ASM134 It's a Patron Show (Part 2)

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coming to you live from my studio in los angeles once again with no studio audience it's part two of the patron show [Music] [Applause] science faith welcome to ask science mike the daily podcast this week where i answer questions from my patrons on patreon about science faith in life and whatever they want to talk about if you'd like to be a part of my patrons and be able to ask questions when i do shows like these you can go to ask sciencemike.com and click the patreon icon and uh that'll get you there so what do you say let's do a show and get it started so continuing from yesterday's episode number 133 we're just going to pick up where we left off i am answering questions on this program like it's a live show which means i'm not researching them ahead of time also greg nordin the producer of ask science mike has the week off against his will believe me he would love to make this show sound better but i'd rather him take some time off to be with his family even though he's in canada and doesn't celebrate american thanksgiving anyway let's do a question lea cheek asks if nasa let you choose where to send our next uncrewed spacecraft which object which object in our solar system would you most like us to explore i'm totally torn between europa which is a moon of jupiter that's icy and we think based on tidal energy from orbiting jupiter has more liquid water than the earth beneath its icy exterior and therefore is a serious candidate to harbor life in our solar system or titan one of saturn's moons that's remarkably earth-like including having lakes and rivers and precipitation only of hydrocarbons because titan is incredibly cold so i've heard some astronomers say that on titan ice is like lava because it's so hot compared to the rest of the planet so you can have ice eruptions on titan uh given the fact that jupiter is closer and probably a little bit uh better candidate at least with europa for harboring life i would choose to send our next probe there with the caveat that the thick thick ice sheet that makes europa's surface would make exploration very difficult but i'd be willing to send a probe just to figure out how far it's going to be to get down to that wonderful liquid interior [Music] quincy asks meditation question i have been meditating for about two years now minimum 20 minutes per day and about nine months ago i had an experience of feeling like my mind's eye elevated about five feet above me and i began to feel as if my arms had gotten extremely long think inspector gadget and my hands grew to a massive size almost clown-like i didn't know at the time that this is somewhat common and so i kind of panicked and had a small anxiety attack i still meditate every day but every time i near that level slash depth i panic and can't get past it any thoughts tips tricks to overcome this barrier uh first of all yeah you're right that's totally normal weird stuff happens in meditation when you do it a lot that's kind of the point it sounds like you might uh be in a place in your practice where you're getting closer to having a high propensity for mystical experiences which is what a lot of people want out of meditation the anxiety is getting in the way so you could try being mindful and observing the anxiety and acknowledging that it's there and accepting it and then just returning your attention to your breath and relaxing if that doesn't work try a different kind of meditation go to a different physical space maybe open your eyes and focus on a candle do something else that lets you get comfortable continuing to meditate uh and without necessarily triggering the same anxiety how's that sound [Music] jonathan asks if cloning or genetic engineering was to make it possible for people to have a third limb attached without fear of rejection where would be the best spot to put another arm to take full advantage of the existing nerves and muscles and to avoid destabilizing the spine what kind of increased caloric expenditures in the body and brain might one expect also i have heard that the brains of people that lose senses such as sight or a limb compensate for the loss over time would there be any kind of long-term stress on the brain to compensate for an added limb thanks mike jonathan i don't think there's a good spot on your body to add another ball and socket joint to accommodate a third arm your arm's not just your arm your arm integrates with muscles and nerves in your shoulders and your back and your chest and we know that this is a big issue because when we build robotic prosthetic arms that attach where someone's arm used to be it causes a lot of fatigue and back pain because this arm is just strapped to the body and even if it has similar strength to a human arm it doesn't have the support of the surrounding tissues so it's not a simple matter of simply attaching an arm somewhere you would have to have a corresponding um support tissue support musculature for that arm so i don't know that there's a good place to put a third arm on homo sapiens that wouldn't have serious health consequences even if you were able to do it calorically i don't know six to 12 percent maybe totally spit balling just based on off the top of my head estimate on uh what percentage of the total body's volume the arm is and how i think the arm might be a little hungrier in terms of calorie than a corresponding amount of torso mass simply because of the musculature muscles are hungry all the time they have to be fed calories in terms of the brain the brain would be fine uh your primary mutual your primary motor cortex deals with your movement uh like all of your brain it's highly plastic through neuroplasticity and i'm sure you could train yourself to use your arm although if it wasn't with you at birth i assume that function would be pretty limited compared to other arms because on your primary motor cortex a disproportionate amount of those neurons are devoted to your lips and your hands and i don't think the brain would necessarily devote the same resources to a suddenly added third arm now if you genetically engineered which is far beyond our capacity uh to do so but if you genetically engineered so a person was born with a third arm then the brain would probably work it out that's an amazing question oh the other thing your fear of rejection did you mean social rejection or tissue rejection because some people are going to think that third arm is strange gordon lee asks hey mike is catch and release fishing animal abuse i've always operated under the assumption that fish do not experience pain the same way mammals do i find fly fishing to be a very spiritual activity and my fellow anglers and i have the utmost respect for the fish we pursue are we really just torturing them though i have yet to find an unbiased source that addresses the science here thanks unfortunately i don't know that i can offer you an unbiased set of studies that have dug into the topic of catch and release fishing off the top of my head what i can tell you is i've seen that catch and release fishing does frequently result in significant trauma to a fish especially if the hook goes deep into their throat or further or if it's really really deep into the mouth tissues and its mouth is damaged during the removal of the hook in terms of the capacity for fish to experience pain they do have brains some fish are social and intelligent others are much less so and i don't know where the dividing line is for appropriate animal suffering there are those who would say that no animal suffering is appropriate or we should minimize it absolutely as much as possible which of course animals are going to suffer if we're going to eat when we harvest food animals die in that process even when we're harvesting vegetables but much less than when we are eating meat so i don't know what to tell you i don't have a really thoughtful perspective i know that i used to fish and i enjoyed catch and release fishing and i stopped because uh too often i saw the damage to the fish was significant or indeed lethal and whether they suffer or not that seemed wasteful for me i would still fish if i was going to eat the fish uh i don't see the difference between me ordering fish that was caught commercially or me catching a fish myself either way the fish dies so i would certainly go fishing to eat but i don't know that i personally would do catch and release fishing anymore brett asks how can one fight confirmation bias without having to verify and re-verify each new piece of information the main challenge i find is with the sheer amount of information there is to consider and digest in science and technology we have to build on prior results otherwise progress would never happen could you describe how published results in the sciences transition from being new and highly scrutinized to more widely accepted and built upon is there anything we can apply from this in terms of our own learning and critical thinking how might an understanding of neuroscience help with this brett there's a huge problem in the sciences with reproducibility of studies and so i think in general uh we have two problems one scientists because the systemic problems are not skeptical enough about scientific findings and on the other side the public can be too skeptical and disregard expertise so how is it the professionals are not skeptical enough and the public is too skeptical well too skeptical to be rejecting findings about client change which have appeared in study after study after study after study that's too skeptical on the other hand unless the press draws attention the media draws attention to a particular study scientists don't necessarily look at it close enough to find mythological fault flaws and they're too busy doing their own research to worry about someone else's unless they're building upon that research so science is an attempt to mitigate human cognitive biases including confirmation bias but it is not perfect in that process indeed it has significant and serious flaws it's just better at giving us reliable information about the world especially the physical world than any other means of knowing or inquiry that we have today science has an excellent track record of making things that work and making models that are useful um in terms of our own life uh well this is what part of the the trend towards specialization is uh this ever swelling body of knowledge and that's why i try to always be a bit of a generalist even if i were a specialist i would still devote significant effort and resources into having a more generalized understanding of the sciences and what communities are finding in terms of how neuroscience can help with that i don't know that it can directly unless you want to you know buy a fmri and hire some specialists to continually monitor your brain i think it's easier to take a pragmatic and behavioral approach to understanding the degree to which we are working with bias and to always be part of institutions and systems that hold us accountable for mistakes and errors in thinking [Music] robert asks your book recommendations for learning more about the human brain structure inner workings and evolutionary history gosh that's tough um yeah i looked at different books and they confused me as much as they helped me so i ended up buying a model brain in order to get a better idea about neuroanatomy and i often found the books that helped me understand the structure and function of the brain were books that weren't explicitly about neuroscience but where a talented science communicator discussed the brain in the context of some other narrative ever since then i've started to get more into neuroscience specific books but i don't know that they would help you with that initial leg into understanding the brain honestly go on amazon and buy a 3d model of a brain and it'll come with a little card and it'll have the parts of the brain on it and just go through and kind of drill yourself on where those things are in three-dimensional space in the brain and then when you see the name of a brain structure just just look it up use google use wikipedia and read about what that part of the brain does in the understanding of neuroscientists today and you'll start to build a working understanding of the brain to the point now that you can start to approach books about the brain and not get so lost in terms of that gosh what have i enjoyed lately phantoms in the brain is uh pretty great i enjoyed the tides of mind um i enjoyed other minds i enjoyed uh i can't remember the exact title are we smart enough to know how smart animals are um yeah those are fun i don't know great question andrew asks here's one i know you hate conspiracy theories but do you believe the jfk assassination had more than one gunman and if so what keeps you from believing other conspiracies such as the ones surrounding 911 there's a lot of good science in the magic bullet the melting point of steel and the buildings falling over that weren't hit with planes world trade center building 7 believing the government is something i have a hard time with especially since so much of what goes on seems to be fueled with money uh andrew total honesty here i have no idea what theories there are around the jfk assassination i have never looked into any of them uh and and similar with different theories about 911. i just haven't uh i haven't looked into them you know um i watched those planes hit those towers um i was surprised they stood at all um and uh i don't know i i don't know that i have something meaningful to contribute as a researcher to that terrible human calamity i've honestly never been curious about the jfk assassination i've only recently started to study history at all american world or otherwise um i always just been kind of a little nerdy science nut and so i haven't dug into those conspiracy theories or what merit or lack thereof uh different theories may have i know that in general i'm bearish on conspiracy theories because humans are so bad at keeping secrets and um i don't know i think it's hard enough to keep classified information classified if you add uh you know the kind of efforts that were required to assassinate a president or cause you know the largest loss of life uh in the history of the united states of america i just think it would be hard to keep those things secret people blab people uh they either get guilty or proud or something and they have a need to share outside of their conspirators circle i don't know that that's bad radio uh it's my most honest answer [Music] chris asks how does evolution slash natural selection account for the major regional differences in facial features of human beings chris that happens by geographic isolation of populations people who live in different areas reproduce together more often and so they start to drift genetically from other groups of course homo sapiens are highly mobile so we're always sending emissaries across cultures who interbreed and that's why there's no such thing as biologically speaking as a human race or subspecies uh homo sapiens has always uh made sure to keep our genetic material mixing across geographic and cultural boundaries but in general it's simply adaptation and mutation within a population that has some degree of geographic isolation from other homo sapiens and that's how we get these kind of distinct traits about facial features and skin color and hair color and eye color and you'll see that in a particular population over time certain features become more prominent based on weather and climate uh and that's just that's literally how evolution works that is a design feature uh that's that's the great thing about evolution people living in equatorial areas should have very dark skin people living in high latitude areas with less sunlight should have light skin same with eye color those are environmental adaptations that have been placed in us by natural selection and the same is true for facial features now one thing about facial features selection through female preference has a lot to do with uh what men end up looking like and vice versa so part of that is also the interplay of natural selection with cultural preferences so the more your face resembles the ideal of culture the more likely you are ultimately to reproduce and therefore be selected for by natural selection [Music] qantas asks if the gospels weren't written by the apostles and they were written decades later why should christians trust the red letters and miracles written in the bible fantastic question depends on what you mean by trust are these accounts that you could use in a court of law probably not are these accounts that you could use to make historical claims well to some degree this is how ancient literature including historical literature was written uh it's i think it's always a mistake to take a modern perspective and project that back onto an ancient collection like the bible so why do the gospels have value they tell us what some of the earliest followers of jesus and some of the earliest christians thought about his teachings and about his life and as long as we place those within a cultural context as long as we inform ourselves about history these are in fact some of the closest records we can get to the life and teaching of christ of jesus if that matters to you so why does it matter well like all scripture it was assembled by the church as a way for us to know and understand god if that's important to you then the largest the absolute largest community of people in the world today trying to follow that which we call god are christians and if that's part of your cultural heritage um there's a lot of great thinking and scholarship and practice in there about how to be closer to god i love the gospels even though they were written in all likelihood by matthew mark luke and john but as i study the gospels i also study scholarship about the gospels so that i best understand the author and the author's intent and agenda for the author's audience i also know that other books for example james some scholars think that james might be the earliest uh or closest to jesus account we have because it was written by the brother of jesus james and uh or or written by a scribe or or follower of james in a closer proximity to the life and teachings of christ so that makes james one of my favorite books of the bible because i'm such a jesus nut and i would say check check the assumptions you're bringing to the bible and why those assumptions are more important to you then the bible itself i think the fact that the bible is human written and human assembled uh by the church makes it more valuable and not less the value of the gospels like the entirety of our bible is their ability to say me too to see that for thousands of years other people have been struggling with these questions as well including one central to our faith who was jesus and why does it matter today [Music] eric asks at what point do you see human augmentation surpassing what humans should control biomimicry is important for developing prosthesis and helping humans regain abilities they lost due to amputation or diseases but what do you see as downsides to normal humans augmenting themselves to improve their abilities um i see a problem if our physical function is attached to consumerism and capitalism we are already stripping the world of natural resources really quickly and building systems that cause dramatically uh or dramatic wealth disparity and it's troubling what if poverty is not only the inability to feed yourself but the inability to compete in order to get work because you can't afford to augment yourself that's a big problem so my problems with augmentation tend to be more sociological and economical than biological i don't think it like dooms the species um you know i if you're if you're hacking parts of your body off i think you might be very cautious just because an artificial foot may run faster doesn't necessarily mean that you should cut yours off um but i think it's coming i think augmentation is coming regardless of our stance on it so it's better to start considering the implications as you've done with your question than to simply be afraid or to pretend it's not happening or to try to fight it in all cases and no matter what we do there's going to be unforeseen consequences because hey that's humanity [Music] jordan asks i have been practicing meditation for a while i find myself constantly analyzing my experiences and am not able to fully enter into them would you have any hacks that would help circumvent the observer part of the brain well jordan the observer part of the brain is a huge part of meditation um that that is mindfulness sounds like you're really good at mindfulness meditation you're great at observing and being aware if you're saying how can you be more embodied try something different go for yoga uh go for a dance party [Laughter] do things that are in the body in the movement that that you don't observe that you actually viscerally experience my wife is much better at visceral experience and uh than i am and you know i'm much more comfortable in the cerebral and and in this observer you talk about um so try different kinds of meditations meditation that involve the body that involve body movement and that involve body awareness and you'll train your brain to not just watch all the time but also to participate [Music] kimberly asks so here it goes i've been struggling with this question for the last three and a half years since my husband committed suicide after i filed for divorce against him we had been married for 23 years 17 good years and the last five years of marriage became unbearable as he became emotionally abusive to me and my teenage son and daughter and addicted to gambling and shopping online he spent his career in social services child protective services specifically protecting kids from abusive caregivers until he became physically disabled probably a result of ptsd his behavior toward us changed as his physical disability developed after his death a trusted friend told me that he thought my husband always had a bad core and that in the last five years he reverted to his true self but that didn't mean he couldn't do good things i am not sure even how to ask this question but do you think my friend was right if i agree with him there are some realities that i need to deal with if i disagree with him there are other realities i have to face either way it's difficult but i do find it troublesome to think that i was married to someone for such a long time who had a bad core one of the problems with suicide is that there are always so many unanswered questions and i can never be one hundred percent certain that i have interpreted our experiences correctly kimberly first uh i am so sorry for your loss and for the pain and the trauma that you and your children experienced as your marriage fell apart as your former husband's life deteriorated and now the guilt and pain that you deal with in the aftermath of suicide i am so sorry for what you're experiencing and there's nothing i can say that will make that better so i just want to start by acknowledging that all i can do is sit here as a stranger across the internet who is compelled by your question and your experience and i want you to know that as you hear these words that my mind is on you now i will think about you throughout this day and throughout this week and you and your family do people have bad cores what does that mean what does that mean do we all have different uh nurture and nature-based predispositions towards some feelings yes some people are more prone to be sanguine others more prone to be depressed genetically and this was reinforced environmentally or not does a person who is prone to depression have a bad core well of course they don't of course they don't i'm a naturally sanguine person does that mean i have a good core that i'm naturally a better person than someone who is depressed of course not so i hear a little in your question through things like ptsd and addiction issues that maybe your husband had some genetic factors that led to destructive behavior and maybe childhood experiences or adult experiences led him to have a struggle with these problems and and he held it together for 17 years and some of that may have been a result of your relationship i don't know i don't know you and i didn't know your former husband what i do know is those 17 years were good years by your own description so whether your husband struggled with something on the inside or not we all do we all do we all struggle with things i i've devoted my life to being available to you all uh strangers on the internet that i i go across the country and meet in person and i love it and i think i'm a pretty good person but sometimes i'm a grouch with my wife and my children i i want to get my work done if they interrupt me i can be hard to deal with especially since i hit my head so now that i've had a brain injury do i have a bad core because i'm more irritable no no i just get irritable sometimes and if i care about the people in my life i should work on that i understand what it means to want to end your life i have stood on a step stool with a noose around my neck i've held a shotgun in my mouth and i've pulled the trigger with my toe i know what it's like to want this life to be over and that doesn't mean that i have a bad core it means that we all have scars and wounds and things that make us limp and we either through our actions and social support are able to cope or we are not your husband's actions hurt you the divorce hurt you his suicide certainly hurt you but it means he was not able to struggle anymore and that's not your fault but it means you had 17 years that were good that you can be grateful for it means you have two children that are good who you can be grateful for so grieve and lament the loss that you've experienced and the pain and the trauma that came from that separation divorce and suicide but as you cope with that hurt be comforted by 17 good years with a person who loved you [Music] okay friends that's part two we'll be back tomorrow uh probably late in the day frankly with part three see you soon