State of Science Speaker Forum

feel. All right. Thank you everyone to our final gathering and event of the spring 2020, the science circle. I am Steven Gerf flying SL. I'm the president of the science circle foundation incorporated. We have uh been the new nonprofit entity behind the science circle since Shantel and the other Science Circle Foundation nonprofit uh technically a stitching in the Netherlands uh has has has handed it off to us. So uh this season represented a new change in management and leadership a little bit abrupt. So, it's been a little bit of a rough ride. I have to say we have the Science Circle web page, but it's not editable at the moment, and that's going to be my summer project. So, uh we decided to do something a little different than we normally do. A lot of times for the end of the spring, we'll have a fair. Uh what we had today was an open house where you could visit the builds. But just as a reminder, you can come to the science circle and visit those builds anytime. Most of them have uh fairly straightforward descriptions of what they're about. There's a teleporter at the landing site to go visit them. So again, welcome to come by anytime and enjoy the science that we have here. Yeah, we are an 18-year-old organization in Science Circle. We uh are I would say I'm going to call us the premier you know science education and presentation group NSL having lasted the longest. Uh although we of course appreciate that there are other groups who do great things and we love to work with and collaborate with uh with everyone involved in this common purpose this common mission of promoting science and education in a virtual world. So I want to talk today. We're going to just quickly do a couple things. What I want to of you do talk about is the events review, let you know what's happening, a few acknowledgements, and then we'll begin with our forum. The science circle has Saturday presentations. We've been doing this for uh at least 16 years. I think the early parts we didn't have the Saturday series, but we've had scientists, other professionals involved in science adjacent or education related um uh fields. We've been doing this continuously. We have about, you know, 40 speakers a year, 40 great events. These all get hosted on YouTube. So, as a reminder, we do have a YouTube channel that you can check out with a variety of playlists. I will put that here into the local chat. We also have other uh events though. So one thing is that every Sunday morning at during the season during the fall and spring season we have a concert series a mix put together by our concert master every week. We also have Matt's club which meets on Thursdays at four o'clock. Again, that they shut down for the summer as well. If you look to your right at the far end tagline, he has organized and runs that every week. And then we also have Moonbase Selene, which is a build project for making a simulation of living on the moon. And if you look at the middle chair, you'll see Phil Young Bloodood, but also to his left by two chair, Sumo is helping organize that effort. And that meets on Mondays at 10:00 a.m. uh Second Life time. And that will continue through the summer. So if you're involved with that or want to get involved, anytime you can get involved, but it will be continuing over the summer. All right. I want to make some acknowledgements. The science circle has help from various people that get us uh help us with organizing and and the events. I've mentioned Moonbase. I've mentioned Matt's Club. Uh I've mentioned the concert master. I want to mention a couple other people of note that um you know, as you can see over here to the left, Sky Gaia, he is our videographer. He has been a dedicated uh filmer since I want I want to say since 2022 or maybe 2021 and he gets all these posted up on YouTube. That way it's such a wonderful thing to not just have these forums and attend live but we now have an archive where you know anybody can see them anytime. And so that's a really valuable service. So, let's give a quick round of applause for Sky helping out with that. We also have two other Oh, we'll let Yeah. Awesome. Okay. We also have uh a and because of the transition and having to do a lot of technical aspects behind the scenes with that. I want to point out that has helped and aided us get that moved and enabled and has is currently still helping with getting it up and running and editable and to a point where we can have that be a place where one we can point people to the YouTube we can have our calendar and then having a calendar is the best way to make sure everybody knows what's happening and where and then also pointers to science and science education and then also a place to host people's slides. So if you want so when a presenter talks it's wonderful when they actually have u you know a slide deck and keep that as something people can can reach as well uh and bios biographies and profiles and what we do. So uh over the summer my project will be to get that that website up and running. So uh another thing another notable we are presence on social media. I personally do a lot of the stuff with LinkedIn but I also want to thank Sis Asmtote for being our manager on the Facebook group. He has uh been dedicated at getting that done every week. But also on top of making sure the events are well known that he is posting he's the most active at posting science stories. The Facebook group is actually a really nice place where we can have science discussions, some commentary. Uh, and again, it's something that you do have to apply to be in it and then you have to be okayed by an admin, but if we know you, let me just put both the LinkedIn and the Facebook group in local chat. A reminder that that is a place where you can engage too. So, let's let's also let's give a round of applause to Gus and Sicy. really appreciate what they do for the group. All right. And then last organizational thing I want to just mention is that we have a new team member. So, one of the essential parts of running and keeping in Second Life well organized is having an estate manager. And so the hope here who is the second chair to my left uh she has agreed and volunteered to be the person filling that role. So the estate manager for the science circle is not though just about the region housekeeping. She will be a point person for all the builds that you see on the land here. She can uh keep that help with that organization and the communication channel the security and rules enforcement but also region engagement. And so if everyone could please welcome Hope to that role. And again, you can see she has that title in her group. So thanks Hope. Looking forward to working with you and helping us keep the land wellmaintained. All right. Um, just a quick mention that if anybody else wants to play a role in the size circle in a volunteering position, we're looking for people to help with events, with programming. Uh, we can also talk about fundraising or social events. So, uh, I sent out a note card on that recently. I'll send out again uh, tomorrow. But if you want to organize anything for the summer, please let me know by Monday, July 6th, and we can and advertising and you can have access and we can use the land over the summer. So with that today's main event we have a speakers forum and again one thing that I have been trying to promote as the new presidents of the science are maybe some more interactive some audience engagement type of events. So we've had you know panels revisited and uh you know we are trying to expand some of our programming as well but one thing is we love our audience right so we love the people that come every week. Oh, I toggled. Maybe that'll help with some people. Uh, again, we we appreciate that you guys come to these presentations every week, that you ask questions. Sometimes we're engaging in dialogue during the chat. So we aren't a science circle organization without our members. Uh hopefully all of you are in the students group. That way you can keep track of things. Uh actually wait let me brief pause. Hope do you want to go ahead and set out one more chair because we have one of our speakers Ariana is now here. So Ariana if you want to step up to the >> Sure. >> to the chair. >> Yep. One sec. >> All right. So, uh, and it's great that you guys come and listen to and engage with our speakers every week. What I have up here is a listing of the topics that we had happen during the uh, spring season. And so, these are some of the topics and areas of of um, science as well as science education that we've had. And you know, these are people who dedicate time and effort to making and preparing a talk. Uh, you know, I do this, too. It's not an easy amount of work. There's a bit of a heavy lift. You have to find and squeeze in time sometimes. And so, let's really appreciate all of the speakers that we've had over the past over the past years and recognize that they really do put in some great effort to make these things happen. But today, the main idea is let's just have a state of science conversation. Right? These are experts. These are professionals. These are people who are in the know with things that are happening and comment on I think um where we are, you know, good and bad. We're definitely going to start and try and emphasize the good. So um again with questions or commentary for this first part. Let's let's keep it positive for the first part. I know there's lots and we can talk about that later. So what I'm going to do now is ask in order from again closest to me and then going down the line to tagline if each speaker could give a brief introduction of who they are, what they do related to their uh profession, a little bit about the one or multiple talks that they describe just very briefly the topics and then when tagline is done we'll we'll I'll have some prompt questions and we'll open it up to a state of science forum. So, Merryill Merryill, on to you. >> Well, thank you. I didn't realize I was going to be sitting here this morning just so I I have no prepared notes particularly, but that I've been a professor for over 40 years. So as you all know professors can say anything at any time for any length. So uh uh my name is Merryill McBride incl. I'm a professor of geography uh recently retired from Colorado State University. Before that, I was uh uh associate vice president for academic affairs and professor of geography at the University of New Orleans where I got my start in Second Life back about 2006. Uh I I gave a presentation as a political geographer earlier this year on the nature of boundaries and uh how boundaries uh tend to be the source of political conflict in the world. Always have and I guess always will will be. Before that I did presentations on uh the nature of place in social virtual worlds along with uh identity. Uh that's another area of interest to me. But um in terms of the state of science uh I let me focus on political geography. Political geographers right now are sort of in a state of panic. uh and more than one has probably gone to see a therapist because of the nature of of of the world. We we've got been taken back to uh a discussion of is geography is destiny and political geographers always say no it's not but given recent events in the world uh we could look at straight of horror moves and say well maybe it is we can look at the Taiwan strait and say well maybe it is and then there are other instances where we may want to fall back on that old chestnut that says that geography has a determined ministic quality. I don't believe that, but it's fun to talk about and fun to explore and uh so uh I'm I'm willing to engage anybody who's interested in in hearing about that in conversation. So, enough from me. Uh let me uh uh defer to the person on my left. Go ahead, Hope. Tell us about uh a little bit about yourself and what you talk about. >> Okay. Sorry about that. I pressed the wrong button. Uh I'm Hope Bunch in uh real life. Uh Espiranza freeze in Second Life for a long time. So since everybody got my first name wrong, I decided to change it to Hope. Anyway, um on June 13th, I think it was, I gave a presentation on citizen science, uh advancing discovery through public participation. And the reason I felt like I could do that was because I've been an environmental science educator for a long time. I'm semi-retired right now, but when I worked at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, I helped um scientists put together educational programs for their grant projects uh that they they had were required to by National Science Foundation. So, I helped them develop programs that involved the public and uh classroom teachers. So um I gave a talk on citizen science and basically it's where uh people who are a lot of them are non-scientists have developed programs that um range from birds to whales to plants and animals any of any it could be any topic. Um and recently some of the trends in citizen science are basically to use AI to assist uh the idea of various species. Um there's a shift toward community uh and research where uh citizens get involved in in the research and report back to different agencies. Um and then there is also a surge in in environmental and public health monitoring. So basically citizens of any age can get involved in um environmental projects, citizen science projects, health. Um it depends on what you're interested in. and my talk. Um, on the 13th, I had people take out their cell phones in real life and download an app called Merlin Bird ID and we IDed some birds that were outside their windows. We could all you can also use it here in Second Life. So, if you go to a nature preserve, say here in Second Life, just get your cell phone out and you can start uh identifying the birds that are inside Second Life, and that's a lot of fun. So, you can do pretty much anything. So, there were several there are now several apps that you can download to your cell phone that will ID plants and animals and fungi and whatever you want to ID. So that was my talk and um and uh I'm really involved in my own citizen science projects in my retirement as well. I just think it's a really great way to stay involved and active um in in science. Thank you. >> Day floor is yours. Okay, I think my mic is working. I reactivate again. So, I'm Dave Miami, Bill Schmackenberg in real life and I gave a talk on evolution in the trial by Triarthus. A little recap on that. Basically, uh my research parallels that of Chris Mcro, Dr. Chris McRoberts at Sunni Courtland. Uh over a 7 millionyear time span, I'm seeing in trites. They're sort of like crabs, lobsters, uh that the eyes ro the eyes in these animals got bigger. They rotated from about 5 to 10°. Um and the field of view increased. Um and the basic argument was that these animals were living in a deep ocean basin on the margin of North America and they were dealing with predators most likely uh shelled sephopods like shelled squid. So, that was the the gist of what I was talking about. Uh, in terms of where it's going, uh, a couple of things. First of all, the director of the Virginia Museum of Natural History wanted uh, a curriculum on teaching evolution at the K12 level that now exists. It's been uploaded to the Virginia Department of Energy uh, website as lesson plans for biology teachers to use. Uh the other thing that's going on at the Virginia Museum of Natural History is there is an exhibit on my trial by plan sometime next year. Um which is going to be really cool to the public. Um the other thing is I talked to the curator and what I'm trying to do is get all the scaled images. I had 100 at the time of the talk. I'm up to about 150 now. And I have an appointment with the uh Dr. Lisa Motti uh at the New York State Museum to get even more images. But the idea is to not just have them store in my Google Drive, but to get them online so that anybody that wants to conduct research on this trilobyte, which is so famous, can just go to a website or whatever and pull it down. And a good example of that, I just got a student at Virginia Tech. Uh Luke that some of you know about uh is going to be doing some research with me and he wants to work on a similar trilobyte called Portoilia uh in Virginia. Mine are in New York for the most part and look at relationships between trius and porilia. and I met with him on Zoom and said uh get as many a portilia as you can and you're welcome to go into my database and get images of triarthus. So there's an example of another researcher albeit an undergraduate student who wants to extend my research. Okay. Uh but he doesn't have to drive all over New York like I did to Courtland and all around Ithaca to get these images. Uh they'll be available online. Uh they're in my Google Drive so they're already available. Uh so the idea of sort of globally sharing uh these images so that further research could be done is is what I'm interested in and that's where I'm at now. And and actually I do since you mentioned it I do want to point out that we uh day is working with someone who is interested in becoming a speaker for the science circle or at least day is interested in getting him to be a speaker. >> So he said he was going to log in. I haven't gotten a count on him yet. >> I said I said, "Dude, as soon as you do and you got some research, we're I got all kinds of venues to present." So, I've been pushing it and he said he wants to do it. So, I'll keep pushing him to come on. >> Yeah. And so, a reminder, if you're a professional in this field and want to give a talk, we're always happy to help get you set up. But, if you can recruit people for us, that would be great, too. If there's somebody like, "Wow, they do great stuff. Let's let's have them get it out there for for the Second Life audience and YouTube." All right. Thanks, Dave. Phil, Phil, tell us about what what you did. >> Okay. I had a couple of the presentations this spring and also the 2020 revisited panel, but they're very different. Uh, which kind of speaks to my eclectic interests. Uh, one was on Artemis 2. Uh, we have a moonbased group that meets every Monday. Has been for three years. And so uh it's living and working on the moon has become a real topic. And if you look for example if you get National Geographic uh which was the one thing that my wife and I uh could not uh give up when we met 35 years ago we both had our own subscription. Uh but uh it's becoming a real thing. But this uh month it's all about living and working in space on the moon and Mars. And so Artemis 2, we keep up on what's going on. And I presented on uh Artemis 2 and what they were doing there and in the past um exploring the moon. The other one I did was the enderic. Well, I think so. And that's part of the reason why I put that up there is science is kind of a boundaryless endeavor even in the worst of times and politically uh scientists still talk to each other. Uh it's one thing I I really admire about the field and so I I also did one on indereic basins um simply because I had no idea what they were. I saw a a picture of a big salt flat and my curiosity peaked and I looked it up and they're called enderic basins where water flows in but does not flow out. It has no outlet to the sea. And so I was looking up what it's like and the fact that there are 20% of the surface of the earth are basins like that which do not have outlets to the uh sea and so they're very hyper sailing in some instances and present their own issues as far as ecosystems and stuff. So, I like to present on lots and lots of different types of topics and that's essentially uh what I did this spring as well and on to Stephen. Okay, there I am. Always good to follow after Phil. He brings enlightenment to the room that I get to bask in. Thank you so much, Phil. You know, I have been presenting I don't know how many years in Second Life now I lose count. It's like 20 now or something like that about mostly about technology and how technology can make our lives so much better in so many ways. But today I I I'm feeling brokenhearted uh in what I see happening with AI in my various institutions. I've taught for UCLA, UCSB, National University, California Lutheran, and a number of others. And first of all, I have this automatic cringe, too. When everybody anybody starts talking about AI, I think, oh god, one more donkey brain about it. So, please bear with me for just a second. I I have a long history in watching how educational tech has hopefully lifted us up. But um I got to say uh well for example the the very first online hybrid course at UCSB was simply a discussion board we brought in so the international students will wouldn't feel so lonely over the weekend and it used to be we were using this tech as a bridge for human connection but today I see it has been an eviction notice for the human intellect. students are no longer being challenged. They're not interacting with one another on a human level. Uh we're being told that academia is evolving. But really, I think the truth is much uglier than that. From what I see, academia has completely surrendered uh to a because colleges they're not selling education anymore. They're holding degrees hostage. This is what I'm seeing. and they're trading on a legacy of credentiing monopoly running this economic racket while automating away the very substance of learning and I know you want to keep this positive Stephen so here it is there is a silver lining that I see and it may be that the administrators have s surrendered but the students have not and they are openly booing AI commencement speakers off the stage and they're filing class action lawsuits against these algorithmic classrooms and they are demanding uh the real thing. Another way we can tell it's really bad right now at the university is they're eagerly asking us instructors for suggestions on how to salvage the situation. And that's when you know things are getting really bad when they turn to the instructors. And finally, I just want to say students I see right now are actively fighting for their right to a human uh education. And I think it's time we stop acting like tech brokers and simply how to teach. And thank you for letting me burp that out today. Well, Steve, I think yeah, you you really point out one of the major topics that we have going on that's disrupting society today and in particular education. I am continually amazed at sometimes the sensibilities of the younger generation and I think I think they're standing up for themselves in certain ways in ways that some of us did have not done before in previous generations. So, I I look forward to this. I look forward to what's going to happen actually. Uh again, so Sumo had to jump out and relog to get her voice back. So tagline tagline, do you want to take and tell us about your talk and and yourself? And then we'll if Sumo's back, we'll get started with the with the Q&A. >> I'm a retired physician uh and uh I had a lot of u experience dealing with headneck cancer surgically. and uh it's part of uh interdisciplinary care for patients with headneck cancer as well as uh some disorders of thyroid and uh I did a lot of ear surgery as well reconstructive ear surgery and um but aside from that uh I was originally a mathematician and uh I don't know my family didn't seem to respect anything about being good in mathematics. It's the easiest thing I ever did in a way. So I uh people often don't appreciate what comes easy. So at any rate, I ended up pursuing questions I have about why and how we exist. And that's been my driving force in life. I uh joined about 12 years ago Second Life here. Uh I was reluctant to because of all the uh Yeah. tagline. I hope you can still hear us. Just cut out >> testing one. Okay. I'm sorry. This has been happening to me. Uh thank you for letting me know. Um I joined about 12 years ago. First person I met uh one of the first people I met uh was Shantel. I uh looked for sciencebased stuff and um science circle came up and uh uh she was around and we had conversations and she was a I thought very gracious and intelligent individual. So I thought this looked promising for you. It's not easy in life to find people you can talk to um and who have interests more than their dogma or the you know shallow banal block that they do. So any rate uh that's how I came to second life and uh to science circle and uh I've given a number of talks on various things. Um I guess one of the first things I talked about in science circle was uh uh statistics binomial theorem and binomial distributions and the relationship to normal distributions. Um I had too much difficulty at first uh figuring out the uh timing of stuff. I tended to go way over. I've gotten much better at that. But uh uh at any rate uh I presented a number of things in mathematics. I one time I presented the caner schro baronstein theorem where if you have two sets there can be two infinite sets and if you have a onetoone mapping from one set set A to set B and a different one to one mapping from set B to what into set A then you can say that set A and set B have the same cardality in other words the same infinity of elements are in set A that are in set B. And if you don't know, I'll point out there are an infinite uh different u levels of infinity. Uh that there infin infinitely more points on the real number line than there are counting numbers like one, two, three, four, which is a kind of alfu. uh as it's called. But uh I also presented um a couple high school girls that were quite talented in Louisiana uh discovered a novel and clever original proof after all these years of the Pythagorean theorem and we presented it uh and um I think that went well. people enjoyed it and seemed to follow it and um I presented a number of things in uh that are medically oriented uh presented on uh uh non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, non-alcoholic Seattle hepatitis which is uh pretty prevalent. Two to 5% of Americans have it. Uh it's related to eating processed food and uh wrecking your microbiome. Uh okay, I'm gonna cut it short here, but uh at any rate, that was a medically oriented talk. Uh I uh talked about the NPA and Hendra virus, which come from fruit bats, one of them through horses that are highly lethal in Southeast Asia, Australia. And I'm sort of proud of this. On, you know, on the 20th of uh January 2020, um uh the um first documented case of COVID uh occurred in the United States. And I think around the 8th of February, I had already arranged for a presentation about a novel or a a new virus from Wan, China. uh and gave a talk about that based uh largely on I I've written a book chapter in the past about viruses of the respiratory tract and so I was familiar with corona virus and uh at any rate um uh it's the first talk I was aware of anywhere in the United States on COVID uh So, that happened right here. Uh, and um, let's see. I guess that's pretty much it. That's I I cover a lot of things that interest me and that's uh, I try to keep it real and I talk too much so I should shut up now, I think. >> Yeah. and a tagline has has definitely um shown himself in uh um China, but the first documented case in the United States was January 20, 2020. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Tagline. Yeah, you've definitely been our uh speaker who's been on the forefront of various viruses or ailments and uh you know, appreciate your medical background. All right. So, Sumo's back. Assumo, if you want to do a brief introduction, then we'll do Baragon and go from there. >> Thank you, Stephen. Um, I'm Sumo Atano in Second Life, Natalie Foster in real life, retired faculty member in chemistry, Lehigh University, where I did research on sight specific contrast enhancement agents for MRI imaging. uh here in Second Life, I've uh um given a talk that's listed on the slide on uh chemistry and Star Trek. I'm not going to mention that today because chemistry and Star Trek hasn't changed that much since the time I gave that talk. Uh back in the spring, in the fall, however, I gave a talk on u um development in antibiotics and that's the one I kind of like to just want to mention briefly again today. and I put in a few slides just so I don't have to say too much. And since the talk was a while ago, I wanted to remind everybody of of what the basic uh subject was. Um bottom line is I personally think that uh resistance to antibiotics is one of the big uh uh problems we have now in uh science and medicine. And um uh I got interested in the impact of AI on drug development and uh came discussed the the situation surrounding a drug called u Malco Nelson that was uh really rather unprecedented in unprecedented in its discovery because it uh really relied very heavily on u the paradigm shift toward AI and drug discovery in terms of its design And um one of the reasons that pharmaceutical companies have gone away from developing antibiotics is because just the discovery process takes so incredibly long. And um Hson was literally discovered in three days. So you're taking a an excited endeavor that typically takes up to 10 years and getting it done in three days. That's an amazing change. And I wanted to just give you an update on what's going on with housing. Now, not only has it been shown to exhibit u activity against a variety of uh problematic diseases and and bacteria. Um it's also been shown to have effectiveness against quite a few other things. Uh and primarily that's thought because of its its rather unique structure that that the AI model came up with. and it was a structure that had never been seen before in in pharmaceuticals. It's now really established as a promising therapeutic candidate with the potential for um applications that exist well beyond just the crisis that I described in in um antibiotic and microbial existence. And then what pardon me what popped up today that I also want to alert you literally today in a feed I get that I wanted to drop in here was uh of all things the mly fool which is an investment advice um um investment advice area. I'm not giving investment advice here, but I just wanted to point out that they are um talking about a a company called Generate Biio Medicines that is a biotech firm, but not in the usual sense. They um have developed a platform as the slide says that digitally tests how a prospective drug molecule might perform as a as a treatment for a particular disease. And this is not just an idea they have. This is a company that is up and running with this platform and they have launched already the development of swing real drugs that are in clinical trials. And this latest update c comes as of this month in 2026. They have four drug candidates in their pipeline that are into phase three clinical testing. Um, this is an incredible, I hate to use a phrase that we used before, but I will paradigm shift because lots of time is not wasted, but time was required and money was required to do this sort of development in this company by applying AI techniques has vastly increased the rate of discovery and decreased the cost of delivery of new drugs to the marketplace. Um general science general analysis now says that AI discovered drugs are about twice as likely to succeed in phase one trials as drugs in clinical trials without p higher um virtual testing and this concept of virtual testing I think has a chance of absolutely revol revolutionizing what goes on in drug development. Um, so let's keep posted. But that's the point I wanted to make today about what's going on in the area that I discussed just probably nine months ago and it has changed radically. And again, I'm not giving investment advice, but we ought all keep in mind this company called Generate Biio Medicines and what they're doing. Um, other than that, that's that's all I'll say because I wanted to just uh indicate this new development that literally just crossed my desk this morning and u I thought we should all know about it. Uh, so thanks a lot for listening and if there are any questions or who as glad as anyone on the on the panel be to answer them but thank you so much for this opportunity and I really thank the second so far for bringing this all together. >> Thank you Sumo Baragon. You want to close us out with introductions? That is hello. Is this thing on? >> Uh, all right. Yes. Uh, this is uh Baragon. Um, so uh thank you for uh inviting me to this panel, Stephen. Um uh so uh you all might remember me from last week where uh um uh you know we talked about uh the paradigm shifts that Sumo just mentioned. Um and uh so I have been uh involved with the science circle for many years it feels like. Uh you may remember about 5 years ago I used to host um or I hosted a uh series of panel discussions where I would invite uh sort of subject matter experts to come and present uh about topics that I was interested in here uh at the science circle. And uh those are still up on YouTube by the way at the on the Science Circle uh YouTube channel. So feel free to uh take a look at those. In fact, the uh the um paradigm shift that we did last week uh was actually an update of one of those panel discussions that that I did back I guess Stephen was that in 19 was that in 2020 rather? Uh so um anyway uh so I'm happy to be back uh involved with the science circle. Um, and uh, you know, I'm not I'm not a subject matter expert. I'm pretty much just a lay person. Uh, but I do really, uh, enjoy learning about all the topics that we discuss here at the science circle. So, um, really happy to be participating in it. I would also just quickly, I guess, mentioned that uh, when I, you know, I've been in Second Life almost 20 years now. It's just hard to believe. And one of the first things I did when I joined was uh get plugged into the Science Friday sim, which I guess so back in 2008 uh NPR and Science Friday actually had a gigantic footprint here in uh Second Life where they had an entire sim for attendance and a second adjacent sim because the Science Friday crowds were so big they had to have overflow space. Um but uh but when the when the Lyndons cancelled the nonprofit uh discount uh I think mainly for land uh NPR left Second Life and so did Science Friday. Um and so then uh we continued to gather to listen to Science Friday for years after that. Um, we had and you know what? Rather than explain this, if you look in my profile in the uh in my picks in the science tab, uh you can find the uh interview that I did with Science Friday. Science Friday actually interviewed me and I go through that whole history of Science Friday and what happened and what's going on with it. Short. So, cutting to the chase here, Science Friday still meets a Second Life. Uh I I ended up actually running the science Friday group uh and we still meet here. So you all are and know you know it's on Friday we listen to the live radio broadcast. So if any of you are interested in that related to that uh one of the regions where we used to listen to science Friday also used to uh broadcast the BBC science program the naked scientists which was out of Cambridge University in the UK. Um then uh that became a problem because what I attribute to Brexit uh the BBC made it impossible to listen to the live radio broadcast of the naked scientist outside of the UK. So this forced us to listen to the podcast of the naked scientist which forced me to become a DJ because I had to now we had to I had to download the podcast as an MP3 and then stream that MP3 into Second Life. So that's how I became a DJ and uh we still do that. And it turns out that the BBC eventually uh cut its ties with the with Cambridge University and The Naked Scientists. So they now operate as kind of a standalone um sort of a sponsor driven podcast, but we still get together and listen to it every week at the same place that we do Science Friday. So just keep all of that in mind. All right. Um so u anyway I just wanted to make just want I'm not sure that everyone is aware that those things are still going that those groups are still active here in Second Life because the attendance is very small. I get like a half a dozen people do these pod do these do these things and but like the membership of the science Friday group is gigantic. It's hundreds of people but only like six people show up to the actual program which is hard because it's in the middle of the day on in the afternoon on Friday. people are working. But still, just wanted to make sure people were aware of that. I also should mention to explain my avatar that uh uh a a giraffe got loose in Texas uh this week and was like missing for two weeks and there was it was very there was a lot of memeing about it on the internet about how can you lose a giraffe. Anyway, they found Gracie the giraffe yesterday and so I now am wearing a giraffe. And my giraffe came with both the head giraffe and the little companion giraffe. And I like both of them. So I decided not to have to decide. So I'm just wearing both of them. So that's why I have giraffes. Gracie the giraffe. All right. Anyway, thank you Stephen. That's all. That's all for me. Bye-bye. >> Cool. Thanks, Baragon. and and actually so yeah like thank you all for the introductions. Uh I think you know you guys are doing something that we need more of which are people getting out there and helping to promote science that science is a great thing to be an advocate for it and then communicate that. Uh and I think you know Baragon points out something you know what do people think about the state of science communication and science education in the country today. So if you have a comment on that, let me know. Or if you want to put something local chat, I'm going to So again, I'm going to spontaneously ask uh Stephen Van Hook up here at the top to to maybe comment a little bit more on that in terms of state of science. What do you think about the state of comm about the state of science communication? Well, I first of all, I've always appreciated that uh Second Life has made me feel welcome. I'm not a hard scientist. I'm a soft, squishy scientist in education communications. So, what and I really do appreciate that. So, those of you that are thinking you'd like to join in on this, but you're not really a hardcore science scientist, I'd say, boy, is this a welcoming group. And uh I I wish I could say I'm hopeful about education in general. I'm very hopeful about science, Stephen. And and as you may know, in the very worst of times around the world, scientists have always held a protected space. In the Soviet Union, it was physicists. So I'm very hopeful that we recognize deep in our core that science is such an essential part of everything. And I hope we're able to find uh educational models that that that bring it to us hopefully in a more democratic and affordable way. >> Ask you Merryill following up. You've been in the educ the formal education business for for a long time. What do you see that is positive about how science can be communicated in the modern world? Well, education is going through quite a quite a big change. It has been for the last decade or so, if not longer. And um the uh uh delivery system for education has changed dramatically. No longer is it exclusively Sage on the stage, but now we have to have all sorts of technological innovations involved. Uh when I first started teaching 40ome years ago, I was a high-tech professor because I dragged an overhead projector to class. Well, that's sort of quaint when you think about it today. So, we're dealing with massive changes in the technological environment and uh uh and in sort of a conceptual environment in terms of how education should be done. And yes, Steven is correct uh about u uh the manner in which education is slow to respond. It's always been a big uh a big uh concern of mine that u a lot of educators don't want to acknowledge what's happening. Uh and as a consequence they get left out uh in in some very unhealthy ways. But uh in terms of communication, how we're how we're communicating whether it's science, whether it's not it's something other than science. Um the uh uh the principle, the idea that I think undergurs any conversation that we have about communication is how the nature of communication has changed. And uh we don't have to accept it all. We don't want to accept it all. We don't want to embrace it all because it's not always good. But uh we have to acknowledge it's out there and we we have to uh uh we have to adapt our messages to that. Let me one big uh I don't know if it's a concern, one big challenge I've had over the years is how do we handle online education? Uh, in my younger years, I did battle with with university senates and and so forth about online education. Personally, I prefer face to face. I prefer staring down those 18-year-old freshman students who came to class swaggering in, taking their seat, and letting everybody know that because they just graduated from high school, they know everything. Okay, I love that type of student. That was a lot of fun. You don't get that with online education and there are other things that we miss with online education. However, uh online education is really telling us about uh what's happening in that technological world that's affecting education at large. It's a new delivery system. We have to adapt in new ways whether it's science we're talking about or any other subject area. uh we have to accommodate the fact that it may be true as one person said about 15 years ago 30 years from now the university will be contained in a briefcase and so are we prepared to handle that in terms of how we communicate science and everything else to students I could go on for a long time obviously about the subject but let me stop there >> no I think I think it's good and I I would love to revisit this topic in the future for the group of the change of what colleges do and what they're good for and what they're really about and the social changes uh especially brought on by tech technology and so you know Sumo Sumo highlighted something um technology and AI and computer algorithms in the field of chemistry and pharmaceuticals and and you know Steve mentioned that for you know college students you know I want to I want to come back to day and tagline and I was wondering if either of you would like to comment about given that you guys are in some very classic and slow to shift fields like medicine and archaeology. You know what what do you guys think about some of the AI effects that we're seeing for people and how it affects your field? Uh let's start with Dave. Uh AI I'm well I'm retired so I retired before AI hit so I'm not sure I'm really the best to talk about this. Um I when I first started playing with chat GPT I wasn't impressed. It was giving me a bunch of gibberish. Um I think that there's a couple of the thing that excited me the most at VD VWP was uh Google story books. Uh I played around with that um and was impressed about how AI could be used to generate uh kids uh books. They even generated one on teaching kids how to do principal components analysis which was spoton with both the technique and also the way it was portrayed to young children. Uh it was called the fire firefly map. um and gave a little story about a kid going through a forest and firing these fireflies and they're all randomly moving around and the magician appears and his magic wand shows the main axis, you know, of where these things are flying. I think it was just incredible that a machine came up with this idea to both portray the technique but also explain it at a level that maybe kids could understand. So, I'm not the best person to talk about AI and uh I hate to say it, I've got a commitment now at 2:00, so I've got to run. But thank you all for inviting me and wish you all a good summer and come back in the fall. See you in the fall, Dave. Thanks for coming, contributing. Um tagline. Well, so actually, so Dave comments on something that reminds me a little bit of my teaching days and you know, Merryill hits on this too is some of the practitioners you have, they may not be ready and eager to do things in a new way and that's very understandable because that can be a lot of an adjustment and you can actually make your teaching worse if you do it the wrong way. Uh so I think that that's worth appreciating. Tagline, do you want to talk a little about AI and medicine? >> Yes. Uh just as um an aside, I entered a uh comment in the nearby chat about mathematics club which uh after discussion with Shantel started in March of 2023. And we'll have session 117 on uh Thursday the 17th of September. That'll be the next one. Uh so you might find it fun. I hope you'll consider coming. uh in terms of um medicine, medicine is extremely conservative and uh experential and um I think there's been a significant shift from classical education and med medicine where you had uh uh most physicians were pretty good diagnosticians and um uh didn't mean they didn't uh misdiagnosis sometimes, but uh that can happen to anyone, I guess. But uh uh if you talk to them, they could uh these older guys uh they were older than me and uh I think it persisted through my generation. uh uh they could tell you about uh complications from medications and side effects that were drug interactions and uh they had more indepth understanding um uh and um they didn't necessarily just think about the easiest quick diagnosis. The problem medicine has been like public education kind tortured u by the expectations of people who are not involved in it so much or by people who want to make money from it. Um, it's been uh um turned into like a corporate uh enterprise and a for-profit uh activity and the doctors are uh and physicians assistants are employees and the people that are uh counting the beans want to see what's called throughput and they want uh you know the charts uh uh so that they're not behind but they're uh they look complete. they have. It's all computerized. And uh what I began to see in the end of my career was I would get records from other doctors that were absolutely worthless because they were full of defaults that um in the from the computer program that generated the report. uh that uh uh you couldn't trust that they'd actually uh asked about it or done it and uh as a part of the exam and uh it it was just like a what do they call it a boilerplate report and uh because if they charge a certain level they have to have justification for it by all this bureaucracy that they've done all these tests and things. So, dotting the eyes and crossing the tees becomes more important than the content. So, the newer doctors seem to be interested in leaving at 5:00 and not being called and not being bothered. It's it's a whole different culture now. And I think AI may help in some ways in that. uh I don't think that the younger doctors think about differential diagnosis in an analytical way. They just they don't carry it around in their minds. um and u AI might uh give them um pause to think. But I think the other side of the the the other edge of that blade is that AI might end up generating being a tool to generate um uh prefuncter reports uh so that they uh look like they're doing their job and doing it quickly. so they could push people out the door. Um, and the other thing that I don't think AI is going to help with is there's a tendency in, uh, at least in in the UK and certainly in the United States, uh, people get mid70s and beyond and, uh, the doctors lose interest. they start to think, well, they pretty much hit their life expectancy, uh, regardless of level of function or, uh, any of this sort of thing. So, uh, uh, my advice to you in this day and age is don't get sick. Uh, I'm not sure AI is going to make it better. it will in some ways. Uh but I also see it becoming a tool for uh what I consider to be a slacker approach to uh taking care of human beings. So that sounds pretty negative. I'm sorry, but that's >> No, no. tagline. I think you highlight a really important thing about AI in that AI does things some things really well and can be an aid and some things that people are trying to in they apply it to things where they think it does well or they're just trying to uh yeah try and make it a shortcut or something cheaper for themselves. And so I think you know AI is a conversation we're going to keep coming back to I think for the for the foreseeable future. And I think these discussions are good for saying, you know, what do we do or don't want it to do. I do want to say one thing real quick is that to me AI is something where we may be able to use it to help enable more people be involved in the science circle and to help engage in debates and to help address certain language barriers. Uh so one person who's not who's here in the audience who gave a talk but is not upfront is Arion and she gives a statement saying I'm from Japan here. I participate as a student but in real life I work in the medical field and I've also taught student nurses as a teacher since I'm not confident in speaking English I am using texttospech software I apologize for communicating through chat today as I do not have a speaking system prepared today I had a presentation here twice before the first time was about the supercomputer K6 sorry supercomputer K six years ago and the second time and that was just a few weeks ago uh was about polio eradication and she's very glad I'm sorry I'm quoting I'm very glad to have those opportunities. It is unfortunate that there are so few participants from Japan but the language barrier remains a major challenge. I would also like to add that I am a member of the lunar base project a role I regard in high honor. Thank you. And again I want to point out that you know Ariana gave used a text a texttospech technology in order to deliver something that she prepared uh primarily in her native language and then delivered it to us uh in English. And so again great examples of technology AI can be used for real time voice to either chat or voice to voice real time translation. So, we're hoping to try and advance some of these to get more participation, more engagement, but we appreciate pioneers like Arion uh helping out with that. So, um coming to that, so let me let me come to you, Phil. I mean, you also you've been in the education and virtual virtual worlds field for a while. You're a technology adopter type person. Uh what do you think about technology and science and education these days? in brief. In brief >> in brief after nine minutes after the hour um yeah I've been working with science and technology since the 60s at least and I'm uh chair of the computer science advisory council for a local university and uh have a PhD in computers and one in education and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Um the big thing the big thing is this too shall pass. Okay. Um ed science and education be around a lot longer than any politician and it will continue to be around and frankly scientists and educators work their salt. Uh don't pay much attention to pol politics. Um although they do have to have money. That's that's about it. um that I wrote I wrote several things in chat and one of the the last things is essentially AI is no better than a good researcher just a bit quicker. You still have to look at sources of the evidence and conclusions rather than just accepting everything at face value. And that's that's essentially what AI is. I mean it can't make up stuff. It has to look around and it can hallucinate. It can make up false conclusions and uh that sort of thing. But we still have to be smarter than the computer or whoever is is is spouting the the propaganda at the time. Um so I I got into education and computing and everything else like that because it is boundaryless and it will be here and it's kind of the hope and science and stuff and it's kind of the hope and best face of humanity rather than some of the other stuff. Um psychics are people too. Oh, >> if we ever I'll go back to that illustration I used of that Doug Halison that is a totally new neverbeforeseen type of drug that is behaving in a way that is teaching people something about uh intermolecular interactions at uh the medicinal biochemical level. Um I I think there I I think AI is not just uh as you described it being a a a tool that just picks and chooses from what already exists. I mean generative AI is quite frankly I think really powerful and because of that also really scary and and but I think that that house brothers analogy is is something that you have to you know it's it's like you can feed AI all the pictures in the world about uh uh four-legged mammals and then you can say generate for me what you think a six-leggedlegged mammal would look like and it can create something like that too but I agree absolutely That's why you need human oversight and human creativity and human interactions. >> Okay. Yeah. I mean, one of the things over the years as I get older is that I don't have to be the last person to speak on a topic. In other words, I am I listen to what you're saying and value it and I don't have to rebut it. Yeah. No, I think in the field that I'm in with genome engineering and thinking about agricultural traits for uh you know seed companies and whatnot under the hood there are amazing things that AI helps enable and make happen better. So pretty pretty amazing when you think about the appropriate right use cuz it is a very novel tool with its uh quote unquote thinking and uh trend discovery that other things don't do quite that well. >> Yeah. We just have to make sure that we realize I mean I'm a computer programmer. I I started programming in 1968. Uh, and you just have to realize that AI is a computer program. Okay. Um, it may make up it may come to some interesting conclusions based on throwing together everything it sees. Um, and coming up with what looks like imaginative ideas that maybe we wouldn't come up with because we wouldn't think they're logical or whatever. But then we have to be logical enough to look at the ideas and say okay yeah this works this doesn't this is just fiction. Um because somebody mentioned anthropic back in the discussion a few bars ago uh uh human humanity has to bring ethical considerations to this and that's one of the things that Anthropic has been so concerned about as a company. uh human beings have got to be there to to being responsible and and add an ethical dimension to this and even though um certain computer systems can come up with like I described with Hson there is no um there's no underpinning to to manage those things. >> All right. Well, I think uh what I want to do right now is pause to consider again that we thank our speakers, those who are present as well as those who weren't able to make it today that have contributed to the science circles mission of discussing, communicating, advocating for science. I want to thank you all for for being here. uh we look forward to keeping on this tradition and keeping it going for as many years as we can uh with your and the audience as well as speaker presentation. So thank you all. We are closed for the season. We will continue again formally uh beginning in the fall and so look for my asking you to help participate. Thank you all. Okay, so I put in a closure to make sure that we had a good ending for the for the videographer that we can close the video archive, but let's we can stick around for as long as people want to have a conversation. So, thank you. I I again I sincerely appreciate everyone being here and participating, but if you want to go on for a little bit longer, if you have any specific questions, uh feel free to stick around. If you but if you need to go, just get going. Cheers. Hope. Yes. Oh, yeah. And Phil, just a quick reminder. I think uh I'm going to put out a tomorrow andor Monday about the summer schedule, but I think you're going to be on your own for for advertising that. Okay. So, we have a question. Oh, sorry. Question again, adaptation from neuro wonder obviously adaptation important. How much responsibility should science professors take on with respect to the tick tock generation? Oh god, such a great question. Merryill, tell me you're not leaving yet, but also um I have a few minutes. >> All right. Why don't you take that question as as your last part? What do what do you think about Tik Tok and new social media modalities and what professors in particular science or professor should do about it? >> Oh god, it's uh probably about time now for that bottle of whiskey and pistol. Uh, I don't know what uh I I'm not a social media type of person and uh I even uh sort of gave up on on uh uh Facebook some time ago because some of the stuff I was reading and so forth. Uh I think social media as a social scientist I would say that social media offers quite a bit of of risk for people as they think about what's going on in the world around them. And uh uh I I know that there are scientific areas that use uh Facebook and Tik Tok and all the other uh as a part of the their u uh pedagogical work and and and that's fine. Uh I'm not against that. But uh I my larger fear is that uh social media is becoming a way not to inform as much as to indoctrinate and u and that's when it gets very difficult for my university faculty and education in general uh to do the work that they need to do in educating. But uh as I said, I'm sort of a a bad uh authority when it comes to the relevance of that sort of thing to education. Well, as a for answer, >> I I want to echo I want to echo what you some of what you had to say is that, you know, when colleges are being paid for and are a certified professional organization to do education, they're not really obligated. And I don't think the professor should feel obligated to have to be out there in the public sphere. And let's face it, a lot of people get in trouble, sometimes fairly, a lot of times unfairly, and your job becomes at jeopardy because you said something this or that or some certain way, and people call for you to get fired. So, I think I think there's a real danger, but I I do want to echo that neuro I think there's an underlying concern, which is should professors and professionals still try and be out there at some level to advocate for science and education and and rational thinking? Then I but there's there got to be some sort of balance in there, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I think that's part of the education process. Uh we're trying to help students understand what makes sense, what does not make sense. And u uh as a social scientist, I want help students understand that what what uh uh mass movements are all about and uh uh what uh uh behaviors are dangerous in terms of their abandonment of logic, reason and uh uh just common sense. Uh so when it comes to that I think that the education world has an obligation uh to speak truth to power and to talk about what what good thinking is. Now there is none of us wants to go in and say you have to believe this and sometimes college professors get in trouble because they go in and say well it's it's right to believe this way and uh uh and so in those cases I say no please don't uh please don't put yourself out there in a situation that that is going to create uh uh it's going to lead to more things that are bad than are good. And I'm not sure you're teaching students how to think so much. So, uh it's a fine line. Yeah. U you know, professors can't just check their beliefs in at the door uh when they go into class. Uh on the other hand, we got to be very very careful how what we say, what we advocate in class comes across as u uh advocacy and when uh we uh uh and that gets in trouble. I'm I'm hesitating a lot here because because we live in an environment right now politically where anything that represents an attempt to contradict what's being set out in front of us as uh proper belief is uh leads is it can be dangerous and I really really resent that. uh but I've been in situations that other times where where a faculty member have come out and they've made a statement that uh uh really should not have been made to the students because it suggests that they have to students have to believe in a certain way to uh succeed in the class. That's my point. >> Yeah. No, there definitely are biases that still exist within professionals and some of those can be pretty >> pretty off the the beaten path. I think I do want to come back to something Neuro mentions which is academia should be a safe zone for both students and professors and I I'm going to partly agree with that and partly disagree that it definitely needs to be a safe place to develop and explore thinking and critical thinking and discovering new knowledge. On the other hand, so not be safe in that if there are things that are challenging your just our personal held beliefs that are not based on an education or education can help inform beliefs beyond feelings, it should not be safe. And so I think there's there's a an interesting balance we I think professional educational institutions need to understand what their focus is and be ready to stand by them. >> Okay. Safe zone. I I we could talk about that for a long time. And uh in the abstract I say yes, it's nice for universities to be safe zones. I'm not going to dispute that. But what do we mean by safe? In other words, if you talk about economics, there are a lot of faculty members in a department of economics and a business college that are going to have uh what they understand to be truth. That is not the truth of a lot of faculty members in a sociology or philosophy department. Okay. So uh uh we have that's what I'm saying. We have to be very careful uh and uh we can't assume that our truths or the truths that are going to be acceptable to everybody. Here's where the safe safe zone largely applies. Most university campuses have free speech corners where students and faculty and others can get up and advocate for a certain position without fear of uh of u recrimination. And okay, I think that's good. >> Let me type in just for a second. I don't think educational I I would love to in an ideic world for educational institutions to be a safe zone but they never will be because people know that that's where uh that that is where young people hang out and uh the politicians and other people that want to control thought um will never let educational facilities be a safe zone because uh that's where minds are formed and that's why they're also uh frankly scared of educational institutions and it's the first thing one of the first places they act is because uh in idealic situic situation it is a place that people can talk about things freely. Uh in reality of course that that never happens. I'd like to add something here just for a moment. Uh I don't see a lot of analogies between um >> uh what education is facing now and what journalism has been facing over the past x number of years and you know journalism has changed incredible. Uh think about 20 years ago what the role of newspapers was compared to now. Um, I think the university system, I think higher education, I think education in general is going to be experiencing a lot of changes over the next couple years. And I I I don't I obviously have no crystal ball. I don't know how this is going to work out, but I think this is an incredibly important discussion to have. Well, journalism, you know, I'm talking about, you know, real what I will call real journalism, you know, um, just like one with the poor education, too. You know, you could say that, but I think there's a there's a system that that defines sort of what journalism is and how it behaves, just as there is one for education. And I'm just saying I think both of those are undergoing some major major shifts now. And I that's why I just think this is an incredibly important discussion. Well, journalists were essentially news researchers. Okay. That uh in theory the best um newspapers and magazines and journalists and stuff actually looked for education evidence and multiple sources and vetted their material and stuff and they weren't just Indian influencers like a lot of them are today. Yeah, that's actually to me one of the most interesting parallel or maybe kin professions to being a scientist is a journalist, right? I mean, it's one of these same types of or even like a detective, right? There's this real search and skepticism and trying to sort stuff through for truth, which is a long and tedious and you have to be thorough and vigilant process. And when you just don't do it right, you get you get crap that comes out of it. And I think that's true for science or journalism or any number of things that where you're letting other things take over just that attitude of how you approach it. Um, education being a very interesting topic. I think education um a lot a lot of challenges for it and I wish it would try and find a good basis to communicate that. I think it was it Harvard was it Yale where the faculty just put out a new like mission statement for what they a study and a mission statement for how education should work and I think that that was a really interesting conversation but funding yeah as you guys mentioned funding is is there too um Caroline, is there anything you're >> I have to excuse myself. >> Yeah, you go. >> I have a I do have strangess. Even though it's Saturday, I have another meeting in a couple of minutes. So, uh you all have a a great day and I appreciate the opportunity to share this event with you. So, bye-bye. >> Thanks for coming. See you in the future. Mhm. >> Um um yeah. So tagline tagline points out something here too. When we think about the purpose of higher education, you know, a lot of people will focus on the value it brings to a career or what sort of value it brings to your your lifetime salary and income. And that's certainly one way a fairly narrow way of looking at it. uh what education does to make your life richer is is a key part. Maybe help you make good or bad or more informed decisions or just appreciate certain things more. Which is why I think this informal education movement that we have and social media can help can help with that is actually valuable when it's done well. But I think the misinformation part can be really problematic. Is there anything you guys want to say about misinformation of science, social media or whatnot? Oh my goodness, we could be here for hours. Um, but one thing I was just putting in in in chat is that the idea of getting a ROI from education has only come about since about 1985. I took a good course in the history and philosophy philosophy of higher education from at a doctoral level and essentially that's where it came about. I mean when I went to college that we didn't think about money. We didn't have money and no and nobody thought about oh I'm going to get rich by getting an education. They thought that they were I'll be able to better society. I mean yes okay it was it was kind of a dream of the 60s and 70s but um it was never about oh I'm going to make more money if I get educ educated. >> Well I mean to yes and no. I mean to some degree a lot of the early like if you wanted to get a law degree or become a doctor you had to go to college then had to go to graduate school. So maybe not more or less money but just for certain professions there was this necessity to to higher education. >> Well expanded that idea the little thing about when you're in your kid and you go you know lawyer doctor Indian chief. Okay. It was what you gonna do when you grow up. >> Yeah. Well, that's one thing I noticed and so when I was teaching and went to graduation ceremonies and I had no appreciation of this until I went to that is when you make going to college about getting a degree and then earning money and can how do you earn more money? You like a third of our graduating class for the undergrad school was business majors, you know. So suddenly becoming a business major was becoming the popular thing because that's in theory people thought oh I'll go into business to make money so I'll do a business degree and I think to some degree that limits the thoughts and ideas that we that entrepreneurs and people can approach business with but it also makes education kind of a a strange pre-certification for something do you necessarily need a business degree to do business so >> well and it and it leads we were talking about misinformation information leads to misinformation. In other words, there is no ethics in business. Uh the only ethics that it exists in business is uh reputation perhaps. But in other words, when all you're thinking about is money that uh it leads to, you know, love of money is the root of all evil. That that's been around for thousands of years. >> Yeah. Tagline. I I like that idea. You know, education is an opportunity to just become more learned and become like a better version of yourself in some ways. Uh again, I I'm going to I like Nuro what Nurero said too, which is um you know, education is about truth. And I think that that's certainly one way we want to approach the topics and the things that we present as as educational material. But I will also say I think a lot of times it's not about the journey of education is not necessarily about the truth. It's about becoming better at being able to recognize the truth and and approach with a logical and thinking and seeking the truth and and in a good and positive way. So I do like that. Carolyn, I think one thing you mentioned earlier back in the chat that I wanted to address was, you know, different different types of science become more or less popular over time. You know, becoming a high particle energy physics physicist or rocket scientist was certainly a big thing in the early 1900s. People loved chemistry at the time, but now biology has become a bigger thing. Is there anything more you want to um ask the panelists about or comment on? Because right now, of course, computer science and then the merging of various fields with computer science is a hot topic. Well, so Nuro, I do think you point out something really interesting here with that. um you know going to an education getting an a formal education can definitely change your attitude about things and and hopefully that's in a good way but it seems like with MBAs maybe that goes the opposite way with their generosity and I think that's one thing I found that challenging when I was a biology educator is that you know there are people who believe that uh things that happen in biology that we call evolution are caused by a higher power. And that's that's their deeply held belief. And when you try and teach biology as a process of natural causes, that actually leads to a lot of philosophical conflict in the classroom. And that can be quite difficult to navigate. That is unfortunate though about MBAs. I would hope they also became you think in some cases more entrepreneurial. Thanks Natalie. I think uh thanks for your contributions. I really liked your example with the AI and what's happening with that. I think it's a good positive example. Although it's kind of too bad we didn't talk more about Star Trek in all honesty. Who anyone want to talk to Star Trek before we have to go? Yeah. Quite all right, Bill. Well, thanks for coming. It's always great to have people participate. I think a tagline, unless you want to make a closing statement or anybody else from the audience wants to to pipe up with a comment or a question, I'll give you the floor for the last thing and we'll uh we'll head out. If you want tagline, >> oh, I'm not hearing you, tagline. >> I'm sure. >> Now I'm sorry, I had trouble getting my mic to come on. I had an idea. Uh, I had a little back and forth um with um of ideas with friendly back and forth uh with uh Phil and um we were talking about uh well the idea that there's nothing of it opinion and science that it's totally wellounded but I think there is a lot of opinion but it it's it gets weighed in as consensus and I I think that's not to be downplayed. That's a huge part of science. Um, consensus and how it's attained and the debate that leads to consensus. And it reminded me of, you know, we go around talking about the normal distribution and everybody talks about the bell-shaped curve and just assumes it seems to me that every distribution out there is probably a bell-shaped curve unless stated otherwise. And um the fact is it's probably about um as realistic as the concept of an ideal gas in uh physical chemistry u which is a model for developing some things in thermodynamics but it's there's no such thing as an ideal gas. there's some uh elements that behave a little more like an ideal gas than others, but uh uh they all diverge from it and in one way or another. And um the thing that's really really cool is no matter what distribution of data you have, if you take any any distribution in the universe, if you take samples, a collection of samples from it at random and get a mean for that and then another collection of samples and get a mean for that one. A mean meaning an average. uh and do this with a large n uh large number of samples then the distribution of the averages will approach that of a perfect normal distribution that's called the central limit theorem and in a sense intuitively I think that when you have groups of scientists working and trying to interpret in coming to a consensus one way or another. Sometimes the debate gets carried out in textbooks after the journals have been written and refined over decades. But in a sense it relates in my thinking to the central limit theorem. These different subgroups and their consensus uh get averaged together and you end up with a true mean. Uh I think that it is the basis for science as a um an approach being the most effective way human beings have ever had to gain knowledge about reality. And I'll stop at that. Thank you for letting me close. Well, I I do think probably one of the most important things that we have come to understand about the human brain is that there are certain things it does wrong and and and again that's just because of our history but understanding distributions and what those really really can't can and can't tell you is one of the biggest things right so yeah biodal I I really feel like kindergarteners should be taught about biotal distributions as as as a way to grasp those concepts. So, yeah. Oh, I think um thanks for thanks for that commentary tagline. Always appreciate some of your your your wider perspectives on things. Um, you know, the these these issues with ill logic can be treated both with a combination of of training, educating, but also involves and requires a willingness to to apply them. So I So Caroline, thanks for that example. I had that that jar example is a good one. I do wonder. Um, well, actually, I'm just saying our educ our education typically doesn't formally start till kindergarten. So, that's that's when they should start doing it as soon as possible. Really? But as a parent, you can or maybe Door the Explorer should talk more about Bimodal. Well, yeah. Well, and to be fair, the ability to think incorrectly in some cases or to make mistakes has been has helped advance science. Um, yeah, I think um again, I'll I'll um I'll end with my own kind of teacup analogy, which is actually not even my own. It's something that Bruce Lee used to tell his students is that when they would come to him to learn about uh Jeet Kundo or some of the other stuff that he was synthesizing as his own forms of the martial arts is he always told his students they need to empty the teacup. Right? that your ability to learn something does require getting rid of preconceptions and other stuff. Now, I think that's true, but there's also this this place where a lot of science and a lot of our knowledge is built upon other foundations. And so, it's trying to navigate the good and bad out of that that I think brings us uh to where we hopefully can achieve the optimum. Science circle is a part of that. Being open, being being willing to come here and discuss is all part of that. So, thank you all for participating. And uh yeah, let's let's have some tea. Let's get to our days. Thank you all for coming. And I Heat. Heat.