Magic, Illusion, and Skepticism, with Bill Nye – StarTalk All-Stars

this is Startalk greetings welcome to Startalk radio I'm your guest host this week Bill Nye and I'm joined by none other than the inimitable Lea remarkable the thoughtful Chuck nice Chuck it's great to see you hey man it's good to be seen I don't want sure if I believe you though yeah sure it's good too it's radio it's fine I can see you well enough well enough so we have cosmic queries yes we do about sceptical points of view of you about magic yes illusion a magic and illusion very closely related and for me is so as skepticism and skepticism closer related for you it is indeed skepticism is the basis of my entire life that's right really I try not to believe anything I want you know I'm serious you know what's funny is my when I was fun it was probably not funny what's not even strange my mother used to say Chuck I would ask her yes he would say Chuck I would ask her anything and she would tell me go find out find different sources and compare those sources and find out for yourself just because I say it doesn't make it true what are you gonna do walk around just believing stuff that people tell you my mother was an educator so of course this led to me having a very healthy sense of skepticism about anything and you know unless I see some kind of reference that allows me to engage in critical thought I really don't believe you and what if I were the Internet then you'd believe everything well it's true if it's on the internet it's true well speaking of which we're start talk radio and we're on the internet on and on the air that's right let's take a cosmic query from one of our participating listeners yes that's right we've got one from Christopher wise and Christopher on Facebook says isn't all technology just a highly engineered version of a magic trick in which the magicians have shared their secrets but for me engineering is where you're trying to solve problems and make things not fool people but see that's because use phrase you my friend are in earnest individual because there were engineers like Bill Nye back in the day who figured out some stuff and could build some stuff and win yo we could get paid well and we can grow food and have parts with wheels and steam engines and and tell until I agree with the telegraphic communicate we can have flags for crying out loud we could make textiles right and clothing from skins of other animals we could do all kinds of extraordinary things but it is - I will say that in my view the really cool magic tricks yeah are based on the skill of the presenter where he induces you to believe one thing or she induces you to believe one thing and then you see something else yeah they often use extraordinary engineering this is to say this object looks like it's one thing but it's actually something else yes hence the expression it's all done with mirrors but in science you know we say it's not all done with mirrors it's done with molecules Oh give me another query cosmically here we go let's move on to Christine Pierce Hoffman and Christine wants to know this bill do you have any insight as to how we could better teach skepticism and more importantly critical thinking to the next generation I love you for this question Christine I say teach people magic tricks I'm not even kidding are you don't real I don't mean you know spend three semesters on it I mean hey have kids try to fool each other and you'll see that how easy it is to make you believe something especially something you're afraid of ghosts spirits right cars coming right at you with a horn blaring so unemployment's maybe that was a bad example yeah so you can really fool people and if you learn to do that learn to recognize that I think it'll help you think critically about all sorts of things yeah you're right because fear alters your perception on every picture you know one of the one of the things they say is never make a decision when you are emotional or in any way or afraid you always take the time to stop and then get decision I mean it's good to decide to apply the brakes yes or to run because you heard a loud boom oh yeah or the flood coming toward the flood right yeah I know what you're saying like buy a car and she did as she asked me for a specific thing and I think it's important to show people how easy it is to fool each other that's it so actually actually magic tricks can be used to inspire critical thinking wow man that's a great answer the other one that everybody loves is forensics you come to a crime scene and teachers some teachers create crime scenes yeah conclusions all right so there you go Christine kill your teacher erase but if you erase down believe Chuck better I better say it because the way people come after me on Twitter when I say certain things I'm I was joking all right man this is great let's move on to John Hughes and John says this bill what is your favorite magic trick and what would you do to make it better or more scientifically plausible do you have a favorite magic trick well no but I do respect I really respect the work of Penn & Teller yeah and Robert oh oh yeah man they do this thing where they show you the magic trick then they show you how they did separately they show you how they did it yes there's a beautiful thing and it is still equally as entertaining more estimating yeah the fact that you know how it's done does nothing to you in terms of your being absolutely enthralled by the whole thing because they picked the tricks that are spectacular so I guess the first thing is to really fool the person and then to show them how you did it so there's two things so that's your favorite trick really fool the person and then show them how you did it yeah I like to be satisfied now or I like to wonder what happened it has to be the trick has to be good enough that I wonder what happened so now I'm interested to know and I may I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's question but I'm just shooting from the hip here because of John's question what do you think guys like what's the guy's name sits on ice for a week oh god somebody help me out here wait you're the only one in the room the guy he's oh that's cool I mean there must be a really cool yeah there's gotta be it's not he doesn't have superpowers no he doesn't really well yeah okay but they're guys who can walk on tightropes without falling off I can't do that right but I can imagine putting in an hours where you could write yeah David Blaine that's the best David Lee David Blaine okay cool all right just one oh that's a hey let's move on let's go to Lenore Harold Mendez okay I imagine it looks like guys but it's not really oh are we giving away two plain secrets right go ahead take it I'm tantalized okay Lenore Hernandez wants to know this why are spheres the most represented shape in our universe could there be a universe yours are the most represented shape is that documented that's what she's saying that spheres of the most represented shape in our universe and I put them in square picture frames wait a minute just if you're a planet a rather if you're a cosmic dust okay let's say when you actually we are cosmic dust whoa dude we are made of Stardust a though and if you have enough of it it's mutual gravity constrains it to form a sphere that's it we got a spherical earth we have pretty much spherical moon spherical Suns spherical Jupiter not big enough an asteroid out there then you oftentimes don't or don't become spherical Pluto icy world right is spherical right okay so now she said so basically is it's gravity in this one case that's well case now could there be a universe in which that is not the case could there be a universe where something forms a box or a pyramid a sphere so in the right scale you know if you're an atom if your lithium hydride lithium ion battery okay your oxygen atoms form octahedra which is our pyramids back to our base to base but when you get macro we get big enough you apparently you form like a bubble forms a sphere so if you had another universe that had different rules I guess you'd get different shapes and it's another way of expressing this sentiment which I'm so fond of which is if things were any other way things would be different so if you had a universe that had played by different rules I guess you'd get different shapes but I right now cannot conceive of those rules okay they what I'm watching for them watching I'm watching you molecules nice Halen or a great question all right let's uh let's check out Dex Jones what he has to ask index is also coming to us from Facebook Dex says bill is the human mind programmed to want to believe what we cannot discern to be fact if so do you think this is why magic or similar illusions are so popular no no not exactly okay I think what we're actually programmed to look for our patterns okay what makes you I think successful is a hunter-gatherer scavenger is you're looking for patterns patterns when the crops are gonna be here when the bananas are gonna come off that tree when I can grow my ground nuts when I can go looking for this carcass that the lion left behind right by the way I've been looking for a time to grow my ground nuts for a very long time well you gotta have some ground that's first of all if you're living an apartment in Manhattan Chuck you know there's your grounds gonna be limited not wise I'm getting a bumper sticker that says you gotta get some ground to grow your nuts all right it's I would call that whimsically referred to as a true fact that isn't easy with balls fact a true fish so with that said I think it's the patterns that we look for and the reason magicians are able to fool us is the pattern it looks one way but it's your expectation is not met thus a pattern is not fulfilled so our expectation of a pattern a couple with misdirection basically gives us magic yeah that's what I think okay and I know books are written but about this very subject but it's the patterns that make our ability to memorize learn and you and extrapolate or take the patterns the next step beyond what we've already seen or experienced is what makes humans such planetary butt-kickers sweet alright that is very cool hey let's take a patreon question yes let's do that as our patrons who are on that's right these are patrons who go to patreon.com/scishow to learn so that we can continue to bring you the programming that we hash yes I am you're not talking about that big powder it's cash okay so this is Joel Jericho and Joel from Minnesota says this does knowing more science make magic less impressive for you bill as a scientist do magicians even impress you at all since you know that there's no lie that there is indeed a logical explanation for every single trick no my relationship to it is I guess different I know what I'm being fooled right but I enjoy it it's art that's yeah I mean I know why a ballerina is able to remain on point I mean in some sense right but I still think it's great right yeah I know the guy's gonna do a card trick he's gonna make me think that I have the card but he's got the card and then but actually he forced me to think of the three of clubs when I wasn't even thinking about the three of clubs I thought that's cool that is cool gives us insight into ourselves and our pattern-seeking I mean I said I mentioned them earlier but I very much enjoy the Penn & Teller show right because they're going to show you how they did it after they mess with your mind love that very cool all right so there you go Joel I think I appreciate it on an even higher level and just being scared oh look at that so being a scientist actually allows you to appreciate magic even the more perhaps okay perhaps very cool after wire our brains to the appreciation meter which might be out there I was gonna say I need to know what I saw one man and the needle moved I saw it then I put a quarter in and I wished that I would be big and I lost a quarter so [Laughter] here we go Christopher Harold Miller let's know this these first states this I am skeptical of everything I'm right sure you want that's what he says it's Christopher words not mine I'm skeptical of everything I believe half of what I see and nothing I hear naturally I don't get along with conspiracy theory I thought he was going through the grapevine I guess do you feel like conspiracy theorists and theories deliver a quantifiable blow to science if for example enough people believe in things like the moon landing was faked does it not slow the progress of humanity you know I thought this was gonna be a BS question when I started like where's this guy going but now I get what he's saying he went a long a long way to go down the block but basically yes it holds us back yeah heresy theories are lazy there for people who don't think critically not wait a minute go back on that one pill because that's a good point you make but at what point did I met you said conspiracy theorists are lazy there were 60 people who were screwing everything up all we'd have to do is find those 60 people and unscrew it that's not what it is it's 7.3 billion people running around trying to make a living and things just get messed up because they just do okay and if you're skeptical of the moon landing being faked I just as always I tell everybody just look how much paperwork was generated to land on the moon there's no faking company who could afford to create the houses of manuals right and to what end so now let me ask you this cuz I think that the Christopher has hit on something and I want I want you to talk about this very quickly there are some conspiracy theorists mr. Nye doctor and I who make a very convincing case that scientists such as yourself are pushing the whole climate change agenda because it brings attention to them and gets them grant money for work and crapola and there are a lot of people who believe this so how do you answer somebody like that well is when it comes to climate change yes he remind us that people being worried by climate change for decades and you may remember June 23rd 1988 when James Hansen testified in front of Congress I can consider that the beginning of the climate generation ok and 97% of the world's scientists are worried about it consider how much the fossil fuel industry invests in creating this myth that there's not a scientific consensus it's a factor of a hundred if if something like the Environmental Defense Fund spends three million the coal industry spends seven hundred million oh wow to promote these myths and so by the way along with the four things electricity for everybody clean water for everybody improve electoral storage improved transmission lines and top-down or regulatory system that discourages the production of carbon dioxide and fugitive methane along with that we need to skate these climate deniers off the play they are causing trouble in my opinion they are holding the earth they're holding humankind back they are leaving the world worse than they found it and I say to conservative politicians if you're out there okay you could be like the guy who quit smoking who is the most anti-smoking person you're ever gonna meet the guy who just quit that's right so positions politician we got 15 months we got 13 months you could change you could say hey I've looked at the evidence hey 97% of the world sponsors are concerned about this every other government world is begging the United States to lead on climate change issues and you could change and then you'd have all the Millennials with the potential to vote for you this would be a fantastic thing Chuck I should pull back on Startalk Radio Chuck nice hear is taking your cosmic queries about skepticism magic magic and delusion and I'm yours guest host Bill Nye we'll be back right after this welcome back ladies and gentlemen to start talk radio I'm your guest host Bill Nye and our cosmic queries this week are with respect to skepticism magic and delusions yes that's correct so Chuck you've got a stack of queries from the cosmos that's right guarding sky I'm skeptical no I'm not I believe you leave it on give me one all right let's go to any Rogers Kubrick and Eddie wants to know this would you say all eyewitness accounts of miracles are either lies or the product of an illusion or hallucination well I think there are people looking for patterns that aren't really there okay yeah so so we all we all get confused eyewitness accounts are the least reliable evidence you're going to come across at scripts and so if you haven't done this in psychology class where the the red car hits the green car no wait it was a white car you get it all confused and so eyewitness accounts aren't especially reliable and what we say in the skeptical community is you have to have high quality evidence extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim and the classic example which I did on a television show back in 1895 was the earth is round when you stand on the earth it looks flat yes but you can show I'm pretty solidly convinced the earth is round so it was an extraordinary claim with an extraordinary evidence I can predict the outcome of horse races if you could do that why aren't you crazy rich well probably I can almost do it okay then you're almost crazy rich right cool give me another one okay so what do you think about when okay so he says okay what do I think about these are eyewitness accounts I think they're not especially reliable all right so now what do you think about the people who believe in miracles because a personal experience when it comes to say for instance an inexplicable cure of cancer see it has to be so in the case of an extraordinary claim like that yes and you say it's inexplicable we'd have to look at this specific case and see how splittable it was it's easy to make broad statements and somebody says the doctors gave him six months to live and he lived five years okay good I'm glad he did right but I'm not sure that it's any more proof that the doctors didn't have it quite right rather than it was a miracle with the divine intervention of an entity that we cannot see or speak with oh you say you can speak with that I cannot see or speak with that cause this so it really depends on the specific claim as we say in skeptical community it depends on the claim the claim is the key okay and that's a damn good answer man all right surprise all right this is Andy Brooks and Ian wants to know this bill as a scientifically minded person what do you consider to be magic what sparks that childlike sense of awe within you Bill Nye okay oh I like that marking childlike sense of awe that happens to me all the time okay that's not the same as magic for me but I'm a definition of words perhaps but magic is something done with supernatural phenomena that I cannot explain okay what a magician does that might be magical having the characteristics of or pertaining to supernatural phenomena is art and science and often engineering right where you have the open the book and it catches on fire somebody engineered a cigarette lighter they'll fit in the book right okay so I am in awe every day of my place in the cosmos really yes that I can somehow be made of Stardust and understand that I made of Stardust to me is astonishing astonishing cool okay but is that I don't can I don't consider that magic I got you but that is what sparks the childlike aww within within Bill Nye science for me really starts with whoa what happened how did did you see that that's how science starts for me that's it and magic has that in common with it Wow how did that happen what but cosmic phenomena are different from people trying to fool you all right well then I need to grow up because that was a very good answer and my answer was boobies I think I have a fascination with those as well and they certainly are magical I think it was Katy Perry who were marked we girls are so magical so kissable yeah yeah yeah with the terry ratchet call is not the same as supernatural unexplained by anything we know in all of science there you go all right there you have it I Andy good question we appreciate it all right let's go to Tom Rix all right yes what a cool name cool Tom ranks damn Rix wants to know this first he states to me magic is simply a word to describe an occurrence that you didn't fully understand then it gives an example for example I imagine my dog Duke is completely bewildered by my ability to change images on the TV without touching it I think he'd give me a dog a lot of credit there man but anyway he doesn't know about the invisible signal sent from the remote so to him it's complete magic would a technologically superior civilization be able to compete completely bewildered our scientists with their technology to the point where our scientists would believe it's magic or is our understanding of physics sound enough that we wouldn't know what's up even if we couldn't replicate it ourselves that was a long way to go to say this Bill Nye you as a scientist you encounter an alien race they are able to perform what looks like magic by violating the laws of physics would you say it's magic or would you say no I got to find out how they violated the laws of physics I'd go with the second one then what I'd probably say is there's some law of physics we don't fully understand okay this is this something this manifestation this effect this phenomenon is described by some aspect of nature that we do not yet grasped got you to say that the dog thinks it's magic when you change the channel I'm open-minded but skeptical yes oh man I think Duke the dog just kind of takes him for granted yeah how human shows up he's got food right once in a while he smells like a dog are we going for a walk yeah are you another dog are we going for a walk exactly I'm tired do you have any food right I mean that's I don't think the claim that a dog thinks it's magic so the dog believes in supernatural phenomena yeah I'm open-minded but skeptical that's a that's a bit anthropomorphic it is projecting you're projecting your human perceptions so does arthur c clarke who were marked that any sufficiently sophisticated technology would be insufficient would be indistinguishable from magic right but it's a charming turn of phrase or quotation but you start getting into the semantics of what is magic and you can knock yourself out i just think with 85% of the observable universe being dark matter right which means you can't see it there's a lot we don't understand people say you got all I'm saying that's the claim that that is magic supernatural and the certain people can control this dark matter dark energy with their minds I am your father there you go Tom so no that's not the way it would work and so the scientists would still say nope we just don't understand how they're doing it but it doesn't mean that it's magic and to any animal that licks its own testicles really doesn't care what's on TV so there's your I don't know I've seen dogs just definitely certain programs dogs prefer I mean there's no there's no real as an assessment of animal behavior okay all right I don't it's not on my business card animal behavior right now I'm projecting because maybe me as a dog wouldn't care with the well I think we're all dogs I feel a little problem and Funkadelic come on right now in a certain situation but yes you are the reader of the queries right you de man now dog there you go that's right my dog all right here we go Rey Marin Rey Marin wants to know this bill why can't mathematics and physics explain what happened before the Big Bang do we need a nor math or a newer version of physics bring it on Wow I mean hold it when you say why can't math do this or physics do that humans discovered math humans made up physics it doesn't like come from the sky these are human endeavors mathematics and physics right and it was very recently that humans discovered the Big Bang I mean people didn't even know about the big who knows what else we have not discovered the pursuit of whatever it is or was before the Big Bang is a reason for astrophysicists to get up in the morning and stay up all night it's a dude it drives us it makes us want to know more about nature so there is no question that our physics our mathematics is incomplete otherwise we would know the answer would have the answer yeah so and if we and if that is unknowable we'd prove that it's unknowable somehow okay and if I'm wrong about that then I will be enlightened and that will be the process that we call science cool man well there you have it Rayman ergo tautological on you but our belief in science is that we can know there is a process by which we can know nature okay and so if we say there's this phenomenon in nature we call the big bang we expect to be able to know a lot about it and certainly more than we know now I'll give you that right all right man if it's like a Nobu and we're like you know living on a ping pong ball and like a cosmic game of ping pong played by Kozma shion's of the cosmos could be but much more reasonable is that we just haven't figured it out yet and at the end of that impression let me just do this yeah okay we covered that earlier yes we can start talking yes we did all right just some disclosure there so let's go to Brian Holmes Brian's got a quick little question he wants to know this story simple is it possible for a human or human sorry I don't I saw a person and I said he thought a human it might be my old boy let me do it again Brian sorry from butchering your question Brian wants to know this is it possible for a person to levitate like the trick done by David Blaine and under what circumstances would that be possible well if you're doing it like the trick done by David Blaine yes it's a trick if you're saying can he do it as an illusion yes okay can he really have superpowers and fly around like Superman and some other guys Green Lantern I think confessing clean went between Wonder Woman no she's just got a point looks like she flies invisible it's a rookie mistake yeah so no I would say no and if you find a way to do it more power to you the guy who did claim to levitate this guy who had a mystic quality from the region of India yes from Asia I forget Yogi's something it had a yogi I think in it but he was an athlete who could flex his thighs in such a way that looked like he was flying he was just bouncing his bouncing off the ground in an athletic fashion but he wasn't really levitating so I'm very skeptical however can somebody like David Blaine make it look like it absolutely cool and and and would there be a way to I don't know using like okay friends since trains hover over top of an electromagnetic bed yes with magnet to its magnitude there they're levitating so that's a form of levitation there you go right could you have enough magnets on a person to levitate I should think so okay but his clothing or her clothing would have an unusual appearance but I wonder if but I by the way you don't levitate that high you know the magnetic field generally falls off as the cube of the distance okay so you have to have a very strong magnetic field even to to move things even a little just a little bit yeah okay well there you go man hey a great question there Brian all right let's move to Jeff Norbury Jeff says what's the biggest illusion you ever fell for fell for so now see I don't know if that would be the right term well when I was in the Boy Scouts okay I was instructed to get a smoke shifter I don't know what that is well it was a thing to shift smoke away from the campfire and the tents to some other part of the forest okay so your eyes wouldn't be watering continually your clothing wouldn't just be soaked with smoke and have that smell Wow turned out to be no such thing okay I walked around that's I was fooled I was badly fooled I was a young person I don't think I was yet 12 years old and I was badly fooled so that was a very good illusion and what the key to it was these other guys who I respected camp counselors who had shown me how to keep from drowning how to rescue others who might be drowning uh how to operate a canoe right how to identify 15 or 25 different species or genus ha's of forest plants right these same people we're all in on this deception bwahahahaha and I fell for it hook line and smoke shifter for about an hour listen I just fell for it right now for about an hour and then and then I was tired of running or literally running and I was afraid I was gonna be derided or penalized or subjected to further kitchen cleanup if I did not come back with this mythic device and so I was motivated and which made it all the more frustrating and for those about you out there for whom the beams of the smoke shifter can have been spilled i I'm sorry but it was part of my critical thinking and it was induced by this thoughtful question here on the cosmic queries and once again in our talk here's the great thing once again you just illustrate at your own point here's a pattern these guys you trust it because they had done so many great things for you no way they would ever subject you now course they are sweet yes we it was quite bitter really I'm still a little shaken up this is cosmic queries skeptics magic and illusion we'll be back with your questions with Chuck nice and myself Bill Nye right after this welcome back to Startalk radio I'm your guest host Bill Nye but I think more importantly and more impressive and just really something I hope inspires our audience I'm here with Chuck nice oh wow Chuck nice is going to read your queries your cosmic queries yes this week's episode features cosmic queries that involve skepticism magic and illusion yeah cue the music but these have been cool questions because these are about for me Chuck right these are about how we know nature they're about how we know our place is how we know the natural world and that for me is the process of science nice but it's very easy to draw incorrect conclusions or what are provably incorrect incorrect conclusions about the natural world and magic and illusionists are people that try to induce you to draw incorrect conclusions right oh that's where their bread is buttered so to speak there you go and I'm sure it's gluten-free and it's a it's a vegetable based breath it's all good Chuck all right you have some queries yes we do let's go with Adam rammer from Facebook and Adam would like to know this how do you know if your standard of proof is too high how do you know you're not being too skeptical I need an example that was this yeah I don't really have depends on the claim if you're like Bill just like roll with it like you know let it like happen you're not gonna there's a very good chance that you won't draw correct conclusions got you where you're so skeptical that you don't even get anything done and you don't enjoy a magic show for example that's a little different deal but can you be too skeptical you can certainly reject too many data that seemed too far off your nominal or what you were hoping for okay so I'm expected all right so with that in mind let's talk about experimentation as a scientist you're trying to you're walking down the street right no no you're just trying to prove something in the lab give me an example there's the lab a street then you could be walking that's true it you could be walking through sorry um but let's just say you're trying to prove I don't know that hydrogen atoms have resident frequencies that disseminate have dark bands where the electrons fall from one quantum level to another that's exactly what I was gonna say okay then you shine light through the hydrogen okay see if you get the bands all right now let's say you do that I don't know 2000 times and it happens all 2000 times there you go I don't know we got to find out we still don't know for sure so that I think like that I think that's what he's saying is where does it where does it happen in experimentation where you say all right good enough we know this happens let's move Oh let's talk Sigma I'll shall we okay so imagine the bell curve or if anything okay hydrogen spectral line measurements so there's a hump right in the middle then it goes out to the left is on the writes the positives and the negatives and at em down down stretching the horizontal accidental fashion well where it changes from curving down to curving up okay that's the standard deviation right left and right of the center so we ran in mathematics they run out of Roman letters so they start using Greek ones and four standard standard deviation is Sigma right lowercase Sigma usually okay so then if you're one standard deviation width from the middle that's one Sigma okay then you can go out to Sigma than three Sigma when you're three of those distances from the center right you're a ninety seven point three percent of the data are between the plus minus plus 3 Sigma minus 3 Sigma okay but now you can go out to five Sigma and Six Sigma way out read where the bell curve is just about that it's almost touching the axis nice but it's not quite touching show me on the axis where the bad bell curve it's not still yeah yes so you get to a place where you're good for all practical purposes and the practical purpose might be manufacturing an automobile engine okay some of them are gonna mess up right almost all of them are gonna work just fine gotcha and so Dan there's a case where you can be too skeptical and spend too much money too much money and time trying to get it even better but it doesn't do any good right because they even if you do it's a diminishing return because finishing return yeah it's it's so negligible what difference does it really make so this is the case where mathematical modeling of nature is quite instructive when we go to make things but there are other things that are absolutely provably true okay and if you got somebody says well you can't prove the sun's not gonna come up tomorrow I can prove it to beyond any reasonable doubt I can call somebody in Australia where the Sun is rising right now right and the gap are still yep sure not it's still happy yeah what if the earth blows up okay probably won't probably long guy right right okay hey Jake oh great question man way to go way to go Adam we love it all right let us move on to yes let us Dean Hiller or hilar H il er dhol er just turned them into an advertisement for himself well it was jello oh my god I totally missed that there's gonna be lost oh please don't eat the jello and take them is in trouble wake up okay Dean wants to know this bill children are highly suggestible they believe just about any idea or concept I'm a kid I gotta stop you're right I know you're right about that but go ahead you prove you can't prove that it depends on the kid so do you have any tips were instilling a good sense of skepticism and to children to prepare them for a world full of incredible claims from credulous people show them how easy it is to fool each other do card tricks right I'm a huge fan of Pepper's Ghost where you have a piece of glass you like an object on one side of the glass mm-hmm the viewer sees that object okay then you change the lighting so you no longer light that object you light an object at a right angle to that and this the glass is at a 45 degree angle to the viewer and now the viewer sees the other object okay I changing the lighting you can make the viewer think he's seeing this or that it's just done with mirrors just a little bit it's done with mirrors and it's a charming effect and I can't say enough good things and just and to promote me you could watch the Bill Nye show about about pseudoscience turn it up loud there you go alright so there you have it man do some experimentation at home so you have your kids learn magic tricks and see how easy it is to fool people okay and the better you are at the trick the more people you will fool you'll see it's an art as well as an engineering problem excellent alright this is a Marko Darko I don't think that's his real it's good enough for me Marko Darko he says this I'm from Canada eh I put the a in there oh and curious about future exploration is the team with various countries a type of space race or can we legitimately join together and pull resources so that we can be the best that we can be oh that's a great question so speaking of Canada you know the Canadian Space Agency although its funding is cut way back from what it was even a few years ago participates in so many missions around the world because Canada made a cool decision not to build rockets us to build instruments right there can they their space agency and they've been very successful and they built the Canada arm which is on the space station and so on and so yes we can all pull together but we're not there yet everybody believe me or not run your own tests if China were sending people to Mars the every other country would be interested in a mission to Mars so the space race aspect that that that sense of competition actually inspires governments to get their asses moving the Cold War was all about race to the moon and it was declared informally and pursued formally so but people who study the history of space cannot help but notice the space race and how much it did to get people on the moon but because after that was done and the moon his life was not a lot of stuff going on right brought back some cool rocks it hasn't become a big destination and it was really what people in history call the Nixon Doctrine yeah Richard Nixon knows this yes decided that NASA or the space agencies had to compete for money like any other domestic program that's right that's right he was he was a crook but that aside he put he made NASA a domestic issue rather than an international relations or international issue Wow and this has had a much bigger effect on the space programs of the world then this the famous Nixon Kenan she was the famous Kennedy moment the famous Kennedy moment when Kennedy said wait wait Rosa bought it alone because that's right and doing this that and the other thing cuz it's hot not easy it sounds like you're kind of Caribbean I don't know your English thing which brings me of course Caribbean new English as always brings us to the lightning round so in the lightning round you read these questions fast and I give you answers quickly that's right this is Orlando Alonso who says evolutionarily speaking isn't it refining our species to be skeptical of new things good and bad alike well I claim that the better our ancestors are at understanding nature through the scientific method the better their offspring will be in the humans that do draw Guddu correct or provable conclusions about nature will have a much better survival rate than those who do not boom Christopher Allen says this I'm a teacher and I would like to know what is the possibility and physical science of telekinesis so that would be either thought transfer or moving stuff with your mind there's no evidence for it period I love you so brain uses about 30 watts just turned up to 11 just going work and as far as you can 30 watts okay you can't do a lot of telekinesis Iying of tables and lamps and cars with that and press how do you get it out of your head into the space around you prove it and we'll be excited [Laughter] mother was in tears bring it on spit it out mark Miller wants to know what would the world be like without skepticism where would we be well take my word for it we'd be we'd be really well off and we'd all be rich and all have superpowers and no one would ever be unhappy ever again nice bill that was really good okay Kelly Elizabeth Klaus wants to know this can you explain the quote/unquote illusion behind what makes stars in the night sky such as serious appear to twinkle yeah the atmosphere the atmosphere is swirling like clouds in your coffee clouds in your coffee and the swirling atmosphere makes the objects appear to change brightness nice Lenny I'm cream and cranny uncreate II unclear Dee wants to know this is there anything that you would accept as being permanently outside the realm of science to explain to explain things and therefore be magical and it can something exist outside the realm of science bill well then we would just say our science is incomplete it's tautological yeah I mean show me the thing and we'll take a meeting uh here is somebody I just can't even Stefan Crowell Jick hey guys my question is where do we draw the line between skepticism and absolute truth well it's way out there so we just did how to go through that right decide if your is the Sun gonna come up tomorrow for me yes I'm counting on it will the world end in 2017 the people who issue my credit cards don't think so yeah so it's up to you but for other for most of us in science we there are absolute truths and the Big Bang is one of them and you and I are made of cosmic dust is another and this has been another wonderful and exciting cosmic query episode of star talk nice has been your reader and common Tait or I have been your host Bill Nye and we'll see you next time on Startalk in the meanwhile everyone please keep looking up this is Startalk [Music]

Channel: StarTalk All-Stars

Views: 7,561

Rating: 4.9126639 out of 5

Keywords: Bill Nye, Chuck Nice, magic, illusion, skepticism, Cosmic Queries, conspiracy theories, climate change deniers, landing on the moon, technology, Pepper’s Ghost, telekinesis Big Bang, smoke shifter, magicians

Id: _aZpYzYzu9s

Length: 48min 36sec (2916 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019