 All right. Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour and W ozio radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee, recording this on Sunday morning, March 31st, 2024. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ doubter five issues. We have a co host one bed on the line with us. Hello. One bet. It's me the one bad. And very cool. Our guest today is red pirate. Welcome. The dread pirate DJ red pirate digital free thought radio hours to talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, ostepharianism, God's holy books and superstition. If you get to think if you get the feeling that you're the only non believer in your town, well, you just not I guarantee it. You're in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible, but we have a group of over 1100 of us. We're the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid show break. So be sure to stick around. Well, I'm at what's our topic today. Common sense. And I can't believe they'd say that on Easter. We're going to have a nice couple of chats today and also catch up on some listener comments for the people who haven't been here on the last two weeks. But before we jump into the main courses, how about we open ourselves up to an entree of some noodles led by our own dread pirate Higgs with our weekly invocation dread. Our newly lord who art in a colander held onto a be thy noodles. Thy blood be run nice, soft, and young with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs for thine are the meatballs and the noodles and the grog. Whatever, whatever. Though I would say, you know, our great newly lord opens doors and closes windows at the same time, because I've had a situation where I have recognized even in my most unfortunate moments, brilliant moments of opportunity. And so here's a quick example. I recently purchased a car. I did it through buying it online and having the dealership delivered directly to my home. And it was a very stress free process because it was simply that's the number that I want to buy it at are you selling it that this number they said yes. And they got a guy on a car and they dropped it off my door and I'm like wow that was ridiculously easier than going to a dealership and negotiating trade ins and and financing all this stuff just straight by. Turned in my old car. You got a competitive price as well. I sure did. I'm like way below MSRP was like the only dealership that was doing it basically like all the prices for all the dealerships across America and I'm just like well I'm just going to sort by price and pick the exact amount I want and have the cheapest one. And I'm like, yeah, we'll give you that one. I'm like, that's all I wanted. But the the trade back was to wait for my title to come in. So that was going to come in separately. And so even though I had the car, I didn't like feel like I legally owned it until it came in the mail. And so I had this conversation with someone who's like, Oh, how do you like the new car? And I sold them. Yeah, I really, really do love it, but I'm still waiting for the title to come in and I'm just a little nervous about that right now. And it did come in. But I realized when I said that their impression of what I said was, Oh, so you bought the car. Oh, so that's way better than financing it. And I realized that I took my hat to how I purchased the car with that accidentally explaining in detail beyond that. And I thought to myself, Oh my gosh, couldn't that be I gave up more information that I was willing to and like a casual conversation. But I thought couldn't that also be a good way to express more personal things without having to like talk about it in in a more casual setting because I don't want to sound like I was showing off or anything like that. But I do want to be able to be honest. And so I thought, couldn't I apply that to atheism as well. And so I tried it out today or this weekend. And someone was like, Hey, it's Easter and like, I knew it was Easter weekend, but I thought Easter was on Friday. And so I was like, Oh, yeah, happy Easter. It's like, No, today's good Friday. I'm like, Oh, OK, well then happy Easter tomorrow. It's like, No, that's just Saturday or I'm like, OK, well then happy Easter the day after that. And he walked away. But then he and then he was like, Oh, so you're not religious. And I'm like, Yeah, you got it one. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Right, right, right. That's way easier way of dealing with it. And I can still be as pleasant than having to like load a conversation from the start being like, I'm an atheist. I'm like, no one is like, I can I can let people know the exact same thing implicitly as well. So some levels I'm learning that was my I had a basically a really good weekend so far took Thursday off and just basically just having a good time just decompressing from a lot of work. We are working on at our job, the development of cars that can run on water. It sounds crazy right now, but it's the next level of engineering and our labs going to be the forefront for testing in that capacity. Really cool. Yeah, but we're well, it's so cool that stuff we can come up with. Also, I heard something recently that they're learning they're developing technology to get electricity out of moisture in the air. Okay, it's doable. Yeah, it's doable. Okay, Larry, you know, things like that are coming. I mean, we're looking at free. The thing about it is if even if you get free energy, like if you were able to just capture energy from the air, you still got to have the infrastructure which costs a lot of money. Correct. To be able to deliver the energy to you. Right. Don't expect the price of energy to go to zero because I still got to support the infrastructure. Correct. And we're not looking for free energy because there is really no such thing as free energy. What we're looking for is energy that can be used up without emissions, zero cost. That would be the next great step. And the great thing about using water as a power source is there's enough energy in that in the form of hydrogen that you can basically have an emission that is oxygen and water. And when you think about that, okay, so my car dries and its waste products are more oxygen and water. I can basically have my face right up against the muffler and be like, ah, this air in the atmosphere is so dirty. Let me get up in front of the back of my car and turn it on. Breathe slowly. Clean air. Finally, some clean air. I want to live next to my highway. It's going to change the power of air down. And the infrastructure is still being built on electric cars. So we still need electric cars. We're just going to make them a bit more efficient, which we've done with like ice engines. But I feel like we've reached the point where we can get as efficient as possible. Let's let's try this new platform. There's a lot of opportunity there. Larry, how you been? Oh, doing fine. Still waiting to get my motorcycle out though. It's not quite where I want it to be temperature wise, but it's getting there. Nice. And what's really getting me is that a dog words are starting to bloom here in March. It's in March and dog words are starting to bloom, which is crazy. Sure. Sure. We have. That's early I take it. Say what? It's early. Oh yeah. It's early. Usually around the first or second, usually the second week in April. Yes. But it's creeping on up. Right. Not only that, but there's pollen everywhere. I do. I think I lucked out without thinking about it. I do have a yellow car. So like now it's just basically only on the windows and I think to myself, oh, I don't even have to wash it that much. Turn on the windshield wiper. You're good. Yeah. The other thing that I love about this time of year is carpenter bees. I'm not sure if you are familiar with them, but they are a bee that comes out. They come out of their nesting around this time of year to mate and get some new nectar. But they are a super chill kind of bee because honey bees, I feel like are only focused on working and getting their stuff done and they have stingers. So like, don't interrupt me. Whereas carpenter bees are like, oh man, this is awesome. This is brand new to me. Everything's cool. Let me have a here. I don't even got a stinger, man. Like, I'm cool. And they're big. They're huge. They look like bumble bees. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like, they don't come out you in ways or anything like that. They're just one at a time. They're super chill. If you see one, just be cool with them and they'll be cool back to you. Unless it's a bumble bee. And you can recognize them by the little saws they carry, right? Yeah. Little saw and hammer. If you don't like bumble bees and you're worried about your home, there's a good trick that you can do without having to use pesticides or anything like that. You basically buy a plank of wood at Lowe's and you just put some either holes or black circles on that plank of wood and you leave it out and the bees will go to that rather than like try to dig new holes in your home. It's the simplest approach that's nature friendly. Yeah, make sure it's not weather-treated wood though. Yeah. So they're kind of solitary bee, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dred, how you been? Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. I'm, you know, plugging away at this paramedic training thing. So this is the weekend I'm not in school because, so I'm in school every second weekend. So, yeah, that's coming along and, you know, living the life up in the Great White North. You are living the life. So, after this next weekend, I'm actually heading home for that two week period in between to do some of my bug stuff and get my taxes done and all that good stuff. I'm looking forward to a big refund this year. Oh, good. I had to pay. And they decided to fix my car. Like, I think I told you I'd been sideswiped by somebody. No. I drive an Audi A4. Okay. Capriolet. So it's a, you know, it's a soft top, right? Yeah. But, and I was worried that the damage was, you know, pretty extensive. And I was worried that they weren't going to, you know, spend the insurance wasn't going to pay to fix it. Yeah. But, but comes back and sure enough, they're going to fix it. So I have my little blueberry back. Oh, good. Well, good. Good. I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're safe. Oh, he just, yeah, I was, I mean, I was going, I was just leaving town. And this guy just, you know, he just entered the, the intersection, you know, and just tapped me. But just tapped me enough that, you know, like it didn't even push me into the other lane. It just tapped me, but just got the whole, the whole side from the front corner panel right to the back and, and mostly the door. Yeah, it was just, yeah. Yeah, glad you're okay. Yeah, I'm glad you're okay. And listen, that was God's plan. Bob's plan. God's plan is always, I'm going to get you in a car accident because that's part of the script, but it's the engineer script. It's the scientist script. It's the policy makers and the civil engineers and the, the emergency responders team plan to basically not do what God had planned. Right. There you go. Crumple zones, good roads. Exactly. Airbags. Airbags, emergency responders, like insurance systems, everything's designed to be like whatever God's planning, we will do, we will do the opposite of it because we're going to try to get over ourselves. Yes. And we actually made a better system at the end of the day, which is why I feel like we can talk to this today. So you have a way more supportive architecture of support than prayer to some particular gods, I would say. And you can, and you can bet that the whoever was on that, that container ship, whatever prayers they were making didn't help. Right. Right. Right. I don't want to talk about common sense, but not in the, not in the standard way, because I feel like we all have a basic understanding of common senses. What I mean more is common sense can erode, can be eroded. Common sense can fluctuate downwards. Common sense can be be evolved or lessened through impacts of ignorance, just communal ignorance can have an effect on common sense. And so here's an example I want to fill out. Columbus might be known in America as the guy who not only discovered America, but also the guy who figured out that the earth was round. And one of the guys who went across the oceans the first time. There's a lot of things we attribute to Christopher Columbus that factually is not true. One, because there are already people here when he came here, so like people already discovered Americas. There are many people who went across oceans before him. He's not the first one. Yeah. And then three, the idea that the earth was round was well known in many societies all around the world. Larry. They were already selling globes at that time. He's selling goes on t-shirts. There are thoughts that he's had proven it. They were sold 2,500 years ago. Yeah, right. Aristotle's Denise did too. Like, these just building pyramids because they know exactly like we we know where the sun's going to rise because we have a good understanding of like how like all that. Like you think we just built these randomly in the middle of the desert somewhere it's like no we did this because we under have an understanding of the curators of Earth. And now we're going to give it to Columbus. The the idea though is, if you were to do a poll right now on the streets of America, like who if who discovered one where America was that the earth was round. And the other thing I said at the top, which I think was like Earth around discovered America, crossed the oceans. Who did that? Everyone's going to say Christopher Columbus, because that's the common sensical answer. That's what's now known as the common sense answer, even though it's in the West. Yeah, even though it's not accurate. Yeah, in the West, in the West, in the West, in the West. But that is telling because common sense can be curved based on your geopolitical location. And so if you in the same way that you would ask someone which God exists or who's the God that does exist. So to keep yourself from going into a different argument. That's based on geopolitical location. So it's common sense. How it's how you are educated determines what your common sense is. What lies stay inside your current vernacular stay inside your common sense. And as a result, your common sense while while we put it on a pedestal is actually in two parts quite toxic. If you don't have it well informed enough to get rid of it and move to a better standard of understanding or really care about how you are maintaining certain sort of mythologies in your current culture. So that way you can say, hey, these are fictional stories. This is what actually happened, right? Like we need to take some ego out of here and appreciate facts more than common sense. And so what I worry about right now is that is common sense actually a harmful thing just due to the fact that it's so subjective in way it's taught and understood. A lot of people have a sense of common sense, but their common sense is actually just the product of all the biases from their political environment or just their geopolitical location. Larry, do you think that's a fair statement? What would you like that? Well, I think it's not an old kind of one sided it's multi dimensional. I mean, common sense helps you out in some situations and it's actually detriment and others. Yeah, I think that we have to rely on it day to day. You know, but common sense is built around the experiences that you had. When you say common sense, are you talking about common man? Are you talking about something that everybody shares? Are you talking about just your intuitions? Your personal intuitions going forward. Yeah, I would say for common sense, it would be the common population, general general common across people. Yes, yes, not like your instincts or like your own intuition. Like generally what would be understood across all people in Tennessee? So basically societal. Yes. And senses between societies change. Yes. So I don't know. I wouldn't. I don't think he could paint it as good or bad period. I think it's, it's great. Okay, okay. Dred, what do you think? Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I mean, I think, you know, a level of someone's what, what you would call common sense is, you know, also dependent on their sort of their, how reliable their epistemology is, you know. Right, right, right, right. If, if you're not very aware of how the world actually works and you, you're living in some kind of a delusion, then your sense of common sense is not as robust or discerning. I would think you're more prone to, you know, bad outcomes, maybe I guess if you rely on common sense that's not built on a reliable epistemology. Right, right. Larry, I saw your hand. And certain jobs, certain employment are not very commonsensical like physics. Right. Yeah, they could be very counterintuitive. Right. You have to be able to get to the truth in physics, you need an awful lot of mathematical background to be able to do it, even if you just want to understand it rather than discover it. Yeah. The common sense for a common man, I think it serves them fairly well day to day. Right. You know, you guys both bring up something really good because there are day to day terms that we take for granted that feel commonsensical but are actually detrimental to communication and dread exactly as you said it's like a lot of down to your epistemology. So it's, and in that scope is also your training and what context that you're speaking in, what's the background, right? Right. And so I have people in my lab who come to me who, from a non-scientific background, they've had some academic but then they get hired into our site and we were filtration companies. So we'll work a lot with particles and I'll have them do an experiment where they get a bunch of particles isolated and I want them to tell me how big the particles are. Well, they're really big. And I have to remind them like, they put that down like a report or a PowerPoint presentation, like these are really big. And I'm like, you can't, there's no such thing as big or small in science. In science, it's how big or bigger than or smaller than, but there's just no standard for big and small. Maybe macro or micro. Right, right. You're always referencing an adjective off of a standardized criteria. You can't just say something's big. And so this is, this has been a challenge for this person because their entire commonsensical life. They're just like, well, these are small things and these are big things. This is, I don't know what you mean. We did another experiment. So like I should have to show him the scale and we talked about macro and micro and now he understands, I'm never just going to say big or small. I'm going to say it's bigger than a blank or smaller than a blank or within this range. And then here's these numbers in the units and that's the way how I always express size. But we did another experiment where one of his jobs was looking through our laboratory and trying to improve one of our instruments. And he found that one of our instruments had like an old spring on it. So we bought a new spring. And I said, before you put the new spring on, you have to do a test to make sure that there's no difference between modifying this piece of equipment because it's still in use. And we want to make sure it doesn't bias itself with the having a new spring, even though it should have had a new spring to begin with or a well working one. I want you to do a reference on both of them and see if there's any differences. So he does the test and he says it doesn't look like there's any difference and he has like these two stacks of numbers and like they look more or less the same. And I told him again in science, there's no such thing as it looks the same. Like you have to do a standard test on it. Yeah. And he's like more or less doesn't count. Right. Right. More or less the same eyeball at the same. It looks more or less the same. These numbers don't look too different. Like none of those terms exist in a scientific context. We actually have to. The testicle test on to fire and rovers rovers have crashed into Mars because more or less. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Even though we are looking at these numbers and in our heart of hearts and our brain of brains in the most commonsensical way. I'm looking at two averages and they're only off by like a thousandth of a decimal. Right. We're looking at this in like commonsensically. These look the same, but that's not good enough for standard or for science. Science has it to a higher standard than common sense. And for the scientific standard, what we're going to do is something called a Q test. We're going to look at all the averages. We're going to take the standard deviations. We're going to do some math to verify that for the number of tests that we looked at the number of iterations that we looked at that the the variance is within a certain range and we'll give you a confidence. What's up. Yeah. I was going to ask you, do you have another way of measuring it? I mean, you need something that's a standard. If you're going to test a piece of equipment and say this is pieces right or wrong before or after the spring was added. Did you have something that you could measure? Very good question. Yes. So we had our raw samples that we were measuring. And then we had standardized samples. And then we also had legacy samples that we had when we did only with the old spring and our anticipation. So it's three tiers of tests. One, the first tier test where we're just doing the standard work. We should expect with standard work that we get the same numbers, statistically the same numbers with the standard work. We should expect with standard work that we get the same numbers, statistically the same numbers with no variance between the two. And then when we do our benchmarking, we should have data that's within the benchmark qualification. It should be within the range that we'd expect for benchmark. And then for our legacy data with the new spring, we should get the exact same data as our legacy data. And in each case, we tested it, it looked the same, but we still did the qualification Q test and T test. We looked at our statistic tools to see if there's a big difference between two sets of data and found out that everything was the same. It was a lot of work. It took us, you know, for him to, to get his head wrapped around it, it took like a good two weeks of his standard work plus this project, what he was working on to like learn how to express that it's not just that they look the same. It's that we did these statistical analysis on them to verify that they are in fact the same. But I can tell you, it helped out so much better when he finally gave his final report, because one of the first things people were asking who are other scientists in the room was, how do you know those are the same? How do you know these two points of data are the same? Did you do any qualification test to verify that? And he said, yes, it's not just me giving you off the shoulder. Yeah, they look the same. It's me going through a battery of statistical analysis where I verify that these numbers are within the range of acceptance for us. It's clear that there's no major difference between the two up to a certain confidence level. It's a longer answer. It's more nuanced for sure, but it's more strict and clear with all the verbiage used and you can do the exact same tests I did and come out to the exact same answer. That's the value that I love about science. It's like, it's not just don't take my word for it. Do it yourself. You'll get the same answer I did. Well, how would you bring that type of example into the world of religion or testing religion or religious claims? I'm actually willing to say that you can't because it's explicit in the book that you can't test me. Please don't do tests on me. You know, like Jesus is there probably walking around right now 2000, 2024 years ago, wherever he was walking around with holes in his hands being like, don't look at these holes. Don't look behind the curtain. If you read the Bible, Jesus did say, you know, blessed are those who believe without evidence, basically, but even Dider Thomas who wanted to touch the hole, Jesus talked him out of it. So I never did get to actually touch the holes. You never got to. The nails were. Yeah. We probably need to take a break. It's getting toward the end of the hour or the middle of the hour. Excuse me. This is the digital free thought radio hour and W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002 or in her 22nd year and have over 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening at Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in Pete's area. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. You can also find us online at Facebook meetup.com or at Knoxville atheist.org. You can just Google Knoxville atheists for that matter. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. That's right. Where do you pick up. So we had a really cool conversation on common sense. Not always good thing. We have better standards out there, but it is a ubiquitous thing, right? So it could be useful for some stasis. My thing is leverage it for what it is. It is a low standard of evidence. Which should only be used for like low standard claims in terms of how extraordinary they are. If you drop a screwdriver common sense says maybe you can pick it up right and keep working. That's simple. But if you're working on a rocket ship, do your math again. Use a higher mathematics. Don't use your basic stuff on that. Measure twice. Cut once. Exactly. Which is not common sense. Yeah. So I was thinking about this because, you know, like you were talking about your lab and the level, you know, the level of precision for one thing that you need to go to and the scales at which you work. So in common sense, I think works really on the human scale, right? Yes. So it's, you know, it's sort of, it's the scales that our senses can perceive on, you know, without technology, you know, like, you know, this, this scale of size, for instance, I mean, when you, when you try to wrap your head around, you know, you know, astronomical distances or microscopic sizes, that is beyond the realm of common sense. And that's where a lot of people who are not, you know, not don't have any kind of scientific background kind of get lost. And common sense no longer has a good grip there because they just can't scale up or scale down from that sort of anthropocentric scale, right? Dred, you're kind of getting a little spiritual here. I kind of love it because everything that I experienced as a human being. I get touched by the noodley one every once in a while. Everything I experienced as a human being is within my realm of understanding, right? Yeah. And because of that, I apply significance to it because it's what's directly impacting me. Of course. However, there are so many things beyond my level of understanding that are real, have a significant impact on me and do so on a, on every second of my life. But because I can't understand it, I easily dismiss it. And so some of the the the adventures, the journey with science is learning to apply to apply significance on things that I can't common sensically grasp or observe immediately and appreciate them as real forces that exist in this universe. And that is such it starts as like, wow, there's these cool things out here that I'll never see. No one's ever going to see a black hole in their life. No one's ever going to see like one photon. But we can come up with these models to explain how these things exist and why they exist and use things that help us on a daily basis. Glasses, x-ray machines, car, car, ABS systems, things that you will never see but do exist and have an impact in your life on a regular basis. Telescopes, especially radio telescopes will show us things we can never, we can never see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just find it to be an experience of humility to recognize that I am woefully prepared, I'll prepared to understand how the forces of the universe exists and the myriad of them that exists in the universe. I can't, I can't appreciate them all, but science gives me a door to open up to appreciate that. However, when I do that, I have to recognize that man, I have like the starter pack. I'm understanding how this universe works. I only have like this squishy little body that's not even permanent. Like this is, I'm going to have to recognize that I'm not going to learn everything, but I can open up a door to appreciating way more than I'm open up to if I'm willing to do that. Michael, let's me do that. Larry, what's up? Yeah, no, I'm sure that there are religious people out there right now saying, well, I have faith, faith shows me things that you can't see with a telescope. Well, faith is very subjective, extremely subjective. Matter of fact, every different religion in the world uses faith to believe the things that they want to believe or that their preachers or their holy book tells them is real. You use faith basically to stop asking questions, which is the basis of science. Ask those questions. Yes. Get some answers and make sure that you can verify those answers when you do get them. Yes, the death of understanding is when you stop asking questions. And I feel like faith is nothing but ammunition to make you stop asking questions. That's right. It's an anthem to understanding. I love doubting Thomas. I feel like that's the most obvious thing that anyone with a common sense understand. Can we just go back to common sense real quick? If you just said, hey, my Messiah was dead last Friday. It's only been a day and a half. It's live walking now. Don't say it's three days. It's three days. Wasn't he dead Friday? I agree. He was dead Saturday, but he died in the evening and it's barely morning and he's back again. Are we really going to give him? All right, fine. Three days fine. I'm not going to be that doubting Thomas, but I do want to touch those holes. I really like that guy. Skepticism. That's right. Can he show us the holes? We saw the holes go in. Can we look at them? No. Thomas. And what's funny, none of the acolytes, none of his, what do you call them? Apostles recognized him when he came back. Right. And all of the different books, it always says that nobody recognized him. So it could have been a different person playing him. Yeah. And just going off on that and to use their religious beliefs against them. And I'm not going to say this in a bad way, but this was before trains existed, before airplanes existed. This wasn't like America where there's people that look like Larry and people who look like me and people who look like, you know, Asian people and Indian people and we're all hanging out with each other. And if like an Indian guy walks out the room and a Chinese person comes in after him, you'd be like, Hey, that's a different person. Like we can, like we can meet early, common sense. However, if you're in a place where, you know, is early Mesopotamia, like this is like, this is the cradle of human society still. Not a lot of people like travel, not a lot of people go to different places. Most people look the same. Most people can recognize each other. Like most people are related to each other, you know, and you're telling me a guy who's very famous, who's dead came back and no one's like, I don't recognize this guy. That should be like red flags for everybody in the room. It's like, you don't know this person. No, it's Prince. It's like, are you sure? I don't know. It's the same guy. Have you ever seen this, this experiment where, you know, two people are having a conversation. And like two strangers on the street. And this is, it's a setup, right? So some, some stranger approaches a person and ask them, you know, questions like directions or whatever. And then in between, like just coming in between them, somebody, you know, two people with it, with a, you know, they're going to be in a plywood or something. Sure. And enter, you know, cuts in between them and the person switches out. Right. And when the, and when the plywood passes, it's a completely different person, but having the same conversation. And oftentimes the person doesn't recognize that the person has changed. Wow. It's like the gorilla walking through the, through the basketball thing. You know, you, they say, count how many times the basketball bounces. And no one, and people are so paying attention to the balls that they don't see the gorilla dancing. Dred, I have to ask how grievous does the change get? Is it just a change of shirt color or is it like a woman to a man? They've done, they've done it pretty extreme. Woman to a man even. They've done this with dating, you know, where someone, you know, they're, you know, So like a woman could be dating a guy and then they switch it on the lady and the lady's like, it's fine with me. I'm good. They're sitting at a table having a conversation and the person gets up and says, oh, I just have to go to the bathroom. And the person that comes back is completely different. Like it's, you know, it's, it's actually startling. I'd like to look this up. What's the name of that experiment? Well, there's a, there's a, there was a show called what would you do? And it has a lot of those things in it. But I'll, I'll have to, I'll look into it if you can't find it from there. Okay. But there was, yeah, there's a couple of very, very interesting and they videotape all this stuff. It's very cool. Yeah. It really tells you how flawed human beings are perceptually. Yes. And how common sense really can, you know, he are worse than me in some cases. There's a, if you're looking, if we're recommending YouTube videos, that's one, one a great thing. Cause I think that's a great demonstration of how unreliable our sense of observation is. Yeah. Cause it's not a one to one. It's not like you're, it's like photons directly going to your brain. There's a lot of interpretation going on there. And your brain choosing what to see and choosing what to make note of. And then that's, and that's an important thing in memory as well. Right. Because your memory doesn't work like a table. Correct. You're constructing reality as you go. Yes. You know, what senses you're focusing on and, you know, where, where your head's at, you know, how tired you are, you know, whether you're hungry or hungry, you know, all these things influence your perception. Right. And you're constantly making rationales out of the things that you're seeing too. Like if, if for whatever reason I looked at Larry and he had a red plaid shirt on instead of a blue one, my brain would just be like, oh, no, he always had a red one on, even if he swapped it out. He did that trick on us. My brain would just be like, oh, that's just the way it is. Because how unlikely would it be that he changed the color of his shirt mid show, right? So you correct your own memory. Exactly. Exactly. And you could have filters on that just change your shirt to blue and I would just have to like rationalize. No, that's the way it always was. Like my brain is constantly making judgment calls for me, whether I like it or not, and I can't turn it off. And that's how we both observe, but how we recall information, which could be to a lot of detriments. I mean, there are a lot of innocent people in prison right now due to how misinformed people are with how perception works, right? Yeah, sure. I wanted to highlight what the Downing Thomas story too, along with that is it's knowing that about human society. It's not even just the Downing Thomas story isn't even just an expression of humans can doubt how perception works and people can lie, which is a bad combination. So you should endorse people asking questions because wouldn't it make good common sense to ask questions? If you have questions and if it's something's true, what's the impact of answering that question aside from upholding the truth? And if it's a lie, at least by asking questions, you can get rid of lies. So like, if anything, the moral of the story should have been touting Thomas to ask a question. Jesus like, no, totally dude, come over here. I'm so glad you asked questions. Let me absolutely prove I am who I am because there are different people here who are down to me. It's the other people who are down to me that are promised you who asked the questions with the doubt constructively doing tests that I support. Awesome. Call this science. You guys are great. See you later. Back to heaven. But no, the story is like, I'm going to chastise you for not believing me without evidence forefront. And I feel like that's such a such the backbone of religion. Right. Believe without question. Believe without question. It's such a telling underhanded story of someone who if I'm lying, that's the moral that I would love for you to have. Don't ever question me. I'm so good that you can't even doubt me. Reasonably, even with your with your body that it's naturally ingrained to doubt things. And it's such a it's such a telling wrinkle in the story, in my opinion. I, you know, you don't ever have to go to the story of Jesus. You can just go to the story of the Emperor's New Close, which I love just as much as a as a parable because these are people who are willing to rationalize their behavior and what they claim to see just so that they can fit into a crowd or be seen as part of like the herd or or not be chastised for being different where it's the kid that finally says, Hey, that's the Emperor's naked. And everyone's like, Oh, finally someone said it. We all thought the same thing, but we didn't know if we were allowed to say it or not. That should be the demonstration of, you know, you're, you can make good observations and you shouldn't let societal pressure. Maybe you should keep a kid. Hey, Ty, these are nanometer scale. I'm like, listen to this kid. They call that the spiral of silence when, you know, most people know something other than what they think the common understanding is. Yeah. You guys are familiar with Hebrews 11? No, not offhand. Faith is confidence in what we hope for an assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients, this is what the ancients were commended for. That's the opening of Hebrews 11. So that says it all, right? Like we don't test, we don't test faith. We don't check the facts. We just believe it. And that's, we run on hope. We run on hope. Scary. Scary situation. It says what faith is the evidence of things not seen. First, faith is evidence. I mean, that right there is, is long. It's a lie. Sorry, it's wrong. Faith is not evidence. So I'm going to throw something out. Really, this is a bit of a random thing, but I do find like there's a disconnect between how we buy our appliances, our products, our cars versus how we elect officials. Like when we want to buy a car, I was looking for safety ratings. I was looking for reviews online. How many doors? What's the clearance? Like how will this look like on the road? Will it be visible enough? Do I have the features that I expect to have for safety for a car that's like relatively new? Like I'm doing a lot of research and I'm making sure it's either there or it's not there. I'm like, I don't like it from this angle. Let me try something else. And I threw, I had a whole spreadsheet. I was doing research and I was like, nope, nope, nope, until I got the car that I found I got. But when it comes to elected officials, even the I fall prone to emotional arguments. So like, I might know who I want to elect as like my governor and my president when I'm in the booth. And it's like, you have seven representatives that you need to elect and you're like, oh man, I didn't, I didn't have any attention to this. Can I pull out my phone and just which one's the the color that I like or which one hasn't said anything crazy in the last four years when I search them up on Google. It's like, oh, you said something nutty. I'm not going to do you. I might actually switch to the other color just to get you out. But like my research is so on the fly on the majority of the ballot. It's not in terms of like impact, but definitely in terms of like local impact for sure. Right. And so I wish people were as motivated to look into people as they would appliances when it comes to cars. Right. Do you think that that's apply this apply the same level of scrutiny, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. Apply that same level, which is why now I'm starting again is my crazy town because I'd love to explore this idea with you. Some people are reluctant to hire AI as their political officials whereas for me, I can't wait until we get to that day. Right. Yeah. I don't think these jobs should be jobs that people should have. I think they should just be algorithms that are at least code verified like on GitHub. You'd be like, this is how we're doing the code and you can compare these two codes and you can run simulations against them. They're free open codes for you to run. But whenever there's a political question, we will run them through the the the elected AI and you can run your simulations and it'll be exactly that. I'd love that way more than a person. What's up Larry? Well, we've been off the air. We haven't done a show last week, but in the two weeks in between, the European Union has had a meeting on AI and the crux of their meeting was how are we going to get our values into this new super intelligence that is being invented and they're worried about it because mainly the intelligence are being invented in America and maybe in China. The forefront is America and they're worried that we are going to put all of our values into this AI and they will not get a word. A way to put their values in. They want secularism. They want more or less a type of socialism. They want, of course the Chinese want communism and Americans want more and more of America population want religion in it. I'm sure they want to be able to have their God represented by this AI. So now we're at the point where we see it coming, but what kind of values are we going to be instilling in this super intelligence that's coming. And it's actually a bigger problem than that. They call it the alignment problem, right? Where when it gets to the point that AI is legitimately self-aware is its values that develop independent of whatever our inputs are, are they going to align with our interests as a species, right? And that's that's the bigger question. I mean, you can program you can program you know, sort of I guess a sensibility, but you know, do the computers truly have values as we program them or values that they develop independent of our contributions to what they ought to be thinking. Yeah, there's a saying going. You can't make an ought you can't get an ought from an is like David Hughes said, right? Well, I get benefit and hope from the old saying, truth has a liberal bent. If you if you've heard that saying before and hopefully this is super intelligent will find truth and be able to realize that being woke is the best possible path forward for humanity. So we'll we'll see I guess. No, I like that. I do find like we're in the middle of a very interesting point where we're definitely on the we're not at the event horizon, but we're at the point where AI is just really annoying based on the different kinds that there are out there. So I know like when I'm driving, I can be like, hey, smartphone, tell me where the nearest Mexican store for me to get Mexican food at is and it'll be like, I don't understand what you're talking about because I'm not saying take me to Taco Bell. Like I'm not so clear with my terms that it's like I know I'm not even understanding what you're saying. I'm just looking for the key words and punching. I'm just looking for opinions. Right. But I know with my AI, like chat GBT, I can be like, can you tell me like really what's the most beneficial, like delicious food that I can get that was like circa 1990s for like Mexican food that had like some Tajin like kind of I don't even know how to pronounce it, but he explained me like these different kinds of candies and compared them with Bolivia from the 1800s. Yeah, here's a full on report. Can you also take me to Taco Bell? I don't know where Taco Bell is. I'm a chat based AI and so I'm like stuck in between these. Why don't you know what this other thing knows and why aren't you as helpful as this other thing like why can't we just combine these two because I'm like it's almost as if I had two kids and I'm like I have my smart kid in the background who knows everything but doesn't know how to talk to people and then have my kid who like is super friendly. It's willing to talk to you but doesn't know anything. This is hard. We need to merge these brains together. That's where we're at right now with AI. We're not like at the true ask me anything. I'll do anything. It's just that the which version do you want to talk to? Stephen Colbert Larry It's a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias. There you go. I wonder where it came from. Thank you. But I do think AI could be very helpful for us as a tool. I don't think it's going away and I think it's telling that we are interested in making sure that the messaging from it doesn't set us back further by setting us up for success to the point where when we have AI controlling a lot of things that we do from an administrative point of view we can have a model that doesn't inhibit us from progressing further for as fast as we want to and I think we can definitely get there. I think we can definitely even use AI even as a tool to get there and I'm looking forward to that day because I say there are some jobs that shouldn't be jobs and that goes from people who are in factory lines moving one thing from one conveyor belt to the other to people rubber stamping things as like, yes, I approve of this. Yes, I approve of that. It's like, get rid of that person. Let him be an engineer and do some real work. I've used chat GPT in my work. I'm reviewing corporations and reviewing companies for the patterns of spending and stuff like that and I see this company that I'm not really, they do a kind of work that I'm not really familiar with and I see the spending pattern and I couldn't figure it out. I said, why would they do that and I just out of curiosity I brought up chat GPT and explained the situation. They gave me five good reasons why this particular spending pattern would apply to that type of company. It was awesome. I was telling you I pay a monthly fee for chat GPT for Oh, good for you. It's like, I don't know, $15 a month or something like that, but it is really a cut above the other one. In our lab, we have a machine that makes acid water as its waste stream and we collect it in a jug and we can basically tell chat GPT listen, we have this much volume it's currently at this pH how much sodium bicarbonate do we need to add to this so it'll neutralize itself back to neutral and be safe enough to pour down the sink and it will show you not, it won't even tell you the answer it'll do the whole breakdown of the math for you. Here are all the moles, here you go and you're like fantastic. Okay, so it's only going to be 612 grams and you pour it in you pour in the grams and every single new gram of base that you add to the acid causes the system to fizz because it's making gases and then once you add in the little bit more, it stops fizzing and that's when you know you have a neutral solution and you can stop and be like, wow chat GPT, you're doing science for us we appreciate it, thank you so much. We're getting to the top of the iron, we probably need to start ending the show here. Okay, we support AI, we support reality you're on the ropes but listen, there's better stuff out there that's the main thing that I wanted to say also, I can't believe we had all these conversations on Easter how terrible, we talked about AI and did Jesus really die? I mean, there's no such thing as death, right? Oh no, he's going straight for that neck okay, go for it. Yeah, I mean think about common sense, you know if death has been defeated then what kind of sacrifice would Jesus' of death be? He had a bad weekend for your sins it wasn't even the full weekend it was just Saturday, it's like bro, you can still hang out it's still the weekend, it's Easter now, let's go play some disc golf this is over all right, thank you guys so much for watching the show, you can catch me on Let's Chat on YouTube, Dred Pirate World, can we find you? I'm on YouTube as well under Mine Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T I've been doing weekly short clips on various topics of Astropharian Significance so come check it out like and subscribe nice, cool and if you're a member of clergy but have come to see that the claims of religion are not justified and you're losing your faith as it were there is help for you there's a group called the clergy project you can find them online at clergyproject.org that is actually retraining clergy to be able to do work in the secular society so if that's up your alley, give them a look by the way you can find this show and podcast everywhere just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour if you're watching this on YouTube be sure to like and subscribe my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject you can find my book Atheism What's It All About on Amazon and remember everybody's going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it, enjoy your life we'll see you next Wednesday night at 7 o'clock here on WOZO Radio say bye everybody bye