Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Brian Dunning: What Are UFOs?

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Brian Dunning: What Are UFOs? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans welcome to the same space with dangerous ideas and what idea is more dangerous
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than the notion that we are currently being visited by extraterrestrial civilizations
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who are flying through our skies and occasionally being spotted mostly these days by military
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fighter pilots whose stories have recently been exposed and investigated by congressional inquiries.
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What is going on with UFOs? A lot of people have a lot of claims. One person who has investigated
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these claims is Brian Dunning. He's an expert on critical thinking on science and specifically
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on skepticism. His podcast Skeptoid, the Bunks conspiracy theories and he has a new movie called
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the UFO movie They Don't Want You To See. Here he tries to get to the bottom of what's really going
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on with UFOs. If you're a believer you might find this a bit dejecting and if you're not a
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believer but you just want to understand then you'll find this inspiring and hopefully insightful.
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Enjoy the one and only Brian Dunning.
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In the changing kind of attitude towards UFOs over the past like seven or eight years has your
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as your impression of whether or not it's likely or less likely that UFOs are caused by alien
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civilizations changed at all. No, there hasn't really been any change to the science on this.
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There's been a lot of UFOologists telling old UFO stories but there's not been nothing new.
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What about the new stories of you know military people having seen things that we hadn't heard
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about before like why is there this escalation in interest slash anecdote?
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Well, the stories that we're hearing if we're speaking about like what David Grush brought up
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in front of Congress he talked about Roswell and an old debunked Italian story from 1933.
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Those are not new stories so I repeat there just has not been anything new.
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Why is there a renewed interest in?
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Because well okay I mean that's a long story the whole this whole UFO narrative has been
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being pushed by a small number of career UFOologists and UFO authors who got their story published
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in the New York Times in 2017 and have largely been able to control the narrative ever since then
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and I hope that they're finally starting to lose their grasp on this with all of the new
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UFO committees and task forces repeatedly saying that there's nothing to it and they haven't found
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anything of interest so I'm hoping that's going to fade and these new task forces and the militaries
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interest and so on they motivated because there are more crack pods in Congress because they're
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feeling pressure from constituents like I think there's an assumption that the reason why they're
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looking into it is because there is something new. I think that they're certainly pressure from
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constituents as part of it you know all the TV shows hold on to these stories that are being
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published out there promote them tirelessly the general public gets interested and you know
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according to latest polls about half of people believe that aliens have visited the earth
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and when you say half of people that includes Congress people they're up to slice a society
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just like anybody else and so I think a lot of them do generally genuinely have an interest
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whether that's a personal curiosity or legitimately wondering if this is a national security
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threat or something they need to be concerned about there's a variety of reasons I mean you've got as
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many reasons to believe in ufology as there are ufologists and one point that you make in your
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movie is that you have seen ufos as well yeah yeah it's uh I wish I saw them more often
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the most of the stories I hear are better than mine but what was it pretty fun to see something
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when you can't figure it out for a few minutes what was yours I had um one time I was out in death
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valley with some friends and at night we're sitting around um you know having our glass of wine
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outside at night and we saw what appeared to be a giant arrow made up just the outline of an
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arrow in lights flying overhead um very big very slow very quiet took a few minutes to traverse
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the sky and then about 45 minutes later it came around a second time and when it came around
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the second time we realized what it was but for those 45 minutes it was among the most exciting
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of my life I mean I thought holy cow what have I just seen that I cannot explain this this goes
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against everything that that I understand so it's a very exciting experience to have man what was it
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it ended up being a formation of planes doing aerial refueling we're right next to the China hat
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China hat um not China hat China lake um naval air station is right there and they do a lot of that
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death valley has lots of um military aircraft flying around that's where the famous star wars
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canyon is and all of that stuff rice and you start by talking about exoplanets in the movie and
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the probability of life elsewhere in the universe and the laws of physics that prohibit faster
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than light travel um can you explain that to us I mean it's probably best to start with the big picture
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yeah I mean we want to answer two questions in the movies the two questions everyone asks is
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are there aliens out there and do they visit the earth so we start with um you know I really wanted
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this movie to appeal to everyone um not only to people who already have a science based perspective
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but also to the people who have um who are alien visitation believers and I'm not trying to change
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anyone's mind or talking to one out of anything but I do want to better inform their beliefs
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with good science so talking about um the situation with exoplanets and astrobiology and how we
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we can't quite do it yet I mean we've had the first um the first potential uh biosignature
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detection with the James Webb space telescope but it's really going to be the next generation of
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space telescopes we expect to find biosignatures all over the place there's so many different
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forms that biosignatures can take so many different ways that life can happen on a planet not
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just carbon based like it is on earth and when we talk about the number of planets and the
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sheer size of um our solar our our galaxy and all the all of the galaxies in the universe you know
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we have a mathematically non zero chance that there are alien astrobiologists out there who have
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noticed the earth and to me that's that's an extremely exciting thought and I I started with that
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because I'm trying to establish common ground because I hope everyone who watches the movie
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agrees with that that that's an exciting thought and and the science behind it is real I'm not
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making things up when I say that earth has a biosignature and a techno signature that screams to
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anyone who might be out there watching hey there is life here and there is interesting exciting life
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on this planet this is like the best this is the dream signature the dream spectrum that we would
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love to find on another planet and that's what we're shouting out to the cosmos so once we establish
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that that yeah there is probably a lot of life out there here's the reasons we know that
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it's very possible that other life would be interested in earth in the same way that we would
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be interested in the same way that we're looking for for biosignatures on other planets
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then we have to talk about the other question which is will those aliens ever get to visit the
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earth and unfortunately that's a much tougher question with a less interesting answer or
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less fortunate answer because it's almost certainly no and and what do you make of the
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criticism that well of course we don't know how to make it how to travel traverse those vast
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distances but we are at our stage of understanding physics and of technology and presumably if there
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are other civilizations that are vastly more sophisticated than our own it's conceivable that they
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have found a way around the laws that we think prevent us from traversing enormous distances
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of space yeah I mean this is almost a default assumption that a lot of alien visitation advocates
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make is that aliens are smarter than us which means they're magic and they can do anything and the
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laws of physics don't apply to them well any sufficiently advanced technology is magic to people
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who don't yet know it yeah but you have to understand that this is not a technology question this
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is a laws of the universe question all right I mean this is not something that you can engineer your
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way out of special relativity is special relativity you cannot design a machine that makes special
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relativity go away the laws of physics and technology are two different things whatever technology
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you create is going to have to understand and work with the laws of physics just as we do so if
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the aliens want to understand what those laws of physics are and see if they can find a way to break
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them they're going to have to use mathematics the same way that we've done and when you use math
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you get the same answers whether you're located here or there the math is going to give you the same
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answers and that tells you special relativity is what it is and this faster than light travel is
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simply not going to be possible either for us or for them and I know that there's people on the
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fringe who say oh you can make a a a Dyson's fear that completely encircles your son and you can
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capture all the energy from your son and you can make an Alcubiaria drive and you can warp space
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that way these are all extremely hypothetical and they they make assumptions of things like
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exotic matter things with that have like negative mass which does not exist it's something that
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you know you can use in a in a mathematical equation to get the answer right just as you can use
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like if you're at high school you you might use i you know the square root of negative one that
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doesn't exist anywhere in the universe but it is something that we can use in mathematical equations
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that's the same thing that these sort of fanciful ideas rely upon they're
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they're purely hypothetical they're not I mean you could ever actually it strikes me that it would
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be it would be unsound to claim that we know that you can get around the limitations that the
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laws of physics impose on our technologies for traveling massive distances across the cosmos
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but I don't think that's the argument I think the argument is because we it would be parochial to
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assume that the limitations that we perceive constrain all life in the cosmos and therefore you
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can't rule out the possibility that alien civilizations can traverse massive distances because
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we don't necessarily know whether or not they can create wormholes through which they can seemingly
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travel faster than the speed of light we we know about spooky action at a distance on a quantum
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level where particles can interact with each other fast seemingly faster than the speed of light
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you know there are more things in and heaven and earth there ratio than a dreamt of in your philosophy
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we can't superimpose human kinds understanding of the cosmos in the 21st century onto beings that
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might be thousands of years more evolved than us which is not to say that that means that they can
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do it but it strikes me as plausible to say that does mean that we can't we can't say that they
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can't do it well I mean you're you're using wishful thinking right now you're not you're not you're
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not speaking scientifically I mean with when you say that that well there they have abilities that
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we don't know they may have they could have abilities that we don't know they they could have
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abilities that we don't know based on what because we do know a lot about the way the universe works
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and we know it doesn't work the way that you're describing and that's just math I mean this is not
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this is not us guessing these are not the laws of humans these are the laws of nature well have
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I mean the the quantum thing that I just mentioned about entanglement is a is a fact of physics it
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is true that you can manipulate a quantum particle here and thousands of light years away
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its counterpart can also behave in ways that seemingly a faster than the speed of light would
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permit that information to travel then we don't know what's going on there but it's conceivable
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but another you're concealing it quantum entanglement does mean that you can affect the quantum state
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but you cannot use it to transmit information that's relativity again that's just a fact of the
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way the universe works you cannot use quantum entanglement to communicate instantly across the
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across the size of the universe I mean it depends how you make what you made about communicate like
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you can you can you can swivel this thing to the left and it's entangled particle will swivel to
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the left yeah this is something that's talked about a lot that people if you have a journeyman's
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understanding of quantum physics which is frankly what everyone has quantum physics you know
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that the old saying is if you think you understand it you don't understand right but this is this
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is an absolutely fundamental thing talk to any physicist and say we know entanglement is the thing
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that means we can communicate instantaneously across across the universe but no that's the that's
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the limitation of the speed of light is that you cannot information cannot travel faster than the
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speed of light that is an absolute fundamental and that includes quantum entanglement if you need
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to get even more into it than that you're then you're gonna have to bring on one of your physicists
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okay let's suppose that we stick with not traveling fast on the speed of light and some
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civilization just creates spaceships where generation after generation after generation of
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of individuals live and they're traveling at 90% of the speed of light and you know it takes them
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how many centuries to get here is that does that break the laws of physics now that doesn't break
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the laws of physics at all it's it would be a hell of an engineering problem because of course
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you've got the energy requirements are doing that are going to be absolutely immense even just to
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keep living beings alive for multiple generations but there's no reason there's no engineering
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reason you you couldn't do it you could build yourself an enormous spaceship that could have
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carry enough you know oxygen food whatever it is that you're gonna need to keep a population alive
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for a thousand generations whatever you think it might take to reach however far you're trying to
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go that could certainly happen there's no law against that it's just not very practical and if
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you wanted to communicate with another planet send them a radio signal at the speed of light and
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you'll hear back in as fast as it's actually absolutely possible to your back so it's it's just
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it just doesn't make any sense that that's something that you would try before trying other things
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first that have a far lower energy cost and I guess by the time you have tried that it would seem
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weird to then get to earth and only interact with earth by whizzing around in inscrutable little
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fuzzy blobs in the sky instead of making yourself known in a more sophisticated way talk about
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let's talk about some of the other impediments the you you mentioned the Christmas tree problem
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in the film what's the Christmas tree problem the Christmas tree problem that's that's my personal
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contribution to the field uh people often talk about the distance problem right it's very
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the distances are thousands of light years it's and everything we've just been talking about the
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distance problem is one that everyone's heard and they're familiar with the other one is the time
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problem and we're not talking about the time of travel we're talking about the time at which these
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civilizations exist we've been a technological civilization sending out techno signatures for
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50 or 100 years um the universe is 14 and a half billion years old so we're just not even an
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incredibly tiny blip on the timeline of the universe well just as civilizations are scattered
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about through space they're also scattered about on that timeline so the Christmas tree analogy
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is imagine a Christmas tree with lights strings of lights blinking all throughout the Christmas tree
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and for the duration of each light being on that's the lifespan of a technological civilization
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now if they want to reach another civilizations they're gonna have to find another one whose light
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is on and not only at the same time but right next to them so you gotta have two lights in the
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Christmas tree that turn on at exactly the same time that their blinks are absolutely synchronized
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and they're right next to each other those are the only two that have any hope of potentially
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making meaningful radio communication back and forth for the rest of us even if we are close
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we're probably billions of years apart they came and went long before we appeared and vice versa
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so the Christmas tree problem is another difficulty that um really really reduces the chances of
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this happening and it's it's frankly very annoying and we hate it so and this is predicated I guess
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on the idea that advanced civilizations are not likely to last for tremendous durations of time
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well there's things like planet killer asteroids and gamma ray bursts that you can't really do
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all heck of a lot about you know a gamma ray burst is like hitting a sand castle with a fire hose
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it's it's gone um it's a stream of neutrons in the space that literally would just the earth would
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be completely disappeared and there's very little that anyone could do about that gamma ray burst
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could end to civilization it'll eventually hit the solar system you've got wars and pandemics
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at planet killer asteroids are among the most familiar and and most most likely I mean we know
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that those have happened to earth in the past and could again in the future so there's a lot that
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can they can terminate the civilization thanks for the upbeat assessment of our our fate that's great
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the um the other thing that people will say when they look at a lot of photos or videos of this kind
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of stuff of these unidentified objects will be well how do you explain uh how do you explain
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this and sort of throw the burden of proof back on the person who is making no claim
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instead of accepting the burden of proof from the person who's making the claim that there's
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something spooky about it so let's just go through a few ways that it does happen even though I sort
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of reject the premise that it is the job of the skeptic to be able to explain every miracle uh that
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they're presented with the parallax illusion is one of them that I found interesting in the film what's
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the parallax illusion so that's when um what's uh what's a good uh a good analogy here let's say you've
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got your friends standing in the yard and you're walking around your friend in a big circle and if
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you're filming your friend with a camera you're going to see the background moving past them
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and when you watch the video back it's going to look like your friend is moving quickly in front of
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the background so that's parallax you've got something that's actually not moving and you've got a
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background that is moving appears to be moving because the viewer is moving and that's the basic
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explanation for most of these modern navy UFO videos that we've been seeing so much for the past
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few years is there cases of parallax um something that is probably very stationary probably a balloon
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weather balloon mylar party balloon uh and the f18 jet is filming it as it flies at a thousand miles
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an hour so of course the background is going to be sweeping past this thing very quickly and it
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looks like this thing is moving fast right so I mean the one way that I find it easy to imagine is if
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you think of a carrot on a on a stick in front of the face of a donkey and the donkey is looking
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around and the carrot is dangling or if you made it if you got a ping pong ball and you dangle that
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from a stick in front of a camera or if you had a selfie stick for example with a ping pong ball
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attached to it and you were waving it around the ping pong ball could look like it's moving very
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fast against the background but that's just because you're swinging the you're in motion essentially
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and so is the ping pong ball yeah that the illusion is less compelling when you're there in person
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because you you've got an overall view with your but but when you see it compressed down it
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you see just a little clip of it on a on a video screen all you're seeing is an object in the middle
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of the screen and a background moving past very quickly and it looks like someone was stationary
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holding a camera filming an object that was moving very fast it's it's it's it's a much more
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compelling illusion when you see it on the screen i don't want to give away the the end of the
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movie but you've sort of alluded to it already which is that just in terms of the likelihood of
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the ways that civilizations would contact each other across the cosmos sending manned vehicles
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would be would not be the first thing you would do you would start by sending radio communications
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then once you if you could get physical objects there you would probably send unmanned drones of
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some kind and then the last step would be little green men not the first and the fact that we
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haven't seen the first two like we haven't heard anything from other civilizations gives us an
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indication that it's unlikely that they're sending creatures is that is that sound that that's
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very sound you know you you you you look at when you have a task and let's say we've discovered a
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planet with very interesting biosignatures we've decided our task as we want to try and learn more
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about that or make contact with them somehow if we can what is the lowest energy way to to accomplish
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our task it sure as heck is not going to build that giant spaceship we were talking about a few
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minutes ago it's going to be sending a radio signal simply electromagnetic communication you know
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what laser beam whatever it is and try and communicate with them and hope to get an answer it's
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it's it's the thing that we listens for with our setting projects our search for extraterrestrial
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intelligence projects and it's the thing that you know we've tried a couple of times with you know
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not not making a huge effort but transmitting simple signals about ourselves into space we haven't
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really done much with that yet um although you know we've been transmitting television and radio
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just not with a targeted dish so it's not very likely that it would be picked up so far away
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but yeah that's that's basically it why do you think we haven't heard anything
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well you know that the basic reason is because the Christmas tree problem combined with the distance
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problem are very difficult to solve and it's a good evidence that nobody has figured out how to
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solve both of those if anyone did notice the amazing biosignatures on earth and sent us a signal
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they probably did it 500 million years ago and of course they never got any answer and so
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they've since died out from their war pandemic or whatever and so we don't even know about them anymore
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you know that that there's there's three possible there's at least three basic things that that
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we would do if we got to an alien world somehow whatever technological solution let's say we got
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ourselves to some alien we got the quantum entanglement working at last Brian you got the quantum
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entanglement working so we would do one of three things we would jump out on their white house lawn
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and say hello we would destroy their planet like it's a Hollywood movie or we would stay up in the
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clouds and spy on them secretly and learn whatever we could so if we know that those are three
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options that we might that we might take any hypothetical aliens out there they probably have
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those same three options and some of them would choose option A some would choose option B some
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would choose option C well we know for a fact here on earth that nobody has destroyed us nobody has
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jumped out on the white house lawn to say hello so the chances are nobody has been here to try any
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of three of those things because if it was possible for aliens to travel around and to visit planets
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some of the briga to do each one of those three options probably so it's not a proof but it's a
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darn good indication right why isn't it a one in three chance that they've done the third
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well it is it is but that that presumes that there's only three civilizations out there visiting
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planets and if each choose one in three I mean when you talk to some of the ufologists out there
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they say oh here's here's some of the races of aliens we know about there's the gray aliens there's
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tall Scandinavian aliens there's the ones that look like bigfoot there's the interdimensional
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shapeshifters they go on and on and on so if there's so many races of aliens out there you got to
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figure that there's going to be at least a few of them try in each of those three options but nobody
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has ever done option one or option two I see I think it's likely that nobody's done anything
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so all of the civilizations in the universe have to have to be on the page of option three
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of sneaking around in the clouds without being seen I mean one one point that you don't make
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in the movie that I think is a good one is you know I heard Elon Musk mentioned it which which
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is why has there not been an increase in high quality videos and photos of UFOs as civilization
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has acquired the ability to take high quality photos and videos and we're walking around with them
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all the time I mean in the 70s it was quite hard to get your hands on a camera like you had to go
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inside the house and like pull your camera out and yet we have if anything about the same amount
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or fewer photos of unexplained aerial phenomena today then we did back in the 1970s when farmers had
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to go back into the barn and get a camera to take a photo of the disc hovering over the cows
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you know if that were if those things were really unexplained you would expect the fact that
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everyone has a phone in their pocket now to be yielding large not much larger numbers of crazy
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photos of things and they're not yeah I agree that that's an interesting point I've never seen
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any data backing that up though I don't know if anyone has ever actually gone back through the
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newspapers and counted how many reports how many photographs have there been reported to newspapers
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each year going back to the 1930s or whenever I would love to see it if that's been published
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I'd also argue that our iPhones really don't take that great of pictures when there's a small
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dot up in the sky it's great for taking a picture of your dog in the woods or whatever but it's
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not great for it doesn't have a good zoom lens it's a digital zoom basically right and so you're
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just going to get a bunch of pixels it's not going to take a very good quality picture
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you remember I mean even the ufologist in the 1970s were not taking great quality pictures of
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their discs above the cows in the sky so it's a low bar here but I take your point
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do you remember the big foot from a couple of weeks ago that a guy was running around in a suit
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outside a train in Colorado were you in Colorado for that you might not I must have been but I
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must have missed it what happened well there there's a guy with a with a sports outfitting shop
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who owns one of those geely suits and he's kind of known for running around town looking like big
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foot and apparently he ran alongside a tourist train in Colorado but he's probably a few hundred
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yards from the train right or meters whatever it is we say these days and people took iPhone
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video of him and that made it all all over the news and that iPhone video is terrible you cannot
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see any details on it so I kind of push back a little bit idea that on the claim that we've all
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got HD wonderful high quality cameras on us all the time you have cameras on us but they don't
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take good pictures of stuff that's far away interesting at the beginning of the movie you say that
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you know you're approaching this from a scientific point of view you're interested in what's
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verifiable rather than I suppose anything anything else looking at it from a narrative point of
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you which might be someone else's take is it is it true that what's most verifiable is always
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most probable it's what most verifiable is what's most probable not sure I follow you
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well there are some things that could be calculated to not leave a lot of evidence
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but that you might nonetheless piece together or infer their existence I mean you know I don't
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Donald Trump says a lot of important people have been telling him that Ukraine is misusing military
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funds that's a piece of evidence there's no evidence against it really do I do I do I notch that
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up as a piece of evidence and and therefore you sort of conditionalize my credences to believe
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probability Ukraine probably is misusing its funds or do I roll with a hunch about a narrative
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about the universe which is that Donald Trump is so non credible that it doesn't that that
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that sort of doesn't count as a verifiable piece of information or I mean you can think of
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other scientific claims where the theory precedes the observation and you know then you will go
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out and try to test you're mentioning special relativity you know there are cases of that where
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Einstein comes up with the with the idea in his noggin and there's no verifiable evidence for it
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and then we go out and we test the universe and the universe shows it to be verifiable I guess
31:21
I'm wondering to do all things does does the model of we have to run with the most verifiable
31:29
explanation always work well I think it does I mean when you're when you're trying to establish
31:38
new science you have to do that based on based on verifiable evidence that there's there's one
31:46
school of thought that says you know the whole absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
31:52
thing right I I'm not sure that that holds up very well it does from a purely scientific
31:58
perspective but from a when you need to know what's true so you can get through your day perspective
32:05
an extreme absence of evidence can I think be considered for all practical purposes to be
32:12
evidence of absence if aliens were visiting the earth and landing and leaving footprints and
32:19
footpads and and probing people and slicing up and dicing our cows there would be some evidence of
32:26
that and the fact that we have nothing but a huge number of terrible cases of evidence
32:36
anecdotes pictures of basically nothing when something is real there would at least be
32:45
some good evidence mixed in with the bad evidence and then you have zero except horrible evidence
32:52
I think that for practical purposes you can start to consider that evidence of absence
32:58
now I'm not saying that counts from a scientific perspective if you're trying to prove new sciences
33:03
but from a practical perspective I think you can take it that way and what do you say to people
33:08
who say all right there may be evidence of absence of alien visitation but there's clearly something
33:15
going on in the sky because there are so many weird phenomena that are being spotted by
33:22
people in military jets and so on that maybe there's an alternative explanation like the
33:27
military is trying to hide you know hypersophisticated equipment that they're working on maybe it's
33:35
maybe it's the Chinese maybe it's the Russians maybe it's Elon Musk maybe it's something else that
33:40
we don't understand but there must be a there there because there are too many things that people
33:45
are seeing to just wave away and say well parallax confusion bad camera glint on the windscreen
33:53
well I mean you could you can look at the report released last week by the all-domain
33:58
anomaly resolution office which found that the vast majority I don't have the exact quote
34:06
even though I was writing an article a lot of this morning the vast majority of all the reports
34:10
turned out to be perfectly consistent with easily explainable things so they were not interesting
34:16
and the ones that remained a much smaller number simply didn't have enough information to make
34:22
any conclusion about anything it would be a pilot says oh I saw a thing in the sky oh yeah show me
34:27
a picture anything well no don't have anything well then we don't have enough information to make
34:31
any conclusion about that so really we don't have any evidence that there have been any unexplainable
34:36
things up in the sky it's always reported that way TV shows people forget TV is entertainment right
34:45
you got to stop believing everything that you hear on television of course the TV shows are
34:50
going to say pilots are stunned scientists are baffled here's all these weird things that nobody
34:56
can explain well so far there haven't been anything that nobody can explain there's been
35:01
things that are simply too poor equality to make any kind of a judgment about and there's been
35:07
things that we'd have perfectly good mundane explanations for for example all of the videos that
35:13
the navy has produced have very solid perfectly mundane explanations we haven't seen anything yet
35:21
appears unexplainable to the people who are skilled at determining what's what's shown in these
35:26
videos so there's I guess I'm trying to get it one thing that you say in the movie is we're looking
35:34
for extraordinary hard evidence and all we're getting are anecdotes and I'm wondering whether or
35:41
not the model of looking for extraordinary hard evidence is always valid I mean let's let's
35:46
grant that it may be valid in the case of UFOs but taking the skeptical outlook as a world view
35:54
are there questions on which it's like because I think that most UFO believers would concede that
36:00
point and say yeah okay there's no extraordinary hard evidence but you're you're that's sitting
36:05
the bar too high that's like asking for extraordinary hard evidence for the existence of free will
36:11
or extraordinary hard evidence for the existence of God you know we're dabbling in areas where
36:17
there's an enormous amount of uncertainty so the way that epistemologically I'm just going to arrive
36:23
at a probabilistic hunch is not going to be driven exclusively by extraordinary hard evidence
36:31
I think that you can make a personal judgment call for your own satisfaction based on that
36:36
but we don't make science conclusions based on that science cannot say hey enough people say that
36:43
they saw a spaceship that we must we're forced to admit that aliens are visiting the earth science
36:49
can make that conclusion but a lot of people have done exactly that as you say a lot of people have
36:56
said there's been so many UFO reports out there there's got to be something to it therefore I believe
37:02
that aliens are visiting the earth that's the kind of thing that I was just talking about a minute
37:06
ago from your own practical for your own practical purposes you can make conclusions based on less than
37:13
firm scientific proof I mean I guess the question is then would that be would that be sound so let's
37:19
let's assume that whatever it is that we're calling science can't you know that it would be
37:24
unscientific to make a claim of certainty about something for which there is not extraordinary
37:30
hard evidence especially if it's an extraordinary claim um then how do we think about the role
37:36
that science plays in our own personal epistemology like because it may that it may be that that
37:42
excludes quote-unquote science from being the sole yardstick of deciding what we believe doesn't
37:51
that leave us playing in a broader sandbox of non science with a large range of issues where
37:58
there is no extraordinary evidence no hard evidence yeah absolutely it does I mean that's the life
38:06
we live in every day uh go to the supermarket and uh look at all of the extraordinary dietary
38:14
claims made of my products you know all natural this and that no sugar organic this and that
38:20
um all of society is so much of society so all of marketing is based on these kind of
38:28
conclusions that you're talking about but I don't know that we've made firm scientific models
38:36
forming our theories based on that kind of information I guess so are there things that you
38:42
believe that are not supported by firm scientific models absolutely what all of us do I don't know
38:50
I wish I did know so I could fix them all well let me re let me re let me rephrase that then are
38:56
there things that you knowingly uh believe that are not supported by rigorous science and that you
39:04
think a nonetheless sound to believe no that's interesting I mean I'm sure the answer is yes I
39:11
would love to be able to think of one off the top of my head nothing's coming I mean what about
39:15
the two that I just speculated on you know free will and uh whether or not there's some creator
39:22
or purpose to the cosmos oh I don't I don't consider those science questions though I consider
39:28
those more philosophical and that's not a subject I'm particularly interested in but I mean those
39:37
are matters of those are matters of um opinion I mean I don't know that science is ever going to
39:43
try and address the question of is there a god because science is the process of explaining
39:49
an observation and we don't have an observation that says oh here something supernatural is happening
39:57
when people pray can we can we validate that scientifically that would be an excuse where we
40:03
could apply science to a question like that so I don't know that those are science questions
40:08
rise I mean free will likely neuroscientists debate whether or not there could be a way in which we
40:16
articulate our our desires and our ambitions that is not purely caused by every prior you know
40:25
physical cause in our brain and in the environment of tundinous genes yeah I feel we're getting
40:33
close to the living in a simulation question I hadn't thought about it but now that you mentioned
40:39
it sure but I mean that's I give the same answer for that one because people ask me that all the time
40:44
we do not have any observations that indicate that we're living in a simulation there's perfectly
40:49
valid theoretical arguments that say hey I bet we're living in a simulation because this is this
40:55
but we don't have any observations there's no evidence that is of anything that can't be explained
41:02
in a way other than living in a simulation so if they were not a scientific
41:06
if there were good theoretical arguments for how alien civilizations could have come here that
41:12
would change the probability about what we're seeing in the skies well that's an interesting question
41:22
you mean if there were if if we had if the laws of physics were a little bit different
41:29
and they allowed ways that you could get through wormholes and things like that that's right yeah
41:34
suppose suppose someone at the someone at the large hadron collider and Geneva goes you know what
41:39
we've discovered this wrinkle in entanglement which means that actually trend you know information
41:44
can be transmitted faster than the speed of light this is going to upend relativity I guess travel
41:50
over vast distances is possible then do you turn up the dial of probability on your
41:57
belief on your non-belief in UFOs well I would say my non-belief in alien visitation
42:04
right here I would say to that specific question I would say still know because we still have
42:12
a lack of evidence that we've ever been visited I think it would take some evidence that we've
42:18
ever been visited and that's exactly when it becomes a science question because then we have
42:25
an observation in need of an explanation you know if we found a you know a crashed spaceship
42:32
and we're able to do metallurgy on it and found that these are isotopes that that don't exist on
42:38
earth you know that's kind of the classic example that people give and yes there are mega rich
42:45
people who could fabricate such a piece of metal given extraordinary amounts of of money and
42:51
resources but a lot of people would know about it for anybody who writes on that stuff it's actually
42:58
quite interesting but yeah it still would take it would still take the evidence not just the theory
43:06
and does that relate also to you know historical conspiracy theories I suppose the sort of
43:13
the the the broad brushstrokes of what I'm trying to point at would apply also to famous
43:20
conspiracy theories like JFK's assassination or something where people who think that there's
43:26
probably something fishy about the conventional narrative about how he was assassinated they might
43:34
say well of course you're not going to get extraordinary hard evidence and we know that there
43:39
isn't extraordinary hard evidence although of course you can always point to some cokes who say
43:44
there is extraordinary hard evidence and it's been suppressed but let's set them aside and take the
43:48
most you know the most reasonable version of our opponents argument here and say that there's a
43:54
there a theoretical narrative reasons why a person might think that it's a little bit too neat
44:00
that JFK was assassinated by this one individual who then conveniently got assassinated himself a
44:07
couple of days afterwards and that there was nothing else going on and that person is
44:12
adjusting the the probability dials in their head in the absence of any hard evidence are they
44:21
playing a foolish game or is that legit I don't know that I don't know that I would choose either of
44:31
those two descriptions they're they're playing a very human game they're doing their brains are
44:40
doing the things that our brains were evolved to do which is to seek out explanations based on
44:46
the things that we know and understand and believe about the world if you are someone who is
44:52
higher on the conspiracy ideation spectrum then your brain is going to correctly interpret thing
45:01
I say correctly correctly according to its rules of how to work it's going to correctly see
45:06
conspiracies where none necessarily exists in the real world so I I don't think it's I don't think
45:14
that I don't think that that person is playing a foolish game and I don't think that that that
45:21
that the alternative means that it has to be true right so I guess what I'm groping towards the
45:28
perhaps a little inadequately is are we are we guaranteed of getting the likeliest understanding of
45:35
the world by always and only following the evidence or are there occasions in which you have
45:42
to make a narrative leap even in the absence of evidence about this specific case and stitch
45:52
together stories like is there a risk that in you doing your work with such a scrupulous focus
46:00
on hard evidence that you miss the wood for the trace but probably I mean it's a wonderful
46:08
question and it's it's it's wonderful to think about and I'm sure that some people listening
46:14
have some ideas and I would love to hear what those are some suggestions for cases where that's
46:19
happened I I don't think you're going to get something more reliable than strict adherence to
46:26
the scientific method and and scrutinizing the evidence and really trying to falsify all the
46:33
evidence I don't think you're going to get more reliable than that but I do agree you're probably
46:40
going to miss some things right right so it's more of a numbers game in terms of having faith in
46:46
in the long run you'll be more right than not is it because I mean like there will be there will be
46:53
right right I mean there'll be a lot of things that an an astricted adherence to evidence will
46:59
lead you to miss because we know that there will be things about which evidence will emerge that
47:04
will affirm some conspiracy theorists suppositions or hunches your claim is not that that won't
47:13
happen but that it's that you're going to be more right more often if you stick with the evidence
47:18
is that right that that's exactly right yeah right how did you get interested in skepticism
47:24
where does that where does all this come from Brian you know this is a question that I talk about
47:30
with with friends and colleagues all the time and it's it's a very common story I grew up
47:36
reading all the books on aliens and ghosts and and bigfoot and haunted houses and the
47:42
preview to try and go and all of that stuff I believed every word that was in all those books
47:48
and I remember that a certain number of those famous mysteries just stuck with me and were
47:53
always in the back of my head making me wonder how the heck could that have happened what what what's
47:58
going on here and you know I I went to college for writing for film and television and
48:05
minoring and computer science and dropped out to work in entertainment which didn't work out
48:12
for me very well and I had a long boring career until podcasts came along and a podcast is like
48:22
oh my gosh here's the perfect convergence of all of my interest it's got the entertainment aspect
48:28
it's got the and it and I could do a science show these were my these were my core interests
48:34
so once I had an excuse to start doing this I kind of just immersed myself in this world
48:40
of science communication and getting to know science communicators and scientists in every field and
48:48
writing about everything that they were doing and writing about everything that I could find out
48:52
and and and podcasting about all of it and sort of learning learning the world of science from
48:59
backwards you know coming at it from the entertainment aspect into science rather than
49:03
coming into it from the front door and this became the opportunity for me to go back to those
49:09
things that had been in the back of my mind for 20 years 30 years 40 years and and okay what is
49:17
going on with the review to try and go and what was going on with this famous ghost story and then
49:22
you find out that people have already solved those things people who solved them with the scientific
49:27
method and it's like oh my gosh and like the whole you know the clouds opened up and it's like
49:33
here's a way that we could actually solve mysteries and find out what's really happening
49:38
instead of just sticking with the popular paranormal story which always turns out to be
49:44
way less interesting than the history of how this and how and why this belief got to be a thing
49:50
so that's how I got into it and that's why I am so so passionate about doing things the right
49:58
ways because that leads you to the best possible answer and when I actually wanted to solve some
50:05
of these mysteries that I'd always wondered about that's how you do it and is the true I just want
50:11
to pick you up on a cloud on a claim there that the true explanation is always more interesting
50:17
than the fantasy it's more interesting to you because you're hardwired as a skeptic but there are a
50:23
lot of people there's something kind of banal and spoilery right about the whole mission of skepticism
50:32
that there's that you know you hear this from religious people when they're talking about
50:36
Richard Dawkins or atheists as well that you know there's this there's this magical universe of
50:43
possible scenarios whether there's a religious spiritual conspiratorial or just fantastical
50:52
beyond belief like the abominable snowman or something like that or the Bermuda Triangle and
50:58
to the to a lot of people the conspiracy mindset or the that that kind of the whole the jigsaw
51:06
piece that's missing from their world which could be anything is there's something magical about
51:13
that and they are hardwired to want to pursue those and to talk about those and to live inside
51:19
that uncertainty and what if they really is this and what if they really were visited and what if my
51:24
you know grandmother really did appear to me in a dream or whatever it might be and their
51:29
emotional response to you which I'm sure you get all the time is that oh you're a spoil sport you
51:35
are coming along and you're kicking over my Lego you know and saying actually grandma doesn't
51:40
exist she was dead all along she's called six feet in the cold cold ground you idiots and that
51:46
there's something you know I'm interested in the in you what you get out of it because it can't be
51:51
true that the true explanation of I don't know the Bermuda Triangle I don't even know anything
51:57
about the Bermuda Triangle so I don't even know what the true explanation is but that that is
52:00
necessarily more wondrous than the spooky explanation or is it to you I don't get the feedback
52:08
that oh you're just you're just a wet blanket a party pooper taking away my cherished belief in
52:13
ghosts I don't get that because they might not they might not put it that way I really I really
52:21
work hard to make sure that every show that I do is a net positive for the listener I don't just
52:28
try to prove that your belief is wrong that's not interesting and it's inherently negative I try
52:33
to find the inherently positive thing I mean look at the UFO movie that I just made right you can't
52:39
argue that I'm being negative about anything in that I mean if anything that's the most hopeful
52:44
ending for a science-based film on on the UFO question that I've ever seen I'm trying to give
52:51
people something that's more and something that's interesting we we're talking about parallax a
52:56
little while back and if you show someone one of the UFO videos these Navy UFO videos like the one
53:02
called go fast in particular if you're listening doesn't matter which one I'm talking about but it's
53:07
it's it's something that's clearly explained by parallax but if you don't know that it looks
53:12
extremely convincing and that's a wow that's a great thing that's like me in Death Valley seeing
53:17
the giant arrow flying overhead seeing look at this thing in this video this is unexplainable by
53:22
anything we know that's amazing and then you can get this 30 explain a 30 second explanation of
53:28
parallax and you go oh now you've got both experiences you can stick with the science fiction
53:38
explanation because it's cool and you can still look back at the video and say look how convincing
53:44
that looks that's kind of neat and on top of that now you have a real explanation for what's really
53:49
going on you're actually smarter and you're actually writing to the belief is actually true to me
53:55
that's a net positive and I've never come across a story um I've never produced a story where you
54:03
don't have that I would never do a story that's just oh grandma's poo doesn't really psychic I would
54:11
find I would find something interesting about how and why that story came to be that makes people go
54:17
oh that actually is really cool I love grandma's poodle adorable little adorable little
54:23
pooch now I've got the bebina triangle in my head can you tell me what the bebina triangle is
54:29
it's a it's a geographic triangle inside of which nothing interesting is ever happened
54:34
I mean how did it how did it come to be it was literally fictional um it came to be a good guy
54:41
named Charles Brulitz wrote a book called the Bermuda Triangle and he just made a bunch of shit up
54:46
um that's unfortunately the the truth of the Bermuda Triangle um he took
54:52
says the man who says he's not kicking over children's uh sandcastles
54:56
there's nothing to it he made some shit up let me give you it's not interesting there's no there
55:01
there let me give you an example uh flight um oh darn I can't remember the flight number but
55:08
there's five no no sorry that was that was Malaysia yeah okay I just wanted to try and go
55:15
okay so there was five TBM Avengers that flew out on a training mission and all five of them
55:21
disappeared making mysterious radio transmission saying our instruments are going crazy the clouds
55:27
are going insane and they all five disappeared that's one of the most famous stories from the
55:31
Bermuda Triangle and by itself that sounds interesting but the real explanation of what happened
55:38
is to me way more interesting than that well what happened okay so um the entire thing was the fault
55:54
of the instructor um this instructor had come from the Pacific theater in World War II where he had
56:01
twice before gotten lost and had to ditch his plate in the ocean because he ran out of fuel and had
56:07
to be rescued that had happened to him twice this guy apparently was the most astonishingly bad
56:14
navigator with the world's worst sense of direction and he was somehow made it to be a flight
56:19
instructor on Florida now Florida is on the east coast of the United States and if you fly east
56:28
from Florida you're just gonna go over open ocean you're gonna go over the Pacific that
56:32
excuse me the Atlantic Ocean and you're you're gonna run out of fuel and crash into the water
56:37
you have no options to land out there the Bahamas he was leading all five guys what the Bahamas
56:43
they actually went to the Bahamas they were they had done a they had done a bombing run they
56:50
had made made a big triangular flight uh of mock bombing runs and then after that they were still
56:56
flying east now even though he had just done those things he somehow got it in his head that he
57:04
was west of Florida in the Gulf of the Gulf of Mexico and he was telling his students we need to
57:14
fly east to get back to Florida and the students are saying to him because we have transcripts of
57:20
this which didn't make it into Charles Burlitz's book the students are telling him dude you are
57:25
wrong we just we were just in Bahama we are not over the Gulf of Mexico and he radioed back to
57:34
base sometime he said well obviously my compass must be wrong because we're going the right
57:39
direction that one comment by him over the radio is what got morphed into our instruments are going
57:46
crazy they're spinning wildly and it was just simply a case of this this guy leading his four
57:53
poor students to their deaths well there there was two three guys in each one of these planes um and
57:58
we have the whole radio transcript wow so not only is the story completely unsupportable because
58:05
we have the actual radio transcripts and we know what happened to me that story of how it actually
58:10
took place that's that's a stock that's mind blowing that this guy could have been that far wrong
58:17
and so many people died as a result it being news flashes idiot says trust me not my instruments
58:24
unfortunately the instruments were right the idiot was wrong uh Brian I want to ask I want to ask you
58:35
about what we should be doing to contact extra terrestrial civilizations and whether or not we
58:40
should be broadcasting ourselves into the universe but I'll do that in our bonus section which is
58:45
for our our subscribers if you want to subscribe uncomfortable conversations dot sub stack dot
58:50
com thank you so much Brian for for being on the free show so at the end of your film you say um
58:57
you know we should be broadcasting into the universe to to try to make contact with possible
59:03
alien civilizations but don't most people who work on in this field think that that could be
59:10
risky why you think to hear the rest of this conversation go to uncomfortable conversations dot
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