sounds like it'll have a role. You know, this is not, you know, as we say, not the silver bullet, not the one, not the cure for everybody. But this might be a good option for some people and could prevent a lot of deaths. Yeah.
C: Which would be really important for sure. It's a big problem, yeah.
S: All right.
Possibility of Orbital Disaster (1:30:44)
- Kessler Syndrome: One Solar Storm And 2.8 Days Could End In Disaster For Earth And Its Satellites [4]
S: Thanks, Cara. Bob, tell us how low Earth orbit on Earth is going to go to crap.
B: That's one way to put it. This is from a new study that argues that mega satellite constellations like Starlink have made low Earth orbit much more fragile than previously in terms of collisions, inevitably raising this the dreaded specter again of that worst case scenario. We've mentioned on the show the Kessler Syndrome, where satellite orbits are mostly just debris waiting to smash anything that goes through them. This is in the the Archive Pre preprint site. The name of the paper is, is an orbital House of Cards, frequent, frequent mega constellations, close conjunctions. So House of Cards is a good way to put it. So Kessler syndrome, we've mentioned this on the show a bunch of times. This is inspired by a 1978 paper by NASA researchers Donald Kessler and Burton Core Pallet. So sometimes it's called the KCPS scenario here with. So that'd be the Kessler core Pallet syndrome. They created equations to model the known satellites that we have in orbit, this is back in the 70s and predict how they could collide and create debris in orbit over a period of years and even decades. And yes, that's true. Even this worst case, Kessler syndrome or or KCPS syndrome is not something that's going to happen like in the Hollywood movies over the course of a weekend or a few hours. This is something that could build up over years and and decades or more before it gets kind of ridiculous. So that's actually a little bit encouraging because I thought it was a little, I didn't think it would, could protect potentially even take decades to happen. But that be that as it may, this is something that we absolutely want to avoid. So what these researchers wanted to do is they looked at this, this, this Kessler syndrome idea and it, they realized that this is a very slow process, like I said, years to decades to really come to, to full fruition. And, and that, and that brought to mind that famous image of a frog not noticing the water it's in getting hotter and hotter, which is fake, by the way, that's not the case. They're, they're definitely not that stupid, but this idea that it's like you're in a slow burn that you're not really recognizing. So to make it more noticeable, to make this danger more noticeable over over much shorter periods of times, these researchers introduced a new key environmental indicator and they call this a crash clock. Crashes, of course, and yet another acronym, but it's a good one. I kind of like this one. Crash here stands for collision realization and significant harm. So this crash clock is essentially an indicator of orbital fragility. That's kind of what it is. It's the time. Specifically, it's the time it would take for a catastrophic orbital collision to happen if we stop our collision avoidance maneuvers or if there's a severe loss of situational situational awareness of our satellites. So that's, that's basically it. So to derive this number, to come up with this number, the research, the researchers had a look at lots of different things. They had to estimate how crowded the orbits are, how often close encounters happen. And then from there they kind of like calculate this overall catastrophic collision rate. It's also important to note that this crash clock, it's, it's not a measure of when a Kessler runaway cascade begins. It's not really meant to point to that, hey, look at, you know, this is going to, this is happening now because of these collisions. It measures how quickly huge collisions could happen when our ability to alter the orbits is impaired, right. So that's, that's the big take away here, that huge collisions can happen really fast and really bad if we lose our ability to alter their orbits for whatever reason. So, so the crash clock according to these researchers in 2018, what 8 years ago now or or so was 121 days. So the crash clock in 2018 was 128 days, 121 days. That means that if satellite operators lost their ability to send commands to satellites for performance to perform these avoidance maneuvers, there would almost certainly be a large collision before 121 days pass. So you got that. The crash clock says 121 days. That means if we're not doing anything, 121 days, some big stuff is going to happen. So as of mid 2025, what, seven years later or so, the crash clock has changed to not 121 days, but 2.8 days, just under 3 days. That's alarming. That's very, that's very if if not red alert, it's definitely yellow alert. I mean, this is like, damn, man, this isn't good. So that means that less than a few days of not being able to move satellites as you want will almost certainly result in in a major collision. Even if we lose control for just a day, just 24 hours, that would that would mean that there's a 30% chance of some potentially catastrophic collision happening. One in three, essentially one in three of some really bad collision happening. And by bad collision, I mean it's kind of a big collision, but also leading to secondary and tertiary collisions. So Cascade.
E: Right, right.
B: But it could. Be you know, it could be just a secondary and tertiary with nothing really identifiable after that. It's not like I said, it doesn't necessarily mean OK, here we go Kessler syndrome is, is starting here. That that's it's not what it that's not what what they're saying here. What do you guys think? It was the major cause for that drop from the crash clock from 121 to 2.8. Yes, satellite mega constellations like Starlink with thousands to 10s of thousands of satellites in orbit. So here's another quick concerning number here. The close calls under a kilometer, meaning that, you know, 2 satellites just whizzed by each other by just a kilometer, which is really very little. It happens every 20 seconds in low Earth orbit, every 20 seconds. So it's just like damn man. So that's pretty bad. So not a highway.
E: System up there, yeah.
B: You think it, you think you know, low Earth orbit is, is just endless, but it's, it's obviously not endless, but also getting filled up fast. That's it.
J: Man game over, Man, game over.
B: What? The fuck are we? Going to do now. Man, I miss that dude. OK, so, so now we have shown we have not had a lot of major collisions in the past couple of decades. It's not like we would be hearing about it. It has happened, These accidents have happened, but we are doing well with this, this ballet of coordination of moving satellites around. But The thing is, we can, yes, we can cope with with the situation as it is. We can we, you know, we can move them. But as if you talk to an engineer, engineers will bring up in this scenario, the idea of edge cases, right? Edge cases are events that don't happen in a typical environment and they are the cause for most of the big failures. So, So what do you think are the edge cases for, for these Earth orbits, especially low Earth orbit? And that a real dramatic edge case here is solar storms. It's just like solar storms. Things beyond our control. Right, right. Ultimately unpredictable. They're not inherently part of the typical environment. And especially the bad solar storms, they don't happen very often, but they can make everything go to crap, you know, pretty badly. So, so these, these solar storms impact satellite operations in two ways. They, they pump a lot of energy into our atmosphere that causes them to puff up, right? They, the satellite, the demarcation line between at the atmosphere and space essentially just goes up in altitude and the lowest, the lowest satellites and low Earth orbit then just experience drag and they, and that causes major problems. In May 2024. You, I'm sure you remember the Gannon solar storm caused this. And get this, because of this Gannon solar storm, more than half of all satellites in low Earth orbit had to be maneuvered to prevent collisions. And it's, it's not just because the drag is causing these satellites need to be maneuvered. Also, the fact that you're maneuvering the satellites themselves just by maneuvering them causes other maneuvers that need to be happened. So it just gets, it kind of builds on itself. It's, it's, it's, it's really bad. In their paper, the researchers say in such conditions, positional uncertainties can easily become as high as several kilometers, making collision avoidance maneuvers extremely uncertain. So you move some satellites and then you're not sure exactly where it is for, for a while, could be days, you're not sure. So then if you do other maneuvers, you could, you could be causing a collision. And then another, another related impact to, to the satellites based on solar storms is this idea that the, the storms can take out satellite navigation and communication systems to a certain extent preventing them. You know, sometimes they go into, into hibernation mode and you can't, they can't come out or it gets, it just causes issues so that you can't maneuver them well to prevent a collision. So it's really, it's a double whammy of, of, of really bad possibilities when we, we've got these bad solar storms. I mean, we could potentially be 1 solar storm away from initiating satellite collisions that could potentially over over time cascade into something far, you know, far worse than just a few satellites crashing into each other. But even without a solar storm, it's not like you need a a solar storm in order for this to be a scenario. In the paper, they say the number of collision avoidance maneuvers made by Starlink has historically been doubling every six months. Every six months it this double S Each maneuver creates uncertainty in the estimated satellite positions from multiple days, with one study even finding inaccuracies immediately after the maneuver of up to 40 kilometers that just caused it that just cascades into these other issues of moving other satellites and then when you just say some of.
E: These satellites move within a kilometer of each other. Well, this, yeah.
B: This just happens. Yeah, there were there every what? Every every 20 seconds that happens. So the bottom line here, I think is that these, these mega constellations are really a scourge and in a lot of ways, not just because what it's doing to low Earth orbit and making it so filled up that it's it it that collisions are becoming, you know, more potentially really scary, But it's also, as we all know, there's been that they cause a disruption in astronomy. Astronomers hate these things for lots of great reasons. There's also pollution. We've covered this on the show as well. They, they cause pollution, pollution in the upper atmosphere because there's more and more satellite ablation happening. There's, there's even increased ground casualty risks, you know, because of so many, so many of these satellites and so many of them in low Earth orbit that eventually they, they're meant to be disposable. So it kind of like it's kind of like a self cleaning this low Earth orbit, but still that doesn't mean these collisions aren't going to be happening. And now we've got this, the scenario of these of these collisions with this crash clock. So I'll end with here what the the paper says here. They said I had an interesting quote by these safety and pollution metrics. It's clear we have already placed substantial stress on low Earth orbit and changes to our approach are required immediately. So absolutely we need to change our approach, but are we going to do it? I mean who's who is confident at all that we're going to do what's really needed to fix this crash clock number. You mean get it back up from 2.8 days get it back up to 50 days if you know 20 days would be better than 2.8 or get hey get it back to the where it was in 2018 with 128 days. I don't think we're going to do that. Is this there's too much money in this short term thinking is rampant in in human psychology and, and the cultures that that are doing these launches now. It's just like I have as usual, I'm extremely cynical that we're going to do what's needed and insist we may come to the point where we could definitively say, hey, you know, we've been ignoring this. And these collisions are happening now so much that it's not only is it incredibly expensive to put satellites in orbit now because we're losing so many of them. It's they could potentially even say at some point in the near future that this cascade, this Kessler cascade seems to be happening. And there's very little we could do about it. And in a few, in a couple of generations or whatever. How many years? These orbits are going to be unusable for a long time. So I don't know, it's just scary and pisses me off that we're so short sighted. Yep.
S: I agree. I do agree with your pessimism on this one, Bob. We're screwed.
B: Embrace the skepticism, Steve. Embrace the cynicism. You have met people, right? You have met people. Yeah. I'm just checking. Yeah. OK. All right, Jake.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:43:13)
S: Get us up to date on who's that noisy, All right.
B: Guys, weeks ago I played this noisy weeks.
J: All right, so Evan actually just guessed what the sound is and Steve didn't play him saying the answer because you guys have to guess and I have to do I have to do a slow reveal here. OK, So good job, Evan. I'm very, very happy that at least one of my peeps guessed it. A listener named Stephen Hunter wrote in and said, Jay, this is the sound of Simon Cowell's blood replacement device. Sounds like.
U: That's the.
E: Best answer? A listener named.
J: Kevin Walsh wrote in and say hi Jay. I want to guess a bird of some kind, but it seems too regular and has too many different components. So I'm going to guess an alarm from a fictional spaceship completely isolated from other noise. Let's go with the USS Enterprise. Not correct, but you were at least in the right region. Let's continue. We have a listener named Robin 10. Kate. Hi, Jay for this. Who's that noisy? I'm going to guess it's a mechanical wind up toy from the 50s or 60s at the beginning of the record. It sounds like a toy just just gets finished being wound up and then it let go to make the noise and annoy any nearby parents. I know you like specifics, so going to guess it's a fire engine. Well, thank you for the specifics because I wouldn't have included your e-mail if you didn't put that line in. And Robin, you're incorrect, but there is another kernel of truth in in your guess. Let's continue. Michael Blaney wrote in and said hi Jay. Echoing Steve's vocalized thoughts at the end. Definitely giving me Star Wars vibes this week. Could imagine an upgraded probe Droid making a noise like that. I'm going to guess that someone quickly tapping on a long metal pipe, creating a periodic resonance that the Tapper then interrupts before starting again. Michael, you should have went with your instincts moving on to a correct and only guest from Ron Hart. Ron wrote in and said Hi Jay, love the show. This is a thermal detonator about to blow. Evan, would you please explain where the thermal detonator is? I'd love.
E: To Jay from Star Wars Episode 6 Return of the Jedi. When Princess Leia went into Jabba's lair to try as disguised as a bounty hunter, she threatened to blow up Jabba's palace using this thermal detonator, A handheld grenade basically, and when it became activated, this was the noise that it created. Here it is.
J: And then C3PO says. What she's holding.
E: That today. Oh. My God. This classic panicked voice. I love that voice.
J: And then Java liked the bounty hunter style.
E: Yes, for threatening.
J: To blow up the palace and this bounty hunter.
E: Is my kind of sky? Definitely.
J: All right, so good job Ron and I have a new noisy for you guys this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Cameron Harris. How cool is that? If you guys think you know what this weeks noisy is or you heard something cool, you can e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, we have the Seattle shows and we have the Wisconsin shows. We're just.
S: Yeah, just days left to get get in on the Seattle shows. Yeah, it's not.
J: Too late to get to get in on the Seattle lots of I think we're basically the only thing that's left at this point. We might have a few seats left at the private show and and we have some seats left at the extravaganza, but the VIP and the Friday night thing are are sold out. If you're interested in going to any, you know, the SGU live show or coming to see us do the extravaganza, you can go to the skeptics guide, theskepticsguide.org. And we have two different venues at two different dates. So Seattle is the weekend of January 10th and Saturday May 16th is the Madison, WI shows. So go to theskepticsguide.org. Thank you.
S: Jay All right, guys, let's go on to science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:47:42)
Theme: Technology 2026
Item #1: Tech companies are investing billions of dollars in small modular reactor technology, with plans for three test models to go online in 2026.[5]
Item #2: The US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel.[6]
Item #3: Major League Baseball announced that it will introduce so-called “Roboumps” in 2026, with an automated ball-strike challenge system.[7]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | {{{fiction}}} |
| Science | Tech companies are investing billions of dollars in small modular reactor technology, with plans for three test models to go online in 2026. |
| Science | The US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. |
| Science | Major League Baseball announced that it will introduce so-called “Roboumps” in 2026, with an automated ball-strike challenge system. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | sweep |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Cara | The US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. |
Bob | The US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. |
Jay | The US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. |
Evan | The US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. |
Voice-over: It's time for science or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts 2 real and one fake and then I challenge my analyst skeptics tell me which one is the fake. Are you guys ready for the first one of 2026 Clean slate We'll. See how you do. These are all technology anticipated for 2026.
E: OK.
S: Here we go real.
E: That's exciting item.
S: Number one, tech companies are investing billions of dollars in small modular reactor technology with plans for three test models to go online in 2026. Item number 2, the US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. And dye number three, Major League Baseball announced that it will introduce so-called robo UPS in 2026 with an automated ball strike challenge system. OK, we'll reverse the order that we went in last week at the end of the year. So, Carrie, you go first, Tech.
C: Companies investing billions of dollars in a small in small modular reactor technology. So 3 test models in 2026, amazing and digital IDs in 2026, is that what you're saying? All of these things are in 2026. That one bugs me. I think that I could see it happening, but I don't know. In 2026 for passports, I could see for driver's licenses, but that seems really soon for passports. And then robo UMPS yeah, I could see there being some sort of automated challenge system. I mean, the human eye is not good. So why wouldn't there be like additional, I guess like a second layer of sort of validation in baseball? I bet that's actually already started. I don't know. I think the one that bugs me is the is the digital ID's. I don't think we're ready for that yet, OK?
S: Bob.
B: All right. I like that these small modular reactors are in the news ostensibly here, 33 test models going online in 2026. That seems like a lot. And I know they've had I haven't done a dive on them in a while, but I know they're having problems with just like cost overruns, which is kind of like almost defeating their purpose to in a sense. But three sounds like a lot. Let's see. I'm going to jump to three. Yeah, the the baseball introduction of robo UMP sounds sounds reasonable. But I think I agree with Carrie here on two that the digital IDs for passports, it sounds like something that's that's a little too soon. And and sure, driver's licenses kind of makes sense, but not not for passports. But it's nothing like having a nice physical passport on you and especially with concerns of, you know, of, you know, duplicating them if they were purely digital. I don't know. Yeah. So I'll, I'll just join with care and say that number 2, digital passports are fiction. Okay.
S: Jay Yeah, I mean.
J: Out of the three, the, the digital passport thing, you know, made me think, you know what really, because first of all, in the US, we all just had to upgrade our driver's licenses so we can travel domestically. Like you actually can't fly in the US if you don't have like the special star, the real ID, the real ID, right? Thanks, Steve. And then I was, you know, thinking, well, if they, if we just got mandatory upgrades to our driver's licenses in order to travel, then if this digital thing is happening, then, you know, why would they do that if the digital thing is about to happen also, you know, I mean, we live in a highly insecure digital world, you know, like presenting, you know, another digital credential that would, where would it live, Steve? How? How would it be Apple?
C: Wallet or whatever. Google Wallet, OK.
J: So you have your iWatch some identifier on your phone. First of all, if you lose your phone, that's a breach if unless it's using biometrics, which I don't think would be secure enough. Those sounds could be faked. I just think it would be something that would be severely taken advantage of because if the government were to issue this thing, they're so freaking incompetent that they wouldn't do it right. So I think that one is the fiction. Okay.
S: And Evan? Well.
E: I'll join the chorus. I'm going to agree with everyone else that the Passports 1 is going to be the fiction. There's also I think a political pushback to it in a sense maybe, you know, on state levels, these things have a usually advance faster than on a federal level, getting all 50 states to kind of agree to this. So I think that's that's also an obstacle here for all the same, all the reasons that everyone else specified. Major League Baseball. Yeah, the robo, I'm not sure if they were already using them in the minor leagues and did tests in the past couple years with them. And therefore they said it's ready for prime time now. Major League perhaps. And yeah, the other one about the small modular reactor technology, Bill, one of Bill Gates company is definitely working on one of those I believe. I don't just don't know if it's ready to go online in 2026, but having three of them, at least three of them maybe, I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility. So I agree with everyone else, OK.
S: So you guys are all agree with the second one. So let's start with three major. That seems to be the easiest one. Major League Baseball announced that it will introduce so-called robo UMPS in 2026 with an automated ball strike challenge system. You all think this is science and this one is science. This is science, Evan, you're correct. This has been tested in the minor leagues and they are ready to introduce into the major leagues. There was debate about whether or not they should go to like an entire robo UMP system for balls and strikes, right. Just having the the the automated system call all balls and strikes, they basically based upon fan feedback. Fans did not like that they wanted the physical umpires to do that, but so they went with the the ball strike challenge system. So each team will be able to challenge 2 calls per game and then they will go to the AI system to see if it wasn't, you know, to see if it was actually a ball or a strike as called by the umpire. So this is probably a transition to get people used to it, you know, and then but for things like this, like did that ball go in the strike zone, computers are going to be way better than at that than people, right? There's no reason not to go to this system at some point. This is they were they were planning on doing it. It was really just based upon fan feedback that they went to this meet this intermediary step of doing just the challenge system rather than the primary system and the.
E: Strike zone is not a fixed position in space. It's relative to the better totally so. So there is some variance that does have to occur here depending on who is at the plate, and I guess they've perfected the system enough that it's accurate enough to to handle that.
S: Yeah, yeah, apparently it works fine. Yeah. OK, let's keep going backwards. the US will begin phasing in digital IDs to replace physical passports for international travel. You guys all think this one is the fiction. So it just says phasing in doesn't say completely turn over right to digital IDs. Good point.
B: I always. Missed those key damn words.
S: This one is the fiction, but we're a lot closer. We're a lot closer than you guys seem to believe. So first of all, there are already digital IDs replacing the driver's licenses and about 1/3 of the states, the federal government has basically given the state a waiver to use the digital IDs. Not Connecticut, by the way. California, yes, I think, but not Connecticut. You have to have the REAL ID, Jay. So you have to have the REAL ID and then you can get a digital version of your REAL ID and you could use it for anything that you would use your driver's license for.
J: And they have it now and you can get it on your phone, yes.
S: Yeah, that's correct. Again, in about 1/3 of the states is the federal government said yes, you could use that for. But anything federal, they do have digital passports as well, however only for domestic travel. You cannot use a digital passport for international travel. That's that just those last two words. International travel is what makes this the fiction.
US#00: OK.
S: So I guess they're testing it out for for driver's licenses, you know, state licenses and for passports, but they're still not using it for international travel. This is only for domestic travel. But you could, especially if you come from one of the states where they have the waiver, you could entirely use your phone as your ID, as your federally accepted REAL ID at this point.
E: That makes sense.
S: Yeah, it kind of makes sense. The the the downside, I don't think it's as much of A security risk as Jay things. In many ways, it could actually even be more secure.
C: Yeah, than like a physical than.
S: People lose.
E: Wallets as much, if not more often.
S: And what you do now, I very recently traveled internationally, you guys have not that all of you within the last few years at least. So basically what you do now is when you go through customs and through the security, you know, when you're travelling internationally is you just step up, you put your passport on the scanner, you look at the thing, they take your picture, they compare your picture to the one stored in the system. And if they match, you're good and that's it. You think they're really, it's very fast, it's very simple. It's basically your biometric ID is your face. This would be the same thing. It would just be and a lot of the passports now they even use RFID, you know, just send you the information through RFID. They can they take your picture, if it matches, you're good. This would be the same thing, except your phone instead of the physical passport. So I think we are rapidly transitioning to this system. You know, again, we're sort of in this intermediary test phase, but it's one of the main concerns is like, well, what happens if your phone goes dead? You know, you're trying to get off an airplane and go through security and your phone is dead. They're just going to.
C: Have to have charging, yeah, yeah.
S: Just but yeah, there isn't. But I agree I like the physical security of having like my physical passport on me and secure. Are you allowed to have?
E: Both.
S: I'm I'm sure for a time you will be allowed to have both. Again, this is a security reason not to allow that. But you know, probably you have a physical for a backup and but digital if you can do it also like not 100% of people have phones, you know what I mean? So for people who don't have phones, they still have to have the physical option. So I don't think the physical options are going to go away anytime soon. But there's a huge incentive to have the bulk of people move to digital because it costs millions of dollars every year just to handle the physical IDs. And especially for states, like if states could save millions of dollars so they don't have to create physical driver's licenses, they would do it, right? So that's the big incentive to move to this system. All right, This means that tech companies are investing billions of dollars in small modular reactor technology with plans for three test modules to go online in 262026 is science. So yeah, we've talked about this before. One of the big challenges of data centers, especially for AIS, that they're very energy hungry. And you can't just, you know, plug into the grid and start dramatically altering the demands on the grid. You have to have a plan for where the energy is coming from. And in states in the US where that wasn't planned out, well, local electricity prices will go up and people get mad, right? And there is a lot of local pushback now against AI data centers being put in neighborhoods because, like, what's going to happen to the water supply? What's going to happen to our energy supply? What's going to happen to our energy prices? So a lot of the big companies saying, well, if we just build like a small nuclear reactor next to the data center, we cover all of the energy. You know, I like the fact that it's covering it in a, you know, low carbon way there. There are SMRS active around the world, but none in the US right now. But there are some that are being developed. The three test designs that are going online in 2026 are being run by the Department of Energy. They are planning on on actually reaching criticality in 2026, right? So they will be fizzing in 2026. So see how that whole thing works out. But it's not a bad idea, you know, to to create the energy that the data center will use rather than just thinking you're going to pull it from the grid. Agreed.
B: So good job guys.
S: You're starting me with the sweep in 2026.
E: You're all one.
S: In zero 100 percent, 100%.
B: I think I'm just going to stop. Yeah, I'll see how.
S: Long.
E: Bob's going to take his chips down right now.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (2:00:46)
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
– -- Galileo Galilei, (description of author)
S: All right, Evan, give us the first quote of the year. First quote.
E: Of the year I actually found this quote on my own but as I am want to do I check it to make sure we had not used it before. Part of my research in doing that is I go through a lot of old emails to see if listeners have submitted quotes that I have found, and I found it. Someone's actually submitted this quote back in August 4th of 2022. Their name is MO i.e. N Moen Moen from Chicago. So thank you so much for submitting this. He says, hello Evan, I always look forward to your quotes at the end of the show. I saw this on the Fermats Library LinkedIn page. Here it is in questions of science. The authority of 1000 is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei.
U: Yep.
S: That's a good quote that requires some historical context as well, in that at the time, you know, Galileo was kind of at this Nexus of science and natural philosophy, as they called it at the time, transitioning from being basically authority based to being logic and evidence based. That was the fight, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, he's saying that, yeah. No, authority should not be the criterion on which all knowledge is based. It should be based on facts and empiricism and process and transparency. Shit.
E: Because who? Is the authority at the time the church right? Yeah. Right. So, yeah. Or. Whoever.
S: Yeah, it doesn't really matter, but it's the idea of knowledge and scholarship and everything. And it's not wasn't just the church. A lot of it was Aristotle right? Now, the church sort of based their authority on Aristotle, but they cited Aristotle's like this guy, this ancient Greek philosopher, he got everything right. And we have to align with Aristotle. And if you're saying something that he didn't say, you're wrong. So it was also based through them to this, you know, 1 towering, you know, individual from antiquity. In a lot of cases that was the intellectual fight of the age, you know, the replacing authority, pay authority based knowledge with process based evidence based knowledge, right. Yeah, yeah. So how's?
B: That battle going these days, do you think we're still?
E: Fighting it in some sort of, I mean, we've.
S: Basically won that fight and, and the, the institutional, you know, institutions of the modern world, science and academia, etcetera, are not based on authority. They are based on knowledge and evidence. Big picture, it's going well. You know, yes, you can focus on on specific locations, specific times where people in authority try to take over, you know, try to say to replace the process of science with their authority. But certainly the institutions, if you remember, like at the time the intellectual elite were saying authority is the basis of this, our knowledge. Like that was the the standard and now it clearly isn't. You know, we talked about violations of science and scholarship, but there there is no serious intellectual movement to say we should. We need to go back to authority based knowledge and get rid of all this evidence and logic stuff and.
E: Anyone who it might be saying that nobody's taking them seriously or yeah, right.
S: That's not maybe that's happening in in some ways in the political realm. It's certainly not happening with science and academia or philosophy or whatever. I do hear that a lot from religious people though. Absolutely that I've had debates the last 20 years, you know, with people saying that, like how especially when it comes to morality, if you guys had this debate where like morality has to be based on God I hate.
B: That. Oh, sure, yeah.
E: That's so. Much.
B: That's yeah. That's an authority.
S: Authority based sort of argument or philosophy is like, no, we can reason our way to ethics through logic and 1st principles and philosophy. We don't need, right?
E: No deity Some.
S: Magical, yeah, alleged authority figure to impose that on us because again, it's the reality is there is no God telling, you know, imposing that on us. It's just individual people's falsely citing the authority of God to impose their morality on other people. And you can't prove that that's not the case, right in the end, and there's 180 or whatever different religions all think that they have the one, you know, true line to to God and therefore the ultimate morality. But there's no way to resolve those differences if it's all authority based, you know, It's got to be based on logic and reason and philosophy in order to agree on what ethical principles should be. I don't know.
B: About you guys. But if somebody could prove that God doesn't exist, I'd be raping and pillaging every day.
C: That's what they. Claim that's the crazy, that's the thing they have.
S: Such a dim view of human disgust, It's.
B: Disgusting. Is that what you'd be doing? Really. Yeah, that's why.
S: That often say, is that what you would be doing? Well, not me, but other people. Come on, No one's, you know, yeah, maybe there's that 1% of psychopaths out there in the world, but whatever. But for most people are not going to start just become violent criminals just because they don't have the threat of divine retribution at the end of their life. It is a very dark view of humanity. Yeah.
E: Absolutely, you know.
S: Right now, we actually have the intellect to reason our way to morality and ethics. All right, well, thank you all for joining me for the first episode of 2026. Happy New Year guys.
J: Happy New Year, everyone out. There.
US#00: Be safe and.
S: Until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ www.cambridge.org: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/role-of-psychological-strengths-in-positive-life-outcomes-in-adults-with-adhd/69B7CE4D4D9F370214929ABF53701567
- ↑ theness.com: Biological vs Artificial Consciousness - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ www.livescience.com: New fentanyl vaccine is entering human trials — here's how it works
- ↑ www.iflscience.com: Kessler Syndrome: One Solar Storm And 2.8 Days Could End In Disaster For Earth And Its Satellites
- ↑ No reference given
- ↑ www.investopedia.com: Digital IDs Are Here: Why Your Physical Driver's License Might Be Obsolete Soon
- ↑ www.mlb.com: MLB to use ABS Challenge System starting in 2026