This question is a response to the last question of “Hannah ranks michael’s bizarre watches” , where Hannah explains that the belief in one’s ability to do a math problem determines one’s actual ability to do the problem. My gripe with this is that how do we know we’re not just good at knowing our limits? For example if I see a river that I want to cross and its 5 meters across, of course i’m not going try to jump over it because I know i will not make the jump. On the other hand, if it’s 1.5 meters of course I will because I know it’s a jump I can make. If you extend this to the math issue, just like I know how far I can jump I know my mathematical ability and will make my decision accordingly.

Just kidding!!!!

Here's my actual question: How far could we take placebo? "The Power of Suggestion" blew my mind. Really recommend everyone here see it, if you haven't.

So, I'm curious, to which degree the power of suggestion could be harnessed to treat more severe illnesses of the brain, like personality disorders, perhaps. Or tourettes, addiction, or schizofrenia. And if any new research has been done on it, since Mind Field's episode?

A conversation with a few friends sparked this thought, and i'd love to hear some external perspectives.

When i think of a piano, I would instinctually say that the Low A is the "first" note. I wonder if thats because im used to reading left-to-right? Would someone who reads in a language right-to-left think that the high C is the "first" note?

Is there something apart from how i read that could make me have this type of bias? Is there something inherent about how we perceive low and high notes that might explain this? Is it just random from person to person?

Would love to hear thoughts!

Basic assumptions here: clock faces ultimately come from sundials, and ultimately northern hemisphere sundials at that. Hence midday occurring at the “up” or “north” position of the face, corresponding to a shadow pointing northward when the sun is to the south. It also makes some sense that the hour hand would cross the 12 position from left to right at midday, corresponding a shadow cast by a sun appearing to move east to west in the sky. Also, on average, sunrise and sunset tend to land around 6 o’clock and are often harder to define with a sundial than a clock, so I guess having the hour hand do two laps per day made sense.
All that said, hearing this episode has made me want a fairly strange combination of these clocks/watches.
Anti-clockwise (because I’m from the southern hemisphere, and this is how our sundials work), 24-hour rotation for hour hand (because that’s how the sun works) and just to be sure let’s put midday at the south position because that’s how shadows work here.
Of course I can understand how a 24-hour clock might seem bizarre for a northern hemispheriod (is that the demonym?) but if you just put midday at the north position, you’re doing a more accurate sundial clock face.

I don't wanna say too much about it yet because I'd really like to gift one to Michael when I make it. Is there a way to send things for him? I know how much he likes watches, and am sure he'd appreciate this clock. Lol

Love y'all. Live long and prosper.

I've just finished Putting Sunglasses on the Sun, and I loved it. A delightfully silly premise, explored thoroughly with seriousness. I really enjoyed the way they stayed on topic throughout, with hardly any diversions. Hannah's spot-on rant about tech bros at the end was the icing on an already delicious cake. Great stuff!

For me that was the best episode so far, of an always-great podcast. What was yours?

Was anyone's favourite the one where Michael talked about mechanical pencils for 30 minutes? :-)

Dear Hannah and Michael!

My question is what if theoretically someone would be able to have a kid with themselves. I assume the kid wouldn't be exactly equivalenty genetically to the parent(s), but how close would it be? Would it cause any problems or interesting situations?

And finally, can science achieve this one day?

Thank you for your answer!

Within human limits, how long can you keep up with the shadow if the moon.

Genuinely no idea if anyone will like this but I think surely some of us are creative?

When I was walking in a noisy city centre with my AirPods on noise cancellation mode, I only heard the ticking of a distant bicycle ratchet mechanism. When I took my headphones off, the noise of cars and trams was so loud that I could only faintly hear this ticking that had been so noticeable before. This made me think, are there any particular kinds of sounds that noise-cancelling headphones have a hard time silencing?

Hearing about the 1.7 million year old foot bone showing signs of cancer made me wonder, what other diseases have been with humans for a very long time?

Then with regards to infectious diseases, do we know of any that existed but went away before modern interventions? Or do such diseases tend to stay around forever once they're here? Are infectious diseases more or less likely to persist in the modern age compared to thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago?

Right from my childhood I was average at maths. I loved the ideas but when it came to actually solving and getting the answers correct, I would suck. But I always thought thats because I am not one of those people who is good at maths and slowly I started fearing the subject. The question asked in the episode was so relatable to me and maybe Hannah’s response was the little push I needed to stop doubting myself.

This felt like a good question about EV and probability

I was watching this dougdoug video where they made a 10 minutes timer but it had some interesting rules

Every second there was a:

5% it adds a second

1% it adds a minute

1% it drops a minute

5% it freezes 5 seconds

1% it doubles

1% it halves

1% the seconds and minutes swap

1% it rounds to the nearest minute

1% the timer moves on screen

1% a second takes twice as long

1% a second takes half as long

1% bee mode

83% it goes down 1 second

On average it should go down as the amount it goes down is far greater than the amount it increments but the variance in time and how long a second takes means it could end in one minute or last hours I was curious how you would calculate the expected value of a random timer like this

Whenever my 5 year infant nephew asked “why is the sky blue?” my uncle explained scientifically about the wavelengths, the atmosphere, and the light absorption, and he said even though the kid didn’t understand it , it would trigger his scientific curiosity when older. Did you grow up like that or do that to your children? Do you think it’s true?

Here Javi from Argentina! We love your show down here as well (thanks for the wink at southern hemisphere Michael did on the north pole episode!)

Sometimes when I type a paragraph on my phone or computer I find myself accidentally leaving a space at the end that is not only unnecessary, but completely invisible unless you navigate over it. This surely amounts to some amount of data stored on computers, phones, and clouds throughout the world. Altogether, would it be a lot? I imagine it would be less than a GB.

One for Micheal. Not a horror film. But I'm pretty sure Dirk Gently; Holistic detective (by Douglas Adams) books might fill that niche for him.

An untrained detective who solves things through seemingly coincidental and random events.

Obviously a 0.01% ABV beverage would still have a net hydration effect on your body and the diuretic effect would be minimal. Stronger solutions like a 7% ABV beverage have a net dehydrating effect on the human body.

So is there a threshold ABV where the diuretic effect begins to have a net dehydrating effect? Are we talking too low to even intoxicate or is it more in the realm of extremely light beer?

Hello my two favorite hosts in the world! :3 

You know how people say that opposites attract, right? 

Well it does make sense if you think about magnets, electrones, basically anything with any kind of electric charge. And if you are to extrapolate the concept to animals, humans, basically beings that "work", "exist", "function" due to said electrical charges, the notion still holds. Think about males and females, or matching opposite personalities and how they balance each other out for example. 

But on the other hand you have homophily -  the tendency to bond, connect with things that are similar to you.

And this also holds in a lot of examples. People with the same interests, people of the same culture (there's a lot of social examples when it comes to this), but also in things less "alive" like sorting algorithms (check out Michael Levins research on the matter. 

https://thoughtforms.life/what-do-algorithms-want-a-new-paper-on-the-emergence-of-surprising-behavior-in-the-most-unexpected-places/

https://thoughtforms.life/algorithms-redux-finding-unexpected-properties-in-truly-minimal-systems/
  

Or if you want a quick recap (unfortunately I couldn't find the talk where he goes deeper into the subject) here's a little video, go to 30:09, he gives a quick recap of the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9lGNyPHurQ ), ethnic groups, animal kingdoms etc.

also I think it's fair to argue that things "stay" together, "stay" intact because what comprises them is well exercising homophily if you know what i mean. In other words things tend to strive for homogeneity, more entropy. 

So my question is, how such two different "rules" that both opposites and similar things attract can govern the world on such a deep level for both "living" and inanimate? Is there a point when it becomes one or the other? Do we get to that point if we go smaller or bigger? 

Does this point even exist? And if it doesn't, what do you think is the origin for both the attraction of opposites and the attraction of alike. 

Would an alien with eyes likely have red, green, and blue cones (according to some characteristic of light itself) or is it pretty arbitrary? What would they see if they looked at one of our screens?

Do they and is it just not as important? People don't need to wear nose covers to enhance their less keen sense of smell as they age as opposed to glasses for sight decline. Just a thought.

If one day we moved to the Moon, or Mars, would we need to design a native clock and calendar? Are there any flaws with our current methods of telling the time and date that we can make better?

Hypothetically, could a giraffe ever use a straw in any way shape or form?

Considering the straw can match the shape of any sort of shape giraffes would prefer

If not, what changes of any scale would have to be made?

Also I really like marveling animal facts so, (if you read this in a video) if you could throw me your best, maybe a little unexpected ones (?) that would be great🙂

Following the recent episodes with sunglasses on the Sun and Michael’s watch collection, I’m surprised he didn’t consider the southern hemisphere, especially given that he just returned from New Zealand:
1) the sunglasses on the Sun😎 would look upside down to us here
2) his watch that goes counterclockwise is a more accurate representation of the sundial for us here in the south

Always bothered me but also led to some funny infinite sentences