Listener Mail V: Computing the Hyper-Real

Once more, the mailbot delivers the spoils of listener feedback and your loyal Stuff to Blow Your Mind hosts read and respond to them. Join Robert, Christian and Joe as they cover everything from computing and hyperreal religions to cargo cults and even Dungeons and Dragons.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, wasn't the Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Christian Seger
and I am Joe McCormick, and we're here for another
listener mail episodes. We've been doing more of these lately
because we begin we've been getting so much good listener mail. Yeah,

(00:26):
the mail bag inside Carney has been very full. It's
and it's and it's been full of really good stuff too.
And I gotta throw this out up front, like, we've
gotten so much that there's no way that we can
address it in every listener mail episode. Now, even if
we do them more often, we could do them like
once a week, and we wouldn't be able to get there.
That's right. I mean, we're hearing from people via email

(00:47):
blow the mind at how stuff Works dot Com. We're
getting people from Facebook and Twitter. We're blow the mind
on both of those. Some people right into us on
Tumbler where we were stuff to Blow your Mind. Some
people on LinkedIn. We did get one on LinkedIn once, Yes,
and I don't even think it was just your LinkedIn profile. Yeah,
everybody go follow Robert on LinkedIn, but yeah, somebody wrote

(01:09):
us there, So yeah, thanks for everybody who's written in.
And you know, just these are the ones that we
felt would make like the most compelling listener mail episode.
But there's lots of other stuff out there, and I'm
gonna make an effort to try to sit down and
respond to all of them. I need to take a
day and just go through everyone. Yeah, it kind of
depends on what day they come in, but we get
a lot of great stuff for sure. Anyway, the takeaway

(01:31):
is if you sent us an email, we don't get
a chance to read it today. Please don't take that
as a slide against We've just got way more than
we can get to. But we really do appreciate all
of your correspondence. And Carney does too. Because Carney is
just bulging with happy energy. I see a lot of
energy around him. There's like a rainbow field of luminescence. No,

(01:54):
you know what that is. Earlier this week, I set
Carney to try to solve all of the P versus
MP problem, and I think this morning he might have
actually found a solution. He hasn't. He hasn't given us
the solution yet. Maybe he judged that it's not for
our minds to know, but he has been glowing with
a radiant light and emitting choirs of angels. The sound,

(02:16):
you know, it's just coming out from inside him. So yeah,
it's it's been kind of warm and happy sitting in
his presence. Yeah, I'm basking in the glow of Carney. Well,
if if Carney has not evolved too far beyond our understanding,
perhaps he slash, she slash yet can present us with

(02:36):
some listener mail. Alright, so this first message is from
our listener, Nicole, and it's with reference to the episode
Robert and I did on the intelligence of birds. Nicole says, Hi,
I just finished listening to your episode on avian intelligence
and it brought to mind and experience I had as
a teenager. We had some problem crows that were attacking

(02:58):
our postman and ripping the shingles off our roof to
pitch them onto the lawn. My dad heard that if
you kill a crow and hang it from a tree,
it will drive the other crows off, so he shot
one with a pellet gun and hung it from a
tree in our backyard. I've heard this as well, not
I've never I haven't shot one but I've heard this, yeah,

(03:19):
she continues. The next morning, I looked out the window
to see hundreds and hundreds of crows sitting in the
trees encircling our backyard like a black wall. They were
making no noise and staring at the body of the
dead crow hanging from the tree. They stayed the entire day,
barely moving, never making a sound. I don't know if

(03:41):
crows typically hold awake, or if my dad happened to
have shot their grand chief, but the experience was chillingly terrifying.
Love your podcast, Nicole. That that is the most disturbing
piece of listener mail I've ever read. That's like the
Dark Half. Do you remember that it was a dark half?
What it was it sparrows and the sparrows are flying. Yeah.

(04:05):
They were like psychopomps. They were like embedded with the
energy of of malice or something that kind of drag
you away. Yeah. Well, I mean I do kind of
wonder about her question, there was there something special about
this crow or was it? Was it just don't you
guys come across anything even even remotely like this in

(04:25):
the episode. I mean, crows do have a startlingly complex
social intelligence. Yeah, they have social relationships, and they seem
to display theory of mind where they can imagine the
intentions of other entities. Maybe they were like fronting to
her dad. They were like, oh, you want to kill
one of us, and then just like swarmed and we're like,

(04:46):
this is our gang. You can't row more so than
most birds. I believe there's the possibility for something I
had to be taking place. Yea though. Yeah, so thanks
for sharing, Nicole. That is very weird alright. This next
one is from Issha. I believe, and she says, hello,
I love the podcast and love the episode on Jeff

(05:08):
the Killer. That's the creepy pasta two episode we did.
I'm not trying to nitpick, but when you guys were
talking about acid burning, one of you said it is
more prevalent in countries where it is quote more acceptable
in society. I'm from Pakistan and I would like to
assure you that acid burning is not socially acceptable there.
It is a crime and perpetrators are punished. Saying it

(05:30):
is acceptable in society simply because the rate of occurrence
is high is the same as saying that gun violence
is acceptable in America's society for the same reason, I
have attached an article detailing the legal repercussions of committing
the crime of attacking someone with acid in Pakistan. Once again,
I love the podcast and apologize if it was a
little harsh. I don't I don't think that's a little

(05:51):
harsh at all. And actually when I first read this,
I was like, oh, jeez, I really hope I didn't
imply something like that. I think what we were trying
to get across was just that there are societies where
it's culturally prevalent. Yes, so that the exact quote in
that bit in in that episode was there have been
a couple of incidents where there have been Western tourists

(06:13):
in foreign countries where this is more acceptable, and um,
you know, to the to the listeners point, yeah, acceptable
is maybe not the right word here, said yeah, yeah,
that that I mean, that's a spur of the moment
thing that and that's my bad. But I would say,
like to her analogy here, like, I think you could

(06:33):
make the the statement that gun violence in American society
is prevalent. Yeah, I think that there there's a strong
comparison to be made here where a gun violence is
not something that is at all. I mean particularly the
kind of like mass shooting thing to it it's been
dealing with. Certainly, nobody is out there saying this is good,
this is great, this is happening, but it is happening

(06:55):
with enough of of a frequency that it exists in
the uh in like the public mindset. And if one
is to get you know, slightly poetic here, I guess
if one's heart were to go to a dark place,
then that experience, that motive behavior is waiting for them
there as an American um. But yeah, I don't. I

(07:16):
think it's the use of the word acceptable. Maybe that
caused the confusion, and that's certainly not what I was implaying. Yeah,
but that's a good clarification. Thank you, actually, and thank
you for letting us know. All right, Well, you know,
Joe and I did an episode on the Tip of
the Tongue or taught so we when we asked everyone
out there to share their taughts, and we receive a
lot of good feedback. So here's one from Ashley says, Hey, guys,

(07:38):
just finished up your Tip of the Tongue episode and
I thought I might have some insight into a couple
of topics that you brought up. First, I am fluent
in both English and as all American Sign Language. I
found that this is a most helpful skill in resolving
taughts in my world. Not only is a s L
far more primitive of a language than English, whose discrepancy
aids me in thinking of words by their death nisition

(08:00):
and not just their uses, but since ASL is a
physical language and English verbal, I often have the pieces
in one side when I don't on the other, translating
the discovery into the desired language becomes easy at that point.
This is an interesting point because we talked in the
episode about how I was surprised to find that there
is such a similarity between looking for the word in

(08:22):
English and or any language in a spoken language. And
then this also this thing known as the tip of
the fingers phenomenon in deaf signers, where they have the
same experience. They're looking for the sign and they have
the semantic meaning of the word, but they can't remember
what you do with your hands. So I wasn't on
this episode, but it reminds me of when we did
the Cyborg episode recently. We were talking about how one

(08:43):
of the guys had coined the word cyborg was very
interested in the ways that uh cyborgs could process language differently,
to the point that he was trying to come up
with a way to come up with averages of words,
like he was thinking about words as math and I
think there's a bit of a connection here. And at
the time I said, you know, this reminds me of
structuralism and post structuralism. This seems to be, as often

(09:06):
happens on stuff to blow your mind, one of those
topics that we circle around. Maybe we should do something
about it in the future. Although uh Man, post structuralism
with your real tough topic to try to spell out
in a like an hour long podcast. It would be
a challenge, but hey, we're all about a good challenge.
But anyway, Ashley does continue. Yes, she says, I also

(09:27):
produce write the words the anchors say at my local
news station. You mentioned during the podcast some of the
differences between speech and written Producing is a fun exercise
in both rooms. Not only must the words make sense
to the viewer who listens, but also to the anchor
who reads the words I assemble. Anyways, thanks for keeping
my mind entertained as I drive about town. Ashley. So,
Ashley is the shadow figure behind the news echo borg.

(09:52):
This is kind of like how you and I are
the shadow figures behind brain stuff. Yeah. Yeah, Jonathan Strickland
is our little puppet. Yeah. Most people have only seen
him from the but from the behind. But from looking
him from behind, it's just like the flesh opens up
into these rods. They've never seen the armhole. I kid,
Jonathan Strickland is full of wonderful insights on his own

(10:12):
and rods and gears. Okay. Also a couple of quick
messages we got back about the Tip of the Tongue episode.
Listener Sophia writes in good morning, gentlemen, love love, love
of the podcast. You're too kind, she says, seeing as
you asked, I constantly have a tip of the Tongue
moment with Christopher Walkin. I've seen most of his films,
his infamous SNL episode, and perhaps every celebrity imitation of him.

(10:34):
But when I talk about him, for whatever reason, I
cannot get his name out. Fun fact of which I'm
sure you're aware. He was in The Deer Hunter, which
is what I googled to get his name with wait
for it, John Kaze, John Kaze. Christian figured big into
our tip of the Tongue episode, Oh is he one
that you? One of you have a tip of the tongue?

(10:55):
We I mean, if i'd asked you who played Fredo
in The Godfather, would you have that name? No, and
I'll tell you why. I've never seen The god What. Yeah, well,
I know it's stunning. I've never seen any of the
Godfather films. I'm planning to sometime this year though. Okay, well, um,
don't let anybody build them up too much for you.
Oh okay, but I think I know who Jun Kazale is.

(11:17):
I know he was in a Deer Hunter dog day
after Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that guy. Yeah. So
thanks for writing in, Sophia. Sophia comments that she's in
Rome and so we appreciate that message. But I had
to read back to back with this, also a message
from Parker, who has a strange convergence here with Sophia's comments.
So Parker writes in says hey guys. Also Parker's referencing

(11:39):
the Tip of the Tongue episode. He says, hey guys,
super interesting episode. As always, you asked what were the
words that always tripped us up? For myself, I had
many years where I had ceaselessly confused Paul Giamati, Steve Bashemi,
and Christopher walkin Uh. It's likely that they all have
somewhat sad faces, and specifically that Giomati and Bashemy have

(12:01):
Italian last names, while Bashimmy and Walking looks somewhat similar
in their character, acting a bit scrawny and pale. It's
interesting as a Venn diagram, however, because the subsets of
two would always be confused, but never all three. I eat,
Giamati and Bashemmy interchangeable. Bashemy and Walking were interchangeable, but

(12:22):
I would never confuse Geomati and Walking. Uh. This aspect
is surely an extra phenomenon of its own, but it
seems as if it came into play as well. Do
you think the same part of the brain would be
affected when confusing people and trying to recollect people slash words?
Thanks for everything always entertained as I listen to you
guys while crunching numbers at my business management job. Have

(12:43):
a great day. Thank you for the message. But I
think that's an interesting question. I do pretty much think
it's it's going to be the same part of the brain.
I am not a neurologist, or a psychologist or an
expert on speech production. So that is my my lay
person's opinion as somebody who's read about this. But from
what I've read, I think, yeah, that we use sort
of most of the same gear in our brains to

(13:06):
come up with proper names that we do to come
up with words where in either case, you know the
semantic meaning you're either thinking about the person, you're thinking
about the definition of the word, but you just can't
come up with the sounds your mouth is supposed to make. Yeah,
so spoilers for our our listeners. Actually this happens to
us in the studio quite often, and we just edited
out where it will be me going, uh that, what's

(13:28):
his name? Uh, and then our producer Noel thankfully edits
it out so we sound, uh, you know, the right
thing as we as we brought up in the episode.
The best thing you can do to solve that problem
more or less on your own as quickly as possible.
That otherwise that the part of the brain ties Paul,

(13:49):
part of your brain. Yeah, don't sit in that tip
of the tongue state forever. It's not interesting to think
of Steve Bushemi as being like the sort of center
of this uh universe of character actor is that are
easy to confuse with one another. I would never be
confused about Steve to shimmy like his name. I look
at people who aren't Steve for shimmy, and I think
Steve a shimmy. All right, here's another one. This one

(14:11):
comes to us from Jonathan in Melbourne, Australia says, quote
in the show, you mentioned the French version of the phrase,
which translates to hole in the head. However, I think
you may have taken the phrase too literally. From your
banter around the show, it sounds like you interpreted the
phrase as being like a hole through the skull. And granted,
given a trepidation style, and since we've covered trepidation on

(14:32):
the show, we kind of can't help but do that.
We can just have a predisposition to talk about holes
in the skull. Um. That's another topic that the show keeps. Yeah, well,
it's kind of in the title of the show, right,
stuff to blow your mind? How are you gonna blow
the mind of not creating a hole? And speaking of Todd,
what's the guy we've talked about him on the show before,
the famous guy with a rod through the head. Yeah, yeah, anyway,

(14:56):
Jonathan continues, However, I interpret it as a meaning u
of a void or space in which the name or
idea should exist but is missing. That makes the phrase
more like the descriptions earlier in the episode where you
quoted descriptions of the feeling is being similar to have
having the shape for the idea in your head and
nothing else would quite fit there, but the idea itself
is missing, it can't be grasped. That interpretation makes the

(15:19):
French version of the phrase perhaps the most accurate. Thanks
again for a great podcast. I think it makes it.
I like this, It makes this as a black hole
in the mind. Yeah, I think Jonathan sounds like you're
exactly right. I bet you are interpreting this right and
we were interpreting it wrong. Uh. The hole in the
head is like what you're referencing is when we talked
about William James. You know, William James sort of has

(15:40):
this idea of the wraith, the wraith of the name.
It's this mold where the name should be, and nothing
else will fit in the mold except the name. But
you can't come up with the name. Yeah, that's scary. Actually,
I thought about the black hole in your head, and
it getting larger larger the longer he's been thinking about it.
Always starts with Steve. Okay, one more about the tip

(16:02):
of the tongue episode before we move on. We heard
from our listener Tyler, who said, hello there. I frequently
experience taught moments as a bilingual, and this is something
that actually comes up in the literature, is bilingualism and taughts.
Tyler writes, often I experienced the problem of having the
correct word but not in the correct language. This happens

(16:23):
more frequently in times when I've when I have to
switch back and forth from Spanish to English. I enjoyed
the explanation on knowing the starting point and the ending
but not being able to make the connection. I've personally
felt that it's caused by modes. Sometimes when I'm in
a Spanish mode, it's hard to get out of it. Uh. Similarly,
I experience it when talking on different subjects. I might

(16:46):
be in a movie mode and then the conversation goes
to music, but the connections are still trying for movies.
Thanks for the episode. I very much enjoy your explanations
of every day often overlooked occurrences Kadado uh Tyler, and
so I think that's an interesting insight, like the different modes,
Like you're you're almost in one warehouse in your brain

(17:06):
looking for product codes to locate the correct items on
the shelves, and if you quickly transition to a different
warehouse part of your brain, that that it might be
harder to locate the things you're looking for. I can
see how that would be true. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Okay,
here's two that are about the same thing, and it's
something that came up in our episode on cargo Cults
and Richard Feynman. The first comes from Carson and he says,

(17:29):
just listening to the cargo cult episode, I laughed at
the part about the reflexology student and then realized what
was probably going on. I'm not going to call it
mumbo jumbo because someone near and dear to me practices it,
but I am also not ready to deny the placebo effect. Well,
I'll just say that I think that we should do
an episode on reflexology. So I don't think it's mumbo
jumbo either. But anyway, the theory is that your body

(17:51):
has energy fields that are all connected, all across the body,
and using this knowledge, you can massage a specific pressure
point on the foot and have an effect on the pituitary.
So the student probably didn't think the pituitary was actually
in the foot. He probably just meant he was on
the pressure point. However, I wasn't personally there in that
hot tub, so I can't say for sure. Thanks for

(18:13):
that clarification, Carson. Yeah, and then we received another message
from Jonathan similar thing. He says, a wonderful podcast on
cargo cults. But I have one comment that's not for you,
but for Richard Feynman. I don't think Richard Feynman still
a lot of this now. He's quite yeah, I have
no desire to validate foot reflexology as a science. But
according to a system, there are channels of energy that

(18:33):
run through the body. Points of the feet correspond to
different organs of the body. So this is the same thing. Uh.
And he's basically saying that it's possible that Feynman just
took this the wrong way. So to recap from that
episode Fineman, the story goes that Fineman wasn't a hot
tub with some reflexology students, and they were kind of
like rubbing on each other, and one said I think
that I've got your pituitary and he was rubbing on

(18:55):
a girl's foot, and Fineman was like, clearly, that's not
your pituitary, and he uses that as an example of
cargo cult science and then like they didn't really understand science. However,
these two messages seem to indicate that the student actually
was probably thinking he was accessing the energy lines connecting
to the pituitary, and that Feynman was just being grumpy. Well,

(19:19):
I don't want to be unfair because I haven't read
all that much about reflexology, but it it sounds like
it is a reasonable assumption to say, massaging somebody's foot
is not really affecting the energy lines going to their pituitary. See,
I don't know, And that's why I think we should
do an episode on it, because I don't know. Well,
I mean, it sounds like it's based on some kind
of non evidence based thoughts about like spirit energy and stuff.

(19:43):
Maybe well maybe I I always took it to be
like more like pressure points and things like that, like
similar to acupuncture. But yeah, maybe we should investigate this
and unravel it. Oh man, if we want to open
that can of worms. I don't know if you. We
could start with me rubbing your feet, Joe, see what happens. Well,
we can do some acupuncture and see if we get
the CBO effect. Okay, alright, So next we're gonna talk

(20:05):
about some emails we got with reference to the episode
Robert and I did on hyper Real Religions. That was
the episode about religions that are founded based on texts
or or canons or ideas that the believers in the
religion explicitly acknowledge our fictional and there's not like a
you know, somebody thinks there's a real spiritual revelation, you're

(20:25):
basing it on the Big Lebowski or Star Wars or
something you know is not real to begin with. And
the way that Robert put it to me later on
was sort of like a Cyborgian version of religion, and
that like, you take aspects that work for your personal
worldview and helped the kind of guide you along what
you consider to be a sort of righteous path already. Yeah,

(20:46):
so we got a lot of interesting feedback about this episode.
And it's true that I think almost any time we
talk about religion, which we do a fair amount on
the show, we get results sort of from both sides
of the the issue. It seems like if you bring
up religion from a you know, critical or investigatory way
of thinking, you're you're gonna get some feedback. You know,

(21:09):
people are gonna have some feelings. Yeah. I always feel
that the approach that we take to religion on the
show is let's let's get it out of the box,
let's look at it, Let's hold it up to the light,
Let's see how how the light goes through it, you know,
treat it like this sort of crystal object. And in
doing that, you have to put yourself sometimes in a
state of vulnerable open mindedness. And that's where that's where

(21:32):
I like to put myself, and that's where I try
to invite the listeners to reach that point as well.
But that's not always a comfortable place. Well. I mean,
we hear from a lot of you guys out there
who seem to really like this approach, and this is
I totally agree, Robert. That's exactly the same way I
like to come at it, to to to understand it more,
to look at it, uh, and not just to be

(21:53):
focused on either propping it up as perfect and wonderful
and true, or in bashing it and tearing it down.
But you know, we will hear from people who have
their feelings stimulated by us talking about this. So we
wanted to give a sampling of a couple of types
of responses we got from the hyper Real Religions episode,
right and and in reading these, and especially in reading

(22:15):
one or two of the more critical bits of listener
mail we're received, I want to also recognize that sometimes
a hostile reaction is sort of like the the initial
reaction to immunization, you know. It's it's kind of like
like like I can look back at my own history
with religion, and there have been times where I go
into a situation with a certain set of beliefs, those

(22:36):
beliefs are challenged, and my initial response is to harden up,
you know, and uh and say, you know, get away
from me. I don't want to think about that. It's
only later than I'm able to to think about some
of these criticisms and incorporate that in and emerge ultimately
stronger from it. Now. Specifically, I think what some listeners
were responding to in the hyper Real Religion episode was

(22:56):
us talking about Young Earth creationism because we had to
explain the origins of the postafarianism idea, and that that
comes out of a criticism of the campaign to teach
creationist ideas in American public schools. So it's it's like
a datast kind of performance. Yeah, it's a it's basically
a parody, all right. So I'm gonna kick off this

(23:18):
kick this off by reading a listener mail from a
listener who wants to remain anonymous. I'm just gonna read
a segment here, and they were essentially comparing our handling
of religion to other house stuff Works podcast handling of religion. Uh?
And did that? I cannot speak because I cannot specifically
remember an example of another show handling religion uh in

(23:38):
any way, shape or form. I know they have, but
I don't listen to all the episodes that come out
on the other shows. So this individual says, as I
listened listen to your show on hyper real religions, I
discovered that no such mutual respect exists on your part.
My faith was blatantly attacked. My belief system was literally mocked.
As one of you laughed out loud when mentioning the

(24:00):
Young Earth model of creation. And I was made to
feel shamed for being a Christian and a fan of
your show at the same time. Please know that I'm
not trying to retaliate or speak out of anger or
anything like that. I'm not looking for an apology or
any sort of acknowledgement at all. I just wanted to
let you know that I'm sorry you had to speak
this way, and I sincerely hope that you will cease
from abusing people for their beliefs in the future. Well,

(24:21):
it's certainly not my intention when we talk about religion
to abuse anybody for their beliefs, and certainly not to
make them feel ashamed. I just uh, I just like
to think and talk about these ideas. Uh. And so
if you are a Christian or somebody of any other faith,
please do not feel ashamed listening to the show. I
hope you will go on this journey of exploration with us.

(24:41):
I also think we should be able to laugh at
about just we should be able to laugh at anything. Yeah,
well just about that's another point. Yeah, I mean, we
we make jokes about every kind of idea that we
talk about on the show, including scientific ideas. Uh. And
so that certainly if you're if you're especially troubled by
making jokes about out a certain subject that I guess

(25:02):
maybe we we might be able to get to you
in that sense, and we're not trying to hurt your feelings.
So like, I wasn't on this episode, but I do
just want to chime in and back up what you
guys are saying in the sense that, like, yeah, there's
lots of opportunities out there where you can be listening
to things, especially in the podcast world, right where like
we're not all going to have the exact same beliefs
and they're not going to overlap, but like podcasts in

(25:22):
particular have like a sort of personal resonance with a
lot of people right where they start to feel like
we're in your with us, right. Uh, Like, I'll give
you an example from my own life. So, like, I'm
a big fan of stand up comedy. I like Louis Black.
You guys know Louis Black, right. Lewis Black on one
of his albums has this pretty long bit about like
how stupid soy milk is Okay? I drink soy milk,

(25:46):
I love Louis Black. I listened to it and I
just go, Okay, we disagree, drink soy milk. I didn't
know you were such a moron exactly. Well, but see,
like you know, I remember the first time out there.
Please know I'm kidding. Yeah, he is totally choking. Uh.
But but you know, like that's a sort of like
non religious version of this where it's like you can

(26:07):
hear something like that and go, well, we don't agree
on this particular thing, but I still like this person.
I like what they're bringing to me. I'm going to
keep up with it, you know, And I can and
I can also laugh at jokes about SWI milk. Well,
I hope it comes through at least most of the
time that we do take an inquisitive approach to religion
on the show. But we also I tend to think

(26:28):
we're fairly friendly and open minded about it. I like
to think so too, especially knowing you guys, you know,
outside of the studio as well. Whenever we've talked about religion,
you guys, it's not like your bemoana or demeaning and
you know, any particular kind of beliefs. Yeah, and it's
not like even within this room, the three of us
have a uniformed outlook on religion, spirituality. Like we each

(26:50):
have our own system, we have our own worldview that
had it may incorporate religion religion into it to varying degrees. Yeah,
I worship the Great God Cthulhu and and and I'm
I'm of the cult of Falsa Doom. We all know
what is stronger than steel? You don't know, do you?
It's a flash. Yeah, of course the flesh really does

(27:13):
not hold up well to steal on that movie. I
recall that's a good point. Steel really cuts through it.
Falsa Doom's philosophy. It sounds real good until it meets
the steel, so clear clarifying for the audience. Thalsa Doom
is the James Earl Jones character from the movie, Yes,
from the Barbarian Yeah. So anyway, following up, but we
got one more email we wanted to share, actually a

(27:33):
couple more, but here's one that we got about the
hyper Real Religions episode, and this is from our listener, Gustavo. So.
Gustavo says, Hi, guys, I really enjoyed the hyper Real
Religion episode. You made some new connections between both official
religions and the hyper real stuff that I hadn't really
considered the search for meaning means quite a lot to me.
My life is more or less built on seeking the

(27:55):
deepest truths I can find. The question never ends. Having
read Dune quite a few times, I can relate to
the idea of reverence for a story that becomes part
of one's being. You didn't quite say that, but I
hope I'm reflecting your intention. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have
to believe Dune is literally true for it to start
to take on some kind of deep meaning or spiritual

(28:15):
significance for you. Anyway, Gustavo continues, maybe I'll memorize the
Litany against Fear to quote it now that I know
at least one person who who has done that. That
was impressive to me. I wanted to clarify, as I
did replying to Gustavo, I have not memorized the Litany
against Fear, though I think I should. I was reading
it off of the screen and this is the thing
when they put their hand in the box here, Yeah,

(28:38):
the little death that brings total obliteration. Yeah. Total. I
once wrote it on my arm before a job interview,
like you know, not where it could be seen, but
it would be a good tattoo. Yeah, I would would
uh anyway, Gustavo continues, when I was twenty, I found Mormonism.
Before that, I was Catholic. I searched so many philosophies
and religions. Nowadays, I can't say I identify with any

(29:01):
particular belief system, but I love systems of evidence along
with speculation about what might be. I call myself a nonbeliever.
I don't think the supernatural is real, but I'd like
to fly, breathe underwater, and do some other things rather
fantastic and deliberately escapist. That would be damn cool. So
I hope there's more. Maybe this is a simulation, and

(29:24):
we'll wake up saying, holy jumping, Juniper Batman, that was
a trip. What's next? I love that reference, good old
Burt word as robin Uh. Gustavo rights, you were fair,
reverent and kind, considering especially how religious slash spiritual discussions
so often devolved into needless, wasteful arguments. Your podcast is informative,
and I feel pleased for having listened. Related one funny

(29:48):
thing about the Wicked Problems episode is that explaining wicked
problems is somewhat of a wicked problem. We know it.
The recursion leads to endless complexity, as with the nature
of life evolution in the quest for meaning. I hope
your day is pleasant, which is a great way to
end an email. But um, yeah, and so I find
it kind of funny that we've heard both from people

(30:08):
who thought that we were way too harsh about religion,
and we heard from multiple people who said that they
were very uh, they appreciated how fair and polite we were.
So I don't know what to make of that. I
think that's a good sign. I think if you hear
two extremes that we're probably doing something right. I hope so.
But that might just be my own narcissism talking. But
thanks for the email, Gustavo. This is it was really great.

(30:31):
All right. Here's another one Chris from San Marcos, California
Rights and it says have been listening to your podcast
for a while and have never been moved to write
in until now. I just wanted to say that I
really appreciate Robert's win app analogy with regard to religion
or religious beliefs. This is about the win App skins. Yes,
perhaps we are all really just trying to choose the

(30:52):
right skin. As the case may be, it was a rich,
engaging episode, and I hope that you'll do a follow up.
Perhaps some day I can say that I was listening
to the launch of Winampism and I like that, and
we'll be able to classify myself as one of the
early win ampist Or is it when when I'm Pete

(31:12):
and there'd be like real playerism and stuff like that,
be the really bad religion during your episodes? During your episode,
and image sprang to mind of the theme in Galaxy
Quest and the reverence for the quote historical documents. Not
sure if this falls under hyper religion or cargo cult
or just an interesting crossover for both. Thank you for

(31:35):
helping to keep my brain functioning during a nasty so
Cow commute. I think Galaxy Quest is actually a really
great point of comparison because in in the movie Galaxy Quest,
we meet aliens who have seen old episodes of what's
essentially Star Trek and they've interpreted it as true. Late
great Ellen Rickman, yeah and so, and then they build
this entire way of interacting with the world around the

(31:57):
assumption that Star Trek is reality that's owns like cargo
cult to me, Big time. Yeah, and it's interesting because
instead of it being a technological cargo cold it it's
it's like, um, an imagination cargo call. Yeah. Yeah, this
We didn't have time to read this listener mail, but
somebody else wrote into us to say that the scene
at the beginning of Star Trek into Darkness is a

(32:19):
really good example of cargo cults. They violate the prime
directive and interact with this, like they let people see
the starship Enterprise on this I don't want to say
primitive planet, but it's like a planet that doesn't have
that technology yet, and they like, isn't it implied that
they like worship the Enterprise as a god? After that? Yeah,
it's a pre warp drive planet. They see they see
a starship and they think it's a god. Yeah, that's

(32:40):
the science fiction is full of great examples like that. Okay,
this email comes to us from another person who listened
to the Creepy Pasta two episode, the Jeff the Killer one,
and to sort of, uh, you know, summarize that episode again,
Like we looked at all the various supposed attributes of
Jeff the Killer, one of which was the idea that
he cut his own lids off, and we looked at

(33:02):
the science of whether that was possible. And this listener writes,
and hey, guys, I know I'm late to the game
on this one, but I just heard the Creepy Pasta
two episode. While listening to it, I immediately thought, this
podcast applies to me. When you were talking about eyelid reconstruction.
I was in a car wreck when I was when
I was sixteen. I was in the passenger seat and
the car flipped over and slid on its hood. My

(33:22):
face went out the sunroof, and consequently I lost most
of the skin on my forehead down to the skull
and the skin on the left side of my face,
more specifically my left cheek and eyebrow eye area. I
was fortunate that I didn't lose my eye, but the
initial skin grafts used to replace the missing skin twisted
and pulled my eye open, so I couldn't close, especially

(33:42):
when I was asleep. And this is exactly what we
talked about in the episode. I had to put a
greasy ointment in my eye to keep it from drying
out for about a year until the scar tissue settled. Okay, Wow,
we didn't read anything about that kind of stuff. What
they ended up doing was taking the skin from behind
my ears because it is the closest smiliarity to eyelids
skin thickness and softness. I'm assuming he means for grafts,

(34:05):
and I think we all just touched. Yeah, they used
the skin from behind both ears from my upper and
lower eyelids on my left eye. Fun story, I think
he's being sarcastic. The hospital I went to for these
procedures was about three hours from where I lived. When
I got home from getting the stitches removed from behind
my ear, I took my shirt off not carefully enough

(34:26):
and ripped the incision behind my ear open and had
to get back in the car and read back to
the hospital to have my ear restitched. I ended up
spending twelve hours in a car that day. I also
thought it was interesting when you referenced the paper that
said an odyssey. I'm pretty sure the procedure they used
to replace the skin on my forehead was fairly experimental,
as they had to rotate muscle from the top of

(34:47):
my head to my forehead and then cut the skin
graph so it kind of looked like a fishing net.
This is fascinating and this is the kind of stuff
you don't get out of the academic literature, you know. Yeah,
you only get the not even sometimes the surgical, but
the standpoint. But then sometimes it's like one step removed
from that sort of the academic view of the surgical
procedure as opposed to the user experience. Uh. Just to

(35:11):
follow up on that last fishnet thing, he said, the
skin then grew together to be full, one full piece.
I can't even imagine how that works. But that's fascinating.
Plastic surgery, reconstructive surgery is just so amazing. Yeah, having
seen like you know, what was done to my own
song with his palette, right, it's just crazy to just
like they went in there, they closed it and it

(35:32):
became solid flash again. It's just it's it's a testament
to not only a surgical ability, but just the healing
ability and flexibility of biology. Uh. Less bit here he
says this was just for functionality, not for looks. Of
the course of five years, I had fifteen surgeries, six
of which were skin expander projects to replace the scar
tissue on my forehead and cheek with smooth, healthy skin.

(35:53):
Not unless you're really paying attention, it looks like I'm
missing an eyebrow and have a black eye. I wear
glasses some most people don't notice. Happy ending. I have
an identical twin brother, and now and then my family
members will call me by the wrong name, which always
makes me smile. It's awesome. Man. Wow, Well, thanks for
sharing that story with us. His name is Jason. Thanks
for sharing that. And yeah again, so like that amazing.

(36:16):
That's the kind of thing I like to hear about
because we do the research and we pull that all
together and we try to extrapolate out of that. But
like these real life experiences really, I think add another
dimension to it. Hey, so we got a lot of
listener feedback on our P versus n P episode, the
one Robert and I did about algorithms, complexity theory and

(36:36):
this great unsolved problem in computer science that would be
sort of revolutionary. It's what Carney's glowing with right now. Yeah,
that's right. So we we don't know yet if he
solved it, but I don't know. The fact that he's
just like pooping out harps at an enormous rate does
make me think he's entered the computing realm of the gods.
They sound great at these harps. I mean they're perfectly

(36:56):
tuned when they clung to the floor. Anyway, so we
got quite a few pieces of feedback, and one of
them that I thought we should start with was an
email we got from Jim in New Jersey. Now, Jim
is the listener out there who inspired us to do
the episode. I've been emailing back and forth with him
over a long time and he sent us some really smart,
insightful emails that helped me figure out some ways to

(37:20):
approach the topic on the show. So big thanks to him.
But he contacted us after we did it. He said,
great job on the P versus n P segment, especially
without visuals. I wonder if we'll ever know the answer.
What if it's one of Girdle's statements that cannot be proven.
This is referencing Kurt Girdle, who we talked about in
the episode with the idea of the incompleteness theorems, the
idea that in a self consistent mathematical system, you can

(37:43):
never know the answer to every question. Um. But anyway,
Jim continues, you stated that P might not be m
P for us mortals, but it could be for the gods.
While that argument is completely hypothetical. I don't think that
could be the case. If we were to have insistent
logical models, then if it's the case for Man, it

(38:03):
must be the case for the gods as well. However,
the gods might have a nondeterministic machine that can solve
problems in P time. Keep in mind that NP are
still polynomial problems, but only a nondeterministic model. I could
see a nondeterministic machine being the realm of the gods
and not for Man. That Yeah, so he's saying that,

(38:25):
you know, P versus MP is about logic. It's it's
not something that could be different depending on what the
you know, physical facts of the universe, where if it's
true here or not true here, the same would hold
true in whether it's the any other universe. I just
want to throw in on the P versus MP thing,
because you guys are too humble to pat yourselves on

(38:46):
the back about this. But not only did we receive
a ton of listener mail, uh some of which we're
going to go through now about how great that episode was.
There are a lot of messages that came to us
through Facebook and Twitter saying how great that they thought
you guys did at exactly what what he just mentions here,
in particular without using visual reference explaining something like this,

(39:08):
and that you tackled a computer science topic that most
people would shy away from. So I'm giving you guys
high fives. Yeah, well, we were a little nervous going
into it, but uh yeah, yeah, well, I mean I
think we have to be honest and say, neither Robert
or I or you know, we're we're not big computer
science and logic guys. So we were a little bit
out of our depth, but we we get our best

(39:30):
to make it, to understand it, and to make it
understandable to you. And you know, I found that actually
sometimes I can man an advantage that's been my experience
in the past. It's like we're we're the we can
be the ones that venture into the woods, uh, retrieve
the mysteries and bring them back and explain them to
to to everyone else. Well, yeah, we we don't have
the This is actually a phrase that Jim used in

(39:51):
his emails that that I was having with him. He
talked about the curse of knowledge. We don't have the
curse of knowledge on this issue, like, uh, knowing it
with such depth and complexity of understanding that we lose
the ability to give the gist of it. You ever
have that problem where you know a topic so well
you can't explain it in a simple way. This was
actually one of the reasons when I was a kid.

(40:14):
This is why my parents explained to me that my
math teacher was so mean to us. Was that, like,
she understood it so well that she didn't know how
this was like fifth grade, but she she had the
curse of knowledge. Yeah, and that she like was so
frustrated trying to explain these simple mathematical things to us
and that we didn't get it. I've heard that from

(40:35):
an other disciplines before, Like people who are who find
themselves given the opportunity to teach a thing that they
are great at, and sometimes they just don't have the
patients for it because it's like you know, breaking down
the basics and the end of the introductory material. It's
just ultimately difficult for somebody that's gone too far beyond. Yeah.
If there's anything I learned from grad school, it's that

(40:57):
there's a huge difference between an expert and something and
somebody who's a great teacher and something. Oh yeah, sometimes
they overlap. I don't mean that they're mutually exclusive, but
oh no, this is true. This is true outside the
sciences as well. This is true. And like writing and stuff,
a lot of people you go to a writing program
or something, you want to go where the famous, really
good writer is that famous really good writer might not

(41:18):
be a very good teacher. Yeah, and even like physical
crafts as well. I've heard this with professional wrestlers. Actually,
I think it is uh the wrestler Daniel Bryan who
recently retired, and he is he's known for just being
a real master of his craft. You know, a lot
of people think, oh, he should train. He can't. You know,
he's not gonna be an active competitor anymore. He can

(41:39):
teach people what he knows, but he's he's gone on
record is saying no, I tried it. It's just not
for me. I can't. I can't deal with the basics. Interesting,
we can't all be Rocky Balboa and Creed. That's right.
Who would have thought the curse of knowledge would apply
to wrestling? Indeed, now I think Christian you should read
another message and then maybe we'll get back to a

(42:00):
few more P versus NP messages. So this one comes
back to the episode the second only the second time
that Joe and I have done an episode by ourselves
without Robert. It was our episode about Wilhelm Reich and Uh.
This guy says high hosts, I really enjoyed your Wilhelm
Reich episode, which connected some historical dots that I was
vaguely aware of but had not really seen together. I

(42:22):
may a quote classically trained scientist with a PhD in
quantitative ecology. Uh. And he says that that means lots
of probability and statistics and a master's in a hydrology.
But I also went to a far out hippie massage
school prior to my graduate trade, and I'm an amateur
herbalist and gardner. This guy sounds fascinating. So I feel
like I've seen both sides of the science as dominant

(42:45):
worldview divide. I feel like you show did a great
job of exploring the myth and mythos that Reik's ideology
is so revealent of being neither dismissive and condescending nor credulous,
that middle ground seems especially difficult to mind in the
modern era. I do have one comment, Slash critique that
arose in my mind several times throughout the episode. I

(43:06):
felt like you perhaps assigned an excess of rationality to
the status quo of the era. Both in the legal
judicial system and in the medical field. Both are fields
where systematic discrimination, profiteering, and all around human venality have
historically been a rule rather than an exception, from the
Dreadscott Decision to early twentieth century eugenics movements to McCarthy

(43:28):
is m the U. S Government has not exactly been
a paragon of fairness and equality. Likewise, with the medical profession.
In the past twenty years alone, many clear ethical breaches
have been driven by profit, and countless more ambiguous cases
of shoddy science and possible conflicts of interest exist. I
find this all so interesting because it's exactly what allows

(43:49):
conspiracy theories to take root and flourish. From using prozac
and children to full hysterectomyse the medical field is littered
with cases of expensive and invasive interventions being used long
before any evidence of the efficacy has been shown. So
when someone claims that all of modern science is flawed,
there's an emotionally appealing argument to be made. In many cases,

(44:12):
older models of treatment such as relaxation, including things like prayer, yoga, etcetera. Massage,
and herbs are quote as good and less harmful than
modern medical treatments for which limited scientific evidence of efficacy exists.
One interesting example is cancer, which you discussed at some length.
Only recently has quality of life emerged as a valuable metric.

(44:35):
Prolonging life has been the historical target, so that an
aggressive treatment that had some chance of extending a patient's
life by months would be common, even if the quality
of those extra months was low. Increasingly, doctors are having
conversations with patients to ask their wishes and desired outcomes,
which I suppose is something we can all agree is

(44:56):
a good thing from a different perspective, pat It's absolutely
drive drug development, as indicated by the Great S s
r I Medical ghostwriting program in the face of prozacs
patent expiration. That's something that would be great to talk
about actually on the show. This in turn means that
unpatentable drugs receive much less scientific scrutiny solely due to funding.

(45:18):
So the fact that traditional herbs are rarely studied by
modern medicine is a no brainer. Natural products are difficult
or impossible to patent. There's a logical jump from Big
Pharma's greedy bag of beep demonstrably true to big Pharma
is suppressing the cure to cancer, which is unlikely. Still,
it's not hard to see how some middle ground is
plausibly true, buying up competitors or even generics in the

(45:41):
interest of profit rather than health, for example. There's more
to this, but I just want to pause and interject here.
Uh So, one thing that we've covered on the show
before that's very connected to what he's talking about here
is m d m A and its use in both
cancer studies and uh in treating PTSD. And I just
did a write up on it for how stuff works now.

(46:04):
Because the group MAPS that has been working on studying
therapeutic applications of m d m A for PTSD, that's
a bunch of acronyms for you. Uh They just said
that they're about five years out from it being legal
for therapeutic application. And that's one of the problems with
that too, is that m d m A doesn't have

(46:25):
I guess a patent applied to it and or at
least as expired, and so so there's not a huge
amount of money behind exactly. The argument goes that that's
why pharmaceutical companies aren't making a great effort to do
similar studies. So you've got a group like Maps, which
is a nonprofit that's raising millions of dollars through donations
to do this kind of study. Um, you know, speaking
of M D M A, I wanted to throw out

(46:47):
a quick reference to a quote from Alexander Shulgun that
I ran across instantly, and that was that he was
arguing that you could essentially find M D M A
in the Pyramids. I mean, you will not find it
in the pyramids. Let's say the ancient Egyptians had it.
He apparently said that if you found it in the pyramids,
it would still be usable, Like it would really that

(47:08):
kind of like long term story. Yeah, we didn't talk
about that, like the longevity of Yeah, well Shulgun is fascinating.
Uh So there's two more paragraphs. No, it's okay, I'm
gonna I'm gonna keep reading it just because this guy
Christians stuff. It's not me, his name is also Christian.
It's just really like good, Yeah, like there's a lot

(47:28):
to respond. He needs to start his own podcast. This
is pretty pretty good stuff, all right, he says, All
of which is to say that it's not hard to
see of the nineteen forties establishment railroaded this particular quack
he's talking about William right here, and how even the
quackiest quacks have plenty of good ideas, and the most
well meaning establishment players like judges or doctors will embrace

(47:48):
whatever hocum is in vogue. Uh. And the great challenge
is teasing out the truth from wishful thinking like reich mass,
hysteria or greed. To do this requires basic research and
a wrong educational system, which in turn requires government funding,
which in turn has shrunk. So, just like infrastructure, research
and education have the potential to greatly increase human well being,

(48:11):
and they're expensive and often poorly supported by prevailing businesses
and political interests. In that case, today is not so
unlike Right's time. Thanks again for the intriguing history lesson
Christian And this was a really great email full of
a lot of interesting ideas. A lot of it I
think I can agree with here, Like I like the
new nuance and what he's talking about saying that, um,

(48:33):
he it's easy for people to have conspiracy theories against
say the scientific establishment, and say like, oh, they're trying
to shut you down, um, because the scientific establishment is fallible.
Even if I would like, what I would say is that, Um,
there's sort of an equivocation issue on the word science

(48:55):
between how people use the word science, Like there's one
definition where you'd say it's basically a method it or
a process like uh, you know, I, I replied to Christian,
and I tried to define it like a systematic cognitive
toolbox for removing error and bias from observations and forming
predictive theory. And in that meaning it's kind of unassailable, right,
I mean, science is pretty unambiguously a good thing. But

(49:19):
then there's also science. As you know, when the lay
person says science, they're often talking about some vaguely uh
vaguely imagined group of people who are in white lab
coats doing things. And of course those people are people
are people like any other people, and they might be
doing really good work, or they might have selfish motives
or whatever. It kind of gets to Cary exactly. That's

(49:41):
where it's going with the idea that the sort of
I love science, bumper sticker level of scientific understanding exactly. Yeah,
that we talk about that in the Cargo. Cold science
is just this force that makes things better at it
and is treated in a lot of ways by some
people like an infallible religion. Just one other thing that
I wanted to say about Christians message in particular. You know,

(50:02):
his his comment critique was about how we were we
were maybe too nice to the legal judicial system in
the medical field at the time, and I certainly didn't
mean to come across that way, no, And well, if
we were being careful. It's funny because this is another
example of an episode where we received listener mail on
two sides of it, right. Oh yeah, we we got

(50:23):
some rich Ian's writing in we did not happy. They
thought that we were completely unfair, yeah, and that we
hadn't done our research and that we were totally unfair
to Reich and that we were rude about it. So
it's again, this is another one of those moments where
it's like, oh, well, you know, and I'm seeing these
two different types of messages come in that that makes
me think like, maybe we did something right sides, then

(50:45):
you must have hit the right Not that I would
say that Christians seems piste off, He's he's got a
very rational kind of critique. But I think that I
thought that we were probably being careful during that just
so that we could give Reich like as fair shake
as possible. Well, I mean, you don't have to buy
into Ricky and pseudoscience to say that, you know, he
was probably still mistreated by the government. It is very

(51:07):
possible for existing authorities to to unfairly prosecute someone who
is in fact a quack. And I think that's what
Christians outlining here is like all the ways that that
that could be possible and still is possible. Okay, it
looks like Carney has has another P versus MP listener
to mail for you to read here, Joe, Oh wow,
and look at this glitter is just dangling right, It's

(51:30):
going everywhere heavenly glitter. Okay, uh so this is P
versus MP and it's from our listener, Rowan. So Rowan
Wright said, Hey, I'm Rowan, longtime listener, first time comment
or love the show, YadA YadA. Anyway, I was listening
to your P versus n P episode and as a
biologist starting to dip their toes into computer science, I

(51:50):
was fascinated. So it sounds like you are right in
the bull's eye of this episode, Rowan. But anyway, Rowan says,
you guys broke it down in a way that made
it more accessible than all the cops ie resources I've
checked out and appreciated how you got into the implications
without getting bogged down into the mats. Well, thank you, Rohan.
That's very encouraging to hear. Anyway, Rowan goes on, as

(52:10):
for the question of whether natural selection is a brute
force algorithm, I vote no Rowan's and so this is
great because he's got experience with both biology and computer science.
So Rowan says, I'm going to use the peppered moth
evolution during the Industrial Revolution as an example. The peppered
moth always had these random light and dark variants which

(52:34):
would have arisen thanks to random mutation, like a brute
force algorithm. But when the Industrial Revolution came around and
everything got covered in gross soot, the ratio shifted drastically
towards more black moths because they blended in better. They
didn't need to wait for baby moths to get random
mutations for better camouflage. Because there was a huge environmental

(52:56):
pressure killing off the white moths. If we want to
stick the comps ie analogies, the white moths subroutine gets
shut off early before it goes through every possible variation
on white moths. You could think of natural selection within
an individual as a brute force algorithm, but when you
zoom out to the population level, it's definitely more sophisticated.

(53:17):
That's my take on it. Anyway, side note, uh oh.
He also asked that we put our email some more
more prominent on the site for people who don't like
to go to social media networks. Look, the site is
supposedly going to get redesigned in the next couple of months,
so we'll see. Yeah, yeah, we can definitely throw that out. Yeah,
if you if you've been to Stuff to Blow your
mind in the past, if you're a regular visitor, then

(53:38):
get excited because facelift is on the way. But we
also try to throw it out at the top and
the end of every episode. And and if you're listening
right now, I wondering what it is, it's blow the
mind at how stuff works dot com. Yeah, so thanks
a lot for that email, row, and I think that's
an interesting way to think about it. So that we
were essentially asking you know, whether evolution is in any
way optimized or whether it's just force and and this

(54:01):
makes sense, it's sort of optimized by the number you
know that that their natural variations occurring already. Yeah. One
of the things that I really like about getting listener
mail like this is that kind of example, the moths
and the soot and the environmental qualities of it. That's
the kind of thing that even for us, like when
we're digging through research constantly to try to find something

(54:23):
to talk about, are likely to is likely to get missed, right,
But it's fascinating. And it's also one of those things
that you won't see in a lot of like pop
si uh like magazines or feeds or whatever, because it
doesn't have like a sexy headline, right, like soit covered
moths evolve blah blah blah, you know what I mean,
Like like that it's old news. It's not something that

(54:47):
exactly but that is like a really important thing to
learn from and one of the reasons why I love
doing this show. Yeah. All right, here's another little bit
on P versus MP, and this one comes to us
from Jonathan. Jonathan. It's a great job on making a
difficult topic understandable taking the issue in a specifically human context.
Are you open minded enough for a thought experiment? Are we?

(55:10):
How about if we postulate the existence of a different
form of human intelligence, not digital, we can call intuition.
In this thought experiment, we style intuition is operating only conditionally,
the specific conditions irrelevant for this purpose. With intuition, it's
possible to solve a problem directly without the need to
test a number of alternatives. This type of cognition is
it is not repeatable using our standard scientific method, but

(55:34):
it is experienced by many people at different times, and
apparently has been throughout history. For a possible example, let's
again for the sake of thought experiment, consider the development
of folklore medicine. Willow bark was used by some Native
American people as an analgesic and have been proven to
contain salosilic acid, the main ingredient in aspirant. For ancient
people to experiment with dozens, perhaps hundreds of plant remedies

(55:56):
would not only have been time wasting, but extremely dangerous.
In this thought experiment, p equals in p under certain
conditions only and only within the context of human intelligence.
For the podcasts keep up the great work. Well, that's interesting.
I mean, I I don't tend to ascribe intuition any
any spooky significance like that, but that is an interesting
sort of counterfactual to think about. Now. I would tend

(56:18):
to think that P equals in P or it doesn't.
Right that there there there can't be conditions where it
does and conditions where it doesn't. Either that's the universe
we live in or it's not. It's sort of like saying, uh,
the law of non contradiction exists in some conditions but
not in others. It's kind of seems like if A
cannot equal not A, then there can't be conditions where

(56:41):
that's not the case. But I don't know. I like
this discussion of intuition in all of this because I
seem to remember that Ian M. Banks incorporates this a
little bit into one of the early Culture novels that
the the all powerful computer aies that run the culture.
They keep humans around, of course because they're benevolent and
they take care of the humans, but behind the humans

(57:02):
are sometimes involved in operations because humans get bored and
one adventures, but also because humans bring something unique to
the problem solving scenario sometimes. Yeah, well, I mean that
sort of gets into one of the examples we talked
about in the P versus NP episode is you know,
one of the people writing on this subject, I believe
it was Scott Aaronson said, you know, if we live

(57:24):
in a P equals MP universe, then there's nothing all
that special about being able to compose the most beautiful
symphony on earth. Really that anybody should have the toolbox
to do that equally um, And so I think that's
an interesting way of looking at it. Like all of
the problem solving tasks, all of the mental algorithms that
are the most interesting and the most impressive to us,

(57:46):
tend to be mysterious. It's difficult to see how one
got from one end to the other, you know, So
when you see somebody have a really novel solution to something,
it's often kind of mysterious where that solution came from. Wait, well,
I hope I hate to interrupt you, Joe, but Carney
is coming at us again, and he has one last

(58:06):
piece of listener mail there for us. Okay, I'm gonna
read this one. Uh, and it this is right up
our alley. It's from Daniel, and he says, hey, there,
I have a kind of interesting use for wicked problems
that might not make it on the show, but you
might just find it interesting. Oh, Daniel, it's gonna make
it on the show alright. I've run tabletop role playing

(58:28):
games with my friends, like Dungeons and Dragons, where I
have to create a story with some kind of theme
and objective to overcome. I tend to start with a
simple problem that has some kind of emotional component, like quote,
your king is corrupt. But then I add a layer
of difficulty to prevent the players from approaching it traditionally
via a wicked problem. Let's say, in the same scenario,

(58:51):
every other person that would take over for the king
if he were to be killed or removed from power
is just as corrupt. This way, my players have to
think very dynamically about how to approach corruption in government,
rather than something simple and emotionless like go get rid
of that guy. This is a great example, and I
must say, if I understand the concept of a wicked

(59:11):
problem correctly, I think the classic way of of creating
a wicked problem here would be to have the notion
that absolute power corrupts. So what if you have a
corrupt king, but putting somebody else into that role necessarily
corrupts them. Yeah. Yeah, I think like the people who
have defined wicked, wicked problem, wicked problems, wicked problems over

(59:32):
the years would agree. Yeah that, Uh. I think it's
just sort of like that politics would be a wicked problem, right,
The power is a wicked problem. And I do think
that the role playing is role playing games it's a
great place to explore these because man, yeah, more more
government officials should be playing DD to hash out issues,
right yeah, because you can. Because in a role playing game,

(59:52):
you can do the straight up combat, you can do
the you know some some just sort of basic mystery solving,
and that's that's great, be tons of fun. It is
cool when you can put that little, uh, a little
shift on the situation where the players really don't know
what the right decision is, if there's absolutely actually actually
no right decision. To me, yeah, I totally agree. And

(01:00:13):
Daniel sounds like the exact kind of d M that
I would want to play with. So so the reason
why we we got really excited about this is yet
we're all gaming nerds here. Uh, we love dn d
Robert runs a D and D game I have in
the past. I love playing him, and man, it sounds
like he would be great to play with. Now here's
a question, what do you think is the highest level

(01:00:33):
of government ever achieved by a D n D player?
That's a great Have we ever had a president who
has played? You know? I want to say, Uh, there's
a guy in Japan that I've read about who's a
politician that is definitely a gamer. I don't know if
he's in particular D and D guy, but he's in
the tabletop role playing. Yeah. But I don't know if

(01:00:54):
anybody out there knows the answer to this. Our first
DND play President President, teach your president social media accounts
for uh? For the President United States? At that point,
who is Mary? Maybe Barry Obama is like secretly like
a crazy D and D player, Like every every Sunday
afternoon they're rolling up and playing games. Yeah, but I

(01:01:17):
bet he's annoying to play with. He always plays a
lawful good cleric. Right, that's the thing. Right, they'd all
be like, oh, I'm lawful good. They'd all roll up
lawful good characters. Maybe not Bernie Sanders Man. Yeah, well
we would, Hey, I would love to hear listeners this
year right in and let us know what what each

(01:01:40):
of the candidates would be in terms of their their alignment,
their species, and their role and their their character class
within a dungeon and dragon's environment. Now, of course we
know that we're going to get both sides of this too. Now,
everybody is gonna think since we mentioned presidential candidates. Hopefully,
I don't think we made any judgments here, but people
are gonna say, oh, you trashed mine. I said, They're

(01:02:00):
made judgments on all of them. I'm pretty sure Bernie
would be a gnome that's my god, like David the gnome. No, no, no,
like like maybe a deep gnome. Oh, I don't know what. Yeah, yeah,
those those guys, they're great. We'll educate you on for
Nipplin after the after the recording, Joe, all right, well,

(01:02:21):
there you have it. Another listener Maile episode in the books,
um As, as we've said before, we didn't have time
to get to everything. We just tried to focus in
on some of the great correspondence that you guys and
gals have been sending in and we would allow to
read more of in the future. Yeah, and so you
know we We obviously brought up a lot of ideas
here where we asked you for even more listener mail.

(01:02:43):
Keep it coming, Yeah, we love it and the best
way is to hit us up Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler and
the old fashioned way guys blow the mind at House
to court stuff For more on this and thousands of

(01:03:04):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com five