 Pretty audio. We're gonna go right video streaming Or you can it'll be there for everyone to see Just yeah, be aware picking your nose will not be seen I put a sailing photo of me from when I'm a little tiny girl, but it's not the photo. I wanted where'd you put it? in the IRC Oh, I see it the Wait, is that you the little head on the right? Oh you freaked me out there My parents fake sailing club was called the irks the ERKK the Eagle Rock cruising club. That's so cute Look at that. I lived near Eagle Rock, but there's just a mullet. Oh, you're on the water. I Really? Was it Canada Escaping or running away from or running away from yeah, I can't tell could be could be Windsor or not Now Windsor not Perhaps we ran red of the country. Yeah, I used to do that for my ties, but it takes too long. I Do a foreign hand now. I'm lazy. Hey, can I do two plugs? I just thought of a second one one is plugging you and me talking. Mm-hmm, but I just finished a A video for Don McAllister screencasts online. It might be cool. Whoops. Yeah, what's the URL? Right try to try to keep them in the space of a single plug for times Yeah, I don't mind you plug in one thing You're all good on which ones you're reading Allison I'm sure I get to say meow meow No, I Do you want that one? I thought no, I did I thought that You just moved everything all over the place. What did you do? I didn't do anything. I just deleted the space. No, you deleted You deleted where I talked about Tom. I Did now my two things aren't lined up? I Can rewrite that title I Think we were doing it at the same time. That's why Overwrote each other. Yeah, so I did not delete it because I cannot do it I did the space. Okay, but I didn't just hold still don't do anything. I'm not doing anything. Don't do nothing Do nothing All right, I'm about ready you guys about ready Hmm. All right, so oh Dave just so you know you'll see the top of do you have you have the rundown in front of you? I do You'll see the top change color. Yeah, and that's just that conversation. Do we yeah, don't worry Tom told me Yep, and it was like that last time I was on to I think okay cool. Maybe misremembering I'm not that bright. I haven't planted memories in you. See that's a whole different conversation Well, that's where we got to have dr. Gary on there. We go. She specializes in Debunking the whole concept of memory. Oh all memories. Have I met her? I don't remember Alright, here we go three Do you like listening to advertisements me neither want to help and support greatest directly then head to daily tech New show comm slash support and help us reach our new milestone today This is the daily tech news for Friday, February 16th 2018 from DTS headquarters in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt from my Cleveland art cave I'm Len Peralta, and I'm Allison Sheridan from South Bay pod feet productions. That's right Sarah Lane off today, but we've got a grand crew That's a beer, isn't it? We have a wonderful crew It's not been drinking grand crew as far as I know also joining us Dave the psychologist Dave Broadbeck Of Dave Broadbeck comm is all I have that's that that's fine. You can find other stuff there. So that's great Yeah, I don't does a bunch of good podcasts and of course teaches at the university And we are gonna be talking today a little bit about why it's so hard to think like a scientist And and why anecdotal evidence sometimes just can't we can't help but weigh it more than it's worth That is all coming up our producer Roger Chang here as well. Hello, Roger Let's start with a few tech things you should know Sources tell CNBC that uber is considering selling its Southeast Asian ride hailing business to grab Grab taxi was one of their early brands. They do ride hailing as well The deal would leave uber with a stake in grab. No deal has yet been reached Intel told shareholders Friday that it faces 32 class action lawsuits over the specter and meltdown vulnerabilities 30 of the suits claim customers were harmed by Intel's action and or omissions The other two accused Intel of making misleading statements in violation of securities laws Q-tech and Intel have teamed up on an experimental two qubit, which is kind of low these days to qubit quantum computer But it runs on a silicon chip usually quantum computers need superconductive material and near perfect zero temperatures to operate this new chip uses quantum dot-based spin qubits and can be made with existing manufacturing infrastructure Which you can get that to do more qubits would be a big deal. I you know, I was always telling them They should use the dot-based spin qubits. Yeah But hammered hammered away to those quantum scientists for years about that and they both listened and didn't listen Nice pull. Thanks strong. Let's talk a little more about Google angering the internet What did they do Allison? So Google has removed the view image button from its image search as Part of an agreement with Getty images the button previously opened the image on its own in the browser now users only get a visit Button which shows the image in context on the page It's from where users will then need to right-click and open the image in a new tab to view it separately This is gonna drive me nuts. I use this all the time. Anyway, Google announced a licensing agreement with Getty images last week And this change was one of that agreement's provisions Lassai So so what they've done is they've made it harder for people to view the image which they think at least Getty images must think We'll make it less likely that folks will copy images from the internet Which is silly if you really want to copy an image from the internet, you can just take a screenshot It's it's not really stopping anything. It's it's a speed bump that's going to annoy people Getty already watermarks their stuff and sometimes and I don't know if Getty actually does this or not But sometimes sites will disable right-clicking Which I suppose you could just have Google respect that and not do the view image if that happens But really this is just a thing that's gonna inconvenience people who aren't breaking the rules Just slow us down a little bit, right? Yeah Does this but it seems like this might bother me more than What bothers me I use it all the time I'm and usually what I'm doing is I'm looking for a company's logo So I'm flipping through them real quick till I find the official one and then I hit it It pops up and big I right-click and grab it and even if I want to link directly to That server's image Which sometimes is a bad idea because you don't want to steal bed with sometimes you do want to copy it and host it Yourself if that's allowed to copy it other times you're like no I want to make sure people know where it came from that it came directly from the company It's a real thing that they serve it makes it harder to even get that link Yeah, well Friday US special counsel Robert Mueller indicated I'm sorry indicted Russia's internet research agency and charged 13 Russians with conspiracy to defraud the United States Of course, particularly the organization impersonated US citizens and used botnets to attempt to influence the US presidential election Lot of technical details in here, which is why we're covering it on this show We don't really care so much about the political aspects of this But internet research agency used a VPN that they set up on servers in the United States To operate the social media accounts that appeared to come from the US So they had to come here and do a little work to get the server set up Although I guess they could have done a lot of that work remotely and then we're able to operate them from Russia The defendants are also accused of using fake bank accounts and false ID documents Deputy Attorney General for the United States Rod Rosenstein said there was no allegation that the operation altered the outcome of the election This is just an attempted fraud, but very pervasive and I have to say from my perspective very interesting to see the lengths they went to Basically troll people It's also interesting to me that they they were successful at at trolling like you say But they use the VPN to operate these social media accounts And yet the FBI was able to figure out who they were where they came from and the organization and trace them back down Anyway, it took a lot of work, right? It wasn't something they could just you know do in a day This is this has been months and months of investigation more and more almost a year now. Yeah, I actually Unless I misinterpreted it on the news today I actually heard that it started more than a year ago that it was like two years ago that they actually started this and then watched They were seeing this activity prior to actually trying to influence this election. They were already watching that activity So yeah, it's fascinating how much technology went into figuring this out And probably some footwork too, right? I mean just just the idea that that you know They probably didn't crack the VPN They probably figured out what servers were used and then maybe subpoenaed those and were able to examine those or found out through Interviews with people. Oh, we were using a VPN or they were using a VPN But yeah, it's it's an incredible combination of social engineering and technical engineering For very little effect it seems No, I've got my prediction of what the internet's gonna do They're gonna try to find out which VPN service provider it was and then complain about them. I I think they set up their own VPN I don't think they actually went through a third party or else they would have gotten caught a lot faster There's that All right Well the Wall Street Journal reports Google tested a new emergency cell phone calling system in the United States in a few states in December and January using the US 911 system Google sent location data from Android to the 911 Operators Rapid OS is a company involved in the test told Wall Street Journal that more than 80% of the calls using the new system Were more accurate than location data use usually provided by the wireless carriers Google hopes to implement the system across the US this year This is great Anything that makes things more accurate in emergency situations is fantastic Sounds like they're doing a good job of testing this out To make sure that it works better before they roll out to everybody my only hope is that They expand this beyond just Android devices. Yeah, I'm real curious to see how this will work with the Require the requirement to share your location with different services So let's say I'm reporting some crime that I'm watching but I don't want to be involved I just want to report it and run away. Maybe I don't want to give my location. I'm having a heart attack Yeah, I would really like you to know my location Are those going to be things that they have to separate in some ways, you know Apple in particular going to make you have to say yes To share your location. Well, yeah, and and one would not want to have to do that if you're having a heart attack So there should there should be an easy way For someone calling 911 to say if I'm calling 911 go ahead and share my data But like you said if you're calling to just report an incident Maybe you don't want your your data shared and and granted you can say well I I you should not worry about that if you're reporting an incident, but it could be a chilling effect on incidents in that case Yeah, I also want to know what the other 20% where was it less accurate in the other 20% or just not more accurate Yeah, I've got curious about that too. I and obviously what they're trying to do is just show like this is going to help It's supplemental. I don't think it replaces the other system Yeah, Dave, what do you think of this? I? think it's cool that It's the idea of the location-based stuff. I mean, it's really important obviously when you're doing the 911 call It would it's funny. It never occurred to me if I was making a 911 call. I don't think to not For them not to want to know my location, but then again, you know, I live in a town of 75,000 people and there's not a whole lot of Things that are really horribly scary here probably so maybe I just have that experience But you know, so I can see that angle. I wonder if that would I wonder how many people would be reticent I guess that's that's that's the question and that's probably a empirical question. You could probably answer that with Some experience, you know or a survey just ask some people would you be? Would you not want your location share when you make a 911 call? And people would probably be pretty honest about that too and honestly the carriers already contract you if you're making a 911 call That's just built in this was a system created In order to to get over the problem of everyone starting to have cell phones and not being able to say where they were So yeah, the carriers can find you that is an important thing and I'll be honest. You want that Granted like I just said it might have a chilling effect on reporting crimes But you want them to be able to find you if they can yes, yes An Australian transit agency deactivated the transit pass of meow Ludo disco Gamma meow meow His name while he was traveling to the United States to speak at a cyborg convention Now meow had embedded the transit pass chip in his hand in April 2017 Now when he did this the New South Wales Transport authorities disabled his pass But he fooled them because the pass he put in his hand wasn't under his name So they weren't able to figure out who he was until he left and they noticed the pass stopped being used and they're like Haha, we've got him or at least that's what I think that's not a pass. This is a pass. Yeah, uh, and so they did they Invalidated it. They've also Find him $200 for riding a train without a valid ticket. I'm assuming What they're objecting to is carving up the card, right and putting the and implanting the chip Without being in the card they there's probably some very strict rules about the card has to be whole to prevent fraud So you can't cut up the card and do anything with it including putting it in your hand Beyond just being able to talk about a story about a guy named meow meow Um, he he really enjoyed the fact that his card was deactivated after this convention He happened to be at in the United States. It was a cyborg convention and the subject was uh regulation and cyborg rights So does the cyborg have a right to ride the subway, right? Uh, he yeah, the iard is not lost, right? He just spent a few days talking about this very type of situation And i'm sure what the new south wales people are saying that the transport agency people are saying is look We don't care if you're a cyborg or not. You can't cut up your card But we don't allow that All right, I love this next story in february 2011 NASA sent robonaut 2 to the international space station to be tested as a robotic assistant In repetitive tasks like cleaning up our cleaning or flipping switches The robot was only a torso and arms, but it worked well until 2014 when nasa upgraded it with legs to give it more mobility They're legs that grab on to things not real like feet legs The uh the upgrade did not go well and the last time it reported completing a research task was december 2013 The problem appears to be a lack of a ground path Which is difficult to fix on board and even if fixed probably has caused Components to degrade or burn out this week nasa announced robonaut 2 will be returned to earth for repairs If it can't be repaired it will be swapped for a newer model now what i found really interesting This is a great article. I read every word of this one. I loved it Um, so this was a model b and the ones they have on on the ground where the model c and the model c Had this ground wire this ground path correctly done So they've spent years swapping out parts and swapping out cables and swapping cards and trying to figure out What was wrong with this thing and it was intermittent because the ground being Messed up was causing components to fail that weren't necessarily the root cause so, uh, You know, that's kind of like science 101. You don't have a good control, right? They don't have the same thing in both places. Did they not see apollo 13? You have to have the exact same stuff on the ground Evidently not but uh, the idea of the robot with legs crawling around flying around was great But why did they make him so big too? He's huge He's human size. Yeah, no, no, no, he's the scary aliens. I mean that's pretty obvious Of course, Dave. I didn't think of that. It's for defense Well, and and the the best part about this is if they had been able to get the spindly leg like things Like you said, they're not really Uh, if they've been able to get those to work the next step was to do EVAs with it IVAs first intra vehicular activity, but then that's what the spindly legs were for right We could never get there working so they couldn't move past IVA tests to get to a so I here's the thing Uh, I love this idea that they were troubleshooting from earth from the surface of the earth To a space station like that that must have been incredibly complex Uh, why wouldn't they just send up a newer version of the robot? Just I mean, I guess maybe you want to learn something by fixing the old one, but It's it's a problem of cargo space the the problem was that the the robot himself is very heavy It's a big payload So they even had to wait the reason he's been um doing it for so long is they can't even get him back down Because they didn't have cargo cargo space true true But once I mean if you're going to send a new one up either way it's going to be cargo space You might as well send the once you know it works Absolutely, yeah, I like it Uh, and that was the other part of this article I liked is is how and and Dave I'm I'm curious what you think of this They said look as much of a failure as this has been practically we learned a lot So it's not a failure as an experiment Yeah, I It's it reminds me in fact you mentioned Apollo 13 and one of the things that when I talk about when I when I teach you to a psych when I talk about problem solving uh is that And sort of novel problem solving approaches is when you have all this stuff in front of you and you're trying to solve a problem A lot of times it takes somebody coming in And I'm not going to say outside the box because it's a cliche, but that's what I mean That has a different approach to things And like I said, you look at the Apollo 13 example It's beautiful and it's the same sort of thing here where they're probably going to learn something about their procedures for problem solving even Uh, even though the NASA's been doing this for Gee since before probably any of us were born. Yeah, right. Nonetheless nonetheless, uh, they can always learn something new about problem solving and problem solving is something that Is kind of a fuzzy thing to study like it's uh, it's it's not easy So especially doing it in a real world situation where there actually are consequences rather than just experimental things I think something really great can come of it for NASA even if they can't fix the thing at all Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes subscribe to daily tech headlines available on the amazon echo The google home in the anchor app and as a podcast at daily tech headlines dot com So monday we talked about how veronica was hesitant to upgrade to macOS high seara because someone close to her Had some major problems with it and I noted that I had upgraded twice two different machines hadn't had any issue But that I understood because it's harder to feel comfortable about things when you're close To that anecdotal evidence that tells you otherwise and allison that reminded you of a couple things you've seen recently Yeah, there was an uh an article for the british psychological society written by uh christian gerrit where they uh summarized Some work done by pretty shah at the university of michigan on why it's hard to think like a scientist So the summary article by christian gerrit talks about five reasons It's so hard to think like a scientist and the number one thing is that we're swayed by anecdotes And that got me to thinking about how um my single favorite thing on the internet is when someone says Well, I'm having this problem and I looked on the internet and a whole bunch of other people are too Sure, that's great. And I was also thinking about uh tom when you were on the philis club one time, uh, Wendy you asked wendy. How do you convince something somebody to change their position on something and she said you can't first of all But the example she gave was if you're trying to convince somebody to get vaccinated for example If you can introduce them to someone with polio, they will then believe in vaccines But short of doing that it's almost impossible to get someone to change a position like that Um, so that that article combined with with what you did that conversation you'd had Really came to light when steven snofsky, uh, who used to run a lot of the largest projects at microsoft Windows itself he's got a lot of experience with uh, scaling large software development projects And he did a tweet storm where he talked about apple and how everybody's talking about their software quality He's gone downhill and part of what he said was I'm betting that it isn't that if they we could actually see the data that they have I'm betting that it actually shows that the quality has gone dramatically up You know on a percentage basis and things like that, but he said Uh, he said you need to step back and look at at the broader context of what they've accomplished in the scale that they've gone to So it got back to that anecdote thing where you you know, hey, I had a bug in ios 11 This thing's happening to me. Therefore this whole thing is garbage So Dave we wanted we wanted to get you on because as a psychologist, uh Do you have any experience learning about this? You what is it about anecdotes that make us go? That's the truth and all this other scientific evidence is not Well, one of the things that we have these sort of heuristics, uh, that we use to solve problems. Okay They they work. They typically work really really well. So, uh, the idea of anecdotes fits in with something called the availability heuristics. So something that uh is If it's available to memory, it must be important That that's a sort of a shortcut that we've learned over I would say learned that we've evolved over 200 000 years of being people uh, and it usually works It actually usually gives a pretty good example that the pretty good solution the problem, of course is that uh, we didn't evolve with there being the possibility of You know of there being three and a half four billion people online that you can talk to at any given time Oh, so before we had a lot of data to work with you might as well work with the only data you have Exactly and what you had in front of you probably made sense I mean, this is true of all kinds of things about problem solving So it's the same thing with the gamblers fallacy for example where people, uh, don't understand how probability works because they don't understand independent events But you know what there aren't any independent events in nature Uh, so we evolved in a place where everything was dependent on everything else People, you know lothar of the hill people, which is a reference that maybe nobody got wasn't rolling dice. So thank you top Wasn't rolling dice. See he was uh, or flipping a coin He was hoping that the saber-tooth tiger that he saw there yesterday if it's that or at that watering hole you avoid out watering hole um So you so, you know the pastiles genes on so this is what's happened over like and these these heuristics work really really well But the problem is we now have Like you said, we now have so much data in front of us that They can lead us astray and they they could lead us astray before, you know, most people were online too This is work by diversity at all over the years looked at these kind of heuristics and They they can make you make you make a lot of mistakes In certain situations and one of them is like I said, so what do you think advertising works because you know Why when you walk when you walk by the deodorant, you know, I'll let you go The you pick up the men in So It's it's that kind of thing. Uh, it's it's and again, we didn't evolve Uh, uh in a time where don draper was writing ads Sorry, I'm always watching madman. Not not yet. Not most of us. No The very small amount of evolution happened for people who grew up at that time I think the other the other thing that was interesting about this british psychology Society story that that allison brought Was mentioning a study Published last year where fernando radriguez and colleagues asked dozens of students to evaluate scientific news reports That drew inappropriate conclusions from weak evidence. So these were designed to be wrong Some of the reports, however, opened with an anecdote supporting that inappropriate conclusions and others didn't as a control Regardless of the level of university training or knowledge of scientific concepts The students were less competent at critically evaluating the reports that opened with the anecdotes So if you're like, well, I'm smarter than that, I'll always see past the anecdote. It's hardwired, isn't it? Oh, yeah, it really is and I mean, this is the problem is that Uh, we can take advantage of the of this of this of this problem. Uh, and uh, sorry of these juristics and make these Really dumb judgments and we all do it. Uh, one of the real problems that that just shows up I know with with my students when they're writing like uh, the thesis or something like that A lot of times they or they giving a presentation. They want to start out with an anecdote and I would say, please don't Please don't instead just get to how you did it and why it worked and everything like that because you know It's a real issue and and you know, it happens the thing that happens, of course, is you get so married to your own ideas That uh, even I was a good scientist and I like to think I'm pretty decent But I mean when I was in grad school, I remember giving my master's thesis My master's proposal to our lab group and it was awful. Like I almost quit school that day I went and drank three pitchers of beer, which was like one more than normal As a graduate student or the next day. Yeah for a tuesday. It was a tuesday. How did you know that? Uh, and I went and I talked to my advisor the next day and she said it wasn't just your fault I'm your advisor and I mean she's famous and such uh, and you know You get so close to things you make mistakes. You think i'm smart I must know what i'm doing. I've got all this training. Uh, and you probably You make mistakes we all do that's why peer review is important, right? Right, right Let's turn this around though and in your line of work where I assume you're training people to become professors and work in this field But what if you were training a group of people in business? I'm thinking we look at these five things that that they they suggest that makes it hard to work Act like a scientist. We use this to manipulate people to do what we want in business Okay, so I want someone to give me more budget I'm just going to put well number three was reduced by graphs formulas and meaningless neuroscience I'm just going to put a bunch of that glop Into my proposal and they're going to go. Oh, that must be really true throw a little anecdote in like Hey, you guys remember last year when you didn't give me budget and this crazy thing happened That's what I should do So i'm just going to use this and what you want to be doing is And you'd say something like and as you can see here from this f m r r We want to increase the amount of dopamine people get people just go Crazy over stuff like that and I mean quote neural marketing, which is a complete scam These kind of things. Yeah, so it's learn to use it. You can use it for evil You can use it for evil Okay, so you mentioned in academics you have peer review There's the idea of transparency and open publishing and showing your sources and that kind of helps Guard against this happening because you have so many different eyes on it But what can I what can I do because we have people in the chat room saying i'm pretty sure i'm not susceptible to this You are of course they are but how but if we know it's hard wired into us, how do we combat against it? I think the knowledge of it is the the first thing. So if you know Acknowledge you have a problem Yeah, well because you have a problem because you're a human being Okay, that we've we're hooked up this way and if we know that we're hooked up that way Then we can say to our and these these these processes these heuristics are unconscious They're not available to to consciousness But what is available to consciousness is saying I will not fall for this Right, so it's like what Richard Dawkins said in the selfish gene where he said I know I'm hard wired to be selfish But I choose not to be that way today And that's a that's an important point you can make when you have knowledge of these things But we should be teaching these things to kids in grades six grade seven Uh that that actually they're thinking works like this. Uh, that's an important point We should go to the university. Don't say you're not susceptible to it Admit you are Look for it happening and try to resist it when it does Yeah, I think the hardest exactly in in the list was the fifth one said being smart isn't enough And it was actually a case of they said that if you're really smart in a topic You think you're not susceptible and you're going to be you're still going to have the problem You think that you know more than you do, right? Uh, that that combined with the overconfidence one that was number two Was you get confident because you think you're really smart and you might be really smart You might be as smart as dave and yet that's actually going to hurt you in doing this Because in reading things because you're going to think I understand more than I think I do No, I understand less Yeah, this is a very important skill to keep in mind when you're on reddit Thanks to everyone who participates in our subreddit You can submit stories to vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com and facebook.com Slash groups slash daily tech news show real quickly out of our mailbag mohan wrote Regarding our suggestion to use privacy badger. He says it does a great job But I just use tracking protection built into firefox 58 quantum Which can be used not just in private mode, but also in regular mode This does the job for me and from what I've read it's borrowed from the tour browser And yeah, it's not going to help you chrome users out there But if uh, if you are willing to use firefox, or are you already use firefox you got that built in stop people He also blocks third party ad trackers now. Nice All right, let's check in with len peralta who has been basically drawing a visual anecdote for us Yes, I kind of took this in a different direction. Um, this is the first time I've ever drawn a four panel cartoon for a dts, which is sort of a big deal But let me take you through it. The first panel, of course, is a gentleman Talking to a young woman about the home pod, which we all know of course leaves an indelible white ring on your wood tables It'll be found out this year So he's telling her a story about that and saying don't pick up your home pod If you want to find an indelible white ring on your wood table Next pink next panel. She looks besides to pick it up in the last final panel There's a tombstone that says I didn't listen to my friend and now i'm dead It was the ring You know what else I love about this is that that's what apple actually should have said was just don't pick it up if you See that steve jobs would have said right? Well, don't pick it up I love this. This is so good. Uh, so yes anyone who is in any way thinking it's dumb or horrible Or whatever about the home pod leaving white rings on oil or wax treated wooden surfaces You should buy this you should buy this I can show you some neuroscience that says that it's a great idea It's good advice too. Just listen. Don't you know if you listen to your friends and you don't die Just leave it there. Just leave it right there. Just don't pick it up. Please lend peralta store dot com Of course the place to find that uh, dave broadbeck. Thank you so much for joining us as well and sharing your expertise with us Where can people find more of what you do? You can find me on twitter at the broadbeck. You can find other podcasts I do like best episode ever at best episode ever dot com, which is a retro tv podcast You can find what I do with my wife that I just released one today We where we go grocery shopping and talk about things at broken dash area dot com and you can look Oh, let's say you're interested in psychology go to people that a u c dot ca slash broadbeck slash blog Which makes me sound like vorac five ten years ago Uh, and you can find all of my lectures, uh, literally 1100 uh so far a little more than that actually of my lectures with the last seven years are there as podcasts Go check it out. Uh, most of that stuff is linked from dave broadbeck dot com as well. Yep, sure Thank you allison charidan. Uh, it's good to have you on the show. What are you got going on? Well, probably the coolest thing I did recently was a video tutorial for screencast online It's on the app focos, which is a really wicked cool app for Uh, iPhones that can take portrait mode photos allows you to change the focus of it. It's very cool You can watch a preview at screencast online or get a free 14 day trial of his site And you can it's tom mcallister's site and you can watch it there I'm really proud of that the one that was really cool And i'm gonna sneak in a second one because it sort of plugs tom I had tom on chitchat across the pond uh just a couple of weeks ago episode number 520 We talk about how social media makes us feel Ooh really talked about our feelings How do you feel about food pictures tom? Nothing more than really Feeling um, but I get it. I get it. I get it. Go check it out. Uh, pod feet dot com Thanks to everybody who supports this show directly. We are halfway through the month So we need your support. Uh, if you're already supporting us. Thank you Please continue it as much as you can we see people dropping off and these days It's always because they they just have some financial hardship and we totally understand that But we know there's some of you out there that don't and it only takes a minute to go to patreon.com Slash dts give us a dollar a month That's all it takes and you've picked up somebody else who was feeling bad and made their day better So check it out patreon.com slash dts and don't forget all the fine new wears T-shirts coffee mugs hoodies at daily tech news show dot com slash store Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com we're live monday through friday 4 30 p.m Eastern 21 30 utc And you can find out how to watch us at daily tech news show dot com slash live no show monday for the president's day holiday here in The u.s. But we're back tuesday with patrick bezia. Talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com I'm in club. Hope you have enjoyed this program That was a great show. Thank you guys. That was fun. Thanks. Thanks a lot guys Yeah, that was really interesting. Um, I would love to have you meet my friend, uh, dr. Mary and gary And when I was talking about she is works at uh, university out of uh in new zealand I forget the name of it. She just moved universities, but uh, she works on, uh, basically debunking memories And uh does all this crazy research where she'll take grad students, you know, because that's who you experiment on an impulse and Basically implant false memories. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure crazy what she can do. It's it's really slick She her advisor was um, professor loftis out of uc or Elizabeth. Yeah, sure. So, you know her. Yeah. Oh sure. You probably were in the same circles Uh, sort of I'm I do more animal memory stuff than human memory stuff, but uh, I certainly know that stuff and uh, That that there's a great loftis experiment, right? Were they you ever heard about the lost in the mall experiment? Yeah, that's that she Mary and worked on that Oh nice. Okay. So there you go. Yeah, that's I love that stuff. Oh, it's just horrible what she does She introduces terrible people. She convinces them that they uh, that they were lost in the mall as a as a small child Oh, yeah And you have to actually talk to you have to talk to their parents first because you have to find it if they ever were lost in the mall, right? Yeah Yeah, it's just because the ethics office a lot Hey, I'm on our ethics panel here. I just reviewed of the way even if you weren't lost Oh, I wonder how that would work. Yeah, see roger the way this works is um, I I say to you I've talked to your mom and dad To get some background information on you and they talked about a time when you were four years old and got lost in the mall And you you would usually look and go I don't think so. I don't remember that and they say yeah, there's all kinds of details So what happens is it was here and here and here and then you wait here And then we're wearing the purple shirt that you actually did own. Yeah, she throws in real facts Yeah, and then you come that you come back like a week later and then they say, okay, uh Can you tell me about the timing of lost in the mall now? A lot of participants will say that I'm sure that didn't happen or I have no memory of it But a lot of a chunk of people will come out and say uh, yeah Okay, so what happened was I was wearing the purple shirt and then I was walking with my mom and dad And I looked over I went over to the toy store and then they were gone And like exactly the story that she's told and then we even put in other events They'll they'll embellish right that actually happened to me like I went to the toy store my parents like left Yeah, that's they've got all kinds of the ones They'll they'll tell a story about how you were on a lake in uh, you know in a canoe I mean it's not always them all My dad would never be near anywhere near a canoe. It's not like I think at about a 20 success rate when people will recite a full detail about it Isn't it what we isn't that what we call guest lighting someone? Well the point is that you can manipulate they work with um, uh, how leading questions are done by police officers in a lineup For example, you know, you can basically make people remember that that was the guy that that that You know attacked you when that guy was never there Yeah, buddy of mine is a forensic psychologist and does that kind of stuff gas lighting it borrows a lot of that methodology the what because because I used to do that in high school with my friend like Like like safer like Monday was a day off because it was it was called teachers day Is is a day that all the high school all the teachers would basically meet for a service. Yeah, okay Yeah, and so You know, I remember on a Tuesday I would turn my friends like where were you yesterday? It's like what are you talking? Teachers day or no, it's like no next week like It was so funny because he didn't believe me and then I got my the guy next to me on it and my friend's face turned like Like just blank white like just like oh crap. That's that's standing You're you're a horrible person, but I like it It is true. I apply. I applaud this I applaud this Um, so titles in my anecdotal opinion ellipses Are you as smart as Dave? Meow meow Dallas multi-pass Anything with meow and it's pretty good as far as I just meow. Yeah, I gotta get Meow meow plays cat and mouse with south whale. Oh, it should be new south wales or south wales Is it south wales transit south wales? New south wales transit That's just a try turning it on and off again The anecdotal and uh antidote antidote I like that one. That's that's the one I've been working. Yeah, that's that is an anecdote. That's nice. I like that The You can also use it to warm up your mouth before speaking engagement The anecdotal antidote rubber baby buggy bumpers I like that finally got into it the anecdotal antidote It's like saying uh, the bank robber and the anecdotal antidote The human torch came in for a bank loan That's a what it's a ron burgundy Like right before that is that for a mankerman? Okay. Yeah, I knew it. That is vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it Human torch made it for applied for a bank loan This is like they're like useless I have to say that Straight uh, was it um, what's the one where you here's the voice? uh Like those are the there's only three will ferrule movies I like and one of them is anchor man. The other one is semi pro And they all under a stranger than fiction I think Actually has a rule. Yeah, I think that's true semi pro is great People I mean, it's not great, but it's funny and I love things about anything about rebel Leagues, I love the ABA and wha in the usfl. I love that crap. I love the fact that it was Both a send-up, but also an homage to that like, you know Yeah particular particular, you know sports level. It's just fun. Like oh, we're gonna wear makeup Yeah, I'll start sweating it gets in their eyes. I don't know Oh There was one thing, uh, I want to tell you when you were uh when we were talking and you mentioned heuristics and you said the availability heuristics Uh, dr. Gary is always making me read books about you know brains and stuff She makes me do that and she gave you this one book to read and all through it They kept using the word heuristics and they talked about the availability heuristics and for the life of me I've never been able to get a definition of heuristics that I can understand Okay, I'll see heuristic a heuristic is a Set of rules or a rule that allows you to to solve a problem to get to quickly get to a solution Like Adding goes like this or it's like a shortcut. Uh, it's a shortcut. Tom's Tom's got a that's a very good way to put it It's a shortcut and it usually works Whereas a uh, what's this heuristic and a an algorithm is always works So for example, if I was cracking your password a heuristic would be and I'm sure this wouldn't work, but you know, 20 years ago It would have worked You know, if I'm a little bit about you, but I knew your birthday. I might try those kind of things Whereas that would be a heuristic now an algorithm a dictionary attack will work Yes, whereas a dictionary attack is an algorithm It will work but it'll or not a dictionary attack, but like a you know, all the possible combinations of letters and numbers brute force brute force Yeah Brute force. That's the one I'm looking for. Okay. Yeah, like heuristics just kind of makes assumptions that you establish Yes, yeah, it may and these things and like I said that they're not available to consciousness We don't know we're doing these things Um, the evidence comes out in in experiments, right? So we know that people Use these puristics, uh so There's other ones too like anchoring. So if I if I say to you Uh, there's a great experiment done in the 1970s. I think it's diversity's group and and they they ask these students undergraduates Uh, do you think the number of uh countries in Africa that are In the un is uh, 65 percent or higher? Is it 75 percent or higher? But this different group 65 75 85 95 45 35 and then you take a look at what number people say The the the best predictor of of what number people say, uh, actually the number that you anchored with So if you say 65 that core and then 75 is going to be higher 85. It's higher. So We do those things all the time all of them. I would pick all of them Well, yeah, that's that's because you know a few things You know what a first your first you're undergraduate pre-existing knowledge to the experiment. You're ruining it That's right invalid dispose of him as you would any other refuse It's we yeah, we just put people like you down when you come into the lab. It's uh, no smart asses get out of here Oh, man, if there were no smart asses everywhere a phd buddy Just from the little I know dave, I'm not sure he would have made the cut on that No, no, I was I'm I'm I'm very smart asked. I'm known for that My my mum has told me my superpower is the ability to just say anything and people go. Oh, that's just dave Whereas other people get fired for things. Yeah Apparently my father could do too so yeah, I specialize more in sarcasm Uh, somebody put a put a poster on my door at work That's uh said the national sarcasm society and underneath it. It said like we need your support I like that. I like that That is pretty great I lean toward What do I lean toward? You can't just a general jerk Really? Yeah, that's fair That's another approach like I'm a smart ass, but I'm also just like Like a jerky curmudgeon like Like no, I don't want to do it You do a video podcast about statistics I did. Yes. That's those are uh, yeah, they are now just on my youtube channel Those are those are my you know slides sync to my lecture Oh for advanced advanced multi advanced univariate statistics, which is a course that our honor students have to take Oh, I know that Which is the one you do with your wife? Is that future play? No broken area? Oh, no if you play was a conference broke his area Uh, that that will lead to the feed. That's the old name of the show. Yeah Oh, that's interesting because that's what itunes finds I just shoved your name in to look for it Okay And it still says you might want to go into itunes connect because it still thinks it's broke his area I'm an old school. I'm an old school dave fan. I'm I'm tangential conversions all the way. Yeah, I wish I stole domain. I renewed it two weeks ago It's uh, it's I'm still subscribed Oh, that's nice. I'll I'll see what I can do. I may be the only one at this point I'll I'll talk to ken. I mean, I ken was over last night. Uh, in fact, we were saying if we still did a podcast We could just pull up my phone set of recording You just email it to me For you sure, we'll just we'll just call you and we'll just do it that way this conference call me It'll just be easier for everybody. Yeah, I really don't have to put in any music. There's no editing Oh So the so Dave's definition of heuristic work for you, Allison It helped. Does that help? Okay, okay Now I have to go back and read the book and see if I fair what the heck it was talking about Mathematical examples of this and I can't think of any right. That's what I was trying to come up with. I mean, is it is it Okay, uh, if now, I don't know how often you would convert temperatures double it med 30 turns turns, uh, Okay Okay, that's a great one because it gets you close, but it's not accurate Yeah, yeah, but it's close enough for rock and roll right like yeah, you know 20 and 20 is 40 and 30 70 and 20 68 So that's close enough and of course really the algorithm is multiply times nine fifths and add 32. Yeah, yeah Right. Yeah 1.8. Yeah, so that's you know as an engineer. It's a little hard for me to do that I'm I'm not a scientist, but as an engineer I need precision Oh, sure. And of course you want precision in your life normally, but when you're making decisions like And normally these things don't lead you astray like right? So like if it's a good heuristic about what am I going to make for dinner is I'll need a protein And a starch and a vegetable, right? That's because that's what people in this part of the world. That's what we do That's what I do. Sure. Um, very rarely do you think to yourself? well Instead I will Maybe make breakfast breakfast for dinner kind of thing doesn't happen that often But you would never use an algorithm to do that because you would try cooking everything in your house including, you know old computers microphones, uh, I'm just looking around here the cough drops Uh, that that's a bad that's a case. You don't want to use an algorithm There's very few cases where you do use them in regular condition because you don't have to and it would take forever Take forever. What are so instead? Use the heuristic Allison. What are some rules of thumb you've used as an engineer? There you go Yeah rules of thumb I don't have a good answer for that You never used a rule of thumb or you just can't remember Well, I'm sure there are some but um Yeah, nothing's jumping into my mind right now. Yeah. Yeah That always happens to me I'm a little more like, you know, I won't say three eights. I'll say point three seven five kind of a person so it might be a little It might be an obsession with with precision is there that makes it harder for me to do the workarounds that are probably What's the photography rule of thumb? What's that? There you go Oh Actually, Steve just gave me a really good one. Here's one of my favorite things to talk about in structural analysis so um If you take a tuning fork and you and you hit it and it vibrates it'll vibrate it its natural frequency It'll be a really good rate, right? Yeah, that's an object with a very high q if you were to map the uh The natural frequency or the frequency against the natural frequency when you hit it it's natural frequency It's a really sharp peak, right? You get a lot of amplitude It's a nice tight peak But if you took like a sponge it also had to the natural frequency, but it's just like this low little blood that has a very That has a very uh low q well in structural analysis They buy all these great computers and they make these structural analysis models nastra and patron you do Build all these 3d models and you run all this vibration analysis and everything and the last thing the engineer does to this day Is licks their thumb and goes i think q is uh 10 Now it turns out q is almost always 10 on complex systems because they all start to average it like you've got you know Screws and nuts and bolts things holding each other together it ends up being 10 But sometimes it's not and i worked on a project where the guy that was head of the structural analysis department with a phd in structural analysis Said q was 10 and q tended to be was actually 100 so then when they put this little laser up on a on a uh vibration machine the little laser went flying across the room There q is 10 so q is 10 is a heuristic Yes, it works most of the time Yeah, but not all the time exactly right Yeah, yeah, any last words for youtube streaming audience Uh Go Canada go Hey Bye-bye