High Science

The human brain is an amazing piece of natural machinery. It is easily the most complex thing the universe has ever produced. That being said, sometimes it just doesn't work right. High Science tackles cognitive biases: the leanings, shortcomings, and pitfalls of our natural thought processes. No one is immune, but we can better deal with these issues by recognizing them in ourselves and others. Disclaimer: Due to a brief microphone malfunction and an asshole cricket, some parts of this episode have low quality audio.

Difference between logical fallacies and cognitive biases

Anchoring Effect

Rosey Retrospection

Post-Rationalization

Outcome Bias

Barnum Effect

Backfire Effect

Identifiable Victim Effect

Reactance

Rhyme is Reason Effect

Sexual Over-perception / Under-perception Bias

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Experimenter / Expectation Bias

Ben Franklin Effect

Bias Blind Spot

Availability Cascade

Hostile Attribution Bias

Pareidolia

Illusion of Control

Anthropomorphism

Choice-Support Effect

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

We can create pretty sophisticated computer models for things like weather and astrophysics. In a future with powerful quantum computers and flexible ethics, can we simulate a reality? If it's possible, has it already been done? ARE WE THE SIMULATED REALITY? The crew explores the science and philosophy behind this idea while navigating semi-relevant tangents and shenanigans.

Topics Discussed:

Scientifically, the answer is quick: we can't test it so we don't know right now.

Simulations we have made: From the Sims to Climate Models

Breaking down consciousness to binary code. How many processes do our brains carry out?

Quantum Computers

Can we simulate consciousness?

Irrational numbers as an argument against a simulated reality

Is our reality procedurally generated?

If we ARE in a simulation, is there free will?

Can free will and fate exist simultaneously?

Would you rather live in a world ruled by fate or free will?

Philosophy Vs. Science!

Tangents: What if Hitler won, the 51st state and the potential effect on the flag, hostilities toward Rhode Island, and serial poopers

This one got off the rails.  The subject was climate change but we start off by talking about menstruation and we end up with applying probability and statistics to determine whether or not soulmates exist. Try to keep up as the crew explores climate change and takes every tangent they could possibly take.

The misleading "debate" on climate change

What is climate? What's the difference between weather and climate

Why the name was changed from "global warming" to "climate change"

Science needs to get get better at public relations

Where does the public mistrust of science come from?

The difference between the "table flippers" and the "daily grinders" of science

Evidence of climate change

Greenhouse gasses

The effects of warming the earth

Caesars

Becoming a global society

The Kardashev Scale - What type of civilization are we?

Carl Sagan and the Pale Blue Dot

What was it like to be a German in WWII?

What's a cuck?

Podcast talk

Gripe talk

An intellectual evolution

Do soulmates exist? - Probability and Statistics

What's wrong with organic? It sounds natural and healthy. GMOs sound artificial and scary. This week, the crew explores GMOs and breaks down the science behind this controversial topic. Genetics is taught, studies are cited, and off topic bullsh*t is discussed as the feel-good organic industry is destroyed with science and critical thinking.

What is a GMO? (Genetically Modified Organism)

A crash course in genetics

What is a gene?

How do genes get passed from parent to offspring?

Mendelian Genetics

Artificial Selection

The scientific consensus on GMOs

Arguments for and against GMOs

Naturalistic Fallacy

Farmer Profit and Yields

Mono-cultures

Nutritional Comparison

Golden Rice

CRISPR Cas9: Precision Gene Editing

How we can use CRISPR to wipe out malaria

Get good googling skillz

Why we shouldn't label GMOs

High Fructose Corn Syrup Vs. "Natural" Sugar

Lab rats, "rat park", and addiction

Instant vs delayed gratification

Politics

Tobacco, vaping, and nicotine

Vaccines could be scary. Autism could be scary. Do vaccines cause autism? Are they worth the risk? The crew tackles the myths surrounding vaccines and shares the tools you can use to answer this question yourself. The science behind vaccines and autism is explored as they apply scientific principles to analyze this modern controversy.

Topics Discussed:

What are vaccines?

The very first vaccine - Smallpox in 1796

What are diseases?

How does your immune system work?

Vaccines today

The backfire effect

What is autism?

The autism spectrum

Temple Grandin - The World Needs All Kinds of Minds

Our current understanding of potential some causes of autism

Andrew Wakefield's infamous paper linking vaccines and autism

The myths surrounding vaccines

The naturalistic fallacy

A tangent on vitamins

The body autonomy argument regarding vaccines

Herd immunity

The crew enters Kat's realm of speech and language science. Language is broken down to the point where the hosts all end up just making noises and trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on. The discussion of speech and language is embedded in developmental psychology. From fetuses to adults, the crew discusses how we develop and perceive speech and language. It is difficult to talk about these topics without also discussing how speech and language critically determine our identity as a species.

Topics Discussed:

The sounds of language

The five components of language

Phonology – sounds and sound systems – how can we combine certain sounds?

It's okay for "ks" to be at the end of a word “breaks”, not at the beginning

Morphology – how to we combine units of meaning – conjugation

Semantics – meaning, lexicon

Syntax – how we combine words

You can put the same words in a different order to create different meanings

Pragmatics – rules for the social use of language, communication

Politeness, indirect requests, facial expressions, etc

The intersection of the study of language and developmental psychology

The difference between speech and language

How speech develops in infants

Speech perception in fetuses

How speech and language studies are performed with infants and fetuses

Brain Imaging (EEG, MEG – Magnetoencephalography, etc.)

Infant perception studies

Habituation studies – If an infant hears the same thing over and over, they get bored and stop

responding as much. If we introduce a new stimulus and the response level goes back up, we

know they perceived the difference. Usually they are sucking on a pacifier with a sensor in it.

Behavioral Response Audiometry (BOA)

Conditioned head turning / Visual Reinforcement – we condition them (think Skinner’s Behavioral studies) to turn their heads to a certain spot when they hear a difference (or whatever we are testing for) by rewarding them with an interesting visual stimulus like a dancing teddy bear, or a light up spinning thing

In audiology – Visual Reinforcement Audiometry (VRA)

Preferential looking - Similar to conditioned head turning – children will look longer at something that matches what they are hearing

e.g. we can tell if they understand the word dog if they look longer at the picture of the

dog than the ball

Technology can track eye gaze very precisely

Innate speech abilities of infants

Infants are born with the ability to hear speech sounds (even before they are born!) and they can tell the difference between their mother’s voice and a stranger’s voice

Kisilevsky et al. (2003) – 38 week old fetuses’ heart-rates went up when they heard their mother’s voices

Infants can remember what they hear in utero and show preference for familiar patterns of sounds

DeCasper & Spence (1986) – moms read passage out loud every day for a few weeks prior to birth and after they were born, the infants showed preference for that passage over an unfamiliar one. Control group showed no preference between the two.

Infants can selectively attend to speech over environmental noises

Vouloumanos & Werker (2007) – 1-4 day old infants try harder to attend to/hear speech

sounds than non-speech sounds

Shultz & Vouloumanos (2010) - This fact holds true for speech vs. other human vegetative sounds (coughing, sneezing, etc.) as well as human speech vs. animal (monkey) “speech”/calls

Why do things move as they do? Are there fundamental rules of motion? Why is math so weird? Why was Newton such a bad-ass? The crew tackles a diverse set of topics while analyzing motion and freaking out about math.

Topics Discussed:

What is a force?

Our ideas forces before Sir Isaac Newton

Newton and his three laws of motion

The issue with teaching the laws of motion

Fundamental forces of nature

Gravity

Electromagnetism

Strong Nuclear Force

Weak Nuclear Force

A Grand Unified Theory of Forces?

The multiverse?

Is math invented or discovered?

Can math exist without the universe?

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physical reality

Why math is beautiful

In our quest to determine how the universe works, we take some time to explore a fundamental concept: motion. Things move through our universe and we can accurately describe and predict this motion using math! In this episode we discuss how things move (kinematics) in preparation for a future episode where we talk about why things move (dynamics).

What is motion?

Frames of reference

Words to describe motion: position, velocity, and acceleration

One-dimensional motion

Two-dimensional motion: Throwing a ball in a gravitational field

Determinism in classical physics

Terminal velocity

Rotational motion

Math: The language of physics

The goal of physics

What does it mean to be conscious? What does it mean to BE? The crew explores the nature of consciousness, the self, and the experience we are all constantly having. The limited science behind consciousness is discussed along with some philosophy of being. To put it another way, a few sentient biological blobs ponder what it means to be awake.

Topics Discussed:

How can we define consciousness?

Thomas Nagel's thought experiment

The only thing Descartes was certain about

The emergence of consciousness. Where did it come from?

Artificial Intelligence and the Turing Test

Glasgow Coma Scale

Spirituality and the illusion of self

The corpus callosum and duel brain patients

Jill Bolte Taylor and her "stroke" of insight

Altered states of consciousness

End of episode banter and theory of mind

What is length? What is time? Who decided the length of a second? The crew explores the fundamentals of physics and learns how we have come to define our units of measurement.

Topics Discussed:

What is physics?

Physical quantities

Galileo: The father of modern science

How do we communicate measurements?

History of the meter

What is time? What is a second

Mass vs. weight

How we define a kilogram

Composite units

Radioactive dating

How do we measure extreme lengths, masses, and times?