The Gopher and Future Consequences

So media behind the Bastards, the very podcast about weight shit, Bad people podcast. The worst in all of history. I'm the host of the show and also bad at introducing it. Let's distract everyone from me being yet again incompetent at the one thing I have to do other than read a script and bring on our guest, Ed Zitron E How you doing today? What's up? I'm Greay. You're great? That's good. That's good bad Ed, your podcast called Better Offline, don't you Do And you talk about a number of things on that show, but you've kind of you've gained a great deal of fame and notoriety lately by repeatedly calling out a lot of the grifty and Cnie aspects of what some people call the AI revolution. I think that would be that would be fair to say. And you're working on. A book right now, aren't you,ud? you want to get the audience, the title of that book It's called whyy E everything stopped Working and it's about how everything stopped working due to technology and how we got to where we are today, which kind of fucking sucks That is a great premise and I can't wait for the book. And I wanted to help you out with some research, Ed on something that's kind of off the beaten path and not directly involved with the tech industry that you've reported on. But in terms of like peoplee fall for cons and specifically con technology products It's a really important story. And so I think you might get some value in hearing it even though it's technically set in an industry That's your immedia industry. This is a defense industry technology story. Have you ever heard the story about the bomb detectors that didn't work that everyone particularly I rq bought. Okay, great. Ed, we're gonna have a really good time today. Oh boy. Speaking of things that explode. rememember when Bezos' rocket exploded yesterday? It sure just did. It sure just did. And anytime something explodes, I'm happy unless it's like a bad explosion that nobody nobody nobody died. Nobbody died. And the videos were really fun Oh Yeah, that was a big boom It is it is amazing how just knowing like no one was hurt can make the two different equally nightmarish explosions. One of them just be really funny. Like you watch the video that explosion when that the town of West in Texas blew up a few years back and it's not fun at all. It's just terrifying. But the blue Origin rocket blowing up, pretty funny. We looked at every angle It made the sound that Ratz Tyrell did in Phantom Menace when he crash or's. It's the same explosion, the same sound But I was much sadder about rats ter rail. I love that you know its name. Of course Yeah This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human This is George Severis and Sam Taggart from Stradio Lab. Let's be real, home comes with a lot of odors. cooking, pets, everyday life. That's where Fabriz comes in. Fabriz helps fight household odors and leaves behind freshness that lasts. And with over thirty cents to choose from, you'll always find one that feels like you. Fabriz. Freshness that fits your life, your space, your style Fabz is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the IHart Radio app and everyverywhere podcast are heard I love living in New York, except when my to do list is longer than a drug store receipt. So now I post on air Tasker, set my budget and taskers handle the rest. Hang the shelves, organize the closet, return the packages, design the flyer for my band's next gig. Done And I finally get to eat my bagel Yeah. From errands to repairs and everything in between, Air Tasker makes city life easier Download the AirTasker app or go to airTasker. com Air Tasker. G anything done When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beeachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations, with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Rcharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning. It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you With my mom and dad living in Orange County, when we bring my five and seven year old to visit, we are sometimes in for a two hour drive that could feel like ten. Oh, as an avid camper, I know all about this. We'll pack up the RV and know this is either going to be the trip of a lifetime or a complete disaster Which is why we load up the iPads with Lingo Kids before we even pull out of the driveway. It's what dreams are made of. Lingo Kids keeps kids engaged and quiet with over four thousand interactive games, songs, and shows that kids simply cannot get enough of You can pack whatever you think you'll need, but Lingo Kids is the only entertainment you'll need for a stress free car ride. Or really, any ride, plane, train, hovercraft, whatever Download Lingo kids for free today or unlock even more amazing content with Lingo Kids pllus Choose the yearly plan and save up to sixty percent. Search Lingo kids in the App store or Google Play Lingo kids, everything kids love. As you know, Ed, and as everyone who listens to your show knows, the US tech industry is currently dealing with a teensy issue of its entire economic foundation increasingly resting on a bed of fraudulent claims about what AI can do. And every week, you break down some new lie or set of lies about how this new AI update or whatever works, or which giant fantasy data centers are actually being constructed and which aren't And for those of us who care about objective reality and want companies to sell products that actually do something, this is a distressing state of affairs. And I wanted to give you a story about kind of dumb that process can get and how really easy it is to trick even very serious people into buying absolute nonsense as long as they feel like they're dummies who are missing out if they don't buy it. That's the story. And ultimately It's going to take us to Iraq and a fake bomb detecting device that got so many people killed, a startling number of people killed. Yeah. But first firstirst h We got to start in pre history and the in the far reaches of time with a psychological phenomenon that we now call the Idiomotor effect. You've heard of this. right Have you heard of the Idiomotor effect? No. Okay. This is you you may just not remember the name because this is like a like this is basically When your thoughts or your like mental images of something cause a reflexive and generally unconscious automatic muscle movement So You and your friends are around on a Ouija board and none of you think that you're moving the little like glass that picks the letters, but all of you are a little bit, right? Like you're just not kind of aware of the micro movements and that moves the thing around the board and creates the illusion that some spirit is moving your hands, right? That' I think people are generally aware of that concept Yeah rightight. And the Idiomotor effect is it explains actually a lot, specifically of things in early human like religious history, but not just that. And one interesting thing to me, you ever heard of dowsing No This is still a thing today. It's not a thing I think most regular people know about in the twenty first century, but it's still something that's done all over the world. and it's a thing that has kind of been repeatedly invented in cultures around the world. And the idea behind dowsing is you've got this usually a forked wooden stick. And you like walk around with it ' you're looking for water, orr you're looking for like an underground mine, right? You think there's gold underground. And as you're walking, if like the fork kind of dips in a direction, that's the dowoussing rod finding water or whatever you're looking for, underground or underwater, right And again, the idea is that like there's some magnetic force that's pulling it down and tells you where you should dig. Like the people who claim this is real tend to now say that there's a basis in science. There's not. And people have just been doing this for forever because it seems like it should work. think this works. Yes, my dad did this professionally when he was a young man. like we were talking like the early eighties, you know Yeah. So yes, people still do d. Very cool. V cool. And what's When Because one thing dowsers will point out, because there are dowsers who like have a great record of like, well, this guy is using a dowsing rod and he's found water all these times. Generally what people tend to think is actually happening is that like these folks are also have just been traveling around and like looking for water long enough and have enough of an understanding of geology that kind of unconsciously when they suspect that somewhere's right, their their hand is moving, you know. They're ignoring their more about in favor of Yes, Yes of just pseudos science. V Of crediting the stick Yes, very We'll talk more about that later, but dowoussing goes back surprisingly far. We have ancient Chinese texts from about two thousand BCE or so that depict Emperor Yu of Hessa of using a dowsing rod in something approaching the modern fashion. And there are even some archaeologists who will argue that a set of cave paintings in Algeria from about six thousand BCE also depict dowsing. that's highly debated. These guys might have just had bows and arrows. It's a cave painting. so there's some room for debate But Herodotus described a similar tool in use by the Scythians in the fifth century BCE. and there are a number of other suspected or confirmed cases ofing and dousing adjacent behavior in civilizations around the world. and sometimes You know, with the Scipiens, I wouldn't be surprised if it traveled out of China, But there's evidence that different peoples have kind of figured out this basic idea independently, sort of like the bow and arrow, right? Um For whatever reason, this is just something that it seems natural to people. Um The practice was well known enough in the days of the Roman Empire that the New Testament even has a passage denouncing dowsing From an article on the Archeology Review blog by Carl Figgins My people consult their wooden idol and their diviner's rod informs them, for a spirit of harlotry has led them astray and they have played the harlot, departing from their go. And that's Hosea four twelve. So You're you're using the technology you in a partent dry is st toiz The Bible this s. Hey, whoa, don't believe this dum shit If we're comparing dowousing to AI, this is the first like this is an early pope encyclical against dowsing. It's hardless of behavior.' make people think about ladies. I don't think that's actually what it was saying. but in the funny word. I just like the word harlot. Um So this is probably part of why dowsing rods became increasingly known as witching rods in the Western world. Weave've ever heard of a witching rod? It's the same idea. And they call it that because People thought it was the devil sometimes. And while the practice was banned at times in the Christian world during this period as a result and even persecuted, this did not overly inhibit its spread. By the fifteenth century CE, Germans were using forked branches they called wishing rods to find ore veins in mountains. or they're not actually finding stuff with the sticks, the sticks don't work, that's just what they think is going on In fifteen fifty six, a humanist scholar and a mineralogist named Giorgius Aggrriicola wrote the earliest surviving illustrated account of dowsing as a professional practice Now By this point, by the time old Georgie, puts that down. We've had a documented history of about three thousand five hundred years of humans using dowsing, maybe more. And enough people believe dowsing works that it's a common practice. But even in the fifteen hundreds, which is not an advanced era for scientific understanding, this guy Agriicola is like, there's no way this is real, right? writes. There are many great contentious between miners concerning the forked twig, for some say that it is of the greatest use of discovering veins, and others deny it. So we're already starting to like do some evidence based, you know shedding of doubt on this practice Were there like guides like how to doub and is like step two When it wiggles, I don't really know like What is He's the first one to write it down We have to assume just given the nature of the way things were spread back then, most dowsers would have been taught how to dows. You're not getting like a guidebook with your first rod. You're an apprentice and you're being taught, you know So Georgius was kind of the first person to document what was probably already standard wisdom within the field R If that makeakes sense? W wisdom of the rod. The rod holding a stick and say water The wisdom of the stick So with some of the stick. Beautiful. I love it I found all the information, most of the information about dowsing that I've read for you on a website called Plus Value India, which had an article on the history of Dowsing that seemed a lot less shady I look the the we pu last year. It sure did It did. So if he's gonna show you the website, if you want to look at how reputable this source is. Oh yeah. top the page is three steps Energized three to five day delivery forform your home's energy without breaking a single wall And it's about healing crystals. It's about healing crystals. As that should make clear, the fact that this history of dowsing is on the website selling you magic crystals, Dowsing is woo. Right, this isn't real science. Doussing rods don't I identify gold or iron or water and pull in their direction. People unconsciously decide a particular area seems likely and their hand moves unconsciously. Yeah. If someone's intuition is good or they're lucky, they find what they're looking for. and this process works out often enough throughout history that it's kept alive U not just alive, but shockingly influential. In his article, Feeiggins notes that, quote, archaeologist and skeptic Jeb Card writes in his spooky archaeology, which is a book that one in eight archaeology instructors in the nineteen eighties were favorable to dowsing This is initially hard to accept. Dowsing is the kind of nonsense that was popular before people understood the idedo motor effect, but surely by the nineteen eighties, we knew the practice was bp kiss. And we did in the same way we know vaccines work, but the world at large has not always accepted that knowledge. right? So The fact that like that many archaeology instructors in the eighties one and eight's, not most, but it's more than you'd guess, right? belieieving in dousing should show you how hard it is convince people even when there's never been and there's never been any good evidence Dowsing works Even th despite that fact, despite how long we've known it's nonsense, peopleeople were still buying it then and still do it today people, by the way. Like the idea of a guy like the years in you're like, okay, step one, hold the stick two It we're go like I just like step two is where a kid stuck. It moves. Wait until it moves. Is it like using the cl around I think you're supposed to kind of walk past the area and if it dips down, that's like the sign that something's there, right? As opposed to variants to this. Do your hand dipping But you couldn't do with a hand. That's just silly, Ed. Yeah. Okay, cool, right Very good. I mentioned earlier that the Ouija board works by way of the Idiomotor effect too, and it does. But the Ouija board is a new product. any claims of ancient Proidence or just marketing. It is, however, based on an older idea, in in fact a very old idea, which is the magic or exploring pendulum. And if you were to get transported back in time to the days of ancient Rome and meet like someone claiming to be a fortune teller, they would probably do there's a good chance they'd do this. where basically you've got like a plate or a bowl that's engraved with pictures or letters or words or symbols that stand for something And you hold this pendulum, sometimes it's just like a metal ring on a string, and you hold it above that. And as the aoomotor effect makes it swing in a c direction, you're saying, oh, the spirit is picking out different symbols or letters and it's spelling out, you know, your fortune or whatever. It's answering whatever question it's been asked to you documentation of this practice dating back at least to three hundred and seventy one BC in Europe or BCE in Europe. according to an article on Quack Watch A question would be put to the priest. The movements of the ring would then be observed. When the ring was set in motion, it would swing towards one of the letters. This letter would be recorded, then the same process would be used to select another letter, right? And that's, you know, basically how these things work. So How did dowsing stay relevant and seemingly credible up until the modern era, whereas like the magic pendulum became a board game for children, right? Even though it's the same amount of legitimacy. That is interesting, isn't it? Right? like one of these is a Parker Bothers game and the others people pay for it. you know. Is it because is it is it the client base? because for the for the doussing, it's the Oe and and the war Yeah I guess that there are those people and the others are seeking to communicate with the debt Right different markets. Right. But it is interesting that A bunch of like hard nosed oil and gas investors over the years have been fooled buy something that like, mostost kids know isn't really real just because it's in a different it's presented to them in a different stand like situation, right? I do think that's kind of telling. Yeah Yeah I can kind of see where you're going with this too If it just does the appearance. Yeah.. Interesting. I sure hopef they don't use this logic for bombs No, no, you don't want to see this logic used for bombs. But if you want to know how this logic went from, you know, stuff that like fortune tellers and wizards would use and wound up in a bomb detector, the answer that starts with the spiritism movement of the mid nineteenth century. We talked about Jamie Loftis talked about this a lot on the show one of the shows that she did for us. This is like around the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. You suddenly have seances become a big thing, right? There's this explosion in all these different weird occult movements. Some of this does feed into the Nazis, someome of it feeds into what's kind of become the newew age movement over here, but it's starting in like the eighteen forties and fifties with people trying to communicate with the dead And in that period of time, often believing that there might have been actual science to allowing people to communicate with spirits or the dead. becausecause it's like eighteen forty eight, right? It's not a crazy thing to believe in eighteen forty eight based on the science of the times. Yeah, we got into that at length on Ghost Church. Ghost church. Yes, yes, that was Jamie's show So the first scientist to actually bust the magic pendulum and thus explain the ideidiomotor effect and bust all idiomotor related magical phenomena was a French dude named Chevrrouel, right? He's a scientist in eighteen oh eight. He'd trained as a chemist and had thus read a standard textbook for the field written by a Strasberurg professor who advocated using a magic pendulum to do chemical analysis That's where science is at this point. In the early eighteen hundreds, if you're trying to analyze like what different chemicals or anything before you do like a chemical experiment, like where you're mixing shit together, you use like a fucking ring on a chain and the way it swings tells you what the minerals are, right? So R And Chevroual to his credit, he's one of these guys just seems to have kind of a naturally scientific mind onnce he his instructors tell him and this is how you analyze what chemicals are in things. He's like, really I don't That you to belie this, right? Like this isn't what we're doing, is it? This can't be right? So he but that said when he uses the pendulum for the first time, it works. L he gets a chemical compound, he knows what it is, and somehow the pendulum swings the way it's supposed to when it's over that in order to identify it as like mercury, right So he's gven a play to Mercury. He knows it's Mercury unconsciously his hand makes the motion that is supposed to indicate that it's mercury, right? So at first he's like, oh, fuck, maybe it does work, maybe I'm wrong. But again, being having a good scientific mind, he decides I'm going to do some actual testing and I'm going to actually try to do kind of early version of double blind testing. So he like puts a plate beneath the pendulum and the mercury and that stops like the thing from swinging. And he also tests putting his arm on a support, which reduces the movements and kind of provides evidence that like, no, no, these are unconscious muscle movements. I was thinking about that with a divining roog. you to test if it was real by having ost or something. Exactly, exxactly. And that's what he does, right? Be he's a smart guy Now this prompts him to conduct the first double blind test on the Iiom motor effect. And I'm going to quote again from that Qackwatch artle He blindfolded himself and then he had an assistant interposer remove the glass plate between the pendulum and the mercury without his knowledge. Under these conditions, nothing happened. Chevreuell concluded, So long as I believed the movement possible, it took place. But after discovering the cause, I could not reproduce it. His experiments with the pendulum show how easy it is to mistake illusions for realities Whenever we are confronted by phenomena in which the human sense organs are involved under conditions imperfectly analyzed Interesting quote to think about when you read about like AI chatbots passing like turning tests and stuff. Yeah Kind of an interesting yeah, thing to think on Um So again, I do like stories about this guy because it gives you it's just one of these like, you can really see a brilliant mind shining through history. This man it was just too smart to believe what literally everyone else in his field said was true. And was like, well, I'm just going to literally do a basic test. No, everyone was wrong Yeah, this make this does make me think of my work which like fifty percent of the things I do are like Okay, you keep saying this, D you look? Did you look? Did you look even once? And then you check and there's no proof and they like, hey, I job lost. Re no proof of that. It Do the businesses make sense? don't make sense at all. if you add up the numbers Oh history's so beautiful. It's beautiful. That's why I was calling him in my head Sheb. Ruet Zitron that didn't really work. Chev Zitron, Cheef Cellio itronank There were I could have tried so many different things that were were better than what I went with. Anyway. so Chevrerouell has correctly generalized that this same explanation illuminates what's really behind Dowsing. He doesn't just call out, you know the pendulum chemical analysis. He's like, by the way, people are using the same the dowsing is the same thing, obviously Um But his findings did not initially spread widely, neither among the general populace, nor even among a lot of educated people By the eighteen fifties, grrifters and gurus were hosting regular seances and talking to the dead parties, where magic pendulums were used to communicate with ghosts. The whole spiritist movement relied heavily on the Iiomotor effect Table turning was another common practice, and this was a Victorian era parlor game that took off after the famous Fox sisters of Hydesville started claiming to communicate with spirits through knocks and taps on tables. In just a few years, the practice had evolved to table flipping, which is described in the website Moon Mausoleum this way The participants would sit around a small table, fingertips lightly resting on the surface, and after a bit of concentration and maybe a dramatic chant or two, the table would begin to rock, tilt, and sometimes even levitate. And again, this is the Iidiomotor effect And there's nothing wrong with this. This basically everyone Giving each other permission unconsciously to believe something silly and to have like a fun kind of heightened experience. And there's nothing wrong with this. if you're not taking this as serious evidence of like how the universe works, which people do because we're dumb So The fact that folks are believing all of this drives a lot of scientists crazy in part because science had just been invented and early practitioners of the field still believed it could compete long term with nonsense, which is a rookie mistake. Anyway, one of these guys was the physiologist William Carter. and Carter argued that none of these iomotor charades are evidence of ghosts, writing All the phenomena of the biologized state, when attentively examined, will be found to consist in the occupation of the mind by the ideas which have been suggested to it and in the influence which these ideas exert upon the actions of the body Carpenter, having described what's going on, coined a name for this phenomenon in eighteen fifty two, the Idiomotor effect. That's where we get the name. crrucial to this whole process was his observation that the people participating in these table flipping games and rituals weren't lying generally or secretly manipulating the results. That happens sometimes like with the Hyde Sisters. Some of the people doing these are deliberately manipulating what's happening. But when people are doing like a group of friends get together to do like a table flipping seance Usually nobody's secretly manipulating the results. They're just all kind of tricking each other and most of them are unaware of their own contributions to moving the table Idiomotor action then provided a non magical explanation for something that only seemed magic because participants were too close to the action to see what was really going on Right. now The original definition of the iomotor effect was the influence of suggestion in modifying and directing muscular movement independently of volition As before, the mere fact that table turning had been explained and the underlying mechanism behind it named didn't immediately change anything So the next year, eighteen fifty three, a group of English scientists convened to find an explanation for what had already been explained. The internet maybe could have helped with this somewhat. There's a lot of people busting the same myths at the repeatedly at the same time. 'causeuse like, how do you know if some guy in London has already like named, you know this effect like Yeahah, I guess they weren't sending each other letters wasn't like placem check I mean, they are sometimes, but you don't have a guarantee. It's not like there's a someone can't just like find the results and then suddenly it's instantaneously in journals around the world. Like you would have had to be exchanging letters with someone who knows that this is going on, right Um You know who I exchange letters with sponsors of this podcast, you know, erotic letters Oh honestly We both wish I'd stopped sending them, but There's no way stopC sp. I don't want love our sponsors. I love our sponsors, you know? Yeah. and I mean, that's how I pretty much interact with every better offline sponsor. They all get I send some tastful nudes as well. That's how we comeight That's right. And they keep telling me, this isn't an only fans, Robert. You don't have to do that to the advertisers, but by God You know, I found their home addresses. I'm mailing them pictures of me. But you want to do it. That's why you do itu Thank you, E. want to Thank you. Anyway. Here's some ad Guys don't like talking about ED, but if something's been off in the bedroom You're not alone and you don't need to wait longer than you need to take action Getting real treatment is simple, and through HIMS, it's one hundred percent online. At some point, you've got to stop blaming stress, sleep or just getting older. If bedroom performance is in question, it's probably crossed your mind to do something about it. The good news, you don't have to jump through hoops to fix it. HIMS connects you with licensed healthcare providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home ate appointments, no pharm missing lines. You just complete a simple online intake form and a provider will review your information and determine if treatment is right for you prescribed your treatment ships directly to your door in discrete packaging To get simple, online access to personalized affordable care for ED, weight loss, and more, visit himIS dot com slash BTB. That's HIS dot com slash BTB for your free online visit. HMS d. com slash BTB. Pcription required, see website for details and important safety information. Slotinahil is the generic version of Viagraa. Viagraa is a registered trademark of Vatrice A Vatrice spepecialty LLC, HyMS is not affiliated with or endorsed by Vatrice This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry? Turns out, it's got its own fascinating story too Because not all detergents are created equal Tide liquid laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, whiter, brighter, and fresher results compared to Tide simply. And those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times Tide tackles one hundred percent common stains for every load, every time. Now if Grease is your nemesis, think food spills, cooking splatters, Tides's got ten times grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands And it works in a machine, in any water condition, on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder TIDE was America's number one detergent in sales last year. So if it's got to be clean, and it's got to be fresh, it's got toa be Tide. Shop now at your local retailer. TDe is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the IHart Radio app and everywhere podcasts are heard. I love living in New York, except when my to do list is longer than a drugstore receipt. So I post my tasks on Air Tasker Hang the shelves, organize the closet, return the packages. Done. Download the AirTasker app or go to airtasker. com Air Tasker G anything done. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum tanning does it better. Beeachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding M' services to many locations, with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Rcharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning. It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you Ah, and we're back U There were several leading theories as to like what was going on with the Idiomotor effect and these pendulums and these tables, right? Among the people who wanted to have like a scientific answer, but like hadn't read any of the explanations that were going around in eighteen fifty three. and the leading one was electricity. becausecause in eighteen fifty three people knew electricity existed, but it was basically magic in most of their minds, right? So when you're asking like, well, why is this thing moving when I hold it above this, it must be electricity. Gotta be electricity, right? Like It' visible power Yeah, they just like probably some real electricity vibes to me, man. I don't know. guuy who only knows one scientific theory Um Baron Carl von Reichenbach credited Odic Force, which he named after Odin, and which he thought this is one of my favorite things. So his Baron Reichenbach von Reichenbach's explanation for the Iidiomotor effect is no, no, there's this Odic Force. And the way he describes it is just the force from Star Wars, right? He believes all living things radiate energy And some people are sensitive to it and can even manipulate it. And there's even positive and negative energies or even a light and dark side of the Odic force that you can learn to cont. Did you actually say light and dark? Yes, he did. Yes, he did. Oh my God. I mean in German, but yes And what year was this This is the eighteen fifies. Hell yeah. He independently invented George Lucas. whichich looks like this is great. It just needs some more racist aliens. and it'll be. Yeah, I need some aliens that look like they came out of Derstirmer. There's something about his middle name being Carl that's really funny. It's really funny. It's really funny. It's good stuff. That's his first name. It's just that he's the baron Carl That's even better U Anyway, four doctors were tasked with investigating the science behind Table turning in the United States, and despite all the theories around it, they came to the same conclusion as Carpenter, although they did not give it a cool name The conclusion was formed that the motion was due to muscular action, mostly exercised unconsciously That same year in the United States, Michael Faraday conducted another prominent debunking of table turning. And by this point, the sheer weight of scientific consensus against this being real began to tell. Some regular people kept doing it, but scientists increasingly agreed it was nonsense Some scientists. A major exception was Russell Wallace. and this guy's such a crank, I want his background to like be shitty But it's not. Russell Wallace independently invented the theory of natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin. Like they published identically and they both Darwin, most people give more credit, but they both get credit because they both figured it out on their own pretty much. Right I mean that's more complicated than that, but Wallace is a person who came up independly with the theory of natural. He's a smart man, right? But in eighteen sixty five, he fell head firstirst into spiritism. Per Qackwatch, he was seated with other sitters around a table The table behaved in ways he was sure could not be entirely explained by Faraday's findings and Carpenter's Theory of videoide motor action. right? Basically, he initially, he is like, yeah, obviously, of course, you know, I believe that what these these other scientists have debunked it, this is clearly nonsense. And some folks are like, hey, you should actually go attend one of these seances for yourself and maybe you'll feel differently. And he does. And he's like, I was wrong. This is absolutely like amazing Right It is true The reading he went to didn't seem to work the way Faraday and Carpenter had described Io motor action That wasn't what was going on. He was just being tricked by fake mediums who had a whole team of people hiding in different looks and crannies in the house to make noises and create fake psychic phenomena That happened a lot too He makes a mistake O assuming that because this is different that like the difference between what Faraday and Carpenter had seen, what he had seen is because he'd seen real ghosts as opposed to mayaybe some guys tricked me, right. So there was a concerted effort to trick him though. There was a concerted effort to trick him and I didn't catch it, right. Because, Faraday and the other scientists hadn't described the exact kind of behavior he'd observed, he concluded skeptical scientists couldn't be trusted to analyze the paranormals Because they just they wouldn't pay attention to the real stuff Dor Ray Hyman, writing for Qack Watch calls this attitude looupolism quote, The tendency to seek out each and every loophole in a skeptical account as a way to protect one's belief in a cherished supernatural orci. I'm fllowing that shit away for the AI boost.'s going. I thought you find this useful. Let's loopholism. That's money. Yeah that. Oh yeah. That's getting a lot of y That's a handy term Lupholism is the kind of behavior you can mock is idiotic But again, this is a legitimately brilliant man. What's really happening here is that looupholism is the mechanism by which otherwise bright and even brilliant minds can trap themselves in nonsense. It provides a safety valve so that that sense of like internal like discrepancy between like what you know and what you're observing gets kind of turned off, right? That's what it allows you to do. It's how smart people get trapped believing stupid things. That's what loopholism is Russell, not only smart people. Russell Wallace was one such mind, but another was Robert Harere, a professor emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in eighteen fifty three, when he was seventy two years old, and Faraday published his debunking of table turning. Hare was again a brilliant chemist, one of the great minds in his field. So when Faraday published this report, the Philadelphia inquirer asked Hare for a comment. and Hare initially says, like, yeah, Faraday's right, this is bogus. And that convinces one doctor Comstock and mr. Amasa Holcom, two men running a fake medium scam, to send this guy a letter and say, Hey, if you're really a fair minded scientist Why not attend to seys? And the same thing happens again. An And another scam artist And another scam artist two known con men, right? Oh man. One of friends because hair's like, obviously, this is real totally different than what the other guysy saw. And one of his friends is like, is it possible that they were like conning you? And Hare iss like, Of course not. They're men of good character I know they're men of good character because I to them. They seemed like men of good character. You know, they seem like good fellows. who. They wouldn't lie to me about ghosts. And his logic was literally, well, they told me they spent hours every week asking spirits for information And men a good character wouldn't waste all that time if it was a trick But that's like a classic scam. they scammed him in scientific ways. So good ople like they were like, Yeahah, youes. whether or not The belief in goes separately to this doesn' m. This is just a very classic scam of ingatate scam. just ingatiate the mark, but yeah, don't worry. I did the seilance real scientific like and I spent hours talking to the ghosts. Yeah Knowing that he'd never get asked for details about what the discussions might be Right. Hell yes, this rocks. So Hare goes off the fucking deep end after this. He writes a book in eighteen fifty five with a very long title. We did not know how to title books experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, demonstrating the existence of spirits and their communion with mortals, doctrine of the spirit world respecting heaven, hell, morality, and God. alsoso the influence of sccripture on the morals of Christians Rse off the tongue. againgain, man Like the first couple of words, experimental investigations of the spirit manifestations. Boom, there you go. That's all we needed. That's all we need, you know, orr experimental investigation of spirits Bh There's a title, you know I'm just I'm just trying to help you out here, man. Anyway, from that quack Watch piece describing this fucking book, Before undertaking his research into spiritualism, Hare tells us he was a materialist and an atheist. He describes in detail the various experiments he conducted that to him, proved the existence of the spirit world. He himself developed mediumistic powers. During these experiments, Hare claimed he had communicated not only with the spirits of his departed relatives, but also those of George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Benjamin Franklin Byron and Isaac Newton Lord Byron, huh? Lord Byron L Bar it. L by Okay, Lord Byron What does Lord Byron have to say about? Yh if you could fuck his wife Oh, okay, that's what Lord Byron did. I, fuck, fuck your wife. No, I wantan to know about spirits and stuffim. Yeah w the wife' situation. The wife' the wife man Let's discuss the wife' situation before we get into spirits So But he also created a device that sounds like a direct precursor to the Ouija board. Spirit scope, as he called it, consisted of a pasteboard disc slightly larger than a foot in diameter. Around its circumference he attached the letters of the alphabet in a haphazard order, an arrow that swiveed at the center of the disk was used to select letters one at a time by pointing toward them for his initial test he had a medium sit opposite him at a table. The disc was placed between Hare and the medium such that Hare could see the letters and the movements of the arrow, but the medium could not. The medium sat with her hands on a surface above the table, which through a system of pulleys, cords, and weights, was attached to the arrow such that slight pressures of her hand would cause it to move in various directions and point to letters Hare asked if any spirits were present. The arrow pointed to the letter Y, indicating yes. Hare next asked the spirit to provide the initials of his name. The index pointed to R and then to H. Hare asked, My honored father, The index pointed to Y Now Hare hadn't really figured out the secret to contacting the dead. He thought he had becauses like, well, she can't see the letters. So it's gotta be a spirit While this medium couldn't see the letters he was looking at. see his face and thus she could move her hand to modify where the thing landed based on his response. And she was like mentalist through her, right? Yes, it's just, it's the same set of principles, right And Hare even realizes she's not necessary. 'ause he starts operating the spirit scope alone and it still works. and he's like, that must really mean it's real. And no man, it's just the same. It's the idiomotor effect And also just be I assume that also wouldn't so the medium could control The thing. Yes, yes. We doing it with him. Yeah. And thus the medium would know what letters corresponded to what hand Well, if he as he's saying, like he's because he's reading the letters and if she gets to why and he's like, Oh, does that mean why? And she's like, Yeahah, yeah, that's where I want. Oh, so he was prompting her Yes, yes. there very degree of that going on. Yeah Al the case with shit like this Why? Yeah, it's asking why you want to know Right, exactly So The decades go by and science gains a robust understanding of how all this stuff works. Regular people continue to fall for it, but it's at least less commonly accepted and educated halls U That said, this still fools a lot of people periodically. One famous example from the twentieth century is the case of Clever Hans, a German horse in the early nineteen hundreds, who it was claimed, had been taught to do math, tell time, read, and write, and a bunch of other things that horses cannot do And so I' to show you, here's Clever Hans. and what you've got is basasically his His owner would point to, you know, if he wanted to have clever Hans, give people the answer to five times four Right? point to five times four and then Hans would start stomping until he reached twenty Thus showing that Hans knew how to do five times four. And Hans could indeed do stuff like this. And so people were like, what else could that be? but a horse knowing all of these things, right However As with table reading, once Clever Hans became really famous, there's a commission that gets formed to study him So the first thing they do, being scientists is separate him from his owner and they do a bunch of tests and they're able to show that wowa O people can get Hans to successfully give correct answers to, whichich at first seems well maybe that really does mean Hans knows what he's doing further studies showed Hans only gets answers correct if the person asking him a question knows the right answer and Hans can see them Right? Those two things have to be in place, right? In other words, Hans doesn't know what five times four is or what three times three is or what two plus two is Han's nose When he starts tapping, at a certain point, the person asking a question gets really excited if they know what the answer is because that's the answer. and then he stops and he gets rewarded Right? That's what Hans is reacting to One thing this shows, which is legitimately of scientific interest, is that Horses are very empathetic, right? Hans doesn't know math or anything or science or anything else But he knows when people are excited and happy with his performance And that's what he's reading for. Right Does that make sense? Yeah, you honest think. Hans does sound clever He's clever. He is. He's a smart horse, just not in the way people thought, right? I also like the reason I laughed so hard was The idea of like a panel or a committee Like a bunch of guys got together. It was like. see how smart this horse is? Or like was there an alarm of like are horses becoming intelligence Really smart? Yes, there was. People were like, wait a second, what's going on here? They're thinking of like an early version of sorry to Bother you Yeah. Yes, exactly. Now this is not the Iidiomotor effect, but it's relevant for a reason I'm going to bring up in a second. I do I should let you know, Clever Hans gets found out, right? Like people realize what's going on not long before World War one. And for his many crimes, he was eventually drafted into World War one and was killed in action in nineteen sixteen and immediately eaten by starving German infantry This might not seem like it's the same I know that's kind of bleak. It's not World War One. Cat' a fever. This may not seem like the same deal as dowoussing, and it's not the Iidiomotor effect, but the human psychology behind it is very similar. Whether it's a horse or a forked stick, we're the ones with the answers, and we just convince ourselves something else is at play, right Today, in the twenty first century, Clever Hans is a fun old timey story, but people are still just as easily tricked by animal behavior And I'm going to have a brief digression to talk about police dogs here. But first. You know who never gets police dogs called on them The sponsors of this podcast because they bribeed the police. know that We don't know this can't This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry? Turns out, it's got its own fascinating story too Because not all detergents are created equal. Tide liquid laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, whiter, brighter, and fresher results compared to tide simply. And those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times Tide tackles one hundred percent of common stains for every load, every time. Now if Grease is your nemesis, think food spills, cooking splatters, Tithe's got ten times Grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands And it works in a machine, in any water condition, on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder Tyidee was America's number one detergent in sales last year If it's gott to be clean, and it's gott to be fresh, it's gott to be Tide. Shroop now at your local retailer. TD is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the IHart Radio app and everywhere podcasts are heard Air Taskers here for your to do list. Good, I've got candle orders to ship and a dryer that's completely given up Post your tasks at airtasker. com or download the app and taskers will handle it Air Tasker. G anything done. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding Ma services to many locations, with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Rcharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beeachbum isn't just tanning, It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you Can I have lingo kids stuff When did we become the Lingo kids house? No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week it Lingo kids. Why Lingo kids? Because it's the best thing ever. You play games. What's astronauts? Wild animals and superhero With more than four thousand interactive games, songs, and shows, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. So no dinosaurs? A dinosaurs Everything kids love. Download it for free And we're back. We're talking about cop drugs. This is a digression, but it's very relevant to the story of Clever Hans. because if you had an education like I did and Ed, you grew up in the UK. so I don't think you guys had dare cops. But did you have cops come into your class to talk about how dangerous drugs were U no, they one time came in and showed us that guns were scary Okay, that's good. kids shouldn't know that that. They also let us rack a pump action shotgun, which is not a good idea. Yeah. 'causeuse like everyone was like, wow these things seem really real scary and you go're like, fuck yeah. W Cool Yeah. horrible ide.orri. All Bys private school wherees the dumbest kid as well. so it's like Maybe don't show any of these children this Yeah, it is but loveily a bad idea But thankfully, we don't have a Second Amendment, which is a great thing, considering. Considering. But it is the same thing with like drugs and with guns where if you bring them into a school, some number of kids will be like, these things are kind of cool, right Yum So at my education, I had a dare cop come to our class and tell us about drugs. and he also talked to us about canine units, right? and how they would find if you had even a sprinkle of weed in a full car or a locker A dog can sniff it out. That's how good their noses are, right? You can't hide anything from dogs. They're almost supernatural, how good they are at smelling out drugs And that sounded plausible. Most people just believe that, you know, without thinking further about it because dog noses really are that good. A blood hound is capable of picking out a tiny amount of weed in a locker or a backpack or whatever. But that doesn't mean that's what's happening when a canine unit alerts and says there's drugs or a bomb somewhere In twenty eleven, the Chicago Tbune went through three years worth of cases where cops had used drug dogs to find drugs and cars in the area. her NPR, quote According to the analysis, officers found drugs or paraphernalia in only forty four percent of cases in which the dogs had alerted them. When the driver was Latino, the dogs were right just twenty seven percent of the time. That seems worse than guessing Did they just train the dogs to be racist as well? Like No. That's the best part, maybe, but not that's not the thing that is to blame for this specific thing, Ed When the tribune reached out the cops and was like, this seems kind of fucked up. If these dogs are so good, why is this happening? And why are they less accurate on like people that the cops might be racist towards? And the dog handling officers responded first by saying, well, you can't measure our accuracy based on the number of alerts that find drugs, right? Dog noses are too good So if they alert on a car and say there's drugs and then we don't find drugs in the car, it's just because there used to be drugs in there