# Laptops, Lords, and Lovers: Will AI Make or Break Us? (with Forrest and Erika)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 19 Aug 2025, 46 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67344433/podcast821_forresterikaai.mp3

Buckle up. Educators and activists Forrest Valkai and Erika (Gutsick Gibbon) showed up for a chat about AI, fossils, "the Monad," and more! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because.
[0:22] Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 3: So anytime I see Forest Valcai and Erica hosted the
[1:00] Speaker 3: Gutsig Given channel together in the same physical space, I
[1:04] Speaker 3: have to put microphones on them and we have to talk,
[1:07] Speaker 3: which is why I do this about every ten minutes
[1:10] Speaker 3: on my channel. And this was the case just recently
[1:13] Speaker 3: at the Baha Khan event the Bluewater Atheist Humanist conference
[1:18] Speaker 3: in Sarnia, Ontario. So Erica had presented that morning. She
[1:23] Speaker 3: did her thing on human evolution, which was amazing, and
[1:27] Speaker 3: then we were there early afternoon. Forest Valkei was up
[1:30] Speaker 3: at four and then I was following Forest right after
[1:33] Speaker 3: that at five o'clock, so we had some time to
[1:36] Speaker 3: kill and I said, hey, let's talk for a bit
[1:40] Speaker 3: and just roll and see what happened. So we went
[1:43] Speaker 3: up to my suite. I didn't take them to my
[1:45] Speaker 3: hotel room. We had a suite with a living space.
[1:48] Speaker 3: We all kind of hung out on the couches and
[1:50] Speaker 3: chairs and we just started talking. Now, one of the
[1:53] Speaker 3: prompts for this was that a presentation earlier in the
[1:56] Speaker 3: day was getting into AI and I just wanted to
[2:00] Speaker 3: get their take on it because there are AI religions
[2:05] Speaker 3: that are popping up.
[2:06] Speaker 2: All around the world. We knew that was going to happen.
[2:08] Speaker 2: There are people who are falling.
[2:10] Speaker 3: In love with AI chat bots, so instead of having
[2:14] Speaker 3: human intimacy, they are now dating their chat GPT companion,
[2:21] Speaker 3: which has a name and an avatar. And what's that
[2:24] Speaker 3: look like in this strange new world? And you know,
[2:27] Speaker 3: is it healthy, is it terrifying? Is it dysfunctional? I
[2:31] Speaker 3: wanted to find out about that, and then I wanted
[2:34] Speaker 3: to get into how AI is affecting education and how
[2:38] Speaker 3: do we know what's true in this perhaps post truth culture.
[2:43] Speaker 3: So that was the catalyst for the conversation. But you know,
[2:46] Speaker 3: we weren't going to stick to that. We just went
[2:49] Speaker 3: all over the place. The chat runs about forty five minutes.
[2:52] Speaker 3: I hope you enjoy. Here we go. So I'm at
[3:00] Speaker 3: a convention. I've got Erica, I've got Forest. I've got
[3:04] Speaker 3: one word. I want to start with, What the hell
[3:06] Speaker 3: is monab?
[3:07] Speaker 2: Now? Monad? Monad? N Wait, what's monad? It was more
[3:11] Speaker 2: than one word all that. By the way, there was
[3:14] Speaker 2: a whole ask question in there. I don't know what
[3:15] Speaker 2: you know? What is? What is monad?
[3:18] Speaker 3: And my listeners who haven't been watching the line, is
[3:21] Speaker 3: this where this originated?
[3:23] Speaker 2: Monad? Yeah? Well clearly it originated eons ago in the
[3:29] Speaker 2: most brilliant minds that humankind has ever produced, and happened
[3:33] Speaker 2: to never write down in succinct ways, but only in
[3:36] Speaker 2: poetic extracy.
[3:37] Speaker 3: Set up Forest. Someone called the show and said said there.
[3:44] Speaker 2: Is a god.
[3:45] Speaker 4: No, no.
[3:46] Speaker 5: What they said was how will the host I'm paraphrasing here,
[3:49] Speaker 5: but they said, how are the hosts going to deal
[3:51] Speaker 5: with the monad?
[3:52] Speaker 4: Like?
[3:53] Speaker 5: How will we cope with it? And you know we're
[3:55] Speaker 5: taking this call in It was a call that we
[3:56] Speaker 5: took the last minute. You know, we were aiming for
[3:59] Speaker 5: a shorter of only.
[4:00] Speaker 4: About six hours.
[4:01] Speaker 2: I'm sorry, did you just say shorter show?
[4:05] Speaker 5: We're trying to keep things concise, but you know, we
[4:08] Speaker 5: Arden twisted our arm and we're like, I guess we'll
[4:10] Speaker 5: have to take one more call.
[4:11] Speaker 2: So I decided her by the way, because if we
[4:12] Speaker 2: had taken one more call, we would have beaten our
[4:14] Speaker 2: previous record of eight nine and it would have been
[4:16] Speaker 2: really and we ended eight hours fifteen minutes.
[4:18] Speaker 3: It would it was a telethon, not a show. It
[4:21] Speaker 3: was it was a show.
[4:22] Speaker 4: It was a show for sure.
[4:24] Speaker 5: But the call in says, you know, i'll have how
[4:27] Speaker 5: to host deal with this, and we're taking this is
[4:29] Speaker 5: a theist call, so we're thinking. I'm thinking to myself,
[4:31] Speaker 5: this is a Catholic thing, and I don't know what
[4:33] Speaker 5: it is, but Forrest probably knows. At first, the call
[4:36] Speaker 5: opens and Force was like, what the hell is Monad?
[4:38] Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, thank god, because I also don't.
[4:40] Speaker 4: Know what monad is.
[4:41] Speaker 5: And then we had an hour and probably thirty maybe
[4:45] Speaker 5: forty five minute long conversation and we did not get
[4:47] Speaker 5: a definition for Monad until maybe the last thirty minutes.
[4:50] Speaker 2: And even then it was worse than when we didn't
[4:52] Speaker 2: know what it was.
[4:53] Speaker 5: It made things worse because it made them stupider. Yes,
[4:57] Speaker 5: it made the whole thing. And you said at the beginning,
[4:59] Speaker 5: you were like you were to put his monad in
[5:02] Speaker 5: a few words, and it's like, well, monad because it
[5:04] Speaker 5: is everything and also nothing and also one, and also
[5:06] Speaker 5: infinity and also zero. I kind of think you can
[5:10] Speaker 5: just he did use one word. It is that all
[5:12] Speaker 5: of existence is mona.
[5:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it was that. And then also it was
[5:16] Speaker 2: electromagnetic radiation, which is also the same thing as energy,
[5:20] Speaker 2: which is also the same thing as your mind. And
[5:23] Speaker 2: you can't separate your mind from the rest of the
[5:26] Speaker 2: universe intellectually, and therefore you can't separate the rest of
[5:30] Speaker 2: the universe from light. And therefore everything is something is
[5:34] Speaker 2: something is monad. And just for like ninety minutes, we're
[5:38] Speaker 2: just beating our heads against the wall trying to understand
[5:41] Speaker 2: this stupid word.
[5:42] Speaker 3: I posted a photo from Erica's speech this morning at
[5:47] Speaker 3: Baja Khan, which was remarkable, and immediately in the comments
[5:52] Speaker 3: section someone wanted to honor her monad or whatever, and
[5:56] Speaker 3: I'm like, I need help with this. Is that a
[5:59] Speaker 3: typical call for the line and I co host there.
[6:03] Speaker 2: You co host there.
[6:04] Speaker 4: I've had a lot of weird calls.
[6:06] Speaker 3: Help Line dial in and they have we take we
[6:10] Speaker 3: prioritized on the Sunday shows. Sunday how about skeeptalk? Is
[6:14] Speaker 3: that theist callerss all of it is?
[6:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, skip talk is more supposed to be like you
[6:20] Speaker 2: have at least one expert in an area that's taking
[6:22] Speaker 2: calls about that specific thing, But it always defaults to
[6:24] Speaker 2: theist calls because that's what that's who watches our shows,
[6:27] Speaker 2: trying to find a way to get us, you know
[6:29] Speaker 2: what I mean.
[6:30] Speaker 3: And the thumbnails are always prove God, help us understand God?
[6:34] Speaker 3: Why should we believe in God? Why are we wrong
[6:36] Speaker 3: for not believing in God? And people will call and
[6:38] Speaker 3: defend God, and the defenses are sometimes just a ram
[6:42] Speaker 3: and noodle soup of what the hell right?
[6:46] Speaker 5: It's that And it's also just like it's it's somebody's
[6:49] Speaker 5: first rodeo half the time where they call in and
[6:51] Speaker 5: they think that they're going to get you with like
[6:53] Speaker 5: a baby's first you know, argument for God that they
[6:56] Speaker 5: heard on the Creation Today or from you know, a
[7:01] Speaker 5: TikTok shot or whatever, redeem Zoomer or someone like that,
[7:04] Speaker 5: and it's like, you know, we've been doing that. I
[7:07] Speaker 5: don't even know if I can say that I've been
[7:08] Speaker 5: doing this for a long time. It feels like a
[7:10] Speaker 5: mona out of time. I've been working on this a
[7:13] Speaker 5: long long time, but it's been a long time since
[7:15] Speaker 5: I've heard something that like totally.
[7:17] Speaker 4: Was brand new. But I have to say, the Monad
[7:21] Speaker 4: call was new to me.
[7:21] Speaker 2: It was it was a new thing. And it's funny.
[7:24] Speaker 2: There have been a couple of times like that where
[7:26] Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, this is actually a new argument, and
[7:29] Speaker 2: I haven't heard a new argument in months. And you
[7:31] Speaker 2: know what, I fucking wish I hadn't. I wish you
[7:34] Speaker 2: didn't call in.
[7:34] Speaker 3: I want to start substituting it for other terms, Like
[7:37] Speaker 3: I just want to like throw it into a sentence
[7:39] Speaker 3: whatever I'm talking about it.
[7:40] Speaker 4: I've been doing it since the call.
[7:41] Speaker 2: I've been doing in my house.
[7:43] Speaker 4: I've been doing it online.
[7:44] Speaker 2: I think tons of comments like how the Monad are
[7:46] Speaker 2: you today, and like praise Monad. I get to see
[7:48] Speaker 2: your video and like just also, and that dude is
[7:50] Speaker 2: still arguing on my Instagram, by the way, he is
[7:52] Speaker 2: still in my comments section, arguing to this this this morning.
[7:55] Speaker 2: I saw him in there. I don't still argue.
[7:57] Speaker 5: I don't know if Jimmy has seen that clip yet,
[7:59] Speaker 5: but there is no way that there's not going to
[8:01] Speaker 5: be some capitalization, probably merchwise on the monad, which is
[8:05] Speaker 5: going to infuriate this person that we're making dozens and
[8:08] Speaker 5: dozens of dollars off of them.
[8:11] Speaker 3: You will make tens of dollars dollars. I brought you
[8:16] Speaker 3: the concept of the monad, right, and you have now
[8:19] Speaker 3: what you have now created an idol.
[8:21] Speaker 2: I need to pay this guy's stupid royalties, and I
[8:23] Speaker 2: don't know how to do that.
[8:25] Speaker 3: All right, So I'm going to do a subject change
[8:29] Speaker 3: because we were talking about this right before I hit record.
[8:32] Speaker 3: We were talking about Drew McCoy had just given a
[8:35] Speaker 3: presentation about AI in relation to religion, which is wacky
[8:39] Speaker 3: as people. First of all, he was talking about people
[8:42] Speaker 3: using chat GPT as a kind of a life partner,
[8:47] Speaker 3: even a romantic partner. So you type in things, it
[8:50] Speaker 3: gives you answers that sound really human and speak to whatever.
[8:55] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[8:56] Speaker 3: It's picking you up as you type in, right, it's
[8:59] Speaker 3: bouncing back reflections of your personality. But it feels sometimes
[9:03] Speaker 3: like a human interaction. And then it becomes the movie Her,
[9:07] Speaker 3: where your life partner is now Ai or Ela is
[9:11] Speaker 3: it la lamb whatever they called it. And I think
[9:15] Speaker 3: to myself, are we now entering that age where people
[9:18] Speaker 3: are leaving their spouses and running away with a laptop.
[9:23] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it was like flip dude, it sounds funny,
[9:27] Speaker 2: but people are already leaving reality and running away with
[9:29] Speaker 2: their laptop. And like, we see that a lot. There's
[9:32] Speaker 2: a ton of like So it's tricky because like, on
[9:36] Speaker 2: the one hand, there's all this information coming out about
[9:38] Speaker 2: how it just freaking rots your brain. You are sacrificing
[9:42] Speaker 2: your critical faculty or your imaginative faculty, like all these
[9:45] Speaker 2: parts of you in order to let a machine do
[9:48] Speaker 2: thinking for you. There's some really worrying graphs usage charts
[9:52] Speaker 2: of chat eybt that shows it peaks during weekdays and
[9:56] Speaker 2: drops off on the weekends. Wonder why that would be,
[9:58] Speaker 2: And then the second square lets out it just plummets.
[10:02] Speaker 2: And so this is what people are using to use
[10:03] Speaker 2: their homework to do all their fact checking, to do
[10:06] Speaker 2: their thinking for them. I can tell you several times
[10:08] Speaker 2: I've gotten in arguments online with somebody and they'll say,
[10:11] Speaker 2: I asked jat gpt in it said I'm right, and
[10:13] Speaker 2: that's that was their source. And so there's this worrying
[10:16] Speaker 2: statistics about that. But on the other hand of that,
[10:19] Speaker 2: it's also a burgeoning technology that isn't going away. And
[10:22] Speaker 2: literally every argument that's made about it was also made
[10:25] Speaker 2: about books that is going to ruin people's minds that
[10:27] Speaker 2: we're going to be thinking for them, or the internet exactly, books,
[10:30] Speaker 2: the internet, you know, writing in general. It was just
[10:34] Speaker 2: these are things that are going to ruin people's minds,
[10:35] Speaker 2: and oh, these kids have their brain in a fucking
[10:37] Speaker 2: book every day.
[10:39] Speaker 3: I mean, I didn't open a book and the book
[10:41] Speaker 3: was I don't know. First of all, a lot much
[10:44] Speaker 3: of this is plagiarism software, yes, plagiarizing racism, Okay, a
[10:49] Speaker 3: lot of it's also.
[10:49] Speaker 5: Just wrong as well, Like you know, the more the
[10:53] Speaker 5: more esoteric the subject, the worst the results tend to be.
[10:56] Speaker 5: Like I can sit there and ask it. For instance,
[11:00] Speaker 5: I was doing when I was putting my sled together
[11:01] Speaker 5: for my talk today, you know, I was putting in
[11:04] Speaker 5: I was googling some pictures of like different hominins, different fossils,
[11:07] Speaker 5: whatever for getting images, you know, but as we all know,
[11:10] Speaker 5: when you search, Google puts the AI result at the
[11:12] Speaker 5: very top, and it's viewing information about this stuff that
[11:15] Speaker 5: you teach in an introductory bioanthe class, which is offered
[11:18] Speaker 5: at the very basic freshman level at many large universities.
[11:22] Speaker 5: It's just outriting correct information, right, Like, I'm not sure.
[11:27] Speaker 5: I like, there's the brain rot aspect of it, and
[11:29] Speaker 5: then there's also the it's not even correct in as
[11:33] Speaker 5: a replacement, it's not even using it's not even mining
[11:36] Speaker 5: wholly correct information in the first place. But it's easy, yeah,
[11:41] Speaker 5: and there's there's hazards there.
[11:42] Speaker 4: It's funny, you know.
[11:43] Speaker 5: We run when I TA last semester, we run exams
[11:46] Speaker 5: through chatchupt after they were created to see what kind
[11:49] Speaker 5: of answers chattupet could get, so we know what the
[11:51] Speaker 5: flag that there's a there's a whole other side of
[11:54] Speaker 5: the coin to this where there's a you know, I'm
[11:56] Speaker 5: sure it always comes.
[11:57] Speaker 4: Back to this. But there's a capitalistic.
[11:58] Speaker 5: Incentive or universities in a sense to let AI run wild,
[12:03] Speaker 5: because then they buy companies that are specifically chatgypt checkers,
[12:08] Speaker 5: and then you're only by by FURPA rulings. You're only
[12:11] Speaker 5: allowed to run students' assignments through certain AI checkers, right
[12:15] Speaker 5: like you can't you can't use external sources. And they're
[12:19] Speaker 5: paying god knows how much money to license that software
[12:22] Speaker 5: for the entirety of the university. And now there's a wonderful,
[12:26] Speaker 5: horrible feedback loop. An arms race really is what I
[12:29] Speaker 5: would call it, between the AI and the AI checking
[12:32] Speaker 5: and how students use that, and so you know, I
[12:35] Speaker 5: mean to derail this in the direction that I wanted
[12:37] Speaker 5: it to go in.
[12:38] Speaker 4: The first place.
[12:40] Speaker 5: I don't know what we're gonna do education wise, because
[12:42] Speaker 5: you're just talking about how CHATGYBT usage plummets right when
[12:47] Speaker 5: school gets out. I suspect we're going to have to
[12:49] Speaker 5: go back to oral presentations and pen and paper, and
[12:53] Speaker 5: that's going to have to be all that's allowed.
[12:56] Speaker 3: I did wonder if we would end up moving into
[12:58] Speaker 3: communities like it's almost like like those dystopian future sci
[13:03] Speaker 3: fi books and films where you have those who are
[13:06] Speaker 3: like enslave to technology and then you know the wholeness natural.
[13:11] Speaker 3: We love sun and light and water. In the Elements group,
[13:14] Speaker 3: they're all wearing you know, beige and earth tones and
[13:17] Speaker 3: they go off and live in a forest.
[13:19] Speaker 2: Way. I feel like it's the exact opposite. I feel
[13:22] Speaker 2: like the eloy are these people who just live in
[13:25] Speaker 2: this happy wonderland where everything's fine and normal, and we
[13:29] Speaker 2: morlocks are down here in the lab trying to tell
[13:31] Speaker 2: them how horrible the world is and how scary is
[13:35] Speaker 2: how they need to believe in maczines please, it just sucks.
[13:39] Speaker 2: And like that's with jet Gipt. I try to remain
[13:41] Speaker 2: optimistic about it. I really do, because like I said,
[13:44] Speaker 2: it could be really helpful. It really could. As of
[13:47] Speaker 2: right now, it's hugely my environmentally destructive, systemically racist, very
[13:52] Speaker 2: stupid wrong all the time. And I think about it
[13:55] Speaker 2: the same way like when when Google first came out,
[13:57] Speaker 2: you mentioned the Google AI. When Google first came out,
[13:59] Speaker 2: all the boomers reminded us that anybody can post anything
[14:02] Speaker 2: on the Internet, and that you can't if you google something. Yes,
[14:04] Speaker 2: it's easy, you're getting results faster, but it's nothing compared
[14:07] Speaker 2: to going to the library and getting a book that's
[14:09] Speaker 2: edited by an expert.
[14:10] Speaker 4: Wikipedia is not a source exactly.
[14:12] Speaker 2: And now look where we are, you know, And so
[14:15] Speaker 2: I have this optimism where it could be better than
[14:18] Speaker 2: it is. And then I also work on the Internet
[14:21] Speaker 2: for a living and I see how people actually use it. Well,
[14:24] Speaker 2: it makes me want to die speaking to how it
[14:27] Speaker 2: can be wrong.
[14:28] Speaker 3: I was reading an article I forget where it was
[14:30] Speaker 3: about how okay AI brings this information it is now
[14:35] Speaker 3: eighty percent correct, eighty percent accurate. Someone uses it as
[14:40] Speaker 3: a source and it is posted, and then a future
[14:43] Speaker 3: AI search plagiarizes from that and it then dilutes it further.
[14:48] Speaker 3: So now you've got something that's a source of a
[14:50] Speaker 3: source that is seventy one percent accurate, and before you
[14:53] Speaker 3: know it, how do we know what's real? And that
[14:56] Speaker 3: makes my brain explode? How do we know what real?
[15:01] Speaker 3: If everything can look like everything?
[15:03] Speaker 5: I think when it comes to AI, there's AI is
[15:07] Speaker 5: a tool, and if it's treated like a tool, it
[15:09] Speaker 5: could be really wonderful for us, Like it's going to
[15:11] Speaker 5: automate so many processes, especially in like genomics and biomedicine,
[15:15] Speaker 5: if a single dollar ends up remaining in that pot
[15:18] Speaker 5: to spend on grant score projects. But assuming that that happens,
[15:23] Speaker 5: like there's wonderful potential here for this is a tool.
[15:25] Speaker 5: The problem is it's not being used as a tool.
[15:27] Speaker 5: It's being used as a crutch, right, So if you
[15:29] Speaker 5: want to find sources, and I've done this before, it's like,
[15:32] Speaker 5: you have a question, you type it in a gule ai,
[15:34] Speaker 5: I'll give you an answer that sounds like the answer
[15:36] Speaker 5: to your question, and it quote unquote provides its sources,
[15:39] Speaker 5: and I don't know, maybe twenty thirty percent of the
[15:42] Speaker 5: time you can go check that source and it's it's
[15:44] Speaker 5: not saying what chatchypt is saying it saying, but sometimes
[15:47] Speaker 5: it is, and in those cases it becomes useful because
[15:50] Speaker 5: then it's like, oh, okay, like I didn't have to
[15:51] Speaker 5: comb through a million hyper specific papers or blog posts.
[15:55] Speaker 5: This at least pointed me in the right general direction,
[15:57] Speaker 5: and that can be That can be a good thing,
[15:59] Speaker 5: But then other times it hallucinates and it'll tell you
[16:01] Speaker 5: that someone says something over and over and over again,
[16:04] Speaker 5: and you're like, I don't understand where are you getting
[16:05] Speaker 5: this quote from? And then eventually it's like, well, I
[16:07] Speaker 5: actually don't think that person said that. You can go
[16:09] Speaker 5: back and forth with chat GPT on this kind of thing,
[16:13] Speaker 5: but at the same time, the technology is only going
[16:15] Speaker 5: to get better, So I think what you're going to
[16:17] Speaker 5: have to do is divorce education and critical thinking and
[16:19] Speaker 5: teaching people how to do that in sort of primary
[16:22] Speaker 5: learning environments from this technology and only allowed to come
[16:27] Speaker 5: in after those skills have been developed.
[16:29] Speaker 4: I just don't see that ever happening.
[16:31] Speaker 2: This is impossibly enough, Like that's what's crazy, is even
[16:34] Speaker 2: Like so in grad school they had us use chat
[16:38] Speaker 2: GPT and notebook LM quite a bit to fact check
[16:41] Speaker 2: our shit, Like, don't have chat gept write your essay,
[16:45] Speaker 2: but plug your essay in the chatchept and have it
[16:47] Speaker 2: proof read it and say, what are some good arguments
[16:50] Speaker 2: against what I said here? So that now you can
[16:52] Speaker 2: think about those things and make your essay better. Plug
[16:54] Speaker 2: it in there and ask you how can is this
[16:56] Speaker 2: clear and concise and well written at least you know whatever?
[16:58] Speaker 2: And then notebook LM is great because you should do
[17:01] Speaker 2: your primary literature of you and then plug those papers
[17:04] Speaker 2: in notebook LM. Have it scan all those papers and
[17:06] Speaker 2: say am I right to think this? And now would say, yo,
[17:09] Speaker 2: well this paper says this, and this paper says this
[17:11] Speaker 2: is so here's some things, and then you can do
[17:13] Speaker 2: the follow up. The critical problem is when you just say,
[17:17] Speaker 2: what do I need to think. Tell me what to
[17:19] Speaker 2: think about this? Is this right? Is this what I
[17:21] Speaker 2: should believe? Have it? Just that's your first step Off
[17:24] Speaker 2: chat chipet and nobook LM are your first step. You
[17:26] Speaker 2: fucked up because it has a proven track record of
[17:29] Speaker 2: saying what it thinks you want to hear, not what
[17:31] Speaker 2: it thinks is right, telling you that all your stupidest
[17:33] Speaker 2: ideas are the best ideas in the entire world. And
[17:35] Speaker 2: it's really extraordinary, compelling. You should really be in movies
[17:38] Speaker 2: and write a book about it. Oh my god, it's
[17:40] Speaker 2: an incredible contribution to humanity. And just like Erico is
[17:44] Speaker 2: pointing out, making shit up. And when you believe the
[17:47] Speaker 2: dumb shit that it says not only about reality but
[17:49] Speaker 2: about you, you become the health secretary and you publish
[17:53] Speaker 2: a fucking report that's full of citations that don't exist
[17:57] Speaker 2: and is clearly written by AI in order to tell
[17:59] Speaker 2: people that the best doctors and scientists in the world's
[18:01] Speaker 2: are all wrong. And if you just have a wormy
[18:04] Speaker 2: hYP your brain, you'll understand some things. And if you
[18:05] Speaker 2: don't know how to reassign a paper, you can work
[18:07] Speaker 2: for a president who doesn't know to read anything. And
[18:08] Speaker 2: then you can change the world. It drives me crazy.
[18:14] Speaker 3: There is so much more remaining in my conversation with
[18:17] Speaker 3: Forrest and Erica. Let me take a real short break
[18:21] Speaker 3: and I'll be right back. I am doing a Texas
[18:32] Speaker 3: speaking run last weekend of this month, so join me
[18:36] Speaker 3: for August twenty nine, thirtieth and thirty First, I'm going
[18:39] Speaker 3: to be Friday night, the twenty ninth in Austin Drew McCoy,
[18:43] Speaker 3: the Genetically Modified Skeptic Channel host with his partner Taylor.
[18:47] Speaker 3: They're going to be there, and that's a tag team
[18:49] Speaker 3: event Friday night in Austin. Saturday, I'm presenting in San
[18:54] Speaker 3: Antonio Sunday morning for Houston Oasis. So it's three Texas
[18:59] Speaker 3: cities in three days. All the details are at the
[19:01] Speaker 3: speaking tab on my personal website. Just go to Seth
[19:05] Speaker 3: Andrews dot com. And this is the last half of
[19:11] Speaker 3: my chat with science educators, activists and friends. Forest Valcai
[19:16] Speaker 3: and Erica, host of the GUTSI Gibbon Channel. So I've
[19:22] Speaker 3: got two scientists here. Define your area of expertise quickly, Erica.
[19:27] Speaker 5: Uh yeah, I mean gosh, I do biological anthropology, so
[19:29] Speaker 5: I study human evolution.
[19:31] Speaker 4: Is that broad enough.
[19:32] Speaker 2: That's totally fine, And I guess human biology is the
[19:35] Speaker 2: best way you could say it.
[19:35] Speaker 3: Give me an example of how AI or whatever we're
[19:39] Speaker 3: calling it has improved what you do, like if you're
[19:43] Speaker 3: getting into human fossils and whatnot. Has it improved the
[19:46] Speaker 3: search algorithm to link up different types of fossils on
[19:49] Speaker 3: don't know.
[19:49] Speaker 2: Give me an example. Is there any thing that strikes you?
[19:52] Speaker 5: You know so much of paleontology, and I wonder if
[19:56] Speaker 5: this is going to map for you as all, Like,
[19:57] Speaker 5: so much of it is relying on your experience and
[20:01] Speaker 5: intuition and following your gut and then taking that down
[20:05] Speaker 5: an analytical rabbit hole. So it's like in those ways chechipt,
[20:08] Speaker 5: at least at present, it's very hard for it to mimic.
[20:11] Speaker 5: It's very hard for chechipt to look at an aerial
[20:13] Speaker 5: overlay of you know, the AFAR region and tell you
[20:16] Speaker 5: which area is going to be best likely to support
[20:19] Speaker 5: fossilization or something along those lines. So it's not really
[20:22] Speaker 5: being used in that aspect. I'm going to give you
[20:23] Speaker 5: a way that I do think it is extremely helpful
[20:26] Speaker 5: to my field in particular, but also to science in general,
[20:29] Speaker 5: which is that it's really good at checking your code.
[20:32] Speaker 5: So one thing that people don't understand is that all
[20:34] Speaker 5: science involves statistics. Unless you are just describing something like
[20:38] Speaker 5: a new species or you know, a new methodology or
[20:41] Speaker 5: something like that, their stats involved and that sucks and
[20:43] Speaker 5: they don't actually tell you that when you get into science,
[20:45] Speaker 5: and then it turns out statistics is like forty percent
[20:48] Speaker 5: of it. But statistics has to be done in programs
[20:50] Speaker 5: like R or Matt Lab. And so what you have
[20:54] Speaker 5: to do is you have to write code to tell
[20:55] Speaker 5: chat GPT, you know, or to Chell chapter PT. You
[20:58] Speaker 5: have to write your code to tell R that, okay,
[21:00] Speaker 5: you know, I want to create a linear model and
[21:02] Speaker 5: specify all your you know, data and all that. And
[21:05] Speaker 5: it's like those are very finicky programs, and if you
[21:07] Speaker 5: don't have a background in coding, you can spend I
[21:10] Speaker 5: kid you not like cumulative days fighting with this program
[21:15] Speaker 5: just getting it to run something that is, you know,
[21:18] Speaker 5: it is conceptually simple, but it's hard to code it
[21:21] Speaker 5: because you're not a coder and you're you're really an
[21:23] Speaker 5: amateur in that field. So what CHATCHIPI is really useful
[21:26] Speaker 5: for is if I'm trying to run some code and
[21:28] Speaker 5: my code isn't working. I can put it in chat
[21:30] Speaker 5: gypt and say where's the typo, like what's causing.
[21:33] Speaker 4: This code to fail?
[21:34] Speaker 5: And it's it's useful in that sense that it helps
[21:37] Speaker 5: streamline the experiment that I designed, the method that I designed,
[21:41] Speaker 5: the hypothesis that I designed, or the the methodology that
[21:46] Speaker 5: I'm using. Right, But it's it's a glorified like scut
[21:51] Speaker 5: monkey in that sense, right, Like it's not actually doing
[21:54] Speaker 5: any of the work. It's just taking the time that
[21:56] Speaker 5: I would previously take to comb for mistakes and streamlining that.
[22:01] Speaker 5: And I think that's I mean, that's the I'm biased,
[22:04] Speaker 5: of course, but I think that's the ideal way in
[22:06] Speaker 5: which I should be used as a tool by people
[22:09] Speaker 5: who do themselves also know what's going.
[22:12] Speaker 3: On a proper research monad research, Yes, is very good
[22:18] Speaker 3: for me.
[22:19] Speaker 2: My second master's is in BioMed and I can't tell
[22:22] Speaker 2: you how many talks I sat through of people saying, like,
[22:26] Speaker 2: you know, we we thought we knew the end of
[22:28] Speaker 2: what we knew about this. We plugged all this huge
[22:30] Speaker 2: population data and chattubute, and it found patterns we humans
[22:34] Speaker 2: didn't notice, and now we are running new experiments on
[22:38] Speaker 2: this disease spreading in this super niche population, this this
[22:42] Speaker 2: this particular gene that we never would have thought to
[22:45] Speaker 2: look at before, because it's able to look at all
[22:49] Speaker 2: of this just bonkers loads of data about demographics, about psychographics,
[22:54] Speaker 2: about genomics, about you know, uh, of epidemiology, about like
[23:00] Speaker 2: there's data and everything else, and treat every single line
[23:05] Speaker 2: of that data as if it's super important and see
[23:08] Speaker 2: which one actually is in a way that a human
[23:09] Speaker 2: could never do, and it is able to do it
[23:10] Speaker 2: in an hour, which would take a million humans a
[23:13] Speaker 2: million years to do. And that is a huge thing.
[23:16] Speaker 2: But then, as Erica pointed out, the end, the critical
[23:20] Speaker 2: next step is someone a human who knows what they're
[23:23] Speaker 2: doing then going up and verifying that and following up
[23:26] Speaker 2: with it. So like that's a big thing that I
[23:29] Speaker 2: see it as a huge opportunity to go back and
[23:31] Speaker 2: re re re review the data of generations and come
[23:35] Speaker 2: up with new information and new models and new new
[23:38] Speaker 2: track records and new patterns that we would never have
[23:40] Speaker 2: thought to look for that could advance science so much
[23:43] Speaker 2: as long as there are scientists to interpret that at the.
[23:46] Speaker 3: End, instead of TikTok influencers who are falling in love
[23:50] Speaker 3: romantically with Ai.
[23:52] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[23:52] Speaker 4: I don't forget.
[23:53] Speaker 5: They're also using it to commune with the spirits, with
[23:55] Speaker 5: the monad if you.
[23:56] Speaker 2: Will love No.
[23:57] Speaker 3: I mean, there was a video on this play earlier
[24:00] Speaker 3: this morning of someone who said that Ai was not God,
[24:05] Speaker 3: but AI now is apparently a funnel or a conduit
[24:08] Speaker 3: through which God can now speak.
[24:10] Speaker 2: It's I don't know, it's what is old as new again.
[24:12] Speaker 3: I guess people have been looking for conduits for spiritual
[24:16] Speaker 3: revelation since whenever, and what this is just the next
[24:18] Speaker 3: big shiny thing.
[24:20] Speaker 2: So AI.
[24:24] Speaker 5: It's it's weird though, right because it's like, what did
[24:27] Speaker 5: he just wad around twiddling his thumbs like Weedi boards
[24:30] Speaker 5: came out and he was like, this is good, but
[24:32] Speaker 5: I'm going to wait another fifty years until I really
[24:34] Speaker 5: get this shit going. And then AI comes out and
[24:37] Speaker 5: it's like, finally I can commune with my people. It's like,
[24:40] Speaker 5: I don't know that that's the most efficient way of
[24:42] Speaker 5: doing things. I should playing through chagbt.
[24:45] Speaker 3: We were terrified of Wuiji boards. If someone had tried
[24:49] Speaker 3: to bring one into our home, they would have been
[24:50] Speaker 3: locked out.
[24:51] Speaker 2: We would not have.
[24:52] Speaker 3: And of course now on the other side of the
[24:53] Speaker 3: looking glass, I'm like, it's cardboard and ink for god.
[24:57] Speaker 2: I mean it is actually literally licensed, my husband.
[25:00] Speaker 4: It is a Hasbro game, it's a toy.
[25:02] Speaker 2: It's a children's game. Yeah, that's that's my favorite thing.
[25:04] Speaker 2: There's there's this great clip. It was, you know, on
[25:07] Speaker 2: TikTok and whatnot. This this guy's doorbell camera and he's
[25:11] Speaker 2: getting door to actually delivered and this woman comes in,
[25:13] Speaker 2: which has I swear to got her shirt just has
[25:15] Speaker 2: the word Jesus on it fifty times, like it's just
[25:17] Speaker 2: Jesus in all different styles of letters. And and he
[25:19] Speaker 2: has a Ouiji board doormat for Halloween and guess who
[25:24] Speaker 2: has a problem with it. And so she's dropping off
[25:26] Speaker 2: his McDonald's and she's like, you know this is evil, right,
[25:28] Speaker 2: And he's like, it's a Hasbro game. And she's like no, no, no,
[25:31] Speaker 2: it's a communication with the spirit. It's like, no, no,
[25:33] Speaker 2: it is literally a Hasbro game. I need you to
[25:34] Speaker 2: look at it. It is a Hasbro game. That stuff
[25:37] Speaker 2: not real. And he talks to her like she's five,
[25:39] Speaker 2: like no, no, no, sweety, that that stuff's not real.
[25:42] Speaker 2: That's not real. I'm sorry.
[25:44] Speaker 4: You've seen the La Boo boo stuff too as well.
[25:46] Speaker 2: I've heard so much.
[25:49] Speaker 4: Do you know about le Boo Boo?
[25:51] Speaker 2: No, it's the biggest mon out of the Central.
[25:53] Speaker 4: It's the biggest one in the Central. So Boo boo.
[25:56] Speaker 4: I can't believe that.
[25:57] Speaker 5: I get to explain boobo to settle boo the weirdest.
[26:01] Speaker 5: It is like a little plush toy and it looks
[26:04] Speaker 5: like a little like monster baby kind of like looks
[26:07] Speaker 5: like a little baby monster.
[26:08] Speaker 4: Basically, some K pop stars, if.
[26:10] Speaker 5: Memory serves, started like wearing them, like clipping them on
[26:13] Speaker 5: their belts or on their designer bags or whatever, and
[26:15] Speaker 5: they got really popular here in the West. People are
[26:18] Speaker 5: buying La Boo boos everywhere, and the La Boo boo
[26:21] Speaker 5: sort of the game. The gamification of La Booboo collecting
[26:25] Speaker 5: is such that you buy a box and you don't
[26:27] Speaker 5: know which labuboo is contained within. So it's another fun
[26:30] Speaker 5: way to sell gambling.
[26:32] Speaker 4: To kids, which is great. I love it.
[26:34] Speaker 5: It's so so amazing that they're getting in and dated
[26:36] Speaker 5: with this absolutely everywhere.
[26:38] Speaker 2: Back in my day, it is it's all the worst
[26:41] Speaker 2: parts of like furby beanie babies, and like Pokemon cards
[26:46] Speaker 2: all wrapped into one horrible new trend trend, and you
[26:50] Speaker 2: have like adults and again I can't just know this
[26:53] Speaker 2: is not a new thing, but it is the thing
[26:55] Speaker 2: now where you have videos of adults like sobbing in
[26:59] Speaker 2: their car because they did get the pink Laboo boo.
[27:01] Speaker 2: They got another goddamn green la boo boo and they
[27:03] Speaker 2: have enough green la boo boo and they're just ripping
[27:05] Speaker 2: its head off and screaming at the camera that they
[27:07] Speaker 2: need the pink one. And it's like it is everything
[27:10] Speaker 2: that we have seen every trend over and over and over.
[27:13] Speaker 4: And participated in arguably when we were younger.
[27:16] Speaker 5: But I mean it's like you're like, God, you're right,
[27:18] Speaker 5: people are losing their shit because we don't get glim
[27:20] Speaker 5: glamor or something like that.
[27:21] Speaker 3: Put that la boo boo in your is a major
[27:23] Speaker 3: religion in this country. It's probably consumerism, isn't that excess?
[27:27] Speaker 2: Right?
[27:27] Speaker 3: That's why cartoons exist these days, mostly just to sell
[27:30] Speaker 3: toys in the first place. But the boo boo is
[27:32] Speaker 3: fun to say.
[27:34] Speaker 5: For the reason I have sort of brought this to
[27:38] Speaker 5: your attention, this pressing matter, is because there's a non
[27:41] Speaker 5: zero portion of evangelicals, but I'm sure.
[27:44] Speaker 4: I'm sure it extends outside of.
[27:45] Speaker 5: Them who think that the boo boo, much like Harry
[27:48] Speaker 5: Potter or Pokemon before, it is actually demonic because it's
[27:52] Speaker 5: a little monster baby and it has sharp teeth, and
[27:55] Speaker 5: you know, they do all this stuff where they're.
[27:56] Speaker 4: Like, you're gonna die at this. I saw one the
[27:59] Speaker 4: other day. It was like, the.
[28:01] Speaker 5: Boo boo sounds like Pazuzu demon and it's like, dude,
[28:07] Speaker 5: I don't a lot of stuff stuff like a lot
[28:10] Speaker 5: of other funny stuff.
[28:11] Speaker 4: I don't know what the time, you're a.
[28:12] Speaker 2: Demon named Pazuzu.
[28:13] Speaker 3: I'm not taking you seriously anyway, right, it's just Pazuzu.
[28:18] Speaker 2: If I ever had like a pet pair, no, but
[28:20] Speaker 2: I mean.
[28:21] Speaker 3: I was growing up and it was they were playing
[28:22] Speaker 3: rock albums backwards, and you know they were looking.
[28:25] Speaker 2: We're patterned seekers, right, So anyone who is looking for.
[28:28] Speaker 3: Something that looks as a pointy end on it or
[28:31] Speaker 3: somewhat dissonant, you know, or or they're going to see agency,
[28:36] Speaker 3: probably dark agency, everywhere they look. We've evolved to see
[28:40] Speaker 3: those patterns. See me, set you up, Erica.
[28:42] Speaker 4: Right, I know this is a softball though, it really is.
[28:45] Speaker 4: You were like, You're like, how can I can I get?
[28:48] Speaker 2: How do I read?
[28:48] Speaker 3: How do I bring us back to to paleontology, et cetera.
[28:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I mean pattern seeking is enormously helpful,
[28:56] Speaker 5: whether you're trying to problem solve and figure out where
[28:58] Speaker 5: the best place to forage or hunt is, or whether
[29:00] Speaker 5: you're trying to figure out how to navigate a social relationship,
[29:03] Speaker 5: which I think is something that we appreciate less when
[29:06] Speaker 5: it comes to pattern seeking. What's the most important pattern.
[29:08] Speaker 4: Seeking that we do. It's facial recognition.
[29:10] Speaker 5: I mean, we are This is exactly why if you
[29:13] Speaker 5: see two dots and a line, you see it as
[29:15] Speaker 5: a face. It doesn't matter where you see it.
[29:17] Speaker 4: It looks like a.
[29:17] Speaker 2: Thing, like the face on Mars.
[29:19] Speaker 5: Yeah, the face on Mark. I look at that outlet
[29:21] Speaker 5: in the corner of the room and it looks like
[29:22] Speaker 5: a little guy, you know.
[29:23] Speaker 4: I mean this is this.
[29:24] Speaker 2: There's a Facebook page it's called faces in Things.
[29:27] Speaker 5: Yeah, or like wooden grain or you know a funny car,
[29:30] Speaker 5: like the way with the headlights and the bumper in
[29:32] Speaker 5: the front. I mean, this is this is what we do, right,
[29:34] Speaker 5: is we pattern seek and we tend to seek patterns unfortunately,
[29:39] Speaker 5: that confirm things that we want to be true or
[29:41] Speaker 5: things that we already know, and we tend to reject
[29:43] Speaker 5: things and actually put the blinders on, like psychologically or
[29:46] Speaker 5: less likely to see information or patterns that you don't
[29:49] Speaker 5: want to see.
[29:50] Speaker 4: So I also said, la boo boo, Oh my god,
[29:54] Speaker 4: it's true. Barely is a relationship.
[29:57] Speaker 2: I admit it.
[29:58] Speaker 5: I'm actually a la boo boo agent out here. But
[30:01] Speaker 5: you know, I mean, you see something scary, and you
[30:03] Speaker 5: see something that kids enjoy, and you see something that
[30:07] Speaker 5: it could eat any shape form or fashion act as
[30:09] Speaker 5: an idol, and all of a sudden, it's demonic. I
[30:12] Speaker 5: mean they do it with they do it with absolutely everything.
[30:14] Speaker 5: I don't know why they still think people are taking
[30:16] Speaker 5: them seriously, but then again, I know about their beef
[30:20] Speaker 5: with it, so obviously it's doing something right.
[30:22] Speaker 3: For the record, that everyone in this room isn't a
[30:24] Speaker 3: booboo whist, I believe you.
[30:25] Speaker 2: You don't believe. You don't know shit about me.
[30:30] Speaker 3: So I'm going to come back into the fossils and whatnot.
[30:34] Speaker 3: I'm totally taken another turn. But that's what we do
[30:37] Speaker 3: tell me about the technology used to find that stuff.
[30:40] Speaker 3: I know in the movies they're shooting like sonar pangs
[30:42] Speaker 3: into the ground and there's a digital readout that says
[30:45] Speaker 3: dinosaur skull or you know, human human ulna or something.
[30:50] Speaker 3: Is that bogus?
[30:51] Speaker 4: Do you want to know what it's really like?
[30:53] Speaker 5: Most of the it is sweltering, and I'm crawling on
[30:56] Speaker 5: my hands and knees up a spiky hillside in the
[31:00] Speaker 5: middle of an exposed section of dirt and rocks in
[31:04] Speaker 5: rainforest in western Kenya. I can hear the thunder in
[31:07] Speaker 5: the distance. I know it's about this storm. Baboons have
[31:10] Speaker 5: stolen my lunch two times this week already, and I
[31:13] Speaker 5: am looking for rocks that vaguely have the sheen of
[31:16] Speaker 5: fossilized enamel on them, amongst millions of other shiny rocks
[31:22] Speaker 5: that are just shiny rocks. That's what most of paleontology is,
[31:26] Speaker 5: and a lot of it is very frustrating, and a
[31:29] Speaker 5: lot of it is the best thing you've ever experienced.
[31:32] Speaker 5: The high that you get when you've spot a perfect
[31:35] Speaker 5: Ranguopithecus molar with the cusps all still intact. It's not
[31:38] Speaker 5: even warners clearly from an adult in the prime of
[31:40] Speaker 5: its life and it's from a tooth position that nobody's
[31:44] Speaker 5: ever found yet. And I get to find it, and
[31:46] Speaker 5: I get to hold it up, and everybody's here.
[31:48] Speaker 4: It's an amazing experience.
[31:49] Speaker 3: I mean, like, what's the strike ratio on something like that.
[31:51] Speaker 3: I mean, I know it depends in the region and
[31:53] Speaker 3: the dapth and blah blah blah. But you're out there
[31:54] Speaker 3: and you're looking at what thousands of tiny stones until hey,
[31:58] Speaker 3: look at tooth.
[31:59] Speaker 5: For my field work, yes, that's what it is. But
[32:02] Speaker 5: my fieldwork is also really unique because of the area
[32:05] Speaker 5: that it's in and for whatever reason, the taphenomic bias,
[32:07] Speaker 5: which that just means like the types of preservation that
[32:10] Speaker 5: favor big things or small things or jumbled things or
[32:15] Speaker 5: articulated things, is like bias towards jumbally itty bitty things
[32:19] Speaker 5: like teeth or little bits of long bone, which you
[32:22] Speaker 5: would think aren't very helpful, but in actuality, that's like
[32:25] Speaker 5: micromammals make up the baseline of the ecosystem, so it's
[32:27] Speaker 5: really important stuff. There are other places that I've been
[32:30] Speaker 5: where it's a little bit more straightforward, where you actually
[32:32] Speaker 5: get to stand instead of crawl and you're walking and
[32:34] Speaker 5: you're looking for exposed shafts of theemura or humorous or
[32:39] Speaker 5: something this that or the other thing, and you can
[32:40] Speaker 5: see it strikingly. Once you've got what do we used
[32:45] Speaker 5: to call it? There was a phrase that we use
[32:46] Speaker 5: in the field. It's sort of like you have to train,
[32:48] Speaker 5: you have to train your brain like you would in LLM.
[32:51] Speaker 4: Look at this, I'm bringing it. I'm bringing it full circle.
[32:54] Speaker 5: Yeah, you patterns seek, right, So it's funny you start,
[32:57] Speaker 5: you start with this kind of thing. And I went
[32:59] Speaker 5: my first probably weak, and I didn't find a single fossil.
[33:02] Speaker 5: And I'm talking about I go over a spot and
[33:04] Speaker 5: the experienced Kenyan fossil collector behind me finds eight things
[33:08] Speaker 5: right where I just pass over.
[33:09] Speaker 3: Do you have like a little brush like they do
[33:10] Speaker 3: in the movies and all that stuff you're just looking?
[33:12] Speaker 5: I pick with my hands, Okay, I mean people do
[33:14] Speaker 5: it brushes or like this. One of our guys has
[33:16] Speaker 5: a screwdriver that uses to turn stuff.
[33:18] Speaker 2: Over like that today everybody tool.
[33:20] Speaker 4: Yeah, they like just that they that they tend to use.
[33:22] Speaker 5: I just like using my fingers, like I just like
[33:24] Speaker 5: to turn rocks over, and you know, see if I
[33:26] Speaker 5: can get the dirt off them, and if it's an
[33:27] Speaker 5: animal or or you know, you can see the spongy
[33:30] Speaker 5: bone and it's it's nice. That's how I like to
[33:32] Speaker 5: do it personally. But once I started finding them, my
[33:34] Speaker 5: brain starts saying, that's what it looks like and sort.
[33:37] Speaker 5: And what's cool is that the fossils are different colors
[33:39] Speaker 5: in different places. So we have sits where they're kind
[33:41] Speaker 5: of this beautiful pale pink, and others where it's this
[33:43] Speaker 5: obsidian like shiny black color, and then another place still
[33:47] Speaker 5: where it's sort of this sulphuric yellow, and your brain
[33:50] Speaker 5: starts to be able to be like, Okay, you know,
[33:52] Speaker 5: I'm at Chamtwara, here's what the fossils look like. And
[33:54] Speaker 5: by you know, the third week I'm finding I mean,
[33:56] Speaker 5: I'm finding fossils, probably not with the best of them,
[33:58] Speaker 5: but I was certainly one of the best Western fossil
[34:01] Speaker 5: collectors out there. The technology and paleontology is just wonderfully
[34:06] Speaker 5: low tech when you're finding the fossils, and then once
[34:09] Speaker 5: they're found, now we're talking about taking one thousand slices
[34:13] Speaker 5: in a micro ct scanner of a bone to get
[34:16] Speaker 5: the perfect curvature to compare it to the curvature that
[34:18] Speaker 5: you see in a chimpanzee thigh bone or femur versus
[34:21] Speaker 5: a human. And then it's like we're doing geometric morphometrics
[34:24] Speaker 5: and we're using eggy statistical tests in the book, and
[34:27] Speaker 5: it is truly cutting edge, but until that point, it's
[34:30] Speaker 5: crawling around in it.
[34:31] Speaker 2: There Erica comes back to the stage.
[34:33] Speaker 3: She's got bruises and slices all over callouses, and she's
[34:37] Speaker 3: all sunburned.
[34:38] Speaker 4: And were you at the airports?
[34:41] Speaker 2: What I look like? Some of the worst sunburned I've
[34:44] Speaker 2: ever gotten was from from Fossil Prospective and stuff like that.
[34:47] Speaker 2: We were out in West Oklahoma last year and we're
[34:51] Speaker 2: way out on the side, like right right in the
[34:53] Speaker 2: corner of the Panhandle, on these areas where it's like
[34:55] Speaker 2: the oil fields and stuff, these massive, wide open spaces
[34:58] Speaker 2: of nothing, and there will be the the hills they
[35:00] Speaker 2: are just muddy, gross, awful, and you just kind of
[35:04] Speaker 2: look to where the water channels are, where the water's
[35:06] Speaker 2: cutting down through the hill, and you just look on
[35:07] Speaker 2: the grounds right around there and you kind of look
[35:09] Speaker 2: and there's some vaguely white rocks and there's some vaguely
[35:12] Speaker 2: white rocks, but that's a particularly interesting white rock, and
[35:15] Speaker 2: you turn that and sure, that's a piece of bone.
[35:17] Speaker 2: And then you walk up the channel there where the water,
[35:19] Speaker 2: just kind of scanning around until you find the rest
[35:21] Speaker 2: of that little bone fragment sticking out of the ground.
[35:24] Speaker 2: And then you start picking away right there and maybe
[35:26] Speaker 2: you get some more bone. Maybe it's just bone mush
[35:29] Speaker 2: that's been squished into mud for a few million years,
[35:31] Speaker 2: and it doesn't matter anymore. Sometimes it's something interesting. You
[35:34] Speaker 2: can say, I see a piece of a skull in there.
[35:36] Speaker 2: And you come away from there and your back is
[35:39] Speaker 2: just like a lobster, and your hands are also red,
[35:43] Speaker 2: but from the red dirt of Oklahoma, not from the sun,
[35:46] Speaker 2: and you're just miserable and sweaty. But you have a
[35:49] Speaker 2: really interesting like shaft of a bone. Now that means
[35:52] Speaker 2: nothing because it's not the end of a bone, so
[35:54] Speaker 2: you can tell it's a mammal. But that's about it.
[35:56] Speaker 2: And you go home happy but not happy enough, and
[35:58] Speaker 2: you go back to that area later on to try
[36:00] Speaker 2: to find either a bone end or a tooth, because
[36:02] Speaker 2: those are the diagnostic things. I can really tell you something.
[36:05] Speaker 5: Let me tell you the most fun falsil I ever found.
[36:07] Speaker 5: Back toally, my favorite false il I ever found was
[36:09] Speaker 5: the rang with the biggest muller. And I found a
[36:10] Speaker 5: couple of my snape teeth, which since that's what I study,
[36:12] Speaker 5: that's what I like. And I have at least two
[36:14] Speaker 5: canines to my name, which is amazing because I'm hoping
[36:16] Speaker 5: to include them and my dissertation and then I can
[36:18] Speaker 5: be like, and I'm citing myself because I found them,
[36:23] Speaker 5: which is amazing, although that's not quite how it works.
[36:26] Speaker 5: But there's ones that we were at. We're I think
[36:27] Speaker 5: it was at Legit Tedd eleven. So we're at this
[36:28] Speaker 5: site in West Kenya where it's where you find I
[36:31] Speaker 5: don't know why I'm looking at you like you're like.
[36:33] Speaker 4: Oh, yes, of course, I love my I guess.
[36:35] Speaker 5: And live no bit there my favorite Yeah, yeah, it's
[36:38] Speaker 5: to explain the situation. We were prospecting the site because
[36:41] Speaker 5: it was about to be destroyed by the local town
[36:44] Speaker 5: for limestone mining, as tends to be the case, so
[36:47] Speaker 5: they've got the excavators out there. I mean, it's like
[36:49] Speaker 5: the cartoon where you know you're you're chaining yourself to
[36:52] Speaker 5: the tree and like you can hear the excavator in
[36:53] Speaker 5: the background getting ready to come and destroy it. So
[36:55] Speaker 5: we were doing this last minute search, hoping to find
[36:58] Speaker 5: anything to justify telling these people and it's you know,
[37:02] Speaker 5: fair right, please.
[37:04] Speaker 4: Don't buildose this fossil stay.
[37:05] Speaker 5: But also this is where they live and they should
[37:07] Speaker 5: be able to use the resources around them, So it's
[37:10] Speaker 5: like a double edged So the question was where we
[37:11] Speaker 5: gonna find anything. And this is like I'm very much
[37:15] Speaker 5: resonating with the spiky hills because this is like dark,
[37:19] Speaker 5: really jagged, like probably i would say probably forty feet
[37:24] Speaker 5: of like sort of debris like heading up the side
[37:26] Speaker 5: of this gigantic cliffs sort of like a cliff, and
[37:30] Speaker 5: there are these hideous nettles growing everywhere. They get in,
[37:32] Speaker 5: you know, in your skin, and there's biting ants and
[37:34] Speaker 5: it sucks and it's horrible. And we found nothing all day,
[37:36] Speaker 5: and it was everybody was having a bad time. So
[37:39] Speaker 5: I'm standing with one of my friends and I was like,
[37:42] Speaker 5: you know, I want to be like.
[37:43] Speaker 2: I'm allowed to swear on this, yeah, please.
[37:47] Speaker 4: I'm like, fuck this place. I hate it here.
[37:50] Speaker 5: And I kicked the side of the wall and this
[37:53] Speaker 5: there's some of this debris crumbles, and I like a movie.
[37:55] Speaker 4: I kid you not. I look up and I'm like,
[37:57] Speaker 4: what is that?
[37:57] Speaker 5: Because I see the shine of the enamel, and I
[38:00] Speaker 5: reached and I pull it out, and it's a partial mantle,
[38:02] Speaker 5: so parcel jawbone that's about six or seven inches long,
[38:06] Speaker 5: fold and tistion.
[38:07] Speaker 4: All the teeth are in place.
[38:08] Speaker 5: And it belongs to a member of Bathier Goidy's, which
[38:12] Speaker 5: is a gigantic naked mole rat species that live during
[38:16] Speaker 5: this time. So imagine a naked mole rat. But the
[38:18] Speaker 5: size of it is such that it's mandible. Half its
[38:21] Speaker 5: jaw is seven inches long.
[38:23] Speaker 4: I mean they we're talking about we're talking about a
[38:25] Speaker 4: naked mole rat.
[38:26] Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a naked mole rat that is the size
[38:28] Speaker 5: of like a like a jack Russell terrier.
[38:30] Speaker 4: They say, there you go, and I pull it out,
[38:32] Speaker 4: and I was like, what is this?
[38:35] Speaker 5: Because we found a million of these little horrible rodents
[38:38] Speaker 5: called diamanthones, and you find them everywhere and they suck
[38:40] Speaker 5: and they don't they're not useful all. And I was like,
[38:42] Speaker 5: I know this is a rodent because it's got the
[38:43] Speaker 5: incisors in the front ball.
[38:44] Speaker 4: What kind of rodent is it.
[38:45] Speaker 5: And my friend Aby walks over and she was like,
[38:46] Speaker 5: holy shit, that is the biggest bathrough Guidy's mantible I've
[38:49] Speaker 5: ever seen.
[38:49] Speaker 4: And I was like it was the first.
[38:51] Speaker 5: Like I told you, these sites are biased towards little things,
[38:53] Speaker 5: but so it's amazing to find like a beautiful Hemi mandible.
[38:57] Speaker 4: Like it was just it was wonderful, the best false
[38:59] Speaker 4: I've what.
[39:00] Speaker 2: We were out in that same site in West Oklahoma,
[39:03] Speaker 2: and we were out there for days and days and days,
[39:06] Speaker 2: and like the last year, we've been pulling up handfuls
[39:08] Speaker 2: of bone, like no bro because we're looking for horse
[39:11] Speaker 2: and camel fossils because of course horse and camels of
[39:13] Speaker 2: all them in North America. And we're out there digging
[39:16] Speaker 2: in the same spot. We have a new group of
[39:17] Speaker 2: students coming out with us, and like we're just finding
[39:20] Speaker 2: dick over it so much and every now and then
[39:23] Speaker 2: they're like, hey, is this bone. We're like, yeah, that's
[39:25] Speaker 2: a piece of bone and it's just a chunk the
[39:27] Speaker 2: size of a quarter. That doesn't mean anything. Side throw
[39:29] Speaker 2: it on the ground. You can keep it as a
[39:30] Speaker 2: souvenir if you one doesn't mean anything. No one's gonna
[39:32] Speaker 2: look for it. Uh, and we're just kind of digging around,
[39:35] Speaker 2: and like on one of the last days we're there,
[39:37] Speaker 2: this one person who wasn't even a palaeontology person, wasn't
[39:40] Speaker 2: even a biology person. She was an English student who
[39:43] Speaker 2: just came along for the vibes and just wanted to
[39:46] Speaker 2: kind of hang out and see what that was all about.
[39:48] Speaker 2: And she comes down the mountains like, what's this And
[39:51] Speaker 2: she's got this chunk of rock that's about twice the
[39:53] Speaker 2: size of her hand. It's a fucking gomfor their tooth. Amazing,
[39:55] Speaker 2: she found goum for theirs. These it's it's a proba
[39:58] Speaker 2: city and not imagine an elephant and you'll have the idea.
[40:01] Speaker 2: It's a fucking elephant relatives from the goddamn Miocene that
[40:06] Speaker 2: evolved in Africa, then spread all around Eurasian and moved
[40:09] Speaker 2: its way to North America. And so there's this massive
[40:11] Speaker 2: Oklahoma elephant that has never been described in this region,
[40:14] Speaker 2: and now her name is going to be all over
[40:16] Speaker 2: this paper. We sat there for the rest of the
[40:17] Speaker 2: day while all the paleontologists who were there supervising, We're like, hey, everybody,
[40:21] Speaker 2: fuck off, we're gonna be here, we're going to this
[40:23] Speaker 2: thing up.
[40:25] Speaker 3: I'm still stuck on camel and elephant and Oklahoma.
[40:28] Speaker 2: In the same story, land horses too, because you think
[40:32] Speaker 2: about horses already as something in Oklahoma, But the horses
[40:35] Speaker 2: that are in Oklahoma now are not Oklahoma horses. They're
[40:37] Speaker 2: European horses that were brought here. Yeah, and they are
[40:40] Speaker 2: largely feral, which is incredibly sad. Uh. And and so
[40:43] Speaker 2: like you, you have horses and camels and evolving here,
[40:47] Speaker 2: elephants migrating or elephant like things migrating here. And you know,
[40:52] Speaker 2: go back to the you know, the the Eocene all
[40:54] Speaker 2: the way into the even the Pleistocene. This is a
[40:56] Speaker 2: completely different landscape, completely different fauna crawling around the area.
[41:00] Speaker 2: And we murdered them and then and then you know,
[41:04] Speaker 2: the Holocene starts, the climate change is massively the last
[41:08] Speaker 2: of them die off, and all you have left is
[41:10] Speaker 2: some of us. And nobody remembers the time when we
[41:13] Speaker 2: were going up against terror birds and giant wombats and
[41:19] Speaker 2: huge armadillo like creatures and all sorts of the short
[41:22] Speaker 2: faced bear, all the other incredible MegaFon that we're all over.
[41:25] Speaker 3: This content imagination is now loaded with images of these amazing,
[41:31] Speaker 3: splash horrifying type things.
[41:33] Speaker 2: They're so cool, They're so cool.
[41:34] Speaker 3: I'm going to type that into chat GPT and have
[41:37] Speaker 3: it generated in so yes.
[41:38] Speaker 2: Please explain to me which will be wrong?
[41:42] Speaker 3: Well, then it will become a reference point for somebody's
[41:44] Speaker 3: college paper, and then it will go on Wikipedia.
[41:47] Speaker 2: What's what's tell me the truth about all these ancient creatures?
[41:50] Speaker 2: I must consult the monad and it will tell me
[41:52] Speaker 2: everything I need to know.
[41:53] Speaker 3: That must bring us full circle because Forrest is on
[41:56] Speaker 3: stage giving a presentation about what today about biology in general.
[42:01] Speaker 2: Just how fucking cool biology is so essentially your work.
[42:05] Speaker 2: This is what you do. Yeah, I study biology too
[42:08] Speaker 2: much and then I regurgitate it in front of strangers.
[42:10] Speaker 3: That job Eric conducted out of the park this morning.
[42:12] Speaker 3: I'm sure you will as well. I'm going to let
[42:14] Speaker 3: Forrest run down do a tech check before he speaks
[42:17] Speaker 3: at four o'clock. Any final thoughts, do you have any
[42:19] Speaker 3: hope about this sort of mix of humanity, nature, technology
[42:24] Speaker 3: or whatnot?
[42:25] Speaker 5: Let me leave you with this, right, the creationists answers
[42:28] Speaker 5: in Genesis has their own AI. It is a safe
[42:30] Speaker 5: AI for creationists to use.
[42:33] Speaker 2: That's exceedingly funny.
[42:34] Speaker 3: I did not know that any Do you know what
[42:37] Speaker 3: it sounds like those Internet filters for their like we're
[42:39] Speaker 3: going to go filter out anything that bothers us almost
[42:43] Speaker 3: safe interest.
[42:44] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a safe space for them.
[42:46] Speaker 3: So what do you mean, like if I typed in
[42:47] Speaker 3: something that contradicts the Bible, their AI will return to
[42:51] Speaker 3: deal that.
[42:52] Speaker 5: If you said to their AI, if you were like,
[42:55] Speaker 5: when did dinosaurs go extinct? It would say forty four
[42:59] Speaker 5: hundred years ago approximately when the global flood wiped most
[43:03] Speaker 5: of them off the planet. And then those that were
[43:05] Speaker 5: taken on Noah's Ark did not survive to repopulation. Why
[43:08] Speaker 5: pariserathereum did and Saura pods didn't.
[43:12] Speaker 4: We don't know. It won't stay that part, but it.
[43:13] Speaker 2: Sure were you there. You were there to know. But
[43:16] Speaker 2: also this fucking Bronze Ade sex manual is there to know?
[43:19] Speaker 2: And so what are we gonna say? And the dude
[43:22] Speaker 2: I djusted a video about them, and like their dragon
[43:25] Speaker 2: shit has only gotten crazier.
[43:26] Speaker 4: How is impossible? It was already absolutely bad?
[43:30] Speaker 2: Wit wait wait wait, dragons in the Bible?
[43:31] Speaker 4: Yeah, raged everywhere everywhere, everywhere else.
[43:34] Speaker 2: Yes, they believe that that dinosaur and dragon are synonymous terms,
[43:37] Speaker 2: and that after the flood there were still some dinosaurs
[43:40] Speaker 2: left and those were dragons, and that all the dragons
[43:42] Speaker 2: slaying stories knights and shining armor, those are all true
[43:45] Speaker 2: people slaying dragons. And also, unlike every other dinosaur, they
[43:48] Speaker 2: could fly and breathe fire. But fuck you for asking questions. Yeah,
[43:51] Speaker 2: and every single example of any story anywhere in the
[43:55] Speaker 2: world that mentions the word dragon is absolutely credible and real.
[43:58] Speaker 2: And therefore it was a dinosaur that was around at
[44:01] Speaker 2: that time. And the one that I was looking at
[44:03] Speaker 2: was it's actually the most viewed YouTube short from Answers
[44:06] Speaker 2: and Genesis.
[44:07] Speaker 4: This is Canada or right now the regular one.
[44:09] Speaker 2: Uh, And it's it's just this guy talking about all
[44:12] Speaker 2: these dragon stories around the world. And he starts with
[44:14] Speaker 2: Saint George, who you know, is this this Christian Byonics? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah,
[44:19] Speaker 2: that one, and he's it's it's Saint George killed this
[44:22] Speaker 2: dragon back in three hundred eighty. Uh, and that means
[44:26] Speaker 2: it must have been a real dragon. And there's this dragon.
[44:28] Speaker 2: There's this dinosaur called Buryonics, which is a massive spinosaur
[44:31] Speaker 2: looking motherfucker that lived in southern England. And so clearly
[44:35] Speaker 2: this englishman that killed the dragon was this, never mind
[44:37] Speaker 2: that the story takes vice in fucking Libya and so
[44:39] Speaker 2: like they just literally they were like, here is English Christian.
[44:43] Speaker 4: I didn't, and.
[44:46] Speaker 2: It's like, here's this. This it's a Christian English story,
[44:49] Speaker 2: so we need a Christian dinosaur to fill in the gap.
[44:51] Speaker 2: And they didn't even be able to read the goddamn story.
[44:54] Speaker 2: And it's just it is. I have to stop there,
[44:57] Speaker 2: and I hate that. I would.
[44:59] Speaker 3: I could talk for another eight hours and fifteen minutes
[45:01] Speaker 3: about dragons, but I'm gonna let you grab your laptop
[45:04] Speaker 3: and do your thing. Erica, Forrest, I'm gonna put links
[45:07] Speaker 3: to your channels in the description box.
[45:09] Speaker 2: So good to hang. Thanks for chatting with me, you
[45:11] Speaker 2: got it. Thank you for having us here in your
[45:12] Speaker 2: hotel room. It wasn't creepy at all.
[45:14] Speaker 5: I'm so glad that Forrest has to go give his
[45:16] Speaker 5: presentation now and I'm done and he's not done, and you.
[45:19] Speaker 2: Need to go. Oh shit, I gotta follow. We're gonna
[45:21] Speaker 2: be sorry, I have to follow. Oh that's good, I see,
[45:25] Speaker 2: you know.
[45:25] Speaker 3: And mine's gonna be uses the music and he's out
[45:28] Speaker 3: there remoting.
[45:30] Speaker 4: When you exident said that you had songs. I was like,
[45:35] Speaker 4: oh no, I'm not. I'm not down.
[45:37] Speaker 2: He did, Sagan.
[45:39] Speaker 3: When I went up after him last time, he's he's quoting,
[45:42] Speaker 3: he's doing the Dale Blued.
[45:44] Speaker 2: I did that speech at the Secular Student Alliance conference
[45:46] Speaker 2: and fucking Sasha Sagan was there in the audience and
[45:48] Speaker 2: listened to me. Oh so she liked it, and she
[45:52] Speaker 2: was very cool, and she came up and talked to
[45:54] Speaker 2: me afterwards. I was so mortified, Like, I just quoted
[45:57] Speaker 2: your dad to you. I'm sure that's not weird.
[46:01] Speaker 3: No, no, but you're gonna kill it thanks to both
[46:03] Speaker 3: of you. Let's do it again. Okay Yeah.
[46:05] Speaker 1: Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
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