"I can't believe you said that on EASTER!" | The LET'S CHAT Podcast

all righty hello and welcome to the digital freethought Radio Hour n w oo radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville Tennessee we're recording this on Sunday morning March 31st 2024 I'm Larry rhods or DJ doubter 5 and as usual we have our co-host wombat on the line with us hello wombat it's me the wombat and very cool Our Guest today is dread pirate welcome The Dread pirate DJ dread pirate digital free thought radio our is a talk radio show about atheism free thought rational thought humanism and the sciences and conversely we'll also talk about religions religious Faith aarian ISM God's holy books and Superstition if you get the think if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town well you're just not I guarantee it here in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt we have a group of over 00 of us we're The Atheist Society of Knoxville or ask and we'll tell you more about us after the midow break so be sure to stick around W what's our topic today common sense and I can't believe they'd say that on Easter so we're gonna have a 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 higs with our weekly invocation dread our nly Lord who art in a colander hel Dante be thy noodles thy blood be rum thy sauce be yum 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 keto ISM but Deliver us some carbs for thine are the meatballs and the noodles and the Grog whenever it [Music] ever though I would say um you know our great nood Lord opens doors and closes windows at the same time because I've had a situation where um I have recognized even in my most unfortunate moments brilliant moments of opportunity and so here's an quick example um I recently purchased a car um I did it through buying it online and having the the dealership delivered directly to my home and it was a very stressfree process because it was simply that's the number that I want to buy it at are you selling it at 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 a straight by turn in my old car you got a competitive price as well I sure did I'm like way below MSRP it was like the only dealership that was doing it it basically showed 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 model I want and have the cheapest one and they're like yeah we'll give you that one I'm like that's all I wanted but the the trade back was I had 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 was like oh how do you like the new car and I told him 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 the what I said was oh so you bought the car oh so that's way better than financing it and I realized that I tipped my hat to how I purchased the car without actually explaining in detail beyond that and I thought to myself oh my gosh couldn't that be I gave up more information than I was willing to in 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 like 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 okay well then Happy Easter tomorrow it's like no that's just Saturday or I'm like okay well then Happy Easter the day after that it's like yes that's Easter and he walked away but then he and then he was like oh so you're not religious and I'm like yeah right you got it in one that's pretty good CH that's pretty good right right right that's a 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 ah I'm I'm like no one needs like and I can I can let people know the exact same thing implicitly as well so some levels I'm learning uh that was my I had a basically a really good weekend so far took Thursday off and just basically just um having a good time just decompressing from a lot of work uh 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 than that yeah but we're well it's so cool this 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 do okay Larry you know things like that are coming I we're looking at free the thing about it is 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 money correct to be able to deliver the energy to you right so don't expect the price of energy to go to zero because they 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 emissions 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 drives 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 turn it on Just Breathe clean air finally some clean air like I want to live my Highway yeah it's going to change the power Paradigm and the infrastructure is still being built on electric cars so we still need electric cars we just need to make them 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 out this new platform there's a lot of opportunity there uh 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 uh temperature- wise but it's getting there nice and and what's really getting me is that uh dogwoods are starting to bloom here in March it's in March and dogwoods are starting to bloom which is crazy sure 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 they creeping on up right not only that but there's pollen everywhere I do I think I looked out without thinking about it I do have a yellow car so like now uh 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 uh the 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 they come out of their 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 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 handang here I don't even got a Stinger Man like I'm cool like can I just land they're big they're huge they look like bumblebees yeah yeah yeah and like they don't come at 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 Dre unless it's a bumblebee you can recognize by the you can recognize them by the uh the little saws they carry right yeah so some people little saw and Hammer Hammer if you don't like bumblebees 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 W holes in your in your in your home it's the simplest approach that's nature friendly and yeah make sure it's not where they're treated with though yeah yeah yeah yeah so they're a kind of solitary be right yes yeah yeah yeah yeah dread how you been uh pretty good pretty good um you know plugging away at this paramedic training thing so uh um this is the weekend I'm not in school because I so I'm in school every second weekend so um yeah that's coming along and uh you know living the uh the life up in the great white North are living the but after after this next weekend I'm I'm actually heading home for uh that two week period in between uh to do some of my bug stuff and uh get my taxes done and all that good stuff I'm looking forward to a big uh a big refund this year so oh good I had to pay and and they decided to fix my car um like uh I think I told you I'd been sideswiped by uh by somebody no I drive a an Audi A4 okay Cabriolet so it's a you know it's a soft top right yeah but um and I was worried that the damage was you know pretty extensive and I was worried that they weren't going to uh you know spend the insurance wasn't going to uh pay to fix it yeah but um but comes back and sure enough they're going to fix it so I have my little blueberry back okay 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 um 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 um it just tapped me but just got the whole the whole side the whole side like from the front corner panel right to the back and and mostly the door yeah it was just uh yeah well yeah glad you're okay yeah I'm glad you're okay I and listen that was God's plan thead quad's plan God yeah yeah yeah God's plan is always I'm gonna 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 the civil engineers and the the emergency responders team planned to basically not do what God had planned right there you go crumple zones uh good roads ex 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 care of ourselves yes 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 way more supportive architecture of support than prayer uh to to some particular Gods I would say and you could and you can bet that the uh whoever was on that uh that container ship whatever prayers they were making didn't help right right right right uh I wanted to talk about common sense but not in the in not in the standard way um because I feel like we all have a basic understanding of Common Sense is what I mean more is common sense can erode can be eroded Common Sense can fluctuate downwards Common Sense can be uh de 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 throw 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 toop Christopher Columbus that factually is not true one because there were already people here when he came here so like people already discovered Americas two there are many people who've uh went across oceans before him he's not the first one and then three the idea that the Earth was round was well known in many societies all around the world Larry you have they were already selling globes at that time he's selling Globes on [Laughter] t-shirts Aristo had proven it you know 2 200 years ago yeah right aristes did too like the Egyptians are 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 this like you think we just built these randomly in the middle of the desert somewhere it's like no we did this because we have an understanding of the curvatures of Earth and no we're going to give it to Columbus the 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 uh the other thing I said at the top which I think is like Earth was round discovered America crossed the oceans who did that everyone's gonna 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 not in the west yeah even though it's not accurate 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 it that's based on geopolitical location so is common sense how it's how you are educated to 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 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 their political environment or uh just their geopolitical IAL location Larry do you think that's a fair statement what what would you like to well I think it's I don't know kind of one sided it's multi-dimensional I mean Common Sense helps you out in some situations and it's actually to your detriment in others yeah um I think that we have to rely on it uh dayto day you know but common sense is built around the experiences that you've had uh when you say Common Sense are you talking about common man are you talking about something everybody Shares are you talking about uh just your intuitions uh 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 and senses between societies uh change yes so I I I don't know I wouldn't I don't think you could paint it as good or bad period I think it's it's great okay okay dread what do you think yeah that's that's interesting I uh I mean I think uh 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 um 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 um I would think you're more prone to um you know bad outcomes maybe I guess if you rely on Common Sense that's not built on a reliable epistemology right right I saw you and uh and certain jobs certain employment uh are not very common sensical like physics right yeah they could be very counterintuitive in fact right right you have to to be able to get to the truth in physics you you need an awful lot of mathematical background to be able to even if you just want to understand it rather than Discover it the common sense for a common man I think it it it serves them fairly well DED day you know i' you you guys both bring up something really good because there are day-to-day terms that we take for granted that feel common sensical but are actually detrimental to communication and Dread exactly as you said it's like a lot of down to your epistemology I and and in that scope is also your training and what what context that you're speaking in what's the background right and so I have people in my lab who come to me uh who from a non-scientific background they've had some uh uh academic but then they get hired into our in our site and we were filtration companies so we'll work a lot with particles and I'll have them do an ex an experiment where they get a bunch of particles isolated and I want them to tell me how big the particles are and they say Well they're really big and I have to remind them like on they put that down like a report or 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 and maybe macro or micro to establish a scale and measurement and all the rest of right right right you're always referencing uh an an adjective off of a standardized criteria right you can't just say something's big and so this is this has been a challenge for this person because their entire common sensical life they're just like well these are small things and these are big things this is I don't know what you mean uh I we did another experiment so like I should have to show them the scale when 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 and the units and that's the way how it always express size but we did another experiment where one of his jobs was looking through our laboratory and trying to uh improve one of our instruments and he found that one of our instruments had like an old spr 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 having a new spring even though it it should have had a new spring to begin with or a wellworking one I want you to do a a reference on both of them and see if differences so he does the test and he says 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 it 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 statistical test quantify it 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 common sensical 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 and like common sensical these look the same but that's not good enough for standard 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 where 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 give you a confidence what's up Larry yeah I was gonna 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 piece is right or wrong before or after the spring was added did you have something that you could compare it to very good question standard 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 the standard work we should expect with standard work that we get the same numbers uh 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 did the uh qualification Q test and T tests which are statistic tools to see if there's a big difference between uh 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 finally gave his final report CU 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 tests to verify that and he said yes it's not just me giving you offthe 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 to 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 uh strict and clear with all the verbiage used and you can do the exact same test 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 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 2 2024 years ago whoever he was walking around with holes in his hands being like don't look at these holes don't be doub don't look behind the curtain you don't hey Jesus your holes like no these are my holes if you read the Bible uh Jesus did say you know blessed are those who believe without evidence basically know but even derer Thomas who wanted to touch the holes Jesus talked him out of it so he never did get to actually T touch the holes you never got the tou 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 uh this is the Digital freethought radio hour in wzo radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville Tennessee we'll be right back after this short break welcome back to the second half of the Digital freethought radio hour I'm doubter 5 and we're on wo radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville Tennessee let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist Society of Knoxville ask was founded in 2002 we're 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 Tap Room in Pizzeria 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 atheist for that matter it's just that simple by the way if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to Meetup and do a search for an atheist group in your town don't find one start one one that's right well where do you want to pick up uh so we had a really cool conversation on Common Sense um not always good thing we have better standards out there but it is a ubiquitous thing right so it could be useful for some cases 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 uh in terms of how extraordinary they are if you drop a screwdriver common sense says maybe you can pick it up right and 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 don't use your basic stuff on that measure twice cut cut once exactly which is not common sense yo go ahead yeah so I was thinking about this because you know like you were talking about your your lab and the level you know the level of precision uh for one thing that that you need to go to and the scales at which you work and common sense I think works really on the human scale right yes so it's you know it's it's sort of um it's the the scales that our senses can perceive un you know without technology you know like um you know this the 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 uh that is beyond the realm of Common Sense and and that's where a lot of people who are not um you know uh not don't have any kind of U scientific background kind of get lost and common sense no longer has a good grip there because they they just can't scale up or scale down uh from that that sort of anthropocentric uh scale right dread you're kind of getting a little spiritual here I kind of love it because everything that I experience as a human being I get touched by the noodly one every once in a while everything I experience 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 toly to apply significance on things that I can't common sensical grasp or observe immediately and appreciate them as real forces that exist in this universe and that is such it be 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 uh x-ray machines car car ABS systems things that you will never see but do exist and have an impact on your life on a regular basis telescopes especially radio telescopes will show things we can never we can never see yeah yeah yeah yeah so I I just find it to be an experience of humility to recognize that I am woefully prepared ill prepared to understand how the forces of the universe exist and the Myriad of them that exist 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 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 I 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 if my go lets me do that Larry what's up yeah um 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 uh 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 pre 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 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 anema to understanding I love doubting Thomas I just 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 had if you just said hey my Messiah was dead last Friday it's only been a day and a half live and walking now but everyone say it's three days everyone's was like it's three days like wasn't he dead Friday like that was like I mean he I agree we all agree he was dead Saturday but like he died like in the evening and it's barely morning and it's he's and he's back again like are are we going to give him all right fine three days it's fine I'm not going to be that doubting Thomas but I do want to touch those holes I really like that guy just want the same guy guys skepticism that's right yeah can we can he show us the holes I like we saw the holes go in can we look at them no Thomas and what's funny none of the none of the acolytes none of his uh what do you call him Apostles yeah recognized him when he came back right in all of the different books it always says that nobody recognized him so it could have been a different person playing him and just going off on that to use their religious beliefs against them their Su 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 and Indian people and we're all hanging out with each other and if like an Indian guy walks out the room and uh an a uh a Chinese person comes in after him You' be like hey that's a different person like we can like we can immediately common sens toally understand however if you're in a place where you know is early Mesopotamia like this is like this is the Cradle of 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 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 is 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 I feel have have you ever seen this uh this experiment where um you know two people are having a conversation and like two strangers on the street and uh this is It's a setup right so um some some Str or approach as 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 a with a you know a sheet of 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 often times the person doesn't recognize that the person has changed wow well 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 are so paying attention to the the balls that they don't see the gorilla dancing across dread I have to ask how egregious does the change get does it like is it just a change of shirt color or is it like a like a woman to a man like how how how bad it 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 so like a woman could be dating a guy and then they switch it the lady and the lady like it's fine with me I'm good they're s they're sitting at a table having a conversation and uh the the person gets up and says 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 um well how I Candid Camera there's there's a there was a show called what would you do okay and it has a lot of those things in it um but I I'll I'll have to I'll look into it if you can't find it from there um but there's yeah there's a couple of very very interesting and they videotaped all this stuff it's very cool yeah it really tells you how flawed human beings are perceptually yes and how common sense really um can you know be our worst enemy in some cases there's a um if you're look if we're recommending YouTube videos that's one one a great thing because I think that's a great demonstration of how unreliable our sense of observation is yeah because it's not a onetoone 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 and that's and that's an important thing in memory as well right because your memory doesn't work like a t correct you're constructing reality as you go yes by the you know what senses you're uh focusing on and you know where where your head's at you know how tired you are you know um whether you're hungry or hangry you know all these things influence your perception right and you're constantly making rationals out of the things that you're seeing too like if if for whatever reason I looked at Larry and he had a 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 cuz how unlikely would it be that he changed the color of his shirt mid show right my brain is just your own memory exactly and you could have filters on that just change your shirt to Bloon and I would just have to like rationalize no that's the way I 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 uh 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 for sure um I wanted to highlight with the Dy story too along with that is it's knowing that about human society it's not even just a a 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 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 tting Thomas ask a questions Jesus is like no totally dude come over here I'm so glad you ask questions let me absolutely prove I am who I am because there are different people who are doubting me it's the other people who are doubting me that are problem it's you who ask the questions with the doubt constructively doing tests that I support awesome call this science you guys are great see you later going back to heaven but no the story is like I'm chastise you for not believing me without evidence Forefront and I feel like that's such such the backbone of of religion right believe without question believe without question it's such a telling underhanded story of someone 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 um a telling Wrinkle in the story in my opinion I you know you don't ever have to go to um the story of Jesus you can just go to the story of The Emperor's New Clothes 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 like 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 SC they they call that the spiral of Silence when um you know most people uh know something other than what they think the common understanding is yeah um you guys are familiar with Hebrews 11 no no not off hand now Faith is confidence in what we hope for and 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 uh 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 well it says what faith is the evidence of Things Not Seen first faith is evidence it's I mean that right there is is law it's a r a lie sorry it's wrong faith is not evidence so I'm G 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 we 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 like I'm doing evidence I'm doing evidence back research I'm looking on YouTube videos 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 nope until I got the card that I finally got but when it comes to elected officials even I fall prone to uh 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 didn't pay attention to any of this can I pull out my phone and just be like which one's the the color that I like or which one hasn't said anything crazy in the last four years when I searched them up on Google like oh you said something nutty I'm not going to do you I might actually switch the other color just to get you out but like my research is so on the fly on the majority of the ballot I 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 car do you think that that's apply apply the same level of scrutiny right yes yes yes apply that same level which is why now I'm starting again my crazy town because I'd love to 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 people should have I think they should just be algorithms that are uh at least code verified like on GitHub You' 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 F well we've been off the air uh we haven't done a show last week but in the two weeks in between there's 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 worri about it because mainly the the intelligence are being in invented in America and maybe in China um you know the the Forefront uh is America and they they're worried that we are going to put all of our values into this Ai and they will not get a word uh a way to put their values in they want secularism they want uh uh more or less a type of socialism they want and of course the Chinese want communism and Americans want more and more of America U population would 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 in steing in this super intelligence that's coming and and it's actually a bigger problem than that I mean they call it the alignment Pro problem right where um you know when it gets to the point that um you know AI is you know legitimately self-aware is its values that develop independent of whatever our inputs are are they going to align with our interests as a as a species right and uh 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 they would computers truly have values as we program them or values that they develop independent of of our contributions to what they ought to be thinking yeah you can't make an not you can't get an KN from an is like David H said right well I I get uh benefit and Hope from the old saying uh truth has a liberal bent if you if you've heard that if you've heard that saying before and hopefully this is super intelligent will find truth and be able to uh realize that uh being woke is the best Poss um path forward for Humanity sure so we'll we'll see I guess no I like that I I I do find like we're in the middle of a very interesting point we're 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 uh 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 keywords and punching you're asking for opinions right but I know with my AI like chat gbt I can be like could 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 they had like some tajan like kind of I don't even know how to pronounce it but can you explain to me like these different kinds of candy and compare them with Bolivia from the the 1800s like yeah here's a fullon report can you also take me to Taco Bell I don't know where Taco Bell is I'm a 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 I have my kid who like is super friendly it's willing to talk to you but doesn't know anything I was like H this is we need to merge these brains together that's where we're at right now with AI we're not like at the the true ask me anything I'll do anything it's just that the which version do you want to talk to that's steep stepen coar uh uh Larry um it's a well-known fact that reality has a liberal bias uhhuh there you go I wonder where it came from thank you all right but I do think 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 A administrative point of view we can have a model that doesn't inhibit us from progressing further or as fast as we want to and I think we can definitely get there I think we can definitely even use a I 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 I go and that goes from people who are in Factory Lines Moving one thing from one conari B to the other to people rubber stamping things as like yes I approve of this yes I approve of that I like get rid of that person let him be let him be an engineer and do some real work yeah all right now uh I I've used uh chat GPT in my work um like I'm reviewing corporations and reviewing companies you know 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 could figure it out I said why would they do that and I I just out of curiosity I brought up chat GPT and and explained the situation they gave me five good reasons why this particular spending pattern would would apply to that type of company it was awesome you know yeah I was telling you I pay a monthly fee for uh chat gp4 oh good for you just it's like I don't know $15 a month or something like that but um it's it is really A Cut Above the other one yeah in our lab we have a a machine that makes as acid water as its waist stream and we collect it in a jug and we can basically tell chat gbt 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 only and be safe enough to pour down the sink right and it will it will show you not it won't even tell you the answer it'll do the whole breakdown of the math for you and'll be like blah blah blah blah blah 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 the Sy of Fizz because it's making gases and then once you add in like the little bit more it stops fizzing and that's when you know you have a neutral solution and you can stop like wow chat you're doing science for us we appreciate it thank you so much yeah we're getting to the top of the hour we probably need to start um ending the show here okay we support AI we support reality common sense 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 everybody we had all these conversations Easter how how terrible we we talked about Ai and yeah and did did Jesus really die I mean there's no such thing as death's going straight for the neck okay go for it yeah I mean it's not think about common sense you know if if death has been defeated you know then what kind of sacrifice would Jesus of the death be you know he had a bad weekend for your sins type thing it wasn't even the full weekend it was just Saturday it's like bro we can still hang out it's still the weekend like he he's it's Easter now let's go play some disc golf like this is over all right thank you guys so much for watching the show you can catch me on let's chat on YouTube dread pirate where can we find you uh I'm on YouTube as well under mind pirate m i n d py r a t I've been doing weekly uh weekly short clips on various topics of pastafarian significance nice so come check it out uh like And subscribe nice cool yeah 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 uh there is help for you uh it can there's group called the clergy project you can find them online at clergy project.org that is actually retraining clergy to be able to do uh work in the secular society so if that's up your alley give them a look uh by the way you can find this show on podcasts 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 digital freeth thought.com be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject uh 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 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 wzo radio say bye everybody Bye by bye