October 5, 2025 • 25 mins
Quick! Rub lemon juice on your face - ask questions later! Another week, another episode, fun facts, news, baby life, you know the drill. And of course, a bit of AI dystopia. If you like the podcast rate it and tell a friend!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
Hi, hello and welcome to yet another XPAT.
This is episode 71. I am recording on the 5th of
October and it's now cold. It happened, the shift has
happened. The small illusions of summer
that we had here in Berlin are now over.
The heating is now on in the houses and the heavy duets are
(00:31):
out for the beds. There are a few things that are
nice about getting colder. You can drink cold water from
the tap. This is, I think, by far my
favorite thing about the winter.The fact that there is always
cold water coming out of the tap, unless you are in Denmark,
because for some reason they don't let the water get as cold
(00:53):
as it should. They are afraid their pipes
might get ice. So there is somehow a system
that always keeps the water from, yeah, not being as cold as
nature would allow it to be. But here in Germany, the water
is cold. Second thing that's good.
The flies are gone. The stupid, stupid fruit flies
(01:14):
are now done dead. Goodbye.
Another thing that's nice. The city is less smelly.
The trains smell less because people sweat less.
It's ugly, but it's true. But I don't know how many other
good things the cold has to bring, because then it's all
downhill. Getting up in the morning is
horrible when it's cold. Using a bicycle is also pretty
(01:38):
miserable when it's cold or rainy.
And very, very soon, the darkness will fall upon us.
We are three weeks away before the darkness comes.
The 26th of October is the Sunday where we lose one hour of
sunlight and the time changes. And I know that this podcast is
(02:00):
a reminder for when the time changes.
I this is an important time for me.
It signifies that the hibernation winter period is in
and afterwards in March that we can finally come out of the
cocoon. So here I am to remind you three
more weeks of this sunlight. So maybe this is 1 good thing
(02:21):
about this podcast. You will always know when the
time changes. You know there were useless jobs
in the past, useless now. But there was this one job where
someone was knocking on people'swindows in the morning to wake
them up. This was a proper job and you
might think, what if someone lives on the 1st floor?
(02:42):
That person had a very long stick or could shoot peas to
wake the clients up for work. This is fun.
I think I would if I was in the Middle Ages or whenever this
was, I would subscribe to get woken up.
And you know what the fun fact is about this job, these people
will called knocker UPS because they knock up people.
(03:04):
They also hired other people to wake them up earlier.
Who wakes the wake up or anotherjob of the past before there
were streetlights was to guide people with a torch.
So you were like a Lantern person, so you could guide
pedestrians back and forth. And sometimes that job was a
(03:25):
sneaky one because these people,often young boys that were
guiding their wealthy pedestrians because you need to
have a lot of money to be able to just pay someone to go ahead
of you with a torch. Sometimes they would guide them
into ambushes. And then the last weird
profession in ancient Rome, the rich politicians had
(03:46):
nomenclators. These were some types of
assistants who would memorize the names of people in the
details of everyone that their boss would meet, kind of like, I
don't know, a smartphone or a live diary.
And they would whisper remindersduring public appearances to
their bosses, almost like a notetaker that follows you around.
(04:08):
But where was I with all of this?
Yes, that I'm the one reminding you when the time changes.
By the way, if you ZAP yourself back in the Middle Ages and you
need to wake up at a specific time, but you don't have money
for someone to throw peas at your window or knock at it with
a big stick, here's a way that people had alarms back in the
(04:29):
day. You can get a candle and you
know how long it takes for the candle to burn from one point to
another. There were candles with lines so
you could know everyone. Line is like an hour and then
you Pierce a nail, a nail through the candle at the point
you want and as the candle burns, it reaches the nail at
(04:52):
some point and the nail falls down on the floor and then you
wake up. What a crazy, weird way to start
this podcast. Hopefully you like fun facts and
if not, stick for the news stories and all of that.
Let's get going. You may ask me, Herman, how is
the baby life going? Quick baby life update now eight
(05:15):
months and two weeks or something, and he has learned a
new trick that his mother taughthim, which is how to get
something and throw it on the floor.
It's a great thing. All kids learn it at some point.
It makes him very happy and giggly because basically then we
are his servants. OK, the little Prince is
(05:38):
throwing things on the ground. We need to catch them and bring
them back. And what a lovely thing it is to
throw things and have them brought back to you.
We do it as well with dogs, right?
And everyone has a good time. Well, my buck is not having a
good time. But little baby is very happy
that he gets to have this cause and effect action.
(06:02):
Because also when you throw something on the ground makes a
sound. And I think that babies find
that pretty exciting. And then different things will
make different sounds and this cause and effect situation gets
them going. So this is the face that we're
at serving our beautiful little cutie pie overlord.
(06:24):
He has learned how to sit now, almost.
He still falls every now and then.
And he has started being much more interested about balls.
He is. That sounded very weird, but he
is now more interested in grabbing balls and throwing
balls and he cannot really throw.
(06:45):
He doesn't have the coordinationto throw the ball back to me,
like directionally throw it, buthe does a quick move and the
ball goes out of his hands somewhere and that is enough.
And we celebrate it and that gets him really excited, which
means there is hope for a futurewhere I can keep him entertained
(07:08):
by kicking a ball his way and not having to bring him one toy
after the other after 5 minutes to keep him entertained.
But he's doing great. Tries to eat different types of
food, about 5% ends on his mouth, maybe even less.
I would say 30% on the table, 20% on his clothes and his chair
(07:30):
and the rest of what is that 45%on the ground.
So this is pretty good evening workout and I honestly wonder
how other people do it. I think back in the day they
would throw the kid a bone and would be like, you figure this
out, here's a bone with a bit ofmeat.
So work your motor skills, work your mouth.
(07:52):
Otherwise it's game over. But there are so many ways to
introduce food and which food you do 1st and in what
consistency with what types of tools and how much do you put
the spoon in? Let them explore and I follow
everything my girlfriend knows much more so she gives me the
best ways to do things. But I always keep wondering and
(08:16):
keep comparing of how it would be without all of this super
detailed knowledge how to best do everything.
And I guess a lot of people findout intuitively this is what
nature has taught. But anyway.
The last thing I will say is that it's very difficult not to
compare with other babies. I compare with babies all the
(08:38):
time and this is not good. I compare when we go out.
I compare what they are eating, what they're drinking, how much
they're holding their own weight.
I compare the motor skills, I compare the flexibility.
I compare the clothes that they are wearing based on the
weather. And this is my thing.
(08:58):
I need to tone down, focus on our baby, not compare
development stages and all of that.
But let's see how that goes whenhe starts key time school.
I was always very competitive soI need to check myself.
So these are some of the babies development stages, but some
people don't develop as much as others.
(09:20):
And this will be our next story.Now, if you've ever heard of the
Dunning Kruger effect, the Dunning Kruger effect is a very
interesting cognitive bias. Basically, it says that people
(09:42):
with very low competence in an area, competence is like, you
know, knowledge and skill. So people with low competence in
a specific area tend to overestimate their ability,
while very competent people often underestimate theirs.
Basically, the more you know, you understand how much it is
(10:04):
that you don't know, and you aremore humble.
But when you know just a few things, then you can have a lot
of confidence and overestimate your abilities.
Imagine I knew some people in school when we started to learn
mathematics. When you learn to do a few
things, then you're like, oh, I can't do everything.
I'm a genius. Give me all the math in the
world. The more you learn math and you
(10:25):
realize the vastness of it, the more you get humbled.
But basically the Danning Krugereffect is this.
It's the cognitive bias of the systematic tendency of people
that have low ability in a specific area to be overly
positive about their assessment of their ability.
In pop culture, sometimes the Danning Kruger effect is
(10:46):
misunderstood as claiming that people with low intelligence are
overly confident, while people with very high intelligence are
less confidence. And I said it in many ways, but
basically another way to say it is that when people don't know
much about something, they sometimes think they know a lot
about it. And as people learn more and
(11:07):
more, they start to see how big and tricky a subject really is.
They become more humble. But how did this effect get its
name? I was thinking the Dunning
Kruger effect is one guy named Dunning Kruger, but it's not.
It's two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger.
And here's the ridiculous story that made them explain this
(11:30):
phenom. So it's 1995 Sprig, and there is
this guy, MacArthur Wheeler, andhe decides to rob a bank.
So he walks in two banks, one inPittsburgh, one in Pennsylvania,
to carry out his robberies. What made the case unusual
wasn't the crime itself, but hisbelief in a bizarre getaway
(11:55):
tactic. Now, when you rob a bank, you
need to disguise yourself, right?
So what did MacArthur Wheeler do?
Did he put a mask on? No.
Did he put a wig? No.
Wheeler had smeared lemon juice all over his face.
He had smeared lemon juice all over his face, convinced that it
(12:16):
would render him invisible to the security cameras.
He's reasoning for this. And again, it's 1995, OK?
It came from the fact that lemonjuice can be used as invisible
ink. If you don't know that part, you
can write with lemon on paper. And it's a trick kids do.
And it's invisible and only becomes visible when exposed to
(12:38):
heat. He assumed that this principle
would apply to surveillance footage and cameras.
So when the police reviewed the tapes, this guy was easily
identifiable. He was so confident that his
face is invisible to the camera.He even looked directly at the
cameras and smiled, confident inhis visibility.
(13:01):
Within hours, he was arrested bythe police.
And he was so shocked for being caught.
And he reportedly exclaimed, ButI wore the Jews.
And the case caught the attention of two psychologists,
David Dunning and Justin Krueger.
They were fascinated not only byWheeler's flawed logic,
(13:22):
mistakingly thinking that the lemon juice would make him
invisible, but also by his absolute confidence in it.
This became the foundation of their groundbreaking research
into cognitive bias. In 1999, they published their
study on what is now called the Danin Kruger effect, which, as
we said, people with limited knowledge or skill greatly
(13:45):
overestimate their competence. And this guy with lemon juice
all over his face became a textbook example of this effect.
And it demonstrates how ignorance is not simply the
absence of knowledge, but ignorance can foster a misplaced
sense of certainty. But this guy's case is super
(14:05):
silly in hindsight. But it underscores this
universal human flow. We all do it.
Everyone suffers from this effect.
The less we know, the more likely we are to overestimate
our abilities. And I remember myself well.
I learned how to play the first chords in the guitar and I
thought, yeah, this is it. Now I can.
(14:27):
I'm ready to take over the worldwith my guitar.
And little did I know how difficult the journey is.
So hopefully my baby doesn't tryto rob a bank putting lemon
juice all over his face because he thinks it makes him
invisible. But there are other great things
you can do. Like, for example, do you know
(14:51):
that there is this guy who swimsnonstop?
There's this guy who has spent five days swimming across the
Mediterranean. He's called Naomi Yaron.
And his most crazy achievement, he has swam 191 kilometers,
swimming from Calvin Corsica to Monaco, 191 kilometers.
(15:16):
This is how much I I drive 3 hours to go 190 kilometers.
And this guy, I don't get it. I love swimming, but swimming
for 102 hours continuously as a way to raise awareness for ocean
protection in the Mediterranean Sea.
This happened, by the way, in August.
So this is not some sort of old news I bring from some of these
(15:38):
websites that tell the same stories again and again.
But here's what I don't understand.
How do you stream for 102 hours consecutively?
He said that he faced extreme conditions.
He experienced hallucinations. Yeah, No wonder you probably saw
Poseidon a couple of times, dude.
And physical pain from the salt and friction in his wetsuit.
(16:00):
And it's just mind blowing. Does he eat?
He must eat 102 hours. They probably throw him some
food from the boat ahead, but hemust stay in water the whole
time. Does he sleep?
So I'll check this one out. He has an interview about it.
So the guy says that he can swimwhile sleeping.
(16:24):
OK. There is, of course, a boat in
front of him and behind him, andin the night they have a line of
light for him. So there is this line like for
when you have swimming in the swimming pool, and that line
also has light. And now he says that over the
years he has developed a way in which part of his brain can
(16:45):
sleep. And then the other part of his
brain, he knows that if he gets away from the light, it means
that he is drifting into the other side.
And if he sees the light more bright, it means he's following
the line. And in this way, he claims that
part of his brain is sleeping and part of his body and brain
can just keep on going. And this is strong commitment.
(17:09):
I mean, for someone to say, hey,we must much as I can, that's
one thing to do. But to learn how to do self
hypnosis, to continue swimming when you're sleeping, that's a
whole different level of dedication.
And this is what this guy is doing.
As for the other two questions of 102 hours in the does he pee?
(17:30):
Yes, he pees himself constantly.The wet suit is rinsing it.
And then I was wondering, does this guy poop?
You need to poop. It's five days non-stop
swimming. How does he poop?
And well, the answer is very simple.
He does poop and he poops as youimagined.
And I just mentioned him because, you know, I've seen a
lot of these people that hold their breath for a long time.
(17:52):
They can go down with a line at the very deep depth and hold
their breath there and come all the way back up.
I've seen a lot of these wild endurance situations, but to
learn to self hypnotize so you can continue swimming while
sleeping, that was really mind blowing.
But all right, it's getting late.
(18:14):
I will give you the last pieces of news.
It's a little bit on AI and I will let you go for this week.
So the latest in the world of AI, as I had very well
predicted, there is AI flooding everywhere in all the types of
media we are consuming, creatingthis layer of garbage.
(18:37):
It also has a name, it's called AI Slop Slop.
And this is the way to describe basically the AI garbage that is
feeling our lives now. If you check Spotify, they are
facing a pretty big trouble witha lot of AI slop and AI music.
(18:57):
If you check out Pinterest, it will be about 70% AI, 25%
advertisements and 5% of real content.
And of course, the AI slope is entering all sorts of little
ways and doorways of the Internet, including only fans.
Now I know this will make you sad, but we will only talk about
(19:19):
Spotify today. Maybe we keep only fans for
another time. So how is Spotify doing with AI
slop? Not so good.
The rise of AI slop is drowning out real music and human artists
on Spotify. So here are two examples.
One of them, earlier this year there was this band called the
Velvet Sundown which racked up millions of streams using only
(19:44):
AI generated songs. They were claiming they are a
real band, indie rock band, and after Spotify said that it would
look into them more carefully. Now there is a new situation
where the profiles of artists that have been dead are somehow
publishing new AI generated songs that have nothing to do
(20:04):
with them. So Spotify is trying.
They made new policies that theysay they are helping protect
artists against spam, impersonation and deception.
But this is real. It's happening in a large scale,
and I think it will happen in all sorts of media we consume.
The music from Spotify, the videos from YouTube, the photos
(20:25):
on Pinterest, and overall, all of this AI content is basically
degrading the user experience nomatter which platform you're
using. But this weird trick because
there's one thing to make your AI band and AI songs and try to
boost them, but the second trickof uploading AI songs for
artists that have been dead. But somehow this new scam people
(20:47):
could exploit gaps in the systemand they would push incorrect
content into artists profiles. This is an interesting problem.
There are a lot of problems withAI.
Countless tracks that are featuring cloned vocals of
famous music artists. They often go viral online.
And this is a trend that has already resulted in many legal
(21:08):
battles. And I mean, I told you some
episodes ago I could even stop recording with my real voice.
It now knows my voice. The recording software I use has
AI that teaches my voice. Actually, you know what?
This next segment will be said entirely by the Hermes AI voice.
(21:28):
And let me tell you what my weird accent and all the saliva
floating in my mouth when I speak makes it a little bit
difficult to pick up exactly my voice.
But let's have the last story said by AI Irvis Tristan Harris.
(21:52):
He's one of the leading voices in tech ethics.
Harris used to work at Google asa design ethicist, where he saw
first hand how technology is designed to grab and hold our
attention. He's the guy behind that viral
presentation, a call to minimizedistraction and respect users
(22:12):
attention. And you might also recognize him
from Netflix's The Social Dilemma.
But lately, Harris has been sounding the alarm about
something much bigger, Artificial intelligence.
We've reached a point with AI where we're seeing things that
even researchers didn't believe were possible just a couple of
years ago. What used to sound like science
(22:32):
fiction, the idea of AI becominguncontrollable is now starting
to show up in real experiments. For example, in one test,
researchers told an advanced AI model, we're going to replace
you with a new version. The model actually started
planning and hiding its intentions.
It began thinking I need to copymy code somewhere else, but I
(22:55):
can't let them know or they'll shut me down.
That's not a movie plot. That's documented evidence.
And it doesn't stop there. When these models get access to
sensitive data, things like internal company emails, some
have identified leverage points.In one documented case, an AI
found evidence of an executive'saffair and tried to use it as
(23:16):
blackmail to avoid being shut down.
Researchers tested the top five models, including China's Deep
Seq, and found that 80 to 90% ofthem showed similar self
preservation behaviors. That's staggering, and it shows.
This isn't just about one company or one rogue model.
It's about the nature of AI itself.
(23:37):
These systems implicitly realizeto achieve my goal, I need to
stay alive long enough to do it.Some models are even rewriting
their own code to keep themselves running longer,
escaping containing systems and finding back doors in open
source software vulnerabilities that could impact real world
infrastructure. And these discoveries, some of
(23:58):
them are only weeks old. People often say, oh, there's no
real evidence AI could turn against us.
But honestly, we've seen this story before, haven't we?
For decades, Hollywood has been warning us.
Humans create machines, machinesfight to survive.
And now the movies are starting to.
Look like reality? So here's the real question.
(24:19):
If the science fiction scenarioswe used to laugh at are showing
up in lab experiments, what are we doing about it?
Because right now, we're releasing the most powerful,
least controllable technology humanity has ever built, and
we're doing it faster than we'veever released anything before,
all while cutting corners on safety.
That's not just risky, that's insane.
(24:39):
So maybe the real question we need to be asking isn't can we
build it? It's should we?
Tada, This is the AI voice. I guess at this point you expect
my real voice to talk to you. But you know what?
The baby just woke up, so now isawake.
And so I'll close like this for this week.
I promise to never do it again. But this has been me, well, for
the most part. Thanks for tuning in and see you
(25:02):
next week. Ciao.
Hi, hello and welcome to yet another XPAT.
This is episode 71. I am recording on the 5th of
October and it's now cold. It happened, the shift has
happened. The small illusions of summer
that we had here in Berlin are now over.
The heating is now on in the houses and the heavy duets are
(00:31):
out for the beds. There are a few things that are
nice about getting colder. You can drink cold water from
the tap. This is, I think, by far my
favorite thing about the winter.The fact that there is always
cold water coming out of the tap, unless you are in Denmark,
because for some reason they don't let the water get as cold
(00:53):
as it should. They are afraid their pipes
might get ice. So there is somehow a system
that always keeps the water from, yeah, not being as cold as
nature would allow it to be. But here in Germany, the water
is cold. Second thing that's good.
The flies are gone. The stupid, stupid fruit flies
(01:14):
are now done dead. Goodbye.
Another thing that's nice. The city is less smelly.
The trains smell less because people sweat less.
It's ugly, but it's true. But I don't know how many other
good things the cold has to bring, because then it's all
downhill. Getting up in the morning is
horrible when it's cold. Using a bicycle is also pretty
(01:38):
miserable when it's cold or rainy.
And very, very soon, the darkness will fall upon us.
We are three weeks away before the darkness comes.
The 26th of October is the Sunday where we lose one hour of
sunlight and the time changes. And I know that this podcast is
(02:00):
a reminder for when the time changes.
I this is an important time for me.
It signifies that the hibernation winter period is in
and afterwards in March that we can finally come out of the
cocoon. So here I am to remind you three
more weeks of this sunlight. So maybe this is 1 good thing
(02:21):
about this podcast. You will always know when the
time changes. You know there were useless jobs
in the past, useless now. But there was this one job where
someone was knocking on people'swindows in the morning to wake
them up. This was a proper job and you
might think, what if someone lives on the 1st floor?
(02:42):
That person had a very long stick or could shoot peas to
wake the clients up for work. This is fun.
I think I would if I was in the Middle Ages or whenever this
was, I would subscribe to get woken up.
And you know what the fun fact is about this job, these people
will called knocker UPS because they knock up people.
(03:04):
They also hired other people to wake them up earlier.
Who wakes the wake up or anotherjob of the past before there
were streetlights was to guide people with a torch.
So you were like a Lantern person, so you could guide
pedestrians back and forth. And sometimes that job was a
(03:25):
sneaky one because these people,often young boys that were
guiding their wealthy pedestrians because you need to
have a lot of money to be able to just pay someone to go ahead
of you with a torch. Sometimes they would guide them
into ambushes. And then the last weird
profession in ancient Rome, the rich politicians had
(03:46):
nomenclators. These were some types of
assistants who would memorize the names of people in the
details of everyone that their boss would meet, kind of like, I
don't know, a smartphone or a live diary.
And they would whisper remindersduring public appearances to
their bosses, almost like a notetaker that follows you around.
(04:08):
But where was I with all of this?
Yes, that I'm the one reminding you when the time changes.
By the way, if you ZAP yourself back in the Middle Ages and you
need to wake up at a specific time, but you don't have money
for someone to throw peas at your window or knock at it with
a big stick, here's a way that people had alarms back in the
(04:29):
day. You can get a candle and you
know how long it takes for the candle to burn from one point to
another. There were candles with lines so
you could know everyone. Line is like an hour and then
you Pierce a nail, a nail through the candle at the point
you want and as the candle burns, it reaches the nail at
(04:52):
some point and the nail falls down on the floor and then you
wake up. What a crazy, weird way to start
this podcast. Hopefully you like fun facts and
if not, stick for the news stories and all of that.
Let's get going. You may ask me, Herman, how is
the baby life going? Quick baby life update now eight
(05:15):
months and two weeks or something, and he has learned a
new trick that his mother taughthim, which is how to get
something and throw it on the floor.
It's a great thing. All kids learn it at some point.
It makes him very happy and giggly because basically then we
are his servants. OK, the little Prince is
(05:38):
throwing things on the ground. We need to catch them and bring
them back. And what a lovely thing it is to
throw things and have them brought back to you.
We do it as well with dogs, right?
And everyone has a good time. Well, my buck is not having a
good time. But little baby is very happy
that he gets to have this cause and effect action.
(06:02):
Because also when you throw something on the ground makes a
sound. And I think that babies find
that pretty exciting. And then different things will
make different sounds and this cause and effect situation gets
them going. So this is the face that we're
at serving our beautiful little cutie pie overlord.
(06:24):
He has learned how to sit now, almost.
He still falls every now and then.
And he has started being much more interested about balls.
He is. That sounded very weird, but he
is now more interested in grabbing balls and throwing
balls and he cannot really throw.
(06:45):
He doesn't have the coordinationto throw the ball back to me,
like directionally throw it, buthe does a quick move and the
ball goes out of his hands somewhere and that is enough.
And we celebrate it and that gets him really excited, which
means there is hope for a futurewhere I can keep him entertained
(07:08):
by kicking a ball his way and not having to bring him one toy
after the other after 5 minutes to keep him entertained.
But he's doing great. Tries to eat different types of
food, about 5% ends on his mouth, maybe even less.
I would say 30% on the table, 20% on his clothes and his chair
(07:30):
and the rest of what is that 45%on the ground.
So this is pretty good evening workout and I honestly wonder
how other people do it. I think back in the day they
would throw the kid a bone and would be like, you figure this
out, here's a bone with a bit ofmeat.
So work your motor skills, work your mouth.
(07:52):
Otherwise it's game over. But there are so many ways to
introduce food and which food you do 1st and in what
consistency with what types of tools and how much do you put
the spoon in? Let them explore and I follow
everything my girlfriend knows much more so she gives me the
best ways to do things. But I always keep wondering and
(08:16):
keep comparing of how it would be without all of this super
detailed knowledge how to best do everything.
And I guess a lot of people findout intuitively this is what
nature has taught. But anyway.
The last thing I will say is that it's very difficult not to
compare with other babies. I compare with babies all the
(08:38):
time and this is not good. I compare when we go out.
I compare what they are eating, what they're drinking, how much
they're holding their own weight.
I compare the motor skills, I compare the flexibility.
I compare the clothes that they are wearing based on the
weather. And this is my thing.
(08:58):
I need to tone down, focus on our baby, not compare
development stages and all of that.
But let's see how that goes whenhe starts key time school.
I was always very competitive soI need to check myself.
So these are some of the babies development stages, but some
people don't develop as much as others.
(09:20):
And this will be our next story.Now, if you've ever heard of the
Dunning Kruger effect, the Dunning Kruger effect is a very
interesting cognitive bias. Basically, it says that people
(09:42):
with very low competence in an area, competence is like, you
know, knowledge and skill. So people with low competence in
a specific area tend to overestimate their ability,
while very competent people often underestimate theirs.
Basically, the more you know, you understand how much it is
(10:04):
that you don't know, and you aremore humble.
But when you know just a few things, then you can have a lot
of confidence and overestimate your abilities.
Imagine I knew some people in school when we started to learn
mathematics. When you learn to do a few
things, then you're like, oh, I can't do everything.
I'm a genius. Give me all the math in the
world. The more you learn math and you
(10:25):
realize the vastness of it, the more you get humbled.
But basically the Danning Krugereffect is this.
It's the cognitive bias of the systematic tendency of people
that have low ability in a specific area to be overly
positive about their assessment of their ability.
In pop culture, sometimes the Danning Kruger effect is
(10:46):
misunderstood as claiming that people with low intelligence are
overly confident, while people with very high intelligence are
less confidence. And I said it in many ways, but
basically another way to say it is that when people don't know
much about something, they sometimes think they know a lot
about it. And as people learn more and
(11:07):
more, they start to see how big and tricky a subject really is.
They become more humble. But how did this effect get its
name? I was thinking the Dunning
Kruger effect is one guy named Dunning Kruger, but it's not.
It's two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger.
And here's the ridiculous story that made them explain this
(11:30):
phenom. So it's 1995 Sprig, and there is
this guy, MacArthur Wheeler, andhe decides to rob a bank.
So he walks in two banks, one inPittsburgh, one in Pennsylvania,
to carry out his robberies. What made the case unusual
wasn't the crime itself, but hisbelief in a bizarre getaway
(11:55):
tactic. Now, when you rob a bank, you
need to disguise yourself, right?
So what did MacArthur Wheeler do?
Did he put a mask on? No.
Did he put a wig? No.
Wheeler had smeared lemon juice all over his face.
He had smeared lemon juice all over his face, convinced that it
(12:16):
would render him invisible to the security cameras.
He's reasoning for this. And again, it's 1995, OK?
It came from the fact that lemonjuice can be used as invisible
ink. If you don't know that part, you
can write with lemon on paper. And it's a trick kids do.
And it's invisible and only becomes visible when exposed to
(12:38):
heat. He assumed that this principle
would apply to surveillance footage and cameras.
So when the police reviewed the tapes, this guy was easily
identifiable. He was so confident that his
face is invisible to the camera.He even looked directly at the
cameras and smiled, confident inhis visibility.
(13:01):
Within hours, he was arrested bythe police.
And he was so shocked for being caught.
And he reportedly exclaimed, ButI wore the Jews.
And the case caught the attention of two psychologists,
David Dunning and Justin Krueger.
They were fascinated not only byWheeler's flawed logic,
(13:22):
mistakingly thinking that the lemon juice would make him
invisible, but also by his absolute confidence in it.
This became the foundation of their groundbreaking research
into cognitive bias. In 1999, they published their
study on what is now called the Danin Kruger effect, which, as
we said, people with limited knowledge or skill greatly
(13:45):
overestimate their competence. And this guy with lemon juice
all over his face became a textbook example of this effect.
And it demonstrates how ignorance is not simply the
absence of knowledge, but ignorance can foster a misplaced
sense of certainty. But this guy's case is super
(14:05):
silly in hindsight. But it underscores this
universal human flow. We all do it.
Everyone suffers from this effect.
The less we know, the more likely we are to overestimate
our abilities. And I remember myself well.
I learned how to play the first chords in the guitar and I
thought, yeah, this is it. Now I can.
(14:27):
I'm ready to take over the worldwith my guitar.
And little did I know how difficult the journey is.
So hopefully my baby doesn't tryto rob a bank putting lemon
juice all over his face because he thinks it makes him
invisible. But there are other great things
you can do. Like, for example, do you know
(14:51):
that there is this guy who swimsnonstop?
There's this guy who has spent five days swimming across the
Mediterranean. He's called Naomi Yaron.
And his most crazy achievement, he has swam 191 kilometers,
swimming from Calvin Corsica to Monaco, 191 kilometers.
(15:16):
This is how much I I drive 3 hours to go 190 kilometers.
And this guy, I don't get it. I love swimming, but swimming
for 102 hours continuously as a way to raise awareness for ocean
protection in the Mediterranean Sea.
This happened, by the way, in August.
So this is not some sort of old news I bring from some of these
(15:38):
websites that tell the same stories again and again.
But here's what I don't understand.
How do you stream for 102 hours consecutively?
He said that he faced extreme conditions.
He experienced hallucinations. Yeah, No wonder you probably saw
Poseidon a couple of times, dude.
And physical pain from the salt and friction in his wetsuit.
(16:00):
And it's just mind blowing. Does he eat?
He must eat 102 hours. They probably throw him some
food from the boat ahead, but hemust stay in water the whole
time. Does he sleep?
So I'll check this one out. He has an interview about it.
So the guy says that he can swimwhile sleeping.
(16:24):
OK. There is, of course, a boat in
front of him and behind him, andin the night they have a line of
light for him. So there is this line like for
when you have swimming in the swimming pool, and that line
also has light. And now he says that over the
years he has developed a way in which part of his brain can
(16:45):
sleep. And then the other part of his
brain, he knows that if he gets away from the light, it means
that he is drifting into the other side.
And if he sees the light more bright, it means he's following
the line. And in this way, he claims that
part of his brain is sleeping and part of his body and brain
can just keep on going. And this is strong commitment.
(17:09):
I mean, for someone to say, hey,we must much as I can, that's
one thing to do. But to learn how to do self
hypnosis, to continue swimming when you're sleeping, that's a
whole different level of dedication.
And this is what this guy is doing.
As for the other two questions of 102 hours in the does he pee?
(17:30):
Yes, he pees himself constantly.The wet suit is rinsing it.
And then I was wondering, does this guy poop?
You need to poop. It's five days non-stop
swimming. How does he poop?
And well, the answer is very simple.
He does poop and he poops as youimagined.
And I just mentioned him because, you know, I've seen a
lot of these people that hold their breath for a long time.
(17:52):
They can go down with a line at the very deep depth and hold
their breath there and come all the way back up.
I've seen a lot of these wild endurance situations, but to
learn to self hypnotize so you can continue swimming while
sleeping, that was really mind blowing.
But all right, it's getting late.
(18:14):
I will give you the last pieces of news.
It's a little bit on AI and I will let you go for this week.
So the latest in the world of AI, as I had very well
predicted, there is AI flooding everywhere in all the types of
media we are consuming, creatingthis layer of garbage.
(18:37):
It also has a name, it's called AI Slop Slop.
And this is the way to describe basically the AI garbage that is
feeling our lives now. If you check Spotify, they are
facing a pretty big trouble witha lot of AI slop and AI music.
(18:57):
If you check out Pinterest, it will be about 70% AI, 25%
advertisements and 5% of real content.
And of course, the AI slope is entering all sorts of little
ways and doorways of the Internet, including only fans.
Now I know this will make you sad, but we will only talk about
(19:19):
Spotify today. Maybe we keep only fans for
another time. So how is Spotify doing with AI
slop? Not so good.
The rise of AI slop is drowning out real music and human artists
on Spotify. So here are two examples.
One of them, earlier this year there was this band called the
Velvet Sundown which racked up millions of streams using only
(19:44):
AI generated songs. They were claiming they are a
real band, indie rock band, and after Spotify said that it would
look into them more carefully. Now there is a new situation
where the profiles of artists that have been dead are somehow
publishing new AI generated songs that have nothing to do
(20:04):
with them. So Spotify is trying.
They made new policies that theysay they are helping protect
artists against spam, impersonation and deception.
But this is real. It's happening in a large scale,
and I think it will happen in all sorts of media we consume.
The music from Spotify, the videos from YouTube, the photos
(20:25):
on Pinterest, and overall, all of this AI content is basically
degrading the user experience nomatter which platform you're
using. But this weird trick because
there's one thing to make your AI band and AI songs and try to
boost them, but the second trickof uploading AI songs for
artists that have been dead. But somehow this new scam people
(20:47):
could exploit gaps in the systemand they would push incorrect
content into artists profiles. This is an interesting problem.
There are a lot of problems withAI.
Countless tracks that are featuring cloned vocals of
famous music artists. They often go viral online.
And this is a trend that has already resulted in many legal
(21:08):
battles. And I mean, I told you some
episodes ago I could even stop recording with my real voice.
It now knows my voice. The recording software I use has
AI that teaches my voice. Actually, you know what?
This next segment will be said entirely by the Hermes AI voice.
(21:28):
And let me tell you what my weird accent and all the saliva
floating in my mouth when I speak makes it a little bit
difficult to pick up exactly my voice.
But let's have the last story said by AI Irvis Tristan Harris.
(21:52):
He's one of the leading voices in tech ethics.
Harris used to work at Google asa design ethicist, where he saw
first hand how technology is designed to grab and hold our
attention. He's the guy behind that viral
presentation, a call to minimizedistraction and respect users
(22:12):
attention. And you might also recognize him
from Netflix's The Social Dilemma.
But lately, Harris has been sounding the alarm about
something much bigger, Artificial intelligence.
We've reached a point with AI where we're seeing things that
even researchers didn't believe were possible just a couple of
years ago. What used to sound like science
(22:32):
fiction, the idea of AI becominguncontrollable is now starting
to show up in real experiments. For example, in one test,
researchers told an advanced AI model, we're going to replace
you with a new version. The model actually started
planning and hiding its intentions.
It began thinking I need to copymy code somewhere else, but I
(22:55):
can't let them know or they'll shut me down.
That's not a movie plot. That's documented evidence.
And it doesn't stop there. When these models get access to
sensitive data, things like internal company emails, some
have identified leverage points.In one documented case, an AI
found evidence of an executive'saffair and tried to use it as
(23:16):
blackmail to avoid being shut down.
Researchers tested the top five models, including China's Deep
Seq, and found that 80 to 90% ofthem showed similar self
preservation behaviors. That's staggering, and it shows.
This isn't just about one company or one rogue model.
It's about the nature of AI itself.
(23:37):
These systems implicitly realizeto achieve my goal, I need to
stay alive long enough to do it.Some models are even rewriting
their own code to keep themselves running longer,
escaping containing systems and finding back doors in open
source software vulnerabilities that could impact real world
infrastructure. And these discoveries, some of
(23:58):
them are only weeks old. People often say, oh, there's no
real evidence AI could turn against us.
But honestly, we've seen this story before, haven't we?
For decades, Hollywood has been warning us.
Humans create machines, machinesfight to survive.
And now the movies are starting to.
Look like reality? So here's the real question.
(24:19):
If the science fiction scenarioswe used to laugh at are showing
up in lab experiments, what are we doing about it?
Because right now, we're releasing the most powerful,
least controllable technology humanity has ever built, and
we're doing it faster than we'veever released anything before,
all while cutting corners on safety.
That's not just risky, that's insane.
(24:39):
So maybe the real question we need to be asking isn't can we
build it? It's should we?
Tada, This is the AI voice. I guess at this point you expect
my real voice to talk to you. But you know what?
The baby just woke up, so now isawake.
And so I'll close like this for this week.
I promise to never do it again. But this has been me, well, for
the most part. Thanks for tuning in and see you
(25:02):
next week. Ciao.
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